Hello friends and welcome to ask Zack today we have a field trip down at exact
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tone Solutions cuz I wanted to talk about you know kind of the tone suck and
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tone Obsession because this is one of the things that in interviews or talking
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with friends you know that that kind of comes up a lot and they'll talk about how something is you know tone sucking
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or it's boosting their s you know when when it's a delay pedal that's boosting or cutting and different things like
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that and so kind of wanted to have a discussion and I felt like if we were going to do this properly we need to
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have someone that could uh really kind of put it in more concrete
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understandable terms instead of Voodoo or you know just the uh kind of lame you know the uh pedantic ter terminology is
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that fair is that fair yeah I mean I mean we'll see right yeah so I'm always afraid it's it's always slightly
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unsatisfying when I have this conversation with folks because even as we've discussed it in the past it can
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kind of feel like you're just kind of going around the mountain again and again and again and uh so we'll see if
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if we can bring any sort of resolution okay to to uh to this thing yeah maybe
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there doesn't need to be a resolution maybe there just needs to be understanding yeah that would be good I'd love to
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understand so you know just to kind of give the the nickel version of ton suck you know if you if you go back to
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like uh you know effects made in the 70s like a old script logo din comp you know
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if you bypassed the thing it sounded terrible because it would just you know
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it sounded dark and uh and of course it made you probably to leave the effect on
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and not turn it off right uh so then we get uh buffered bypass and then we then
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we get into you know true bypass which are kind of you know I guess the two different main ways of kind of trying to
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address this now when would you say is the peak of true bypass as the historian
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that you are oh okay because I remember like nobody talked about it nobody talked about it and it feels like maybe
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in the odish like that became like a huge deal where you were doing yourself
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your family your ancestors a disservice if you did not have true bypass I I
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would that's absolutely true I would say by the late 90s it it started with the boutique
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companies and I think part of it was a uh you know a cost thing I think you
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know maybe it was in the design of circuit I don't know what do you think about that where it seemed like they
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started using these switches and touting that cuz I mean fullone and others were touting true bypass and using those type
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of mechanical switches as early as like 95 or such and they were and they were
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selling these things but uh yeah and as far as circuits go I wonder I never
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really thought about it until just now but those once those three pole double throw switches came available which made
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True bypass with indication really easy right now is if just like a DIY home
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brewing these things you don't need to know anything about uh like fet
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switching or you know analog switches that used to come in like a monolithic
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package or flipflops or you whether discreet like what the boss has or you
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know actual integrated flip-flops like the Nobles has like you could just ditch all that stuff which would be hard to do
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like not on a circuit board and not with some understanding and so I want like cynical
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me kind of wonders if well we don't know how to do buffer
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bypass uh we do know how to do true bypass now because I can just draw a
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wiring diagram and do it so I get the benefit it's a there's a double benefit
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I can kind of put down what was which might be more even more technically
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difficult in some ways and I can tout this thing as the as the a better option
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yeah I I think there's an element to that of of the uh the kind of uh
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explosion of true bypass and how everyone started asking you know by the late 90s everyone was asking is it true
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Bypass or not and and we still get that yeah yeah and and so I guess
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uh now you know everyone a lot a lot of guys have done like little tests and
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stuff like that like I've done you know testing where you have a a sizable board maybe it's 10 to 12 pedals and you have
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them where it's all true Bypass or you have it where it's all buffered and both of them when you get to that level of
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extremism it's problematic MH because when you have 10 to 12 true bypass
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pedals they're all off and nothing is acting in any way shape or form as a buffer MH uh by being on whether it's an
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overdrive or a delay or what have you uh yeah I mean there's a lot of capacitance
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and uh and and and it's an odd thing it's not great uh and then if you have
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that many buffers if you have 12 buffers and of course um sometimes it's it's
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weird you know depending it was even more weird when all the buffers were made by the same manufacturer and it
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seemed like compounding yeah it seemed to compound the issue of where certain
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frequencies were hyped more and it just didn't it seems like it's really
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difficult to have a truly flat buffer yeah I I think
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it's I think looking at it on paper it's not too
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hard um one thing that I think often gets overlooked and maybe you were talking
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about this before maybe it's just another conversation we had before the sometimes it's not just
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frequency range like the the R1 and the MOs dorion you're passing through fets
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that are being used as switches and I think one of the reasons why uh some reh
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houses of those people I mean because we've had our guys come in and be like I had this rehoused and they wrecked it
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and what they did was they pulled out all those switching fets and replace them with a piece of wire uh which
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should be one for one you look this this fed is acting like a switch
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and when the pedal is on it should be closed so I'm just going to jump that with a piece of wire the problem is is
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that the fet isn't a perfect switch particularly as you are shoving signal
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through it so it might be flat frequency wise in their frequency band of Interest which is which is not you know super
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wide band for guitar but the fet's distorting and so you hear that and you
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might inter interpret that if it's kind of distorting in the mid-range you might hear that as a limiting of mid-range and
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or a boosting of base and high because those aren't getting limited because
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basically you've got a multiband compressor at that point and so this thing for small signals is flat but as
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you start to hit it with more signal it's doing this multiband compression thing and at the very least ay
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uh it sounds like it's hyping something and I think if you if you did that in particular if you had a string of those
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together you would hear that effect compounded totally yeah you at the end of the day
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everything affects everything to an extent and and so it yeah it's like the
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you know CU I've messed with mooran pedals a lot over the last 15 years and I've played through a lot of the
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different copies and such and if makes a difference if you have it true Bypass or
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not or whether it's got the the the same type of you know switching and buffer in
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there it changes the sound of the petal and so some might like it better but it doesn't sound like the original when you
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true bypass it anymore yeah it yeah I would say you can true like when we true
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bypass those we basically trick the pedal into being on in its original state and then
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all we do is basically you could think of the pedal as being in a true bypass Loop
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inside of itself right but the circuit itself you're still running through for better and worse you're running through
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all this stuff that really is ostensibly just there for switching except it never
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switches again for the rest of its life and that's the better way of doing it because you're able to preserve the real
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sound of it yet you're able to completely bypass it yeah yeah and so that that was you know that seemed
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as we were looking at the problem where guys were bringing things in and saying hey this doesn't sound the same anymore
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some of these things and I maybe we'll get more into this later some of these tone suck things they we have to deal
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with like the psychology of it so one of the reasons we do what we do for things
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like reh houses or even other things I think it applies to that is to remove if
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I deliver something something to you aoran and you say man this sounds
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different I need to be able to give an account for what we did and at the very
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least reassure you that I don't know how that could be right cuz we didn't change
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you're running through all the same stuff so hypothetically you don't like running through the new Jacks with this
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switch with this mechanical switch but that would have to be it and maybe that's enough to sort of of quell well
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okay I guess it really can't be yeah that different and so that can be
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helpful especially if somebody ships Us in something from Japan we and we mod it
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and we send it back and they're like well it it changed and I'm like well we change if it did we changed it the
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absolute minimum to be able to give it the function that it has you're the
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Corpus the the core of what that thing is we left completely untouched yeah and
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we just kind of remoted it in in one sense or the or the other so that sort
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of preor is sometimes necessary depending on the client and
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how sensitive they are to even the
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concept of change because like as we've talked about that suspicion that something is
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different can be just as Insidious as something actually changing yes and and
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that's one of the important lessons that I've learned you know from you and Joe
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Glazer and and people that work on any aspects aspect of musician's gear is
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that the psychology of it is really important because you're really treating the person as much as you are the gear
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mhm so going back to like the crude testing that I did with you know all
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true bypass pedals and all uh buffered pedals one of the things I noticed with
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the all buffered setup was it seemed like the tone didn't really get bad but
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it changed the way the guitar felt as you played it and I know that's getting like way off into the ether some but
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some of that's explained by what you were talking about when the the buffer is is doing different things and you're
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getting a compression or a lack there of and it goes from feeling where it has a
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compression to it or softness to it or maybe it's an EQ thing where you're hearing frequencies that you weren't
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hearing before and that changes the way it feels when you're playing yeah so
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like those buffers like a lot of those buffers are just like a um like a transistor like a single
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transistor buffer and that's going to have some sort of harmonic Distortion
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right and when you I maybe this is it I've not
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measured it uh to to verify but as you
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if you think of harmonic Distortion as sort of spreading the energy out over over the Spectrum as you do that I think
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you can lead to sort of softness because if you like I remember one uh Pedal
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company they were doing some wave shaping things where they could kind of they could give you a ton of second
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order by design the second order Distortion and in our we've been told by tube purists and all that like second
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order is great but if you take that and you add a ton of second order it's
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basically is an octaver and it everything starts to feel softer and so
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if you if you take that same harmonic structure that harmonic Distortion
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repeat it again and again and again and again even though it's slight in the one case it's it's multiplicative right so
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you're applying the same function to that signal over and over and over again
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and so then you're hyping what the the little thing that it did that
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0.1% you multiply that by 10 times and now you've got one part in 100 and I
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think people the more you do that the more people are able to detect yeah you
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know that difference so that makes sense I think it it is really tough and when I first met uh Greg here he really he he
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does such a good job of uh cuz I had no sense of like feel I
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was strictly like a sound because I'm not a like a real player if it sounded
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right that was good enough and then as I started interacting with players who were much much better than I was and
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began to realize that feel was a thing and then working with Greg who would show me like listen this is what this is
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doing and then playing the lp and then you can kind of annex somebody else's feel and get a sense like that's a real
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thing like people should feel secure and like like don't don't let anybody tell
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you like feels not real cuz it is and it's a and it's a real part of you know
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it's a dynamic thing typically although EQ can really change perceived feel cuz
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if I take the if I slam the highend out of something it's going to feel softer
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cuz it's not going to feel as fast or as clicky or cuz I just took like this and
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now all of a sudden it feels that in articulation can kind of translate to
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your right hand like it doesn't feel like it's responding the same and that's a feel thing yeah and yeah and that
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makes total sense because sometimes when you think oh this doesn't feel the same and you think that something's going on
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with something killing the signal or compressing it or what have you and
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really it can be purely an EQ thing where it's just because it's it's hyping
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uh the highend or something it feels harder yeah or if it's cutting the high end all of a sudden it feels softer yeah
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and it's interesting like purely an EQ thing that's it's that's the strange thing about these systems is it's almost
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never purely anything yeah it's not we want it to be right yeah we want it to
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be like oh you've got the wrong X Swap this piece out and then the stars align
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and everything starts looking again or working again but because everything is sort of I maybe we were talking about
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this before it's like Play-Doh and you've got these different colors and you start mashing them together you
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can't really tease out anymore what's doing what I mean you can like in the
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same way the colors like well the blue and the red like the the blue is making
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it more purpley like you can do that but you can't tease it out yeah and and have
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yeah it's kind of stuck in there now and if you try to extricate it you're going to change what it is and in some ways I
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feel like that's kind of a bummer cuz it feels kind of like hopeless like you can't change anything but in the other
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in some other ways I feel like it kind of is what it is and then that way you can just kind of Let It Go like okay I
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like this it is what it is yeah and I think part of this goes back to
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the a lot of the true bypass marketing and such was that you know it's like
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when you turn it off it sounds like you're plugged straight into the amp mhm and with a switch and two extra Jacks
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right exactly it it is changing things but it was it seemed like it was more
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subtle especially when when you were doing a test where it was one p mhm so
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and I think what it comes down to is that you know you're you're never as
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soon as you start inserting anything between the guitar and the amp it changes things and so it's like if you
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want the sound of a guitar plugged straight into an amp well you have to have the guitar plugged straight into the amp yes and there's no way around
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it yes yeah yeah I mean I think technically that's true and again it's kind of
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bummer cuz it's like well then I can't have anything you just every person every player has to
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kind of decide how nuts do you want to be about this and and and being nuts is
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okay to a degree but I think like one of the things we we have to make it you
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know kind of make these compromises and decision as players and such is it okay
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what do I have to have if I'm just you know what do I have to have for the that I'm playing yes you know and so if you
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have to have a lot of different gags and a bunch of different sounds well then you kind of got to have some kind of
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multi effect unit or a bunch of pedals or whatever it is and you just kind of have to work with it you know we we were
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talking on the phone the other day and uh I was talking about you know a situation that you know from 20 plus
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years ago where during my time you know working with Brad Paisley you know we
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started obsessing over okay which one of the wireless units sounds just like uh cable you know
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pluged straight into the amp and basically there wasn't anything especially then yeah especially then and
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we had we had you know what was at the time topof the line you know Wireless units by Sennheiser andure and at the
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end of the day because Brad was never going to do a show without a wireless cuz he you know
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he goes all over the stage and there was one time where um we were we were playing near a military base and um
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there was like we were it was like even before the show I knew we were screwed because there was only like one or two
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frequencies that were working right and I knew it and so I had 100t cable and I
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I knew I was going to get screwed and so of course about the second or third song
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100t of table that tell was about to get screwed too exactly so so uh it it ended
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up that about probably two or three songs in of course the guitar went out you know the W you know the frequency
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got got stomped on and so you know he picks the guitar up like this and uh and
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I go over there and I take you know and I unplug the wireless and plug in the 100 foot cable and then he thinks it's
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fun to start you know going around Mike stands and things like that and uh and he's laughing the whole time right so
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but but again I tell that story just to say that there's there's so many times where you
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have things that you have to have and you just kind of have to you know compromise with it and then this
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obsession over over tone and things like that is really part of in a lot of these
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guys not all of them but in a lot of them it's the same Obsession that made
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them the great guitar players they are yes and so it's just like the way they're going to be over prepared for
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the gig and they're to know everything backwards and forwards you know they're also being just as methodical when it
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comes to their their rig and that they're going to be like oh this delay pedal is giving me a 3% boost when I
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turn it on or worse it's giving me you know a 5% cut or something like that
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when I turn it on or this tuner I think I'm losing you know 3% or whatever it is
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but there's these little things that that and so then they spend all this time finding okay what tuner can I live
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with because I have to have a tuner or am I not going to use a tuner and I'm going to use one of those clip on tuners on the guitar I'm going to I remember JD
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did that a ton back when he was like Gable and the Marshall yeah like the tuner was there to be plugged in later
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like when you needed it cuz it screwed things up yeah it's like the uh uh I
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think there's a you know like an internet meme where someone's talking about uh you know D trucks and uh and
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and he had this you know one of those old cord rack tuners on top of his amp and and uh guys ask him how do you get
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your signal to the tuner and he unplugs the guitar from the an he plugs into the
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tuner and then he unplugs it from the tuner and plugs it into the amp y so there is part of this that's just kind
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of normal and part of kind of the same Obsession that makes someone but there's always times where it it it can go too
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far yeah like I was I was thinking about it this morning coming in they're in the
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same way that like if you're talking about like physically getting ready for
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like a sporting of like if you play soccer or football or baseball or something like that that sort of
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obsession that you would have with understanding the sport and in preparing
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for it and like getting your body physically ready there's a lot of that that drives a lot of good behaviors
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right but then you've got like this body dmor dysmorphia where every time you
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look in the mirror you're like like I just can't see myself for who I am and
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that manifests in all sorts of deleterious ways so I think there's a lot of people out there who have sort of
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rig dysmorphia yeah and they look down at their rig and be like man if I could just get this thing then I would be
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happy and then they get that thing and they're not happy cuz it moves on to some other thing it's like oh you know
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if I could just spend I I've got to have wireless but if you know if I can't get
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eight grand together for a sure aent I mean that would really do it like if if if I could just get to that level or if
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I could get this amplifier and so there's this same sort of mental perversion of what could be a
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helpful drive to really pay attention really care know your parts know you
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know the tamber that you're going for but then you just get bogged down in
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this very critical unproductively critical sort of way of looking at uh
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your world to the point where now you're not even playing right so like you've stopped playing yeah because you're
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worried like oh you know I was going to play today but instead I'm going to redo my board for the 18th time this month
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and and you never play anymore yeah and and that's really the the kind of
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extreme example of the where the the tone Obsession becomes unhealthy when it
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becomes I'm spending so much more time obsessed over my tone when part of being
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able to get a good sound is practicing and playing and gigging and things like that and so it's it's one of these
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things where you almost want to try to have some kind of balance with it where you kind of you know where you expect
25:23
the obsession you know great maybe maybe just it is Obsession I think into like
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again cynically I like what we do here at XTS
25:36
depends on the sort of striving that the average guitar player goes through
25:43
absolutely we need you folks out there to want to do a new rig if everybody was
25:49
happy with everything that they had forever nobody would make new pedals nobody would buy new pedals nobody would
25:55
need new rigs built we wouldn't need to talk about it on YouTube no we we'd all we'd all become accountants we' all we'd
26:02
all just be be happy and full full of joy right we would be happy I probably
26:07
that's probably a good thing we would all be happy and accountants but now we're but we don't know how to account
26:14
so uh we do this and we're willing to be miserable so so part of you know one of
26:22
the one of the things that's uh that you know and I'm sure you run into this also
26:27
is that you know I've done a lot of interviews and I'm around a lot of guitar players all the time and and so
26:34
you're always getting this this stuff is always being discussed and and one of
26:39
the things one of the problems is is that once you hear something you can't unhear it yes and so there's times when
26:47
you are just blissfully going along and you kind of even know that you have a
26:53
pedal that's doing something funky but you're just kind like I have on my board that y'all built built on both of them I
27:00
have a line six Echo Park on there and so it's true bypass but as soon as you turn it on the tone gets a little
27:08
thinner and it's like and I just kind of like H whatever you know I kind of knew
27:14
it but I didn't want to think but then it's like I didn't want to think I didn't want to think I was able to put it out of my mind I was able to put it
27:19
out of my mind and then and then you have friends that like uh I have a friend there's your problem right there
27:24
you have friends I've avoided that complication in my life by not having any by not having so then I have a
27:31
friend that his name rhymes with JD Simo and uh and so he's been obsessed about
27:36
tuners and so we've been talking about that and so uh yeah and and then you
27:42
know we started talking about delay puddles and things like that and so then I ended up you
27:47
know grab this so just as a a a little fun side
27:57
thing uh you know I threw this together you know over the weekend you know
28:02
because this was a uh a tuner that uh that JD felt like it was do a a better
28:09
bypass which you know well I mean I'll say JD
28:15
brought that the tuner Saga in here yeah and we listened
28:22
to tuners yeah and he's not he's not wrong right um does it matter to
28:30
everybody um I mean we've put a lot of tuners on boards and nobody's known the
28:35
difference um but we sat out there and played and how he plays what he was
28:42
playing the amp set as it was set there is a small difference and so we built
28:50
him a box to sort of switch things away this has a has a uh like a three-pole
28:55
double throw if I remember correctly so this is is the the least offensive and like when we look at those switches we
29:02
think like oh they're if you draw that switch like even this the schematic it's
29:07
got this thing that toggles between two sections and this part of the switch is supposed to be zero ohms and there's no
29:13
connection between the the one that it's not connected to in that pole but if you were to draw that in reality there'd be
29:20
capacitors going between each one and and there'd be a resistance here and
29:26
then there's a huge resistance between these two so you'd like to think of these things as sort of pure platonic
29:32
archetypal perfect things but they're not uh the but can you can you get
29:38
something that is honest enough that you can't detect it because
29:44
basically if you if you're a something and you can't identify it more than 50%
29:50
of the time then you don't know because a monkey could a monkey can get 50%
29:56
between two choices just randomly picking yeah uh so if you and we do that test here a lot we'll do it with Greg
30:03
who's got a great capacity for like oral memory and and and detection and we know
30:11
that if we get it to where none of us in the shop can can tell more than 50% of
30:16
the time then you can't tell yeah sometimes you'll get it sometimes you won't get it and once you're to that
30:22
point uh you know it's it's ambiguous enough that they're close enough that
30:28
you can't detect it now like we've talked about before that's for that one
30:33
scenario that you're testing it in maybe that's clean guitar now do you do it
30:39
again on lead on Rhythm double stops like that sort of thing yeah and then
30:45
whether you have another effect on yeah yeah all of a sudden it becomes a different thing so I just kind of put
30:51
this together kind of as a just kind of a fun minimalist thing where it's basically you know three effects and a
30:58
and a tuner and they're all supposed to be you know pretty decent as far as the bypass is on them with the cuz I'm
31:06
assuming these are relay bypasses on the on the strans yeah yeah I mean it's like
31:11
we say pretty decent and it's like now I don't know anything anymore but yes
31:16
these are relay bypass so this switch is really just like a you know the same
31:23
like functional switch it's not a keyboard switch but just like a keyboard switch it's just closed when I press it
31:30
yeah pressing pressing this switch reroutes signals inside the body of this switch same for this switch this switch
31:37
has no audio going through it it sends basically a signal to a tiny little
31:43
computer inside that tells a relay that is handling the audio to do the thing
31:48
and that should be that should be pretty good but if if you look at a relay the
31:55
way it's physically constructed is the contact are all super close together you can have more capacitive interaction so
32:04
uh and again I don't say that to undermine anybody's uh you know faith in the
32:10
system right but just to highlight the fact that it's just a really cruel world
32:16
out there and the final Arbiter is how
32:21
how it you know how it sounds to you how it plays how it feels and that sort of
32:30
overarching philosophy of how obsessed or how much care am I going
32:38
to what's good enough yeah everybody's got to decide what's enough yeah
32:43
so let's get let's get concrete as far as like what do you guys you know recom
32:49
like when you're putting rigs together I mean do you like to have like one buffer and then everything else is going
32:55
through Loops or something like that let's say you're building a rack or you know like what what's your ideal
33:00
scenario when you're building a rig and you're thinking about buffers and loops and different things like that yeah we
33:06
actually tend not to think about it in those terms because we don't want to
33:15
necessarily apply the same methodology to everybody so this may sound like a
33:21
copout but if you come in and you want to build something our first question will be are you happy
33:28
with what you've got right and if you say yes I love this then we are going to
33:34
do everything in our power to not change anything right if you say man I feel
33:42
like when I play like it's it's like it gets a little darker and I feel like the
33:47
more stuff that I add it gets even darker I'm like okay well let's let's try a buffer yeah maybe you like that or
33:56
uh you know they'll be other things like I've got a vintage dyom and I like it
34:03
when it's not you know I feel like when I put that in the rig when I have the compressor on it's great but when I turn
34:08
it off it sounds terrible yeah okay yeah okay well that makes from experience we
34:14
have a heuristic for okay maybe we need to True bypass that or put it in a true bypass Loop if you don't want to screw
34:19
up something vintage so we try to be very responsive and and don't fix what
34:26
isn't broken and and or create a pro because potentially you're going to create a problem if they're happy with
34:31
the sound of it going through these buffers or true or whatever and then all
34:36
of a sudden you decide to fix it and all of a sudden it sounds or feels drastically different than it did before
34:43
then you've created a problem you've created an unhappy customer yeah and and then it can
34:49
be difficult to claw well one again it's the psychology thing and I know you've interacted with this before if not
34:56
directly with people you worked for I know you've heard stories where when you've built something new and you bring
35:03
it to somebody that first impression for most guitar players most artist types is
35:09
super critical if you crash and burn on that first impression it is very very
35:15
difficult to come back so we want to when we deliver something we want it to
35:21
feel like immediately like a huge win and that's not to say that tweaks don't come after the fact as people spend more
35:28
time with something and maybe you know like hey this is a little different can we try something here yeah we'll try a couple things but if if you if somebody
35:36
plugs something in it's like and they're like this is not it uh that's pretty
35:41
tough to win the day after that cuz the the seed that you know there's this
35:48
Inception of it's not going to be right yeah because it wasn't yeah so that the
35:54
psychology of that is it's it's when all this Mojo stuff becomes real is once the
36:02
player gets involved and that seed of Doubt or suspicion or even potentially
36:08
distrust comes in that all that tropical fish carbon comp true bypass Bufford all
36:15
that stuff gets crystallized into reality because if you don't feel secure
36:20
you don't play secure if you don't play secure you don't sound good and now all that Mojo stuff results in a roundabout
36:27
way through the player's brain results in them not sounding as good well now it's real yeah and it works conversely
36:34
as well if you feel like everything it's like after you've washed the car and you changed the oil you've done everything
36:40
you do to be a good car owner and you get in that car and you're like this is is Good As It Gets that's right this is a fantastic car I love this car I'll
36:46
never sell this car but you know that uh that's there's an analog for that in
36:52
playing and you're like yeah this this is great I'm I couldn't be happier and
36:57
that's that's a good place to be and you know there's the the psychology of of having a piece of gear that breaks on
37:04
you during a gig and if it does it twice it's kind of over it can be it
37:11
can't you know unless you just love it and you're just you're just willing to to keep going after it but we've got
37:16
some guys who are in in abusive relationships with Deluxe memory men yes yes I can seems to be
37:24
that's they just keep going back to them even though it keeps it keeps hurting them real bad keeps hurting them shut
37:30
down during the the gig we've got guys who like I want to put a deluxe memory man and we're find we're buddies with
37:37
you know this client I'm like I'm like do you really want to do this I feel like like a counselor it's like listen
37:45
don't go back to him he is not treating you right you deserve better don't try
37:52
this Benson delay please this is a good man yes this w't be faithful that's
37:57
right he's going to treat you right he will not beat you during the show right so you then we start doing things like
38:04
putting him in true bypass loops and stuff like that which is something like a restraining order I guess you can you
38:10
can just dump it at at any point it's it's but yeah we so we have but I think
38:16
in general we've certainly had examples of guys and gals who've who have had
38:22
stuff that failed on them and they were like super invested in it and they've
38:27
ditched the maker like oh yeah XY and like I don't want any pedal that's made
38:33
by this company anymore and it really is kind of unfounded um because switches break and
38:39
Jacks break and and you know having an instrument you step on is going to have
38:46
issues uh but some yeah bad switch uh case in point um but it's like
38:55
you've it's once burned you're you can be like you just can't recover yeah some
39:02
people can yeah so I'll just tell this real briefly so this says bad switch on
39:08
it and that's because um I was I was doing some some work for Reggie Young's
39:14
Widow and so Reggie kind of had the feeling if anything broke if a pedal
39:20
broke he did not repair it he just he just bought another one so if a volume
39:26
pedal so was that for a or was that that was for his own like peace of mind and because he was like a
39:32
double or triple scale you know session musician it just wasn't worth it yeah it wasn't worth it and so he would just you
39:38
know when if the volume pedal had any scratchiness to it he just bought another ear Ball volume pedal if
39:43
anything went wrong he just bought another one and put it to the side well anyway when we I was helping her go
39:50
through some things and you know I saw this one and it said bad switch on it
39:55
and uh and she said you know she said if you want that you can take it and I said
40:01
okay and so was it a bad switch no it the switch wasn't bad so I don't know
40:06
you know and I and I've tried to make it not work yeah but it's it's worked every time for me so anyway I think it's a
40:12
wonder these switches work at all they are sort of a Rube Goldberg machine yes
40:19
like three contacts all slamming together around the same time and all
40:24
that even the way they go like clack clack yeah it's it's not it's not confidence inspiring well and that that
40:31
goes back to I mean weren't these designed for uh to be passing AC signal they're not even designed to be passing
40:37
delicate DC or yeah I mean who I I don't know I mean certainly their their Market
40:43
use at this point has it's got to be pedal people using most of them um I
40:50
think these were designed to be hand actuated they weren't even designed to be foot switches oh really well I certainly would believe you yeah yeah I
40:58
you know it's um it's there just so much going on in
41:03
that switch like i' I've broke them open to look at them and stuff it's like part of me is again like I said it's it's a
41:09
wonder they ever work and they're rated most of the ones that I've seen are
41:15
rated for like 10,000 hits like your keyboard will be rated at a million right um because it's such a
41:23
comparatively simple uh device so these things are going to fail uh it's just a matter of
41:31
time I don't sometimes they fail gracefully which in my mind is kind they
41:36
give you a warning yeah um sometimes they don't um you know it's
41:43
just the whole system is built on these some of them are very backwards
41:50
sort of things and we take for granted that they even doing what they're supposed to do yeah and and foot switch
41:57
can be like that like oh it's a switch it's a hard switch it's the same thing as a piece of wire um and it is for the
42:04
most part it just kind of depends on how microscopically you want to look at it or measure it
42:11
[Music] yeah so if we had to distill this conversation down and we had to uh you
42:17
know like a uh an eighth graders you know little uh little paper and you got to have the uh the closing paragraph
42:25
that's just so you know perfectly tied up it seems like there's there's a psychological aspect where you you kind
42:32
of have to find your own uh areas where you stay on the road and don't get into
42:37
the ditch of not giving a crap and also caring so much that you're not you know
42:44
that you're only concerned about your gear and you're not concerned about the playing or or anything else yeah and
42:50
then you know what else I think that's a great place to start I think everything
42:56
does matter yeah uh to one extent or the other if I've often said you know uh a
43:05
man with an argument is never at the mercy of a man with an experience so if
43:11
somebody comes in and tells me you know this thing is this object X is doing why
43:20
I have to say okay I don't understand how that could be but let's look at it
43:26
and see see if it makes sense if if you if if it's real to you then it's real enough for us to look at so there's that
43:35
there everything is real there is a point of diminishing returns I think in
43:41
general like you said there the obsessiveness that any obsessiveness
43:49
that's productive in the sense that it sort of moves you along in your hobby of guitar or vocation of guitar uh that's
43:57
sort of driving it uh or you know giving you some ambition like for improving and
44:03
playing cuz sometimes the gear will drive that you get excited about a new piece of gear and you find yourself well
44:08
I played for three hours today because I got this new thing well that's a good thing yeah but the other side of that is
44:15
this sort of dysmorphia thing where it can be paralyzing for some folks where
44:22
what what are the settings that I should be using for this box is this the right box you know should I be doing this and
44:29
then they're not playing and they're spending time you know on Instagram or forums things like that trying to figure
44:36
out what they're doing wrong when the biggest thing that could probably use a tweak is is actually playing the stuff
44:45
and so for for those folks I would just exhort to you know there is a point
44:51
where you can you can let this go and there's a bunch of counter examples out
44:57
there of guys playing what is probably quantitatively crap gear just
45:02
garbage and uh and they sound great doing it yeah and so I do I need this is
45:10
this bringing me joy or is this you know kind of bringing me pain is this is this
45:16
breeding content or discontent and so I think the obsession thing to actually sum it up and not
45:23
draun on about it it's good as long as it's productive thebody feels like this is making guitar
45:30
kind of suck for me I'm enjoying this less I think it's probably time to make
45:36
an adjustment uh and and make a make a change because that always kind of stinks to because we'll have famous
45:43
people come in and they're at some point they're not having fun at all anymore
45:50
and it's just about this problem of guitar and and all that and that's
45:57
that's what I feel like we're here we're here to make that problem go away so it can strictly be fun yeah so you go and
46:05
do shows and and and be happy and and give those people that are watching a vacation yeah CU that's what they're
46:11
there for they didn't pay hundreds of dollars to to have a a disgruntled uh you know musician just mad about mad
46:18
about everything yeah yeah it doesn't make it doesn't make sense and I get and we've talked about this before we
46:25
work uh uh with a lot of folks who are doing this for a living which
46:32
necessarily invites compromise like I was thinking this morning like I
46:38
remember uh Tim Pierce was telling us is like what a thing s what a pedal what an
46:44
amp sounds like in a room is irrelevant to me all that all that matters what's
46:49
real is when I put a mic on it and record it what does it sound like I
46:54
don't basically I don't know what it sound sounds like until I do that because that's his Target application
47:01
and that's fair yeah and so if you if you're playing live and it's got to be miked it's what it is in the PA have you
47:08
know what it is in your ears because that's a huge wrinkle that and and not
47:14
ideal you know monitoring thing we've we've already made these huge
47:20
compromises that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care but I think it does frame like it gives us boundaries for
47:29
what are we going to what are we really going to examine here so like if somebody could write it off and be like
47:35
well it's you know I'm listening on inar monitors I don't know why I'm bothering at all you know I don't know why I'm
47:42
picking spending so much time picking amps or or whatever and I I think I don't think that's true no and and and
47:50
no matter whether using wedges or or in ear or whatever you know it's it's having that holistic approach of like
47:57
how do I make it sound where you know I can be happy with it you know where does it maybe it doesn't sound like it does
48:03
when I sitting in front of the amp you know playing but I'm able to find a good sound that I can listen to and I can
48:11
work with it and I can be creative with it instead of being obsessing the whole time this doesn't sound like when I'm
48:17
sitting in front of the amp with my just you know my ears yeah yeah yeah yeah
48:22
totally yeah well guys thank you so much for watching thank thank you to Barry and all the guys at exact a pleasure
48:29
always always good to have you here it's it's a it's a treat thank you thank you right bye-bye