Effects Question only indirectly related to bass...

[bluehevy75]

I'm a bass player in a combo in the spirit of Morphine (bass, sax, drums). Dana Colley was the sax player in Morphine. He used some effects in Morphine but is using even more in his current band A.K.A.C.O.D. I'm trying to figure out what these effects are and what other effects might work well with sax. Especially I'm looking for a distortion or fuzz that will work but I haven't had much luck.

Listen to these:
The album is “Hapiness.” Songs are below. I’m sure you can find them online:
“Spanish Fly” Sax Solos start at 3:50
“Bad Weather” Sax Solo 2:45-3:55

There are some pics online that I've attached. If you view the attachments you can get a look at the board.

I'd love to understand more about what he is doing.

[megadan]

In both pictures he's clearly using a mic, so my guess is that he has a preamp on his board, to take the signal from mic to line level. Then run effects as needed, whatever floats your boat.

What I can make out on his board:
Volume pedal (Ernie Ball? in the middle)
Digitech Whammy
Some Wah pedal pedal (his foot is on it in both pics)


In my band we run several effects on the vocals (delay, reverb, others as needed). We use the cheap Art tube Pre amps with an sm58, Xlr, then the 1/4" out to whatever effects we need and then into the PA.

[bluehevy75]

Originally Posted by megadan

In both pictures he's clearly using a mic, so my guess is that he has a preamp on his board, to take the signal from mic to line level. Then run effects as needed, whatever floats your boat.

What I can make out on his board:
Volume pedal (Ernie Ball? in the middle)
Digitech Whammy
Some Wah pedal pedal (his foot is on it in both pics)


In my band we run several effects on the vocals (delay, reverb, others as needed). We use the cheap Art tube Pre amps with an sm58, Xlr, then the 1/4" out to whatever effects we need and then into the PA.

I didn't think about the pre-amp part of the equation.

I'm confused about the whole mic thing. If you look close at the pictures you can barely see a 1/4" cable coming out of his mouthpiece. If you look here http://liveon35mm.wordpress.com/2009...s-of-morphine/ the cable is super clear.

I had assumed he was using the mic for dry and the 1/4" for wet but maybe not.

[megadan]

I'm assuming he also has a clip on mic, though it's not obvious those pictures.
I'm not sure what a 1/4" out of the mouth piece would do since (I believe, I'm no wind/brass/sax expert) the mouthpiece just sets up the standing waves, the actual tone and timbre of the instrument isn't complete until it leaves the bell.

Could be some sort of MIDI breath controller??

[gnasher1993]

I'm primarily a sax player but I've never thought to play through my pedalboard...

There's a first time for everything

[gribuski]

A wah works...either a pedal wah or an autowah/envelope filter. I think Jeff Coffin from the Flecktones used a Q-Tron. And I bet the right person could have some fun with a Whammy.

I'm a really big Morphine fan, and I could have <i>sworn</i> there were some tunes where Dana used a wah, but I guess not - b/c I just listened to bits of about 20 or so songs and can't find a wah anywhere...maybe I just thought of some funky tunes and I associated a wah.

[Swimming Bird]

Huh, I thought an effects bassist might be all over the effects sax... no love for Sherik?

Listening/watching Spanish Fly, my bet would be he uses the mic for effects and a clipped on mic for clean -- you can hear the straight sax with different pitches fading in. On the other hand, this could just be overdubs.

My bet is he's playing away from the mic then moves towards it with the Whammy on and presto, instant horn section. Also, definitely hear wah. From looking at a crappy live clip of AKACOD there appears to be more on the board, but I can't tell what

Mind you, some of the original guitar fuzzes were meant to mimic sax sounds (a la Rolling Stones Satisfaction), so he may just be using the two.

[gnasher1993]

Examples of wah on saxophone...

Listen to Joel Purnell (my teacher ) on the tune 'Boogie Man'

Found here.

I'll ask him what he used on that track

[Fishyfan]

Originally Posted by megadan

I'm assuming he also has a clip on mic, though it's not obvious those pictures.
I'm not sure what a 1/4" out of the mouth piece would do since (I believe, I'm no wind/brass/sax expert) the mouthpiece just sets up the standing waves, the actual tone and timbre of the instrument isn't complete until it leaves the bell.

Could be some sort of MIDI breath controller??

it is definitely possible to have a mouthpiece with a quarter inch output. Miles Davis had his mouthpiece drilled to put his trumpet through a wah wah and an Echoplex, and Eddie Harris did a lot with a saxophone and a drilled mouthpiece.

[bluehevy75]

Originally Posted by gnasher1993

Examples of wah on saxophone...

Listen to Joel Purnell (my teacher ) on the tune 'Boogie Man'

Found here.

I'll ask him what he used on that track

Awesome...thanks for the clip...I'd love to know what your teacher thinks....

[bluehevy75]

Maybe I should have been more clear. We actually are using a pickup for the sax but it doesn't look like what Dana is using. We are using Telex Telethin earpiece which is nearly identical to what Eddie Harris was using back in the 60's. See here for Eddie's effects http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/maestro/w2. I was on DIYstompboxes and they showed me this http://www.effectsdatabase.com/model/conn/multivider. My sax players pickup looks exactly the same.

I've been doing some more research. Is it possible that impedance is an issue? The average guitar pickup is somewhere in-between 4K and 20K ohms (correct me if I'm wrong). But the sax pickup we are using is something like 125 ohms. Maybe this is having an effect on how the pedals are triggered?

[bluehevy75]

SUCCESS!!!!
Last night we played around with pre-amps, compression, mixers, pickups vs. mics etc...some stuff sounded good but nothing triggered the distortion.
What finally did it was running a Flange and (or) the Q-Tron before the distortion. If anyone has any ideas why these kind of effects triggered the fuzz I'd love to hear it.
We will need to some work to keep the feedback from going crazy but it was difinetly working, usable, and sounding exactly like we hoped it would. Thanks for all or your time peeps.

[megadan]

Originally Posted by bluehevy75

SUCCESS!!!!
Last night we played around with pre-amps, compression, mixers, pickups vs. mics etc...some stuff sounded good but nothing triggered the distortion.
What finally did it was running a Flange and (or) the Q-Tron before the distortion. If anyone has any ideas why these kind of effects triggered the fuzz I'd love to hear it.
We will need to some work to keep the feedback from going crazy but it was difinetly working, usable, and sounding exactly like we hoped it would. Thanks for all or your time peeps.

It was probably the input impedance of the fuzz pedal.

Putting a buffered pedal in front of it fed the fuzz pedal with the right signal.

[bluehevy75]

Originally Posted by megadan

It was probably the input impedance of the fuzz pedal.

Putting a buffered pedal in front of it fed the fuzz pedal with the right signal.

I had a boss noise gate in front of it before....is that buffered?

[bluehevy75]

Julian at the EHX forum sent me this that explains the situation nicely:

"A square wave is a signal full of harmonics, a sine wave is one devoid of harmonics.

Distortion adds harmonics, making a signal closer to a square wave. (additive synthesis)

Filtering removes harmonics, making a signal closer to a sine wave. (subtractive synthesis)


A saxophone is already very close to a square wave, so I didn’t think distortion would effect it very much. So if you make it less like a square wave, the distortion will have a better effect on it."

This is why filters worked so well in front of the distortion/fuzz. What should I search to just look up filters without modulation? Like a filter without the flange or without the envelope.

[megadan]

Originally Posted by bluehevy75

I had a boss noise gate in front of it before....is that buffered?

Yes it is.

Julian's explanation also makes a lot of sense.

There are filters without modulation - technically, they're just EQ pedals. But the spirit of what you're looking for - the only one I know of personally is the WMD Fatman, it's an envelope filter with a Feedback knob, which adds or removes the sound of the filter from the output. So in other words with it off, you don't hear a lot of movement, just filtering the range it's set for.

[danacolley]

dear readers,
let me help by saying that the mic on the bell is only used to mic the bell. the pick up is on the mouthpiece is a barcus berry transducer. which goes to a pre amp then into the effects and into an amp I am using a boss equalizer from the transducer pre to a whammy 2 into a morley power wah and into a line 6 multi delay. now go and make some noise
-dana colley

[bluehevy75]

Originally Posted by danacolley

dear readers,
let me help by saying that the mic on the bell is only used to mic the bell. the pick up is on the mouthpiece is a barcus berry transducer. which goes to a pre amp then into the effects and into an amp I am using a boss equalizer from the transducer pre to a whammy 2 into a morley power wah and into a line 6 multi delay. now go and make some noise
-dana colley

Dear Dana,

Thanks for the reply. Maybe you hear it a lot but maybe you don't hear it enough:Thanks so much for your music. I love listening to you play: Morphine, AKACOD, Twinemen, etc. Also, thanks also for the above tips. If you are interested in checking out some sax, drums, and slide-bass noise the group I'm in has been making check us out here: myspace.com/keysockettrio Thanks again man. If you are ever in Chicago and need a place to stay feel free to let me know.

--Kevin

[M Sterling]

Originally Posted by danacolley

dear readers,
let me help by saying that the mic on the bell is only used to mic the bell. the pick up is on the mouthpiece is a barcus berry transducer. which goes to a pre amp then into the effects and into an amp I am using a boss equalizer from the transducer pre to a whammy 2 into a morley power wah and into a line 6 multi delay. now go and make some noise
-dana colley

I saw Morphine at the Horde fest in 1995. A show that changed how I thought about music and a lot of other things, too. I think it is great that Dana replied here on talkbass, what a class act. I will be sure to check out the new project as well. Sorry I have nothing to offer the OP, but just wanted to tell Mr. Colley how awesome he is.

[BassBrass]

Originally Posted by Fishyfan

it is definitely possible to have a mouthpiece with a quarter inch output. Miles Davis had his mouthpiece drilled to put his trumpet through a wah wah and an Echoplex, and Eddie Harris did a lot with a saxophone and a drilled mouthpiece.

I used to use a King transducer on my trumpet--they were around in the 70s mostly, went into a belt preamp with one and two octaves down. (The nipple it attached to broke off eventually so I had to change mouthpieces.) Transducer sound sounds like the horn in question, but with very low fidelity---which actually works better with some effects (like wah / envelope, distortion etc). Miles was very successful using that low fidelity sound and making it organic sounding, but without true trumpet overtones it's just for soloists. Attachable mics are the way to go these days. But distortion with a mic is trouble. Obviously. I've recorded in studio with distortion in the headphones. Live it's feedback city.

Being from Boston we've had from Serge Chaloff and Dana, amazing baritone players who do more with it than was previously though possible, and made it seem easy. (Challoff was the Charlie Parker of bari...people didn't believe what he could do. He died young from the drink and life on the road. His mother was Madam Challoff, consultant piano teacher to the greats.)