JamUp Pro is a fantastic, easy to use app.
In conjunction with the JamUp Plug I reviewed last month, Positive Grid have provided me a copy of their premiere guitar amp and effects modeling iOS app, JamUp Pro.
JamUp Pro is one of the newest guitar apps to appear in the iTunes app store, and it has really taken off with a bang. With 6 multi-stage amp models and 14 studio grade effects available from the launch date, and more to come according to Positive Grid, it is great value at $19.99.
Anyone can perform DIY!
I think most people are a little scared to open up and tinker around with their guitar pickups and effects pedals. It’s like there’s some sort of special voodoo magic inside the components that shape our tone. Truth be told most of the time there’s nothing too crazy to deal with, and as long as we are careful and methodical anyone can experiment and modify.
Let me start off by saying my family jokes around and calls me “Tim the Tool Man Taylor”, the hilarious main character from the nineties sitcom “Home Improvement”. As anyone familiar with this show would know Tim was a well meaning DIY kind of guy with his own cable TV program, who couldn’t help but continually break and destroy whatever he was working on. Now I am not that bad, but I have had my moments. My Dad and brother definitely got the handy man skills, but I’m not completely useless, and I usually know my limits.
I’ve been playing guitar for nearly two decades now, but I’ve only in the past year or so gathered up the courage to try some guitar related electronics DIY. I wanted to write a couple of articles for those of you who have thought about getting into DIY, but haven’t felt confident enough to actually embark on the journey. I want to let you know that even if you are clumsy, and a bit of a “Tim the Tool Man Taylor” like me you can still give it a go and have lots of fun doing so. (more…)
TonePrint gives you instant access to tones that are custom-tweaked by your own guitar heroes
TC Electronic have come out with a great new effects pedal line, the Tone Print series of effects. These new pedals offer you standard stomp box control, as well as something special.
TC Electronic have worked with guitar players from all over the world to develop their own signature “TonePrints”, and make them available to you.
The TonePrint pedals have a USB input which allows you to install these special “TonePrints” which are created by guitar players such as John Petrucci, doug Aldrich, Bumblefoot, and many more.
Check out what TC Electronic have to say about the new TonePrint series: (more…)
The Seventh Heaven - a very impressive, versatile high gain distortion pedal.
Goosoniqueworx is a small effects pedal manufacturer from Singapore. The Seventh Heaven is a high gain twin channel distortion pedal with a bit of a difference. Rather than using diodes to clip the signal the Seventh Heaven utilises cascaded JFETs to achieve high gain distortion very similar to a high gain valve amplifier.
The Seventh Heaven employs a base distortion switch which triggers the pedal, and a boost switch which gives you more grit and fattens up the sound too. The boost only operates when the distortion is engaged.
Within the base distortion settings there are two “channels’ which are accessible via a toggle switch. This gives you low gain, and high gain distortion options with slightly different tonality as well. (more…)
Introducing the Green Envy
I’ve finally finished off the modifications to my re-worked Daphon E20OD pedal. With the rehousing of it I wanted to give it a new look and name. Seeing as the Daphon E20OD is essentially a reworking of the Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive with a Ibanez Tube Screamer chip, and because I had added in the switch to go between symmetrical and asymmetrical clipping, and modified the circuit to be a little closer to a Tube Screamer one I felt I had to acknowledge these things. I ended up Christening it the “Green Envy”.
The artwork I found on Deviant Art (by xcrystalcorex – hope you don’t mind me using this for personal work), and I felt that it sat nicely with the name I came up with. The way I did the artwork was by printing the imagery on some photo paper, cut it out, and glued it to the top of the pedal. This wasn’t my preferred way of doing this. I wanted to use some adhesive photo paper to make it easier to stick the the pedal and it’s curved edges, but couldn’t find any today. I then sprayed a light coat of clear coat to help stick the image to the pedal. This would have worked a lot better had I used the adhesive paper, but it will do for my first attempt.
The E20OD came with a PCB mounted AC jack, but I wasn’t able to give it external access very easily. I decided to install a new jack on the side of the pedal.
The jack I had bought at my local electronics store was a metal cased one, and I realised afterwards that I would have to ensure that the jack was not installed with metal to metal contact, as the standard AC jack arrangement on most pedals these days is the Boss standard with the tip as negative. I bought some rubber grommets to install the jack to get around this.
Newly installed AC jack.
To make the installation simple I left the stock PCB-mounted jack alone, and wired up a 9V battery clip to the jack, with what is normally the positive wire to the tip, and negative to the sleeve. This is so I could plug the clip onto the pedals batter clip, and match up the polarities correctly. This worked nicely, and meant that I could use AC power, or hook up a battery if I felt the need to.
Building this customised pedal has been an extremely rewarding experience. I would love to make a few other changes to the Green Envy, like add a true-bypass switch, and maybe quiet down the pedal a little more, but that will be extremely difficult considering how packed the enclosure is right now, and my limited skills.
I’m planning to build a pedal from scratch next. I’m looking a building an Electro-Harmonix LPB-1 on perfboard, so hopefully that will go well.
