Tremolo vs Vibrato: What's the difference

Some of the earliest effects available to guitarists were tremolo and vibrato.  These effects were usually built into the amplifier.  Between the vibrato, tremolo, and reverb there was little else available to the electric guitarist.

Leo Fender's company while prominent in the development of the electric guitar led to some great confusion with the mis-labeling of their amps tremolo channel as vibrato.

Seasoned guitarists have figured this out but for anyone who hasn't quite nailed down the difference here is a quick video to demonstrate to the difference between tremolo and vibrato.

Phase before or after distortion

Phase before or after distortion?

I won't bore you with my opinion on the matter.  We guitarists are all individuals and like what we like.  Sometimes you don't know what you like until you hear it and then it's all or nothing

The phase pedal or phase sifter has been use by many a guitar player.  Eddie Van Halen notoriously used one to enhance his solos. The sweeping shift of frequencies in and out of phase with each other seems other worldly.

  But where do you put it in the signal chain?  Only you know for sure.

Check out my demo of phase pedals before and after distortion.

DIY Octave Pedal

The
Octave pedal in it's earliest form was a fuzzy nasty pedal that produced an octave up effect if played around the 12th fret with the tone knob rolled off.  In more recent years, pitch shifter pedals have given us the ability to produce clean octave up and octave down tones

Still, these early crude octave pedals such as the Tychobrae Octavia or Green Ringer were used to great effect and produced some great tones

Many years back I fancied myself one of these old school octave pedals.  With an infant in the house and no disposable income I decided to learn how to build one of these beasts. With the abundant information on the internet and a lot of trial and error I got into the hobby of pedal building.

Below is a demo of the pedal that came to fruition based on my shear determination and want of a simple Octave Pedal.

Tomsline Plexion Mini Pedal

Mini pedals seem to be all the rage these days.  With the prevalence of pedal board power supplies and the all the pedal board wiring kits available these little gems are great for packing more punch into your rig without taking up too much real estate.

If you're a gigging guitarist or just a bedroom jammer a Marshall would be an awesome piece of gear to have.  Unfortunately we can't always haul around a large 4x12 cabinet and head.  This is where the Plexion comes in.

This little giant has an enormous sound.  Everything from lower gain JTM 45, to Mid gain JCM800 to the highest gain offerings,this little pedal does it all for very little money.

It has a volume,tone, and gain knob. It also has a bright switch which

alters the voicing giving way to even more tonal options. I couldn't be happier with this little monster.  I've used it in a band setting and it turned my very clean Fender Blues Jr. into a fire breathing dragon.

Check out the below demo of the Tomsline Plexion pedal

Phase versus vibe pedal

Out of context one could argue that some Phase pedals and Vibe pedals sound the same.  Granted they both provide tons of swirly tones and some do a faux Leslie better than others. Still,the vibe and the phase pedal have similar qualities.

Eddie Van Halen certainly solidified the potential for phase pedals.  The likes of Jimi Hnedrix and Robin Trower certainly used the Uni-Vibe very effectively. So what's the difference.

Phaser, or Phase shifter pedals tend to use transistors and resistors to blend a dry signal with an out of phase wet signal. Vibe or the original Uni-Vibe used a photo resister and lamp to achieve a similar but usually more dramatic effect. In fact, the Uni-Vibe was first designed to emulate a Leslie rotating speaker. While it did not achieve the exact desired effect, it did achieve a sound all it's own

I decided to take my phase and vibe pedals and compare them side by side to demonstrate the similarities and the differences.

Check out the Phase and Vibe pedal comparison and see for yourself what each pedal does.

The Dumbler Overdrive Pedal

Dumble amps are the things of legend. Handcrafted and owned by only the elite of the guitar world these elusive amps are extremely desirable.

For the common man the unobtainable nature puts these amplifiers well out of our reach.  There have been many clones as well as pedals that claim to capture that elusive sound.

The Dumbler Overdrive Pedal does not make any claims although the name alone would suggest m this pedal is inspired by the rare and expensive Dumble amps.

Since I've never played a Dumble amp I can't speak to whether or not this pedal sounds like a Dumble so you tell me, what do you think.

DIY Screamer boost pedal

The Ibanez Tube Screamer is undoubtedly the most ubiquitous and famous overdrive pedal ever.  It has been used by countless guitar hero's as well as being in the arsenal of a huge number of working musicians.

A number of years ago I decided to take a stab at building my own pedals. The Tube Screamer type circuit has so many iterations and variations that it is almost mandatory that one tweak the circuit and put their own twist on it.

Below is a video demoing my take on a TS type circuit with plenty of mods to satisfy my own needs.

Joyo Tremolo

Tremolo is one of the earliest effects guitarists had at their disposal.  Whether Optical or Bias based tremolo the warbling throb of the volume fluctuation in he guitar signal conjours a hypnotic feeling.

While most of us don't have a use for tremolo frequently, it is something the working guitarist should have in their
arsenal.

The Joyo tremolo is an inexpensive decent sounding tremolo that won't break the bank, yet give you that swampy throbbing goodness when you need it.

Check out my demo of the Joyo Tremolo.

Cheap Analog Delay

Guitarists in general are mostly gear hounds. We love new gear whether it's a new guitar, amp, or stomp-box. Some of us are complete gear snobs and will not even consider anything that isn't top of the line or boutique. Some of us simply look at what the best tool for the job is.  I'm not judging here, i'm just stating facts.

I recently stumbled upon a budget friendly analog delay on Ebay that I simply couldn't pass up.  Now I own several delays from a Roland SDE1000 rack unit to a Zoom multi effect, and my favorite, the TC electronics flashback.  While I didn't need this delay I felt compelled to buy it based on the price and the very diminutive size.

This analog delay from Mosky Audio was less than $30 on ebay, but how does it sound. You decide.

Will it slide

Slide guitar is a staple for the blues guitarist.  Legends like Robert Johnson, Ry Cooder, and Dwayne Allman took slide guitar to amazing heights.  While I'm by far nowhere near proficient in slide guitar I got to thinking, what else could you use a slide on.

Join me as I investigate the musical and not so musical instruments that a slide can or cannot be played on in my quest to find out, "Will It slide?"

Zoom Choir

Back in the mid 90's Zoom released a few pedals that had some really cool functionality.  The pedals had a number of different types of sounds as well as the ability to set a preset and a current setting that was foot switchable.

I was fortunate enough to purchase the Zoom Choir 5050.  This pedal offered chorus,chorus and reverb,chorus and delay, delay, aura, and dimension.  While I mostly used this  pedal for chours and delay the other sounds came in handy at times.

Below is a video demo of my Zoom Choir 5050

Scott's Superdrive

As you may know I've dabbled in the DIY pedal scene for a while.  I love the smell of melting solder and the fly by the seat of your pants "will it work?" feeling when making a pedal.

A number of years ago I started trying my hand at creating something different by mashing different pedal designs together. Some of these were non starters and others were OK.  This particular experiment came out quite well.

Scott's Superdrive took the Tube Screamer type circuit and married it to a Big Muff type tone stack. Of course each of these parts of the pedal received their own tweaking and modifications.  At the end of it all was a Mosfet output stage to recover some of the signal loss from the tone stack.

The result was an overdrive with more drive than a Tube Screamer, less buzz than a Big Muff, and an overall interesting characteristic all it's own.

Digitech CF-7 Chorus Factory

Let it be known, well I guess you already know, I like chorus.  The lush deep swirly sounds, the subtle slow doubling sounds, even the over the top 80's over modulated chorus.

Back in the mid 2000's Digitech introduced the CF-7 Chorus factory.  This pedal was s modeling pedal with a remarkably good sound. It included models of Boss, Digitech, Fulltone, Electro Harmonix, and TC electronic pedals.

With a multitude of controls and all these models it was a chorus junkies dream.

I purchased one of these pedals and used it extensively for years.  Below is a demo of the pedal, which can still be had on ebay for not a lot of money. If you like chorus, you should check out this pedal.

If at first you don't succeed...walk away?

Have you ever had one of those days where you just couldn't get it right. You're trying to learn a part but you keep running into a wall. You try to get a track down, but you keep flubbing the take. So you keep trying. You don't quit right?...or do you.

Sometimes walking away is the best thing. Clear you head. Let your body relax. Give yourself time to rethink the process. I know it's hard when you are so focused on getting it right, but that focus may be misleading. You may not be focusing on the part but rather the need to get the part done.

It's amazing how the mind and body can come together when they need to, but sometimes you need to give them space.  Sometimes all you need is a reset button.  It's a hard thing to do when you have a deadline, a gig tomorrow night, or you are one track away from finishing the next big song.

Remember, music is made up of sounds and spaces where there is no sound. Allow yourself the spaces so that the sound that you make is spectacular.

The Shtizu Fuzz

The fuzz pedal has been around for a long time. It has come and gone and come again in popularity. Sometimes you just get it until you get it.  But once you get it, it's magical.

I have been building my own pedals for 10 years.  I took all the readily available information from the interwebz and built the Shitzu fuzz.  It's small, hairy, and loud.

Essentially it's a Fuzz Face circuit with a few tweaks.  The first transistor is a lower gain transistor and the second is higher gain. Also, it has a potentiometer on the power supply so you can reduce the voltage starving it and creating those great sputtery fuzz sounds. It also has a poteniometer on the input

to reduce the signal to the first transistor to tailor the amount of signal hitting the first gain stage.  Lastly, I just omitted the fuzz control since I like it dimed anyways.  The volume control on your guitar or the control to limit the signal on the first gain stage more than give you enough control over the amount of fuzz

It's a simple build and a great sounding and versatile pedal.  Check out this demo below.

Fuzz, I just never got it, until I got it.

The below post is a re-post from one of my old blogs, enjoy.

Fuzz pedals have been around for more than 40 years now. They were the first attempt to get the sound of a cranked amplifier without having to crank the amplifier. They were/are crude, and dare I say, sometimes not very pleasant sounding. Now if you were a guitar player in the late 60's, this was all you had at your disposal. Technology has advanced, amplifiers are capable of ridiculous gain at moderate volumes, and there are a million other distortion devices. So why does the fuzz pedal still prevail.

I came up in the era of the shred guitarist. Van Halen, Randy Rhoades, Ygwie Malmsteen. The requirements for this type of playing was a high gain yet articulate and clear sound to allow all the fast picked notes to be heard. There was no room for the woolly, unpredictable sound of a fuzz pedal so I just never gave them much thought. They were yesterdays technology.

Fast forward 20 years. Shred is less prevalent. Grunge hit us all in the face. And the wall of sound was being driven by fuzz pedals. All of a sudden, the Big Muff, Fuzz Face, Tone Bender etc... were all over the place. I couldn't believe it. Why were these guys using old technology? Of course grunge has since passed but the fuzz pedal is still here. Holy crap.

I finally decided to look into this a little. As I was learning to build my own stompboxes I decided that I needed to dive head first into a fuzz pedal. I build a fuzz face variant. After i got it working, I plugged in and let it rip. What an experience (no pun intended). I realized that while crude and somewhat odd sounding at times, the overtones and singing qualities of the pedal made me take notice.

 There is a great range of sounds in a good fuzz pedal. Rolling back the volume yields a sweet overdrive with a hint of grit. Running it full out gets you a tone reminiscent of hell on a bad day. I finally got it.

If you have wondered about what all the fuss about fuzz is, go to your local music store and check one out. You may be surprised.

Scott

Mesa Engineering Bottle Rocket Tube Overdrive

Mesa Engineering is famous for the Boogie branded Mark series amps as well as the massive sound of the Rectifier series.  The company has also recently released several pedals to compliment the various amplifiers they produce.

This is not Mesa's first foray into the pedal market.  In the 1990's and early 2000's Mesa released two tube driven pedals. The well known V-twin preamp pedal and the little brother and lesser known Bottle Rocket overdrive.

The V-1 Bottle Rocket is driven by two 12AX7 preamp tubes that create a wide range of overdrive and distortion tones.  This pedal is quite different than the high gain tones of the Mark series amps and crushing distortion of the Rectifier series.  This pedal thrives in the low to medium gain blues, rock, and classic heavy rock tones.

Below is a quick demo of the Bottle Rocket being run through a Fender Blues Jr.

Enjoy

Danelectro Pepperoni Phasor

Danelectro has had some great success with their pedals in the past decade.  Their small food themed pedals while not the sturdiest enclosures they are packed with sound.  I have purchased a few of these little gems and I think you get a lot of pedal for not a lot of money.

I decided to break out the Pepperoni Phasor and run it through it's paces. Its controls are super simple, just a speed knob.  Even I can handle that. Even if you only need this thing to get the EVH vibe going it's well worth it. Boba Fett says "Get one of these or I'll encase you in corbonite"

Check out the demo...

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Musician pet peeves

I try not to be a judgmental person. Live and let live. But as a guitarist, I can’t help but have pet peeves about fellow guitarists. I’m not bagging on anyone personally and I’m sure I have some qualities that my rub others the wrong way but this is my blog so I’m gonna let my pet peeves be known.

1) ” Don’t touch my guitar” Ok… I know a man’s guitar can be like his woman but c’mon. Do you really think I’m gonna mess it up. I’m a guitar player too. Get over it, it’s just a guitar.

2)” I need to drink to play my best” I can totally relate to having a beer or two to loosen up. A few beers throughout the course of a gig is fine. If you need to get drunk before you go on stage, you will never play your best, regardless of what you think.

3)” I only know it in the key on the record” Ok, this is where the boys are separated from the men. Yes, you learn a song from the record. Maybe most bands play it in the same key. But occasionally, you will find yourself in a situation where you have to play it in another key. Learn to transpose, it’s part of being a professional musician.

4)“My amp sounds best when it’s this loud” I know we all want to be heard. Trust me, it’s a fruitless effort. While you may not be hearing yourself as well as you like two feet from your amp, the audience is getting more than enough volume twenty feet away. Maybe your amp does sound best at that volume but the band as a whole needs to sound like a unit, not a guitar player with a backing track.

5)” I just can’t get my tone” Translate to: “I’m playing like crap”. I know we all have an ideal tone and yes, there are times where things just don’t seem right with our rigs. This should not diminish your playing ability. You should be able to play just as well on a rented back line as you do on your own rig. Tone is secondary, capability is primary.

OK….I’m not trying to offend but after playing for many many years I have practiced a few of these and endured playing with people who practice some of these.

Scott

Focus on the playing forget about the gear

We all go through periods where the quest for tone becomes almost obsessive.  We think,rethink, and over think the signal chain. “If I had my XYZ box on the board I could get the (insert favorite guitarist here) sound. 

Maybe we think we need another OD just to round things out.  Maybe a speaker change would get us that tonal nirvana.  What about new cables for the board?

I have gone through this myself.  While chasing the perfect tone is fun, it can be counter productive.  You see, it doesn’t matter how good you sound if the sounds being made are not pleasant.  I’m not saying that trying to get a great tone is a bad thing, just make sure it isn’t the only thing.

I have done the past several gigs without even thinking about my gear.  I have a few pedals, wah,a booster, a chorus, and an echo into a Fender Blues Jr.  I stopped worrying about whether the OD I have is the right one or whether I should use another pedal for an extra layer of sound.  I have been enjoying just playing with what I have and it has been great.

I’ve tried to make sure the notes I am playing count more than whether of not the Leslie sound I’m getting out of the chorus pedal is convincing enough. I'm too busy making music to worry about my rig. I’m also trying to make sure I sell the song.  Really making sure that the audience sees the fun I’m having playing the gig.

I have had many last minute gigs and when I find out in short notice instead of worrying about the gear I need I just nodded my head and said ” I’ll be there”.  All I’m concerned with now is the set list.

Try to spend some time focusing on the playing and you’ll be surprised at how easily the rig comes together.