The Future of Forestry DVD is coming out on Nov 19th.
I’m going to see them play in San Jose in Dec.
I heard this song in the car the other day and the bridge section really stood out.
Skip to 3:28 in the song. Has 30 Seconds to Mars been listening to Future of Forestry?:)
It’s not as blatant as Hillsong ripping off Death Cab for Cutie (pointed out by Karl earlier this year).
I went to see Phil Wickham last night at CPC in Foster City.
Phil is doing a pre-release tour before his new cd is released in Nov.
Phil was kind enough to do a pre-show Q&A for some of the worship arts folks from the local churches.
Here are some pictures of Taylor Johnson’s setup.
His pedalboard for the tour is slightly different than what is listed here.
pedals:
Line 6 DL4
Line 6 MM4
Boss RV-5
Boss DD-20
Boss TU-2
Digitech Whammy WH-4
Fulltone FD2 Mosfet
Fulltone Clyde Deluxe Wah
Barber Tone Press
RC Booster
RAT
Little Lehle
Line 6 and Ernie Ball expression pedals
I didn’t get a shot of Phil’s pedalboard because he was tuning up and I didn’t want to bother him.
From what I could see, he is using a DL4, DD20, and a couple Xotic effects pedals. He played a Jazzmaster, a Telecaster, and his Taylor acoustic.
Here are some new quick M13 videos that I shot.
I haven’t been playing a whole lot so excuse the random noodlings.
These videos feature some new effects that were released in the 2.00/2.01 update.
Pitch Glide is pretty cool. Watch for a Pitch Glide vs. Digitech WH-1 video as soon as I can find the tripod which got packed away during our recent move.
For this week, I pulled some examples of Phaser.
Check out the solo:
Here are some other songs with phaser that I couldn’t find on youtube:
Wilco – Passenger Side
The Innocence Mission – Spinning
the Man wants you to lip sync!
I think Ryan Adams did something similar on Top of the Pops and let his bass player pretend he was Ryan.
The world is telling you that you need guitar pedals.
But what if you don’t know what effects even do or sound like?
I’m starting a new series where I round up some good examples of a particular effect so that you can hear what that effect really sounds like.
This week: Tremolo
For a detailed explanation of the tremolo effect, go here.
The ramping effect on this song seems to have inspired some boutique builders like Cusack to build it into their pedal:
Tremolo + feedback = great hook
Some tremolo + phaser action here:
Mike Judge has a new movie, Extract, coming out and this clip is too funny.
Pat Metheny is the Jake E. Lee of fusion guitar players.
You’re gonna love these humbuckings!
These videos about music are fascinating.
Moving:
We bought a house and are closing by the beginning of Sept. We’re moving North close to where Voodoo Lab and Two Rock Amps are located. Exciting and stressful to think about everything we need to do. I’m looking forward to having an office where I can keep my music gear out instead of everything packed up away from the kids. That will probably help me play more than once a month. 
Travel:
I going to be in Houston for a work meeting in August. Usually, they spare us from going there in the summer but our normal spring meeting got so delayed that we didn’t have a choice. This must be the hottest summer on record as I’ve never heard more complaining from the people in that office about how hot it is. The day that I fly back, I get to go home for a few hours before heading back to SFO with wife and kids to fly to Vancouver for our family reunion. I used to go to Vancouver every summer for the reunion but this will be our first time flying with two small kids.
Speaking of travel, I’m looking forward to the new Travel II ep from Future of Forestry that is coming out in Sept. Some short clips have been posted here.
iphone:
We recently switched to AT&T after being with Verizon for 8 years.
The iphone 3gs is great but I’m still getting used to having a 3g phone where the battery runs down pretty quickly. My old LG non-smartphone only needed to be charged 1-2 times per week.
The iphone video feature is very handy for the times that I want to capture random videos of my kids but don’t want to lug the much bigger Sony mini-dv camcorder. It does low light better than I thought it would. Good for casual videos but the real camcorder is still better for the memories you really want to capture in detail. I had considered the Flip Mino HD but I think the iphone is good enough for the youtube level stuff. Here’s a video that I shot when we were driving back down from house hunting.
Gear:
Skreddy Pig Mine ordered
Trailer Trash 30 x 18 blem board I got off ebay arrived and I decided to keep my Trailer Trash 18 x 16 board for now.
New gear that looks interesting:
Liquid Edge from Liquid Foot could be cool.
Paramix Parallel Mixer pedal has 2 parallel loops and lets you run both delay and shimmer in parallel:
There was a post from Zachary Vex on HCFX forum giving advice to the small builders on how to scale (sorry for the b-school speak). I met him a few years ago when he did a product demo at Banana’s At Large in San Rafael. We had a nice chat about My Bloody Valentine resurfacing and Ed Ackerson/Polara. It turns out that he was the recording engineer on a 27 Various cd that I had picked up after getting into Polara. Anyway, it’s a fascinating read.
The internet really changes everything, but not necessarily for the better. When I started in 1995 the only way to sell was through stores, so during my second year I went on a road trip to visit cities that had them, taking strange routes across the country, zig-zagging and backtracking to hit as many as I could. It was fun, but it was instantaneously heartbreaking because there were no real sales… However, I did get my pedals into New York.* The magic thing was, after some time went by, the stores that had poo-pooed the pedals at first called me up to order as soon as I got a little bit of press in GP magazine, when a writer/reviewer (Joe Gore) bought a few of my pedals I managed to sell to Rudy’s Music Stop in New York.
Now the internet has made it possible to get a lot of attention on these kinds of forums as each buyer does a review and increases visibility. The thing that fools you is that this is such a tiny segment of what’s out there. The vast majority of musicians who actually buy product are visiting stores, not forums, and ultimately that’s where your customers are. So the key thing to do is get in your car with a buddy who wants to travel and head for one coast or the other, passing through the best boutique pedal stores you can find. There’s lists available everywhere online. My site has a list, Fulltone has a list, just do some research and plot out the cities on a map, and go show off what you do. Selling in stores causes you to have to raise your prices. That’s tough in this economy, but it has to be done. Best time to bite that bullet is when you’re small and relatively unknown. Don’t undercut your dealers by advertising your pedals cheaper than retail online.
Some time after my road trip, I called up Mike Fuller to ask him if I could use the name “Black Box Number 9″ (original name for the Machine pedal). He had recently ceased production on a power supply he called “the Black Box.” I didn’t want to step on his toes. He said flat out “absolutely not” in typical Mike fashion, but he went on to talk with me for at least an hour about everything I could think of to pick his brain about. He said something that completely freaked me out. He’d been in business for 6 years and I was just starting my 2nd year, and he said “it won’t be long and you’ll be doing a quarter million a year in sales.” I shook my head when I got off the phone and laughed, thinking I’d be lucky to break 5 digits, let alone 6.
It took a few years. I remember that conversation often. I wish I’d payed more attention to the details of what he was telling me. Who knows what I’d have learned if I had believed him at first.
footnote
* The road trip to NYC did not immediately result in getting Rudy’s to sell my pedals. I arrived in NYC during a light rain on a Friday night and expected all of the stores to be closed. We drove past Rudy’s and saw people going in… my heart raced. John drove the car to a 24-hour parking ramp and some crazy driver there took it screaming and squealing around corners up to a high floor until we couldn’t hear it anymore. We trudged up to Rudy’s a few blocks away, me wearing a backpack full of pedals. I went up to the floor (3rd or fourth?) where the accessories were sold, and I awkwardly introduced myself to the salesman, Tomo. Tomo had a thick German accent and laughed at my pedals, telling me that nobody in New York would want such crazy things (Octane, Fuzz Factory, SHO). He said that NYC was heavily blues-based and crazy pedals weren’t hot. I reminded him that the US music scene was beginning to show real signs of picking up noise influences from the shoegaze scene in the UK which had been raging for some years, and he was mystified by the whole thing, not recognizing any band names I mentioned. I gave up, packed up 15 pedals into my backpack and strapped it back on, trudging down the stairs to the street where I stared at the city rising above me and felt like a schmuck. Trip was over, and I’d consigned 3 pedals and sold none. Then I heard Tomo’s voice behind me. He’d come down the stairs and was out on the sidewalk, talking quietly like he was making a drug deal. He wanted to buy a Fuzz Factory for himself. I was like, wtf? You want to buy one for yourself and not for the store? His reaction was, “You don’t understand the owner here. He’s not going to let me spend money on these weird pedals. He doesn’t trust me to make those kinds of decisions. My band is really weird, so I have to have this sound.” I’m like, shit, you just want to be the only guy in NYC to have a Fuzz Factory, and he laughed right in my face. I figured a sale is a sale, so I handed him one, and he took my card and told me his “record label” would send me the money. I was stunned.
So I drove back home with my tail between my legs, alternating shifts with my friend John, and waited for the check for a month. Nothing. Nada. I’m like, country bumpkin goes to the big city and gets conned. One day the phone rings and it’s Tomo. He’s like “did my record label send you the money yet?” I said no. He swore and then apologized profusely, the label sent the money overnight by FedEx, and within a couple of days he placed an order for 40 pedals for Rudy’s Music Stop and saved my broke ass. Rudy’s placed orders at the 10 to 20 pedals-per-month level for more than a year after that. I went to visit Tomo there and he took me up to his penthouse apartment which looked directly out at the Chrysler Tower. I was stunned. He said, “This is my wife. She’s also runs my record label.” Fucking Tomo.
I was crushed when he quit working there to go into real estate full-time. He probably made a total killing.
Another story about Tomo. One day he calls me up to tell me Metallica is in the store and they just bought a fuzz factory. Next day, he calls me up to tell me one of them came back to buy 5 more fuzz factories and now he needs to place an order. I’m like, why 5 pedals? Tomo laughed. “He said he wanted to make sure nobody else would be able to get a fuzz factory in New York while they’re working on their new record across the street.” I FedEx-ed him the full order that night. That’s another thing to keep in mind. Always, always always have stock on hand. No matter what it takes, make sure you can supply your dealers. Never run out. It’s not cute. It doesn’t make you seem popular. It’s seriously aggravating for the dealers to not get what they need. Same with their customers. People want it, and they want it now. The longest I made my dealers wait was a week or two. Never let it get out of control. You’ll be seriously sorry. I’m never out of stock now. Ever.
Of course, Tomo sold all of the fuzz factories immediately by telling the Metallica story to his customers. That’s the coolest thing about stores. Famous musicians come through and want freaky new pedals (they’re making money touring and it’s burning a hole) and then the sales guys can tell excellent stories to all of their other customers about it. Your customers. Your happy customers who can show off their new pedals and tell the story about the crazy rock star. Believe me, your customers don’t want to tell their friends stories about a crazy pedalmaker.
Get your pedals into stores. Stop believing in this internet bullshit. You can sell direct for more money once you establish a real retail presence. And fuck the guys who say you charge too much. They just want to use you. Think about it. They want to put a brick on your head. Make you into their pet. Clip your wings. Stunt your growth like a bonzai, keep you in the forums where they can keep an eye on you. Don’t drink the kool-aid. It’s not kool. This place is a cult. Business is still done in brick-and-mortar stores. The internet is a secondary market.
Look at the truth. Keeley is in stores. Analogman is in stores.
Think about that. Mike from Analogman started off by modding pedals, grew an internet presence very very early in the game, started selling other maker’s pedals and his own pedals in his online store, and then sold to where? Brick and mortar stores. That’s where the real world is. Go live in it. The internet is small. It only seems big. And forgive me, Mike, if I got the order wrong, but i believe I got it right. Now, look. The brick-and-mortar stores are selling his pedals online. It’s exponential. He’s now ubiquitous.
http://www.ludlowguitars.com/invento…dals/analogman
Btw, what a laugh that some in here bitch that my 5-knob hand-painted germanium fuzz pedal sells for $19 more than his 3-knob silkscreened germanium pedal fuzz pedal. His has a one-year warranty. Mine has a lifetime warranty. Go figure why I’m always the target for their inane rants about “overpriced pedals.” They don’t want someone outspoken on here. That person may break the trance. Might pull back the curtain to reveal the tiny little operators of this frightening, all-important machine they believe rules the world. Actually, they’re deluded geeks.
Let me spell it out for you. The people on the forums don’t want to help you, or make sure you’re successful. They just want to be in control. Defeat the matrix. Get yourself into real retail brick-and-mortar stores and get your prices straightened out. You can always cut deals quietly with your old friends. The dealers do that too.
Good luck.
__________________
http://zvex.com …14 years of freaky pedals!
Here is some Polara for you. I liked their first album better but this was all I could find on youtube. I remember seeing this band at the 9:30 club in DC and Ed was running two amps. Huge sound.
Tonight I worked on the pad sound in the M13 based on one of the sounds in Karl’s video.
Here is what I came up with:
Karl’s pad sound still sounds better.
It takes 4 delays or 3 delays and one octo on the M13 to get the sound.
Setting 1
Setting 2
So is it in the ballpark?
The sound was also informed by the bands Hammock, Idaho, Sigur Ros, My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive.
From the guy who co-wrote “God of Wonders”
