MichaelW
Well-known member
@PedalPCB Not sure if this thread belongs in the Build Report forum, please feel free to move it. (Technically it's a Build Report in my sometimes angular logic since it's a pedal demo) Actually, it would be cool to have a dedicated forum for pedal demo's all in one place, I'd love to hear how some of these awesome pedal builds sound from everyone.
So as you can tell from my Build Report activity, I've been on a bit of a tear lately, building a boat load of pedals. I think my parts and PCB ordering reached a point of critical mass that I had enough standard components in my inventory that I could just pick a board off my shelf and build it without worrying too much about whether I had the right components and needing to place yet another order.
This project has been sitting in my DAW for months because it was such a pain in butt. When I ripped the stems from the original recording I could not separate the keyboards from the guitars. I find this is true for a lot of older recordings that were mixed with a lot of compression for radio airplay.
Anyway, I wound up using only the bass, drums and vocals from the original recording. The keyboards are from Bobby's Backing Track. That's where the "pain in the butt" part comes from. He played it at a slightly different tempo and accent than on the original and I had to manually quantize the track to make it work. (Never doing that again....)
I recorded two rhythm guitar tracks panned left and right. Main guitar track and bridge instrumental mixed in the middle.
Also in full disclosure: I faked the feedback part on the opening chord. I can't get my monitors to feedback so I mixed in a little of the original feedback tone.
Pedals making an appearance:
Son of Ben Preamp
As I mentioned in my build report, I was not familiar with Benson amps or this pedal and built it solely based on the enthusiasm from this forum for it. I was not disappointed! It's a great sounding pedal. Very amp-like with lots of rich harmonic content when pushed. I've read some other reviewers talk about this pedal as a VOX-like pedal but I am definitely not getting that. To me, it's reminiscent of a pushed Tweed/Brownface deluxe. Which is what inspired this clip. It was pretty easy to dial up a Royal Scam era Larry Carlton's famous 5E3 tone.
Clandestine Preamp
I used the Clandestine in "aging EP3 unit" setting (volume at around 5 o'clock" to give the Son of Ben a slight boost on certain sections (you can see me reaching over turning it on and off during the clip) I love this thing for the subtle boost/tone shaping capabilities.
AionFX Oceanid
This is my first experience with an optical compressor and I have to say I really love it. It may be too subtle for someone looking from a more traditional Ross style squash but it works for how I use a compressor. For the main guitar part, I used this compressor to tighten up the overabundant transients of the the Son of Ben so that it would be a bit more defined in the mix.
SeaShore Overdrive
Man I love this thing! Such a great low gain pedal. I used it on all the rhythm guitar tracks to add a little "hair" and fatten up the tone. Also used on my Strat for the bridge instrumental section. Actually, all 3 guitars on the exact same settings, I just plugged in a different guitar for each track.
Dark Rift Delay
I'm using this in a pretty subtle way and nowhere near some of the craziness it's capable of. With the modulation dialed low I definitely get a bit of the Memory Man Deluxe vibe in a much more compact and reliable package. It's a great sounding delay although I am looking forward to my Hydra build coming up.
Spatialist Reverb
I just got my custom eprom for this which is 1/2 Radium Springs and 1/2 Spatialist. For this track I'm using the "Glimmer Reverb" patch but dialed way back. Really like it.
AionFX Cephus
Final pedal in the chain, turned off. I was just using this for the buffer after the delay and reverb pedals. I really really need to build some kind of a loop switcher to keep the modulation pedals on their own buffered loop. But this worked well for this track.
All the above going straight into my Apollo Twin X using a very clean amp model to let the pedals do all the heavy lifting. The main guitar is using a Friedman 1x12 cab IR and all the other guitars using my favorite Pete Thorn 2x12 cab IR.
Guitars:
Nash T-63 Tele
Eastman TM185MX - main solo and fills
M-Line Tele Thinline - rhythm guitar mixed left (I might have this backwards)
Gretsch Jet Junior - rhythm guitar mixed right (Still pretty much stock except I installed a bone nut)
Partscaster Strat
So as you can tell from my Build Report activity, I've been on a bit of a tear lately, building a boat load of pedals. I think my parts and PCB ordering reached a point of critical mass that I had enough standard components in my inventory that I could just pick a board off my shelf and build it without worrying too much about whether I had the right components and needing to place yet another order.
This project has been sitting in my DAW for months because it was such a pain in butt. When I ripped the stems from the original recording I could not separate the keyboards from the guitars. I find this is true for a lot of older recordings that were mixed with a lot of compression for radio airplay.
Anyway, I wound up using only the bass, drums and vocals from the original recording. The keyboards are from Bobby's Backing Track. That's where the "pain in the butt" part comes from. He played it at a slightly different tempo and accent than on the original and I had to manually quantize the track to make it work. (Never doing that again....)
I recorded two rhythm guitar tracks panned left and right. Main guitar track and bridge instrumental mixed in the middle.
Also in full disclosure: I faked the feedback part on the opening chord. I can't get my monitors to feedback so I mixed in a little of the original feedback tone.
Pedals making an appearance:
Son of Ben Preamp
As I mentioned in my build report, I was not familiar with Benson amps or this pedal and built it solely based on the enthusiasm from this forum for it. I was not disappointed! It's a great sounding pedal. Very amp-like with lots of rich harmonic content when pushed. I've read some other reviewers talk about this pedal as a VOX-like pedal but I am definitely not getting that. To me, it's reminiscent of a pushed Tweed/Brownface deluxe. Which is what inspired this clip. It was pretty easy to dial up a Royal Scam era Larry Carlton's famous 5E3 tone.
Clandestine Preamp
I used the Clandestine in "aging EP3 unit" setting (volume at around 5 o'clock" to give the Son of Ben a slight boost on certain sections (you can see me reaching over turning it on and off during the clip) I love this thing for the subtle boost/tone shaping capabilities.
AionFX Oceanid
This is my first experience with an optical compressor and I have to say I really love it. It may be too subtle for someone looking from a more traditional Ross style squash but it works for how I use a compressor. For the main guitar part, I used this compressor to tighten up the overabundant transients of the the Son of Ben so that it would be a bit more defined in the mix.
SeaShore Overdrive
Man I love this thing! Such a great low gain pedal. I used it on all the rhythm guitar tracks to add a little "hair" and fatten up the tone. Also used on my Strat for the bridge instrumental section. Actually, all 3 guitars on the exact same settings, I just plugged in a different guitar for each track.
Dark Rift Delay
I'm using this in a pretty subtle way and nowhere near some of the craziness it's capable of. With the modulation dialed low I definitely get a bit of the Memory Man Deluxe vibe in a much more compact and reliable package. It's a great sounding delay although I am looking forward to my Hydra build coming up.
Spatialist Reverb
I just got my custom eprom for this which is 1/2 Radium Springs and 1/2 Spatialist. For this track I'm using the "Glimmer Reverb" patch but dialed way back. Really like it.
AionFX Cephus
Final pedal in the chain, turned off. I was just using this for the buffer after the delay and reverb pedals. I really really need to build some kind of a loop switcher to keep the modulation pedals on their own buffered loop. But this worked well for this track.
All the above going straight into my Apollo Twin X using a very clean amp model to let the pedals do all the heavy lifting. The main guitar is using a Friedman 1x12 cab IR and all the other guitars using my favorite Pete Thorn 2x12 cab IR.
Guitars:
Nash T-63 Tele
Eastman TM185MX - main solo and fills
M-Line Tele Thinline - rhythm guitar mixed left (I might have this backwards)
Gretsch Jet Junior - rhythm guitar mixed right (Still pretty much stock except I installed a bone nut)
Partscaster Strat