This video by EHX’s resident FX master Bill Ruppert really shows off the potential of this pedal. I was mildly interested in it before but now I am thinking a little more seriously about getting this one eventually.
The Marauder Project: Part 2-The Plan
Incase you missed it – part 1
My original plan for refinishing the Marauder was to bring it back to something similar to it’s original color – A deep wine colored stain. But as I looked over images of Marauders with different finishes, most of them being stained rather then painted, something just didn’t seem right about them. The classic woodworker finishes just felt too stodgy for the design, which too me feels very 60’s retro and aggressive. I realized my instincts in college may have been spot on. The retro-ey teal seemed a much better fit, not to mention the grain on this guitar was certainly not of the quality that begged to be shown off.
So when I stumbled upon a freshly refinished Strat on one of the guitar forums, I knew I had found my color. A pale creamy, vintage white with a black pickguard. Surprisingly I found a place that sold new Marauder pickguards in just about any color you’d want. I could have also made my own using the original white one as a template, but WD Music had them already finished for only $36. So I went ahead and ordered one to get things going.
For the paint, my plan was to use some reranch nitrocellulose lacquer. I found that site while looking for tips on properly refinishing a guitar and boy did I hit the mother-load. The reranch site hosts a forum for guitar refinishing and building, that is one of the best places on the net to learn about this stuff. Many of the regulars there have finished dozens of guitars. Some have hand built there own guitars from scratch. I’m constantly amazed at the stuff people are making there and it’s one of my favorite guitar sites. Not to mention the people there are extremely helpful and most importantly, really love guitars.
So after doing some research there, I ordered a can each of sanding sealer, primer, Olympic White, tinted clear and 2 cans of regular clear. My plan was to get the cream color with a light coat of the tinted clear over the white.
One other finishing product I bought was some black oil dye. It’s intended use is for dying leather, but I had seen people use it on rosewood fretboards to make them look like ebony. I thought that blacking the fretboard like this, and then painting the face of the headstock the same cream as the body would give the whole guitar a cool two-tone look. I bought this dye at Stewart-MacDonald, more commonly referred to as “stewmac”. This is the other site that, if your gonna get into finishing, fixing, or building guitars – you need to know about. They are basically the Home Depot of guitars. They carry all the weird specialized tools and supplies luthiers and weekend refinishers need to do just about anything from fixing a scratched guitar, to building one from scratch.
So the plan was in place, and the UPS trucks were rolling. In the next part I’ll get this project started.
David Byrne’s Pedal-Line?
I randomly came across this mysterious picture of David Byrne of Talking Heads fame. It’s by a photographer by the name of Antony Crook. There is no caption or any info other then – SoHo 3/19 so one can only wonder what’s going on here. Like, is David Byrne the biggest Boss fanboy ever?
Debunking more magic mojo myths: Op-Amps
Bob Weil of VisualSound debunks the myths surrounding “vintage” Op-Amp chips. Why are guitarists so susceptible to this kind of hype. It seems to riddle every facet of the guitar hardware industry.
Nice Online Metronome
simple metronome
Using a metronome when practicing guitar is essential. Besides the obvious benefit of helping to develop your sense of timing and rhythm, a skill that many beginning guitarists overlook, it has many other benefits as well. By making you more conscious of when you are hitting the note you will have a tendency to play the note more cleanly instead of fumbling over the hard parts.
The point of most guitar excercises -scales, arpeggios, etc. is to build muscle memory in our hands. I believe that if each movement is timed in a rhythmic manner the reinforcement will happen more quickly and be more accurate.
Since almost every guitar teacher will tell you to start a lesson or exercise slowly and increase the tempo as you begin to gain confidence, the metronome will also act as a ruler to this progress.
So yes, if your serious about learning the guitar you need a metronome. That doesn’t mean you need to go buy one though. Your computer can easily tap out precisely timed clicks given some simple programming. There are many downloadable software metronomes as well as online versions. I have tried many of them but found an almost universal problem with all of them. The sounds they use are really annoying and unmusical. For this reason I will often open a program like Garageband and create a simple rhythm to use for this purpose.
But I recently found an online metronome I really like. Bestmetronome.com is actually 3 metronomes. All are still in beta and have different requirements to run. They each have different features. From the barebones a.bestmetronome.com which also has a tap-tempo setting. To my favorite for everyday practice – simple.bestmetronome.com which is an emulation of a real world wind-up metronome. Best of all it has a nice old school, analog sound to it. There is also a very feature-rich version, which is really a drum machine as it allows you to mix and match multiple sounds in any order you choose – advanced.bestmetronome.com . Here’s a video demonstrating metronomes and their use with the guitar. Notice how annoying this guys metronome sounds.