It’s been a busy Spring ‘13 – I’m re-assembling Chateau Daveaux, getting her ready for mixing and a certain amount of tracking. The place has 13-foot ceilings like most of the grand old Louisiana colonial-style homes, and with enough knickknacks on shelves & oriental rugs I should get a decent amount of sound diffusion & reflection control & still take advantage of a good-sized space.  I’m still on the fence about ProTools I/O options – since I’m not trying to track more than four people at a time here or get into big drum situations it doesn’t make sense to drop thousands on an HD rig but it would be nice to have a good neutral-sounding “8 in/8 out” box with a/d-d/a conversion. Call it option anxiety, there’s just too much shit from which to choose.
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I finally had my old ’60’s Gretsch (Maxine) re-wired and given a little TLC from Jerome Garbutt here in NOLA. I forgot how much I loved that sound, there’s no guitar that sounds like her. Not a versatile instrument but when you need THAT SOUND, there it is. Here’s the test track:

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Been doing some shows with my friend and fellow Algerian Terry McDermott, which are fun & totally rock, although I suspect some of his core audence was expecting more balladry (he’s a rock artist in sheep’s clothing). This weekend we’ll do an opener for the mighty Terry Reid here in New Orleans, and I believe I’ll be sitting in with Mr. Reid’s band on guitar. A bit intimidating, that man is the master.

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(’To Be Treated Right’, from Terry Reid’s masterpiece Seed Of Memory)

No Comments | In: Life, New Orleans, Terry McDermott, gear, guitar, music, random shit, studio stuff, technology | | #

Did you know there’s also a Dave-o Facebook page where I post scheduling, links, photos, etc.?

You can see it here.

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James Trussart let me hang out at his workshop and try out a bunch of different model guitars today – he makes strange beautiful works of art influenced by,  yet completely different from the classic Gibson/Fender standards.  He makes some models completely of steel, others with wood bodies & steel tops.

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The one I chose to leave with, a Steel DeVille, has all that I like about the Gibson scale (my hands are not large), plus 24-fret neck, but allows me the ’spank’ of Fenders that I love. I can really lay into it and it barks back, or finesse it and the notes bloom… The Bigbsy excites me, I have an old Gretsch that’s too fragile to take out on the road and I love the advantages of that color it gives. Every one of the similar model had other qualities I liked; they were all different in various ways – it was difficult to commit.  A good thing.

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He uses real snake or  alligator skin to texturize the surfaces!  I had assumed there was an automated process or mold or something to get that oxidization and texture, but it’s a crazy (!) primitive time-intensive method, which I don’t understand and probably shouldn’t divulge if I did.  He is a true luthier, craftsman, engineer and mad scientist. I’m looking forward to using the crap outta this instrument … I wish I had a gig sooner than Wednesday so I could use it thru a LOUD amp.  Check them out:
www.jamestrussart.com

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This holiday season I’m leaving all my nice gear at home & doing a buncha parties & gigs where there could be potential drunks staggering into me – big fun, except for a 15% chance of vomit.  Here’s my “sacrificial” rig:

Electro Harmonix “22 Caliber” Amp head – $100 – actually sounds alright, I’m using it tonight for a small-scale gig to see how much abuse it’ll take.  They also make a 44-watt version.  If it can’t hang, I’ll use:

1974 Traynor BassMaster head – $200.  It’s a Canadian-made Plexi Marshall clone, basically. Sounds awesome if you trick it out with some Telefunken preamp tubes & Mullard EL34’s, but that would defeat the “sacrificial” nature of the amp;  I switch out the tubes with Sovteks for gigs & leave the good ones in for recording.  Think “Machine Gun”.

Late 60’s (CBS) Fender 2×12 loaded with Eminence 12’s from junk shop – $100. The cab was wired all out of phase and poorly, the guy thought it was a piece of crap. I reversed one of the speaker connections & soldered it properly and now it sounds killer.

Washburn Overdrive – $30 (sounds as good as a TS9, IMHO). Squishy.

And, the pièce de résistance:

An SX PRS-style knockoff, delivered to my door for less than $200 from rondomusic.com.

Maple top/mahogany back, rosedwood neck etc. I clamped down the trem, set it up & polished the frets, changed the tuners & voilá! Serviceable & sounds fine – the pickups are medium-output & not too middy for clean strummy stuff, but thick enough for blues.

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There are a lot of ways to inspire yourself to play cooler stuff, and exploring top-quality gear and attention to tone are definitely two of them.  Ultimately though, your tone comes from  your mind, hands & heart and a dash of technique. I use Instruments for safe situations, and Tools for gigs where “tone” is essentially taking a back seat to convenience.  And damn, I think my shit still sounds pretty alright.  If you keep your eyes open you never know what you’ll find.

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UPDATE:

The 22 Caliber pulled its weight – i ran it thru an old Boogie chassis and it was pretty loud, it broke up at the right volume ( I don’t require a crazy-clean headroomy sound, i like a little squish). Sounded about as good as a Peavey Bandit or Backstage. Definitely giggable and a great backup in case your rig  goes tits up at the wrong time.

4 Comments | In: Life, New Orleans, gear, guitar, music, random shit, technology | | #

A lot of people (ok, guitar nerds) ask me what I use for the acoustic shows I’ve been doing lately (The Gutter Twins ‘09, Mark Lanegan May-Aug ‘10, Greg Dulli Oct-Nov ‘10) – it looks reminiscent of a couple of more popular old guitars (like a cross between a Django-style, a straight acoustic & a cheap f-hole archtop) but you might be surpised at the make -

It’s an Alvarez AD65CE, made for only a coupla years in the early 2000’s. I never see them for sale but I don’t know what one would go for if you found it. Spruce top, laminated maple back/sides, maple neck, rosewood fingerboard.

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I think it was intended for jazz players who use a thick plain or wound G string.  The P90-style magnetic pickup in the neck actually sounds pretty good with steel electric strings, but with the bronze acoustic strings I use,  it mainly adds some thick low-mid, a little bump around 200-300 Hz (i use a Radial 2-channel instrument preamp where I can blend the stereo output of the pickups, rather than use the volume pots on the guitar), without much detail – the bronze strings don’t have enough magnetic response to excite the pickup.  It does help on certain songs where I’m doing walking bass lines or with gain effects, it sounds nice & thick.

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The cool thing is the split output – I used to do instrumental loop-based ambient gigs at art galleries but only had a rudimentary looping setup, so I’d send the piezo pickup to the looper, since you can beat on a piezo & get reasonable drumlike sounds, then run the mag p/u through a bunch of other pedals.  Again, probably not what Alvarez had in mind.  On a jazz gig it would do alright i think, although it’s too much of an ugly duckling to be confused with a D’Angelico or Benedetto… Still, the neck is nice – not too thin but not too chunky.

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At some point I really need to spend the damn time trying out a lot of different acoustics & find the “right one” for my hands, but this thing does a good job in the meantime – I like to take tools on the road & leave instruments at home, y’knowwhatimean?  I’d hate to have this thing stolen but I’d rather see it destroyed than a $12,000 1964 Whatchamacallit.

No Comments | In: Greg Dulli, Mark Lanegan, gear, guitar, musicians, random shit, technology | | #

A vintage Aiwa RCA 77DX-knockoff I saw in a pawnshop window in Brussells... on a Sunday. Shit.

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…not to mention Roddy Piper in “They Live”…

Smart phones get even smarter with “augmented reality” | New Orleans Metro Real Time News – - NOLA.com.

1 Comment | In: technology | | #

With the OldBooth iPhone app you can re-imagine historical figures as losers from high school, like Union General J. E. B. Stuart William Tecumseh Sherman as the guy who sold weed.

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here’s a song called “Dhun in Mishra Pilu” by a bunch of the Shankar family – i got the album off iTunes and when it downloaded and i listened to it i quickly realized that it was all fucked up all the files were corrupted. They all sound like they went thru a random cut/paste process or something, it sounds like John Lennon took a pair of scissors to the master tapes.

I decided to not even try to get my money back. Now bathe in the awesomeness…

Dhun in Mishra Pilu, click here

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