Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Stoner/Doom Bassists Thread, Part 90: Maxed Out
- Thread starter Korladis
- Start date
Metal Monday GH show last night, way tired today...but as always well worth it.
3120 sounded good, but I dont think the 610 is the right cab for it, I think the speakers dont have high enough power handling or something to handle the shear gain this thing puts out. The 3120 sounds baller through the 810TX but I use that on the bass side for PVYHenge. Maybe the 412 will fair better.
Also couldve been the last gig for the PVYWagon, going to the dealership tomorrow to lowball them on the Transit Connect. We'll see what happens...
3120 sounded good, but I dont think the 610 is the right cab for it, I think the speakers dont have high enough power handling or something to handle the shear gain this thing puts out. The 3120 sounds baller through the 810TX but I use that on the bass side for PVYHenge. Maybe the 412 will fair better.
Also couldve been the last gig for the PVYWagon, going to the dealership tomorrow to lowball them on the Transit Connect. We'll see what happens...
A unique circuit is something pedal designers like to brag about but rarely ends up being true.
Not doubting you or your designer but in usage does it feel and sound origional?
Same goes with "quality" electronics or stuff like "vintage cloth wrapped wire." I'm Not convinced this contributes more than consistancy and repeatability in the former and inconsistency in the latter.
For small volume production runs some inconsistency is often desired.
Call me grumpy but i don't see any of those as significant.
Unique tone, or exceptional flexibility or utility, yeah those are significant.
Like i said before i not knocking it just there are a lot of "buzz words"(marketing speak)in this post.
Proprietary information should remain so but maybe some info without hyperbole?
my new bass is out for delivery, Shipped from Japan yesterday, not bad at all!
That's the guy, and unfortunately these fuzzes are a big part of the reason he had to pass. He's sold over a dozen already and it's only been a few days haha! It's his only "bread and butter" if you will.
I hear you man. I agree, vintage cloth wrapped blah, is just aesthetic. I do have to say using quality parts has a cumulative benefit though, imho. Replace one cap, no you likely won't hear that, but use great stuff for the whole circuit as opposed to all cheap poopie, I've no doubt you will. Some people say "if a cap is the same value, it will sound the same, no matter what". Well, for just a coupling cap, or tone cap in a guitar, yeah, that may possibly be true often. When you're talking power filtering and stiffening, things like ESR, temp rating, other specs, and even physical size of a cap can make seriously noticeable differences as far as sag/dynamics/explosiveness/reliability/noise are concerned. There is definitely mojo hype, but I'd say there's also a strong anti-mojo hype as well. My opinion is the reality is somewhere in between.
While I certainly wouldn't be upset if my posting this turned into a sale for Joe, I literally wouldn't make a dime from it, definitely no "shill"ness going on here. He did some work for me, I designed these boxes in return. That's the extent of my collaboration. I just really believe in Joe and his creations is all.
Honestly, I'm a poopy businessman, not sure I've really made a decent profit on anything I've ever sold, and honestly that doesn't bother me at all. What makes me happy is making something kickass that someone loves and makes sweet music with. My "day job" supports me financially just fine, and Satyrnine is basically just a fun hobby and artistic outlet. When I build something, I've no problem sharing schematics and details, because A) I'm not an electrical engineer, and don't really feel I could even create something revolutionary enough to require protection. B) I'm an IT guy by trade, I'm all about "open source", lastly C) I'm not in it for profit, if more people can build my design, SWEET! I'm all for it.
Joe Frantzen, on the other hand, is neck deep in this stuff. It's his whole life, all his eggs are in this basket, and when he asks me to be hush-hush about it, I really have to respect that. I get really excited about silly things like circuits, and when Joe filled me in on this, I couldn't help but get excited, because like you say, most circuits are the same old.
To answer your question, yeah, my opinion is that is really truly does sound and feel original. Guitarist in my band has a billion pedals, and gone through gobs of all the usual "high end" fuzzes, finally just settling on none, and using his amps (a SLO-inspired amp I made him) for distortion/fuzz. When Joe gave me a prototype fuzz to test, he played it and withing a few chords decided he wanted one. I know this sounds sensational, but thus far, out of the 4 people I've let demo my personal pedal, every single one ordered one from Joe immediately. That includes my guitarist, both Bereft guitarists (Zach and Alex), and Eric Schuman, a small rec studio owner near Madison.
Without going into detail of the circuit, the things I'd say it does better than other fuzzes and uniquely so, would be:
1) Bias pot implementation. While a bias pot isn't revolutionary, most take the tranny from gated fuzzy to smooth fuzzy, either clipping the top OR the bottom of the wave in the process. The way he does his, the middle of the sweep is most bias, and either direction starts to reduce bias to either the "push" or "pull" side of the wave. The sound difference between clipping the collector vs clipping the emitter def provides a different texture, and is something unusual if not unique.
2) Switching. Joe is not a believer of true bypass everywhere. He DOES hate poopy buffers though. This fuzz is jfet buffered I believe, and the switching is taken care of by a single momentary footswitch which controls a switching circuit he designed that takes care of the bypass, LED, and has the benefit of being "soft" but instant. There's no click/pop like a standard 3PDT, relay, or even the slight surge then settle you get from an optocoupler.
3) battery life. He employs his "sleeper" circuit in this pedal. After a period of no input, if you left it plugged in with a battery, it will "sleep" and reduce current draw to the point that a standard fresh 9v would last something like 3500 hours on "standby". A lifetime essentially. The second it sees input signal, it actually uses the voltage from that signal, to "wake up" the sleeper, and bring everything back up to working within an instant.
4) Tranny consistency. He's come up with some sort of solution that makes having matched tranny's not a necessity (or at least ideal situation). He's using AC125's which can be all over the board, but showed me on the scope how symmetrical they were in his circuit. He demonstrated measuring two very mismatched trannys, popping them in, and the results where near identical to two closely matched units.
5) EQ. Most fuzzes have a very simplisitic tone stack. Either a Muff style, or maybe a F/M/V style, RAT style filter, or maybe none at all. Joe is OBSESSIVE about EQ shaping. I sure didn't understand it all, but when I saw the schem, there was lots of "baked in" eq'ing going on between each gain stage. The two controls are "bass" and "treble", which aren't just increasing/decreasing a static freq range, but also control what appears to be shelving filters on the top and bottom. So it's kind of a cross between a bax and traditional stack, with added baked in shaping.
6) Layout. Joe's background is Ultra high radio frequency military radios, hence the work on the F117 fighters. He's told me his intellectual property is more in his layout than in his actual circuits. After building a weber clone of an SLO with all part values exactly the same as a real SLO and comparing, you'd realize how MASSIVE of a difference layout can make. The weber squeeled, skreeched, hummed, and all solely because of the board and wire layout. So, needless to say, the guts of his pedals are clean as shag, and have at least three decades of wisdom in the hardest fields (as far as layout goes) behind them. Same with my 600+W bass amp. It can be cranked and will be silent as a mouse (assuming your bass isn't the noise problem) until you play a note. It's unnerving how little idle noise it has.
7) Consistency. Like you said, some people like a bit less consistency for that mojo value. Joe's the total opposite, obsessively. Coming from his military design background, every part produced better be identical, not to mention durable as shag. He always says he wants even his amps/pedals to be able to take a tumble down the stairs and still play fine after replacing any busted tubes. I believe it.
All that, plus the thing can go from trebly, splattery, and gated to smooth amp-like windhand-esque power amp clipping-ish growl. Only fuzz I've played that didn't require my blend as well. Gobs of gain, yet plenty of clear low. Pretty sure there's some internal blending going on of some sort.
Sorry for the novel, hope that helps.
Last edited:
Max, if you can't find anyone to work on your amp shoot me a text, I know a guy that could most likely get it up and running without much trouble. Former broadcast engineer, very familiar with tube circuits of all kinds, I doubt even an oddball amp like the VTA would give him much trouble if he had the schematic.
Great stuff if you are already a Prime subscriber(like me) so its an extra bonus. Not a complete selection of music by any means but can't be the price.
Yeah, I've had Prime for a few months. It's got most of the Beatles and Rolling Stones stuff I should own and aren't on Youtube.
My "library" consists of a TON of crap i dont mind listening to in occasion that i wouldn't but nowadays. Lots of spur of the moment I am looking for X stuff. Much better for me than my old itunes impulse buys.
Yeah, I can see myself using Prime a bit at work. That's pretty much where I listen to music the most these days. But, going down the rabbit hole on Youtube is so much fun.
Well I'm sold. Are there clips somewhere?
Does he have a website?
Being someone who worked with F18's I'm intrigued to check out this guys work.
That's the guy, and unfortunately these fuzzes are a big part of the reason he had to pass. He's sold over a dozen already and it's only been a few days haha! It's his only "bread and butter" if you will.
I hear you man. I agree, vintage cloth wrapped blah, is just aesthetic. I do have to say using quality parts has a cumulative benefit though, imho. Replace one cap, no you likely won't hear that, but use great stuff for the whole circuit as opposed to all cheap poopie, I've no doubt you will. Some people say "if a cap is the same value, it will sound the same, no matter what". Well, for just a coupling cap, or tone cap in a guitar, yeah, that may possibly be true often. When you're talking power filtering and stiffening, things like ESR, temp rating, other specs, and even physical size of a cap can make seriously noticeable differences as far as sag/dynamics/explosiveness/reliability/noise are concerned. There is definitely mojo hype, but I'd say there's also a strong anti-mojo hype as well. My opinion is the reality is somewhere in between.
While I certainly wouldn't be upset if my posting this turned into a sale for Joe, I literally wouldn't make a dime from it, definitely no "shill"ness going on here. He did some work for me, I designed these boxes in return. That's the extent of my collaboration. I just really believe in Joe and his creations is all.
Honestly, I'm a poopy businessman, not sure I've really made a decent profit on anything I've ever sold, and honestly that doesn't bother me at all. What makes me happy is making something kickass that someone loves and makes sweet music with. My "day job" supports me financially just fine, and Satyrnine is basically just a fun hobby and artistic outlet. When I build something, I've no problem sharing schematics and details, because A) I'm not an electrical engineer, and don't really feel I could even create something revolutionary enough to require protection. B) I'm an IT guy by trade, I'm all about "open source", lastly C) I'm not in it for profit, if more people can build my design, SWEET! I'm all for it.
Joe Frantzen, on the other hand, is neck deep in this stuff. It's his whole life, all his eggs are in this basket, and when he asks me to be hush-hush about it, I really have to respect that. I get really excited about silly things like circuits, and when Joe filled me in on this, I couldn't help but get excited, because like you say, most circuits are the same old.
To answer your question, yeah, my opinion is that is really truly does sound and feel original. Guitarist in my band has a billion pedals, and gone through gobs of all the usual "high end" fuzzes, finally just settling on none, and using his amps (a SLO-inspired amp I made him) for distortion/fuzz. When Joe gave me a prototype fuzz to test, he played it and withing a few chords decided he wanted one. I know this sounds sensational, but thus far, out of the 4 people I've let demo my personal pedal, every single one ordered one from Joe immediately. That includes my guitarist, both Bereft guitarists (Zach and Alex), and Eric Schuman, a small rec studio owner near Madison.
Without going into detail of the circuit, the things I'd say it does better than other fuzzes and uniquely so, would be:
1) Bias pot implementation. While a bias pot isn't revolutionary, most take the tranny from gated fuzzy to smooth fuzzy, either clipping the top OR the bottom of the wave in the process. The way he does his, the middle of the sweep is most bias, and either direction starts to reduce bias to either the "push" or "pull" side of the wave. The sound difference between clipping the collector vs clipping the emitter def provides a different texture, and is something unusual if not unique.
2) Switching. Joe is not a believer of true bypass everywhere. He DOES hate poopy buffers though. This fuzz is jfet buffered I believe, and the switching is taken care of by a single momentary footswitch which controls a switching circuit he designed that takes care of the bypass, LED, and has the benefit of being "soft" but instant. There's no click/pop like a standard 3PDT, relay, or even the slight surge then settle you get from an optocoupler.
3) battery life. He employs his "sleeper" circuit in this pedal. After a period of no input, if you left it plugged in with a battery, it will "sleep" and reduce current draw to the point that a standard fresh 9v would last something like 3500 hours on "standby". A lifetime essentially. The second it sees input signal, it actually uses the voltage from that signal, to "wake up" the sleeper, and bring everything back up to working within an instant.
4) Tranny consistency. He's come up with some sort of solution that makes having matched tranny's not a necessity (or at least ideal situation). He's using AC125's which can be all over the board, but showed me on the scope how symmetrical they were in his circuit. He demonstrated measuring two very mismatched trannys, popping them in, and the results where near identical to two closely matched units.
5) EQ. Most fuzzes have a very simplisitic tone stack. Either a Muff style, or maybe a F/M/V style, RAT style filter, or maybe none at all. Joe is OBSESSIVE about EQ shaping. I sure didn't understand it all, but when I saw the schem, there was lots of "baked in" eq'ing going on between each gain stage. The two controls are "bass" and "treble", which aren't just increasing/decreasing a static freq range, but also control what appears to be shelving filters on the top and bottom. So it's kind of a cross between a bax and traditional stack, with added baked in shaping.
6) Layout. Joe's background is Ultra high radio frequency military radios, hence the work on the F117 fighters. He's told me his intellectual property is more in his layout than in his actual circuits. After building a weber clone of an SLO with all part values exactly the same as a real SLO and comparing, you'd realize how MASSIVE of a difference layout can make. The weber squeeled, skreeched, hummed, and all solely because of the board and wire layout. So, needless to say, the guts of his pedals are clean as ****, and have at least three decades of wisdom in the hardest fields (as far as layout goes) behind them. Same with my 600+W bass amp. It can be cranked and will be silent as a mouse (assuming your bass isn't the noise problem) until you play a note. It's unnerving how little idle noise it has.
7) Consistency. Like you said, some people like a bit less consistency for that mojo value. Joe's the total opposite, obsessively. Coming from his military design background, every part produced better be identical, not to mention durable as ****. He always says he wants even his amps/pedals to be able to take a tumble down the stairs and still play fine after replacing any busted tubes. I believe it.
All that, plus the thing can go from trebly, splattery, and gated to smooth amp-like windhand-esque power amp clipping-ish growl. Only fuzz I've played that didn't require my blend as well. Gobs of gain, yet plenty of clear low. Pretty sure there's some internal blending going on of some sort.
Sorry for the novel, hope that helps.
Well I'm sold. Are there clips somewhere?
Does he have a website?Being someone who worked with F18's I'm intrigued to check out this guys work.
Me waiting for my band mates to actually follow through with a planned practice.
Pretty sure I'm done with my metal band. I have to collect some loaned pedals and we have a show in April, but after that I'm not sure if I want to stick around for the album to be recorded or not. I'm super frustrated with the lack of communication and lackadaisical approach to practice, on top of the sonic issues and tempo issues that apparently only I recognize.
We took a little holiday practice hiatus after our last show on 12/10. We have since had three practices and cancelled 6 practices.
I'm tired of being in a band that wants to pretend it's a band.
We took a little holiday practice hiatus after our last show on 12/10. We have since had three practices and cancelled 6 practices.
I'm tired of being in a band that wants to pretend it's a band.
Damn you Ibanez. Damn you to hell.
I bought an MDB3 bass. Absolutely love it. Best bass ever for me.
Now they are making an MDB4. Same basic bass but with a P/J setup. I don't need it at all, but I must have it.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I bought an MDB3 bass. Absolutely love it. Best bass ever for me.
Now they are making an MDB4. Same basic bass but with a P/J setup. I don't need it at all, but I must have it.
What the hell is wrong with me?
P bass arrived safe and sound. in short, wow! tone wise, typical P but the neck and fret work are incredible. came setup the way i like it. straight neck with 0 relief and low action. waiting for some flats to come in stock but in the meantime i threw on some La Bella SS. definitely a keeper.
does anyone know of a good source of MIJ pickguards?
does anyone know of a good source of MIJ pickguards?
Do it. Similar situation I had recently. They all (well, some) decided that playing out of key and off time was not only acceptable, but the preferred way of doing things. Add to that the completely lax attitude about getting shows and I was done. I had plenty of material for that band, but most of them didn't want to work at it. Finally gave up, the and dissolved, one of the good guys came with me to a new project and the other good guy is in another local band playing out. I'm much happier in my current group, even though we're missing a drummer and vocalist. We can play on time, in key, and explore all our odd musical tendencies to our hearts' content. Of course, our odd take on genre-hopping heaviness likely means it'll be tough finding like-minded individuals to round out the group, but it's worth being happy for. We are all willing to wait for the right person and enjoy it all while we can.
I got nothing, business happy hour tonight, work school band, work school band, blah blah blah. Buddy of mine is a rep for Spector now, might borrow a five string for the weekend.
My slow loris is almost finished. Gotta run to the electronics store and grab a few electrolytics that I do not have. Just waiting on my clean blend boards to arrive.
Im undecided about art, ink color or knob placement. What do you guys think? Art may be difficult, with 5 knobs and a switch it's already pretty cluttered. I'm not sure if I should hand paint labels and call it good or if I can waterslide decal the box. Probably with red ink, though white would be killer not sure if it's feasible though.
Knobs are volume, distortion, filter, sweep and clean. Switch is between Si and LED clippers.
Here are some knob placement ideas.
Im undecided about art, ink color or knob placement. What do you guys think? Art may be difficult, with 5 knobs and a switch it's already pretty cluttered. I'm not sure if I should hand paint labels and call it good or if I can waterslide decal the box. Probably with red ink, though white would be killer not sure if it's feasible though.
Knobs are volume, distortion, filter, sweep and clean. Switch is between Si and LED clippers.
Here are some knob placement ideas.
Attachments
g&l called me yesterday to let me know that my neck is almost done and that we can take some pics when i go down to fullerton to pick up the bass, i'm back to teaching everyday again and i forgot how hard it is to wake up, go to school, get things prepped, and to be in a semi pleasant mood for the adult learners on a daily basis, gotta get a handheld fluorescent light to take more photos of skulls on the lightbox, because the halogen spots kinda suck, i thought we were auditioning this young girl who is a rapper to play the second bass in the performance art doom/sludge project, i'm just gonna role with it, if she can play that's cool, if not maybe she can pull some sweet samples or beats for some of the covers
