I love not having kids. I slept 11 hours then slowly got up over the course of another hour and was going to put-off mending the torn fence from yesterday's high-winds (again, due to mary-jane medicinal shops littering the countryside) in such the style as Paw-Kettle (uncultured folks should look that one up, it's a whole sub-genre of American pop-culture). Becky, however, urged me to not do so; so I went to Lowe's to buy some wood screws (which turned out to be far too short) and ended up using the ones I already had. Becky had got the drill for me but couldn't find the bits for it as the whole box containing them went missin'. Happily, in the plastic screw box there was a 6-star bit I needed that I had put there from before (clever me) and we got the drill a-goin'. Had to move some rocks out of the way so I did so dog-style (not doggy-style, and no, I'm not making a link to "doggy style" ahem) and we got the fence section lined-up pretty good. Becky expertly recommended drilling locations and we got the fence afixed and it's stable 'nuff. Ah, Coly-rahd-y.
200 points to who can guess who this guy is
yeah..yeah, Mike R. Jackson but who is he?
Wind was so nuts today I couldn't keep the grill alight so I ended up using the George Forman indoor grill which worked enuff fer dogs n' burgers. The pilot kept going out on my Blue Ember Grill outside. Colorado seems to always be windy here on the mesa. I know some guys that don't ride motorcycles because it's "too windy" out. I warned they'd never ride with that attitude here! It's always 20 mph winds minimum it seems.
I was reading "News of the Weird" and stumbled across this article which I'll leave you with.
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-- William Todd arrived in Nashville, Tenn., on April 9 via Greyhound bus and faced a nine-hour layover. According to police, Todd committed at least 11 felonies during that time, one after another, with more charges still possible. Among Todd's alleged diversions: shooting up a restaurant, setting it on fire, robbing four people at a bar, carjacking, breaking into a law office and defecating on a desk, trolling hotel rooms seeking theft opportunities, and stealing a taxicab and robbing the driver. Said a police sergeant, "I've never seen anything like this before." He was finally captured at Opryland, where he had hidden by submerging himself in water up to his nose. [WSMV-TV (Nashville), 4-9-2012]
So many medicinal marijuana places has finally made the wind itself "high." Wind gusts were up to 70 mph today and knocked down part of my fence (and this part I've always wanted to say) which'll need mending. Oh, I love Colorado for that.
I can talk cowboy talk. I can say the big words! Yep. YeeHaw! Ride that spicy chicken!
So I gotta buy some nails and smash hammer into nail to make fence work thing. I think I'm to blame on this. I turned on all my pedals at once from the previous post. BUT YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE ME! WHY DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME! Now we're screwed. I think I saw a Count Dracula biting a Manticore.
I also mailed an eBay package Priority Mail TO THE WRONG ADDRESS!!! FRACK! Well, eBay didn't give a street address, just a state and zip code for New York. The zip code eBay gave me was a New York zip code, which was good but coincidentally his street address WAS the zip code (which he omitted). Both his street address and zip code were nearly identical, so his package is going to the wrong city. It might come back to me, maybe. Pricey item, too. I got the actual address when I got back from the Post Office in an email. It's what I get for shipping extra early. DOH! Well, we'll see!
I refuse to use smartphone goodness. Instead, I'll send things via pigeon if I have to!!! (Click it, go on... you know you want to).
So I finally got the final pedal (a distortion pedal, the MXR-M116), leaving room for the final final pedal (someday) of either the Loud WTF or the Electro-Harmonix Sitar pedal (not sure which I want) both of which are very large. At the same time I got these, arrived were the the steel flat Hosa connectors which allow me to shove 'em all up-close. I took my own advise and got the Super Feedbacker & Distortion pedal by Boss to work better when boosted by the Behringer EQ700 pedal and it sounds, well.. boss. Very 1985. I'm pretty convinced my rig blows away Eddie Van Halen's setup (except for the 5 full-stacks to my 1/4 stack, though he puts mics in front of his rig into the house speakers, something I should consider someday).
I played around with it and it sounds great. I mean really great. Tone is spot-on and each of the distortion pedals are distinct and delicious. I opted to not stereo-out the Vortex Flanger but go old-school mono with it and keep the stock setting from TC Electronic as it sounds vintage enough (though, yes, it does not sound quite as gritty as a script MXR Phase 90).
In the pictures below, yes I have them all activated. This will create unusual weather patterns but don't worry, I shunted it right after the mixing board so no sonic disturbance would ensue. Turning on all those lower tier distortion pedals at-once creates a banshee shriek that's uncontrollable and dangerous to dolphins and spaceships.
The connections start at the lower right and move up to the upper right. This is a common setup for guitar pedals because the OUTPUT is (almost) always to the left. No rhyme or reason to that, it just.. is.
The pedals (bottom right to top left are..) [Note* MIJ = Made in Japan]
1983 Boss Octaver OC-2 MIJ (creates a bass-guitar frog-like sound)
2011 Boss Metal Core ML-2 distortion (everyone gets the Metal Zone, this is meatier)
2011 MXR '78 Badass Distortion
2012 MXR Fullbore Metal distortion
1985 Boss Super Feedbacker & Distortion DF-2 MIJ (hold the pedal down for Hendrix feedback)
2011 Behringer EQ700 Graphics Equalizer and signal booster
(now top right to top left)
1997 Boss Enhancer EH-2 (1997 Now) cleans up signal and smooths it out
1983 Boss Chorus CE-2 MIJ (tames distortion)
1984 Boss Phaser PH-1r MIJ (insane beast, think intro to U2's Mysterious Ways)
2011 TC Electronic Vortex Flanger (think Heart's intro to Barracuda)
2012 Artec Analog Delay SE-ADL
These all go into my Digitech 2112 effects loop in/out so it can be mixed nicely in the effects processor route. It's shoved into a Behringer mixing board and final output is stereo into my custom:
2010 Wet Stereo Reverb pedal
Finally it all goes into analog-to-digital processing with my AudioBox 22VSL USB 2.0 processor and into my Windows 7 64-bit PC for recording using Presonus Studio One.
The Behgringer mixing board also goes out to my two Crate 200-watt Power-heads with Celestion 10" speakers in stereo. Crate doesn't color the sound like other amps such as Marshall or Fender and I like it's purist, dry signal (I already colored with my pedals!)
The whole thing hooked-up with dim lights is.. pretty like Sonic Christmas Destroy
On the bottom is my foot controller for my Digitech 2112 (upgraded to 2120 specs) for even more stereo effects which sound great during recording sessions and add things my pedals don't, such as compression, detuning, and harmonizing as necessary.
I have a Brian May Red Special pedal but I never really play too much Queen so it sits in its box now, probably worth something over time. I replaced my Behringer VD400 Vintage Analog Delay with the Artec, even though the Artec is (gasp) Made in China. True vintage analog delay pedals run in the near-thousands of dollars and my Digitech can handle that just fine, but I wanted something that degraded with each repeat. Amazingly, the Artec (to my ears) is far superior to anything else I've heard, even the MXR Carbon Copy delay so I grudgingly got it and it's got the mojo I need. I like to think American downed pilot prisoners made it from U2 spy-planes but that's just me.
It's all sitting on my custom Monkey Board that lights up blue nicely. If you click da pict-chya you'll notice red tape over some of the LED lamps on the pedals because they're like lazerz shooting C-beams into my eyes off the shoulder of Orion so I had to tame those down to only 10 giga-lumens.
I figure readers want to hear less talk and more music. What do all the pedals sound like turned-on?
