Sound & Life in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra Live At Founders Brewing 12.18.11

2011-12-19T14:24:00.001-05:00

The Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra Performing

I had the great fortune of catching another fantastic performance by the Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra at Founders Brewing Company. They perform there on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of each month and it's always a packed house with people of all ages. This is one of the best regular events that takes place in our fair city of G.R. Great food, drink and service from the always accommodating Founders staff to go along with top notch entertainment.

With it being so close to the holidays, the orchestra followed in theme with some holiday tunes and killed it as usual. If you haven't been to one of their performances before, you have no idea the time you're missing out on. Along with their linked site above, you can keep up on all of their events by visiting their Facebook page here. You can also go to their site and buy their "Jazz On Tap" CD recorded at Founders or better yet, buy one when you go to see them.

I happened to arrive with my stereo recorder in hand so I could capture a little taste of the action. The first clip was recorded by setting up the recorder by the end of the bar furthest from the orchestra so there's a lot more room and patron sound. For the second recording, I placed it against the window by the sound board which is about 10-15 feet away from the players on the stage left side. You can give it a listen below...

Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra Founders 12.18.11 (Part 1) by buefordwilson

Grand Rapids Jazz Orchestra at Founders 12.18.11 (Part 2) by buefordwilson

Life is good.

12 Track Radio Live Set At Jukes 12.10.11

2011-12-12T15:19:00.000-05:00

12 Track Radio is a trio that my brother Ryan joined recently. I went to Jukes Bar to check them out for the first time this past Saturday and brought my handheld recorder to capture the set. Here's the audio:

12 Track Radio Live at Jukes 12.10.11 by buefordwilson

New Guitar For This Guy

2011-12-10T17:33:00.001-05:00

Had another good find on Craigslist. It's a '72 Telecaster Deluxe Reissue. I had to tear it apart and fix some wiring on one of the tone pots and input jack, but it's sounding great with no hiccups now. I played it through my Kay Model 504 tube amp after repairs were finished. This is what they look/sound like:

'72 Telecaster Deluxe & Kay 504 Test_1 by buefordwilson

Life is good.

A New Recorder & Dax Riggs At The Pyramid Scheme

2011-12-08T17:33:00.000-05:00

Recently I purchased a Tascam DR-08 digital recorder. It has built in stereo condenser mic capsules the can be positioned different ways for different types of recording. I wanted something portable so I can quickly and easily capture ideas at band rehearsals as well as live performances. Here's what it looks like:

I got to test it out at a show after a few days of receiving it in the mail. The show was Dax Riggs at the Pyramid Scheme and it was great. I managed to get some audio of his set even though the batteries ran out in the middle of it. I haven't done anything to fine tune the audio yet, but it sounds decent straight from the device. Here's the two uncut clips I managed to capture:

Dax Riggs1 PScheme 12 4 11 by buefordwilson

Dax Riggs2 PScheme 12 4 11 by buefordwilson

And here's one track I caught from Grand Rapids' own Haunted Leather:

Haunted Leather Pyramid Scheme 12 4 11 by buefordwilson

I've had a good amount of stuff going on lately and my amount of posts reflect that surely, but I'm going to try to keep up on this better in the future. On another note, I started building my first tube amplifier. This is going to be a long and arduous process, but that's all for another post.

Life is good.

Fes2val.

2011-08-29T18:43:00.000-04:00

A really great event that happens every year in Grand Rapids is Fes2val. It is an entire day event featuring 2 member bands. Every year I have to work on that day, so I miss it. This year was no change, but I thought I would be able to catch the last three groups. Wrong. Got stuck at work and only caught a snippet of Beast In The Field's last song. Missed Jowls prior to that. Luckily I was able to see all of Charles The Osprey's set, so the day was not lost. Here are the resulting pictures:

New HTAFM Video Is Now Up!

2011-08-23T16:10:00.001-04:00

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines, which is a group I play in, has a new video online of a song from our upcoming release "Siam" to be out on September 17th. Grand Rapids filmmaker Joel Potrykus shot and directed it on Super 8 film and it turned out fantastic. The song is titled "Follicle Gang (Green)" and is the fourth track on the album. Check it out:

Been In Chicago Thinking of G.R.

2011-08-10T20:03:00.001-04:00

Went to stay with a couple of friends in Chicago while on vacation and had a great time. Through doing this and that, a wordsmithing comment eventually led to the formation of another group to play in. While this one will be a very low activity and intermittent outfit, it will more than make up for that in it's intensity. Watch. Wait. Anticipate.... Pat Cenataur.

Digitech Space Station Pedalboard Addition

2011-08-04T16:52:00.000-04:00

It's time once again for the ever-changing pedalboard to be revamped. That being said, I recently acquired a XP300 Digitech Space Station. These are fairly rare and sought after. I have been looking for one at a somewhat reasonable price for years and finally hit the jackpot. I traded a Korg Microkorg for it as I haven't barely used it since buying it used a year or so ago. This is another in the line of killer Craigslist deals I have managed to secure over a couple of years. Here is the new pedalboard setup as of the end of July:

Signal path is as follows:

Guitar in to GGG Alembic Stratoblaster Clean Boost---->Digitech Whammy---->GGG BSIAB II---->Triangle Big Muff---->Ernie Ball Volume/Pan---->Electro Harmonix Memory Toy---->Hardwire Stereo Reverb(Used for reverse reverb setting)---->BBE Sonic Stomp---->Digitech Space Station---->Morley ABY Box---->Signal split between 1960s Acoustic Head with 6x10 cabinet and modified Epiphone Valve Junior head into a 4x12 cab with Celestions.

Here's a youtube video of some examples of Space Station sounds:

As I mentioned earlier, there have been a few great Craigslist scores that I've secured. For example, a Technics electronic organ(Free!) and most recently before the Space Station, a 1962 Kay Model 504 hand wired tube amplifier. The amp is in pretty remarkable shape for it's age other than a sketchy electrical cord repair. It even has the original made in the U.S.A. RCA tubes in it. There is built in tube tremolo as well. It has definitely been in a smokey environment for some years, so I had to clean it up a bit, but it sounds fantastic and records very well. I still have to get the power cord switched over to a three prong grounded plug, but it shouldn't be a big deal. Here are some before after cleaning pics along with a shot of the guts:

Front

Back prior to cleaning with back panel off.

Back after cleaning.

Guts!

Hopefully one of these days I can find enough time to start doing some youtube demos of my own with some of the cool equipment I've acquired. Until then, I'm off to Chicago this weekend for Lollapalooza.

Life is good.

Total Blam Blams, Alexis & Festival Of The Arts 2011

2011-06-08T16:06:00.001-04:00

Been pretty busy so I haven't had the chance to post some pictures from Grand Rapids' Festival Of The Arts this past weekend. This was the 42nd year running and it's always one of the best times of the year. The weather was fantastic and there were a ton of things to do around town. I even got a chance to go into the Grand Rapids Art Museum. They had an Audubon exhibit as well as a few plate pieces by Picasso. Unfortunately I had to work two out of the three days, so I missed out on a lot. I did manage to catch local acts Alexis and the Total Blam Blams who both had killer sets. Make sure to check out the links on the right side of the page if you haven't already. You'll find both of these face melting artists under there along with many other fantastic Grand Rapids groups. I took some pictures of both as well as some other ones around town. For some reason, my camera was set to a lower resolution(unbeknownst to me), so that sucks, but here they are nonetheless:

Alexis on the Clock Tower Stage at Festival Of The Arts 2011

Picture in Picture; Alexis on the Clock Tower Stage at Festival Of The Arts 2011

Alexis on the Clock Tower Stage at Festival Of The Arts 2011

Total Blam Blams on the City Stage at Festival Of The Arts 2011

Island Dancers on the Calder Stage at Festival Of The Arts 2011

Walkin' 'round town.

Grand Rapids Art Museum

Grand Rapids Art Museum: Picasso Plate

Grand Rapids Art Museum: Chair Close-up

Grand Rapids Art Museum: Picasso Plate

Grand Rapids Art Museum

Grand Rapids Art Museum: Audubon Exhibit

Grand Rapids Art Museum

I also got a quick video clip of the island dancers on Calder Stage along with these horn players in Rosa Parks Circle going through a solo feature of all of the musicians:

Life is good.

We Are Hex, Man At Arms, CTO & Ozenza on 5.21.11

2011-05-23T16:31:00.000-04:00

We Are Hex, Man At Arms, Charles The Osprey & Ozenza played at The Pyramid Scheme last Saturday. Fantastic show other than the fact that I completely missed CTO's set. That being said, I obviously didn't get any snapshots of them, but it was indeed a rock solid night of music. I had never seen We Are Hex or Man At Arms before and both were extremely high energy and entertaining acts. It was a little tough to maneuver around the stage for shots as the crowd was gathered in close, but still got me a few:

We Are Hex @ The Pyramid Scheme 5.21.11

Man At Arms @ The Pyramid Scheme 5.21.11


Man At Arms @ The Pyramid Scheme 5.21.11

Ozenza @ The Pyramid Scheme 5.21.11


Ozenza @ The Pyramid Scheme 5.21.11

Boom.

Pictures From Shores and Fields Of Industry Performances

2011-05-17T15:25:00.002-04:00

Shores played a sweet set last Thursday at Jukes. Heavier Than Air Flying Machines were supposed to play the show as well, but unfortunately, Jeremy had to be out of town due to work. Snapped a few pictures with my phone as usual. I also included a few shots of Fields Of Industry. Chance Jones played with them at The Pyramid Scheme on Friday and we all had a great time.

Shores @ Jukes 5.12.11

Fields Of Industry @ The Pyramid Scheme 5.13.11

Laziness, A New Music Venue For G.R. and... STUFF.

2011-05-12T15:00:00.000-04:00

Wow, have I gotten lazy on this. Anyway, Grand Rapids has gained a superb mid-sized music venue called The Pyramid Scheme. There's a separate front bar lounge with pinball, a jukebox and a good amount of seating. The back venue area can be summed up in one sentence; Not a bad seat in the house. The entire place is aesthetically pleasing and there are fair prices on beverages for those who may wish to partake. All the way around, this place hit the nail on the head and I can only imagine what lies in store for Grand Rapids' music fans.

Bars Of Gold at The Pyramid Scheme

Paucity at The Pyramid Scheme

A view from the stage of the Pyramid Scheme's live room after the first night's show featuring Charles The Osprey and Chance Jones.

Expunk played a show called Trip The Light at the Wealthy Theater along with some fantastic musical acts and superb dancers. The dancers performed choreographed works to local musicians' works and it couldn't have gone any better. There were no cameras allowed as it was dubbed "Trip The Light Ephemeral." You had to be there to see it and I think that made the event that much more special. I did nab a picture or two of Ghost Heart during the previous weekend's rehearsal, but that's about it. What a night! In other expunk related news, we will be going in to Cold War Studios with Rick Johnson sometime this summer to record our next effort in the wonderful world of noise.

Ghost Heart rehearsing for "Trip The Light Ephemeral" at the Wealthy Theater

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines have a new album finished and it sounds great! We're really excited about its release especially since we have officially been picked up by Friction Records! We have a couple of shows coming up before the album release show(which will be at The Pyramid Scheme), and the artwork and everything is coming along great. The album release show will be in the beginning of August.

Another group that I play in by the name of Trophy will begin recording in early June for an EP. We are planning on doing everything live much like in the good ol' days. What you hear is what you get. This will probably be done over at Cold War Studios as well.

Chance Jones has been getting the scratch drum tracks down for our next record which will be titled "Us." I'm really eager to get working on this album as it'll be full of some great tunes.

That should be it for now. I will be doing my best to keep up with this here local journal much better than I have been. Life is good!

A Call Out To Grand Rapids In The Name Of Al Green!

2011-03-10T14:37:00.000-05:00

This will be epic. As a movement started by the one and only Chance Jones, the quest for a commemorative Al Green statue has begun. I created a Facebook page for it here and to whoever is reading this, please check it out and spread the word! We are seeking out an artist to make a statue. We are beginning the process of brainstorming ideas to raise funds. No corporations. No big names. Solely brought to fruition by the people of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This will be by word of mouth, benefit concerts, fliers and anything we can think of to gather enough money to make this happen! Not sure what else to write as of now, but I'll toss out some info whenever available.

Let's stay together. Life is good.

Shows, Recording and Pedal Mods. Would you expect no less?

2011-03-03T16:48:00.001-05:00

So I realize I've been lazy posting this year. Moving on...

I'm looking forward to some good Chance Jones shows coming up. I saw an Apostles show which also showcased Mean Mother. Apostles were great as always and so was Mean Mother. You should check those guys out. On the tip of national acts, I was able to see Motorhead, Clutch and Valiant Thor at the Orbit Room the other week and they all were phenomenal! The lead singer of Valiant Thor has to be one of the most entertaining and hilarious front men I've ever had the fortune to see. Check them out as well.

I have been thoroughly pleased with my pedals built from General Guitar Gadgets. Both the Alembic Stratoblaster(Clean Boost pedal) and the BSIAB II (Cranked Marshall modeled distortion pedal) are both fantastic and are constantly used in my current pedalboard setup as seen below:

The boost pedal is the smaller silver box to the left of the white Boss Chromatic Tuner. The BSIAB II distortion is the light blue pedal with creme knobs next to the Digitech Whammy.

Next up, I ordered parts to mod out my Russian Big Muff pedal. I replaced a few resistors with others of different values as I did with a few of the capacitors as well. I then took out one resistor and wired in another potentiometer so there is a separate Bass and Treble knob instead of one Tone knob. I also replaced the red LED with a yellow one. All replacement parts were ordered from Pedal Parts Plus. Now I just need to test it out tonight to make sure I didn't mess anything up...

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines are going into the studio tonight to record the last two songs to go on the untitled as of yet album due out this summer. This record is going to be great. All of the songs we have recorded and mixed pre-mastering sound fantastic already. We will be shooting a video with our friend Joel coming up soon as well. It will be shot in Super 8 format which is very exciting. So much to do, so little time...

Life is good.

Almost a month without a post. Tons o' stuff happening.

2010-12-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

I've been keeping busy. Very very busy. So busy that I seemed to have halted posting on here for a bit. Several fantastic shows have happened in the last month. So many cool shows that I feel overwhelmed to write about them all. Total Blam Blams, Apostles, Ozenza, Shores, HTAFM, The Brave Youth, Moto, etc. The list goes on. You can find all of those cats in the links in this blog.

Gear time. Picked up a Morley ABY box and I'm now running a two amp setup for tonal options. Sounds megasweet. I also ordered a distortion pedal from General Guitar Gadgets that is called the BSIAB II (Brown sound in a box version 2.) This is based on the sound of a cranked Marshall amp. I got the enclosure all painted a metal flake blue. Also, I shopped around for replacement knobs and a white LED for fun. The result was a pretty decent looking pedal cosmetically, which is great. What isn't great is that after building it, there was no sound coming out of it. Let's keep in mind that I am very much new to this building pedals thing. Oops. Not sure of where the gremlin is inside the box making it screw up(and no multimeter to my name at this time), I decided to bring it into Eric's audio repair so he can dig into it and let me know what I did wrong specifically. This is a learning experience I suppose, but it is rather disheartening to spend that much time on a project and have it not function upon completion. I am eager to hear what I messed up. More importantly I am very eager to play the thing. Here's some pictures of parts of the process(Taken by my new phone to boot!):

Well, look what came in the mail...

Enclosure to be painted

Optimus primer.

Blue metal flake light layer #1.

A few more coats finished it off.

Beginning to populate the PCB.


Solder of fortune.(Note the finished enclosure with new knobbies on the right)

Once I get it up and running, I'll be rearranging the pedal board again to accommodate both the new pedal and the aforementioned ABY box.

Next up, Expunk started the process of doing a video shoot! Fun, fun, fun. We did the first "taping" a couple of weeks ago in the live music venue in Mulligans. Walt Lodes III is shooting for us and did a stellar job lighting the whole thing along with Joe(our drummer) and got some amazing footage. We'll be going back there next week to finish up shots including Phil on bass as he couldn't make it the other week. Here are a few shots from the great time we had:

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines have been working on the new album and practicing for a couple of upcoming shows. We actually wrote a new song last week which comes few and far between, so there is a possibility of a few more tunes ending up on the new album. Here's a few videos I put up on youtube of practice space clips(Turns out my phone records video in 720p. Sweetness):

The turn of the new year brings a busy time for me. Chance Jones was asked to fill an opening slot for Rusted Root at the Orbit Room tomorrow night. That should be a good show with a decent turn out I believe. New Years Eve is Chance Jones, AB! & Coconut Brown, and Cabildo at Founders. I was asked by Josh from AB! to sit in on trumpet for one of their tunes, so I'm really excited for that. New Years Day is Chance Jones playing at Mittenfest in Ypsilanti along with Ghost Heart and numerous other fantastic groups. January 4th brings the Expunk show and we're playing with the Apostles which is always a great thing. January 6th is HTAFM opening for Lenin/McCarthy at Jukes. Lenin/McCarthy is a band that Rick Johnson(the dude at the helm of the HTAFM album) plays in. Very excited for that show! I think the next one coming up will be the Ghost Heart album release at Founders with HTAFM opening for them. They have recently asked if I would see about writing a couple of trumpet parts for songs, so I'm thrilled to give it a whirl. It will be the first time I have written complete horn arrangements for another group other than one of my own.

Finally.... I got a new axe. I didn't necessarily need one, but I had to have it. It's basically the lowest budget guitar that LTD manufactures, but over time it will see a number of modifications including a Floyd Rose tremolo. $50 on craigslist. How could I NOT buy this thing?! Sidenote: upon playing on it through an amp I quickly discovered that it is a certifiable "Squealy Machine." This means that the pinch harmonics have sustain for miles. Miles, I say. Here she is:

Life is good.

Pedalboard Progress and Speakertown

2010-11-30T17:32:00.001-05:00

So the other day I had mentioned that I was going to try my hand at building a guitar effects pedal. Well I did and it was a success. It was a clean boost pedal which apparently is one of the easiest ones to start out on. I also just ordered a T Rex Fuel Tank Jr. so all of the pedals are running on clean efficient power thus reducing a good amount of extraneous noise created from running a lot of pedals/cables. Here's the T Rex unit:

While waiting for the power supply to arrive, I thought it to be a good idea to do some preparatory arrangement work on the board. Here is the board before rearranging commenced:

And here is the board after I removed the cruddy power strip, wall wart adapters, replaced a not so great patch cable, and added my new boost pedal:

My Pedal Board: Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner>General Guitar Gadgets Stratoblaster Boost Pedal Kit>Boss SD-2 Dual Overdrive(Modded)>1998 Russian Sovtek Big Muff Pi(Modded to add a Boss style power jack)>Digitech Whammy Reissue>Ernie Ball Volume/Pan Pedal>Boss DD-3 Digital Delay>Hardwire RV-7 Stereo Reverb>BBE Sonic Stomp

My Guitar Setup: Acoustic 150 w/matching 6x10 cab. Epiphone Valve Junior 5W tube amp. Blackheart Killer Ant 1/2W tube amp head(Modded with Bitmo kit to add pull boost tone knob and direct line out on front). Custom made 4x12 speaker cab loaded with Celestions(can't remember the model of speaker.)

As long as I was taking pedal board shots, I thought I would document Jef's board and get a few shots of the expunk practice space affectionately dubbed "Speakertown." You'll see why it's called that in the pictures below:

Jef's Pedal Board: Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner>Boss PS-2 Digital Pitch Shifter/Delay>Boss BD-2 Blues Driver>Boss TR-2 Tremolo>Electro Harmonix Small Clone>Electro Harmonix Small Stone(Vintage)>Electro Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb>Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man>DOD FX52 Classic Fuzz>Dunlop Rotovibe


Jef's Stereo Guitar Rig: Fender Super Six Reverb and Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue.

Northwest corner of Speakertown. Those are Joe's drums on the left.

Southeast corner of Speakertown. Jef's setup on the left and Phil's bass rig on the right. Acoustic head with a 1960s Fender 2x15 cab.

Many, many more updates to come in the future. Life is good.

Lights At Sea, Ozenza, Shores, Ambassador 11.27.10

2010-11-29T17:56:00.000-05:00

Lights At Sea held their album release show on Saturday of this past weekend at Mulligans. This show was easily one of the best of the entire year and then some! All bands absolutely killed it. At the end of the show, Lights At Sea had drummers from local bands Ozenza, Apostles, Shores, Ambassador, & Charles The Osprey join them onstage for a finale song of which epic does not even begin to describe. I was able to catch video of Ozenza's first song and a couple minutes of the finale with everyone on stage. I wish I could have gotten more(with better audio to boot), but the place was so packed that movement was difficult. Very difficult. Below are some pictures of Ozenza as well as the two videos:

The Plague Years, Apostles & Bullpig

2010-11-22T17:49:00.000-05:00

Great show on Saturday night. The Plague Years were good... and loud. Unbelievably loud. Really enjoyed those guys as well as their do it yourself lighting setup. All the way around they were a pretty thorough outfit. Apostles set was really good as usual and besides a lot of pictures, I also took video of them playing the song Countach so I can splice it with other live footage and a few video clips to put into a video. Here are some of the pictures from the evenings Apostles set:

The Return of Shoegaze

2010-11-19T14:39:00.000-05:00

Last night I saw a fantastic show at Founders Brewery. Headliners Weekend with touring support act Young Prisms and local opener Walden (Pond). What a great show. Check out all of these guys as soon as you can because they rocked my face right off. The bands were all great and it was nice to see a show featuring the shoegaze genre in Grand Rapids.

This Saturday brings an Apostles show at Mulligans. I'll probably bring my camera out and take some pictures of that show. They'll be playing with The Plague Years and Bullpig.

That's about it for now, I think.

Studio time and pedals

2010-11-16T17:51:00.002-05:00

Short one today. Going in to finish up work on vocals for Heavier Than Air Flying Machines tonight after work and enjoying a day off tomorrow. (Well, a day off from the day job, anyway.) Practice for both Expunk then Chance Jones in the evening.

Speaking of Expunk, Jef wanted me to make a diagram of his pedal board setup like the one I threw together recently of my own. It was a rather quick job and nothing fancy, but you get the idea. I'm pretty sure I got it mostly right even though I had to go from memory and a very blurry picture.

Sweet stuff on there, people. Imagine both of those rigs colliding with each other very loudly.

Waiting on my boost pedal kit to arrive in the mail from General Guitar Gadgets still. I'm looking forward to assembling that next week.

Gear rules. Life is good.

Local Music: Ozenza

2010-11-12T13:31:00.000-05:00

Ozenza is back to a three piece after the departure of their guitarist Kremo. They played at the very tiny venue Rocky's last night and sent seismic tremors throughout the greater Grand Rapids area. Unfortunately for some odd reason(poor setup/system configuration) you couldn't hardly hear the vocals even though they were the only thing going through the PA. Despite that, they killed once again. I couldn't locate my camera I had purposefully brought, so I made do once again with ye olde trusty camera phone. These are the results:

Rock.

HTAFM at Cold War Studios

2010-11-11T17:36:00.001-05:00

Heavier Than Air Flying Machines went into Cold War Studios with Rick Johnson yesterday for what ended up being a 10 1/2 or so hour session to record the album we've been wanting to do for a while. I believe Jaymes has something in mind for the title of the record, but I can't recall what he initially mentioned a couple of weeks ago. We had a great time recording there, but it was definitely grueling in terms of physical exertion. We got all of the instruments recorded as it was done live with baffles set up in the room. The only overdubs on the record will be vocals, group shouting vocals, samples and two different segments of guitar. The idea was to maintain as much of a raw live feel as possible and we accomplished that. Jaymes and I are going next Tuesday to wrap up the remainder of the vocal parts, samples and small electronic keyboard bits. We've got a decent number of options for where we want to send it out to get mastered, so that is yet to be decided. The microphone setup for the drums was much more complex than I've had on my set before. The entire microphone setup as well as a few pictures of what we did are below:

Scratch Vocals-Shure SM7B

Group Background Vocals-Audio Technica 4050

Guitar-SM57

Bass-Sennheiser MD421 II on the cab and another line ran direct.

Drums:
Hi Hat-Audio Technica AT3031
Snare(Top)-Shure SM57
Snare(Bottom)-Shure SM58
Rack Tom-CAD M179
Floor Tom-CAD M179
Kick Drum(Inside through port hole)-Audio Technica ATM25 (I think)
Kick Drum(A couple of inches off from front head)-ADK 51TC
Ride Cymbal(Underneath)-AT3031
Left and Right Overheads-Audio Technica 4050

The Never-Ending Guitar Setup

2010-11-08T17:49:00.000-05:00

So I figured I would indulge myself by posting what I have going on at the moment for my guitar setup. Slow news day, I know. Anyhow, I am working on getting a dual amplifier setup going just for tonal fun. That being said, I just need to get an ABY splitter box to be able to run from my pedal board to the two different amps. I stacked everything up the other night and took a picture of it(not how it's going to actually be setup, but I couldn't resist).

Kind of reminds me of a guitar version of an old school big screen television. On top of everything is an Epiphone Valve Jr 5 watt tube amp that I will run through the bottom cabinet which was a custom made cabinet loaded with celestions(can't remember what model of speaker they are). The other amp is a vintage Acoustic 150 solid state head with a matching 6x10 speaker cabinet. That's right, boys and girls. 10 speakers total. I'm not usually one to get into solid state amps, but this old Acoustic sounds really cool. On the right are two of my guitars. One is an Epiphone Les Paul 7 string with a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge position and the stock pickup in the neck position. The other is a somewhat recent acquisition that I posted here about before. It's a Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster with a 3 single coil Stratocaster style configuration.

As for the pedal board, here's a list of what's on there in order of signal chain:

Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner
Boss SD-2 Dual Overdrive(Modded by Eric's Audio Repair)
Russian Big Muff Pi(1998 version 2 I think)
Digitech Whammy reissue
Ernie Ball Stereo Volume/Pan
Boss DD-3 Digital Delay
Hardwire RV-7 Stereo Reverb
BBE Sonic Stomp

I used some photo editing software to throw together a detailed picture of what is on my pedal board as I haven't taken a picture yet, so here's that:

Gear rules. Life is good.

Buildings, Apostles, Red Lights. Jukes 11.4.10

2010-11-06T10:08:00.001-04:00

Great show Thursday night at Jukes. Buildings from Minneapolis, MN put on a great show. That was the first time I've seen them and I was definitely impressed. Unfortunately I missed most of The RedLights, who were the opening act of the evening. The Apostles ended the night and killed it as always. High energy set, tight riffs and a good amount of humorous banter seems to be the right combo. I took a decent number of pictures during the Apostles set. Here are some of them:

Also, I caught some of two songs on video. I only had a digital camera and they were loud to say the least, so the audio isn't great. Here are parts of "Countach" and "Double Gravity":

Halloween Show 10.30.10

2010-11-01T15:02:00.000-04:00

Went to a Halloween costume party on the west side on Saturday night and had a great time. The lineup of bands in order was as follows:

Potato Babies (Grand Rapids, MI)
Boss Mustangs (Grand Rapids, MI)
Delilah DeWylde & The Lost Boys (Grand Rapids, MI)
The Concussions (Grand Rapids, MI)
Beast in the Field (Mt. Pleasant, MI)

I arrived too late to catch the Potato Babies, but every other band that I saw tore it up majorly. The Boss Mustangs ended their set with a cover of MC5's 'Kick Out The Jams' that blasted the roof off the place. Delilah DeWylde & The Lost Boys did a fantastic cover montage of tunes from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. The Concussions played a fierce set as always in skeleton costumes with black lights on stage. Looked really sweet.

Lastly, Beast In The Field played a blistering and loud set to close the night off. Those guys are nuts. So many speakers and amps for just one guy on guitar and the only other member is on drums. Great stuff, but like I said, bring ear plugs if you ever go to see these guys. This was one of the better shows of the year hands down. One of the coolest parts was the fact that they were recording all of the bands' sets to a vintage analog reel to reel machine. Now to figure out how to get a copy of that...