I am one of those guitarists who has turned into an old dude that constantly plays with their volume knob to adjust distortion/saturation. However, I am constantly driven a tad crazy by the tonality changes of adjusting the guitar volume knob. I have messed around with bright cap/resistor networks across the volume pot and they never really help. I have also tried using a volume pedal with a buffered input (or after a buffered pedal), and just never touching my guitar. I'm pretty bad with my feet, though.
Because of this, I'm having some impure thoughts.
Active pickups! Wow, Ben, WTF? Active pickups send a high current / low impedance signal out of the guitar. Generally, the pots are changed for lower values.This results in (almost) no change in tone that would normally come from the high impedance, high pot value, and long cable capacitance interactions. Still, this seems like bringing a flamethrower to an arm wrestling match. So... what else?
Well, how about a buffer? I need to do a proof of concept test, but I believe that a good buffer, placed between the volume knob out and the output jack inside the guitar, could solve the volume-knob-circuit-interaction tone change. Has anyone done this? Does anyone know a good, low current buffer circuit? Is this dumb? Should I just suck it up and realize that no one cares but me?
My next plan, for the record, is to take a ZVEX SHO pedal and hook it to my strap... see if that changes anything.
But I'm listening. Thoughts?
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2292I don't have any solutions at the moment, but I want to say, I SO wanted to be a guy that just messed with my volume knob to get the right saturation, but failed miserably and was just never happy doing it + felt awkward on stage. I wanted to simplify, but in trying that I just wasn't getting what I wanted. So now my board is basically a tuner, 3 different gain stages (that are all friendly with each other after a lot of trial and error; one of those pedals stays on 90% of the time, leaving me with only two big foot switches to hit), a delay, and reverb. Here's to finding a solution that works for you!benadrian wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2025 11:55 am I am one of those guitarists who has turned into an old dude that constantly plays with their volume knob to adjust distortion/saturation. However, I am constantly driven a tad crazy by the tonality changes of adjusting the guitar volume knob. I have messed around with bright cap/resistor networks across the volume pot and they never really help. I have also tried using a volume pedal with a buffered input (or after a buffered pedal), and just never touching my guitar. I'm pretty bad with my feet, though.
Because of this, I'm having some impure thoughts.
Active pickups! Wow, Ben, WTF? Active pickups send a high current / low impedance signal out of the guitar. Generally, the pots are changed for lower values.This results in (almost) no change in tone that would normally come from the high impedance, high pot value, and long cable capacitance interactions. Still, this seems like bringing a flamethrower to an arm wrestling match. So... what else?
Well, how about a buffer? I need to do a proof of concept test, but I believe that a good buffer, placed between the volume knob out and the output jack inside the guitar, could solve the volume-knob-circuit-interaction tone change. Has anyone done this? Does anyone know a good, low current buffer circuit? Is this dumb? Should I just suck it up and realize that no one cares but me?
My next plan, for the record, is to take a ZVEX SHO pedal and hook it to my strap... see if that changes anything.
But I'm listening. Thoughts?
guitar in - weaklungband.bandcamp.com/
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2293I've gotten along with only treble bleeds just fine. I actually LIKE when there's a pretty sharp drop off between 10 and 8-9ish, as I'm really only looking for 2 to 3 sounds in there (cleanish, slightly cleaned up saturation for a complex chord maybe, full dumb saturation).
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2294i've done some amateur digital video stuff (capturing VHS footage of my dude's [mid 90s] band before the tapes disintegrate) so i don't really know what i'm talking about, and I specifically haven't done anything with video in Reaper, sorry, but I would suggest doublechecking the video media item properties once it's imported into Reaper. Is there any chance it's importing the footage and imposing an incorrect frame rate?penningtron wrote: Sat Feb 08, 2025 10:52 am I've been having issues with video/audio sync'ing lately. Sometimes I'll export the video's audio into Reaper for eq, compression etc and when I recombine them back in iMovie they no longer sync across the whole song. The Thru Zero flange was kinda cool once but it's just pissing me off now.
Is there something about video processing that can alter the time of a file? I can't figure where else it could be coming from.
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2295About a year ago I was sick of worrying about gear, so I just decided that I was going to go "no pedals." I set the gain a bit higher on my amp than usual, set my guitar volume to about 7, and off I went. Practices were super fun. I was paying more attention to my playing and "singing." I was just more present overall. I kept this up until the Caterwaul show in May. I just went guitar, cable, backline amp. It was rad. I don't know if I'd EVER done a show like that before. It felt great.Owen wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2025 12:25 pm I don't have any solutions at the moment, but I want to say, I SO wanted to be a guy that just messed with my volume knob to get the right saturation, but failed miserably and was just never happy doing it + felt awkward on stage. I wanted to simplify, but in trying that I just wasn't getting what I wanted. So now my board is basically a tuner, 3 different gain stages (that are all friendly with each other after a lot of trial and error; one of those pedals stays on 90% of the time, leaving me with only two big foot switches to hit), a delay, and reverb. Here's to finding a solution that works for you!
But yeah, like you the volume knob is sometimes unpredictable, and the rhythm sound is a bit of a compromise with the volume at 7. So I went back to my classic setup; guitar amp set for medium gain, an overdrive to push into saturation, and a gate. I roll off the volume to clean up more, but it still seems a little meh. I've since thrown in another overdrive. So I'm kind of doing what you're doing, but there's just no cleanish sound unless I turn down. Your set up also sounds a lot like what Kowloon does as well... the "all boost" pedalboard.
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2296This is endemic across digital video and we can't figure it out. We Record video straight from camera into Atmos Shogun Video recorders and if you take those files and drop them into Premier or Resolve, over the course of about an hour and a half the sync will drift by about 30 frames. Sometimes more. We cannot make sense of it and have not found a solution other than to just take a slate at the top of the take, and the end of a take and use it to sync up the audio in post. A friend seems to think it has something to do with the conversion from RAW data to transcoded compressed formats like Mpeg. It's makes zero sense and doesn't seem to be specifically a Reaper issue. Happens in all editors. It seems better if we record directly to media in camera, but doesn't completely fix the issue. It is weird to me that in a video file, the incoming audio stream is not locked to frames as you would expect, but just a free floating audio file packaged along side the video frames, but it seems to be the case.dfglv wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2025 2:15 pmi've done some amateur digital video stuff (capturing VHS footage of my dude's [mid 90s] band before the tapes disintegrate) so i don't really know what i'm talking about, and I specifically haven't done anything with video in Reaper, sorry, but I would suggest doublechecking the video media item properties once it's imported into Reaper. Is there any chance it's importing the footage and imposing an incorrect frame rate?penningtron wrote: Sat Feb 08, 2025 10:52 am I've been having issues with video/audio sync'ing lately. Sometimes I'll export the video's audio into Reaper for eq, compression etc and when I recombine them back in iMovie they no longer sync across the whole song. The Thru Zero flange was kinda cool once but it's just pissing me off now.
Is there something about video processing that can alter the time of a file? I can't figure where else it could be coming from.
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2297Oh geez, I just thought it was my podunk methods. Guess I might need to zoom in every 30 seconds or so, cut out small chunks of video, and re-sync from the splice spot. Sucks.Kniferide wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2025 3:24 pm This is endemic across digital video and we can't figure it out. We Record video straight from camera into Atmos Shogun Video recorders and if you take those files and drop them into Premier or Resolve, over the course of about an hour and a half the sync will drift by about 30 frames. Sometimes more. We cannot make sense of it and have not found a solution other than to just take a slate at the top of the take, and the end of a take and use it to sync up the audio in post.
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2298It only really affects us if we record more than like an hour, if we stop record every once and a while it isn't an issue. Certain recorders seem worse than others. We can't figure it out. Makes no sense. If you lock everything together with time code, it imports perfectly, but you have to use a separate recorder for the audio like a Sound Devices. We have a mic plugged into the camera, and HDSDI from the camera takes that video and audio TOGETHER into a recorder, no idea why it should drift over time, but it does. Video is dumbpenningtron wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2025 3:35 pmOh geez, I just thought it was my podunk methods. Guess I might need to zoom in every 30 seconds or so, cut out small chunks of video, and re-sync from the splice spot. Sucks.Kniferide wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2025 3:24 pm This is endemic across digital video and we can't figure it out. We Record video straight from camera into Atmos Shogun Video recorders and if you take those files and drop them into Premier or Resolve, over the course of about an hour and a half the sync will drift by about 30 frames. Sometimes more. We cannot make sense of it and have not found a solution other than to just take a slate at the top of the take, and the end of a take and use it to sync up the audio in post.
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2299I'd stick a single JFET buffer circuit on a piece of perfboard and try it out. Install a switching jack in the guitar to cut power when it's not in use.
Re: Small questions that don't fit anywhere
2300i've been meaning to get round to something like this for a long time, since i know very little about applied audio electronics or circuit design, and a straightforward preamp/buffer seems like a good place to begin. i landed on don tillman's preamp design (after being really impressed by his notes on guitar pickup characteristics), but i don't quite know where to go next as far as identifying a viable modern substitute for the JFET part, which i don't think is in production anymore.