John Hendow

About a month ago I rebuilt my guitar pedalboard and have been making some adjustments to the setup since that time. It’s been performing beautifully and I’m happy with the results. This effort included the following ingredients:

For this incarnation of my pedalboard I used a Pedaltrain PT-Pro which came with a flight case. The pedalboard base is welded from aluminum and is lightweight and very solid. The first steps in putting this new system together are (1) mounting the VoodooLab Pedal Power 2 power supply and (2) installing a powerstrip for the AC-powered effects. Then the velcro gets applied to the top of the board. So the picture of the bare pedalboard isn’t much to look at, but the foundation work is complete.

The next step is “pedal tetris”. Before mounting the pedals on the board I spent several hours trying out some layouts to see which would be best. I had a bit of a head start… before I ordered this board I got all the dimensions of my pedals and did several test layouts in Visio to ensure this would work as expected. There are also some interesting online tools that allow easy setup and configuration of pedalboards.
 

Here is a picture of the pedalboard with all pedals installed. Each pedals is mounted with velcro, and some also got a zip-tie “seatbelt” to keep them from shifting. You can also see a number of zip-ties securing the cables between pedals. This helps keep the layout neat and manageable. When installing zip-ties it’s nice to clip the tails off once they’re nice and tight. This usually leaves a sharp end where it was cut. I used a lighter to melt those sharp ends slightly, reducing the potential for pokes and cuts. Part of the setup process involved making the custom-length George L cables and connecting the power cables. I adhere to a simple rule of routing power below the board and audio above it. This is both for aesthetic and electrical reasons. By keeping these runs separated (even by half an inch) it helps prevent noise from getting into the signal chain. It’s good practice to do this when wiring pedalboard and studio rack equipment.

So which is which? In the diagram on the left I’ve identified each item. The routing is as follows: The Input Select is a simple A/B footswitch for choosing either the XDS Wireless Receiver or the second input. This allows me to easily go from wireless to wired inputs without having to pull out any cables. Next is the Peterson Strobo-Stomp 2 Tuner pedal followed by the Keeley Compressor, Keeley-Modified Crybaby Wah and the Way Huge Pork Loin. This signal chain feeds into the Line 6 POD XT Pro which is then routed to my amp.

It was an interesting project to assemble this setup. It’s definitely the cleanest and most flexible system I’ve ever had. I’d love to find a way to get this kind of power and tonal versatility from a smaller system, but good tone requires good gear. The next gear project will probably involve searching for / building a really great Stratocaster.

Warr Guitar - Front

Last night we had the first Preons practice in quite a while. We intentionally took a little break last fall, though it wound up being a longer break than we anticipated due to work, vacations, Swine Flu, and the holidays. But we’re a hard bunch to keep down, and last night we reconvened for a full-band rehearsal. We played through the material from the most recent CD, along with the songs that we’re planning to record for the upcoming release. Generally it felt pretty good. There were definitely some moments where we had to search our mental files to recall our parts to songs, but I was satisfied that we got through everything we attempted.

I only brought my 5 string bass last night since there would be so much to remember as it was. Just a few songs into the evening I found myself wishing I had my fretless and Warr guitar. It’s pretty standard for me… I definitely love to play all those instruments. I’ve been putting some effort into Warr guitar lately and look forward to expanding my use of the sonic range, along with improving my general technique.

The band has the potential to really rise to something special and I think this will be a good year for us. We’ve been talking about a slightly different approach to composition and performance, and there may be some opportunities for us to introduce new instruments or technology into what we do. Brad and I chatted over dinner before rehearsal, and we’re both considering how we might spice up the band’s sound. I’m planning to transition more of my bass parts to fretless bass and Warr Guitar. The band has an interesting dynamic and I appreciate having so much freedom in what I do with them. Look for us in your local saloons. The Preons will be getting twisty.

On Friday 1/1/10 the 1 Uppers performed at the Conor Byrne in Ballard. This would seem to be a day of destiny with all those 1s in play. We were a little concerned when this show was booked; our assumption was that most people (and possibly the band) would be appropriately exhausted and hung over from New Year’s Eve the night before. Therefore we feared it might be a light crowd. We were pleasantly surprised to find our assumption was incorrect. We had a great crowd and people stayed until the very end of the show.

Because we were playing last on the bill, we didn’t get a soundcheck and had to pretty much wing it for a mix. I actually like the fact that Conor Byrne doesn’t put drums or amps in their PA system. It seems more honest to me, requiring the bands to manage their own mix from the stage. It is interesting to see how people react to the band. We’re an unusual country act, but I’m pretty confident that we present a faithful interpretation of the music we do.

This was the second night using my newly expanded pedalboard. The new Keeley compressor really shines in this context. I found that it really helped fatten up my guitar tone for those parts where the guitar is more exposed. It’s also very pleasing to have such good ears all around me on stage. Lots of interesting comments from my bandmates. Definitely worth every penny it cost to add that gizmo to my arsenal.

New Year’s Eve is always a great party, and this year was especially fun. The Dudley Manlove Quartet spent the evening performing at The Sunset Tavern in Ballard and we had a great crowd with many fine friends in attendance. Events like this are all the more fun when we look out from the stage and see familiar faces. In preparation for the show I went out and purchased a bunch of party supplies including hats, noisemakers, leis, beads and tiaras. Each member of the band had a pile of stuff to hand out to the audience, which gave us chance to fan out and individually greet / thank people for joining us. Among the dozens of bead necklaces were four all-black sets; I set those aside and wore them during the show, although I did wind up giving two away to friends. Receivers of black beads: consider yourselves awesome.

Soundcheck for this gig included a few new songs: “She’s A Lady” and “Thank You For Being A Friend”. The latter turned out to be quite an effort to perform. It has a pretty long arrangement and lots of backup vocals. I thought it went pretty well and we performed it to end the first set. This was the first show where I used my newly expanded pedalboard. The newest additions to my setup include a Keeley compressor and a Keeley-modified Crybaby wah pedal. I also used the “Pork Loin” overdrive pedal for several songs. The new setup is very good and I love the tone. The down side is that it’s a bit bigger than my previous pedalboard – only by about 6 inches – and it’s a bit heavier. Still, it’s absolutely worth the extra effort to haul this beastie and the sonic results are tasty.  Although the trusty black Stratocaster is my primary guitar, I always bring a backup / alternate. For this show I decided to bring my Eastwood; it’s a Les Paul style instrument with P90 pickups. I used it for the first set and it sounded great on the new pop tunes. For the second and third sets I went with the Strat, and as always it was wonderful to play that guitar.

As we closed in on midnight, we performed “The Final Countdown” followed by a fairly traditional “Auld Lang Syne”. Another highlight of the night was seeing our good friend Heather Fenech in the audience. Heather, Stefan and I were all in 80s Invasion together. Always a pleasure to see her.

At the end of the night we were all suitably exhausted from playing and dancing. It was very nice to spend the evening this way. Performing with The Dudley Manlove Quartet is a true pleasure. We’ll be taking a few weeks off to work on new stuff and we’ll be back at it again soon! If you haven’t already visited our new web site, hop on over and have a look… and while you’re there sign up for the mailing list. Happy 2010!

On Saturday The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at The Triple Door in Seattle. This is probably the nicest night club in the city and has a wonderful staff. We arrived in the late afternoon for a somewhat chilly load-in. Once we got set up and changed into our suits, we spent about 45 minutes taking pictures. We’ve been wanting to do a new promotional picture of the band for some time, and this seemed like a good opportunity for us to take a number of shots. Our friend Kristi was kind enough to come down to the club with her DSLR, and after reviewing the first bunch of her pictures I think we’ll have several very good ones for promo purposes.
The club has a backline of great gear available for bands to use while playing there, and I used the club’s ’65 Twin reissue guitar amp. This is a great amp and I’ve used in on numerous occasions when playing the club. For some reason it didn’t sound nearly as good as it usually does, and throughout the night I kept going back and attempting to dial it in. The tone was strident and flat. My guess is it needs new preamp tubes. My bandmates thought it sounded good, so perhaps this was just my perception of the amp’s tone.

This performance was a private party, booked by a corporate client almost a year ago. We performed three sets of material during the night, starting with a string of holiday hits. Once we settled into our more typical set, the audience began to dance – tentatively at first, but as the night went on the dance floor got more full. Nothing like great food, a few glasses of wine, and a fun band.

My pedalboard project is currently stalled while I await delivery of my Keeley-modded pedals. Rather than hauling the incomplete pedalboard to this gig I decided to remove the Line6 Pod XTLive and carry it in the old case. Since my wah pedal is one of the units being modified, I used to the built-in wah that’s part of the Pod. It’s actually not bad although the sweep is pretty big. It’s also a little strange to have my volume pedal be the wah pedal, since this means when I switch functions the volume is maxed out. I have a volume knob on my guitar, but it has a much different effect on the overall tone. Overall, I’m sure it stuff that others notice much less than I do. I’ve become so attuned to nitpicking about my tone that sometimes I obsess over things that probably should be below my threshold of concern.

One of my favorite things about The Dudley Manlove Quartet is that the band is composed of such wonderful friends. Hanging around backstage with this bunch is always a kick. Once we hit the stage it’s a three ring circus of music, humor and interplay. Playing music should be a joyful experience, and DMQ is a great example of how well that translates into a fun gig.

The initial configuration of my pedalboard is underway. I’m taking pictures as I go, so I’ll have a detailed setup story to tell soon. The current status is that I’ve gotten the velcro applied to the pedalboard and to (most of) the pedals. I’m still waiting for delivery of 2 new pedals so progress is temporarily halted until they arrive. I’m expecting that before next weekend I’ll be ready to assemble the full system.

Initial learnings: industrial strength velcro is actually pretty strong. You don’t need much of it. I applied three generous strips of this stuff to the bottom of my Pod XT Live. Then I decided I wanted to move it slightly to the left. Removing it from the pedalboard was a bit of a challenge!

Hey all… passing this along for a friend who is selling some gear.

As you can see from the list below, this is all top-shelf equipment and has been treated with care. I’ve included the seller’s email address at the bottom of the list if you’re interested.

• Raven Labs 2 Channel Universal Stereo preamp –mint condition $500—2 individual channels with EQ, or blend both channels into 1 output  http://www.raven-labs.com/pages/products/usip/usip.html
• Raven Labs PMB – II  Master Blender:, very small two channel, with eq, mixer/pre-amp http://www.raven-labs.com/pages/products/pmb1/pmb1.html $300
• SWR Henry the 8×8 cabinet (w/case) – $550 with flight case
• SWR Triad 15, 10, horn (w/case) – $550 with flight case
• 2(two) Euphonic Audio Cx3-10 Concert – 3×10”, with horn and tweeter. Full range tower design. With flight cases. $650 each, or take them both for $1100.
• 2(two) Euphonic Audio VL-110 – 1×10” plus horn and tweeter. With flight cases. $400 each, or take them both for $700.
• Switchblade 16 SoundSculpture $1000, 16 channel midi-programmable audio matrix with smooth crossfade between patches. precursor to this model:
  http://www.soundsculpture.com/products/switchblade_models.htm#GL
• 2(two) Digital Echoplex’s, with one foot controller. Perfect condition. $800 each or $1500 for both.
• Electrix Repeator $600, the classic four channel looping device. 
• Lovetone Meatball – amazing envelope filter, $500 http://www.lovetone.com/meatball.html
• TC Electronic Sustain EQ pedal – the classic $200
• Line 6 Bass Pod Pro rack, great condition $250
• Line 6 Filter Pro Studio Modeler rack, mint condition $250
• Roland VG-88 $250 (without GK pickup)
• Radial Tube Drive Classic $125. Nice stomp box driver.
• MXR Phase 100 (orange) $100
• Sans Amp Classic mint condition $125
• Boss WP-20G Wave Processor (GK pickup in, pickup not included) $125
• Boss AW3 Dynamic Wah pedal — $100
• Electro Harmonix Linear Power Booster pedal, vintage box $60
• Line 6 Pod $90
• M-Audio DMP3 2channel mic pre $40

For more information please contact tgweb@quodia.com

The various parts and pieces for my pedalboard project are arriving. The only remaining items are those coming from Keeley and I expect to have them next week. I’ve made a few minor tweaks to my design based on some research:

1. The A/B box will be simplified. Rather than shorting the unused inputs to ground I’m just going to leave them as open connections. I don’t have enough data on my wireless receiver to determine whether it would be negatively impacted by shorting its output. I don’t expect any noise to be introduced by this device when it’s not connected so there shouldn’t be any loss here. One of the impacts of this design revision is that I didn’t need to use a 3PDT footswitch and could have gone with a DPDT instead. Oh well.  I always have the option to rewire this box in the future.
2. After some research, I’ve decided to use my Ernie Ball volume pedal as a second controller for my Pod XT Live. It appears this pedal can be used a substitute for the dedicated Line6 expression pedal, and it’s vastly superior in terms of build quality. I happen to have one and was considering using it in my new pedalboard setup, but was concerned about the loading characteristics of the passive volume potentiometer. I received some good suggestions from my friend Kris, and from pedal customizers. Everyone suggests that a buffer might be a good idea to minimize the sonic impact of the Ernie Ball pedal. But if I use it as a controller rather than as a volume pedal, this isn’t an issue. I will need to experiment with the Pox XT Live to ensure this works as expected.

This weekend I’ll solder up the A/B box and hopefully come up with some kind of crazy paint / decoration job for it. By the middle of next week I should be ready to rock with all my new pedals.

As noted in a previous post, I’m planning to completely redesign and rebuild my guitar pedalboard. Over the past week I’ve placed orders for everything I need, including parts for a true-bypass A/B switch box. The reason for this part of design is to allow me to switch the input from the wireless system to a direct cable connection. I don’t always go wireless and I don’t want to disconnect my input each time I change.

Building the A/B switch box should be pretty simple. I have a basic schematic in hand already, slightly modified from a fairly standard circuit. I wanted to ensure that the unused input would be grounded in order to prevent extraneous noise from entering the circuit, and the LEDs are just for convenience. The 1K resister is basically a guess. Its actual value will be determined by the voltage of the LEDs. Also, I don’t need a battery clip in this circuit since I’ll really be powering the whole pedalboard from a single source. The hardest item to source in this circuit will be the 3PDT footswitch, but I believe Small Bear Electronics stocks them. Once I get the pieces together I’ll document the build process.

Over the next week or so I’ll be receiving all my modified pedals from Keeley, and then I can begin the fun process of assembling my toys on the new board.

Update: I decided the previous schematic had a minor flaw: I was making the assumption that the two LEDs would have the same forward votage requirement. I’m intending to use different colored LEDs and it’s possible they’ll have different voltages, so splitting the 9v+ feed seems like a better approach.

Over the years of working as professional musician my equipment setup has undergone numerous modifications and updates. I’ve always had a few effect pedals in my setup and this introduces a logistics challenge for setup. Back in the early 1980s I started to build my own pedalboards in order to manage my effects. One of my favorite pedalbards was a beautiful mahogany plank that I stained and carefully covered with multiple coats of spar sealer. Gorgeous, but a little heavy. As my setup evolved to include the Pod XT Live, I got away from using most of my individual effect pedals, thus a pedalboard seemed unnecessary. But slowly I started to add some pedals to my setup again… I carry a Crybaby wah pedal that I use in The Dudley Manlove Quartet, and of course I have my wireless receiver… oh, and a couple of other fancy pedals that I occasionally bring to gigs… and my strobo-stomp tuner… which brings me to the realization that I actually do need a slightly more organized pedalboard. Everybody says the 80s are back, and so is my need for a pedalboard!

I’ve started to put together a plan for the 2010 version of my pedalboard. The physical setup is something I’ve already started to lay out in Visio. I have exact dimensions of every item I intend to use on the pedalboard including the clearance necessary for the right-angle plugs. Geeky, yes. But by carefully laying it out in advance I was able to determine the ideal layout for the pedals. I’ve already ordered the pedalboard – a PedalTrain PT Pro – and will begin to assemble my new rig during December. This time I’ll be using some very specific items:

• Line6 Pod XT Live
• Line6 XDS Digital Wireless
• Crybaby Wah
• Keeley Compressor
• Way Huge Pork Loin “Soft Clip Injector”
• Peterson Strobo Stomp Tuner
• VoodooLab Pedal Power 2+

There is actually one somewhat “weak link” in my signal chain, and that is my Crybaby wah pedal. It’s a stock unit and has an unbuffered signal path, so even when it’s off the guitar is actually going through part of the circuitry. Given then work I’ve put into everything else in my signal chain, this is not acceptable. So what’s the solution? I’m going to send it to Robert Keeley for modification. When I get it back, the pedal will have a switchable second inductor, jack for external power, switchable bass response, external volume control and true bypass. I look forward to getting it back and putting it to work. In a few weeks I should have all the pieces of my system and as the official assembly begins I’ll be taking pictures to document the entire project.