Doing Things Wrong

No More Reviews

Well, it's that time of year again, time to renew the web hosting. And for those of you that don't know, that has become a lot more expensive than it used to be. Fifty dollars a year is now several hundred. Not to mention the price of domain names has gone up ten-fold.

And I just found out that the nice folks at PayPal disabled all my Support buttons, and I never got a notice (although that may be my fault.) In any case, it is all working again now, so if you would like to make a small donation to help defray these costs, it would be greatly appreciated.

Alas, it seems my supply of cheap Chinese stuff to review has dried-up completely. If fact, all the cheap Chinese stuff has dried-up - just look at eBay. Oh well, I don't need another "Phas" pedal anyway. A number of the products have disappeared from Amazon as well, but the pedals are still in stock, and they're even cheaper now.

"Vintage Phas" on the right
The sad thing is, these are actually not bad!
At least Home Depot still loves me - check out my free workbench
I was really looking forward to getting one of these


First, I am bound to state that I received this pedal at no cost for review. Having gotten that out of the way …

What is a tremolo? As relates to electric guitar, tremolo is a modulation in the volume of the sound. That's all. Back in the way early days, this was an effect that could be implemented very inexpensively using the often-unused half of a pre-amp tube in an amp. This made it a popular feature for amp manufacturers, which in turn led to its use by musicians, especially back when there were basically no other effects.


the blue one

First, I am bound to state that I received this pedal at no cost for review. Having gotten that out of the way …

This is pedal #4 since I started reviewing these for KMise, and I must say, I am very pleased with all of them. I started with the tremolo, then the phase and the "US Dream" overdrive, and now this "Crunch" distortion. All these pedals are well built, great-sounding, attractive, quiet, compact, and true bypass.


Today I got my set of Alice bass strings, 105-85-65-45. They were packed in individual sealed plastic sleeves, similar to every other kind of string. The diameters are all within 0.001" of spec. The lengths are as follows:


First, I am bound to state that I received this product at no cost for review. Having gotten that out of the way ...

This is a 2-amp negative-tip 9-volt power supply for guitar effects pedals. This supply has more than enough power to drive multiple effects pedals, and the 8-way split "Daisy Chain" cable lets you do just that. You can neatly power up your entire pedal board with a single connection.


rat's nest

One of the fun things about building electric guitars is wiring them up. Factory wiring tends to be simple, minimizing the amount of fussy handwork required. Many manufacturers keep strictly to 'classic' designs, seldom if ever changing anything. These designs are generally simplistic, often crude or even stupid, and sometimes outright flawed. There is no need for you to do this. I don't. Here are some of the things I have done over the years. I don't claim to have invented any of this, although some of these schematics I have never seen anywhere else, and had to derive them myself.

Printed from luthierylabs.com