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From God to Gilmour. There’s a transition! Anyway.
Being a budding young… ok, rookie guitar player, I am of course forming opinions about players and sounds that I like – absorbing my influences as it were. One of the current ‘most admired’ players is David Gilmour – I wouldn’t be alone in voting his solo in Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ as one of the greatest of all time. I was watching his latest DVD release Remember That Night, the live gig he played at the Royal Albert Hall last year, marvelling at the things he can do with his hands… I think his music, and that of Pink Floyd can have a real emotive quality; a feel that isnt too far removed from the kind of space and emotion I could happily see in a (long) worship service.
Anyway, what inspired me to blog these thoughts was a great website I’ve stumbled upon: It has all the guitar goodies you could ever hope to read about: Gilmourish! Amazing site. It has loads of info about all DG’s gear, style etc. And even a really good page on setting up your own guitar rig. Pretty cool.
There’s a virtual avalanche of sites out there for my main guitar hero, The Edge, but none so far have been quite so, I dont know, nicely designed…
You may have noticed from the picture of my board that there is no Boss RE-20 on there… I ended up going with the Maxon AD999 instead (it’s the pink one at the bottom left). 900 milliseconds of super-warm anlogue delay; it’s a beautiful thing. And bought from Japan for 40% less than UK prices. I love the internet.
So here it is, finally. The custom looper pedal built for me by RedOnion. It’s been wired up to my pedal board and working just nicely. I’ve already found that I am using the parallel quite a lot, as it keeps things from muddying up while running two delays. I find I have more problems with what to play that how to route the effects, but that’s always the way isn’t it? All in all though, a very cool addition to my current-pedalboard.
I have to put a plug in for TJ at Red Onion Solutions.
I ordered a nice little tap tempo switch (a bit like the one shown) from him a short while ago at a very reasonable price (half that of the Boss FS5U), so he was first in line for an email after my imagination took off one day in early April.
Very soon after discovering a great new ‘old school’ delay which is soon to come onto the market (Boss RE-20 Space Echo) I happened to google myself onto this website. After losing myself in there for a few hours, and having gained a smidgen of insight into the the inner workings of The Edge orchestra, I got to thinking how I might how I might combine the use of a couple of delays (after, of course, I’ve bought my self a Space Echo). More specifically, I wanted to wire them up to run in either series (ie the usual stomp-box fashion) or in parallel (as Edge does in, say, the delay-song-of-all-delay-songs – Where The Steets Have No Name). While I might not yet have a couple of mid-sixties AC-30’s, the pedal that is currently in progress will be a little work of flexible mini-orchestral proportions… and all thanks to the hard work of TJ at Red Onion.
I sent him an initial email with a few ideas, and subsequently, over the past week or two, at least a dozen emails (and a little switch testing later), we have finalised a design. What I think is incredible, is the service I received: I’ve taken my inexperienced guitarist ideas and electronics-ignorant mind and sent all these thoughts and ideas to TJ. He then has patiently worked through the logistics with me to try to give me what I want; told me honestly when it wouldn’t work (or would work, but would create noise issues below their standard, and hence having the integrity to not supply me with what I suggested); and then quoted me for the item which best suits my needs. And bottom line, at a great price for a custom-built loop pedal.
So I’m pretty exciting about what I’m getting: A pedal with the ability to footswitch between two effects loops (in this case of course, delays) – but there’s nothing revolutionary in that. Here, however, are the two really cool features I’m going to spend lots of guitar-geek time playing around with: First, I get to footswitch whether they run in series or parallel (my initial idea), and secondly, and fairly tricksy; I will be able to flick a toggle switch and change the direction of the signal path; an A>B/B>A option. Rock! Not only that, but something TJ suggested also, was adding a true-bypass to cut out any noise in those loops they are not running. But wait, there’s more! A simple, effect output set-up means I can choose to either send my great guitar sounds to a single amp (alas, I am not yet on a rock-star budget), or use split outputs when running in parallel. Wicked! I can then chop and change between long delays, short delays, short-long, wide, fat, (tall?), echoey reverbs. Essentially, lots of those ambient vibes.
I think I’ll call it my K-Looper.
Want one?
I’ll post some pictures and further comments when I receive it. I just wanted to plug Red Onion. Plug. Plug. (Pun entirely incidental, sorry).
