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Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2015 4:42 pm
by Taylor Livingston
They're additive so you can use both at the same time, in any ratio you like, or one or the other. The only way to turn off the envelope following is to lower the Sensitivity knob all the way. The expression pedal is effectively turned off by simply setting it to heel down position - that's equivalent to having no expression pedal plugged in.
So, to use both together, you could have your envelope set to sweep from 40Hz to 160Hz with average playing dynamics, then sweep the expression pedal up to keep the same 2 octave range but now it will sweep from 160Hz to 640Hz. For example maybe there's a breakdown in the song where you play high up on the fretboard and the base setting is too low to let these higher notes sing - sweep up and you have the same size sweep, but starting from the fundamental of these higher notes.
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2015 2:23 am
by goroth
OH man, that sounds insane, in the best possible way!
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 8:36 pm
by Taylor Livingston
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 10:06 pm
by Taylor Livingston
Oxides with top jacks:


Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2015 5:08 pm
by jmoote
Oof, those oxides. The finish suits the pedal perfectly and matches nicely with the others you've been doing lately.
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2015 7:14 pm
by Taylor Livingston
Thanks Jeff! The main paint color used on those is actually called "crimson oxide" so I knew I had to do some Oxides with it.
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2015 5:57 pm
by Taylor Livingston
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:14 pm
by Taylor Livingston
These Polytopes have a hand-applied, genuine copper finish. I tried at first to get a coppery finish using my normal airbrush paints, but it didn't look very real, so I decided to try creating a new finish using actual copper powder. There's a lot of variation in this batch, so see
the shop page for pictures of several pedals from the batch.


Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 1:26 am
by goroth
Dude they are beautiful!!!

Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:01 am
by Jwar
Taylor you are KILLING these finishes man! Just killing it! Do you use an air brush? I'm looking into an artist one but it's like 300 bucks! LOL. So nice dude!!!
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:06 am
by Lebowsky
who wants to flip a copper for a green one?

Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:18 pm
by Taylor Livingston
jwar wrote:Taylor you are KILLING these finishes man! Just killing it! Do you use an air brush? I'm looking into an artist one but it's like 300 bucks! LOL. So nice dude!!!
Thanks Jwar, I really appreciate it!
For these, the airbrush was involved but not really critical to the copper application. Basically, I applied a clear coat with an HVLP gun, then dusted the copper powder on while the clear was wet. Once dry, I laid black over the copper and rubbed it back with steel wool. The black paint in this case was just to accentuate the texture and the text labeling (it doesn't get touched as much by the steel wool because it's recessed, same concept as with painting an etched box and sanding it back). Then it got a final layer of clear coat to keep the copper from oxidizing.
So I used the clear coat like a binder for the copper powder, because that's what I'm tooled up for, and because the clear coat I use is much less nasty to work with (VOC-free) than the resin binder that I was originally going to use with the copper. But if I didn't already have this setup, I'd probably have come up with a different way to do it. I definitely would not actually mix the copper powder with the paint and try to shoot it through the HVLP gun or airbrush, as that would probably mess up either tool beyond repair.
Regarding airbrushes, I'm currently using a Badger model 155. It's about $100. I have used some cheaper ones and found them to be such a huge pain to work with that it's a false economy situation. So far this one has been working well for me, easy to maintain and clean, and it can shoot very finely or widely without tip changes or other fiddly stuff. So far I haven't run into a reason to upgrade any further.
Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 12:59 pm
by jmoote
Lebowsky wrote:who wants to flip a copper for a green one?

You have or wants green one?
I really want one of these or a similar blue/green finish. I regret missing them when they were in the shop

Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 10:39 pm
by Taylor Livingston
Nimbi:


Re: "In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 8:39 pm
by Taylor Livingston
Those blue ones are gone already, so here's a new set of Nimbi.
As a kid growing up in New Orleans, this color was iconic and known as "K&B purple," so named for the local drugstore chain that was ubiquitous in the city for nearly 100 years.

