Blog
UniVibe – why it (usually) goes pre gain
UniVibe sounds better pre gain... there, I said it. Now, I know this is a subjective statement, but you know, the VAST majority of the people I know and have spoken to consider the UniVibe style circuit to be perfectly placed pre gain stages. Of course, there is going...
Gear of the Year – Gear of the Decade
Unlike a lot of other blogs and video producers, I’ve waited until the end of the year/decade to nominate my gear of the year – how it can be done in Q3 before all the big “Black Friday” releases are out I’ll never know, but you know, clickbait and SEO is king!!! This...
Telecasters, trying to find THE one.
I’ve had a strange relationship with Telecasters for what appears to be over 30 years now. You see, I love them, dearly – there is no sound like it, but I have to admit, I just can’t really play them and enjoy myself properly. I fail to ‘get lost’ properly in them,...
Terraform, understanding the default settings…
One of the most surprising and lovely things I’ve noticed via customer feedback is that they are really digging the ‘plug and play’ default settings on the Terraform. It was something that Jake and I went over comprehensively, but to be honest, I didn’t think people...
Designing the Terraform – a snapshot of history
I honestly can’t remember how long we’ve been working on this pedal… If I’m going to have an educated guess, I’d say it’s been well over a year – probably about 18 months. It all started in a meeting we were having, Alex was saying (as usual) “What are we going to do...
Brent Mason – Musicians Hall of Fame
I had a weird sense of pride wash over me last week – seeing Brent Mason inducted into the Musician’s Hall of Fame (with the rest of the Nashville Players – John Hobbs, Eddie Bayes Jr, Michael Rhodes and Paul Franklin) was literally a moment of “About bloody time...
Humbuckers – split coil and coil tap
Way back when… and I mean way back when, I was working in a guitar shop and it was right about the time that the concept of the Superstrat REALLY took off. It was the early 90’s and affordable guitars that allegedly bridged the gap between a Strat and a Les Paul were...
10,000 hours of practice to become an expert?
My youngest daughter is 13, and unlike many 13 years ago she still subjects us to a constant barrage of irrelevant questions, kind of like when she was only 5. Most of the time this is delightful as her questions can be about absolutely anything, some of them are...
Music Education in schools and the problem with ‘The Arts Last’
Today we give the blog over to my current favourite guitar playing walking the earth, and long time Wampler artist (he performed at the Wampler NAMM booth this last January), Mr Jack Gardiner. Jack's musical life was transformed when he took his first lesson with Tom...
How fast do guitar pedals drain batteries?
One of the things I hear the most, and it’s literally almost a daily occurrence, is “why does this pedal eat batteries so much?” or something similar… Here’s the starting point, in my opinion of course… what we should all remember when thinking about guitar pedals is...
60 years of pop music and the charts
Quite often you see a thread on social media about how much pop modern music is, especially in ‘the charts’… Granted, the charts as we remember them (if you are as old as me) are gone, with streaming, YouTube and everything else, it doesn’t represent how music is...
Signal Chain – Reverb into delay, delay into reverb, or something else?
Which order do you put your delay and reverb pedals? For years and years I was a firm subscriber to the most common way of delay into reverb… once I had started to play in LogicX, you know - just messing around, I was surprised at how different, albeit quite subtly,...
Stainless Steel frets – pros and cons
Well, I had my first EVER refret last week. I’ve never really cared enough about a guitar to get it done… well, either that or I haven’t kept a guitar for long enough and played it hard enough to even think about it. Or maybe, in the case of my favourite PRS, the...
3 ways for you to make your band sound better
As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m what’s known as a ‘part time’ gigger, or a semi professional musician, or the type of person who sinks every spare penny into a hobby without any monies coming back in… pretty certain many of you can relate! I’ve been...
Compressors, for guitar – a simple guide
If you are anything like me, for the longest time you treated compression as a big ‘meh’ and didn’t understand why virtually all guitar players need it. Yes, I did say that, virtually all guitar players need it. I thought that compression was something country and...
Dear Gibby… a letter of friendship.
Dear Gibby, I feel I have to write as I am really worried about you. I would normally pop over so we could have a drink and a chat, but you know, you’re literally miles away. Let’s face it, we’ve been friends for… man, I don’t know, seems like forever… and yeah, I...
The 9 levels of G.A.S.
Being a confirmed gear head has its down sides, you often have to traverse through the nine levels of Hell to realize your perfect rig… or, as we know it, the nine levels of G.A.S. You are shopping online, your offer has been accepted, you transferred the money at...
10 rules of jamming!
We had the pleasure of having one of the world’s finest Steel players sit in with us a couple of weeks ago, Sarah Jory. Now, this doesn’t reflect on the quality of the band I am in, we are not so good we command the world’s greatest players to come and play, we’ve...
Cutting out the middle person, who is ultimately yourself
As usual I’ve been watching some geeky stuff on the uTubez and, as always, one of the first videos that was recommended for me was something from That Pedal Show. This time it wasn’t a pedal thing, it was a video of Mick changing the saddles on his favourite Strat,...
Seeing Panic! At The Disco live… Do you understand your kids music?
Last night I found myself in the middle of 5000 people watching a band and, to be honest, it was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had. Quite eye opening in fact, the band in question was Panic! At The Disco. I’m guessing that if you have teenage kids, who...
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