Tonemoan Review Feed

XL Electric Guitar Strings

Ok, I know this is not the most exciting of subjects. I mean, strings, ok. Yeah. They useful and shit, but they not exciting. At all. Nevertheless, they do account for 30% of your tone, and, although I base that on absolutely nothing, it does sound about right.Early on, I chose string sets based on packaging color (the only reason I ve ever bought Ernie Balls, those day-glo colors really work when you're a drunk 19 year-old) and price. If it's the cheapest on rack, I m allready at the counter with 2 packs in my hands. But, time moves on and people do too. At some point, you're gonna have to make a grown up decision about that kind of shit, pick something out and stick with it.So, after trying out Fender Strings (crap), GHS (crap), Rotosound (again, crap), Ernie Ball (not my cup of tea), I bought a set of Cryo-somethings' by D'Addario and they were really good, but too expensive, so then I tried the XL's and that was it. The metal is pure enough to last me for about 40 hours of game, which is pretty decent, tone is fucking brilliand, andthe price is just right. No brainer.A testament to D'Addario Strings' quality: when Herman Li's endorsement was announced, I did not go ahead and throw away all my sets, burn all the packaging and attack my local dealer with Molotov's.

TURBO Distortion DS-2

On July 17, 2006, Navarro and Electra announced their split to Star Magazine. (source) What Dave "BOSS addict and general addict and bona-fide asshole" Navarro failed to mention is that Electra dumped his stupid nipple-ring ass cos he sounds like shit and endorses the Chicken McNuggets of the pedal world that go by the name of BOSS. In case the subliminal message somehow didn't make it through clear enough, let me spell it out for you... If you want to sound like everyone else who sounds like SHIT and IS shit and EATS SHIT go get yourself a BOSS pedal. Even if you can somehow afford a manager who can buy you Carmen Electra for a week, you're still gonna end up with an amicable separation and all the time in world to play crappy funk by yourself or with Flea. And it's gonna sound like ass, cos you're gonna be playing it through a BOSS. And cos it's funk. Which is Native American for "ass". And so is BOSS. If you have a BOSS and it breaks, which is pretty much seven milliseconds after you plug it in, good luck fixing it. I'm convinced they're using the same circuits as the early Gameboys. That's why they make your guitar sound like Luigi's digital bolt on kneecap. If anyone tells you BOSS pedals don't break, slap them. That's the biggest lie in history. I've never seen one that wasn't broken. Except the ones bought by people I know who don't actually play guitar. This is how I can't be sure they were broken. BOSS cleverly build their pedals so that they look like tanks, shit-colored ones while we're at it. Three hundred out of ten cases, any given BOSS pedal is not built like a tank, it's built like a fart. The DS-2 is a TURBO Distortion. TURBO means the DS-2 is able to reduce your tone to hot liquid audio shit in no time at all. That's 0 to SHIT in 0 seconds. When you want to sound terrible (and don't even dare considering this implies terrible in some sort of cool metal way) all you have to do is plug your axe into one of these orange tanks. If you're lucky enough, one or both of the in/out jacks will be broken. This happens all the time with BOSS tanks. Usually your luck will run dry enough for the jacks to just eek and scratch, allowing for the tonal shit storm to make it through a speaker. At this point, you will get the urge to burn all your guitar related material and die a techno death. That's a good idea, go for it. The DS-2 has four knobs. Level sets the volume level. My favorite setting for this knob is zero. Tone does what my old man's '77 one-2-inch-speaker portable radio's tone control did. It changes the sound a bit, but it doesn't matter because it sounds like crap in every setting and alongside everything else that's going wrong here, this control is hardly the problem. Distortion will give you an endless palette of the much coveted, circa 1991, bedroom recorded, death metal demo tape hoover tonal range. On to the TURBO, I'm gonna quote the Builders of Tanks themselves. "Turbo Mode II gives you a full mid-range sound. Set DIST to a moderate level to obtain a rough, street-level sound." ... As if the damned thing doesn't sound like a disabled Florida mosquito with a voice impairment that mutes all but its mid-range vocal chords all the way through. And what the hell is a "street-level" sound? What street is this? Unless street means the sunny suburb Fred Durst grew up playing with his Barbie doll collection in. Britney, meet Ken. Let's frat rap metal fusion. The only good thing BOSS have going for them is that boutique pedals are called boutique and where I come from that's what you call stores that sell clothes for women. Some might tell you people use Bosses [...] cos they rock. This is a blatant lie. The reason so many people use BOSS is that, as Slipknot so eloquently for a lame band put it, People Are Shit. They are... All you have to do is listen and you'll know for yourself.

OC-3 Super Octave

I am gonna go ahead and just state early on that I think that Boss pedals totally fuckin rule ass. Not many agree -especially among the Tonemoan contributors- but don't let anyone tell you different. Yes, absolute everybody is using them, so if you're looking for that unique box that will totally tag your sound and turn you into Jimi Clapton Bruce Lee or whatever, then Boss is not your manufacturer. Of course there is a great reason that a lot of people use Bosses, and that is because -as previously indicated- they totally rock. Period. Their original octave pedal -the OC1- is the Jesus of Octaves pedals and it descended to Earth to save our solos from thin-sounding indie lameness. YES, even the most brain-dead petatonic-my-ass vomit of a solo would sound divine played through an OC1. I have tried a couple of other octavers, namely the EH rig (the Multiplexer Octave) and a cheapo Danelectro one. The Danelectro was pretty shit as always, but the multiplexer is not that bad, although the OC1 is better to my ears. And it's not an EH, which is always a plus. I hear MXR is doing one, but haven't played it yet. Could be cool, but its homepage is currently giving out a php error. Call me a geek, but that is not cool.Anyway, back to the OC3. This version features polyphonic octaving, which basically means that when you play a chord in polyphonic mode, your guitar doesn't sound like Billy Gibbons farting a particularly vile taco lunch. That doesn't mean it sounds much better. Useless feature, never used in a recording, and 'm pretty sure I never will.Clean and processed outputs are pretty useful though, if you wanna sidechain a couple of more effects to the treated signal (a compressor is usually interesting) or simply drive each signal through a different amp so that your solos can reach God and make His balls bleed. The overdriven mode is again pretty much shit, and I really can't figure out why they added it along with the poly mode. Probably some marketing ploy, which I am glad to say didn't work for me. It did however work on a very good friend of mine, who went and bought the OC3, only to subsequently give it to me for free. Note: that guy already owns two OC1's and an OC2, which would make him a brainless tool of our capitalist society. That's ok though.So, to wrap the tone talk up, the OC-3 work decently as a single or dual octave duplicator, and that is what anyone should stick to. My fave position is 2 o'clock direct, about 11 on the first octave, and 9-10 on the second one, with the OC sitting right after my Big Muff.Construction-wise, the OC will never die in less than 10-15 years, which is one of the reasons Boss pedals rule. That is a 10 out of 10 right there.So would I trade my OC2 with the refurbished, yet bloated OC3? No, not really. But it is still a decent stomp box that will stick around your rack for a long, long time, even if you only use 30% of its fuctionality.

Marcus Miller Jazz Bass

Taken from Fender.com: Marcus Miller’s combination of soulful groove and astounding technical ability has made him one of the jazz world’s preeminent virtuoso bassists.Eurgh. That is my only problem with this baby, it is cursed with a Jazz player's name. And it's a pity, because the damn thing sounds huge and awesome and I know a lot of people who would never buy it just because they read that damn passage on some Fender catalogue or anotherActually not that many people. But enough.Down to business, the MM J-Bass packs everything you would expect from this classic instrument plus a preamp system and a Badass II bridge, which is AWESOME. The Badass is much more tonally stable than the original J-Bass bridge design, and it sounds at least as good. The body is made of ash and the neck is maple, emulating the 1977 designs of the Jazz Bass series. The neck design is actually kind of interesting, as it is extremely thin towards the headstock. The guy in the store told me that the 5-string model has a neck width only marginally bigger than a normal four-string pBass and apparently that was a request by Miller, who plays a five string.I myself would never touch a five string with a 20-foot pole, but the thin neck suits me fine, since I use a lot of chord fingerings.The tonality of the instrument is pretty versatile. You can get a wide tonal range out of the EQ system (max +15dB at 40Hz and 6.4 KHz from bass and treble boost respectively) in conjuction with the preamp. The preamp is actually pretty linear in frequency response, so no surprises there. I am considering of maybe sticking a Bartolini on the bridge position, 'cause you gotta love a Bartolini on distortion, and I use a lot of distortion. The neck pickup sounds just swell out of the box, I would never think of changing it. So, just in case anybody didn't get the message yet, I LOVE THIS BASS. THIS BASS ROCKS. Even the price is extremely reasonable for what the instrument offers, and that is pretty rare for a Fender, or any other high profile U.S. manufacturer for that matter.

SG Clone

I seriously don't know why I'm still keeping this thing around. I bought this weird axe back in 1998 or 1999, and for the life of me I cannot remember how much I got it for. Lot of things have happened since then... I basically bought this axe because I liked the way it looked. I still believe she's a beauty, but, after a decade of fiddling with it, repeatedly replacing parts of it, patching it up etc etc, I have to say there is NOTHING ON THIS PLANET that can be done to make this thing sound like an actual guitar. I used this on my band's first full length album. My band's first full length album was good, but it had crap sound. And so do all EKO guitars. All of them, period. They are easy on the eye, but they are only good if you don't case about being in tune, and you don't mind sounding like your beatnik uncle's old band. Let me list all the customizations I've performed on this bitch over the years: Changed the frets to jumbo ones. Helped a bit with the fretboard feel, didn't really do anything for the tone. Replaced neck pickup with a humbucker salvaged from an old Ibanez. Don't really remember what this one is, or even why I did it. I was probably getting desperate. I mean, truth be told, the pickups this one has on are true 60's vintage stuff, nothing really sounds like they do. Which is shit. I actually got a very good deal on the one I removed, I sold it to a garage rock afficionado for 180 euros. I think that's about as much as I paid for the guitar. Changed neck screws, reinforced neck join with glue. My main problem with this axe is that then neck is unstable, because of the very thin and bad quality woodwork. Tried everything I could on this one, and it's a bit better now, but still not stable enough. After all that, all I have to say is that this guitar -apart from being pretty- is the worst guitar I have ever played I my entire life. I seriously think that buying something like this automatically makes me a Muppet. Same goes for all you out there, too.

Phasor/201

DOD Phasor/201Cool factor number one: One knob. Speed. That's all you get. That's all you want. You're not looking for a "versatile" pedal or something, are you now?Cool factor number two: It's a Phase-OR, not a Phaser. That's real important. Phaser is some lame space weapon someone from Star Wars uses to slice Chewbacca Cereal for a wholesome breakfast. Phasor is the guy who used to beat the crap out of you and your lil' buddies at school and steal your lunch money to buy Quaaludes which he then sold to Tommy Lee and his boyfriend for nine hundred bucks a piece. Now which one do you wanna have in your rig?DOD is one of those companies that demonstrate the truth of the "they don't make them like they used to" stereotype. Cos they used to make pretty decent stomp boxes back in the day. The 201 is (long) living proof. Not sure where I stand on their current catalog... DOD used to be what EHX could have been back in those days, if they were making pedals in Sandy, Utah instead of NY and didn't waste half their time telling us how their pedals are from, like, New York City. This one was in fact made in Sandy, Utah and cost me 18 pounds sterling. And it sounds majestic. You can't beat a deal like this. Good news is folk all over the place got some for sale, so you go buy ALL of them. Just cos they're so cheap. And so good for the price tag. I shouldn't have to remind you that old, cheap and good are three words you don't see combined that often any more. It's usually "vintage" and eight hundred bucks. For something you can't play, cos if you do you'll break it, or nobody will be able to hear what you're playing cos it's dying, or you'll electrocute yourself and miss your chance to die chocked on Jack Black's own vomit. What the 201 does is add a phasing effect to your tone. You can control the speed with the single SPEED knob. It's warm and it shimmers, and stinks of cigarette-smoke-and-whiskey blues. The effect is pretty subtle, in a nice way, unlike the MXR Phase 90, which tends to give you a way more over-the-top range. I sure don't want that range, and if you don't either, go buy seventeen 201s, cos they're so cheap and swell. It goes from rather slow to leslie-like on the clockwise extreme, remaining haunting all the way. Around two o'clock you'll find the quiet blues sweet spot. I don't like mine in front or behind an overdrive. But then again, if it's not a wah wah, don't drive it, is what I say. It doesn't do your True Bypass thing and it will change the tone of everything when disengaged and hooked into your pedal chain. EVH didn't seem to mind when he was shredding with the mechanical-bypass-free Phase 90 so take a good long look in the mirror and ask yourself...

Les Paul copy

I got this one off eBay about three years ago for $180. I've researched this guitar a bit since and, based on the urban legends, it might be an early seventies model cos it doesn't have a serial number and some peeps say it's one of the Ibanez "Lawsuit" Gibson copies that are rumored to be better than the originals of the time. I wouldn't know, cos I've never played a seventies LP. It certainly doesn't have near the oomph neither the huge yet crisp sound of AC's LP Studio.When I first got it, the bridge pup would feedback like a bitch even on half loud volumes. I got some candles, melted them, took off the humbuckers and wax potted them and it's been kicking tone since. That's how I discovered it's wearing PAFs. Yep. Wanna buy 'em? I've many a time contemplated replacing the pick ups with something more powerful but I keep on shying away cos there's some sort of dusty, voodoo-hazy warmth about the PAF-on-Cortez tone that gets me every time I plug it in. What the hell, it's an old horse, it's gotta sound old.It's made in Japan and resonates old in a very neat old way. It sounds like those sepia yellow-ish pictures of the late seventies/early eighties would sound like if you could plug them in and shred. The ones where everyone's skinny and hairy and eats flowers. Compared to newer stuff, it's like there's a little missing from all of its frequencies. The treble, mid and bass only go up to eight, if you know what I mean.The setup and hardware is very Les Paul, apart from the neck which is a bolt-on. There's not one bit of cheap material on it. It's got a brass nut, which some peeps gotta have, although I have to say I don't understand why they think it's better. It does make the tone kinda twangier than what you'd expect from an LP type of axe, but that's about all I've noticed.The neck pick up is smokey and dark, kinda flabby on the bass and got enough cream to give you all the clean channel cholesterol your Edge lovin' organic string bean eating ass can take.It's not gonna be my main axe any time soon, but it's certainly a keeper. We all wanna play an old guitar - there's something about them. I don't wanna shell eighteen grand on a '59 Custom just about yet, and until I do, the Cortez does an excellent job in helping me get the vintage out of my system with style.

TRM-1 Tremulator

This is going to be a short one, cos I can think of this much to say about a tremolo. I don't know why I keep on buying tremolos. The ones I got cost a fortune for what they do and I only end up using one of them, in one part, in one song, every couple of albums. Sure, The Reverent Horton Heat use the effect all over the place, but I often wonder what difference does it really make. If you find yourself using a tremolo all the time and you're not in The Horton Heat, you gotta be doing something wrong.The Tremulator is another of the pedals I don't have any more, cos I've lost it. I loved the sound while I still had it, but as I said, I didn't have what to do with it, so I don't miss it that much and am not thinking of replacing it any time soon. The Tremulator must be the heaviest - physically - pedal I've ever owned. It's probably heavier than a Fender Jazzbass. If you're looking for something to use for breaking the face of the annoying poser who keeps on talking to his buddy while you solo during a gig, then get one. It will send the chump to ER with a fractured skull and enough brain damage to shut up for all eternity. It's also my favorite among all the tremolos I've ever played, including the real thing (on board an old Fender amp), the Fulltone Supa Trem and unfortunate attempts like the EHX Wiggler. As far as the tone goes, it does a great job sounding like a Fender tremolo with enough of its own unique character. I've played a '64 Champ at some point and the Tremulator kinda sounded like that, without the hiss, cos I wasn't playing through an antique amp, I guess. It has two knobs - Depth and Speed, the sturdiest input jacks ever, true bypass and a trim pot on the side which sets the bias for the optical unit. When engaged, it'll provide a small gain boost. They say this is to allow "proper tremulation", but I don't know why this is. Turning up the the bias trim pot squeezes the signal, the other way loosens it. Apparently, the default setting for this control is Ry Cooder's setting of choice, and I've gotta say Cooder must've known a thing or two about tremolos, cos that was my favorite, too. Anything else was either too square or too round, although it's nice to know you have the option. In all fairness, both extremes are perfectly usable as I hear it.The Tremulator would make my guitars sound a bit darker, chewed off some of the highs, but that's to be expected from a tremolo. I wouldn't want it any other way, anyway.None of the settings ever get all-over-the-place unusable. Experimental, when it comes to guitars is usually synonymous to lazy the last couple of decades and the Tremulator won't give you space-wanking out of the box. I like that. It's a real strong pedal. I can't imagine it ever breaking. Like, ever. If we ever decide to make an unplugged album, I'll get a Tremulator again. Unplugged means plugged without too much overdrive, in case you didn't know. If you really unplug, it'd better be your life support, Edge, you got that?

Big Muff pi

The Big Muff is a classic. It's been used by a truckload of diverse artists, from Pink Floyd to Nebula to Steely Dan to Frank Zappa. It comes in two version, the US made one, the cheapo Russian one. This article is about the cheapskate version. Goddamn Electro Harmonix is an annoying company. They make killer sounding boxes, that seem to break down when you do as much as look at them. That's plain sadistic...And having you Wiggler or Tube Zipper suddenly stop working six moths after you've paid good money to buy the damn thing is not funny. Not at all.Stuff breaking down shouldn't be such a big issue. I mean, there are a lot of companies out there that manufacture shit gear. All you have to do is not buy it.Problem is, EH boxes sound pretty damn hot. So you always have to go for some piece of EH gear, thinking "Man, maybe this time the damn thing will actually work. God knows it sounds cool, I can't go through life without owning one, even if it means I have to pay this stupid boutique premium EH seems to charge on all its gear." And you buy it. And six months later, boom."Yeah, think it's the vacuum tube cradle, man, it keeps giving way, resulting in the tubes being disconnected from the process path."Fuck that.The Big Muff π though, is a different case. See, the Russian made version of the Muff (built by EH's sister company Sovtek) is stupidly cheap. I mean, I bought it brand new for, like, 18 euros or something. That's like 4 beers in a pub, right? You don't even care if it breaks, it's cost you nothing.And it will break. A couple of times.I mean, this is a stomp box made in the country that gave Lada to the planet, the world's worst made non-italian cars. So yea, everything about the Muff π is pretty shoddy. It might look like a tank, but it sure ain't built like one. The switch is apparently made out of pudding, I managed to break mine 3 days in. The plastic hex nuts that hold the input-output jacks in place are a joke, too. I replaced mine with metal ones I salvaged from an old Peavey amp, because I got bored of going jack-fishing every three days. Upside is that the design of the board is pretty straightforward, so fixing shit is not that big an issue. Plus, opening up stomp boxes and fixing them is probably the manliest thing ever, so any chance of doing it is a Good Thing. Sound-wise this baby sounds GREAT. It's not that good for tight rhythm sounds due to the way-too-rich rich spectrum it produces, but it's so great for solos. And solos is what it's all about, right? Right. You can get seriously fat and creamy tones, especially with the sustain dial around the 2 o'clock position. It sounds rather like a fuzz box, but it also works much better along a wah pedal than most fuzzboxes, which is pretty cool.Volume settings should depend on your rig. Going straight to the input of a JCM 9000, volumes larger than the 3 o'clock position tend to clog things up a bit. But hey, some of you might like that. I don't. I don't get nu metal, see.The tone dial is very sensitive, and is what makes the Muff an interesting box. As you turn the thing around, you get a huge variety of wildly varying spectra, all of them seriously SOLO material. My personal favourite is 11 o' clock. So, overall, if you don't mind a bit of fiddling around with a soldering iron that much, the Big Muff π is a good buy. It's certainly worth the money (it would be really hard not to) And there's at least one solo out there that will sound way better through the Muff.

StrangeMaster Treble Boost

What a stupid name. Really. Like Range Master, with a 'St', see? Which, of course, is a good thing. You know, when it comes to gear, and when the gear's good - especially when the gear's that good, bad names have a reverse effect to that expected of things stupid. They actually sound cool. Very few displays of moronity out there get away with it in style. The Strange Master is a clone of the Germanium Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster, made famous by Eric Clapton, Brian May and Tony Iommi. What this means is this bad boy sounds like the Rangemaster if the Rangemaster was actually a good pedal. In fact, it kicks so much ass, it's hands down the best stomp box I've ever played. Sadly, I don't own one any more cos I went and lost mine, which makes me a Strange Master, the moron bit, without the cool, cos I'm stupid without being a killer piece of gear. One of my favorite bits about the Strange Master is its minimalist approach when it comes to knobs and switches. It's got a Boost output knob, an eleven position Bias knob and a treble/full range switch. True bypass switch and green power LED, check. The first is self explanatory. I used to set it between 10 to 3 o'clock on mine, depending on the mood. I tried most settings and they all kicked ass in one way or the other. Setting the Bias control to it's anti-clockwisest position seemed to completely kill the sound with my setup. Turning it clockwise increased the bass response, making the whole thing sound tighter - and louder. I kept this knob on eleven the whole time. I'd be happy if that was the default setting and could do without the knob, but I can see how it could be useful if you're into recreating certain people's sound. Same goes for the treble/full range switch. I could have set mine to full range and rip the thing off and never look back. Going with the treble option on that switch, you probably get tone closer to the original Treblemaster, if that's what you're after. When used with an AC adapter, the Strange Master hummed. It's probably down to me using a crappy generic adapter, but either way, I gave up on that and bought myself a whole load of 9V batteries. I still have them. If you only play in your bedroom, don't get a Strange Master. Save yourself some money and buy a Pod or a Friends DVD box set, or whatever. The Strange Master only sounds good in bedroom unfriendly volumes. It's a boost so it boosts and it will only sound real if you play it through an amp that's already on stun. And that's gotta be a real amp, mind you. The Strange Master didn't alter the tone of any of my guitars or amps, only made it richer, louder and screaming for vengeance. It sounded a bit thin through my Roost, which is to be expected, cos the Roost is kinda cheap on the bass, but was a beast through my Minimat. When I went crazy and played it together with the boost that comes with the Minimat, it made me wanna beat the crap out of someone. Cos it sounded so darn huge and awesome. Best guitar volume knob clean up I've ever witnessed on a pedal. And even in full blast, you can still hear every single string in a chord, despite all the blood in your ears. My ultimate goal is for a rig consisting of one guitar, one overdrive pedal and one amp with one channel. Using my SG through the Strange Master plugged into my Minimat is the closest I ever got that. I gotta go buy another one soon real bad. Rating: One THOUsand out of ten.