"In the Shop Tonight," season 2: Engraving Boogaloo

[Taylor Livingston]

They're additive so you can use both at the same time, in any ratio you like, or one or the other. The only way to turn off the envelope following is to lower the Sensitivity knob all the way. The expression pedal is effectively turned off by simply setting it to heel down position - that's equivalent to having no expression pedal plugged in.

So, to use both together, you could have your envelope set to sweep from 40Hz to 160Hz with average playing dynamics, then sweep the expression pedal up to keep the same 2 octave range but now it will sweep from 160Hz to 640Hz. For example maybe there's a breakdown in the song where you play high up on the fretboard and the base setting is too low to let these higher notes sing - sweep up and you have the same size sweep, but starting from the fundamental of these higher notes.

[goroth]

OH man, that sounds insane, in the best possible way!

[Taylor Livingston]

Some new Xero Deluxes, and for the first time in about a year, a batch of the standard Xerographs are in the shop.

[Taylor Livingston]

Oxides with top jacks:

[jmoote]

Oof, those oxides. The finish suits the pedal perfectly and matches nicely with the others you've been doing lately.

[Taylor Livingston]

Thanks Jeff! The main paint color used on those is actually called "crimson oxide" so I knew I had to do some Oxides with it.

[Taylor Livingston]

Some new XDs with a strange color-change sparkle finish goin' on. To get this, I laid down black, sanded it back, then applied a pale blue transparent paint with light green sparkle mixed in. From some angles it looks blue, from others green.

[Taylor Livingston]

These Polytopes have a hand-applied, genuine copper finish. I tried at first to get a coppery finish using my normal airbrush paints, but it didn't look very real, so I decided to try creating a new finish using actual copper powder. There's a lot of variation in this batch, so see the shop page for pictures of several pedals from the batch.

[goroth]

Dude they are beautiful!!!

[Jwar]

Taylor you are KILLING these finishes man! Just killing it! Do you use an air brush? I'm looking into an artist one but it's like 300 bucks! LOL. So nice dude!!!

[Lebowsky]

who wants to flip a copper for a green one?

[Taylor Livingston]

Taylor you are KILLING these finishes man! Just killing it! Do you use an air brush? I'm looking into an artist one but it's like 300 bucks! LOL. So nice dude!!!

Thanks Jwar, I really appreciate it!

For these, the airbrush was involved but not really critical to the copper application. Basically, I applied a clear coat with an HVLP gun, then dusted the copper powder on while the clear was wet. Once dry, I laid black over the copper and rubbed it back with steel wool. The black paint in this case was just to accentuate the texture and the text labeling (it doesn't get touched as much by the steel wool because it's recessed, same concept as with painting an etched box and sanding it back). Then it got a final layer of clear coat to keep the copper from oxidizing.

So I used the clear coat like a binder for the copper powder, because that's what I'm tooled up for, and because the clear coat I use is much less nasty to work with (VOC-free) than the resin binder that I was originally going to use with the copper. But if I didn't already have this setup, I'd probably have come up with a different way to do it. I definitely would not actually mix the copper powder with the paint and try to shoot it through the HVLP gun or airbrush, as that would probably mess up either tool beyond repair.

Regarding airbrushes, I'm currently using a Badger model 155. It's about $100. I have used some cheaper ones and found them to be such a huge pain to work with that it's a false economy situation. So far this one has been working well for me, easy to maintain and clean, and it can shoot very finely or widely without tip changes or other fiddly stuff. So far I haven't run into a reason to upgrade any further.

[jmoote]

who wants to flip a copper for a green one?

You have or wants green one?

I really want one of these or a similar blue/green finish. I regret missing them when they were in the shop

[Taylor Livingston]

Nimbi:

[Taylor Livingston]

Those blue ones are gone already, so here's a new set of Nimbi.

As a kid growing up in New Orleans, this color was iconic and known as "K&B purple," so named for the local drugstore chain that was ubiquitous in the city for nearly 100 years.