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to another episode of the Guitar Nerds Podcast. I am your host, Joe Branton, joined this week by J.D. Short. Hello. And Philip Carter. Yes, sir, what's up? That's right, dear listeners. We've got Philip Carter from the 40 Watt Podcast back with me and JD and possibly the first time... The first time with Guitar Nerds hosts that I've been outnumbered by the other side of the pond. I mean, JD, you sort of count as a halfway house now, I guess.
But yeah, I take the note, you know, and also like, both of us I think we could... i mean before the pod we were chatting a little bit about some stuff and i was like oh yeah we got we can go country on a lot of a lot of things if we need to you know like we got some hillbilly in this we'll just go straight so We'll see how quickly I slip back into the, you know, I grew up by the Mississippi River, you know. That's one set of S's and you said it correctly. Yeah.
Wow. Okay. Well, yeah, we will see. We will see. There's going to be an awful lot of things that will go over my head, I imagine, on this week's episode, dear listener. Just, you know, before we started this podcast, we were talking a lot about American sports, and I understood very little. I mean, the only thing I really know about American football is when I played John Madden. I think it was John Madden, 96. on the Sega Mega Drive.
And, you know, you used to be able to, like, you described it, Philip, before we started recording as, or maybe it was you, JD, that said it, actually. See, I can't even tell the difference between you already. But JD described it, I think, as the chess game of American football. And I was like, oh, yeah, I remember that. I remember playing John Madden, 96, or whatever it was. And...
The computer team being like, yeah, it's going to play this for this play. And I had to pick one. I had at no point did I have any idea what I was doing. or whether or not it was going it was sheer luck it was like rolling dice that would have been before like tampa 2 was like one of the main defense you know like you weren't gonna have like lots of options there it was basically
Blitz or not blitz. I'm a match man. And that was still like, how are I? That was it. You're in the eye formation. And that was it for offense. There were still fullbacks. They're coming back now. It's a thing they're coming back.
But, Joe, immediately I knew that you weren't going to know anything about John Madden because you called it the Mega Drive. It's the genesis. Oh, it's the genesis to you. Of course, yes, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I... up until recently i used to have like a an app for my phone that let me play like tecmo super bowl which is like one of one of the like the games that started doing it where you get like
Like Bo Jackson was on the Raiders. I can't remember where the Raiders were at the time because they move around quite a bit. as the name suggests, I suppose. And then, you know, it's like, and then like Icky Woods was, we're still in the bank, you know, some old, old times. Google the Icky Shuffle one of these days. Just some of the great stuff. And then we can take this and we'll talk about all the great uh sports songs that have been written over the years like performed by the team so i
I mean, that's the one. But I have discovered, because I'm starting my process of becoming more acquainted with Premier League, I'm going to laugh, and y'all, I promise, we're not going to turn this into a sports podcast. We're just taking a few moments here to be silly.
But that would be a funny podcast. That's another podcast. A few years ago, we got complaints for talking about football for too long as in as in soccer football for too long on the podcast so well i don't care anymore um because so i decided i've been watching ted lasso And that's been like a reintroduction to soccer or football, but especially to Premier League football, because I've been aware of it. I've watched parts of matches here and there, but...
that show actually helped me understand it better in a way because I got curious about it. So I'm like, I'm going to follow it this season. I didn't realize it was near the end of the season. I thought it was actually the off season. I didn't realize the season was still going on. So I'm like, I've got to find a team and I've got to start researching this. Suddenly I'm like, oh.
It's going on right now. I'll watch it. It usually doesn't end so quickly. Yeah, that's true. It's super weird, by the way, that it's still going on, but a champion has moved around. Yeah. Did you pick a team? Right now, I realize it's the easy road. Liverpool's real fun. They're real fun to watch. As an American, you can only pick from our major cities. It's unusual for sort of... people outside of the country to choose any weird ones.
You don't get many American Aston Villa fans. When I first started, I was really... trying to follow like Blackburn because they were still in the Premier League at a time and I was like it was just too hard at the time you know like I was like I wanted like a real northern team and part of it is so this ties it back to music part of the reason i ended up liking liverpools like before i knew anything was i was at this I was at this gig and I was talking to like
this isn't a clang, but like Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols. And like, he's a massive Chelsea supporter. And I was, I didn't know any things, but I was just like slacking Chelsea off all night. And like, just cause I knew it was a thing. And so I was like, well, I can't, I can't support Chelsea. So then, you know, that helped. And then it was also nearly around the time where Beckham was more of a perfume salesman than a baller.
Oh, wow. Well, you chose wisely because look at you now. Apologies for my shredded voice, everyone. But as I said, there's been many ole, ole, ole and freed from desires coming from me for the last few days. That's a thing that I really love about Premier League culture. Maybe it permeates all of soccer football culture. Associated football, if we're going to use the full Christian name. is the chants and songs and Like, that does not exist in American sports. I mean...
Not to that level. Yeah, MLS stuff does. But some of the most cringe things you can ever see are the Seattle Sounders chants and songs that they do. So if you just Google like... or search up as the kids say, you know, like Seattle Sounders, like stop. And the U S national team is always like fight and win is one. It's like, it's not quite as, it's not as inventive or as like funny or malicious as some of the, some of the stuff, but like,
It's definitely very elaborate. I feel like in the US, for your chance, you've got things like GoBirds, and over here we've got... songs about the other team's specific players' infidelity to the tune of Sweet Caroline, you know. Which, you know, is also a song about a child, which is always weird.
Yeah, and the thing that made me realize how different it was, there was actually, it was a meme that was going around that was like, uh, American sports fans, defense, defense, British sports fans. All right, lads, I've worked up a song to the tune of WC's Claire DeLune about opposing players drunk driving charge. I'll count us off.
it's it's just so it's so good and it's you know we're talking about too like the like the musical aspect of it if like the the sort of tailgating aspect in america that you don't quite quite have so there's like fan zones and stuff but it's only for like big like pre-planned matches, like semifinals or finals and stuff like that. But the idea of having, like, there's a few, there's a few groups that are, that I know because they're Liverpool supporters are.
like have songs that are liverpool based or around that that like put on these massive gigs And just, and are just songwriters that have songs loosely tailored to Liverpool stuff, or they just, they'll play with the Liverpool lyrics and stuff like that. And then...
And they go on and do a couple of their own tunes. You see, in essence, a bar band going, and here's an original where everyone's like, blah. Let's not forget, here in the UK, we've had several number ones based around England football songs. for World Cups and Euro tournaments that we have never won. Oh, that's funny. Yes. Which it will do eventually. Yeah, you've been closer than the American national team. That's all I'm saying.
The men's. No, the women's national team is amazing. Yes, they are. Yes, they are. Fantastic. Anyway, let's do some housekeeping. The few people who are still here after this little digression, this 9 minute and 30 second digression, don't worry, this episode is in fact called The Amplification Situation. And we've got JD and Philip together for the first time, not just to talk about the difference between US and UK sports.
But we're going to be talking about amplifiers, weird amplifiers. I kind of want to pose the question of, as we're living through this age of like Helix and... and quad cortex and and they're really starting to thrive i was at a festival this weekend i'll talk a bit about more about that and the gear that i saw there and i want to talk about whether or not things like this new two notes product and the new tube amp expander
Is this creating a fight now? A fight for Valve Amps to get back in the room, back in the battle against the Quad Cortex and against Helix? are they bringing it back making it more accessible or are those other digital products still gonna win because we are in the age of convenience and you know to be honest i think also there's an argument around the
Valve apps happened originally because there was no alternative. Now we've got an alternative. Is there a good reason to carry on using them? But we're going to be talking all around that sort of thing and maybe mentioning some of our weirder... weirder amps or unusual things or things we think you should check out as well. Whilst we're on that note, before we get into the meat and potatoes of this episode...
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It's great if you're into techy stuff or mouse stuff, but if you like classic stuff as well, Their Tone King and their Morgan Suite are absolutely fantastic. I really like their Mesa Boogie, sorry, present company. There you go. I want to get into that suite, and I think that it's very good. as well. I have it. It's fantastic.
Do you? Yes. I really want to, I think, and we'll talk about this maybe when we're talking about amps a little bit later, but I really want to improve my Mesa Boogie knowledge and I really want to get into them as an amp brand. over the rest of the year there. Yeah, I just, you know what, it was the festival, I just heard a particular band called Every Hell, and their bass player was using a great big Mesa Boogie all valve amp, and I'm not sure what it was.
Because that's the big one. So the 400 also looks incredible. I really like it. It reminds me of the SVT Pro 2. It's the same sort of chassis. It's really cool, but it's like a, if you've not seen it, dear listener, it's like a rack-mountable version. 400 watt rack-mountable, too. It's 400 watt!
not even bass players need 400 watts it did it did then when they came out like mid 90s you know like everything was and also like that era like the cabinets were built in the ones that were built into the road case like everything is just so like it was so industrial and like, it was just very butch, you know, like it was real, like it was like built into a road case, like metal grills, like just,
Very functional, but just, like, yeah, it really tickles my nostalgia. Yeah, exactly. I have a real nostalgic love for that. It was... It was the angle combos that we used to have at GAC and that you could not sell them because I'm talking about, of course, dear listener, I'm mentioning the heyday.
of the guitar amp and keyboard center which is like 2013 to 2017 the real like prime time of when the original nerds were all working on the shop floor there And around that time, also, everyone was buying tweet amplifiers, Fender amplifiers, I mean, it was when Fender were releasing things like the Excelsior and the Vaporizer and all of those things, like weird, like 12, 13 watts.
Everything was designed to be like weird, quirky boutique, and that was really popular. And meanwhile, in the corner, we had these angle combos. I can't remember what they were called. Thunder something. Does anyone know? I'll look it up.
Yeah, that's way outside of my knowledge. Wow, I thought you'd... So, yes, the angle Thunder 50. That's what we had. Like, gorgeous, like, 112. 50 watt all valve combos the sort of things that look like if you picked them up and threw them downwards they would go through the floor to the centre of the earth
They were just proper industrial, that like 90s build quality where I guess it was an aesthetic choice, but it also just seemed like stuff was designed. The number one thing being, will this tour? And yeah, that and like the Gigmaster 15. Gigmaster 15 is a 110-15 watt combo that still has the same look. I love that. That's pure nostalgia. Just have a wall of those now. Exactly. But yeah, that Mesa Boogie bass amp, it was like in a normal chassis.
I have no idea what it was. Yeah, I was sitting here while you were talking and we were chatting. I'm trying to find... What Mesa Boogie? Because it's not the smaller version now. They make the small heads now. Subway or something now. Yeah. which are really, really good. My bassist that plays a lot with my band used one of those. I don't think he does anymore. I think he swapped over to Aguilar at this point.
But I can't think of something that would be in a normal bass head. No. I can. I wonder if it's a guitar head. The Prodigy? The Bass Prodigy? Sorry, I'm doing Google search while we're podcasting. It's rude. They went through a whole range. So it's basically like they had the 400 and then they had a couple other things.
And then, wasn't it like the big block or something I think they had? But then they went through a whole... a whole range of trying to just sort of shift from what they were doing to hit that. hi-fi market that was all around like when like the Eden and Trace and those ones where they just loads of features and that's when they came out with like the Impulse and Sort of that era. But I think maybe it was a big block. I think those are a normal...
Maybe. Yeah. Could be. Could be. I don't know. The walkabout. I've mentioned it before on the podcast, the Walkabout was my favourite thing because around this time was when Ben Kenny, is it Kenny? Ben Kenny, the Incubus bass player. He got the job as the Incubus bass player. Of course, he is a guitarist and a Mesa Boogie endorsed guitar player.
So when he moved across to playing bass for Incubus, they said, we're going to supply him a bass rig. At that point in time, the only bass rig they did was the, what was it called again? Walkabout. Walkabout, which was a 115. combo in like red tolex or like burgundy tolex and so at incubus gigs he just had a wall of like six or eight of these ridiculous tiny combos Which is great. I loved it. I think that looks rad. I'm here for it. Yeah, well, this is the thing. Mesa Piggy stuff is really cool.
Yeah. I mean, they were one of the original sort of custom shoppy ones where you could custom order your Tolex and do all that before other people were doing that. And there's so many red... like burgundy wine mist.
snake skin like snake skin makes a boogie like cabs around especially in california because they're northern california based and you just you would find so many of them just in the shops, like they ended up being one of the ones you would find quite a bit, which, you know, for me, it was all PV when I was growing up, you know, it's like, I moved to Orange County and it's like, Oh, it's Mason Boogie and everything around.
Is that true? Do you find, like, would things be state-specific in the US, like gear tastes? Some can be. For example, this was a, don't get me wrong, 70s, 80s, PV was all over there, all over the place. But in Mississippi specifically, because it was made here, it was here.
every music store in mississippi was a pv dealer it feels like i see pv was was my town as well because it was like mpeg wasn't really a thing really crate hadn't become like a thing yet harkey was sort of sort of came in as like a premium option but it yeah it was it was like all the bands all the clubs if they had backline it was all pv and it was all black widows it was all you know it was
classic pv of like this the gray stripes on the side like there's a great video i discovered recently of david allen co in the i think it's the late 70s but don't quote me in maybe the 80s Actually, no, I think it's got to be the 80s. I mean, there's lots of short, short. There's like the big, big blown out hair. But it is, and Warren Haynes is playing second guitar with him at the time. Wow. And there's just walls of PV, PA, bass.
the pedal steel, the keys player, every guitar player, everyone's PV gear. If PB doesn't start using that in their ads at some point soon, I don't know what they're doing. I should. Well, whilst we were talking about this, Philip has actually located, he has discovered the amplifier we're talking about. It is the Buster Bass 200 by Mesa Boogie. Looks like between 97 and 2000.
And it is a proper, you know, just that sort of standard Mesa Boogie valve amp chassis with a simple selection of, you know, a basic three-band EQ, but then a separate... seven band on the on the other side and I think Maybe a switch to be able to bring that in or out. Ya, tetap terasa. Yeah, that's great. It looks fantastic. I mean, it looks like this one sold for £950. Of course, it's from Philadelphia.
But they must be... Not sold. It is for sale. Oh, it's still for sale. Oh, yes. Sorry, it is. Wow. Well, there you go. Listeners in Philadelphia. Let's see if Jay's going to Philadelphia anytime soon. Well, I mean, do you know what? I... I, when, when, um,
I guess there's slightly behind the curtain, dear listener. Obviously, when brands want to do stuff with guitar nerds, they want to see our demographics and everything, and who listens to us where. I've never updated them. I've checked it like... I realised I hadn't actually checked our demographics for three years. I was running on old information. So I updated it at the start of this year. And previously we were 34% U.S. So still like our strongest listenership, we are 49.3% US listenership.
You're welcome. USA. USA. Because three years ago is about when I started showing up. That's true. This is all you, Philip, and JD. This is when both of you became sort of more active. Wow. Yeah. That's it. It's nothing to do with me anymore. We'll check post tariffs and see what it is. Yeah, exactly. But... But yeah, there you go. Mesa Boogie, they're great. Philip, didn't you pick up a Mesa bass rig recently? No, I picked up an Ampeg recently. I found a used V4B, which...
If you're going for that Ampeg sound, that's the amp. It's 100 watts, but it's tube, 100 watts. That's what you want. And the guy selling it... I drove to Florida to pick this up, which was stupid. That sounds far away. That is very far away. That is like It was five and a half, six hour drive one way. Okay. It's very far. But I needed a rig. I was providing back line for a festival and I didn't want to, there's not really any good place to, I didn't want to turn around and rent a rig.
for a festival that was renting from me. Like, I really didn't want to do that. And if I was going to buy something, I wanted something I wanted and I would actually use. I don't play that many bass gigs, but I do pick them up here and there. and um i i knew i wanted a v4b i love the sound of that rig uh that amp i've heard heard them used a few times and i found this guy in florida selling one and he was selling the head
and two of the 2x12 matching cabs for less than I could buy a head and cab for, typically. So I was like, okay, I'm driving to Florida, apparently. And so it... Sounds freaking killer. is happening on of July and this wondrous event for 2024.
out on socials for a big old helping This is where the weird cultural phenomenon, which is bass players being absolutely fundamentally opposed to lifting anything, is really helpful like guitar players still happy to play that but for some reason it's really wormed its way into bass culture where everyone was like unless the entire rig fits in the front of my gig bag I'm not interested
It's like the reverse of what we had to live with since they got off bass. I also don't carry a pedal board when I play bass. You should have a compressor. It's fine, I'll let you. One panel board of compressors. You're always on, you're sort of like a bit of a fun, a colour compressor and then a limiter at the end. That's it, that's exactly what you had. A compressor at the start and the end at least.
And your whole, if you were recording it, your entire way of form would just look like a laser beam. Which is what every producer has said is preferable. I don't know what to do with it or play with the pig. Yeah. A B-15 would have been an option as well. I have a B-15. I love my B-15. but my B-15 is from 74, so it's not one of the highly as collectible 60s. It's still great. It still has the octal preamp tubes, as it should, but...
That thing has seen sunshine three times in its existence. One when the original owner bought it in 74. One, when he passed and it went to a tech to get it checked up and brought to spec. And three, when I brought it home. So it's pristine. I'm not taking that out. I'm definitely not renting it to a blues festival. It's just not happening. So I needed something that I felt comfortable. Letting other people use. To be really honest.
Yeah, I understand that. That makes sense. I mean, a B-15 feels like blues music. Amp of choice, but I absolutely understand. And, you know, the 100 watts probably was. a little bit helpful yeah yeah it definitely helped with a little more power um it was a it was a pretty small venue though so you know i we probably could have gotten away with the 30 watts out of the b15 But yeah, just that I don't feel comfortable. taking it out, especially if I'm not the one using it.
Or I didn't even want it rattling around in the car. Yeah. I don't even want that out of it. I want to roll it in when I need it for recordings and roll it out when I'm not using it. And that's it. That's the extent of its movement. That's fine. That makes sense. That makes sense. Now, I do want to talk about amplifiers and stuff and sort of their application in the modern world.
So I went to this Strange Forms Festival over the weekend in Leeds. I drank far too much cider and far too much Jägermeister, and I have incredible acid reflux now. But it was... It was very good, a very wonderful festival at a club called Brudenel in Leeds. Wonderful, wonderful venue. And this festival... Sold out. I think it was the 10th year of the festival. I think maybe the first time it sold out. And fantastic.
You know, weird, avant-garde, interesting, odd music, full of very unusual bands, often with terrible names, but they tend to be good nonetheless. Actually, the two best bands I saw had the two worst names. And one band were called Socks and Ballerinas, which, you know, both terrible, terrible names, but both bands absolutely fantastic. and one thing that i did notice was a real consistency was the absolute lack of amplification there were some
amplifiers there. There were a lot of bands over from Ireland and just for travelling purposes people were using stripped back versions of their rigs for that we had the band by curious who used jazz choruses they instead were using like some orange combos and it frankly didn't sound nearly as good it's still fantastic performance but of course if you're a jazz chorus band and you're forced to use orange amps it's going to be very very different
But the one thing I found was a real consistency was the lack of amplifiers. And the thing that I saw the most of were varieties of universal audio pedals. Oh, really? Yeah, that's right. I saw the Dream. What's the full name of the Dream? Dream 65. 65. I saw that. more than a few times. In fact, probably the best guitar tone there was from a band called Alma. who...
It's like a one-man band who switches between playing keys and playing guitar. Plays this lovely old 80s Japanese Telecaster. Has a massive pedalboard that is used a range of amplifiers over the years and a couple of years ago moved away from having a couple of Vox AC30s on stage. to having a Tone Master, one of the Fender Tone Master, I can't remember, the 212 one, I think, whatever that is. The twin, yeah.
that and i guess that was him getting away from val for the first time but this time and bearing on his guitar time was absolutely incredible it was just the dream pedal on the end of his pedal board and it sounded absolutely brilliant So, you know, it feels like it's happening more and more, you know, people not using actual amplifiers on stage.
Nanocortex have just done a big update. Sorry, I guess Neural DSP have done an update of their nanocortex to basically open up the nanocortex to almost be what everyone hoped it would be in the first place. loads more effects and things on there. And two notes have just... have just released their Reload 2. Of course, this is hot on the hills of the Bosses Tube Amp Expander Mini. Core. Core? There we go.
And, yeah, like I posted at the start of it, it feels like a bit of a fight back for valve amplification, like Helix and Quad Cortex aren't going to take over, like there's some hope, there's some light for valve amplification. I have this conversation a lot. I go to a lot of shows. I go to a lot of festivals. I go to a lot of... I don't play as often as I'd like, but I play a bunch. I keep saying that I don't gig very often, but I'm already over.
20 gigs for this year, and I feel like some people are like, that's pretty often. That's pretty often. It's not like it used to be, y'all. That's all I'm saying. But when I was scrapping for a living. I've still only seen someone using a model or twice in ever, ever. And both of those times, they were big acts using them. And once I saw the bassist for the Wallflowers had a quad cortex, but he also had an Ampeg 8x10 and SVT on stage. And the guitarist for Sister Hazel was using an axe effect.
And so everyone else I see is still using amplifiers of some variety. I just went to a blues festival. Now, granted, it's a... I don't know how to talk about the joint festival that happens in Clarksdale every April that I play. That's where I provided some backline. But, you know, most of these folks aren't world-renowned bands. Some of them aren't even touring bands, but some are.
Every single performer out of the literally 200 acts that performed during this festival used amplifiers. Right. No modelers to be seen. So what you're saying is I'm getting blinded by this area of music, of weird, progressive... sort of avant-garde math rock and prog and stuff that I'll go and see. I guess they're more...
gear-centric. What do you think, JD? Do you see things disappearing at the shows that you go to? I don't know. I feel like it's a real mix because I see a lot of bands who are on... tour in the UK but are in but are touring very light like they're not they're not they often don't have their own you know like they're not bringing stuff with them or if it is they're just using backline
And I know loads of people. I have seen a lot of Helix. I've seen some Cortex, you know, here and there. Those are the two big ones. Metal shows, you see like Fractal and stuff still because, you know. Are you tired of being told to pipe down, pet? Calm down, love. Or worst of all, get a grip? Oh, it just gets us so riled up even thinking about it. Well, if you're sick and biting your tongue, we're here to help you let it all hang out.
the chaos and make some noise. I'm Angela Scanlon. And I'm Vicky Patterson. Our new podcast is the unapologetic group chat you've always wanted. Introducing Get a Grip. So if you're done with holding back, this is your space. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. ACOS is the home of podcasting, including The High Performance Podcast and The Wild.
it's just easier to have a silent stage, but it's, it's, it's pretty rare. I will say I, I see it more in rehearsals I go to, where I'm playing with different people and they'll bring some different multi-effects or some different... sort of set up that is just their sort of rehearsal rig that might be a capture of what they have and then when they go play a show
They're like, all right, well, now it's worth me bringing my rig and everything. But if you're using public transport... it's different It's quite different, like in London at least. Yeah, I was going to say, like being in sort of the central London music scene.
It must be you're more beholden to making sure everything's portable. Certainly one of the bands you play in, your guitarist plays called Cortex, right? Yeah, it's just Cortex, which makes me... I just want to have a matching rig, because I love when you have, like, I had a band in the States where we had matching, basically matching roots. We both had the Mesa Boogie V-Twin preamp pedals into Sound City heads and everything. And it was just, it was,
It was just, it was just cool. And it was before anyone was really doing that besides the sort of Chicago scene of everyone when like you could still get a Travis Bean for under a grand and stuff. Cause I was like, what are these dumb things? I remember those days. Yeah. But it was, yeah, it was sort of that. And it was before I then just went full, eaten everything. But it was, yeah, I quite liked that.
that vibe. And also I, it would be really convenient to have something like that because of the different groups I play in to be able to like wildly swap something. But I think there is a real
I think, you know, I still see amps most of the time. I also say, like, it's been really wild to me to play pub gigs, and I haven't yet in London had a... anyone bat an eye when I ask for in-ear feeds or something you know they'll just be like oh yeah cool what do you need and it's like I was really not expecting that because it still seems a bit
big stage and posh in a sense like it doesn't just seem like oh i'm just playing a puppet i was like well there's loads of programming that i need to hear so yeah yeah and and for me it I see all the good reasons to have. I use a Helix. I have one. I've used it for gigs very rarely because we're not going to go into it. It doesn't inspire me, but whatever. the thing that The car culture in the US
Everyone has a car. Everyone's driving to their gigs. Nobody's taking public transit unless you live in one of the big public transit cities. Chicago, LA is okay, I guess. New York City, you know, the big public transit.
there makes a lot of sense to have, you know, a small portable rig that I can carry on a bus or a train. Um, I wish we had more trains. That'd be great. Um, Guitar artist sponsored by Stringjoy Guitar Strings The thing that I love most Stringjoy are also so you stole for them to be better
like, well, string drive and they're available string string choice strings are available at But also, there's such a variety of venues, and venues in the U.S. don't invest in PA and sound the way it sounds like y'all do in the U.K. So I don't trust sound guys in the U.S., and I was a sound guy in the U.S. I don't trust them.
usually in a lot of the places that I'm playing and that a lot of my contemporaries are playing, even up to a certain level, like well above I've ever played, PA is carrying mostly vocals and maybe a kick drum, and that's it. Nothing else is even getting miked. Everything's sound on stage. also when you get above that and you're backlining and traveling that way. You're not backlining a quad cortex. You're not backlining a helix. You're backlining an amp. It's going to be a...
a beat-up twin reverb from the early 2000s, or it's going to be a Hot Rod Deluxe, or maybe one of those, not the good Chinese import Voxes, one of those bad Chinese import Voxes. You know, so... you see that a whole bunch so you know people are taking their own amplifiers and even the times i've seen a modeler Guess what? They've got an FRFR with them because they need to treat it like an amplifier. Because there is no in-air feed unless you borrow your own monitoring system.
which I'm totally here for. I've got a band that start getting ready to gig a whole bunch more, and I think that's the route I'm going to go, is I'm going to invest in a small, portable in-air rig. Yeah, that's... See, the thing I think I find is, yeah, I guess maybe that's the case then in the UK. Maybe even small venues are geared up with better PA systems. But I... Field-like products like the Tube Amp Expander, which is sort of what I wanted to get onto, was
I love the idea that they can bring back Valve apps. They can make them portable because all of a sudden your volume is controllable. They're far more usable on silent stages. You can run them more easily into things like in-ear setups. It gives you all the versatility. You know, not obviously the effects, but it gives you a bunch of versatility that was previously excluded.
whilst if we're talking about just using it with maybe a tube amp expander in the head, that's portable enough for you to get to and from a show, which means Dear listener, I think a lot of us can actually get back involved with weird old valve amp.
because they're really cool and it made me sort of start thinking oh i should i should i should get a tube amp expander because here i'm just running like either a line out from a katana or i have the the quad cortex plugged in or i'm running a neural dsp plugins straight in and they don't take pedals in the same way certainly they're not designed to that's not their purpose but
with something like a jubamp expander i can get weird because of course jd i really i was very envious of that combo that you had yeah what was it that fenton wild the fenton wild combo 15-1-12, 1-15? Yeah, I think it was a 12 in it. So it's basically like a British B-15. But as if they had never seen a B-15. Yeah. So...
It's like if a kid describes a dinosaur to you and you try to draw it, it was sort of that. But it was But it was great because, and that was the thing, like when I, that was sort of the first time I got into using like two notes or anything along that, but it was one. It really enabled me to use that as my at-home recording rig, because I...
I live in row housing, you know, so it's like, I can't, or I don't feel comfortable like being super loud. I think everyone would be fine with it, but you know, I don't want to record loud, but I, If I'm recording a Valve amp, I want it to be at a certain place, and being able to have that amp and have options put on top of it was really good.
I think the thing for all of these, like the... you know like with the two notes and the boss that we're talking about is like it's just it allows you to have the amp you actually want but to use it in multiple contexts as opposed to Like for me, and also I've been, you know, doing some work with like the Musicians Union and stuff around like...
you know like what levels rehearsal like sound pressure levels rehearsals should be at and i've come from very loud settings and trying to get rehearsals at a specific like under 100 db right certainly forgot to go lower but you know it's like
Being able to have that but it's it's not quite as fun when you're like fighting someone's amp or you have to be turned down and it doesn't quite do the same thing so like being able to just in a rehearsal context use the same amp at the right wattage at the right loudness level is
is enough most of the time and the other thing for me i just last bit on this is like like with the cortex And those sorts of modelers, if you're not using loads of effects of where they really shine is being able to do loads of stuff and wildly different stuff with the press of a button. But if you're
If you're basically running a light overdrive and some delay, it's really overkill. So you're paying for all this stuff you don't really need or use. And I know there's other options out there for that, but it just sort of feels... it feels like yeah like what you're saying it's like if you have a pretty simple rig being able to do this is such a cool option and i really hope that it I really hope it does mean that we all just buy valve amps, but usually after I've seen one that I want to buy.
And then people don't buy it out from under me. Thank you. So since I was like, you know, I was reading up on the new two notes and it sounds absolutely fantastic. Also, look. incredible. If you haven't seen it yet, dear listener, it's a great bit of aesthetic marketing by Two Notes. It's premium studio looking. It's premium looking. We all know that wood end panels on any gear makes it desirable. Look how many June 6th. pedals, Behringer's soul.
because they had wood end panels on a... I'm not sure they're real wood. Yeah. The Reload 2, if you haven't seen it, dear listener, has two gorgeous walnut... end panels on them, but with feet cut into the wood panels so it sits up at a slight angle. Terrible if you're trying to put a drink on top of your amp, but... Which you shouldn't do, but we all do.
But it looks gorgeous. Super retro aesthetic as well with the controls. I'm still going to go with tube amp expanded core. Partially because I'm not sure Matt would forgive me. And the other half is £849 is the price of the new two notes. I was just looking for it in dollars as 50% of the audience don't understand the pound. $1,200 US dollars. Which is a big chunk when you consider a tube amp expander is 600 quid in the UK. $700. $700.
It's a big difference. It's a huge difference. Does the two notes offer enough features to warrant that price tag? on top of what you get from a two-pound pickspander. I've not done enough digging on the new Reload 2, but what I don't think, just based on hearing some other folks talk about it, I don't think it's the replacement for the captor. I think we're still talking captor versus the tube amp expander more than we're talking the reload 2. I think reload 2 looks like
a studio tool. Yeah. I think really it is. And I'm sure it sounds great. I think the introduction, I think this is the first time that I know of that they have something with the Roman numeral two, like they've revamped it, like a relatively new product. Here's the second generation of it. Could this lead us into a captor X2 or a captor whatever they want to call it, double X. Captor triple X is a totally different thing. Please don't use that one.
I think it's really cool that we're getting into this world where the merging of the technology is making it possible. I still use Captor X's. I really, really like the tube amp expander core. I want to get a hold of one at some point.
But I've gigged the Captor X to make it easier to just get my sound live. But I still like a speaker on stage because monitoring systems usually aren't that fantastic and whatever um so now i just i carry my own microphone and a plexiglass shield and i try to avoid putting the plexiglass shield up if i can but um But I think these tools, I think more than...
These tools being available and people can start using them and carrying them live. I think what we're going to start seeing more and more and more of is modern amp companies. building this tech into their amps like Rev does. Rev brought out the new D25 with Joey Landreth recently. They've got the D25, the D20, the G series. All have the capture technology built into the head. Do you know Ashdown did that first? Yeah, I do. Well, Ash John just doesn't have that rap for guitar amp. No, exactly.
But yeah, I completely agree with you. Cutting that sort of technology into a Valve Ambit is a fantastic idea because it gives you the best of both worlds. But keeping that technology separate gives you the option of exploring some... weirder stuff but also vintage stuff i mean you know he's talking mentioning that phantom while i was looking around i was like well if i get a tube amp expander
I could get something really fun that I would never think about getting. So I started having a little hunt around reverb at valve amplifiers from the 60s and the 70s. And of course, When, as you know, JD, as you found finding that Fenton Mile, when you look at amplifiers from the 60s and 70s in the UK, you get some really awesome weird stuff because whilst Fender were certainly making their way over here, an awful lot of amps weren't. So...
And when it comes to bass amplification, things got even weirder. So my favorite thing I found at the moment, I'll post this link. on the Discord and on the Facebook group, dear listeners. You've got to check it out. It is a 1963 Selma Futurama bassist major. This amplifier is the head and the cabinet that you get in this particular suite of amplifiers.
The head even has catches on the side of it, allowing it to lock into place on the top of the cabinet, making it a sort of faux combo. That's so smart. Yeah, it's a great idea. It's got two inputs. And the only controls are volume, volume and tone. You've just got one master tone stack. And obviously, you know, it's two separate volumes for the two separate.
inputs there's no info on whether those inputs are different i doubt that they are but it's uh it's you know so that all you're going to be hearing is the sound of the amplifier itself the valves itself running into that 15 inch speaker cab on an old 60s selma it's stuff like that that you can get that's just that you probably wouldn't gig or really be able to.
get the most out of they're either they're going to be too quiet or too janky and i think being able to use something like a tube amp expander with it to actually Make it into a super cool product is a great way to get more out of these things. But, yeah, that's been my hunt now is to find weird.
old school stuff. Well, I'm going to recommend you hunt because I had one a while back and I moved it on because somebody really, really wanted it and I wasn't using it. I don't want to go back because I can find more of these. the old K amplifiers from the 50s and 60s.
They are so cool. They're just, I had a 503, they call it the vibrato master, so it's got a bias trim circuit built into it. Three input like maybe 10 watts i don't even think they're 10 watts um but they sound so vibey and cool they've got this really like mid-century modern cabinet with this like splatter art thing on the grill cloth. Oh, I've just found, I've just found them. This is Pure 50s. Oh, it's so good. And they're
They're so vibey, and the sound is so cool. It's not Fender, decidedly not Fender, Vox, Marshall. It's none of those things. So don't expect, like, crystalline cleans. Don't expect... The chime that you get from Fox's. It doesn't even quite dirty up like you would think a small low wattage amp is. It's very much its own sound. And I love those. They're like K model three numbers, like that entire series of amps. I'm looking real quick on, on reverb just to try to get some model numbers too.
use as illustrations are like a 704 there's an 804 there's obviously the the five series that i had talked about um They're really rad. They're usually a volume, a tone control, and in the case of those that have tremolo, which they call vibrato, by the way, there's a knob just for speed, and that's it. They are so vibey. And they're really, really, really affordable. I'm looking at a, let me find it again here. There was a smaller vibrato equipped amp. Um... Like a 503, like $350.
Wow, that's a great price. For a 1950s amplifier. So the 704 is really, this is my thing, as a big fan of the silvertone amping case. The K704 is a suitcase amplifier. It is. It literally locks into the top half of a suitcase for travel and then becomes a complete amplifier. It is as thin as a suitcase, dear listener. Think about that! That's what you want. You can probably fall over if you knocked it. They're beautiful. Yeah, the 704 with vibrato, the K-Vanguard. is a super, super vibey game.
I think they get slept on. Don't get me wrong. The cabinets are trash. The chassis are thin metal. These were budget... like catalog amplifiers so don't don't expect robust you can you know throw it down a flight of stairs and it still work you throw it down a flight of stairs you have firewood But if you want a very cool, unique sound, Highly recommend looking at things like the old K. Everybody knows the Silvertone stuff. Nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about these cool K amplifiers.
Very cool. Very cool. What about you, JD? Where would you go if you were buying something vintage and weird? rebuy my fentanyl I shouldn't have gotten rid of no I mean it was a great amplifier I needed to get rid of it um i don't know i'm a lot of a lot of the the kms are things i was thinking about but it's like for me here what's interesting is is just all the different like all the whim stuff and all the like like selmer and things which
we just don't you don't find as much in like in like pawn shops in the states and stuff like that so it's like for me it'd be like it's like Anything just weird you know that sort of makes it or like probably old French or old Italian kind of amps that you can get. Something like that. But a lot of them will be that same vibe, like the K, where it's like chipboard.
and then basically paper covering. So it's like a Luan laminate or something like that. It's just holding everything together. Your tone is the glue that has the paper stuck to each other still. Which is great, but I don't know. It's also made me think about maybe actually properly fixing my silver tone because i got one of the 1482s um which which was my grandma was my grandparents bought it new in 63 64 and it's still it's still great and
I've always been thinking about swapping transformers and stuff so I could use it here properly. I need to recap it and stuff, but maybe it's worth putting that in and actually... Actually making that like my main, right? Because it is, I mean, I was young, but I still think my, it's my favorite tone I've ever gotten was was that amp. Two, bass-wise, but also that amp with a strat and a metal plectrum.
uh playing along to like dookie you know trying to get like trying i was like oh it's like no distortion or anything but just turning it up really loud so it was like crazy i was like hey this is pretty good And then it turns out I have a deep love of Travis Bean and old trainers and stuff. The amp trainers, not trainers as shoes here.
Yeah, I think if you want something that sounds great on bass, that's affordable and vintage and cool, you hit the nail on the head with WEM, I know that they're back now, which is brilliant, thanks to Hiwa. But if you can find a WEM Dominator Mark 1, they go for not a lot of money. They are little... little bass amp combos with that classic Wem grill cloth on the front. You can pick them up for like 300 quid, dear listener. And they're just...
They were made in the 70s and they look absolutely like the 70s, but they go for no money. They're very cool. Adding in something like... a tube amp expander to expand how you can record with this and play live with it would be a really cool thing. I think, just to add one more, because JD made me think of it. because I had one in the past and I sold it to a buddy who I think still gigs it. If you are looking for something that kind of does both bass and guitar, Um...
Definitely, there's a whole crew of people who already know about these, and if you're in that range, if you're those folks, awesome. I'm glad. But there's a whole generation of folks who have no idea about these. the trainer t-r-a-y-n-o-r y-b-a-1 basemaster It is a 40-watt tube head that is like three component changes away from a JTM-45. Wow. This looks incredible. I've never seen anything like this. Traynor really didn't make it over here at all. It's Canadian. They barely made it to the US.
But yeah, they are super affordable. I'm looking at one on reverb right now. Tolex is a little beat up for $675. It's a 40-watt all-tube amp from the late 60s. Yeah, that's awesome. They're so cool. They have four inputs. You can jump them just like old marshals. Um, they sound great for bass and guitar. Um, big time sleeper amps still to this day despite people preaching about them all the time whatever happened to um amps that were suitable for both
guitar and bass. I don't think they ever were. I think that bass wasn't Because I think that was the thing. It was like why the SVT became like the first real bass rig. Right. Is that it was the first one that could actually reproduce reproduced bass at the sound levels that guitars were being reproduced at where everything else was like it's like why all I mean, I love all the tones, but if you listen to all the bass stuff from the 60s,
it sounds like you're playing it through a paperboard K bass amp, you know, like something where it's just like, and they're just using guitar speakers that aren't really any different. You're just... Basically, you blow speakers every third gig and you just replace them and go, I guess it's fine. Because they're not running a pedal board with multiple compressors in front of them. When you think that the... The bass amplifier. predates the electric bay What?
The 1949 was the first bass amplifier. That predates the Precision Bass. The Ampeg made the Super 800. It was made for... amplifying acoustic basses. Oh, right. And because you've got to remember that even into the 50s, after the precision bass, which, listeners, I know, yes, there's at least one other electric bass that we know of. actually predated the Precision, but first commercially available successful electric bass.
Even through the 50s, bassists were still primarily playing upright bass. Yeah. And so these 50s amplifiers were still being used for upright bass rather than electric bass. Guitar players weren't playing at the volume. Rock and roll had not really been invented yet, even though... Freaking Gate Mouth Brown was doing it in 1948 and 49. I still think he was the actual first rock and roll artist.
It's a whole vibe. And so these bass amps didn't have to get as loud as we need them to once rock and roll became a thing. I think what I was thinking of, to be honest, when I was saying amps that are suitable for both, because I'm aware that things like the 50-watt Vox bass amps from the 60s really weren't doing a great job. The B-15. Sorry? The B-15. The B-15 was great, but it was a recording amplifier. It's a small show amplifier. I guess I was thinking of Hiwa.
as you know a company that do a really good job of actually doing both even now like they have their uh their dr88 which is part of their custom shop it's a hundred watt amplifier that is as good on on bass as it is guitar. I mean, actually, it does say designed for bass tones and excels for down-tuned guitars, baritones, or just a different flavour of KT88 based tones. It is an incredible amplifier. JD, this is the one I blew up at a...
Birmingham Guitar Show and it settled the fire alarms off. Yeah, and then everyone freaked out because it was set by the door and people thought they were trying to nick it. It was fun. But to be fair, it did sound incredible. And we've played that same amp since. And I know it's fine. It was. It was blown up because it was set up quickly in a hurry, like all the cab configurations.
Yeah, that's right. There's nothing wrong with the amp itself. No, no, the amp, yeah, worth noting, I will make incredible amps. Yeah. This is an incredible amp. It's just that they had like an elaborate cab switching and it was running some weird homage and I was driving it quite hard. Yeah, it was very loud. And it did a pop and then there was some smoke. And then I was like, that's the smell you don't want to smell. And then we like turned and ran away. So like, like when you.
throw a frisbee into someone's garden or whatever and it's just like yeah we're like squealed like I remember it came back later. The thing with Hiwats are their entire shtick, the entire thing they were built on was loud, clean. And when we say loud clean, we don't mean like Fender loud clean. They took an entirely different approach. There's a reason we have to think of them There's Fender, there's Marshall, there's Vox, and then there's Highwatt.
It's its whole own category. Those amps were so clean, so powerful, that the same amp could be used by guitarists, bassists, synth players, whatever you needed to plug into it. It could handle it. yeah they're they're like pa yeah like there was that was the thinking was more along the lines of like like reproduction of sound as opposed to like what we think of guitar amps
especially now as like an integral part of the overall sonic experience. Like they were like, we need to take this and make it loud. We want whatever you're putting into it to be loud, which is what a lot of the old amps were. initially meant to do it's just that designs were so poor you know like in the most beautiful way but they like Most great sounding guitar amps
would give electrical engineers fits as far as like, this is the worst circuit I've ever seen in my life, but it sounds great. Why do you think bass amplification sits outside of that? For guitar amplification, you're absolutely right. The tone of an amp is an integral part. It's far beyond actually amplifying the sound. You're defined as a guitarist by whether or not you play a Fender amp or a Vox or an Orange. Those are all...
utterly, utterly different flavours that completely change everything else you plug into it and your whole style is dependent on it. With bass amplification, I think, certainly by modern standards, when you consider that most new amps now for bass are Class D normally, which means all of them are using the same ice chip. So the power stage is always the same. We're talking about slight differences in EQ curves. But really, I don't think bassists are looking for...
tone impact from an amplifier. I think they're looking for just the sonic reproduction and everything else comes from elsewhere.
I was going to say, for me, a lot of that, I agree, but I think so much of it is about the role and the band. At first, what you really need is to be able to have low end and because the frequencies that and as we've joked about about like needing four compressors on a puddle board you know it's like the the frequency response of bass is such that you you have to control it in different ways because plucking, fingerstyle, slap all have wildly different transients.
that are a nightmare for anyone to deal with and then mostly i think a lot of bass players like it's it's also that thing that used to be the old joke that like you know, guitar players will bring five guitars to a game and a bass player only owns one bass that, you know, like maybe does a couple of different sounds or you have a bass that can do lots of different sounds, but it's one instrument.
I think it's just that thing of being able to have that control all sort of right at your... your fingertips and i do think there is a using the amp to shape your overall tone but even if you're really looking at the amps like far end of spectrums like like Trace Elliott, which always has, it's always a Trace Elliott sound, like, and it only sounds like Trace Elliott, you know, or Ampeg has its own thing, but, but other than that, everything else is sort of
It is just a bass tone that you want. Can I get a little bit of grit? Can I do a little bit of sculpting on the EQ? And then...
That's really about it. You're really changing gig or, you know, gig dependent, like whatever the room sounds like, or how, you know, full of like hot blood bags it is. And also, you got to think about what is the... signature voice of an ensemble, of a band, of a group, in the vast majority of groups in the world the signature sound the identifiable portion of a band that separates them yes there's a myriad there's myriad things but the most important is the voice of the singer
And in the bands where there is a second voice, it's almost always the guitarist which needs to stand out as unique and identifiable and be its own thing. There are very few bands. And I'm sure listeners, you're all screaming different band names as I say this, but yes, there are some. There are very few bands that are defined by the sound of the bass guitar. Just like there are very few bands that are defined by the sound of the drum.
But I would say also, if they are defined by the sound of the bass guitar, it's not the amplifier, it's that that bass player will be effects heavy. Yeah. Or maybe that bass player has a particular... style that's take a take super stereotypical talk about um Paul McCartney's bass playing. He plays bass very lyrically.
He doesn't sit and rock a Motown groove the way we think of a lot of bass players or anything else. Download any Beatles tab and it will be five pages long because he doesn't repeat himself. Exactly. so yeah I get that yeah okay fine that's a point well made because yes you know like yeah if you listen to John Paul Jones One of the most famous bass players of all time. Tonally, characterly, like...
characterfully. It doesn't have that many identifiable features that would separate him from anything else. I feel like what separated John Paul Jones
was the fact that he played bass. He also played mandolin. He also played organ. He also played the other keys parts on all those records. He played bass with his feet at the same time. Yeah. You know, yeah. He was... Later on, he's playing 12 strings. Yeah. And you're just like... obviously he's amazing he's amazing anyway that does in fact bring us to the end of this
episode of the Guitar Nerds podcast dear listener thank you very much for joining us we are going to I'm going to head over to the Patreon with my American Ensemble and we're going to chat about some more stuff there we're going to talk about bits of bass that I've picked up recently and yeah we're going to talk a little bit about
Clons as well. Oh, yeah. But yeah, do join us. And King of Tones. And King of Tones. Oh, yeah. I didn't ask you about that. We're going to talk about King of Tones as well, dear listener. So do join us over on patreon.com forward slash guitar nerds. Before we go, I just want to thank our top-tier Patreon supporters, without whom none of this would be possible. So thank you very much.
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Listeners, because you're not watching, you can't appreciate that Joe puts his entire body into that. Quite a lot. Quite a lot. I have to. I have to. Thank you very much, dear listener. We'll be back next week with more of this guitar nerdery. Farewell.
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