Latest / Chasing Tone - Guitar Podcast About Gear, Effects, Amps and Tone / 641 - A vintage Marshall steals Brian’s heart, Richard’s fuzz hits the big stage, and stop getting Wampler wrong!

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641 - A vintage Marshall steals Brian’s heart, Richard’s fuzz hits the big stage, and stop getting Wampler wrong! · Chasing Tone - Guitar Podcast About Gear, Effects, Amps and Tone

• 0:06
  Richard: Threw him off.
• 0:07
  Richard: I threw him off by saying we need a different song beginning with two.
• 0:12
  Richard: Because he was gonna start singing two is the magic number.
• 0:17
  Brian: Just the two of us.
• 0:18
  Richard: That's normal to just the two of us.
• 0:20
  Richard: Oh, you should have sung two is the magic number.
• 0:22
  Richard: So again, I think it's three is the magic.
• 0:25
  Brian: I think it's three is the magic number is the song.
• 0:27
  Brian: Two is not the magic number.
• 0:30
  Richard: Two is in England we're cheap.
• 0:32
  Richard: Two is the magic number.
• 0:34
  Richard: In England, 33% cheaper.
• 0:37
  Richard: Yeah, Blake isn't here this week because he's uh flying off to I guess he's flying to California to do awesome stuff for a week.
• 0:45
  Richard: So uh I think that's that means no Blake for two weeks on the he's flying on he's flying on the corporate stringjoy jet.
• 0:52
  Richard: He really is.
• 0:53
  Richard: Um string string force one string force one.
• 0:59
  Richard: So is that what we can call it?
• 1:02
  Richard: Uh I was gonna say Joy Force One, but that sounds like a different product altogether.
• 1:07
  Richard: Yeah, it's probably something different.
• 1:09
  Richard: So, how are you doing anyway, Bri?
• 1:11
  Brian: Oh man, I'm good.
• 1:13
  Brian: It's um it's been an interesting weekend.
• 1:17
  Brian: I was camping all weekend.
• 1:18
  Richard: I saw some pictures, yeah.
• 1:19
  Richard: It looked amazing.
• 1:21
  Brian: Yeah, it was a good weekend for camping.
• 1:23
  Brian: It's one of those weekends where if you like campfires, it's perfect campfire weather.
• 1:27
  Brian: Oh, no, no rain at all, just no rain and cool evenings.
• 1:32
  Brian: Cool air with the fire just being the perfect the perfect temperature for a good campfire.
• 1:37
  Richard: Okay, which is what 400 degrees Fahrenheit?
• 1:42
  Brian: I mean, the perfect temperature outside for a good campfire.
• 1:46
  Richard: See, uh, did you roast some marshmallows on the campfire?
• 1:49
  Brian: Uh they did.
• 1:50
  Brian: I'm not a big fan of the marshmallows or s'mores or anything.
• 1:52
  Brian: I'm not.
• 1:53
  Brian: They everyone else did, but I I just ate large amounts of unhealthy hot dogs and hamburgers.
• 1:59
  Brian: As opposed to healthy hot dogs, uh, which don't exist.
• 2:03
  Brian: Um I basically just ate the entire weekend, and then today I'm like, why do I feel so terrible?
• 2:10
  Richard: Oh, but that's great.
• 2:11
  Richard: It's good to kick your like your new balances off every now and then, put your feet up, drink a nice craft beer.
• 2:20
  Richard: I hope you took a little picture of craft beers with you.
• 2:23
  Brian: Uh I did not, no.
• 2:24
  Brian: I just had some some regular old plain old beer.
• 2:29
  Brian: Yeah.
• 2:29
  Brian: Not even that much, really.
• 2:31
  Brian: I had more coffee than beer, actually, if that makes.
• 2:34
  Richard: I I had a good result last week.
• 2:35
  Richard: Well, kind of a good result.
• 2:37
  Richard: It was actually a bad result and a good result.
• 2:38
  Richard: We went to Leela's house, uh, and she bought us a Chinese meal from a takeaway that she says is great, Dad.
• 2:47
  Richard: And I'm like, okay, I'll trust you.
• 2:48
  Richard: So I let her, I was like, Do you want me to pay?
• 2:51
  Richard: No, I'll buy it.
• 2:52
  Richard: I'm like, amazing.
• 2:53
  Richard: We'll we'll have the Chinese food.
• 2:54
  Richard: We ate the Chinese food.
• 2:56
  Richard: It came with two free beers, and they're both on a we're not drinking much anymore kick because sure.
• 3:04
  Richard: Let's just say they went out a few weeks ago, and my son-in-law may have drunk too much of the alcoholic slushies in an arcade.
• 3:13
  Richard: An Uber may never pick them up ever again.
• 3:16
  Brian: Those things happened.
• 3:17
  Richard: Yeah.
• 3:18
  Brian: The Uber got painted blue.
• 3:20
  Brian: I understand.
• 3:22
  Richard: The air got painted blue, that's for certain.
• 3:25
  Richard: Um, oh wow.
• 3:27
  Richard: So I got these two free beers.
• 3:29
  Richard: Um, there is a side note, the next day I had the worst stomach cramps and whatever else known to man, and I actually had all of Friday morning off work as a result.
• 3:40
  Richard: But I had the two free beers, so it was okay.
• 3:42
  Richard: But what was interesting is these are like commercial supermarket beers that they're a named brand, but it's 3.4% alcohol.
• 3:52
  Richard: And I've like a Michelob Ultra or something.
• 3:54
  Richard: Right.
• 3:55
  Richard: I was like, I haven't had a low alcohol beer like this since I tastes a lot like bad water, doesn't it?
• 4:01
  Richard: Well, I I I would say it kind of tastes a little bit like good water.
• 4:05
  Richard: Like it it's quite a nice, refreshing drink.
• 4:08
  Richard: It doesn't touch the it doesn't touch the sides alcohol-wise, but it just about tickles the beer motor.
• 4:14
  Richard: It just about starts you up ready for a real beer.
• 4:17
  Brian: I drink a lot of sparkling water.
• 4:20
  Brian: Yes.
• 4:20
  Brian: Um, and I would rather have sparkling water than like a 3% beer for the water.
• 4:24
  Richard: Sparkling water.
• 4:25
  Richard: Not that I am anyone to lecture, but you know, sparkly water is very bad for your teeth.
• 4:30
  Brian: Yes.
• 4:30
  Brian: I don't drink a lot of it.
• 4:31
  Brian: Just generally when we run podcasts and water.
• 4:36
  Richard: It's not sparkly enough.
• 4:37
  Richard: Can you taste the difference in different sparkling waters?
• 4:41
  Brian: Um, I always get the same thing.
• 4:44
  Richard: Because they all do taste the difference.
• 4:45
  Richard: Some are softer, some are the same.
• 4:46
  Richard: I can taste the difference in water.
• 4:48
  Richard: Yeah, right.
• 4:49
  Brian: Yeah, it's like regular bottled water I can taste a big difference in.
• 4:52
  Richard: Have you ever noticed that your regular tap water tastes like skunk or groundhog Bry?
• 4:59
  Richard: Because I discovered something about Bry that I did not know.
• 5:04
  Richard: It's not just Bry, it's apparently the whole of his area of Indiana.
• 5:09
  Brian: Well, at least this part of Indiana, not all of Indiana, but yeah.
• 5:13
  Brian: Your part, yeah.
• 5:14
  Richard: Uh Bri draws his water up from a natural well, not from like the mains like the rest of civilization.
• 5:21
  Brian: There are no water mains out here.
• 5:23
  Brian: Wow.
• 5:24
  Brian: You're like, if you wanted to connect to the city, tough.
• 5:28
  Brian: There's no water mains.
• 5:30
  Brian: So so what you do out here in the country is you basically dig a well.
• 5:34
  Brian: I mean, you hire a company that digs wells, and they basically dig way down a couple hundred feet, find a pocket of water, because there's lots of pockets of water here, and then you put a pump in it, and you pump that stuff into your house.
• 5:47
  Brian: What power is the pump?
• 5:51
  Brian: I don't know.
• 5:52
  Brian: Um it's it would either be it's probably 110.
• 5:56
  Brian: It might be 220, though.
• 5:58
  Richard: Okay.
• 5:58
  Richard: And where does that like there's a very long extension lead running into your house?
• 6:02
  Brian: Oh, there's there's um I'm not exactly sure it works.
• 6:07
  Brian: By way, by the way, my monitors are on in your house.
• 6:09
  Brian: I can hear myself coming to your mic.
• 6:11
  Brian: Um But anyways.
• 6:13
  Brian: I'm a doofus.
• 6:14
  Brian: There's no, you're right.
• 6:15
  Brian: It'll just be a little bit of an echo for folks until now, but that's right.
• 6:18
  Brian: Uh so there's I mean, there's just a water, a uh water line that comes from it, and then there's an electric line that goes to it.
• 6:25
  Richard: So this is a whole I mean a whole new world to me.
• 6:28
  Brian: Well, I mean, so to be to be fair, like the water pump isn't 200 feet down.
• 6:33
  Brian: The water pump is where you can get to it, it just has a big long pipe that goes down to it.
• 6:38
  Brian: Sure.
• 6:38
  Brian: Yeah.
• 6:38
  Brian: Down at the water.
• 6:39
  Brian: Yeah.
• 6:40
  Brian: And that's where the skunk goes.
• 6:42
  Brian: Well, you don't want a skunk to fall in that pit.
• 6:44
  Brian: That's so you generally want to seal them up, yeah, so nothing can get into it.
• 6:49
  Brian: That's the trick.
• 6:50
  Brian: It's keeping the water clean.
• 6:52
  Richard: Amazing.
• 6:53
  Richard: It's a whole new world.
• 6:54
  Richard: But you know, it's good that you are so self-sufficient because who knows.
• 6:58
  Brian: Yeah, so the uh so once the agents take over, yeah.
• 7:02
  Richard: Once the AOA has taken over.
• 7:04
  Brian: Yeah, once that happens, then um as long as we have electricity, I can still get water.
• 7:09
  Richard: Yeah, I mean, well, surely you could build a gigantic solar farm on your land, Bri.
• 7:16
  Brian: Uh, a lot of people do.
• 7:17
  Brian: A lot of people rely on solar, yeah.
• 7:19
  Brian: But um, and generators.
• 7:21
  Brian: We have a lot of everyone out here has a generator.
• 7:23
  Richard: Is it time to finally build that solar-powered amp we've been dreaming of?
• 7:29
  Brian: We probably could solid state, but not tube.
• 7:32
  Brian: I mean, an average not for long, anyways.
• 7:34
  Brian: I guess you could charge a battery and then power it for a couple seconds or so.
• 7:39
  Brian: I reckon you could do better than that.
• 7:41
  Brian: I mean probably so.
• 7:42
  Brian: I mean, you'd have to charge 10 grand worth of panels.
• 7:46
  Brian: Substantial battery or something, but yeah.
• 7:48
  Richard: I was looking at solar for my house, and essentially it's it's quite a cost, it's about£12,000.
• 7:55
  Richard: And like my house would be way smaller than an American house, uh, like probably a quarter the size, but it's still 16 panels, and it's like it would take me 10 years to pay that back in terms of savings.
• 8:10
  Richard: If if we're still using electricity the way we are in 10 years, the whole world's screwed anyway.
• 8:16
  Brian: So I do wonder though, for the solar house, if you have Marshallplexies, multiple Marshallplexies, how long can you run them on solar?
• 8:25
  Brian: You know, I mean with your battery banks.
• 8:28
  Richard: It sounds like a video waiting to happen to me, Bri.
• 8:32
  Richard: Brian, why are you installing a 14 megawatt solar array on our house?
• 8:37
  Richard: Don't worry about it, Amanda.
• 8:38
  Richard: It's for a video series I've got.
• 8:40
  Richard: You'll see it on YouTube before long.
• 8:43
  Brian: All will be revealed.
• 8:45
  Richard: Oh, I hope not.
• 8:46
  Richard: That would be hideous.
• 8:47
  Brian: Um I gotta make another YouTube video, actually.
• 8:49
  Brian: I'm in the midst of it.
• 8:50
  Brian: I'm in the midst of it right now.
• 8:52
  Richard: Well, yeah, I mean, look, it's been a tough year for both of us for different reasons.
• 8:56
  Brian: Oh man, yeah, it's just been a hell of a year.
• 8:58
  Richard: Yeah, and uh obviously, uh, you know, you've gone heavily into the uh the AI vibe coding rabbit hole.
• 9:07
  Richard: Let me tell you, I did a bit of that myself last week, Bright.
• 9:10
  Richard: And uh, I think I'm gonna give the patrons, if not the listeners, because I don't think I can afford the bandwidth, uh, a sneak peek.
• 9:16
  Richard: I wrote a game in AI by feeding it a disc image of an old game and then reverse engineering it and rewriting it in three dimensions.
• 9:28
  Richard: Uh, and it was a really, really interesting experiment, and the game was really good, and absolutely zero people gave a shit about what I did, Bri.
• 9:39
  Richard: They were like, Yeah, but you just vibe coded it in AI, you just pressed a button and it happened.
• 9:43
  Richard: I'm like, I did so much more than that, but it is scary how good this stuff has become, and what's really scary is how good Suno has become at writing music.
• 9:52
  Richard: I wrote the music in Suno with like three prompts, and Suno changed a lot, I think.
• 9:58
  Brian: They they didn't they just change a lot recently, and basically they changed all their training models.
• 10:02
  Brian: I don't know what they're saying that way, everything doesn't sound like Eddie Vetter whenever you make a song.
• 10:08
  Richard: I mean, it it's really, really good.
• 10:11
  Richard: It's very depressing, Bri.
• 10:13
  Richard: Uh, but I was thinking in the shower this morning, I was thinking I might now write an original game with original music, and that might be the best way of using my musical talents by bringing them out in a game rather than by bringing them out as you know, individual music.
• 10:32
  Richard: If it was an original game with original music, then I think you can be excused for using AI to code it.
• 10:40
  Richard: It's no different than just using another coder.
• 10:43
  Brian: Did we talk about streaming pedals getting reverse engineered?
• 10:47
  Brian: We did mention it, yeah.
• 10:48
  Brian: Okay, okay.
• 10:49
  Brian: Did you find anything else out about it?
• 10:51
  Brian: Um, I did find out I'm just something, an article I stumbled stumbled upon.
• 10:56
  Brian: So basically, nothing more than we already know.
• 10:59
  Brian: It just talks more about how the person did it.
• 11:04
  Brian: That's it.
• 11:05
  Brian: This is the thing.
• 11:07
  Brian: But I mean, I will I will say, like, as much as I hate that, I saw yet another instance this week where someone took a batch of my pedals and made a AI-based neural model.
• 11:20
  Brian: Right.
• 11:20
  Brian: Because that's AI-based, and now they sell it.
• 11:24
  Brian: And I a batch of my pedals sold as a neural model.
• 11:27
  Brian: It's the same thing as taking an artist that someone uh an artist um drawing or whatever.
• 11:32
  Richard: I'd imagine the entire internet was incensed about this, right, Bri?
• 11:36
  Brian: No, no one gave a damn.
• 11:38
  Brian: Fact everyone said, that's awesome.
• 11:40
  Brian: I love the fact that you took someone else's work and then turned it into a file that others can buy from you without giving anything back to the person that actually created the circuits.
• 11:49
  Brian: That's that's amazing.
• 11:51
  Brian: Which is exactly what most people bitch about.
• 11:54
  Brian: Exactly what people bitch about, right?
• 11:56
  Brian: Exactly.
• 11:57
  Brian: But it's totally different when it's neural modeling for guitar amps.
• 12:01
  Richard: Yeah, I I mean I I honestly think like we've all been looking at this AI debate a bit skewed because we're all scared about the content it produces.
• 12:10
  Richard: The content it produces is not good, like even with a good human giving it good prompts, and Brian's done some good stuff in this area, it's still like vacuous content to a degree.
• 12:22
  Richard: And it's it's fine for a purpose, right?
• 12:24
  Brian: And and to be and to be, you know, to be blunt to answer some questions.
• 12:27
  Brian: No, at Wampler, we do not just vibe code effects and put them into a pedal.
• 12:32
  Brian: That's not how that stuff works at all.
• 12:34
  Richard: Or do we use it for any of our design?
• 12:36
  Richard: I can say that without you know, yeah, so that's without hesitation.
• 12:40
  Brian: We're not using it for that sort of thing.
• 12:42
  Richard: No, but the thing that AI is really good, like it's just beyond good at is coding.
• 12:49
  Richard: Like, is doing the work of computers.
• 12:51
  Richard: Funnily enough, a network of computers compressed into an algorithm is really good at doing the work of a network of computers being run by people.
• 13:01
  Richard: So, in terms of coding, that's the area.
• 13:04
  Richard: I think I think the job most at risk right now is is that in software engineering.
• 13:09
  Richard: I think if you're not pivoting to being better at specifying software and less about actually doing the code, I think there's gonna be a lot of jobs lost in that area.
• 13:20
  Richard: And I mean this is crazy, man.
• 13:23
  Brian: You know, I was thinking about this last night.
• 13:24
  Brian: I think as this just becomes more uh common and and really ubiquitous, I think there's gonna be a drive back to the good old analog of everything, whether it's tube amps, whether it's guitar pedals, I mean, because it it is overwhelming when yeah, everything when everything is easily built digitally, then the only thing of value is that that's not.
• 13:49
  Richard: And and again, I I can tell you so again, we're not gonna make this the AI episode again.
• 13:55
  Richard: Yeah, this yeah, I don't want to make this an AI episode.
• 13:57
  Richard: Yeah, but but the things that amuse me most about my game, I mean the physics, great, you know, all brilliant.
• 14:03
  Richard: But the things that amused me most were the little touches I put in it, which hearkened back to the simpler times of gaming, and it made me realize like the skateboarder guy that kept knocking me off my damn butt.
• 14:15
  Richard: That's it, right?
• 14:16
  Richard: But like, and I then look at my son-in-law, who's just recently purchased two modern Raspberry Pi-based arcade machines, and he loves nothing more than playing Paperboy, Gauntlet, and those classics.
• 14:29
  Richard: I love that stuff, man.
• 14:30
  Richard: Because you can pick it up and start playing.
• 14:32
  Richard: You don't need to read through a giant manual and fight against a ninja army of 12-year-olds who are way better at playing it than you, with way faster reflexes, exactly.
• 14:43
  Richard: Way faster reflexes and way more time on their hands and and no need to sleep to get up the next day.
• 14:49
  Brian: Except I had to quit Call of Duty because I kept getting shot before I even saw anybody.
• 14:54
  Brian: I didn't even see that person.
• 14:55
  Richard: You were really good at Call of Duty as well.
• 14:58
  Richard: I was terrible at it.
• 14:59
  Richard: So uh yeah, so that's uh that's one thing I've been doing.
• 15:02
  Richard: I had a band practice this weekend, Bright, and I took my new my new Digitech drop pedal with me.
• 15:08
  Richard: Um and did it work as good as uh we talked about?
• 15:11
  Richard: Maybe, maybe not.
• 15:13
  Richard: So we played Basket Case by Green Day, which is in D sharp tuning.
• 15:19
  Brian: It is dropped, isn't it?
• 15:21
  Richard: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:22
  Richard: And so I used my drop pedal on it, and at the end, my guitar, uh my my drummer looked at me and went, uh, yeah, that wasn't your best one, Rich.
• 15:30
  Richard: I that sounded all over the place.
• 15:32
  Richard: I was like, it did, and then I realized what was going on.
• 15:37
  Richard: A, I wasn't tuned perfectly, and if you're not tuned uh because of my bass player, that's another story.
• 15:43
  Richard: But if you're not tuned absolutely perfectly, then obviously your drop is going to accentuate that.
• 15:48
  Richard: And we had a backing track, and there was just a little bit of drift in the tune there, and I'm like, it's not me, it's the backing track.
• 15:56
  Richard: Let's kill the backing track.
• 15:58
  Richard: But I think my conclusion is I'll probably take another guitar when I when I gig.
• 16:05
  Richard: Like for practice, it's fine.
• 16:07
  Brian: So stupid question, because I've always played that with bands just in E, just because it's better, it's easier, right?
• 16:13
  Brian: Yeah, but what if you drop it down to D?
• 16:16
  Brian: Oh, you can't because you're using backing tracks.
• 16:18
  Richard: That's why you're going to E flat.
• 16:19
  Richard: Okay.
• 16:20
  Richard: But you don't need backing tracks for that song.
• 16:21
  Richard: We're a three-piece band, we've got drums, bass and guitar.
• 16:24
  Richard: So you're just you're fine.
• 16:26
  Brian: That that's a three-piece band that played that song.
• 16:28
  Richard: So you can find so I'm I'm my I I have two campaigns.
• 16:33
  Richard: One stopped the drummer from telling me I sound out a tune, which in itself is all kind of ironic.
• 16:39
  Brian: But I mean, the hold on the drummer.
• 16:42
  Brian: Like, yeah, what tune is your tom end?
• 16:44
  Brian: Yeah, exactly.
• 16:45
  Brian: But second, some drummer's gonna say, actually, we do tune those two keys.
• 16:50
  Richard: Uh I used to I used to tune all of mine to the to uh a C.
• 16:54
  Richard: I used to try and get all of mine to a different C note so that when you played across the kit, you got a really nice musical taste.
• 17:00
  Richard: That's a fact.
• 17:01
  Richard: Interesting, yeah.
• 17:02
  Richard: I mean, it's a g it is a good way of tuning drums, is just try and pick a musical note.
• 17:06
  Richard: Whether I did it accurately or not is another another question.
• 17:10
  Richard: And whether the steps were big enough.
• 17:12
  Richard: Yeah.
• 17:12
  Richard: Sure.
• 17:13
  Richard: But uh it's it's an interesting way of doing it.
• 17:14
  Richard: But yeah, uh so and honestly, it destroyed my confidence that day.
• 17:20
  Richard: Everything I played that day just felt wrong after after going in with that.
• 17:25
  Richard: It didn't help that we went in and played Evelong, which I hadn't really listened to properly, and I couldn't.
• 17:31
  Brian: Oh, you gotta listen, you gotta know that song.
• 17:33
  Brian: There's some changes going on there.
• 17:34
  Richard: Well, it's the pre-chorus, right?
• 17:35
  Richard: The the pre-chorus is like in weird timing, and it got me every single time because I was following the drummer and the vocalist was doing the vocal.
• 17:46
  Richard: I was like, no.
• 17:47
  Richard: So I I'm I messed up and I just felt really, really low.
• 17:51
  Richard: I came away wanting to stop playing guitar.
• 17:54
  Richard: Have you ever had a practice that bad where you've just gone, I actually just want to stop playing guitar.
• 17:59
  Brian: I've had gigs that way, man.
• 18:00
  Brian: Where it's just you, I mean, we're like for whatever reason you just still feel deflated, you know.
• 18:06
  Richard: I couldn't put my finger.
• 18:08
  Richard: I I mean, I could.
• 18:09
  Richard: There were a number of things I did wrong.
• 18:11
  Richard: Uh, some I can talk about on the radio and some I can't, but um, on the podcast.
• 18:16
  Richard: But uh the the number one thing is yeah, man, I was not prepared.
• 18:21
  Richard: I I was arrogant.
• 18:22
  Richard: I went in thinking I'm gonna wing this because I've played it through three times and I know where my fingers go, and I was arrogant, and I'm gonna have to punish myself a lot for that.
• 18:33
  Richard: So uh yeah, um the the drop did its thing.
• 18:38
  Richard: It's the least exciting pedal to ever buy.
• 18:41
  Richard: Like it's less exciting than a tuna pedal.
• 18:45
  Brian: But it's useful.
• 18:46
  Brian: It is useful, yeah.
• 18:47
  Brian: Yeah, I mean that's there's a reason why we haven't come out with the pitch shifter.
• 18:51
  Brian: It's not because we haven't designed one, it's just that and by the way, the graphic I designed for it was about my best.
• 18:57
  Brian: Yeah, I thought it was great, but it's just one of those things where there's not a huge audience for it.
• 19:04
  Brian: No, it's not it's not like a great tube amp, like a JMP Plexy that George Metropolis modified.
• 19:11
  Brian: I mean, it's nothing like that at all.
• 19:12
  Brian: I'm just I'm just saying, because that's pretty much I mean, if you like cats and you like meows, that is the cats meow.
• 19:22
  Richard: Okay, is what that is.
• 19:23
  Richard: I'm going to assume that you enjoyed the new purchase.
• 19:26
  Brian: Oh, good lord.
• 19:27
  Brian: I played that amp and I said, I feel like quitting the guitar pedal business now.
• 19:32
  Brian: Oh, this amp has the most glorious overdrive tone.
• 19:35
  Brian: Oh my god.
• 19:36
  Richard: It's so amazing.
• 19:38
  Brian: So good.
• 19:39
  Brian: It is so good.
• 19:40
  Brian: Have I mentioned how good it is?
• 19:42
  Richard: Yes, and you've sent me pictures.
• 19:44
  Brian: Uh did you did you get the picture where I was hugging it?
• 19:48
  Brian: Uh in bed?
• 19:49
  Brian: Oh, you were hugging it.
• 19:51
  Richard: I I sent that to the FBI because I'm not sure.
• 19:55
  Brian: I blurred out the naughty bits, but we may have spent a night together, if you know what I'm saying.
• 20:00
  Richard: What we need to do now is is we need to do a series of like Polaroid pictures of you in bed with an amplifier, but blur out all the amplifiers' control knobs.
• 20:11
  Richard: So that would be a great viral uh viral start to the week, or a way of getting in trouble.
• 20:18
  Richard: I don't know.
• 20:19
  Richard: One of the two.
• 20:20
  Richard: Uh so what did you ever figure out what year this amp actually was?
• 20:25
  Brian: It oh gosh, I did.
• 20:28
  Brian: It is, I want to say it was a 74.
• 20:31
  Brian: Um, at least that's where it started its life at.
• 20:33
  Brian: Now I again George Metropolis actually modified this.
• 20:37
  Brian: So stupid ads on Reverb.
• 20:40
  Richard: And have you have you just spoken to George since getting it?
• 20:43
  Brian: So it was a 74.
• 20:44
  Brian: 74.
• 20:46
  Brian: Sorry, that's when it was built originally.
• 20:47
  Brian: It's a JMP 1987 Mark II is.
• 20:51
  Richard: Weren't you built in 1974?
• 20:55
  Brian: I can neither deny nor confirm over the internet.
• 21:00
  Brian: I I shall not be telling people my age on this internet thing is just saying it might be as old as you.
• 21:07
  Brian: I am not saying.
• 21:08
  Brian: Uh you never know.
• 21:10
  Brian: I might be 1984.
• 21:12
  Brian: You never know.
• 21:13
  Brian: I could be 40.
• 21:14
  Richard: You could be.
• 21:15
  Richard: He's or whatever it is, 42.
• 21:17
  Richard: He's definitely not.
• 21:18
  Richard: Speaking of, Brad Paisley is playing in London on my birthday next year, and also Amanda's birthday.
• 21:24
  Richard: What a perfect opportunity for you to fly across to the UK and we'll all go and watch Brad together in London.
• 21:30
  Richard: That'd be a lot of fun, wouldn't it?
• 21:32
  Richard: It would be a lot of fun.
• 21:33
  Richard: Um, oh, and also I got a video uh jumping out subject to subject before we go back to your amp.
• 21:39
  Richard: Got a video from Jake Young today.
• 21:40
  Richard: Uh I post it on the One Plurb.
• 21:42
  Richard: Um from the Man the Home podcast.
• 21:44
  Richard: Yeah, and the other podcast, the uh paranoia one.
• 21:49
  Richard: I can't remember the exact name, I'll have to go back to it very quickly.
• 21:52
  Richard: Uh, which I talked about, which I actually really, really enjoyed.
• 21:56
  Richard: I yeah, in in some ways, uh It's become one of my favorite shows, but as everything else in life.
• 22:04
  Brian: Is it the nope, that's the wrong one.
• 22:07
  Richard: Never mind.
• 22:08
  Richard: It's uh it is called The Paranoid Perspective.
• 22:12
  Richard: I wanted to call uh okay.
• 22:14
  Richard: Yeah, I wanted to call it the Practical Paranoia podcast.
• 22:17
  Richard: Maybe that's my new title.
• 22:18
  Richard: I don't know.
• 22:19
  Richard: Uh but man, dude, that guy can play.
• 22:23
  Richard: He can play.
• 22:24
  Richard: He's another reason I want to give up the guitar today.
• 22:27
  Richard: Um anyway, back to the amp.
• 22:29
  Richard: Uh so how many channels is that then?
• 22:31
  Richard: Is that a single channel amp?
• 22:33
  Richard: It's a single channel.
• 22:34
  Richard: I'm guessing no effects loop back in in that day and age.
• 22:38
  Richard: No, no effects loop.
• 22:39
  Richard: So just as the good lord intended it.
• 22:42
  Richard: What input?
• 22:43
  Brian: Yeah.
• 22:43
  Brian: Not not easy.
• 22:44
  Brian: So I will say, so George did put a master volume on it.
• 22:47
  Brian: I like a master volume.
• 22:48
  Brian: Yeah.
• 22:48
  Brian: I like a master volume.
• 22:49
  Brian: I have heard this.
• 22:50
  Brian: Um so he he did put a master volume on it, still has the presence control.
• 22:56
  Brian: And um I this is gonna sound terrible, but I actually like some sometimes.
• 23:02
  Brian: I like more modern transformers in those type of amps.
• 23:05
  Brian: And uh this is one of those scenarios where it just there's I don't know how you explain it.
• 23:11
  Brian: There is like this crispness of a crisp, yeah, with without being sizzly.
• 23:16
  Richard: Yeah.
• 23:17
  Richard: That I really like.
• 23:18
  Richard: Um you get that a lot with the modern synergy stuff, I find.
• 23:22
  Richard: Like because they've used modern components, but then they've voiced each module to sound like it's kind of vintage or modern counterpart, you still get that snap, but you get a different warmth.
• 23:34
  Richard: I I mean, I would I would test it out, but I've got rid of my synergy now, Bryce.
• 23:38
  Richard: So I'm without a synergy for a while.
• 23:40
  Richard: I'm sure you'll have another one.
• 23:41
  Brian: Oh, I'm sure I will.
• 23:42
  Brian: Um did it smell funny at all, the amplifier?
• 23:47
  Brian: It didn't, so I actually like how most old amps smell.
• 23:51
  Brian: In fact, I had a discussion with my wife who said that she hates the smell of a music store because of the way the electronics smell.
• 23:58
  Brian: To which I said, What what?
• 24:01
  Brian: What the hell are you talking?
• 24:03
  Brian: What do you even mean?
• 24:03
  Brian: What's that even mean?
• 24:04
  Brian: That's not even English.
• 24:06
  Brian: Um, it didn't smell like electronics.
• 24:09
  Brian: It actually just smelled like I don't know, maybe maybe a hint of cologne.
• 24:13
  Brian: Yeah.
• 24:14
  Brian: The person was boxing it up after having a shower or something.
• 24:18
  Brian: I don't know.
• 24:18
  Brian: But it didn't have any weird funky smells.
• 24:21
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:22
  Brian: It was this one was actually boxed up fantastic.
• 24:25
  Brian: So no problems at all.
• 24:26
  Brian: In fact, when um the person was boxing it up, one of the little spring um holders for this for the power tubes, one of the springs broke.
• 24:35
  Brian: And so this person emailed me and said, Hey, uh, this just happened.
• 24:39
  Brian: I'll take, you know, if I can either return your money or I can take 50 bucks off.
• 24:44
  Brian: And I was like, dude, that's more than fair.
• 24:45
  Brian: That's fine.
• 24:46
  Brian: So do you have to uh fix that yourself?
• 24:48
  Brian: I will.
• 24:49
  Brian: It doesn't stop with the playability of it at all.
• 24:51
  Richard: No, so so they're like the little kind of locking things that keep the tube in place.
• 24:55
  Brian: It's that it's just yeah, but it's just the spring that's on the side.
• 24:58
  Brian: So not a big deal.
• 24:59
  Brian: I'll just get in that quick.
• 25:00
  Brian: Yeah.
• 25:00
  Brian: Yeah, but I mean, just to just as a far as a you as a reverb user that emailed me to say, hey, this just broke while packing packaging it up.
• 25:09
  Brian: Um, you know, and just being forthright.
• 25:11
  Brian: I thought that was very, very cool, very nice of them.
• 25:14
  Brian: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 25:15
  Brian: Um compared to the last pill I bought that was basically stuffed in an envelope, ran over, thrown with you know, hit with a baseball bat and everything else, it's a nice change.
• 25:27
  Richard: Yeah, sorry about that.
• 25:28
  Richard: Next time I'll take more care.
• 25:30
  Richard: Uh so my my question to you though, Bri is is it an age-related thing?
• 25:38
  Richard: But like there was a time in my life where if I bought anything, the best thing I could buy was the newest, glossiest, and most woodiest.
• 25:48
  Richard: But now the best things I can buy are the humblest looking, the most unassuming, and and sometimes the little bit beaten up.
• 25:57
  Richard: The patina tells a story.
• 25:59
  Richard: You know, I looked at the amp and I immediately wanted to play it.
• 26:04
  Richard: Whereas if you'd have just sent me a picture of a modern martial head, I'd have gone, yeah, that's nice.
• 26:09
  Richard: Next.
• 26:10
  Richard: But there's something about the little little kind of markings in it that intrigue me.
• 26:15
  Richard: Is that an age thing?
• 26:18
  Richard: Maybe so.
• 26:19
  Brian: Maybe just it shows experience, you know.
• 26:21
  Brian: I like it.
• 26:22
  Brian: Kind of kind of like a balding head.
• 26:24
  Brian: Yeah, kind of like a balding head starts to just show experience, yeah, more than anything else.
• 26:29
  Brian: That's that's my story, anyways, that I'm sticking to.
• 26:32
  Richard: Yeah, well, it's a good story, and uh I I wish to stick to it too.
• 26:36
  Brian: I would say there are things that that doesn't apply to, like BMX bikes, for example.
• 26:40
  Brian: Sure.
• 26:40
  Brian: Yeah.
• 26:41
  Richard: I like a good refurbished 80s BMX bike, particularly a do we have any BMX manufacturers like listening who maybe want to sponsor you by sending you a BMX just asking for Brian?
• 26:54
  Brian: I'm still waiting on that call from Steve Caballero, so you know.
• 26:57
  Richard: Um, another thing, you ever sold someone a guitar and then they've modified it, and you've looked at it and gone, that's better than what I had, and now I'm slightly mad for not thinking about it.
• 27:12
  Brian: Well, first of all, there's a problem with your question.
• 27:15
  Brian: You said, Have I ever sold a guitar?
• 27:18
  Richard: Uh let's let's start with that.
• 27:20
  Richard: Have you ever sold a guitar?
• 27:25
  Brian: I need to.
• 27:25
  Brian: I mean, I have guitars that I they're literally just packaged away.
• 27:29
  Brian: I just can't bring myself to sell them, man.
• 27:31
  Brian: I need to.
• 27:33
  Richard: Well, so this was like basically I have limited room in here, and I wanted a new guitar, and I had this Gordon Smith telecaster, and I just didn't love it.
• 27:43
  Richard: And my cousin loved it, and he was like, I'll buy it off you.
• 27:47
  Richard: And so we did a fair deal, and I sent it out to him, and he got it, and he's been playing, he's in a little band, and and he's been playing uh and he sent me a picture the other day, he's replaced the neck, so it was a like kind of surf green colour, but he's replaced the neck from a roasted maple plain neck to like what looks like ebony.
• 28:08
  Richard: It it it's probably some like exotic rosewood.
• 28:11
  Richard: Are you flexing your bicep at me there, Bri?
• 28:13
  Richard: Do I you were just flexing your bicep?
• 28:15
  Richard: Was that involuntary or or or were you giving me the gun show?
• 28:19
  Brian: I didn't know I flexed my bicep.
• 28:21
  Brian: Yeah, it was pulsing.
• 28:22
  Richard: It was pulsing.
• 28:24
  Richard: Uh, I'm obviously making you excited with my talk of rosewood.
• 28:27
  Brian: I I was yeah, I was trying to figure out why someone would replace the neck on that.
• 28:31
  Richard: Well, see, it had a very thin neck on it, and he's replaced it with a slightly fatter and uh really gorgeous looking like ebony neck.
• 28:40
  Brian: So it's not that they were trying to figure out whether they could toss it around their back or anything.
• 28:44
  Brian: No one would do that, Bri.
• 28:46
  Brian: You'd have you'd have to be uh a damn fool to try that.
• 28:50
  Brian: Do you think that the different woods on the neck really make that much of a difference?
• 28:53
  Richard: Uh in terms of feel, I definitely do.
• 28:56
  Brian: I mean, soundwise though?
• 28:58
  Richard: Uh I I don't think so at all.
• 29:01
  Richard: I think again, it I think the only thing that makes a difference sound wise, and this is really controversial, is is your fingers.
• 29:08
  Richard: I think everybody will play every guitar differently.
• 29:13
  Richard: So the the most differences in your own tone.
• 29:16
  Brian: So then So I have heard from like a physics perspective, and I don't build guitars for a living, so please correct me.
• 29:24
  Brian: But I have heard that the different woods, what makes the different tone is that it dampens this the string movement, and that's what gives you the different tone.
• 30:16
  Richard: That sounds like bullshine to me.
• 30:18
  Richard: I mean, how does it dampen it?
• 30:20
  Brian: Like, I guess just a resonance of things, I guess.
• 30:23
  Richard: Maybe you know, in in very subtle amounts, you know.
• 30:28
  Richard: I glibly make all these statements about it having no effect.
• 30:31
  Richard: I don't know anything.
• 30:32
  Richard: I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a woodsman.
• 30:34
  Richard: So I'd no idea.
• 30:36
  Richard: Right.
• 30:36
  Richard: But I've never really noticed like it's hard to tell though, isn't it?
• 30:41
  Richard: Like, because you rarely pick a guitar and change, in fact, I should ask my cousin, and change the woodwork on a guitar and leave the electrics the same.
• 30:50
  Brian: I mean, so like but you hear people talk about how changing the paint will affect the sound and all this sort of thing.
• 30:55
  Brian: And keep in mind, like the pickups just uh it's going off of the string movement, right?
• 31:00
  Richard: Yeah in that magnetic field.
• 31:03
  Brian: So that's what's creating that that voltage.
• 31:06
  Brian: And so you would think that the paint wouldn't make any difference, but maybe it just dampens that string just enough.
• 31:14
  Richard: Fill the paint with with like m magnetic flakes.
• 31:18
  Brian: That would that would make a difference.
• 31:21
  Brian: That may make a difference, yeah.
• 31:23
  Richard: That's an idea.
• 31:23
  Richard: Let's patent that.
• 31:25
  Richard: Brian Wampa's magnetic flake paint.
• 31:28
  Richard: Dude, that could make some serious matters.
• 31:30
  Brian: Have you ever ever wants more sustain?
• 31:33
  Brian: Have you ever gone the other way and wanted less sustain?
• 31:35
  Brian: Now's your chance.
• 31:38
  Richard: Oh, that would be brilliant.
• 31:40
  Richard: A trem unit that actually just completely damped all your strings.
• 31:43
  Richard: It's like an ebo, but an opposite, you know?
• 31:47
  Richard: My guitar, uh, my bass player, sorry, singer in my band was talking about a guitarist friend had with a tuner built into it.
• 31:55
  Richard: And he was like, You just play a note on the fret, and something down on you know, by the bridge like detects what tuning you want and it retunes.
• 32:04
  Richard: I'm like, and is that all done with robot tuners?
• 32:06
  Richard: He went, No.
• 32:07
  Richard: What was he talking about?
• 32:09
  Brian: That is the um oh, what is the name of that company?
• 32:14
  Richard: See, I I said, is it something like Evertune or something like that?
• 32:18
  Brian: Evertune, yeah, that's something I've ever doesn't Evertune work that way.
• 32:21
  Brian: I've never used like again on time, but I've never owned one with it.
• 32:26
  Richard: Yeah, have anyone listeners got an Evertune guitar?
• 32:29
  Richard: How does it work?
• 32:30
  Richard: Don't Google it, Bri.
• 32:31
  Richard: Well that'll lead you to AI, and by before you know it, you'll be making a version of the Odyssey.
• 32:37
  Brian: I think we should stop calling it Googling and just call it Gemini now.
• 32:41
  Brian: And also, whenever you do that, probably just figure about 60% is wrong.
• 32:46
  Brian: Um, so how does it work?
• 32:48
  Brian: It's an all-mechanical system, it maintains that, blah, blah, blah.
• 32:52
  Brian: This is where we need some like keeping the tension constant.
• 32:56
  Brian: It basically keeps all the all the tensions constant so everything stays perfectly in tune.
• 33:01
  Brian: So it's a mechanic.
• 33:02
  Brian: Robots.
• 33:03
  Brian: Not robots.
• 33:04
  Brian: No, I think this is it's no bat, there's no batteries or motors in it at all.
• 33:10
  Brian: So this is all just purely mechanical.
• 33:12
  Richard: Okay, so how does it retension the string?
• 33:15
  Brian: Well, hell, I don't know.
• 33:16
  Richard: I'm I'm Geminiing it.
• 33:17
  Richard: Are you telling me it's clockwork, right?
• 33:19
  Richard: The hell do I know?
• 33:20
  Richard: Are you telling me it's a giant clockwork motor inside a guitar?
• 33:24
  Richard: Has anyone ever made one of those?
• 33:25
  Richard: That's basically my catchphrase.
• 33:27
  Richard: Has anyone ever made one of those?
• 33:29
  Richard: Whenever I think of something stupid, I immediately go, has anyone made one of those?
• 33:34
  Brian: And is there money in it?
• 33:35
  Brian: Then you start registering your website, Oliver uh tuners.
• 33:40
  Richard: Don't say Oliver last time I had to.
• 33:46
  Richard: Sounds like a great name if I was an actor.
• 33:48
  Richard: I am Oliver Bridges.
• 33:50
  Richard: Uh my name is Oliver Bridges.
• 33:52
  Richard: Yeah, right.
• 33:53
  Richard: You should I'll let you have that as your nom de plume when you need to go, you know, when you're in Amanda need to go and check into a hotel under a different name and call yourself Olive Mr.
• 34:02
  Richard: and Mrs.
• 34:02
  Richard: Oliver Bridges.
• 34:03
  Brian: There definitely is a big problem with that, you know.
• 34:05
  Brian: Lots of people looking for pedal builders in hotels.
• 34:08
  Brian: Lots of.
• 34:10
  Richard: Oh, I mean, I'll take your word for it.
• 34:12
  Richard: Uh uh, oh man, okay, right.
• 34:16
  Richard: I do have to talk about this.
• 34:18
  Richard: I have had like I I hinted that this had happened in a similar way the other day, but today uh my friend, well, friend of the show, Paul Cudderford, sent me a picture of his pedal board, which consisted of the following pedals: a tuna, a mini war, a black 65, a faux uh reverb, a faux spring reverb, and an Oliver FX purple on fuzz.
• 34:45
  Richard: And he took that pedal board out to play with the Boomtown Rats, which, when I grew up, I mean that's Sir Bob Geldoff's band.
• 34:54
  Richard: It's one of the biggest like underground bands of the period.
• 34:58
  Brian: I love Sir Gandalf.
• 35:01
  Brian: All his greatest hits.
• 35:06
  Richard: That's not about that.
• 35:07
  Richard: So Bob Geldoff is a very famous person, Brian.
• 35:09
  Richard: The Boomtown Rats are massive.
• 35:11
  Richard: And my pedal was next to your pedals on Paul's board.
• 35:15
  Richard: That's insane for me.
• 35:17
  Richard: Like I'm used to seeing why why is that weird to you?
• 35:19
  Brian: Yeah, well, I can I can understand how that's true.
• 35:21
  Brian: I've sold 50 of them so far.
• 35:23
  Richard: Very restrained Brian, give or take.
• 35:26
  Richard: So, like one of those 50 is out there.
• 35:29
  Richard: Speaking of, I'm running low.
• 35:31
  Richard: If anyone wants one of the next batch, get them in before I have to go and drive up and pick more of them up.
• 35:35
  Richard: That's happening soon, too.
• 35:37
  Brian: But let's pretend it's not that's not a very good call to action.
• 35:41
  Brian: Let's pretend it's not your caller in now before I have to go pick up some more.
• 35:45
  Richard: See why I don't write copy anymore, Brian.
• 35:47
  Richard: Just let AI do it.
• 35:49
  Richard: I just can't be bothered to sell anymore.
• 35:52
  Richard: Buy it or don't, I don't care.
• 35:54
  Richard: Uh seriously, you should buy it, it's amazing.
• 35:56
  Richard: But uh, how cool is that?
• 35:58
  Richard: Like, you imagine that people have gone to pay to listen to Bob Geldoff built out some of the best hits of a generation, and my pedal was underpinning that.
• 36:11
  Richard: Well, with a couple of yours, too.
• 36:13
  Brian: I I mean, I would say still to this day, it's pretty awesome when you're sitting in the audience and you hear your pedal over huge loud speakers of means.
• 36:23
  Richard: That I don't think I'd cope with.
• 36:24
  Richard: That I think when I hear that, I will start running around, flapping my hands like a like a little butterfly and squealing whilst my wife looks on and tuts.
• 36:36
  Richard: That is what would happen there.
• 36:38
  Brian: It's pretty awesome.
• 36:39
  Brian: That's a pretty awesome feeling.
• 36:41
  Brian: Whenever your art has been used to make more art in a loud, um, boisterous way.
• 36:49
  Richard: Speaking of, oh, I'm gonna go back slightly to the AI thing.
• 36:53
  Richard: Someone posted a picture the other day.
• 36:54
  Richard: You commented on it on one of the forms, it was on multiple forms, and it was like five different types of pedals, and it was like blues breakers and tube screamers.
• 37:03
  Richard: But it was what was interesting is the AI had become quite good at mimicking nearly every brand except ours.
• 37:10
  Richard: It changed the colours and graphics wildly for our pedals, and I don't know what that says.
• 37:16
  Richard: Hmm, that is odd.
• 37:18
  Richard: Like the the the pantheon was cream color.
• 37:23
  Richard: It was silver.
• 37:23
  Brian: Yeah, I thought it was silver.
• 37:25
  Brian: Yeah, it was something like that, and it was like aerial font or something, something generic, you know.
• 37:31
  Brian: How very dare you! But you know, I mean, just like like like it was just plain font.
• 37:36
  Brian: There was nothing else.
• 37:37
  Brian: But there were pedals next to it.
• 37:38
  Richard: Now, admittedly, I don't know what the other pedals that were being used exactly look like, because I haven't studied them.
• 37:45
  Richard: But I was like, it does look like ours are well, I'm not gonna say AI proof, because they're definitely not, but it seemed that the AI hadn't quite twigged on what they were.
• 37:54
  Richard: I don't know what that says to us.
• 37:55
  Richard: Probably says I need to spend more time.
• 37:57
  Richard: I don't know.
• 37:58
  Brian: I mean, yeah, that's a good question.
• 38:01
  Brian: I mean that is an odd thing because you would think it'd be trained on prior art, and we've never done a we've never done a plain one in silver or cream color.
• 38:13
  Richard: But then someone posted the other day that tumness pedal, uh, and I was looking at that, and I I was thinking, yeah, it's not a fake.
• 38:21
  Richard: I think there might have been some pre like final artwork ones that hit the market.
• 38:26
  Brian: Yeah, there's a so there was a Tumness Deluxe that was posted on the Wampler group on Facebook, and it was a graphic that none of us had ever seen before.
• 38:35
  Brian: But it was definitely ours because we have a special case that we paid to do it.
• 38:38
  Richard: It was our case circuit, and there were typography errors in the like labeling, which I recognized from the the first duminus graphics.
• 38:49
  Richard: I was like, okay, that's that's genuine.
• 38:52
  Brian: So the only thing I can think of, and we've had this problem before, where someone at the factory is making just experimenting with different fonts or graphics or whatever, and some somehow like somebody walks off with with a case and puts puts it in their pedal.
• 39:07
  Brian: That will happen.
• 39:08
  Brian: Yeah, yeah, that happens.
• 39:09
  Brian: I don't like for it to happen, but it does happen sometimes.
• 39:12
  Richard: That will happen.
• 39:12
  Richard: And there's also the other thing where you meet a guitarist of a famous band and you trust him because you've known him for a few days over text, and you lend him 14 of your pedals, including a prototype of a delay pedal that you've set up in a specific way, and then he changes his numbers, pretends he doesn't know you, and becomes the most famous person in your country.
• 39:33
  Brian: It's good that you don't have any ill feelings towards that.
• 39:36
  Richard: Isn't it?
• 39:36
  Richard: It's I'm lucky I'm not a bitter man.
• 39:39
  Brian: I I there's a very well-known guitar artist here who I I gave a ton of prototypes to at one point.
• 39:47
  Brian: And then I started noticing them for sale on might might have been reverber e I'm in for reverber eBay.
• 39:55
  Brian: But I started noticing them for sale, and I'm like, what's going on?
• 39:59
  Brian: And the answer was, yeah, we're just getting rid of some gear.
• 40:01
  Brian: I'm like, yeah, you're supposed to give those back to me.
• 40:03
  Richard: Yeah, right.
• 40:05
  Richard: You're not supposed to monetize that.
• 40:07
  Richard: Eric Clapton.
• 40:08
  Richard: Oh, I gave it away.
• 40:11
  Richard: Uh right.
• 40:12
  Richard: Before we get on to I want to talk to you about pedal spice, and I want to talk to you about your new pedal, but a couple of quick things.
• 40:17
  Richard: Z.
• 40:18
  Richard: Uh Sonic Research have just bought an MXR turbo tuner out.
• 40:23
  Richard: And like tuners are not interesting.
• 40:25
  Richard: Uh yeah, we did, but I I I've ordered one because it's black.
• 40:28
  Richard: So I'm just gonna let you know about that.
• 40:31
  Richard: Um, and oh yes, this um crazy tube circuits triptychon pedal, four straight fuzzes, one overdrive, two octave fuzzes, and two boosters, all in a pedal with just two foot switches.
• 40:45
  Richard: That's a lot of work.
• 40:47
  Richard: Like that's that's clever um fitting all that in there.
• 40:51
  Richard: So I'd like to hear that.
• 40:52
  Richard: Uh, and there was also some confusion this week with Fender, who appeared to lay off 500 people, but apparently that's just them having their Christmas holidays.
• 41:02
  Richard: So maybe all is well.
• 41:05
  Richard: That's that's the way Merry Christmas!
• 41:09
  Brian: You no longer have a job.
• 41:11
  Richard: Yeah, but you can reapply in January.
• 41:13
  Richard: I'm not sure.
• 41:14
  Richard: I'm not sure.
• 41:16
  Richard: Like it was it was like this is not a layoff, this is just how we close the factory down over Christmas.
• 41:21
  Richard: Because you know how it how it is around our factory, it it has closures, like they've like I'm unused to this coming from the corporate world, but every now and then they stop working for a few days, weeks, whatever.
• 41:35
  Richard: So I think they do that offender too.
• 41:38
  Brian: I'm uh I don't know anyone that stopped working for weeks.
• 41:44
  Brian: It's kind of weird.
• 41:45
  Richard: Yeah, it happens though in certain industries.
• 41:47
  Richard: In Germany, certainly.
• 41:48
  Richard: I mean in guitar spaces.
• 41:50
  Richard: I know of uh one amplifier company that has a company holiday where nobody is working because the entire hollow company is just on holiday.
• 41:59
  Brian: How about that?
• 42:00
  Brian: Was it like Plexi Day or something?
• 42:02
  Brian: I don't know.
• 42:03
  Brian: That's Europe's I can understand Europe's success.
• 42:06
  Brian: If it's Plexi Day, I get it.
• 42:08
  Brian: Take that day off, you know.
• 42:10
  Richard: Yeah, I I never tried the um the JTM 800 module on the synergy, but I did quite like the Plexi module.
• 42:17
  Richard: But yeah, you know, I gotta say the the Plexi Drive pedal still holds its own.
• 42:24
  Richard: I know it's not really anything like the circuit of an actual Plexy amp, but it sure as hell can sound like one.
• 42:32
  Brian: Kind of sort of.
• 42:33
  Brian: I mean, I'm using JFETs because they're loosely analogous to tubes, not exactly, but you you cascade the stages the same way as you do tubes, you drive each stage like you do tubes, that sort of thing.
• 42:49
  Brian: Um But no, you can't you can't just take the tube circuit and apply it to JFETs because impedances are different, voltages are different, headrooms different, all these things are different.
• 43:00
  Brian: So you have to kind of make it differently.
• 43:03
  Brian: Um But yeah, even you know, even looking at it today, if I made another plexidrive, I'd redesign it.
• 43:09
  Brian: I'd do I'd I would do something some things different.
• 43:14
  Brian: Okay.
• 43:14
  Brian: I mean, hell, I did that with the mini.
• 43:16
  Brian: We kind of did at the mini.
• 43:17
  Brian: I'm like, uh, I probably would add some more stuff on it, and that's what we did.
• 43:21
  Richard: I I think it's time to bring out a new plexi drive, Bri.
• 43:25
  Richard: I think it's time to bring out a new like in in a regular enclosure, too.
• 43:29
  Richard: Not a mini, not a maxi, just a regular.
• 43:32
  Brian: Here's what I'm struggling with, though, because as you know, I've been doing deep dives with Marshall style topology for a year or so now.
• 43:39
  Brian: And I have this burning itch.
• 43:43
  Brian: But we'll talk about that later.
• 43:44
  Brian: Yeah, there's cream for that.
• 43:46
  Brian: There's cream for that.
• 43:47
  Brian: We'll talk about that.
• 43:48
  Brian: The dad jokes here.
• 43:52
  Brian: No, I have this burning, burning desire to like make all the different models into pedals because that's just where my brain goes.
• 44:00
  Brian: I'm like, this is an amazing amp.
• 44:01
  Brian: I should try to make it into a pedal.
• 44:03
  Brian: Um, but I don't I think that's so hard for the broader pedal buying audience to be like, well, this is a JTM45, and this is a JMP, and this one's JCM 800, this one's JCM 900, this is JCM 2000.
• 44:17
  Brian: Like it's just too much.
• 44:20
  Brian: You know what I mean?
• 44:21
  Brian: And the circuit the circuit's so different that outside of doing something digital, which I despise in dirt, um I I can't really do that accurately.
• 44:34
  Brian: I can half asset.
• 44:35
  Brian: I don't want to half asset.
• 44:37
  Brian: So the only thing I can think of is to either make Multiple models and sell less because that won't be applicable to everyone.
• 44:44
  Richard: Yeah.
• 44:45
  Brian: Or um, or I don't know, make a pedal that's the size of an actual amp head.
• 44:53
  Richard: Which you are kind of doing.
• 44:54
  Richard: Uh oh, no, maybe you're not.
• 44:56
  Richard: Um, what we should maybe do is reintroduce the concept of the Nintendo cartridge pedal system, where we create a little Wompler Marshall body, and then you buy a little tone cartridge that you plug into it.
• 45:11
  Richard: Now it's a JTM, now it's a plexi.
• 45:14
  Richard: The synergy model applied to smaller, made out of plastic, and you need to blow on them to make them work.
• 45:21
  Richard: Must blow on them.
• 45:21
  Richard: Has to blow on them.
• 45:23
  Richard: And if they don't work, you you hit the top of them, right?
• 45:26
  Richard: And in definitely with with a mallet, and also they shouldn't be a regular pedal like construct.
• 45:34
  Richard: Instead of being cuboid, they should be like, I don't know, shaped like a puzzle piece or round or something that makes it really difficult to master.
• 45:42
  Brian: Last time, last time that that happened, those worked fantastically.
• 45:46
  Richard: I mean, I saw someone like talking about the negative impact, uh, the negative feedback his new pedal design had got on the internet, and it was like a weird triangular like geometric design.
• 46:00
  Richard: I'm like, dude, there's a simple fact pedals should be cuboid.
• 46:06
  Richard: It's okay if the top face is angled too.
• 46:09
  Richard: I'll accept that.
• 46:10
  Richard: Or unless, or unless you make fuzz faces.
• 46:13
  Richard: Uh yeah, that that is exceptional.
• 46:16
  Richard: But let's face it, a a fuzz face is bloody annoying if you've got to put it on your pedal.
• 46:20
  Brian: It's so annoying to put that on a pedal board, man.
• 46:22
  Richard: Right?
• 46:23
  Richard: How much real estate are you taking up for one transistor, three resistors, and two capacitors, right?
• 46:29
  Brian: It's like have you ever looked inside of one of those?
• 46:31
  Brian: It's like you could you could house a family inside that thing.
• 46:34
  Brian: Yeah, the circuit is.
• 46:36
  Richard: The circuit is literally the size of a matchbook that's been unfolded.
• 46:42
  Richard: It's it's like the size of the knob.
• 46:44
  Richard: Yeah, like it's it's such a waste of space.
• 46:47
  Richard: Which is why, I mean, fair play.
• 46:49
  Richard: Dunlop had a good idea making those mini ones, but again, they look wrong too.
• 46:53
  Richard: They look like I want to go and play hockey with them.
• 46:56
  Richard: I don't care for the size for the look of the mini ones, yeah.
• 46:59
  Richard: And I don't care for the size of the large ones.
• 47:01
  Richard: I like the square ones.
• 47:02
  Richard: Yeah.
• 47:02
  Richard: Uh cuboid is the way forward, as our friend the Portland Cube would definitely agree.
• 47:07
  Richard: So, anyway, Bri, tell me about what you've been up to with uh pedal spice and this new pedal you've got.
• 47:14
  Brian: Well, the new pedal I have is called a uh Reverend Drivetrain.
• 47:19
  Brian: Did did we talk about this last week?
• 47:22
  Brian: I don't think we did.
• 47:23
  Brian: So Reverend Drivetrain, um it's an older pedal that was really popular, I want to say back in the back in the 2000 aughts and maybe maybe late 90s.
• 47:34
  Brian: I knew about it.
• 47:35
  Brian: Early 2000s.
• 47:36
  Brian: And then I think uh Visual Sound, which became what did Visual Sound become?
• 47:44
  Brian: Shoot.
• 47:48
  Brian: Well, True Tone, thank you, True Tone.
• 47:50
  Brian: Uh they became true tone, but anyways, they ended up making, I don't know if they bought the rights or whatever license that it they ended up starting making the drivetrain.
• 47:58
  Brian: And anyways, I've always had a soft spot for it.
• 48:01
  Brian: I didn't have one.
• 48:02
  Brian: So I bought one of the old drivetrains and um yeah, there you go.
• 48:08
  Brian: And kind of tying that in with some other stuff, I am going to put schematics, I've actually put a bunch of schematics inside of the software pedal spice.
• 48:18
  Brian: So if you're a paid user, there's going to be a huge library full of all kinds of pedals, popular pedal schematics, that including some of ours, that um, you know, a person can mess around with inside the software.
• 48:33
  Brian: Interesting.
• 48:34
  Brian: Okay.
• 48:35
  Brian: I like it.
• 48:37
  Brian: So and also another thing that I did this week is um I had a lot of people asking me, like, what do I do?
• 48:43
  Brian: How do I get my LT Spice documents, my schematics into the software?
• 48:48
  Brian: So I created a way for them to basically just export their LT Spice document inside of it.
• 48:54
  Brian: See, it sounds like you are becoming a real software developer, Brian.
• 48:58
  Brian: Well, I mean, we talked about this off-air a little bit.
• 49:03
  Brian: I think it's probably equally important knowing what you want.
• 49:08
  Brian: 100% agree.
• 49:09
  Brian: And and how to get there and what how to do it properly rather than just saying, make me uh because it like literally you could go to Claude right now and say, make me a spice type software, and it'll get you it'll get you there.
• 49:23
  Brian: But you're not gonna be able to do the all the things and make it all work in the way that you want it to.
• 49:29
  Brian: Like, for example, whenever you're like, I need to model this the 4049 chip.
• 49:35
  Brian: How do I do that?
• 49:36
  Brian: There's no models that I can copy.
• 49:38
  Brian: How do I do that?
• 49:39
  Brian: Good luck.
• 49:40
  Richard: Yeah.
• 49:42
  Richard: And honestly, that's kind of uh analogous to when I developed my game the other day.
• 49:50
  Richard: Um developed when I vibe coded this game, I gave it a disc image.
• 49:56
  Richard: I said, here is a game, look at this disc image, you know, deconstruct it and rebuild it.
• 50:00
  Richard: And said, Well, it's copyright, but I can make you a tribute.
• 50:03
  Richard: But the first tribute it made was running in reverse, so the bike came towards you, and it's like you have to know what you want, otherwise AI can massively misinterpret uh these sort of things.
• 50:20
  Brian: Yeah.
• 50:21
  Brian: Yeah, and I mean, so there's it's a handy tool if you know how to use it properly.
• 50:26
  Brian: In the same way that you know, if you're using a nail gun, you probably don't want to you don't want to use that to hang a picture, right?
• 50:33
  Brian: Well, maybe you do.
• 50:34
  Brian: Yeah.
• 50:35
  Brian: I mean, generally generally you don't want to use a nail gun to hang a picture.
• 50:38
  Brian: I mean, you know, break the trim.
• 50:41
  Brian: Maybe I guess it depends what type of nail gun you use.
• 50:43
  Brian: You could use a what kind of picture, yeah.
• 50:45
  Brian: Um anyway, anyways, I digress.
• 50:48
  Brian: Um I haven't made any games with it other than that little pedal biz game that I did for fun that one day.
• 50:57
  Brian: But I have a lot of fun just making my I'm calling it like Petal Spice, like I've said, is the software that I have wanted for years and years and years.
• 51:06
  Brian: So I actually enjoy the process of making it do everything that I want it to do for me.
• 51:13
  Richard: To be fair, Bri, it's the it's the second like most wanted piece of software for you.
• 51:19
  Richard: First of all, it was that strip poker game you were working on.
• 51:22
  Richard: Oh, we weren't supposed to talk about that one, were we?
• 51:25
  Richard: Well, I mean, you would never send me images, so I sent you all the images.
• 51:31
  Richard: I think I think this has gone too far.
• 51:34
  Richard: Uh good.
• 51:37
  Richard: Uh uh so so yeah, it's it's um the world is changing, software is changing, and look, I'll say again, I hate AI-generated content, even the stuff Brian makes.
• 51:49
  Richard: I I understand why he has to make it, but I don't like it because it's like you know, it's not my thing, but I understand why it's there, but using AI to build software is the future of software, and anyone that thinks anything otherwise has like I've been working with a number of big software houses recently, uh, and they're all changing the way they engineer everything, so that is the future.
• 52:13
  Brian: And you know, like we talked about, I mean, as much as people hate it, if you want to profitably run ads for for your business or whatever you're doing, and you just make two or three pictures and two or three ad copies, you're not gonna do well.
• 52:28
  Brian: No, you need about 80.
• 52:30
  Brian: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:31
  Brian: How are you gonna get 80 every week?
• 52:33
  Richard: Yeah, unless you just you're not gonna pay an artist, even if you pay Fiverr, like you know, one of those services, it you're just not gonna do it.
• 52:41
  Richard: There's no way of competing.
• 52:43
  Brian: Unless they're using AI to do it in some way.
• 52:46
  Brian: So, yeah, that's that's just kind of the world we live in.
• 52:49
  Brian: And even, and the truth is, I think I don't know if we've mentioned this before, but even if I said, I'm not gonna use any AI or not uh at all, not not at all in this Facebook ad, Meta will say, I believe we can get a better result if we generate an image and make our own ad copy because yours is not good according to our tests.
• 53:08
  Brian: And so then they do it.
• 53:10
  Richard: Uh uh Meta are losing people at the moment, they've introduced this new meta one.
• 53:15
  Richard: Oliver FX is only allowed to post two external links a month, like unless you pay like 50 bucks a month or something, unless I pay the money now.
• 53:24
  Richard: For some reason, chasing tone, wompler pedals do not have that restriction.
• 53:30
  Richard: Really?
• 53:31
  Richard: Because we've spent more on advertising in the past.
• 53:34
  Brian: Yeah, might maybe so.
• 53:36
  Richard: But either way, can I just tell you guys one thing uh at meta?
• 53:41
  Richard: Two words, friends reunited.
• 53:44
  Richard: The free websites those weren't the those weren't the words I thought you were gonna say.
• 53:49
  Richard: But it was uh it was one of the early social networks, and it was all the rage until they monetized it.
• 53:55
  Richard: And the minute they monetized it, it died instantly.
• 53:57
  Richard: Uh, Facebook will die if they over-monetize it.
• 54:02
  Richard: They need to stop it right now.
• 54:04
  Brian: Well, you have other problems too, like Vine, where it was great, but they didn't monetize it, so it died.
• 54:10
  Richard: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:11
  Richard: And it had a bunch of copyright errors that they were never fighting their way out of course.
• 54:16
  Richard: Um, all social media is is bad, man.
• 54:20
  Richard: And again, I was talking to this on the Patreon a bit.
• 54:23
  Richard: You know, I I've been beating myself up a little bit about my mobile phone addiction, but I've realized it's not a mobile phone addiction, it's a dopamine addiction.
• 54:32
  Richard: I'm addicted to that dopamine hit, and I need to find other ways of getting it, which is why I'm becoming a monk and leaving.
• 54:40
  Brian: Have you ever just sat down, like let's say you're sitting outside with your phone next to you, and you just instantly gravitate towards picking it up to look at it, like oh, I'm I'm not going to do this.
• 54:51
  Brian: Like, it's just such a huge habit.
• 54:55
  Richard: It really is, and it's it's destructive, and I hate it.
• 54:59
  Richard: Um which is why everyone needs to move to analog, which is why everyone needs to move to analog.
• 55:05
  Richard: And on that note, I should probably mention the greatest people on the planet that did move to analog, which is our.
• 55:12
  Brian: They are all analog themselves, I believe.
• 55:13
  Richard: They are all analog.
• 55:15
  Richard: So uh thank you all of you for your support.
• 55:18
  Richard: It means a lot.
• 55:20
  Richard: Next time we record a patron, which I'm gonna record with Blake tomorrow, normal time.
• 55:25
  Richard: Um, so we're recording a bit out of sequence because a few things are happening around the place.
• 55:30
  Richard: Um, I'm gonna give you a link to an exclusive Patreon game.
• 55:34
  Richard: So, anyway, uh Bill Bays, Andrew Adkins, David Tyndall, Dave Trombetti, Eric Wilson, Vida Frostad, Michael Freer, Sean Arbo of Garner Street Wiring, Rick Calhoun of Honey Picks, Patrice Fournays, Dylan Talks Tone, Missouri Electrical Box Company, Kevin Harrington, Barry from Grez Guitars, Tom Kelly, Jake Young, who I spoke to today because he's an awesome guitarist of the Man the Helm podcast, and the Paranoid Principal.
• 56:02
  Richard: Did I say that?
• 56:03
  Richard: Oh, now I've got to look again.
• 56:05
  Richard: Paranoid Perspective Podcast.
• 56:07
  Richard: I'm so bad at remembering words beginning with P.
• 56:10
  Richard: Pigsy spoke to him earlier today.
• 56:13
  Richard: He was asking questions about what you get up to in Indiana, Bri.
• 56:16
  Richard: He showed me some pictures, that's all I'm gonna say.
• 56:19
  Richard: Uh John O'Neill, another wonderful human being, Robert Carl.
• 56:23
  Richard: Oh, they're all wonderful.
• 56:25
  Richard: Uh, Hunter Hudson, Rob Stokes, Nick Spano, just been to England.
• 56:28
  Richard: Uh, we didn't get to cross uh paths, but he did go on HMS Belfast.
• 56:33
  Richard: Uh Sasha Sir, Jay Stratton.
• 56:35
  Richard: Yes, that Jay Stratton.
• 56:38
  Richard: Harry, his book's like the number two uh best-selling book at the moment.
• 56:41
  Richard: Isn't that crazy?
• 56:42
  Richard: Yeah.
• 56:42
  Richard: Isn't that insane?
• 56:43
  Richard: But it's a great book, man.
• 56:44
  Richard: It's a great book.
• 56:45
  Richard: Harry Post, Harvey Pedles, Alison Carroll, Balm Laser, who is an alien.
• 56:50
  Richard: Anthony Stevens out to play his guitar, Philip Carter of the 40W podcast, who is a gentleman.
• 56:55
  Richard: Christopher Logan, probably also a gentleman.
• 56:57
  Richard: I'm not gonna say it after everyone's names.
• 56:59
  Richard: Jason Engelhart, Josh, James Thompson, God in Little John, machete of in Derek Lyons, Darth Bagel, Dustin Romero, Wizard of Wars, Crappy Tongue, Tom.
• 57:09
  Richard: Nearly said crappy tongue.
• 57:11
  Richard: Crappy tongue.
• 57:12
  Richard: That's where I'm suffering from.
• 57:13
  Richard: Crappy Tom, Bud Coles, pharmaceutically enhanced ponytail, DJ Farns, Carl Viana, Robert Han, Han, John Hill, Nick Cole, Kyle Ray, your face, D D.
• 57:27
  Richard: Every time.
• 57:28
  Richard: Dave, Evangelista of the Guitar Dads podcast, Roxy Gwynne, Derek Howe.
• 57:33
  Richard: Oh, Roxy Gwynn took an amazing picture of satin the other day.
• 57:36
  Richard: Churchill from Camgirls plus Ross Edwards, William Price.
• 57:41
  Richard: Thank you.
• 57:41
  Richard: All right.
• 57:42
  Brian: Thank you.
• 57:43
  Brian: And uh we'll talk to you next week.
• 57:45
  Brian: Yep.
• 57:45
  Brian: See ya, bro.
• 57:47
  Brian: Thanks for listening to the Chasing Tone Podcast.
• 57:49
  Brian: If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, shoot me an email at podcast at wamperpedals.com and I'll personally get your email.
• 57:55
  Brian: You can reach Blake at info at tone mob.com.
• 57:58
  Brian: Richard is Richard at WamperPedals.com.
• 58:00
  Brian: If you want to support the show, the easiest and free way is just to share this episode with a friend, leave a rating and review wherever you listen.
• 58:07
  Brian: Helps more than you know.
• 58:08
  Brian: Be sure to check out Blake's other podcast called the Tone Mob for even more guitar talking.
• 58:13
  Brian: If you love pedals, of course, check out wampapedals.com.
• 58:15
  Brian: If you're curious about designing and building your own guitar pedals, head over to guitarpedalcourse.com for step by step courses.
• 58:22
  Brian: And for bonus content, behind the scene discussions, and extra fun, join us on patreon.com slash chastingtone podcast.
• 58:29
  Brian: Thanks again, and we'll talk to you next week.