BIG KNOB the new pedal pusher in town

If like me you like to mess around with the odd guitar effects or two you may have noticed a new supplier!

They came to my attention on Ebay as a maker of clones! They are basically high quality hand wired replicas of iconic stomp boxes.....with a few twists along the way! The company BIG KNOB you can find them at http://www.bigknobpedals.com/

I succumbed to the TUBE 808 a clone of the best version of the Ibanez TS808 using the same JRC4558D opamp chip with a true bypass switch as they all do so as not to colour the signal when it's turned off. This is a great pedal that goes from a full clean boost to a creamy overdrive yet still has transparency, dynamics, tone and low noise.  The first one I bought which I notice isn't on the web site at present is the Fullclone, this is a Fulltone OCD clone. This again excels particularly between third to full gain. It's full with rich harmonics without harshness and maintain low noise and transparency. 

Some of the others including the RATPAK, which unashamedly is a Proco RAT clone is on my list! It's an exacting replica of a vintage 1985 'Whiteface' Rat distortion. This LM308-based classic is still massively popular and is the specific one most enthusiasts will point to as representing the very best this legendary line of distortions had to offer. The only addition to the original 1985 circuit was the inclusion of a switch which allows you to switch over to the newer turbo-type sound. Noted users of this vintage pedal have included Jeff Beck, Joe Walsh, Joe Perry, Thom Yorke, Dave Grohl and Thurston Moore. 

There are Big Muff and other type fuzz pedals and more, check them out you will not be disappointed....I understand if you have a pedal you would like them to make they will endeavor to do so.....what ever it's worth contacting them....tell them where you heard about Big Knob!

Know your guitar's amplifier before you buy a new one

Your electric guitar was made to put out a vibrant, clear sound. Buying the right amplifier will assure a high level of sound, play and enjoyment. To make sure you get the best amplifier for your style of play and for your guitar, you will need to do some homework and most likely some legwork. The purchase of the right amplifier is a long-term solution so let's get it right the first time.

Let's start at the beginning. You need to determine your requirements. Usually the determining factors in buying an amplifier are budget, style and audience. If you will be playing for fun in your basement or garage, your requirements are less demanding than a guitarist who intends to play for big audiences. Checking with internet providers before visiting the local stores will help establish a reasonable budget. Today, there is no reason to spend more than your budget permits.

The Internet is the best and perfect medium to get information about amplifier before buying your guitar amplifier. Internet providers offer advice, chat rooms, forums and deep discounts. Before you finalize any purchase, you should always cross-check with online providers. Be sure to check manufacturer's warranties and glean any information you can so that when you visit those local stores you have product knowledge.

Tube amplifiers and solid state amplifiers are the two staples of the industry. You will select one of these types. Tube amplifiers became popular in the mid 20th century. They present accurate tone and are very reliable. The tube will need to be changed after a period of time and tubes are not inexpensive. Tube amplifiers also require regular maintenance.

The newer solid state amplifiers are basically maintenance free. The sound is sharp and they have great range. Best of all, there are no tubes to replace.

Tube amplifiers have the classic look. The tones are genuine and experienced guitarists feel they put out a bit more warmth. Tube amplifiers are more expensive than their counterparts which has increased the demand for solid state units.

Tube amplifiers are heavier and require more careful handling. While the sound generated by the tube is truer, it is often not as vibrant as the sound of the lighter solid state amp. Generally, experienced players prefer the tube amp while beginners migrate to the solid state.

Most beginning packages today are combination packages. Speakers, power amplifier and preamp are the mechanisms of guitar amplifier. These all-in-one packages are terrific for stay-at-home guitarists. They are easy to connect and easy to use. The speakers range from 8 inch to 12 inch sizes. Even if you take your act on the road and play before smaller audiences, these combo packs can get the job done.

When shopping for your first amplifier, ask as many questions as it takes to get comfortable. There is no need to rush. Remember that there are very competitive providers on the internet. Make sure to see, touch and hear the various systems at your local stores and then check the online opportunities. Wherever you end up, always consider the combination packs. These are great fits for most beginners.

The Electric Guitar - How To Buy The Right One

One of the most challenging tasks facing any guitarist is selecting the right electric guitar for their musical needs. Whether you are young or old, a beginner or a master musician, there is no sound in the world like a finely tuned electric guitar. The thing is that it can be overwhelmingly difficult to choose the right guitar.

The basic construction for a guitar is the same for almost all of the different types of guitars. All electric guitars are comprised of the same parts: a body, a neck, a head stock piece, electrical pickups and a bridge.

Unlike an acoustic guitar, electrical guitars require an amplifier to broadcast the guitar's sound. The sound for an electric guitar is generated when a musician plucks the strings and the vibration of the strings is transmitted through the pick-ups to the amplifier.

Now, there are two very important considerations when purchasing the perfect electrical guitar: price and sound.

Electrical guitars can be priced as low as ninety-nine dollars all the way up to twenty thousand dollars, so knowing your budget is crucial. A beginning guitarist should look for starter kits that will include a guitar, amplifier and some instruction books.

Electric guitars are divided into four different categories: Acoustic-Electric, Electric, Hollow Body Electric and Steel Electric and each one is designed to generate a different sound.

Acoustic-electric guitars are acoustic guitars with pick-ups installed so that they can be wired into an amplifier or a public address system. These are some of the most popular types of guitars for touring bands as they are well built and last a long time.

An electric guitar is typically made of a solid wood body and sound is only generated through the pick-up system. An amplifier is required to increase or decrease volume. These are the most popular models of guitars for beginning enthusiasts and prices can range from $99 and up. Most manufacturers like Fender and Gibson have beginner electrical guitar kits that come with a guitar, an amplifier and training manuals to get started.

A hollow body electric guitar is constructed in the same way as a traditional electric guitar with one exception. A hollow-body guitar has 2 chambers cut out of the body. The end result is that the guitar generates additional sonic resonances because of the chambers and delivers a completely unique sound. These guitars are most often played by Jazz enthusiasts and are available in many different sizes and tones.

The last type of electrical guitar is the steel guitar. Steel guitars are so different in design from traditional guitars that it requires many years of specialized training to learn to play them properly. The steel guitar was made famous by Jeff Healey and is played on its back as opposed to being strung around the player's neck. The strings are often elevated above the fret board and allow for the use of a 'tone bar'. A tone bar is a cylindrical tube that is worn over the middle finger of the fret hand, and provides the classical steel guitar 'whine'. The steel guitar is most often used with country and western style music.

Regardless of whether you are looking to purchase an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar it is always advisable that you research thoroughly. Speak with employees of guitar shops and test every guitar you may be buying. Search the internet to decipher between the different manufacturers and models available until you are certain you have found the electric guitar of your dreams and then buy it!
If you're considering buying an electric guitar, then have a look at the esteban electric guitar To learn more, visit our as seen on tv music site.

Copyright 2007. You may reprint this article on your site provided you include author's resource box and active links.

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Make your own Tube amp, book review

This article is a book review on a series of six books that is the most comprehensive and lucid explanation of guitar tube amp architecture, circuits, tone, components and construction technique for DIYers I have ever found. The review deals with each book separately and recommends purchasing them in a specific order to grow your knowledge in step with your building experience.

Kevin O'Connor of London Power has created a series of books under the main title of "The Ultimate Tone." These books are truly unique and carefully tailored for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) guitar tube amp hobbyist and boutique amplifier builder. The books have a home-made 'feel' as well... all the illustrations are done by hand and the books are photocopy-printed on 8.5″x11″ paper and bound with plastic spines and clear plastic covers. There are six books in the series now with the most recent being released in the late spring of 2008. You may want to buy the entire series all at once and get a modest savings, but I think you should consider buying them one at a time and digest as you go, building projects along the way. A key point though... you don't necessarily want to buy them in numerical order. I recommend the following sequence:

The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 - Generations of Tone
The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 - Tone Capture
The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 - Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana
The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 - Advanced Techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design
The Ultimate Tone - Modifying and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps
The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 - Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today


The Ultimate Tone Volume 3 - Generations of Tone

This is the most important book in the series for the beginning tube amp builder.

Chapters 2 through 4 lay down the foundation of good DIY tube amp construction, filling you in on good electrical connections, grounding technique, lead dress and other wiring techniques, and mechanical layout including assembly methods like terminal strips, turret and eyelet boards.

The subsequent chapters each pick a particular 'iconic' amplifier, each iconic amplifier being a prototypical example of amplifiers of its class, and they are examined in detail as to the circuit topology, peculiar tonal characteristics that result and fatal flaws that the product is notorious for. Kevin provides the original schematics and then shows how you can apply the techniques detailed in the earlier chapters to improve the performance and reliability of the icon without harming the tone. The schematics are redrawn, layouts are provided and mechanical solutions are worked out to make each chapter a complete, self-contained, build-it-yourself amp project.

This process is repeated for several variations of the Champ in chapter 5 (this chapter greatly influenced my own single-ended amp project), then in quick succession: the Bassman, Plexi, 800, Bull Dog, AC-30, Portaflex, SVT, Bass Master, Custom Special, Guitar Mate, Herzog and Laney amplifiers are dealt with.

If you can only buy one book for your DIY guitar amp hobby I'd heartily recommend this one.

The Ultimate Tone Volume 5 - Tone Capture

Volume 5 picks up where Volume 3 left off, with a project-oriented approach and some sophisticated DIY tube amp solutions for guitar and bass.

The book starts off with a chapter overviewing vacuum tube operation called 'tube tone,' followed up by a chapter on guitar electronics and pickup characteristics.

The next two chapters are small projects: Sigma for effects switching and Triple-X for amplifier switching.

Chapters 5 & 6 are on transformers... important components but it made me yawn, sorry.

Starting with chapter 7, all the stops are pulled out and you are in project heaven... Major (200W), Soma 84 (EL84 amp), Standard (the London Power Standard Preamp from 1995 coupled to a 50W amp using four power tubes), Doppelsonde (mixing power tube types), AX84 (discussion on the original goal of a very low output power amp), Kelly (50W from 4 6V6s), and several other projects of lesser scope.

One favorite project I did was based on Kevin's reworking of the HotBox tube preamp pedal from Matchless in chapter 16. I built this pedal in a truly "true point-to-point style" (meaning terminal strips) in a tube pedal enclosure from Doug Hoffman, substituting a Baxandall tone stack and reworking the preamp values to be more Dumble-esqe (non-HRM type).

What would you do to match an amplifier to Yngwie Malmsteen's style? See chapter 18, 'Swede.'

The Ultimate Tone Volume 2 - Systems Approach to Stage Sound Nirvana

Volume 2 is not project oriented. The bulk of the book, chapters 2 through 5, deals with power supply tricks and a comprehensive overview of power amplifiers, including tube, solid-state and hybrid power amps. Chapter 3, on tube power amplifiers, has some very practical information on mods and fixes to Marshall and Fender bias circuits.

I like the 1st and last chapters of Volume 2 the best. The first chapter is a short discussion of sound stages and how you might setup your gear on stage for the best audience/band experience. The last, chapter 6, is called "Pillars of Tone" and in this chapter the major contributors tone at the block-level of a guitar tube amplifier system design are discussed one by one and Kevin provides some very valuable insight into tone shaping throughout the preamp/amplifier.

The Ultimate Tone Volume 4 - Advanced Techniques for Modern Guitar Amp Design

This is the book you'll want to buy if you feel the need to get deeply involved with the power scaling technology that Kevin has developed. Power Scaling, coined and trademarked by Kevin, is the way you can get aspects of power amp distortion (as opposed to preamp distortion) into your tone at bedroom volume levels. Volume 4 is not DIY project oriented but explores the issues, including attenuation, power scaling (both down and up), sag, and power management, tackled by modern guitar tube amp designers.

That said, the second-to-last chapter in Volume 4 might be important for a broader group of enthusiast builders... design philosophy. In this chapter Kevin provides a hierarchical design process that could be used to make key decisions on how you approach your next project.

The Ultimate Tone - Modifying and Custom Building Tube Guitar Amps

There is no volume number in the title of this book, it was the 1st. Personally, I bought it for completeness. I specifically wanted to have the 'perfect effects loop' information, although the loop itself is incorporated into a project in Volume 5. TUT also has some excellent material on reverbs and signal switching methods that is not explained in the other volumes. The first half of TUT introduces/overviews tube amp systems, power supplies & grounds then focuses on preamp and power amp modifications to commercial amplifiers (e.g. Marshall / Fender)... if you are totally new to tube electronics you may want to buy this 1st volume at the same time as Volume 3.

The Ultimate Tone Volume 6 - Timeless Tone Built for the Future Today

In many ways, Volume 6 is a continuation and extension of the material in Volume 4, where Power Scaling is introduced. In Volume 6 a new 'direct control' version of Powerscaling is featured which was introduced in Vol 4 but flushed out with comprehensive circuits and applied to 'sag' and sustain control as well in Vol 6. The new scaling circuits have many advantages for a DIY builder like greater noise immunity and less sensitivity to layout, etc.

I applied the new DC Power Scaling to a Trainwreck clone project and was really impressed with the improvement in 'playability' at lower volumes... the unmodified Trainwreck Express circuit is just too loud for domestic use, needing to be cranked to get the sweet tones it is renowned for.

One of the chapters in Volume 6 is dedicated to the Dumble amplifiers... something I was really looking forward to since many of my hobby projects focus on those circuits. I found this short chapter to be a good introduction to the overall architecture of the Dumble amps, written from the point of view of the evolution from the early modified standard amps that Alexander Dumble started out doing, but I felt the chapter fell short in discussing some of the more important subtleties of the later Dumble models.

Volume 6 also has lots of other material in it, including a great tutorial on designing really high output power amplifiers and a great chapter on high gain amplifier designs with real-world circuits referenced and detailed.

In Summary...

Kevin's books have a very empirical approach. He encourages you to set aside convention in some instances or not be afraid to try combinations of tubes or even pulling tubes and in all cases clearly explains why it is o.k. and points out any reasons why it wouldn't be o.k. All the examples in the books are very practical and he certainly has the DIYer in mind as he is writing.

Kevin's body of work is truly encyclopedic in nature, and considering that, one feature sorely lacking from his books is any kind of indexing... this is aggravated by the fact that Kevin constantly refers to previous writings rather than repeat himself in a new volume, and it is very difficult to put your finger on the reference even with the other book in hand. Perhaps search engine technology, like Google's ability to search protected content, could be put to good use in this case and provide a kind of 'auto-index' on the web of all of Kevin's books without actually giving away the book itself. Or better yet, how about an e-book format of Kevin's entire collection of TUT books... I think all of the e-book readers include searching capabilities... and Kevin's hand-drawn schematics would probably scale adequately and be very readable on the e-paper displays these devices feature.

Meanwhile, how do you get Kevin's books today? The best way to get the books is to directly order them from London Power Press. They now have a shopping cart on http://www.londonpower.com.

About the author: Mark Roberts blogs on DIY tube electronics at TubeNexus.com. He is avidly involved in guitar electronics as a hobby and dabbles in boutique effects pedals as a business with Cause & Effect Pedals. Please visit the TubeNexus Blog at http://tubenexus.com for more articles and book reviews about DIY Guitar Tube Amplifiers and Effect Electronics.

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