MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:31 am As far as youtube, The Dylan Talks Tone guy seems good, Stew Mac has some Dan Erlewine vids. Dan has a book that covers the basics. There's lots of good luthiers on youtube, I can't remember the names but just search for whatever particular task, someone will have a helpful vid.

I'm particularly fond of Ted Woodford https://www.youtube.com/@twoodfrd/videos

thecr4ne wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:36 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2025 10:31 am As far as youtube, The Dylan Talks Tone guy seems good, Stew Mac has some Dan Erlewine vids. Dan has a book that covers the basics. There's lots of good luthiers on youtube, I can't remember the names but just search for whatever particular task, someone will have a helpful vid.

I'm particularly fond of Ted Woodford https://www.youtube.com/@twoodfrd/videos

Me too! Even though I am a toolless klutz, watching his videos is a weekly oasis of calm.

Ted lives half a KM away from me and has done work on a bunch of my guitars. It's a pretty rare amazing thing to have a master so close to home. I'm very grateful.

I watch him when the calm app isn't doing the trick lol. I really love his approach to troubleshooting overall which is essentially "don't buy trouble. fix problems, don't create them."

It really is relaxing.

Anyone ever fuck with varieties in the Sansamp lineage?

I was just reading an old Tchad Blake interview where he was talking about his lofi boxes and talking about Sansamp on drums. It sounds like his version was both old, and had some eq switch stuff beyond the bass/mid/treble plus presence.

Looking on Reverb there are wonderous varieties at prices ranging from stompbox to used motorcycle.

I actually don't care if its any good on guitar. I also already use guitar pedals when mixing all the time so it might be redundant.

losthighway wrote: Sat Mar 01, 2025 4:41 pm Anyone ever fuck with varieties in the Sansamp lineage?

One MILLION years and ~1100 pedals ago I built an enormous clone of the Sansamp GT-2 for a friend. Dont remember much about it, but it did sound good.

losthighway wrote: Sat Mar 01, 2025 4:41 pm Anyone ever fuck with varieties in the Sansamp lineage?

I was just reading an old Tchad Blake interview where he was talking about his lofi boxes and talking about Sansamp on drums. It sounds like his version was both old, and had some eq switch stuff beyond the bass/mid/treble plus presence.

Looking on Reverb there are wonderous varieties at prices ranging from stompbox to used motorcycle.

I actually don't care if its any good on guitar. I also already use guitar pedals when mixing all the time so it might be redundant.

Yeah - I remember reading an interview where he said the first one he got had dipswitches and I’ve definitely seen listing for them out there for not much money.

I have a Sansamp PSA-1 permanently strapped to an effect send on my board and I go through phases with it. It was the cheapest one listed at the time I bought it and somebody on an old gearspace recommended that model specifically, though I don’t know if T. Blake used that one. I think I actually like it best on room mics on any source though I’ve never even tried it on a direct guitar. It does work fairly well on percussion too.

The effect is very similar to reamping nontraditional sources, where sometimes you get a wild hair to try a cool idea, then you hear it and it’s like, well, ok! That’s what a tambourine through a tube amp sounds like! Next!

It’s no coincidence that Tchad Blake gets so goofy with it because scrolling through Sansamp presets can sound pretty cartoony. The knob preset system it uses is so weird that if a preset doesn’t get me 90% of the way there I keep going, but like half of everything either sounds like a metal guitar sound and the other half is like a spanky Strat thing. The AC30 preset is pretty funny too. I thought the EQ would be more useful but I really don’t use it all that much… it works, but again, the effect really is like running something through a guitar amp and then playing with the eq on the amp.

Anyways for the cost of a guitar pedal it can do a lot, but it’s also one of those you can burn hours on. There’s so much stuff out there like this for cheap that I’ve still never felt compelled to try saturation or vintage-izer plugins.

Unless you make lots of looped trip hop music, stomp box distortion on drums usually sounds stupid. You're better off experimenting with saturation plugs for this kind of stuff because at least you'll only waste 5 minutes on it verses several hours futzing with pedals, re-amping the snare or whatever.

I got a MXR Bass DI that I actually use to for bass sometimes. For more classic bass parts it gets pretty close to what I'd get out of a mic'd amp (and lots of 'classic' bass sounds were recorded direct anyway), but it's a little harder to get Shellac/Big Black kind of bass sounds out of it. It just gets too zingy, too "4 track in the red" sounding too fast.

If you're going for the Tchad Blake thing, you want the OG Sansamp with the dipswitches, but I agree with FM Penningtron, just do this stuff with plugins now, way easier.

Back in the late 90s I had the non-OG Sansamp and it was ok, it distorted stuff, but it wasn't any magic thing. I think the dipswitches on the OG are where the fun is, so if you were gonna do this.....do that.

While we're talking Tchad, this Level Loc plugin just came out:

https://korneffaudio.com/product/shure-level-loc/

I haven't tried it but it was getting raves over at gearspace. I had to give up on that place because I got tired of having arguments with astoundingly out of touch arrogant boomers, but that plugin is probably fun.

Oh yeah, if the new little Level Loc guys ever show up used within a comfortable Pay In Four range (ie, ~$250, mea culpa), I’m jumping on it. I’m not even really a big T Blake fan outside of Low’s Trust, which was a longstanding fav.

To be clear though, the rack Sansamp I have takes line level signals, so you don’t have to mess with reamp boxes or anything. Then you blend it in on it’s own channel or send or both (like I do). Not sure about the others.