shawnhatfield

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5 Steps to a Better Guitar Setup

5 Steps to a Better Guitar Setup

Ever wonder why your guitar feels hard to play? Beyond a steady practice schedule lurks rusty strings, fret-outs, not enough relief, bad intonation, and action that can be seen from a satellite. There are many string options, heavy and light handed players, but it comes down to a setup that works for your preferences. Below we have five guitar setup tips that should have you back in business.…

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The Borfski Blog: Thomas Osatchoff

The Borfski Blog: Thomas Osatchoff

Thomas Osatchoff, together with family, is building a self-sustaining home near a waterfall. Recent poems have appeared in Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Cold Mountain Review, CutBank Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Thomas is currently putting together poems for a collection that draws lines for seeing intersections between the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.

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The Borfski Blog: Secret Tween

The Borfski Blog: Secret Tween

Juan Ysaguirre is an artist that makes music under the pseudonym ‘Secret Tween.’ He uses only a phone to record his music and has several releases available for streaming. During this pandemic, a close family friend of Ysaguirre’s, Louis Manuel Jr, passed away. He was an Indigenous tribal leader and former Chairman for the Ak-Chin Indian…

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Happy New Gear Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Quick intro and plan for the year. Going to do a lot more videos on pedals, guitars, amps, especially vintage Big Muffs and Stomp Under Foot pedals. Expect more from The Borfski Press as well!

Happy New Year everyone! Quick intro and plan for the year. Going to do a lot more videos on pedals, guitars, amps, especially vintage Big Muffs and Stomp Under Foot pedals. Expect more from The Borfski Press as well!

[shawnhatfield]

(Big) Muff Monday!

Hey everyone, I’ll occasionally (maybe monthly, maybe weekly, maybe whenever the hell I feel like it) be posting my Big Muffs and their circuits for (Big) Muff Mondays. Since I got this one out so late some of you may be reading this on Tube Screamer Tuesday…this week features a 1979 Red & Black Tone Bypass with an EH-3003 circuit. The Operational Amplifier Muff is the first by Electro-Harmonix…

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28 Years Without Deviation from the Norm

28 Years Without Deviation from the Norm

In 1991, Frank Zappa was chosen to be one of four featured composers at the Frankfurt Festival in Europe. Among those composers were American John Cage, German Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Russian Alexander Knaifel. Even though Zappa was fighting prostate cancer, he accepted Ensemble Modern’s (a German chamber ensemble) request to perform his music and invited them to LA to rehearse. Content with…

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The Borfski Press: Mantrana Agarwal

The Borfski Press: Mantrana Agarwal

Mantrana Agarwal is just another person who is crazy enough to believe she can change the world. She calls herself a lazy workaholic, and a disorganized perfectionist. That said, Agarwal writes an article every day in the blog, A Highschooler’s Opinion, to let her restless hyper soul free. Art flows along in the ups and downs of life to let her be who she is. Agarwal submitted a 10-piece art…

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Combat Laziness and Anxiety

Combat Laziness and Anxiety

Is It Worth It? It’s easy to find yourself asking if something is worth it. Not trying to get too existential here, mostly focusing on tasks. You can easily misconstrue laziness with tiredness, especially last year with so many people stuck at home. After working a long day, doing dishes, cooking a meal, or more likely all of those combined in one evening, can make it difficult to fit anything…

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Vintage Ram's Head and Dinosaur Jr

Vintage Ram’s Head and Dinosaur Jr

J Mascis, Billy Corgan, Frank Zappa, and many others have a huge impact on why I’m so drawn to Big Muffs. The Mascis sound is undeniably the ’76 Ram’s Head Big Muff. Such a huge, open, and lush tone coming from those records that used them. That said, Mascis’s tone is not solely coming from a single stompbox. There are several pretty essential pieces of gear that, when combined, get you the…

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Head On With the Ram's Head

Head On With the Ram’s Head

For today’s ‘Muff N’ Music’ we have a ’75 v1 Violet Ram’s Head Big Muff by STOMP UNDER FOOT paired with some classic ’70s PINK FLOYD albums. The Violet Muff is assumed to be the unit to recreate the “Comfortably Numb” leads. That said, check out the ’73 v6 by SUF and you might find it gets closer 😮 This ’75 has a very balanced tone with a huge warm fuzz and the unique color variations make the…

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The Borfski Blog: Amy Donnelly

The Borfski Blog: Amy Donnelly

Amy Donnelly is based in Oahu Hawaii and works primarily in mixed media formats. She lived in New York City for ten years and recent events inspired her to express herself in ink. Ms. Donnelly also has a background as a librarian and completed her graduate work at Pratt Institute. Rosie Can Do It Donnelly’s pieces were created at the beginning of the COVID ‘stay at home’ orders in…

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The Borfski Blog: Annabelle Cardin

The Borfski Blog: Annabelle Cardin

Grapefruit By: Annabelle Cardin Annabelle Cardin has been writing music for ten years and started publishing a year ago. She takes heavy influence from several of her favorite grunge era rock bands, producing her music individually but laying down several tracks of different instruments. You can hear Cardin’s brand new tune, “Grapefruit,” out now on YouTube, Spotify, and more. Grapefruit by:…

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The Borfski Blog: George Stein

The Borfski Blog: George Stein

Modern American Gothic by: George Stein From the Artist: “I am quite fond of interesting juxtapositions and strong contrasts,” says Stein. “This photo is meant to be a modern take on the grant wood piece.” Modern American Gothic by: George Stein This modern take on Wood’s piece contrasts the relationship between the two characters and their environment. While Wood constructed a home and the…

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Yes to The Triangle Muff

Yes to The Triangle Muff

Hey everybody, hope that things are going well as we start to wrap up 2020. I’m making a lot of progress on the Big Muff book and started a little side project to pair with it! I’m going through each of my Muffs and posting pictures of them with records that use them. Today, we start with the Stomp Under Foot 1972 Tri-Muff V6 and to accompany this fine unit, we have ‘Yessongs’ by Yes. It was the…

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The Big Muff: Triangle

The Big Muff: Triangle

But First…Let’s Stomp Under Foot!

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to Matt Pasquerella from Stomp Under Foot(SUF). If you are unfamiliar with his work, Matt hand-wires pedals with vintage and new-old-stock parts out of Orange County, Florida. You’ll find many affordable options for Big Muff and other vintage fuzz pedals in his catalog. While I know a bit about the tones,…

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The Big Muff: Early Years

The Big Muff: Early Years

In 1967, a young musician named Mike Matthews was working at IBM (International Business Machines) in New York City when he was asked to take over production on a stompbox called “Foxey Lady” with Guild. He had recently finished a masters program at Cornell University EE and wasn’t exactly looking to get into electrical engineering, but made an obvious choice.

At an early age, Matthews showed…

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The Big Muff: An Introduction

The Big Muff: An Introduction

“What the heck is that?” You might say. Well the short answer is that Big Muffs are fuzz guitar pedals designed and released by a company called Electro Harmonix. Mike Matthews started the company in 1968 and they have produced many different effects and instruments. Although the Big Muff Pi (BMP) was not the first fuzz box, it took off in the ’70s instantly creating a classic melty sound that…