It was October 16th of 2015

Twas an overcast and drizzly morning.  Not that it’s an excuse but a relatively stressful morning/day at work.  After already cheating on the previous day, or day 1 of quitting; dave ran to the shop nearest his work to purchase a pack of cigarettes.  His first thoughts were “Here we are again, 2015…the year of quitting smoking….again.”

He’d already gotten his brother on board to sponsor and support dave on his journey of quitting by way of weekly phone calls, and putting up with his craving induced rage filled rants via text message.  The phone calls and rants that would never be; well, at least until this final back is completed, or when the clock resets.

dave is now faced with a choice, to N.O.P.E out, and destroy the evidence, as if nothing ever happened.  He knew he’d be lying to both himself and his brother, which made this a non-starter.  His second option of course would be to admit to his brother and face the shame and disappointment of failing so soon.  This second option while not great, dave decided was preferable to the former.

But the problem remains.  What to do with the final pack???

I had mentioned previously that 2015 was the year of quitting for dave, and throughout the year dave tried a number of methods.  In the way of NRT he tried the patch with moderate success, he actually did quite well with this method, but was not stubborn enough to see it through to the end.  Eventually he succumbed to his weakness, and shook hands with devil again.

Some months later, he quit “cold-turkey”, or so they say…this worked slightly less better than the patch, but still his confidence did receive a boost, knowing that he could inevitably with enough will-power remain N.O.P.E (Not One Puff Ever), not that he did, but that he could; this was important, and a milestone in retrospect.

Next up, cold-turkey again, this time however dave became aware of quit.smokershelpline.ca.  Upon getting acquainted with this resource, he realized that it would be better to do so prior to actually quitting.  “Another excuse.  I’m full of them” he thought.

So…what to do with the final pack???  Well, it’s now down 14 cigarettes, but still…”what do i do with them?  after all they burn pretty fast…maybe i just smoke them?”.

For now dave has decided to go back to quit.smokershelpine.ca and start from scratch.  He will need to face the music with his brother at some point in the near future.  dave dreads that first phone call from his brother, without a doubt.

MXR Carbon Copy, no tax on these emissions!

Here comes the bucket brigade

My first delay pedal was a BOSS DD-5.  Purchased a few years ago, I thought I’d never tire of it.  Eventually I found it lacked “character”, some of you may find this is an egotistical thing to say.  I did however find that it had some great options to play with at first, as well as through into the middle of a trippy jam.  But as focused more and more on writing, I found my self needing something with fewer tonal options.

The huge selling point on going with an anologue delay for me was the “imperfectness” of the delayed signal quality.  Having those harmonically saturated repeated notes may not an in your face effect, however it adds a type of body and character that my DD-5 was lacking.

Sonically, the Carbon Copy is wonderful, structurally sound.  It loses points on the metallic paint job, but that’s hardly a hinderance.  I find more often then not I end up just leaving it on with low level and feedback values to add a layer, and then just tweak the delay time to suit the particular piece.

The Carbon Copy and the Diamond compressor are two pedals that when plugged, or switched on and pretty much stay on until it’s time to say goodnight…and then they come to bed with me.

All in all a great pedal allbeit a tad expensive IMO.

.DCS

Diamond CPR-1 Compressor

Diamond CPR-01 Compressor

This was money well spent. 

My first stomp-box compressor was a BOSS CS-3, which from what I thought would do the trick, well it didn’t and in fact left a bad taste in my mouth about stompbox compressors for years afterwards.  My experience with the CS-3 was that no matter what setting I had the comp/sus/level/tone at a noise supressor would have been required to make the pedal useable.  This idea just didn’t sit well with me.  As I hear it, if you insert a pedal into your chain, you shouldn’t have to insert another to compensate for whatever the weakness of that first pedal was.

After doing a few tone mod’s to my amp, and still not having a rig that I was 100% happy with, I decided it was time to do some research.

I first thought about the Pigtronix Philosopher’s Tone (A distortion+compressor stomp-box).  I found the concept interesting, and the compression (from sound clips only) sounded okay to me.  I don’t like bending over while playing to fiddle with knobs, unless the fiddling is making the actual sound (ie delay squelches etc,)  and I figured I’d constantly be adjusting the dirt knob while playing.

I happened to stumble across some demo videos over at ProGuitarShop.com (PGS) of the Diamond CPR-1 and I instantly had to go try one out for myself.  One thing I found rather attractive about the pedal is that Diamond is based out of Dartmouth, NS a neighbouring city.  This got me extremely excited.

So one day, I was at the local music shop (or money-vac as I like to call it,) trying out drum sticks, and picking up guitar strings, and I casually mentioned to the fellow behind the desk, if they ever had a CPR-1 in I’d like to try it.  He replied “I remember seeying one at some point,” went and fumbled through a drawer and voila, there it was, in all it’s yellow glory.

I was so excited I just bought it on the spot, and was not dissapointed in the least.  This is essentially an unwanted noise free compressor pedal (to my ears) and has extremely responsive controls, especially the tone control, which boosts and drops highs and lows depending on which way you turn it. ++

This pedal will be in my chain for a while.  And I will post some of my own demo clips when I get some time to do so.

Cheers in 2010 Everyone!  (or no one as the case may be)

Project: An instrumental Giftmas

With this years Birth of Christ approaching rapidly, I’ve decided to write and record an instrumental ~2 min in length, featuring clarinet, steel-string acoustic, & nylon string acoustic guitar.  I may throw in a dash of percussion and bass guitar as well.  If only I had a keyboard/e. piano to through into the mix.  

The details of this project can’t be posted yet to maintain the element of surprise, but I will probablly make freely available for download the mp3 and charts, and perhaps an added bonus little goody.  So check back for updates!

The writing starts tonight =]

November 26 2009 Update:  The track is complete and synced to video!  Here it is on youtube 🙂 

Clyde Deflowers DCSmusic

Fulltone Clyde

With my recent burst of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), I’ve decided it may be beneficial to others to post my own blog. I haven’t entirely decided on a particular topic, and so I’ve left the title somewhat open.

If I can figure out how to post some sample audio clips tonight, I will do so and update this post. Cheers.

For now I will post reviews on gear I’ve acquired over the past year or so and list any short commings. With this post I will kick it off with my personal favorite purchase of the year….rat ta tat tat ta tat tat ta tat…..

The Fulltone Clyde Vintage Voiced (White enclosure) Wah Pedal.

Okay to kick it off this a buttery tone with great useable bandpass set-it forget it and come back to play with it later positions. The treddle “stiffness” can be taylored to the users preference for heavy feet or those who like to leave a wah in a set position. It is sturdier then a brick sh*t house (which their seem to be alot of in my city), as is the enclosure.

So at first I plugged my Takamine GX-200 straight into the pedal, and the pedal into my Traynor YCV-40 (c/w 6L6WXT’s and an Eminence Red Coat 12″ Governor speaker.) What hit my ears next was a clean bypass signal, no tone-sucking, no noise, completely transparent.

Upon engaging the effect my mouth began watering and my sphincter clenched shut for fear of being sucked into a 70’s porno and a big shaft perpotrating me from behind. Seriously, this thing has all out tone. I’ve had crybaby’s before in the past, and their is just no similarity between the two.

The Clyde has some awesome where’s my nose spray positions that are emphasized by the grit channel on the amp. We’re talking 70’s zappa here. It’s very responsive and I found it to be easy to tune the reasonance to the melody played.

If you are looking for a great sounding, versatile wah, look no further, but be prepared for the sphincter exercises this thing can lead to after extended use.