Nico Adie wrote: Wed Dec 18, 2024 6:02 pm A very old upright piano. There’s a lot wrong with it, sticking keys, very out of tune etc, but I look forward to getting it into shape. I took it apart today, hoovered about half a ton of dust from inside it, found a half penny from 1863 under keys. Cool. Going to be a long ride I think.

That dust is the mojo!

Pulsar Primavera - a spring reverb plugin based on a vintage model, with toggles for different conditions. I hesitated on this, because I had a decent enough spring reverb plugin. Once I started using the demo, I realized how much more this one offered than the one I already had. Just a lot of cool spring effects, now I kinda want something like this on my pedal board!

Pulsar Echorec - I'm a sucker for a good tape delay. I already have a space echo from UAD, but I found that I don't use it often. There's this free plugin (forgot the name) that is an amazing tape delay, albeit a little bit of a one-trick pony, but it tends to be my starting point and I use it a lot, sometimes I wish it had more to offer. There's so much going on with Echorec that it's hard to not buy on sale for $30.

I purchased these directly from Pulsar, they're giving away some free plugins with it from a third party. That really wasn't the catalyst for this purchase, but one of the plugins is a Chorus/Echo effect. You can't have too many fun plugins to mix with!

Pulsar just continues to put out really excellent plugins. They focus on quality over quantity.

cakes wrote: Fri Dec 20, 2024 9:45 am Pulsar Primavera -

Pulsar Echorec -

I almost bought both of these when they dropped the price to "hell yeah" amount. I just couldn't bring myself to buy another reverb or delay plugin. I'm getting decision paralysis with all the plugins I have but these are both great. WF for the Demo video on the Pulsar website having the absolute worst music for demoing a spring reverb that I have ever heard. WTF?

A couple of months ago I went to one of the second-hand-stuff barns in my area and found, in a corner, a Yamaha CX40 classical guitar. It had five strings on it and had been hanging on a hook in an unheated barn but I figured, it's a Yamaha, it's basically indestructible. £60 with five strings and no bag. I cleaned it up a lot. Frets are a little rough. But as life partner sez, "you need a guitar where all you can do with it is play it rather than [fuck about forever with the electronics and hardware]"

I started playing 35 years ago on an inexpensive nylon-string, so this feels like home to me. I'm no classical guitarist but it's lots of fun.

I bought it a strap and a bag and a set of La Bella 900B classical strings. These strings, they're definitely £17/set nice. The bass strings are polished, kind of half-round, they feel good and they can bark a little. The treble strings are black and look cool and sound better. (There are little helper things in the packet so you can tell which one is which.)

La Bella seem to be tricky to find in the UK, but I really like the sets I've tried. The MIDI guitar has got a set of the black tapewound Jazz Flats on it, and they're really working for me there.

About a month ago I bought a Mesa Boogie Mark V:35 1x12" combo. I got it second-hand in a custom color. Like I said in the other thread, I feel kinda dirty/dumb. It's just so complicated and excessive. I addition, it has such douchey associations. On the flip side, it can be a super satisfying amp to play in a junk-food kinda way.

So, my review. The amp is super fun, but I just don't like playing hard rock/high gain music with open back combos. You think I'd learn my lesson. I have two nice 4x12 cabs, and two spectacular TL-806 1x12 cabs. But I gotta be captain choad and KEEP TRYING 1x12" combos and not liking them. I even tried blending the combo with a cab. I can get it to sound good in the room, but the result is two speakers that sound kinda bad on their own. So, one gets miked and the FOH/recording sounds terrible.

For clean to medium gain music, this amp is really great; though the stock speaker is a bit bright. For Medium gain and up, I just can't get it to sound good. However, I plugged it into my 1x12 cabs, and it was really great. I use the crunch setting on channel 1 and MkIIc or MkIV on channel 2. I can use the amp footswitch and get away with a no-pedal setup. That's what I'm looking for... a crunch and a chug sound and no faff. Sadly, I'll never be happy with the combo format for how I want to use this amp.

I thought about building a head-shell for it. That seems like a silly idea, especially since it has the custom color torlex and grill cloth. In addition, I'm not fully sold on the four EL84 power tube compliment. I've always preferred EL34, 6L6, and 6V6. I'm going to try it as the worlds most inconvenient head with my extension cabs to be sure, though. My expectation, though, is that I'll put it on Reverb and maybe be able to make a few bucks.

And really, if I have to put a channel switcher on the floor, that's not that much different than putting a boost pedal on the floor. Actually, the boost pedals I use are probably cheaper than the special Mesa 5 pin footswitch, so I can't pretend my desire to use no pedals is for safety and worry of damage.

TLDR: Super fun amp that I should have got as a head, but also ridiculous and make me feel like I'm about 25% wanker.


Mesa MarkV:35


Mesa MarkV:35

benadrian wrote: Thu Jan 09, 2025 11:13 am The amp is super fun, but I just don't like playing hard rock/high gain music with open back combos. You think I'd learn my lesson. I have two nice 4x12 cabs, and two spectacular TL-806 1x12 cabs. But I gotta be captain choad and KEEP TRYING 1x12" combos and not liking them.

There are maybe ways to make a closed back tube combo that might solve this quest.

Dr Tony Balls wrote: Thu Jan 09, 2025 1:24 pm

benadrian wrote: Thu Jan 09, 2025 11:13 am The amp is super fun, but I just don't like playing hard rock/high gain music with open back combos. You think I'd learn my lesson. I have two nice 4x12 cabs, and two spectacular TL-806 1x12 cabs. But I gotta be captain choad and KEEP TRYING 1x12" combos and not liking them.

There are maybe ways to make a closed back tube combo that might solve this quest.

I have a Yamaha T100 1x12 open back combo that sounds fantastic in a variety of settings and only makes me %10 douche (most of that is just me in general. ) Maybe I don't want what FM benadrian wants, but it's close to Mesa size and I don't find the open back detrimental

Edited repost of my post on the ILF forum:
I recently won the auction for what most of YouTube calls “the most useless pedal of all time,” aka the Boss EH-2 Enhancer. It's NOS and I got it for a 41 dollar bid so it was destiny. It's basically an envelope-controlled Presence boost or cut depending on the settings. Most people online say "it does nothing!" but this is untrue if you use it correctly (which might not be the easiest thing to do since the manual sucks). It's a very obvious treble boost/exciter at the right setting (MIX fully CW to "NOR", FREQ fully CCW to "LO", and SENS to taste). I tried it after my gain pedals and it gave good lead tone. What's cool about it is you can get trebly with it but not have as much hiss between notes, so it's kind of like a subtle low-pass noise gate. When the Mix is set to INV then it is supposed to duck the selected frequency when you play harder (kind of like a low-pass limiter), which is a less noticeable effect that I don't know why anyone would want.

TylerDeadPine wrote: Thu Jan 09, 2025 5:07 pm I have a Yamaha T100 1x12 open back combo that sounds fantastic in a variety of settings and only makes me %10 douche (most of that is just me in general. ) Maybe I don't want what FM benadrian wants, but it's close to Mesa size and I don't find the open back detrimental

Those are very cool, but for me I KNOW it's more about the resonant frequency of the lows. Open back cabs have a lower frequency which make it sound a bit more loose and mushy to me. The TL cabs are about 80-90 Hz (I Think), and most 4x12 cabs are about 110Hz. I'm enjoying the moments of chug-chug metal in my new band, and that isn't mixing with the open back cabs

Tyler, are you going to NAMM?

benadrian wrote: Fri Jan 10, 2025 2:43 am

TylerDeadPine wrote: Thu Jan 09, 2025 5:07 pm I have a Yamaha T100 1x12 open back combo that sounds fantastic in a variety of settings and only makes me %10 douche (most of that is just me in general. ) Maybe I don't want what FM benadrian wants, but it's close to Mesa size and I don't find the open back detrimental

Those are very cool, but for me I KNOW it's more about the resonant frequency of the lows. Open back cabs have a lower frequency which make it sound a bit more loose and mushy to me. The TL cabs are about 80-90 Hz (I Think), and most 4x12 cabs are about 110Hz. I'm enjoying the moments of chug-chug metal in my new band, and that isn't mixing with the open back cabs

Tyler, are you going to NAMM?

That makes sense - I was glad to see you posting about gear qualms and not fire qualms

I am! I’ll be there the 24th