alantig
Zombie Four, DFZ
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2012
- Messages
- 15,450
I'm a big Vintage Trouble fan. For my money, I don't think Nalle Colt has played a bad note on record yet. There's a video of them playing three songs at Paste magazine, and he's using a rotary speaker effect. In his full rig, he has a Fender Vibratone rotating speaker, but this was obviously not that, and when I saw them a week ago, he seemed to be using a mix of a Boss MD-500 pedal and Vibratone through the night.
This tone seemed a tad brighter than his rotary tone in years past, and I just totally fell in love with it and decided it was time to get off my butt and do something about it. I use a couple different rotary speaker plugins, but honestly, none of them were thrilling me, and I can't really use them when I'm just plain playing.
You can hear the effect in the first song, "Pelvis Pusher" (and it's a great illustration of what a great groove can do - the guitar/bass parts are not exceptionally complex, but the groove is heavy as all get out). The song starts at 2:29 in this video, and the effect makes it's first appearance around 3:48.
I'm 99% certain the MD-500 is supplying the effect here (and it's all over the second song, "My Whole World Stopped Without You"). Since I had today off and my buddy wasn't available to go record store shopping today, I figured it was a good day to go to nstuff music and check out what was available.
A quick check last night showed no MD-500s in stock. They did have an MD-200, though. I was a little disappointed at first, then figured I'm not looking to necessarily duplicate that tone, just to get a good quality rotary effect. Plus, that's a relatively new pedal on his board, and I figured I'd check out what he used previously as well - but they didn't have that, either. I went through the stock and decided to try three, partially based on what I'd looked at already and my sales guy's recommendation (he's never steered me wrong). Fulltone Deja Vibe, Strymon Lex, EHX Lester G (I'd watched a couple videos on this and it looked really cool). The Deja Vibe just didn't grab me. I ran through a lot of settings and stuff, and it just wasn't quite doing what I wanted - not a surprise because it's not truly a rotary effect.
The Strymon - well, I was a lot more impressed. There's a ton of tonal variety there, and the rotary effect was glorious. I texted my wife in the middle of trying it and said, "This one is going to be hard to beat."
Last one was the Lester G. The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't getting quite the sparkle that the Strymon had. But the deal-killer was the fast rotary speed - for my money, the usable range was smaller than I wanted. It could get faster - faster than the Strymon - but it was too fast for my taste. I did like some of the tone-shaping tools on the LG - it's got a pretty decent compressor on it - but in the end, my new pedal day consisted of...
As I was checking out, I took a quick look at the slides. I'm not much of a slide player, but I keep trying. I'm currently using a Craftsman socket, but I keep looking for different things. I got an e-mail a couple weeks ago about Taylor's ebony slides. It's part of their responsible wood sourcing program, so I'd been planning to order one. Turns out they had them in the store. I couldn't remember what size the socket I use is, but here's a new one on me - Taylor's packaging allows you to easily open it in the store and try it on for size. Outside of some more boutique-y slides, every other slide I've ever seen has been sealed in NoAccess (tm) packaging so that you have to call in a special extract team to get it out when you get it home. New slide day!
This tone seemed a tad brighter than his rotary tone in years past, and I just totally fell in love with it and decided it was time to get off my butt and do something about it. I use a couple different rotary speaker plugins, but honestly, none of them were thrilling me, and I can't really use them when I'm just plain playing.
You can hear the effect in the first song, "Pelvis Pusher" (and it's a great illustration of what a great groove can do - the guitar/bass parts are not exceptionally complex, but the groove is heavy as all get out). The song starts at 2:29 in this video, and the effect makes it's first appearance around 3:48.
I'm 99% certain the MD-500 is supplying the effect here (and it's all over the second song, "My Whole World Stopped Without You"). Since I had today off and my buddy wasn't available to go record store shopping today, I figured it was a good day to go to nstuff music and check out what was available.
A quick check last night showed no MD-500s in stock. They did have an MD-200, though. I was a little disappointed at first, then figured I'm not looking to necessarily duplicate that tone, just to get a good quality rotary effect. Plus, that's a relatively new pedal on his board, and I figured I'd check out what he used previously as well - but they didn't have that, either. I went through the stock and decided to try three, partially based on what I'd looked at already and my sales guy's recommendation (he's never steered me wrong). Fulltone Deja Vibe, Strymon Lex, EHX Lester G (I'd watched a couple videos on this and it looked really cool). The Deja Vibe just didn't grab me. I ran through a lot of settings and stuff, and it just wasn't quite doing what I wanted - not a surprise because it's not truly a rotary effect.
The Strymon - well, I was a lot more impressed. There's a ton of tonal variety there, and the rotary effect was glorious. I texted my wife in the middle of trying it and said, "This one is going to be hard to beat."
Last one was the Lester G. The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't getting quite the sparkle that the Strymon had. But the deal-killer was the fast rotary speed - for my money, the usable range was smaller than I wanted. It could get faster - faster than the Strymon - but it was too fast for my taste. I did like some of the tone-shaping tools on the LG - it's got a pretty decent compressor on it - but in the end, my new pedal day consisted of...
As I was checking out, I took a quick look at the slides. I'm not much of a slide player, but I keep trying. I'm currently using a Craftsman socket, but I keep looking for different things. I got an e-mail a couple weeks ago about Taylor's ebony slides. It's part of their responsible wood sourcing program, so I'd been planning to order one. Turns out they had them in the store. I couldn't remember what size the socket I use is, but here's a new one on me - Taylor's packaging allows you to easily open it in the store and try it on for size. Outside of some more boutique-y slides, every other slide I've ever seen has been sealed in NoAccess (tm) packaging so that you have to call in a special extract team to get it out when you get it home. New slide day!
