Muff's Modules & More

[Muff Wiggler]

Well, I guess it's about time this section of the forum got one of these threads.


Here's my bass, a stock L-2500. It's the best bass I've ever played in my life. The neck is perfection, the body is crazy comfy, it sustains for about a week, and the electronics package is insane.... it can be passive or active, the humbuckers can be split, they can be aligned series or parallel, in short it can cover every single bass sound I could ever want or need, plus loads more. There's nothing else I could want in a bass.





This is my #1 guitar, a Legacy with quite a lot of mods. If the house was on fire and I could only grab one thing, it would be this. I spent about 15 years trying to find this guitar, this one is just SO RIGHT. It took forever to find the right one, then about another year trying various modifications and keeping some, leaving others, fine-tuning the setup. Now it's "that guitar", it's me in a guitar. Nothing feels better to me.





Here's my amp, it's a Swart Atomic Space Tone. I'm not going to even try to tell you how much I like it.



With lots of advice from Eric Barbour, I found what seems to be just the right complement of NOS tubes for it. The difference this made to an already outstanding amp is incredible. Amperex Bugle Boy 12AX7 in V1, Amperex 12DW7 for the reverb, Mullard 12AX7 for the phase inverter, Bendix 5992's for the 6V6 power tubes, and a Mullard 5Y3 Rectifier.



Inside the amp is all hand-wired, turretboard, cloth-covered goodness.



I had Swart make me a matching 2x12 cabinet with Celestion Blue's inside. It's the only one they ever made. One day I may buy the head version of the AST to use with this cab, and then I'll have a pair of ASTs I can use in stereo.





Some day I'll pull out all my pedals and take a group sex photo of them. I don't use a pedalboard and only ever use like one or two pedals at a time (if even that) so it'll take some effort to get them all out at once. Anyway I'll have a thread to post the pic in when I do.

[Kwote]

nice. dig the setup. the bass in particular. probably cuz i'm going through bass lust right now.

[dkcg]

Mmmm tweed. Beautiful amps you got there Muff. I just got a Tweed Pignose. Sounds great with the bassmaster. So where's the pedal setup muff, i know you got some goodies for the strings to play through.

[Muff Wiggler]

How could I forget!?!?!

I have a Pignose as well, and they are damn damn fun. If you've never tried one before, seriously, they are a lot more fun than you would expect. I have a blast with this thing, and for the price it's a no-brainer, everybody's gotta have one.

[chromium]

I Like this clip of Zappa from the Mike Douglas show - nothing but an SG and Pignose: 8)


Link

[Muff Wiggler]

freakin' awesome. Man I love Zappa.

[kidtesla]

[Moog$FooL$]

yeah.
i'm sportin' a chubby about the G&L & Swart!!!
gotta stock that amp at NJAMS!! that & the Headtstrongs.

ever use the piggy as a pre-amp??

[Muff Wiggler]

i'll get a pic up sometime in a few weeks of my pedals

and i've never tried the Piggy as a preamp, that's a fine idea actually!

kidtesla, i'd say the neck is medium-beefy, it's just right anyway 8) i'm with you about the harmonics.

both guitars and the bass are from the pre-CNC era of G&L necks where each on is worked on by hand 'till they feel just right to the craftsman, and each one is a bit different

when I say i spent 15 years looking for the right guitar, it truthfully is mostly the right neck i was looking for i think. i was looking for the right strat in white with a maple neck, with a 'right' enough feel that I could perfect the rest through setup tweaks, pickup changes, etc. You know, when you play one that just feels right, you know it. G&L's seem to have a higher proportion of instruments that have an awesome feel, every one I've touched had a KILLER neck.....but this Legacy just has that little bit 'extra'. Damn I love it





Also cool as time goes on more flame and birdseye are coming out in the neck. It was really plain when I bought the guitar. I don't really care for birdseye, but I like flame a lot, and the little mini-birdseyes I see in this neck are pretty cool!

[chromium]

Not that I'm into basses or anything, but...

I had taken a break from music for a while, and when I came back to it I had carpal tunnel, so I found playing a standard long scale bass kind of hard for a while there. I picked up a short scale bass around 2002. This one was kind of a nostalgic, guilty pleasure purchase - a Gibson EB-2 like the ones I was infatuated with as a kid:



I loved Tull early on, and had a copy of Benefit with Glenn Cornick holding one on the cover (recently read that he actually hated that bass and had only ever recorded one track - Witch's Promise - with it). The Animals (with Chas Chandler on Rivoli - Epi's EB-2 equivalent) were another early influence. So... I suddenly found myself with a '66 EB-2DC. The neck is the early version - wide and chunky, and I've modified the electronics quite a bit. Left stock, EB-2s are either a little too boomy (although, makes for a great dub sound) or too brittle/nasal. Not what I'd call a go-to/utility/all-purpose bass by any means, but I love it and all of its idiosyncracies.

From that experience, I discovered that I really like the blurry/middly sound of the mahogany on a bass, and I LOVE the short(er) scale stuff. The carpal tunnel is now gone, but the basses stayed.

So the ones I gravitate to mostly these days for live playing are an '83 Alembic Distillate, and a couple of Gibsons.



Alembics have low-impedance pickups, and I find the active setup in the Distillate easy to tweak - volume, LPF cutoff, resonance switch, and bass/treble boost/cut switches. The biggest plus with this bass is its an Alembic model that I can actually afford . It has a 32" mid-scale, a beeeeaauuutilfuull slender neck, and the response is perfectly balanced across all strings and up the board. Fantastic player.

The other one I use quite a bit is a '73 Gibson Triumph. This also has low-impedance pickups that give out nice broad frequency response (without being active), and it also has a high impedance mode for gettin some filth thru the tube amp:





I can get a staggering array of tones out of this thing, but it still has its own unique voice- and theres really just one setting in particular that I've honed in on. The Triumph is all mahogany (and a big-ass chunk of a body at that), the neck is slim, slender, and comfy, and I bought this particular one from a dude who had it stuffed in his closet for 30+ years. The only down-side is its kind of heavy at 10.4 pounds. It balances well enough, though, to where I can gig it without curling up into a fetal position mid-set.

A more recent love is a '76 Gibson Thunderbird:



This one is long scale, and the farthest thing from ergonomic - but man the sound is there. Lightweight, highly resonant, and puts out those bell-like mids that are a staple of the Tbird sound. Like the neck pickup on the EB-2 above, the pickups are "sidewinders" - sort of a stacked humbucker turned on its side, with magnets on the outside, and poles in the middle. These arent as overwound as the EBs were (~30K impedance!!!), and put out a clearer, less saturated tone. They're usually wired in series on the 76-79 birds, but this one one has the pickups in parallel and sounds a bit more akin to the 60s and present-day tbirds as a result (more even freq response, vs. honking midrange)

The amp I use is a Orange AD200 head (200w, 4x6550), with Ampeg SVT cabinets (buncha 10s in sealed enclosures). Looks funky as hell and kinda beat, but omg I love that amp - it makes my insides happy. Plenty of headroom even for outdoor venues, and when pushed it just melts into the smoothest sexiest overdrive I've ever experienced on bass. The only drag is that its only single channel, so if I need to switch quickly between clean and OD sounds I'll sometimes frontend it with an EHX English Muff'n.




As for guitars, I have two old Rolands (G-505 and G-808) that I use only for recording. I don't play guitar very well - just play what I write and write what I can play. Actually, I've been working thru a self study book and thinking about taking private lessons on guitar after a I get done with my current school obligations. I had a late model Strat and SG, but is it any surprise that I sold 'em for these?!?



These were just yet another distraction/obsession on the way to modular and the further ravaging and pillaging of my poor little unsuspecting Paypal account

[helitron]

fast cars and bass guitars...

[Pockets McCoy]

At this point, I don't really have a "setup" as much as I've just got a "pile," but that should all be rectified once I hit home depot and get some wood and build a board.

In a few weeks there should be the additions of a Metasonix Assblaster and a super duper modded Digitech XP-1000, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Anyhow, on with the show:

One of three good old fashioned tube function generators, one of which will eventually be shipped off to Trogotronic for some violent modifications



The candidate for surgery:



The drums, with the standard midi keyboard in the bass drum (you know, because of how much I use it...):



The pile:



Trogotronic and Moogerfoogers...I've never been such a proud parent:



More of the same:



The assorted axes, 3 of them cheap enough to paint, one of them too recent an acquisition and too precious an instrument to sully the face of:



The guitar of maximum wackiness (10 switches, 4 strings...on/off for all 4 pickups, phase switches for the rear two, hi-pass/lo-pass selector for the tone knob, capacitor selector for the tone knob, two further capacitor sub-division switches, volume knob, tone knob):



Maximum loudness:



The expression-pedals-in-waiting:



The other guitar, brutally cannibalized for parts:



I guess I'm probably one of the few people hanging around here who doesn't have a modular, but I'll be damned if I can't make my guitars SOUND like one. This many pedals is sort of like the not-exactly-poor man who's strapped for space's synth. Alas, for now, my modular dreams must exist only in the world of Reaktor.

[Muff Wiggler]

some very cool stuff!! I totally hear you about the poor man's modular, i was connecting pedals and boxen in all sorts of manner (with great effectivness!) long before i had a modular and it certainly helped to push me in that direction

thanks for the cool post, and modular or not I'm glad you're here. this place is not just for the modular crew!


chromium and helitron those are some beautiful guitars and basses. I love the Alembic and that fretless j-bass. And ooh I spot an SVT 8)

[sduck]

Here's my axe. I used to have a ton of stuff, but as the modular passion has grown, a lot of the guitar stuff has been sold off to pay for it all. That's a warmoth bargain shop basic guitar, with a swamp ash body, paduuk/pau ferro neck, EMG David Gilmour pickup setup, an old podxt with all the model packs crammed into it, and my roland v-wah. Oh, and my tubeworks 4x10 amp - forget the model number, but it's loud but not very good sounding. I'm saving up for a new amp right now (mesa boogie?)




I also have pignose, which I've had forever - bought it back in college in the 70's. It doesn't work currently, need to replace something on the pcb.

[dkcg]

This setup sounds a LOT better than you think a pignose ever could. Well, thanks to the Germanium B:assmaster. Nevermind Ralph Macchio in Crossroads, here come the Muffwigglers and their Pignoses!

[A Dingleberry Monstrosity]

I have a burgundy fretless fender jazz bass

no cam, sowwy :(

[dkcg]

[Muff Wiggler]

really nice strat!!

your neck is the same as probably 99% of strats - the 'skunk stripe' (where the neck was routed to insert the trussrod) is a classic hallmark of the stratocaster. I believe there are a couple of issues that did not have it, but the vast majority do.

the neck and the body of my bass are indeed each made of a single solid piece of wood (maple neck, swamp ash body). However for both parts the wood was cut, shaped, and then cut in half for trussrod insertion (neck) and electronics routing (body), and then glued back together. It's very, very, very difficult to find the seam, but it's there.

[Kent]

Yup, that skunk stripe is where they route the space for, and then insert, the truss rod. All strats, teles, J & P-Basses have it. The earliest Fender Broadcasters (and some of the earliest Teles) didn't have a truss-rod at all, so no skunk action.

P.S. Strat Plusses fuckin' rule.

[Moog$FooL$]

where's the Gibson luv???

i need an sg jr.!!
single p-90 is all u really need.

currently i have a '77 jazz bass for sale @ NJAMS in Vancouver, kinda hate to see it go but i don't need 2 basses. i guess i should check the website to see if it's listed & pic'd.