Hot diggity damn!

[Poster]

well that sucks. i will say though, after flying across the country thats normal, (unless youve got a graphite truss like I do :0)

Benny you need to let me overhaul your effects setup. Your about 85 percent there. But honestly, you need to just give me about 650 bucks, a croquet mallet, a weeks notice, and about 6 hours alone with your entire rig.

Ill mount everything plush so its completely economical and road worthy. Also, we need to cut down on the amount of free floating crap on your floor when your playing. You dont have a tech, so stop asking to break your shit. Lets mount them all in ata cases so you just pop out your shit, plug in three things, and go.

we should swap chips in your overdrive pedals and see which one you like more in a blind comparison, swap speakers, convert to a midi rack system.

Cmon mang, its a shame when your so close to the epic tone boner...

[patrickstefanski]

can you upload some pics?  ones that you took?
LOTS of them!

[sour d]

Benny you need to let me overhaul your effects setup. Your about 85 percent there. But honestly, you need to just give me about 650 bucks, a croquet mallet, a weeks notice, and about 6 hours alone with your entire rig.
Ill mount everything plush so its completely economical and road worthy. Also, we need to cut down on the amount of free floating crap on your floor when your playing. You dont have a tech, so stop asking to break your shit. Lets mount them all in ata cases so you just pop out your shit, plug in three things, and go.
we should swap chips in your overdrive pedals and see which one you like more in a blind comparison, swap speakers, convert to a midi rack system.
Cmon mang, its a shame when your so close to the epic tone boner...

I think your rig sounds fine. The 2 times I've heard it. I don't think the signal your guitar is putting out cares if your pedal is on the floor or in an ATA case. The pedals you're playing through are all rugged enough to sit on the floor if they want. If you haven't ever swapped opamp chips and you want to give it a try, I have a bunch of different ones and if your pedals don't already have chip sockets I can put them in for you. I don't know if that will help with the boner thing or not.

[Poster]

nope.

the key to a practical effects setup is durability. if the pedals are securely velcro down, pots tightened, the jacks should never fail. If you keep laying shit carefully on the floor your still plugging them in and then unplugging both the power wart and the 1/4 inch jacks. that is a recipe for damage. whereas with a professional setup, not only is load in time cut in half, but your shit wont break, ever.

Trey has the best tech in the business. Phish has hours to load in, soundcheck, and fuck around with everything. When you going from shit hole bar to clubs etc, it doesnt work that way at all. Especially if there is more than one band on the bill or they just give you the standard 2 hour load in.

So why take any chance, spend more time setting up, potentially break shit?

[sour d]

if the pedals are securely velcro down, pots tightened, the jacks should never fail. If you keep laying shit carefully on the floor your still plugging them in and then unplugging both the power wart and the 1/4 inch jacks. that is a recipe for damage.

At the same time, if you never move your connections, they will corrode and eventually cause a bad connection. It is important to move your 1/4 cables and power jacks to ensure a good connections.

Walker, be a good Mainer and fasten all your pedals to a blue tarp with duct tape. When your gig is over, roll it all up and store it in your lobster trap for safe keeping.

[Poster]

meh, Ive never seen anything like that happen. When you go from higher to lower altitudes (or vice versa), air pressure, humidity may cause some corrosion. But coming from a dude who just did a run of texas/new orleans/mobile al, i can honestly say the biggest concern was sweating over my board. Hell in Austin it was 108 degrees at night... So fucking hot. I musta drank 3 gallons of water and pissed once. New Orleans it was the same deal except as humid as a hot bath... But seriously dude, I would not recommend just setting your effects plush on the ground. There is usually slimy beer, sweat, cum, blood, piss, snot, etc. all over a decent stage floor. I would argue your more likely to incur corrosion/moisture that way. On a pedal train, its up off the ground, so even if somebody kicks over a bottle of water its not going touch those power connections. my whole deal is basically that the gear should work for you, it doesnt deserve that much effort/attention, as you gotta be focusing on just playing music. when walker is plugging things in, running lines, fucking around with that shit, he could be warming up the guit, snapping pics, eating a sandwich.

but even in the giant pro audio racks ive used to run sound at big shows, Ive still never had issues with corroding patch cables on secure equipment? and were down in the swamp ass of the Mississippi? Ive seen lots of shorts from power surges, shorts of all kinds on boards from moisture, age, or just being banged around. Some of that shit was 30 years old. I guess they arent getting rained on, or whatever, but same kinda idea.

[sour d]

meh, Ive never seen anything like that happen. When you go from higher to lower altitudes (or vice versa), air pressure, humidity may cause some corrosion. But coming from a dude who just did a run of texas/new orleans/mobile al, i can honestly say the biggest concern was sweating over my board. Hell in Austin it was 108 degrees at night... So fucking hot. I musta drank 3 gallons of water and pissed once. New Orleans it was the same deal except as humid as a hot bath... But seriously dude, I would not recommend just setting your effects plush on the ground. There is usually slimy beer, sweat, cum, blood, piss, snot, etc. all over a decent stage floor. I would argue your more likely to incur corrosion/moisture that way. On a pedal train, its up off the ground, so even if somebody kicks over a bottle of water its not going touch those power connections. my whole deal is basically that the gear should work for you, it doesnt deserve that much effort/attention, as you gotta be focusing on just playing music. when walker is plugging things in, running lines, fucking around with that shit, he could be warming up the guit, snapping pics, eating a sandwich.

but even in the giant pro audio racks ive used to run sound at big shows, Ive still never had issues with corroding patch cables on secure equipment? and were down in the swamp ass of the Mississippi? Ive seen lots of shorts from power surges, shorts of all kinds on boards from moisture, age, or just being banged around. Some of that shit was 30 years old. I guess they arent getting rained on, or whatever, but same kinda idea.

Think oxidation. Any metal to metal contact, especially when current runs through it, will oxidize. Especially if one of those metals is gold and it makes contact with any other metal. That's why they invented DeOxit. I wasn't talking about liquids.

[Poster]

 deoxit, and pot cleaner have always been frowned on by my techs?

hmmm maybe Iam moving shit around just often enough? weird. your making my brain feel like jelly. jelly brains.

maybe i should unplug every single connection at every show. (lol) Ill start showing up 6 hours early :0)

seriously though, sour, if i told you to simply plug my rack back in, you would pull your fucking hair out.

i really need to number each cable as they are custom cut for each pedal, and only in one particular order. I swear you put one in the wrong spot, and you

gotta start all over again. if you want to experiment with different pedals, the order, or whatever, it turns into a full day quest.

one major mystery I have still yet to solve, is how in the fuck do you keep a wall wart in the rack conditioner when moving it around? ive tried velcro, gaffer

tape (a lot), and yet, this one particularly heavy wart (for the super vibe) flings all over the fucking place inside there. the others inside dont move, its just too

heavy to sit in the outlet. never had an issue when playing, just loadin/loadout... whats really insane, is I have an original yoda action figure mounted to the

front of my upper shelf, and its never been touched. one time i opened it up that wart had unplugged half my shit, but not touched the wise master yoda.

[Happyorange27]

It's probably best to NOT constantly plug and unplug.  My therory is because every time you do, you are scraping the metal contacts and eventually wearing down the chrome, zinc, or whatever the surface treatement of your metal, eventually exposing the rustable under layer.  I'm sure some cables and jacks are built stronger than others and with different surface thicknesses.  So just don't get all OCD and unplug your rig as a daily ritual.  I've had my stuff plugged in years at a time and I haven't come across corrosion.  The only weird thing related to the subject was that I unknowingly kept C sized batteries in my Line 6 delay unit for 10 years and when I opened them up they were nasty, corroded, bonded, and literally empty shells; all the acid had leaked slowly over all that time.  BUT luckily that compartment didn't allow any penetration into the circuit.  So I say take the batteries out so you don't forget they are there.

[aoguitars]

hey AO, could you elaborate on the high action on jerry guitars? I still dont really get that part of his tone. Does it simply let him pluck at the strings more for that banjo kinda ring, or what? Seems like it would mangle the chord hand after a 3 set night of mashing that shit down?

There's quite a few different reasons people go with the high action thing--tonally, you do get more clarity and more sustain--but with that, you do usually get into some intonation problems. But from the research I've done on Jerry and his gear and talks I've had with certain people and from my own years of GD obsession, Jerry was a very deliberate guitar player. Every single note was important and meant something to him at that moment. So, he actually wanted to set the guitar up with high action to be borderline difficult to play so that every note he played was on purpose--there was no noodling (intended, at least...I'm sure it happened once or twice over several thousand shows)--he had to work for every note he played, so everything was intentional. Once you put all of this together and really pay attention to his playing on a stellar SBD or find a good video of his fingers, you really can see how this worked for our man Jerome.

I think it's a very cool way to think about playing the guitar, for all of us burgeoning guitar addicts.

And as far as mangling the chord hand? We're talking about one of the most prolific guitar players and databases of American music of all time. He started as a fiddle player, and then was a virtuosic banjo picker before becoming the Jerry we all think of...who never stopped playing. I don't think that high action bothered him in the slightest.

[Poster]

I wonder what type of action steve kimock plays with? man o man, his cripe, Ebony, is probably one of the sexiest guitars ever built. Too bad he rarely plays it anymore... 

[Walker done done]

Sour D - that tarp/ducktape (aka Buxton Chrome) comment was absolutely fucking hilarious....had me laughing out loud this morning in my office to the point where coworkers were wondering what the eff was going on.  +1000 to you.

But Poster, these past few comments between you two are kinda pointless.  My pedals are velcroed down on a raised pedalboard that is only ever opened when I play, and is locked shut when I'm not.  I mean I hear ya about the ATA cases & what not, and am not saying they're a bad thing, but I don't think it's something I need to go spending money on right now.  The upgrade isn't worth the expenditure by any stretch, IMO.  Sure, if I was going on tour then it might make sense, but for my purposes what I've got works plenty good.  I try to do a good job at taking care of my pedals - dusting them off when they get grit and grime on them, etc.  I do not unplug them at all, unless it's to clean them off or something.  Other than that, they stay put and never move.  I don't sweat like it sounds like you do (might want to try a fan buddy...they're great...I have one at every show), so I don't have that problem of soaking my board with my bodily fluids.  And if drunken bar patrons decide to get too close to me, I kick them away - literally.  Since my hands are usually busy playing, I'll put my foot right out there in front of me and boot 'em (if they're holding a drink and being dangerously ignorant, that is...if they're just having a good time and not about to fall over on my gear, I leave them alone, lol).  In fact I pulled this move last @ our first gig @ Buck's BBQ back in January or February...kinda funny as I remember it.  The dude had no idea why I was kicking him but I explained it to him afterwards, all was good. 

Anyways, appreciate the willingness wanting to help, as always.

[Poster]

yeah the fans dont do shit when its 108 degrees at night and its an open air venue. throw in can lights, and you are going to sweat like a summer hog.

i wont chime in anymore

[Walker done done]

yeah the fans dont do shit when its 108 degrees at night and its an open air venue. throw in can lights, and you are going to sweat like a summer hog.

i wont chime in anymore

Well first off, I hear ya on the heat factor.  Never played in the south so I can't comment on that but it sounds like hell.  Hell, it's hot enough playing up here some nights...down there must be downright brutal. 

Secondly, why are you not chiming in anymore?  Did I miss something?

[patrickstefanski]

i think we are all overlooking the important issue at hand here....

UPLOAD MORE PICS OF THE GUITAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!