MichaelW
Well-known member
- Build Rating
I've actually had this one done for a couple of days.
When I went to go do a demo for it, I went down a pickup swapping rabbit hole.
I wanted to use my Eastman Semihollow for part of the demo and realized I hadn't played it in quite a while. Which got me thinking about why that is, I mean I absolutely love that guitar. It occurred to me that somehow the tone just didn't inspire me for some reason.
When I bought the guitar it came stock with some Bare Knuckle Old Guard PAF's. They were good sounding pickups but part of their budget line.
I decided to install a set of Lollar Imperial Low Wind hum buckers in them, which is what both Eastman used to use on this model as well as Collings, which is what the Eastman is based on. (Carved solid mahogany back and carved solid maple top). So it's really more like an arch top than a 335.
Collings has now moved onto using ThroBak's on theirs (I think) and Eastman went with Bareknuckle. Anyway, the Lollars are a bit too bright for this guitar but it took me a while to admit that after spending $400 on the pickups and suffering immeasurable trauma of changing the wiring harness and installing pickups in a semi......
So on a whim I decided last night to swap out the Lollars and put the set of Wolfetone Legends that I had in my PRS into it. WOW, the guitar just came to life in a big way! The Legends are just fabulous vintage PAFs. probably the best I've ever played.
I want to thank @Big Monk and @cdwillis again for turning me onto Wolfetone. I think I'm on my 6th set of pickups from him! I wound up ordering another set of Legends and plan to do some more pickup swapping. The new set of Legends will probably be going into my Les Paul Gold Top, As much as I love the Durbano 59's that I have in that guitar, I can't help wondering if the Wolfetones won't sound better..... (Always chasing the toanz......hahaha)
Ok, so back to the pedal, this one half of the Cornerstone Gladio (the cleaner side). And I have to say, it might be my favorite Dumble style pedal I've built yet.
Most Dumble pedals seem to focus on the high gain side of things where the Gladio SC does a great job emulating the lower gain and semi-clean sounds.
I'd be really interested if @Robert did a project on the full monty Gladio with both sides. Would be a really cool project!
For the build I decided to use relay switching. There's a toggle for compression that brings in an additional set of 4148 diodes for a more compressed sound.
I have not seen the schematic yet so not completely sure what's going but the pedal has 6 1n4148's for the clipping.
Lots of great sounds on both sides of the toggle. It's also got a Blend knob that mixes in some clean signal. But from what I understand it doesn't work like a typical blend but rather taps the pre-gain clean signal and passes it through in parallel with the overdriven signal. I found it most useful at the lower settings, just adding a touch of clean to the signal especially on the more transparent tones.
Some pretty cool features for sure! I decided to use the top hat knobs as a tip o da hat to the original, although its in a blue enclosure.
There's also an internal trimmer to add or cut bass. I left it at noon and it seems to be fine right there. Don't think I'll be changing it.
For the demo, I did some comparisons with the ROG Umble that I recently finished. Very different pedals both in terms of how they sound, the gain structure as well as topology. I'm less enamored with the ROG Umble than I thought I'd be but @ICTRock gave me some ideas to try in that build.
Since the two names that get mentioned the most when it comes to Dumble style tones is Robben Ford and Larry Carlton, I decided for the demo to try to emulate their sounds. According to Gladio, the SC was designed to nail the Robben Ford "Cannonball Shuffle" tone. Which is a fairly low gain, transparent sound in the studio recording. He also used his 60's Tele on that recording. There are many live video's of him playing Cannonball with other guitars with lots of different tones.
Anyway, I tried to get close on my Tele to that sound in the little clip of Cannonball.
Larry Carlton typically uses a much more compressed sound. And even though he did not use a Dumble on Kid Charlemagne, I decided to do a short clip of that for the Larry Carlton sounds.
All in all, really dig the pedal and highly recommended build for those of you that are looking for a Dumble-esque tone that's a bit more nuanced and subtle than a Zen Drive.
When I went to go do a demo for it, I went down a pickup swapping rabbit hole.
I wanted to use my Eastman Semihollow for part of the demo and realized I hadn't played it in quite a while. Which got me thinking about why that is, I mean I absolutely love that guitar. It occurred to me that somehow the tone just didn't inspire me for some reason.
When I bought the guitar it came stock with some Bare Knuckle Old Guard PAF's. They were good sounding pickups but part of their budget line.
I decided to install a set of Lollar Imperial Low Wind hum buckers in them, which is what both Eastman used to use on this model as well as Collings, which is what the Eastman is based on. (Carved solid mahogany back and carved solid maple top). So it's really more like an arch top than a 335.
Collings has now moved onto using ThroBak's on theirs (I think) and Eastman went with Bareknuckle. Anyway, the Lollars are a bit too bright for this guitar but it took me a while to admit that after spending $400 on the pickups and suffering immeasurable trauma of changing the wiring harness and installing pickups in a semi......
So on a whim I decided last night to swap out the Lollars and put the set of Wolfetone Legends that I had in my PRS into it. WOW, the guitar just came to life in a big way! The Legends are just fabulous vintage PAFs. probably the best I've ever played.
I want to thank @Big Monk and @cdwillis again for turning me onto Wolfetone. I think I'm on my 6th set of pickups from him! I wound up ordering another set of Legends and plan to do some more pickup swapping. The new set of Legends will probably be going into my Les Paul Gold Top, As much as I love the Durbano 59's that I have in that guitar, I can't help wondering if the Wolfetones won't sound better....
. (Always chasing the toanz......hahaha)Ok, so back to the pedal, this one half of the Cornerstone Gladio (the cleaner side). And I have to say, it might be my favorite Dumble style pedal I've built yet.
Most Dumble pedals seem to focus on the high gain side of things where the Gladio SC does a great job emulating the lower gain and semi-clean sounds.
I'd be really interested if @Robert did a project on the full monty Gladio with both sides. Would be a really cool project!
For the build I decided to use relay switching. There's a toggle for compression that brings in an additional set of 4148 diodes for a more compressed sound.
I have not seen the schematic yet so not completely sure what's going but the pedal has 6 1n4148's for the clipping.
Lots of great sounds on both sides of the toggle. It's also got a Blend knob that mixes in some clean signal. But from what I understand it doesn't work like a typical blend but rather taps the pre-gain clean signal and passes it through in parallel with the overdriven signal. I found it most useful at the lower settings, just adding a touch of clean to the signal especially on the more transparent tones.
Some pretty cool features for sure! I decided to use the top hat knobs as a tip o da hat to the original, although its in a blue enclosure.
There's also an internal trimmer to add or cut bass. I left it at noon and it seems to be fine right there. Don't think I'll be changing it.
For the demo, I did some comparisons with the ROG Umble that I recently finished. Very different pedals both in terms of how they sound, the gain structure as well as topology. I'm less enamored with the ROG Umble than I thought I'd be but @ICTRock gave me some ideas to try in that build.
Since the two names that get mentioned the most when it comes to Dumble style tones is Robben Ford and Larry Carlton, I decided for the demo to try to emulate their sounds. According to Gladio, the SC was designed to nail the Robben Ford "Cannonball Shuffle" tone. Which is a fairly low gain, transparent sound in the studio recording. He also used his 60's Tele on that recording. There are many live video's of him playing Cannonball with other guitars with lots of different tones.
Anyway, I tried to get close on my Tele to that sound in the little clip of Cannonball.
Larry Carlton typically uses a much more compressed sound. And even though he did not use a Dumble on Kid Charlemagne, I decided to do a short clip of that for the Larry Carlton sounds.
All in all, really dig the pedal and highly recommended build for those of you that are looking for a Dumble-esque tone that's a bit more nuanced and subtle than a Zen Drive.
