Guitars, Gear, and Open Source
A couple months ago I was rearranging some pedals on my baord and I noticed the patch cable kept falling out of the output jack on my favorite TS-9. I knew that wasn’t a good sign. It has been a few years since I’ve opened one of these and I had forgotten that the jacks are plastic. <sigh>
Yuck! Who’s idea was it to use plastic jacks?!
I finished my first DIY pedal and I’m pretty happy w/ how it turned out.
Continue reading “TS-9 or BS-9?”
I received my ITS8 kit promptly in the mail and spent a a good part of Saturday putting it together. This video was a great refresher for soldering. I spent the most time trying to get the wiring nice and neat. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s pretty good for my first build. I used the pedal at church on Sunday and it’s sounds awesome.
I’m huge fan of DIY (do it yourself) projects. I don’t necessarily have the best track record for completing and sticking with them (like the radiant barrier in my attic), but I still enjoy getting my hands dirty on all types of DIY projects. One successful endeavour was my Warmoth Tele which I put together and love playing it. Anyway, a couple weeks ago i stumbled across a web site www.buildyourownclone.com and was fascinated by what they sell. They have all kinds of DIY pedal kits that are clones of famous vintage pedals. They use top notch parts, have great, detailed instructions, and offer a lot of the popular “mods” for these pedals. To be honest I was really sold by the mods and the price. They also have an excellent forum w/ tons of great info.
After digging around it didn’t take long for me to find their competitor, www.generalguitargadgets.com. Their site is a total mess, but the price is right! I ended up purchasing a tube screamer kit form these guys for the following reasons:
…more to come.
I’m not sure what it is about the Ibanez Tube Screamer that has fascinated guitarist from it’s conception in the late 70s. Guitarists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Johnson, Trey Anastasio, Scott Henderon, (and thousands more) have all sworn by some variation of these pedals. These iconic seasick-green pedals, or one of the many clones, can be found in just about every guitarists’ rig. If you play the guitar this is a must have! Continue reading “The Tubescreamer, An American Classic”