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I'm a size 11 shoesize wise and I do agree that it's an absolute bastard to cleanly engage and disengage pedals.

How do most people get around this? Using those big looper things?

When my feet still worked right, I wore 14 double-wides. It's one of the reasons I was partial to Boss type switches (including the ones on their multis) - they were consistently the easiest for me to hit. I also didn't put pedals very close together. These days on a good day one foot is functional, and can hit stuff slightly, and I have a pedal to my left. But it's still a soft-touch switch (typically a FS-6 dual running as a controller switching something in/out).

My actual PT-2 is never actually anywhere near my feet, I hit the buttons with an elbow or right hand (it's at knee height basically, and I'm stuck sitting while playing). Considering going to a midi-controllable patchbay/looper so I can control a couple effects on/off from the Roland GK3 controller on the Jaguar.

If I hadn't gotten fucked up, I'd have completed transitioning to a full on MIDI controller/looper for everything with big, happy footswitches that aren't the normal ugly clicking ones.

Invisible Man wrote: LG, if you don't 'tune' the carrier frequency with your ring mods, do you have a sweet spot you set it for, then just leave it? My favorite was always trying to find some kind of enharmonic 'tonic' so that at least the note of the key I'm playing (or abusing) can be pretty. Are you going for straight-up clang?

Pretty much just clang. It all started out of function. The bass/keyboard player I was in a band with at the time used every frequency available to him and would drown out my half stack (basically making mud). I had just started playing guitar the day I joined the band and didn't know what the hell he was playing (due to being essentially tone deaf, inexperience, and him tuning to some weird Japanese diminished scale...for street cred and a different sound or something dude was nuts...like punch through a windshield because he forgot his keys nuts). Anyway, I didn't know what to do, so I bought a ring mod, ran the CO at a very high frequency (like equal to like 7 or 8 on the Moog dial) and learned to play that way just to cut and play something. I would adjust it based on what frequencies he was canceling out with all his crap (Juno 106, Sidstation, arps, sequences, filter sweeps, delays, pitch shifting, space station...etc...all running at once).

I actually hooked a tuner up to the carrier out on the MF102 for the first time the other day and tuned it to 'G'...it was kinda fun. I guess I alway accidentally played harmonics (I always just called them sweet spots and it would vary by day and stuff). I can hear it when it is right, but tuning it is impossible for me with out a tuner (I play guitar by numbers and have actually tuned my guitar several times by tension but can't for the life of me tune by ear...like when bands tun to each other by hearing the offset vibrations = impossible for me...I hear those no matter what...and things like C5 and C4 are different notes...I can hear the difference, know which one is higher and lower, and know they sound right in a chord together...but play me 5 notes and ask which two are the same note an octave a part...couldn't answer it...they are all 5 unique notes...so, yea tone deaf = not good at tuning haha...probably partially ignorance though...can't mimic any tone I hear with my voice either...so no karaoke).

I still like my old style where I would just set to cut/ear-taste and then wave-shape/fill space by slapping all the strings at once and muting a few to change sounds, play unrelated notes and bend them to create different sounds, feedback on different frequencies, shitty slide playing, etc. All that stuff sounds better in a mix though.

tl;dr...I just play noise because I don't know what else to do. Sounds kinda dumb outside of a band...and it hurts the ears sometimes.

Great to hear. Sounds like you don't need any encouraging, but keep it up. There are way too many guitar players out there as it is, and too many of us all try to play 'the one best way.' Which is why I hang out here. Kinda figured recently that I should just use cheap stuff again for the most part, as all I want to do is mangle it, anyway. I'm afraid to mess with all these boutique pedals...probably why my CT5 is in the shop right now...OT, but I rediscovered how gnarly the DD-7 can be. Modulate mode, set to max feedback and short delay? Detuned oscillator, no input signal necessary. Add an 8 Step or something similar, and you've got a crude monosynth. $200. Unintended use is so much more fun is all I mean to say here. Clang certainly fits.

So, safe to say that ring mods are 'your sound?' I know you love them, but it sounds like they're integral to your playing. That's be an interesting thread--not just 'favorite effects,' but ones that have a sound that define your approach to an instrument. I guess that's kinda what we're talking about here...oh.

Yeah I think a big problem that I'm having is that when I played bass I sort of had my "sound" figured out. Clanky OD or Gated fuzz all the time, generous suboctave and stutter/glitch, and pretty bright while still being deep and punchy.

But now that I'm playing guitar more I'm sort of still finding my sound and what works for me. So far it's just light OD and reverb. I don't even really use fuzz on guitar and I really don't like super high gain stuff. But some of my riffs are already kind of weird or percussive so I think ring mod would actually work pretty well with my sound. And I want to find some more dirt that I get along with.

what i've figured out to do with the Randy is set the mix so there's some of the clean note mixed in; you can almost follow the melody line, but only "almost." it's good with dirt, too.

Neon, definitely check out the Copilot Robotum. Such a fun ring mod, and cheap as fuck. I've got a demo of it on my youtube channel.

I got a Malekko Vibrato by surprise today.

I do love vibrato. More than delay I think. Reverb into vibrato. Mmmmm

Likes EQD gear, uses TCE-mini.

A thread about what defines your sound only makes sense to me. I feel like the reason we use so few effects regardless of how many effects we had is because once you found the sound that is the most indicative of your feelings it's hard not to go back to that. I explore but mostly in the modular realm, in guitar I'm pretty firmly planted in my love for pitch pedals with 3-5-7-9 intervals rather than just octave up/down. This is also informs my playing because I can't go crazy on quick solos due to tracking issues so I play more staccato and deliberate.

I really wish I could hear the difference between most fuzzes because then I could maybe actually use them rather than my one rat haha

Invisible Man wrote:

Great to hear. Sounds like you don't need any encouraging, but keep it up. There are way too many guitar players out there as it is, and too many of us all try to play 'the one best way.' Which is why I hang out here. Kinda figured recently that I should just use cheap stuff again for the most part, as all I want to do is mangle it, anyway. I'm afraid to mess with all these boutique pedals...probably why my CT5 is in the shop right now...OT, but I rediscovered how gnarly the DD-7 can be. Modulate mode, set to max feedback and short delay? Detuned oscillator, no input signal necessary. Add an 8 Step or something similar, and you've got a crude monosynth. $200. Unintended use is so much more fun is all I mean to say here. Clang certainly fits.

So, safe to say that ring mods are 'your sound?' I know you love them, but it sounds like they're integral to your playing. That's be an interesting thread--not just 'favorite effects,' but ones that have a sound that define your approach to an instrument. I guess that's kinda what we're talking about here...oh.

Actually, I love my boss delays for that reason...kinda always go back to them and the amdek (but recently pick up a Yamaha analog delay that does the amdek thing good enough). I'm glad I've tried bigger, crazier flavors of delay, but I always go back to the boss dd's and dad's (but either way they are all superfluous effects for me). I do like the memory loss too...but dont know if I would use them in a band context...

Mangling effects is my favorite thing to do. That was all I used to do but have gotten away from it for a but (setup time, space, etc)...but making things work wrong is my favorite...cheers on that man. Glad to hear you are having fun without all the sweet moogs (I think I honestly prefer dd-5 to the 104m myself).

It was ring mod or nothing for a long long time...expanding my horizons these days though...mostly because playing alone changes my perspective of how things sound...and I want to learn to be passable at normal guitar (if I ever have a kid, I want music to be important... My parents thought it was a waste)...but I will never stop my ring mod style haha.

Been doing a lot of ring mod to ring mod and feedback tests...need another tuner. Been thinking about running several carriers and switching them (like microphone, co one, tuned to pitch, co two tuned to cut) with a second trem set run mod? I dunno, probably could run three rms really.

Eivind August wrote:Neon, definitely check out the Copilot Robotum. Such a fun ring mod, and cheap as fuck. I've got a demo of it on my youtube channel.

Be nice to have a squarewave around! Monday I think mine ships! So excited!

Inharmonic forever!

lordgalvar wrote:...and I want to learn to be passable at normal guitar (if I ever have a kid, I want music to be important... My parents thought it was a waste)...but I will never stop my ring mod style haha.

Seems like quite a few ILFers have kids (more than I assumed, anyway), especially after seeing the response to the cartoon thread. It's pretty amazing to see how my kids act around my sonic shenanigans. Anything remotely rhythmic, and two 2.5 year old daughter starts cuttin' a rug. She loves to get down and tune oscillations (fuzzes, delays, loops, whatever) with her grubby toddler paws. She has no idea that what I'm doing is 'wrong,' and I have no interest in teaching her otherwise. It's just refreshing to not have to explain to everyone why I don't know any AC/DC whenever they see my guitar laying around, you know? She just lays down on the amp and sends arpeggiated white noise directly into her belly. She is an ILFer, in short.

I can confirm that shit loads of pedals with flashing lights and some oscillation is a barrel of laughs for children

SecretMachine wrote:I'm a size 11 shoesize wise and I do agree that it's an absolute bastard to cleanly engage and disengage pedals.

How do most people get around this? Using those big looper things?

Size 12 here. I arrange my pedals putting the ones I use the most frequently closest to me. My pedal boards have a tier for each row of pedals i.e. stepping on a pedal on the 3rd row is totally out of the way of the 2nd row.

I also covered my stomps with Barefoot Buttons which makes each stomp a huge target.

I do have a bypass looper, but it's not used as a way to on/off individual pedals from a single location.

I had an hm-2 a while back. I confess. The key is crank the mids and lows, dim the highs & distortion. Not bad. It compresses a little. I was able to get a very tight, quick tone.