Gifts for my awesome bro (gifts on pg2, Klon discussion)

[counterdestroy]

get him a sleeveless finntroll shirt

[mathias]

I think I've got everything sorted out. I'll update this thread at the end of the month with what I ended up getting him

[mathias]

My brother is on his way to Milwaukee, and he's probably driving for the next couple hours, so it is safe to post what I got him here without the (remote) possibility that he would somehow find it online and spoil his birthday. I plan on giving him this stuff later today.

First up, I got him the Opeth - In Live Concert At The Royal Albert Hall (2DVD/3CD set). I also got him two scifi novels that I enjoyed, Perdido Street Station and The Sparrow.

I built him a pedalboard that is the same size/angle as a Pedaltrain Jr, but it is made out of MDF and not metal. The thinking is that if he wants a gig bag or even a flightcase for it, he can buy a really cheap Pedaltrain bag off Craigslist. The board is pretty durable and will do, considering he has no pedalboard now. There should be enough room for a single OneSpot underneath. Not sure about the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2.


Why does he need a pedalboard? He only has one pedal right now, a Fulltone OCD clone. But he likes Smashing Pumpkins, and I'm not really getting any use out of the Devi Ever TP I have, so I'm giving him that.


And last but not least, as I mentioned in the beginning, my brother has a Crate V33 that he likes the clean sounds of, but doesn't like the gain/distortion channel. (Hence the Fulltone OCD clone he uses.) I'm too far away from him to mod the Crate, but I did think that maybe an overdrive might help. And why not give him the most sought-after, most boutique overdrive ever? I spoke to Mike at Rhythm and Detonation http://www.rhythmanddetonation.com/ and got my brother the BMX Klon clone that Mike makes.

[Achtane]

Wow, that's awesome.

You bros must really be bros.

[mathias]

I honestly don't know if he's going to use the overdrive, so I'm going to tell him to take it home and try it. If he doesn't like it, I can build him a Big Muff of any type, or a RAT. The Klon doesn't do HIGH GAIN BRUTALZ but I think he might like it to spice up his distortion channel on his Crate head, as mentioned. We'll see.

[jfrey]

What kind of stuff specifically does he play?

[mathias]

I dunno what he plays. I just know some of the stuff he listens to (or used to?) As I said, I haven't lived with him in years, we haven't talked about music all that much. But the few times this past month that he ranted about his Crate V33, I listened

I'm guessing a mix of the death metal type stuff (Opeth, etc) and Smashing Pumpkins, Silversun Pickups, etc. In which case, pedal distortion/fuzz is going to sound better than the distortion channel of his Crate head.

Part of the reason I wanted to get him some nice stuff is he's been unable to play guitar or drums for about 3 or 4 years now, under doctor's orders. Through a combination of work, school(writing), typing, and playing guitar/drums constantly, he had developed a rare tendon issue called Trigger Finger (because it was historically associated with soldiers who had to sit with their finger tensed over their trigger for hours on end.) My brother had it in all his fingers. It was painful for him to do anything with his hands, and physical therapy didn't work, so they eliminated a lot of things, including writing with a pen/pencil, playing guitar/drums, etc. So now that he can play guitar again, I wanted to get him some nice stuff he could enjoy making music with.

[jfrey]

Cool. Just curious, because I play a mix of stuff that includes things like death metal and tech death. When I'm not doing like Post Rock, or whatever.

I'll usually run something like Boost/Overdrive > Fuzz/Overdrive (Electric Brown or similar) > Distortion and then maybe some delay and reverb if I'm doing lead stuff.

Especially at lower volumes distortion can sometimes sound kind of thin (maybe not the right word) or sterile-ish. A little overdrive and fuzz can really thicken things up and get your sound much heavier.

[mathias]

Yeah, the BMXKlone has a great buffer and plenty of output volume from what I could tell from noodling around on it. So he can either choose to put it last and really drive his distortion channel with a huge amount of boost, or he can put it earlier in the chain and really slam the OCD, fuzz, etc. The tone control on the Klon is neat, it sounded sort of like a really subtle filter to me? But I don't know if that's technically what it is. Not sure if it will be too bright for what he plays. It can definitely be darker/grittier in a Texas-tone way, much darker than my modded Sparkle Drive can get.

Edit: So, I had some time to play the Klon, and I did. I don't have a tube amp right now, but I do have this ART Tube MP Studio mic preamp that I use, with a 12AX7 in it. It actually makes a nice little preamp to warm up a signal before I record into my laptop. The only problem is, while it will let you get that warm tube sound, it has automatic clipping (distortion) protection built in, so you can't really drive it that much.

Still, I put the SG in front of the Klon and the little mic tube preamp behind it, and listened through headphones on my laptop. The Klon does a much better job at driving the mic preamp than my Sparkle drive does. Anywhere from clean boost, smooth saturation, or gritty dark Texas blues are possible.

Next up, I got out my beat up old Strat, which I rarely play, because it came with a Floyd Rose (ugh) and the Floyd Rose is broken (well, the bolts the tremolo floats on are pulling out of the body). It's a definite 80's Strat with the Floyd Rose and HSS pickups.

But man, that Klon can make my old Strat sound awesome! Especially on the single coils. I was loving every tone I was getting out of that Strat. I don't even need to crank the gain, I just leave everything at noon and get a great tone. I bumped the gain up to about 2 o'clock and it just sounds sweet. The guitar's volume and tone controls interact very nicely. Makes me GAS for one of these little Klon klones from R&D for myself, once I figure out what amp to get..

[sonidero]

This is turning out great... I think with all that there's no way he couldn't find a tone he wants... Damn it now I has BMX gas...

[mathias]

Yeah, I figure now my brother will have a nice OD, a nice distortion, and a cool fuzz on a solid little pedalboard.

[Wes Mantooth]

You are an awesome brother!

Wish I got something that cool from my sister...

[mathias]

It's too bad the Klon's presence with me didn't overlap with the Fuzzhugger Algal Bloom and AB-Synth that are on the way. I'm sure it would sound great with the Strat, driving the AB-Synth.

[hclapp219]

Those are some very cool and thoughtful gifts!

[republicofcheese]

Those are great - and more importantly thoughtful - gifts for your bro. You are truly a magnanimous one!

I unfortunately couldn't do anything like that (in terms of really surprising him at least) for my brother as we're in the same band now.....and he already gets first crack at any of my hand-me-downs or pedals that get demoted from my board :/

The Klonclone and handmade pedalboard are especially impressive.