Hello Friend! Its been a crazy couple of weeks! We’ve added several mods to the website, including a tube driver mod, an sd-2 mod, and a od-1 mod that gets you back your bass-instead of letting it drop out whenever you click it on!! We also are now selling custom pedals from vintage tone project- - a clone of the very rare Dallas Arbiter RangeMaster The RangeMaster is the secret to Clapton's sound on the first John Mayall and the BluesBreakers album. It was also on Black Sabbath's first album. Later, Brian May of Queen used the RangeMaster. -- $109.99 - a clone of the original circuit of a late 1960's Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face The major difference is that ours features gain matched transistors. Gain varies greatly in germanium transistors. Picking random transistors will lead to random results. Vintage Fuzz Faces varied so greatly in sound that it wasn't uncommon for a guitarist in the 60's to pick through an entire music store's shipment just to find one pedal. This problem is now solved by carefully selecting proper gain matched transistors, testing every one, and only using the best. -- $99.99 - a clone of the incredible sound of the Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer. This compressor nails the late 70's and early 80's sound of Steely Dan and Mark Knopfler on Dire Straits first album. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan) described the original Orange Squeezer as "probably the greatest guitar compressor I've ever heard." A great rock and blues pedal. This is not a transparent compressor. It adds a sweet, fat distortion when the bias knob is turned up all the way. Pure Rock-n-Roll! -- $99.99 If you need the mod sheets for any of my pedal mods, please let me know-I’ll gladly send them to you. Also, if you think that someone you know might benefit from this newsletter, please forward this to them. If you’ve been sent this newsletter from someone who forwarded it to you, please send a blank email to indyguitarist@getresponse.com to start getting the newsletter. Thanks, and keep rockin’!! Brian This weeks article: How to eq your sound-using an external equalizer Whether graphic or parametric, box or rack mount, external equalization can prove to be beneficial for many players. I’m referring to the location of the equalization itself. Basically here’s the idea. If you put equalization in front of or before the distortion signal, it will provide a much different effect than when placed after the distortion signal. This has to do with the fact that distortion and compression are basically the same. Examples of equalization before distortion are either placing an equalization device before and overdrive/distortion box, or using the amp’s built-in distortion and putting the equalizer simply in line between the guitar and amp. In either case, the net effect is that changes in the equalization are somewhat limited because the overdrive/compression affect is “squeezing” the frequencies together. What does happen is that boosting any of the frequencies or the master level control on the equalization device can lead to adding quite a bit of distortion or gain into the signal. It is quite popular these days to apply what is known as a “clean boost” effect and this refers to this same concept. Similarly, you can clean boost the overdrive of an amp by taking an overdrive pedal and using the controls in reverse – meaning the drive/gain controls are set to a minimum level and the volume control is set to maximum. Moving the bands on an equalizer in this fashion will also increase gain for this clean boost effect, plus you still do retain some of the effect of the tonal changes of the equalizer, there just not as dramatic. This is the best way I’ve found to take an amp that has “not quite enough” distortion and push it to new levels of contemporary sustain and rock distortion. Now, examples of equalization place after distortion could mean putting an equalization device in a chain after the distortion, or it could also mean running the equalizer through an effects loop. Do note however that an effects loop is a place to patch affects that is setup in the system to be right after the preamp stage and just prior to the power amp stage. In this regard, amps that utilize mostly preamp distortion will result in a more extreme effect. When the power stage begins to clip, the compression effect starts to come in as well and then makes the equalization closer to the original described effect. So what is the effect of an equalizer put after a distortion device? Well, easy, simple as a tone and level booster. Basically this is what the equalization device was “made” to do. Equalization bands can be varied widely in tone and the level control will boost the volume. The distortion amount coming from the distortion box or amp doesn’t change in amount of the distortion effect. I have to thank all the newsletter subscribers that have e-mailed their thoughts and questions to us. It is because of you that many of the ideas for these articles come about in the first place. Keep the thoughts and questions coming and take care! Thanks to legendarytones.com for part of this article