Effecting change

As a sequel to the amp retrospective, I've decided to go through all the noteworthy multi-effect units that I've encountered over the years



These were the first two multi-effect units I ever owned. This was way back in the day, when Zoom still had a name for themselves. They were dirt cheap back then, pretty much the cheapest thing on the market. They were neither particularly tweakable nor did they sound very good, but I guess looking back, they were a decent introduction into the world of effects. They were sure as heck cheaper than buying a whole bunch of individual analog pedals, and they at least gave me an idea of what different effects sounded like. Although, with the stuff available on the market these days, I can't honestly say I'd recommend them to anybody anymore. Not that I really would have back then either...


These were my first real introduction to the realm of multi-effect units. Back then, Boss was pretty much THE name in multi-effect processors. I started out with a GT-3, but then my curiosity got the better of me and I quickly "upgraded" to a GT-5. These units were pretty darn flexible in the effects department. I can't say I cared very much for the direct output and "amp simulation" features, especially in light of the Pod series that stormed the scene shortly after I was playing around with these, but for everything else they were fantastic. Typical of Boss, they were built like a tank. Plus, they even had some fancy features that I still don't see as being common place on the market. What stood out the most for me was the intelligent pitch shifter/harmonizer. Pitch shifters are pretty standard fare these days but you could program the harmonizer for the exact intervals that you wished it to harmonize each note to. I expected nothing less from Boss, and to this day I'm still curious to see how a GT-8 sounds, having had a generally good experience with these units.


Ah the beloved VG-88. I really wish I didn't have to sell this one of. It truly was the most innovative and unique effects unit I've ever laid my hands on. Suffice to say, to get real mileage out of it you needed to use a hexaphonic VG compatible pickup with it. After doing my research I decided to go with the Graphtech GHOST piezo hexaphonic pickup system. I promptly ordered the parts and got a luthier to do the installation on my EBMM Luke. One thing I really hated about the whole setup was the 13-pin cable. The connectors on the the guitar were rather flimsy, and since I was playing out with this back then they took quite a beating on stage. After they crapped out on me twice, I lost faith in the reliability of the whole idea and sold off both the guitar and the VG-88. I suppose it was somewhat fortuitous because shortly after that the VG-99 was announced...

One thing most people don't know about the VG-88 is it doesn't actually work through pitch to MIDI conversion. It actually process each string separately, so rather than having a mono signal, you have six signals being processed in parallel. This allowed the VG-88 to do effects that conventional units could only dream of. Pitch shifting individual strings was possible, making alternate tunings at switch of a patch a reality. It also did guitar/pickup modelling, allowing you to make that hexaphonic signal sound like pretty much any guitar you could think of, and some you couldn't even imagine. I personally feel the guitar modelling left a lot to desire, but I don't think that's where the strength of the VG system really was. It's real magic, was in being able to make your guitar sound completely NOT like a guitar.. and that was something that intrigued me greatly.

Because there was no pitch to MIDI conversion involved that meant that all the problems of "tracking" that pitch to MIDI conversion presents were not applicable. There was none of that false triggering of notes or lag in the conversion nonsense. All conventional guitar techniques as well, like pick slides, could be used without causing a sonic fart. The VG system is something I've been keeping my eye on for quite some time. I just wish they'd update the 13-pin system, I'm sure in this day and age something like a Cat-5 cable could be used to send the necessary output from the guitar to the unit, much like the Variax or the Gibson HD.6X-Pro. Until that happens though I just don't see myself jumping back into the VG system again.

The GI-20 and the XV-2020 reprsent the alternative way to approach the hexaphonix pickup system. Unlike the VG-88, the GI-20 is actually a pitch to MIDI converter. That is, your guitar signal is converted into MIDI messages, and this is used to control and outboard synth unit, in this case, the XV-2020. Unlike the VG-88, you really need to clean up your technique to make these units work for you. Sloppy playing tends to drive the GI-20 a bit mad, which makes it far less useful unless you're say, John McLaughlin. Still, it's more or less the ultimate head turner to strum a chord and have everyone looking for the keyboard that's making the piano sound.

When I had my rack rig, it seemed to make sense to go rackmount all the way, and so after shopping around for a rackmount effects unit I went with the G-major. I didn't really feel like I needed the raw power and flexibility of it's big brother, the G-Force. And while the Rocktron stuff looked appealing, the G-major just seemed like the right blend of quality and price point. Plus, it was a T.C. Electronics unit. Unfortunately, the rotary dials on it were rather crap. They died on me twice, and the power supply decided to quite on me once too. Forum posts tended to reveal that these suffered from reliability issues, and when I decided to abandon the whole rack idea, I can't say I was too sorry to see this go. It did sound pretty good, to my ear at least, and it was pretty darn flexible for my purposes (can't imagine ever needing the flexibility of the G-Force or an Eventide), but this is one of those units which you really need two of. One to plug-and-pray, and the other to have in the repair shop.

I've managed to dig up a couple of clips I did with some of these units to give you an idea of the more... interesting things they were capable of.

VG-88 and PSA1 (EBMM Steve Lukather)

Ryu's Theme from Street Fighter II - This one has heaps of MIDI stuff as well so it's hard to tell what's what I guess :

Little samba piece

Roland GI-20 and XV-2020

Ominous
Ethnic intro

All geared up

Thought I'd do a little retrospective of all the amps/amp related gear I've owned over the years (as far as I can remember)...

My first guitar amp was a Ross RG30. I remember the day I got it.. it was a gift from my father, around the time I bought my Telecaster. My dad actually scoured the classified section of the newspapers to look for a second hand guitar amp. Turns out the person selling it was a down and out musician living in a rundown apartment in Geylang. My Dad and I went down to his place to have a look at the amp. I had absolutely no clue about amps, or guitars for that matter, back then (this was some 13 years ago). What I do remember was the guy who sold it to us.

He was living in a one bedroom apartment in Geylang, the seedy part (if you could call it that). I remember he said he was a professional musician. He had this guitar case, that was covered with stickers from all over the world. Let's just say even as a little kid I could see that that wasn't quite how I'd want to be living out the prime of my life. Later on my Dad said that he wanted me to go down and have a look at where this man was staying, and what he was doing with his life. I think he was trying to warn me about the perils of being a "musician". Over the years it's become clear to me that there's a difference between being a professional musician, and a "musician", but that experience was certainly an eye-opener for me at 13. Suffice to say, that little solid-state Ross amp wasn't all that impressive.

Once I grew tired of the Ross, and that didn't take long at all, I started reading up on affordable amps that I could upgrade to. It was around this time that I came to know of Tech21 NYC, who were renowned for their Sansamp products. I believe it was also around this time that they came out with their first amp, the Tech 21 Trademark 60. I still remember, the only dealer for Tech21 in Singapore at the time was Sinamex. I went down, and they had one in stock, so I gave it a bit of a test run and then started to think about how I could scrounge up enough cash to take one home.

It was a nice little amp, with a few neat touches. The chicken head knobs, the tweed grill, the tolex, and the foot switch. To the 16 year old kid I was back then, it sure felt godlike! I didn't think it sounded half bad either. To be honest, I was rather smitten. To this day I still think it's a neat little amp for the money.


Awhile after the whole solid state thing, something new hit the market. In a way I think of it as a product that's revolutionized the way people thought about amps and DIY recording, and continues to do so til this day. The first generation Line6 Pod was released. While everybody else was doing these foot controlled multi-effect units, Line6 released this red kidney bean shaped product, which downplayed the "effect" part of the equation and put amp modelling right at the forefront.

I remember heading down to City Music after school on several occasions to give that Pod a test run. I wasn't willing or able to buy it first hand though, but a school mate of mine was letting one go at a good price so I got in on some of that action. Was it awesome? No, not really. Was it worth the money? Hell yeah! The Pod introduced me to the world of digital modelling as we know it today. It was relatively versatile, didn't quite do anything fantastically but did a great many things in an acceptable fashion. I remember when the Pod 2.0 update came out. This was way before flashing your firmware at home was a common thing. I was too cheap to pay someone to install it for me so I ordered the EPROM chip online, cracked open the Pod and upgraded that sucker.

Eventually I got bitten by the whole rack-mount bug, and figured hey if I'm going to own a Pod I might as well get the Pod Pro. I was rather disappointed that essentially it was identical to the bean but for an S/PDIF and AES EBU digital output. Although it did come in a nice shiny metallic unit... and everyone knows that that's the whole point of racks. Lots of shiny metal and blinking lights! The Line 6 floorboard was plenty neat as well. It was the first time I'd seen a Cat 5 cable used to connect a MIDI controller to an effects unit, and I remember thinking that it was an ingenius idea. No hassle trying to figure out which pins phantom power was on, no problems with MID cables, no need to figure out how to map CC commands and all that jazz.... That was all to come later for me.

Eventually I decided to go from solid state and digital to tubes and digital. It was around this time that I scoured all of Singapore for a Mesa/Boogie dealer, only to discover... that there was none. I ended up having to order it in from the USA. After thinking about it for some time I decided to go with a 50/50 power amp and a 2x12 Recto cab (I'm pretty sure his had something to do with my then guitar tutor's Triaxis + 50/50 rig and my burgeoning interest in Dream Theater).

I still reckon that power amp and cab sounded pretty righteous, I eventually got the chance to play several gigs with it when I moved to Australia. It was loud. Really loud. Too loud. And now it's gone. Those two units were heavy though, and they definitely taught me something. If you're going to live on the third floor of a building that has no elevator, don't own 60KG of equipment.. it's just not a bright idea.

Eventually I became a bit of a tube head. It was about this time that I discovered a small boutique company, VHT amps. They seemed to have a good rep and I they were coming out with a new product, the VHT GP3. I'd been reading about these on forums for awhile, and they looked really interesting. Again, there was no dealer in Singapore, so I took a gamble and called up VHT in the states to see how much one of these would run me. Thus began the worst business transaction of my life, and if I knew then what I knew now I would never have let them get away with it. The sales rep on the phone told me that since there was no dealer in Singapore, I could get it at dealer price. Hearing this, and seeing that it was a substantial discount from retail, I quickly made all the arrangements, sold off the Pod Pro, wired them the money, and waited patiently for it to arrive. And waited patiently to arrive... and waited patiently to arrive.

And then... I was told, by Steve Fryette no less, that the amp was going to ring me more than double what I was told. After I had paid, in full, the price that was agreed upon. In retrospect, this was *clearly* a breach of contract. VHT wasn't making a loss on this product since they were selling it to me at what dealers paid for it. I, on the other hand, had put myself through great inconvenience to acquire it, inconvenience which I was willing to endure based on what was told to me by a sale representative (who, indisputably, had ostensible, if not actual authority and hence VHT would have been bound to honour the contract).

Long story short, being the naive child I was, I paid up, received a unit with a bent rack ear, and quietly played it for a couple of years before selling it off at a substantial loss. Sure, it did sound pretty good, didn't turn out to be the right amp or me but I won't dispute it sounded good. But since then I've decided I will never, as long as I live, own another VHT product. I refuse to do business with a company who's founder can't do something as simple as honour a simple business deal with a little kid halfway around the world who was legally in the right but too ignorant to do anything about it, even when wasn't in a position to make a loss out of the bargain.

While in Sydney, I picked up a little Marshall Studio 15. This little amp tube amp was *loud*. I remember one Sunday afternoon I was rocking out, and I had it cranked pretty high. So high in fact, that a neighbour from across the road turned up banging at my door. As it turns out, his wife had just come home from the hospital the day before after having given birth, and he was angrier than an elephant that just had it's testicles crushed by a medium sized boulder.

I think he was expecting some sort of altercation, but the situation was diffused rather quickly and he seemed fairly satisfied with the result. Besides, that was the last I ever saw of him. The shop I bought it from claimed that it was the actual amp used on an AC/DC recording back in the 70s but.. who's to say. Not that I really cared either way...

My love/hate relationship with Tech21 eventually led me to acquire a Sansamp PSA-1. For the longest time, I had coveted this unit, having been a fan of their amps and pedals. I eventually found one in Sydney at a good price and couldn't say no. I used it on and off for quite some time, but like all the other Sansamp products I'd owned, I eventually ended up selling it. It was versatile, and had a unique character, but perhaps it's character was just too unique for its own good.

The distorted tones could get pretty over the top but they always sounded a little bit too fuzzy to me, when I was really going for a more liquidy sort of tone. The cleans, I also always found a little lacking. It really couldn't do that JC-120 sort of pristine clean tone. Everything else sounded a little bit harsher than what I was going for, but it certainly had a charm about it despite all my complaints.

Eventually, I grew tired of having to lug all that equipment around and started looking at Line6 again since they'd just released the Pod XT series. I was particularly intrigued by the Pod XT series after reading up about how Line 6 had updated amp and cabinet simulations, and eventually acquired a Pod XT Pro. Unfortunately, after a couple of years of playing with all that tube stuff it was a crushing disappointment. Nothing sounded, good, nothing sounded right, and I got fed up with it and sold it off fairly quickly. Perhaps a little too quickly because for the last 2 years or so, I ended up playing through a Pod XT Live and loving it.

Ahh the Pod XT Live. It's got me singing praises about Line6 all over again. After they updated the cabinet simulations in the 3.0 patch I think it was, suddenly it was like someone breathed new life into the Pod XT series. I ended up using this as my main unit for the last 2 years or so, I think it was, and it was an absolute blast. The model packs were also worth the coin of the realm that I handed over for them. It's really a neat little unit, that pretty much does it all. Much like it's predecessors, it's not perfect. But it sure gives you damn good value for money.

It was versatile, it was portable, it was rugged, pretty much everything I needed at the time. And really, if someone comes up to me looking for an amp that portable, not too loud, versatile, and affordable, I personally couldn't recommend anything better than this. Hook it up to a decent pair of speakers, or a PA, and you're pretty much good to go.

I'll end off with a bunch of recordings that I have lying around for some of these amps, so you can hear for yourself what they sounded like. That speaks a lot louder than any of my words ever could, literally.

NB:These tracks were all recorded at different times over the span of years, so the recording quality and playing varies greatly between them

Pod XT Live (Chambered 6-string Soloway)
My Friend of Misery cover

Other recordings of the Pod XT Live can be heard in the Sand Theft Audio post

VHT GP3 + Mesa/Boogie 50/50 + Mesa/Boogie Recto 2x12 (Ibanez RG2027)
Clean
Heavy
Enslaved
The Fangs In My Carrot
Yoko

Here are some links if you want to find out more about any of these amps/companies

Line 6
Mesa/Boogie
Marshall Amps
VHT
Tech21 NYC

Sand Theft Audio

I was involved in the CSE Revue 2007 - Sand Theft Auto in September this year. It was an awesome learning experience for me, I got to play with some fantastic musicians in the stage band, and the show had me guffawing every night. I also had the chance to score a soundtrack for the first time. I've never done anything quite like that before, and so I did the only thing I knew how. I wrote the parts I could, I stole the parts I couldn't, and I just hoped that it didn't turn out shit. Anyway, here's the soundtrack, with some production notes.

PS: My recording/production skills suck so please ignore the occasional clipping. Also, big thanks to James Douglas who helped with the whole process! He did most of the drum parts and kept me in check to make sure I didn't go overboard with the cheese factor :D And a big thanks to Matt Heike, who played bass guitar on I'm Busier and Surfing rugs. All the synthesized parts were done with Reason 3.0. I used the solid body Soloway 7-string and a Pod XT Live for all guitar parts.

Welcome to Agrabah
Ah the title piece... we started work on this before we had even seen the script. I think we kind of knew that there was going to be this mad, intense rush at the end and we figured it was better to get a head start on this sort of thing. The staccato string parts are inspired by Therion's "The Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah". The melody seemed to flow after that. We really wanted to have a melodic theme to drive the song forward, rather than go with the whole jam/pop/rock oriented concept we had at first. There's a reference to Jaws and Flight of the Bumble Bee (Killer whales! Killer bees!) that are cued to the video. And the cheesy horn fanfare right at the end...

Running Bass
When James told me there was going to be a parkour chase scene, I instantly thought of Banlieu 13 and Tom Yum Goong, but after checking out the music from those movies I just felt that the whole electronic/techno thing didn't quite fit the vibe we were going for. Eventually I decided to rip off "Movimento" off the Gunslinger Girl soundtrack by Toshihiko Sahashi. I took the general vibe of the song and reworked it to fit the melody I'd written for the theme, and it seemed to work well with the footage we had.

The First Breakfast
This scene was particularly dialogue heavy, and for some reason I had Jame Horner's soundtrack for The House of Sand and Fog stuck in my head. I realized that droning, ethereal sound was precisely what I was looking for, and it all sort of came together in one evening.

I'm Busier
Ah, the market place fight scene... This was particularly difficult for me as I remember we kept getting different edits where the timing changed, and once we saw it with the sound effects, we knew that we had to rework the whole thing. This song is really a re-arrangement of "Mystery Planet" by The Bomboras. I found a way to weasel my secret surf fetish into the soundtrack after all! The little wah bit at the end had James and me crapping our pants when we did it, it's inspired by Bill Bailey's brilliant skit about the music of Starsky and Hutch. Oddly, the crowd didn't seem to pick up on that one...

Surfin' Rugs
The surf man returns! We got the final cut of this video at 2AM the night before opening night, so I had no choice but to pull an all-nighter to figure out how we were going to arrange it, and ended up having to do all the arranging and recording til about 1 in the afternoon. And then I got to go on stage sleep deprived! Hurray!

Since we were doing the whole GTA spoof, I figured a little Eminem might be in order. But once he's on the flying carpet, it was time for a little more of The Bomboras, this time with "Playa de los muertos". The timings for this scene changed a lot from our initial draft but fortunately a little rearrangement was all it took to make it gel again.

It segues into the Malguenas portion of Dick Dale's "Miserlou Twist", since we didn't want to reference Miserlou directly as it was used in Med revue. I prefer the Malaguenas portion anyway! Of course, there's that scene where George is riding the L-plate carpet, and I just knew we had to have a drastic change... We tried it with the intro from Girl From Ipanema and it was hilarious. It was also the musical cue that got the most laughs every night.

The ending was a bit of a problem for me as I didn't know quite how to finish it. The scene went into a sort of slow motion bit, and in the end I just did a bit of a free form improvised solo over it and tried to get it to fit the scene.

Incidentally, I have a hard tail guitar. All the tremelo bar effects on this track were done by mapping the Pod XT Live foot controller to the "bender" effect, set to go a half step down. Virtual whammy bar!

You've Got To Be Kidding Me...
This is probably the piece I was least happy with. I couldn't quite figure out how to pace the scene. It's also my pathetic attempt at trying to sound remotely like Hans Zimmer... and failing miserably. The percussion and guitar parts were heavily inspired by Chant off the Black Hawk Down soundtrack, but I knew there was just no way for me to get that massive sound. Incidentally, the guitar track is actually 20 tracks of guitar panned all over the place. Just for the heck of it.

You Can Have My Stuff
This is one of the few pieces that really wasn't inspired by anything in particular. I knew we were going to need something ambient and ethereal for the dream sequence, and while looking through my old recordings I found something I had written while fiddling around with the GK picking on my old Lukather. Because this scene was also rather dialogue heavy, I wanted to let this track ride in the background a bit more. There's very subtle development up until the part where Aliyah shows up, and then the cello melody comes in. I really liked that melody, I remember it just sort of kept flowing as I was writing it.

The Showdown
Another failed "I wish I was Hans Zimmer" moment. I had this vision of Molossus from Batman Begins being perfect for this scene. And it would have been, if I hadn't butchered it so badly in the process. We just didn't have the right samples to make the string parts work. They lack that fat punch and urgency that's prevalent in Zimmer's sound. Also, the choral voice that I used, in retrospect, just didn't quite do it for me. Despite all this, I'm still quite happy with this piece, there was much "conducting" back stage while we waited for the video to end.

Man I had so much fun doing CSE revue. I really regret not getting into the whole thing earlier, and I also regret that after I leave this year I won't be able to be involved next year. If you're in Sydney around September, drop by and check it out, I'm pretty sure the stage band is going to be awesome. Again. Maybe this time we'll have an 8-neck guitar. I guess we could call it the "He-X" guitar next year....

Dirka Shredastan!