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Music compelled me to move to Los Angeles 6 months ago, but once I arrived I was faced with working long, hard hours in order to adjust to a new life here. I had very little down time to create music but while working I couldn't keep my mind off of  sounds or feelings that I wanted to impress upon listeners, my mind was racing with ideas fueled by this new landscape.

Every day I had off I would write, record and mix a single song and be done with it so that the next time I'd sit down to create I could focus on something new and I would keep moving forward. It was more of a practice of letting go of the need to perfect and craft a song for days or weeks and just let it be something that existed for the moment.  This process happened  over and over until it became my new normal.

After a few months I decided to revisit these songs and as I was piecing them together, I came to realize that there was a cohesive sound to them, that they had started to form their own narrative in my head and in their own syntax.  I'm finally ready to release what has been the most natural collection of songs that I've ever worked on: Man on Mars. Its now on #Spotify, #itunes, etc and over the next few days I'll be posting parts of my favorite compositions. It’s a dreamy soundscape that lends itself to long drives, falling asleep or working through the night. https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/man-on-mars/1317887617

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I finally got my Squier Vintage Modified Mustang up to snuff and here’s how. 

When I bought this guitar used from Guitar Center it arrived in bizarre shape. The rolling bar on the tail piece was flipped upside down and someone placed washers under it so that it’s now a hard-tail bridge, the neck had too much relief in it, it was missing a tone knob, the strings were jumping their saddles and the bridge buzzed! This all took me awhile to figure out because I’d never inspected a Mustang before and didn’t know the in’s and out’s of one. The most important issue was getting it playable and with the action I like. 

I realized that the strings were most likely jumping out of the saddles because there was no angle to the neck and the tail piece was almost as high as the bridge so there was no downward pressure to keep the strings in place. I first put a matchbook cover in the pocket of the neck to provide an angle but this wasn’t quite enough. I took the guitar apart again and this time placed a .73mm pick to act as a neck shim along with the matchbook cover. This provided a nice angle but now the strings were almost completely flush to the neck and buzzing. That was okay because I also wanted to raise the whole bridge anyways to provide more of an angle between it and the tail piece. I accomplished this by taking the tabs off of two cans of club soda and putting that under the bridge. The poles to the bridge fit perfectly into the holes of the tabs and there is no buzz from this. The final step I needed to get the action slightly higher to get rid of all the buzzing frets was to simply raise the saddles on the bridge which created an even greater angle which has completely taken care of the strings jumping without having to change to a heavier gauge. The guitar plays like a dream now. 

The cosmetic things that were bothering me was the missing tone knob which I momentarily replaced with a small knob from my Supermoon pedal and the tortoise-shell pickguard was hideous to me. I sanded down the pickguard until I hit a nice white color. I’m really pleased with the results now but in the future I may send in the pickguard to pickguardian and have them use the template to make me a mint green or aged parchment guard. 

I have a modified Mustang bridge and new tail piece coming in from Warmoth soon and I’ll let people know if it all fits or not. I know it’s difficult getting concrete information on whether Allparts, Warmoth or Fender brand parts fit to the specs of a Squier. 

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Fulltone Deja Vibe

NPD (new pedal day)- Last weekend I returned a power supply I ordered online from Guitar Center and I swear they take 20 minutes to return something so that you get bored and start fiddling around the store looking at things you don’t need, which is exactly what I did. I decided to demo a used Lovepedal Vibe because it was on the cheap and I ended up really loving it. I never think about vibe pedals and that might have been the first one I’ve ever played which made me want to compare it to others that were around the store. Next I tried a TC Electronic Viscous Vibe which was cool but definitely digital and cold compared to the Lovepedal. I also demoed a Fulltone, which I’m sure you can deduce from the title of this post that I ended up buying it. It was warm, swishy and intoxicating. Why?! Why did I have to play a pedal while returning an item? I could have walked out with $100 back in my pockets but instead I left -$50. 

To be honest, the extra money spent was so worth it because this pedal is very inspiring and who can put a price tag on that? One of my favorite ways to utilize this effect, inspired by Dead Meadow, is to run a fuzz into it and have the Deja Vibe pulse at high speeds and depth. To great effect I’ve also started running this pedal with a long, slow sweep set on chorus mode which gives your chord progressions a dreamy vibe, David Gilmour anyone? If I add in some pitch-shifting vibrato from my Pigtronix then I’m in a shoe-gazey, lo-fi wonderland. This pedal is getting the velcro seal of approval and staying on my pedalboard for some time. The only downside is this pedal is larger than I’d like it to be, but then again you can control the knobs with your feet so it’s a trade-off. 

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In my previous post I mentioned getting a second guitar amp and cab to run a stereo signal. I decided to throw up a rather quick demo to showcase the voicing of this wonderful little amp. When I demoed this, before I bought it, I used a humbucker guitar and the natural breakup on the amp is spectacular with it but with a single-coil guitar, like my Jazzmaster that I use in this video, it leaves something to be desired. 

Some things I plan to do with this amp is change the stock speaker, it’s not bad as is but I can imagine this is where they cut some of the costs, and replace the tubes. I’ve always been pleased with Tung-Sol tubes so I’ll probably look for a replacement with them. The amp is currently voiced a little dark but it works in juxtaposition with my treble-y Gibson Falcon. I’ve actually had better success with recording my VHT over my Falcon. It seems to be more forgiving in my mic placement and takes pedals quite well. At the end of the video I mic up an external cab with Eminence Legend speakers to see if you can hear a difference in the voice of the amp. It’s very hard to tell in the video the difference but definitely noticeable in person. 

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I’ve been chasing tone for the better part of 18 years now and I’ve finally caught that fucker by the tail. 

I’ve been in love with the sound of surf guitar for 7 years now. I mostly just want to hear a clean single-coil guitar drenched in some sort of reverb, be it spring plate or hall- I want it heavy-handed. I got that tone pretty easily with an offset guitar, my Jazzmaster, and a vintage amp. I was happy for quite sometime with this modest setup, which also included a delay. I wanted for little else until Tame Impala came around and rocked my world. Kevin Parker used phaser in a way that wasn’t cheesy. He used fuzz and bit crushers that stayed out of the way of the mix and didn’t muddy up the song until it became illegible. Kevin Parker used subtle detuning via a vibrato pedal which gave the sound of a warped record. You were suddenly nostalgic for a sound that you were hearing for the first time. What an incredible accomplishment for a musician. To give a listener instant nostalgia and a yearning for times that never even happened. Tame Impala worked my imagination and there is no price for that. 

I slowly grew my pedal collection to assimilate some of Tame Impala’s but never strayed from my base tone of surf guitar. Like any musician, once I obtained the sound I was looking for, I expanded my horizons and fell back in love with Stoner Rock a la Dead Meadow. This led me to the Black Arts Toneworks Pharaoh Fuzz, a Fulltone Deja Vibe and a Crybaby Wah which my father gave to me. The wah was sold after about five minutes of playing time because it was a total tone suck on my signal. The fuzz I got is incredible. I’ve had a few fuzzes over the years and have never been satisfied. This is the first time I plugged into one and knew I had to have it even though I rarely use fuzz. That should say something about the pedal because pedalboard real-estate is very important lest we end up with a prog-rocker’s 42″ board that looks more like a crutch for poor musicianship/compensation. There’s not much to say for the Deja Vibe except that it’s great and does what I want it to, which is to either swirl through my chords or chop it up aggressively almost like a tremolo. 

At this point in my acquisition I could play surf, indie, dream-pop, psych and stoner rock but there seemed to be a certain something that was missing. It was shoegaze in the vein of My Bloody Valentine. I didn’t really want to do their thing necessarily, but I wanted to get in that realm which led me to the wonders of a reverse reverb. Many of the artists that forged the path to shoegaze used effect rack units of the 80′s and 90′s. Remember when that was a thing? Member Berries do. Since I wasn’t going to go that route I did some basic research on pedals that offered reverse reverb, which is sadly, not many. I decided to give the Digitech Hardwire RV7 a shot and I must say, it’s pretty, pretty, pretty good. My criticisms are that it’s a little cold and sterile, i.e. digital, but I’ll live. 

For the first weekend with my new, full setup, I was very content until I wasn’t. 

You see, with this reverse reverb pedal I can only get a 100% wet signal. That means you can’t hear the attack of your notes. This was very irksome for me because the emotions of the music changes without the initial, strong-voicing of a plucked chord or note. It sounds like you’re playing music down a very long hall and your ears are only receiving the sound seconds after it was actually played. I found a trick which helped but didn’t truly solve the problem. If you put your fuzz after the reverb it tricks your ears into feeling the attack come back into your signal. After a few weeks I finally came up with a solution which was born from both necessity and a great deal on Craigslist. 

The necessity: My Gibson Falcon can be a fickle beast at times and for a short period was giving me some grief. Because of this I decided it’s finally time to get a back up amp in case the Falcon bites the dust. 

The Craiglsist deal: Someone online was selling a VHT Special 6 in immaculate condition for $100 and a 2x10″ cab for $50. 

Since my delay pedal has stereo outs, I decided to send one signal to the reverse reverb, then to the VHT, because it’s a little dark in color and tames the cold sound of the reverb, and the other part of my signal stays “clean” and keeps the attack of my notes and goes to my Falcon. Like the Planeteers I put all my rings together and created Captain “fucking” Planet. I created a new tone which is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Currently I have a sound that I’ve been describing as push-and-pull. I get the attack of my signal through one amp, which I describe as the push, and then there’s a slight delay of my reverse signal which sounds like it’s actually being sucked or pulled back into the other amp. There is this great tug-o-war happening with my sound as I play and it’s larger than life. I’m thrilled with a sound that I’ve stumbled upon that I can say is my own. It doesn’t sound at all like the aforementioned artists because I don’t use the pedals in conjunction with each other like they do. It’s a sound that would make Zeus smile and Odin wink, with his good eye. 

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What to do, what to do...

There’s so much to be done in a day when you have your hands in a lot of different projects and I’d like to talk about how to prioritize your schedule. 

The easiest way of prioritizing is of course to complete whatever has a hard deadline. If it has to do with recording then be sure to give yourself a 48 hour head start. We all know there can be complications with your computer, or maybe you just can’t get a tone you like that day. Give yourself a buffer because feeling rushed while recording is mentally tough and you’ll most certainly not be happy with the results when you listen back to it in a week or month. 

What I believe to be the most important way to prioritize is to do whatever feels good in the moment. Let’s say you have a few projects going on and there’s one coming up in a few days that needs to get finished and you have another that doesn’t have a timeline but you’re feeling inspired to work on the latter, then do it. We all know that inspiration comes whenever it wants to. You don’t sit down and wait for it to come to you, it hits you when it does and you best be ready for it. 

Elizabeth Gilbert has an interesting theory on inspiration. She believes it to be a creative force that touches down through you and if you don’t give it the outlet it wants, by creating, then it will simply pick up and move on to someone else until it gets expressed. 

Don’t forget that the reason we love doing what we do is because creating in the moment gives us a high and sense of accomplishment. We’re not doing this to go through the motions and make a few bucks. We’re artists because we seek to express ourselves and find a way towards the oneness. This, in my opinion, is why we do this. Being an artist, a master of your craft, is a spiritual practice. So when creativity comes, use it. 

Don’t get too caught up in deadlines because we all know that they aren’t hard deadlines in the music world. Things can wait, albums get pushed back all the time because artists don’t feel they’re right, so don’t let creativity take a backseat to what your calendar tells you to do. 

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I recently picked up an Ace Tone Rhythm Ace FR-1 from the original owner. I bought it because he was selling it for a hell of a deal and I simply wanted to flip it but I’ve actually become attached to it. The samples you hear online or on YouTube just don’t do this thing justice. It sounds great in person. It’s from ‘67, analog, and you can push in two of the rythms to create a hybrid of the two which is sometimes pleasing or terrifying. I’ve created a few videos of me playing over this drum machine so you can get an idea of how it sits in the mix, which is very pleasing. You can check out some videos on Copperfox’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/copperfoxmusic/

or D’ark’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/d_ark_music/

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Esoteric Sound Vibrations

Music is my connection to the higher. It’s how I communicate to that which is everything, timeless and ineffable. Music has caused transmutations to occur when I was most stuck in the quagmire of illusions. Through alchemy of sound I have been turning myself from lead to gold. Out of chaos comes order. 

I’ve been playing guitar since I was 14, picked up bass a year later, which I played for nine years, and have recently fallen head over heels in love with synthesizers. I’ve learned a lot about instruments, pedals, recording and playing over the years and felt it time to start chronicling my adventures and thoughts so that others may learn from my experiences. I’d love to have a dialogue with other musicians through this medium so that we may learn from each other and strengthen the bond of a musical community. Right now the world needs connection and art. 

“Experiences are the chemicals of life with which the philosopher experiments with.” —–Manly P. Hall

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Moog Model 15 (App)

In this three-part video that would make Ken Burns proud, I go through almost all of the presets this app has to offer. I made the videos only to give people a basic understanding of the sounds and quality that this app was capable of. I don’t do anything fancy because I’m playing as I’m discovering this thing in real-time. I don’t really mess with the parameters because it was already time consuming to show just the presets. I’d like to think of these videos as the type you put on and just observe with your ears while sweeping the house or doing the dishes. I highly recommend this app to anyone that may be on the fence. I also recommend that you use it for your iPad because let’s be honest, it’s too damn small on your fine to fine tune anything. It would be cool if Moog put out a plastic body that could act as a hardware controller to this great app.

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Yamaha PSS 480

This might be the most sought out of the Yamaha FM synths in the Portasound line. There are more controls in this than the others I had. With a little bit of menu diving you can control ADSR and a few other parameters of which I can’t remember because I also sold this one to fund another thing because I’m a gear addict and have more desires for stuff than I do space to put it. This synth also has the smaller keys, which I personally don’t like because I’m still a sloppy keyboardist. The FM character really shines with this synth. With controls for feedback and modulation level, every sound can become a gnarled piece of steel stabbing your ear drums if that’s what you want. Isn’t that what you want? I know longer have this keyboard after giving it to a friend that is God’s gift to music, but I’ve been on the search for another ever since I let it go.

So much gear, so little time

-Buddha

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Yamaha PSR 36

Out of the three Yamaha FM keyboards I’ve owned, this is hands down my favorite. The keys on this one are larger than the others and felt good to me. You get more mileage out of the parameter sliders than the other three. There’s more of a nuanced character between the sounds and the chorus built into this one is actually quite nice. Like the others, this one also sounds great through guitar pedals. I got turned onto this particular synth after discovering these great videos made by Daniel Kerr. He has videos on his channel where he mods Yamaha keys and turns them into so much more than a toy. I recommend watching some of his videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO4j6J9kO8Q

My only regret is that I sold mine to fund another purchase. We shall reunite again someday though, like long-lost lovers we’ll recognize our mistakes and never let each other go again. Yamaha, if you’re reading this somewhere I’d like to say, “I’m sorry. Come back to me.”

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Yamaha PSS-470

I scored this FM synthesizer for $30 after a friend clued me in to the possibilities of sound with Yamaha keyboards produced in the 80’s and into the early 90’s. He sent me a link to a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLJSdNYcdpk) where it was explained that there’s a chip in some of these synths that actually make these more than just toys.

I took a gamble as I found it on a website and didn’t know the condition of it. Turns out it worked great! The sound is of course thin through the little stock speakers and it’s not a good way of getting a feel for the real thing. I plugged it straight into my audio interface, put headphones on and was pleasantly surprised with some sounds while others seemed redundant. There’s not much depth to go into with these but I wanted people to know that they’re worth the buy if you can find them. The fact that you can change some of the parameters make this thing a lot of fun. The 470 is my least favorite out of the three FM portasounds I’ve owned but it’s still worth the buy and they shine with guitar pedals. These sound just as good in mono as they do stereo so I ran them straight into my whole pedalboard chain. With some delay, reverb and chorus you can get some pretty trippy sounds that fit into a mix. These synths don’t carry enough low end to ever get muddy which is actually really nice.

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Mr. Black Supermoon Reverb

If you know anything about me as a musician then you already know I can be heavy-handed with the use of reverb. In the great words of that old lady from the Frank’s hot sauce commercial, “I put that shit on everything.” The thing is, I’m not discriminatory in my types of reverb. I like hall, plate, spring, modulated and everything in between.

I first heard about the Supermoon from The Tone Report newsletter sent out by Pro Guitar Shop every week. It looked cool and they spoke well of it so I sought out their demo online. I knew within 30 seconds that I NEEDED this pedal. I loved the sway control and the modulation it delivered spoke volumes to me. I also loved that you could get a 100% wet signal and that it could decay for practically, like ever. The only problem was money. Lisa and I had just moved to Nashville and we spent all, I’m talking all, of our money to get there and I had only just started working. So I did what any insane, guitar-loving man would do and I bought it. This was the first, and so far only, time I decided to spend money on gear and be okay with being hungry for a few days. The major factor in this impulse buy was because of some Pro Guitar Shop employee telling me that this was a limited run and as soon as they sold out of this first batch there would be no more. That was obviously a lie because these were produced for another three years after that conversation. I made my purchase over the phone and like Tom Petty said, the waiting was the hardest part.

My super-sexy chrome pedal arrived a week later and has not left my pedalboard since. I’ve only turned it off a couple of times and that was a mistake I tell you. For the last two years this pedal has stayed on. Sure, I play with the mix and decay for different songs but I never turn it off. It is my tone. If I want a spring reverb sound I’ll dial the Supermoon down and play the Malekko Spring Chicken or let the glorious and raucous spring reverb from my amp fly, but the Supermoon is still there as a base layer. I know we can’t all have everything but I do wish this pedal had stereo in’s and out’s because I’d buy another in a heart beat and play my synths through it.

I don’t have much else to say that the video won’t show you but I do want to salute Mr. Black pedals as being one of the finest pedal makers out there. In the future I wish to acquire the Deluxe Plus and the TrancePortal. Enough from me, grab a towel ‘cause it’s about to get wet.

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Gibson Falcon GA-19RVT

Every guitar player has a dream amp. Not every guitar player will be able to put the money down on their dream amp. My dream amp is a Fender Princeton Reverb. There’s just something about it that is ineffable. I love the look of it, I love how compact it is, and most of all I love the reverb built into it. For me, that amp articulates and pushes forth the essence of any guitar’s sound. It’s chimey, warm and has some fight in it if you need it to. Now, I’ve not been one to have the luxury to throw down $1,200 for any piece of music gear which is OK because it’s taught me to have great ears and given me the ability to look past a name brand. My insatiable need for a Princeton Reverb led me to discover that I didn’t need to have a Princeton, if I dissected what I liked so much about it, maybe I could find an alternative.

What I learned is that I love the sound of a hand-wired amp pushing 6V6 tubes through a 12” speaker- I know they came with 10” speakers but every used one I found had been upgraded to 12” and I liked the bottom end it had. Searching for amps with these specs brought me to Gibson amps which I knew absolutely nothing about. I fell deep into the rabbit hole of digging for concrete specs and reviews of these amps and could find hardly anything of use. I waded through dribble on forums just to gleam an answer or opinion that could help me find my way to what I was looking for. What I discovered after a couple of years of research, before I bought my first Gibson amp, which was a replica and technically not the real thing but was damn close considering every spec of it had been made with parts that were correct for the era, was that reviews on Gibson amps were split and there were inconsistencies on the specs of the amps. So here’s the lore of vintage Gibson amps and how they were made.

At some point in time during the making of these amps, they truly were inconsistent in their production. Apparently the workers would come in during the evening and play cards while drinking for a few hours until they felt like building amps. They would try to use consistent parts if they had them but if they didn’t, well, fuck it, they’d find something close. This is why some people will tell you that their Gibson Falcon is terribly harsh and practically unusable because of the amount of shrill treble shrieking through the speakers and others will tell you that their Falcon is terribly muddy and could only sound good for a solo jazz guitarist that would be going for that subdued, under water tone.

I loved the appeal of this amp because it felt like playing the lottery. You could buy one, at the time for between $300-500 and maybe, just maybe, it might be the one. I specifically searched high and low for a Gibson Falcon because these amps were supposed to be the poor man’s version of a Princeton Reverb. I would frequently find Gibson amps within the time period of late 50’s to early 60’s but I immediately knew they weren’t what I was looking for even though the price tag on a lot of these were very cheap. Keep in mind this was 2010 and the only vintage name brand anyone wanted to buy was Fender and most players had yet to fall in love again with hand-wired amps.

Finally, in 2013, I found a used one through the Guitar Center website and called the store to ask about the condition of the amp. The man that answered just so happened to be a personal collector of vintage Gibson amps and said that if he didn’t already own two of these he’d buy this one because the condition was great, considering the year, and its tone control actually worked, unlike so many others. I talked a little bit longer on the phone with the employee and he effectively gave me a discount that cancelled out the cost of shipping. All told I believe it was $500. When this amp arrived I put it through its paces and cranked the reverb and stomped on the tremolo. Fun-fact, you can get a 100% wet signal by keeping the master volume down and turning up only the reverb. I was in sonic heaven. This, affectionately nick-named, Stove Top Series amp was exactly the sound I was looking for. Some of the surprises on this amp was that it had the original speaker and tubes, neither of which I’ve replaced even though I’ve logged hundreds more hours into this. It’s forged by goddamn magic I tell you!

The amp sounds great, the reverb is wonderful, the tremolo is deep and pulsating, it’s light and easy to carry around and when turned up it breaks up so, so well. This video demonstrates most of what this Crestilne series amp is capable of but because of lack of a good microphone and because I was recording around a lot of work-spaces I was not able to capture the amp breaking up. I hope to do this in a future video now that I can.

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I remember the first time I tried this pedal. I was in one of the greatest guitar shops I’ve ever set foot in, Old Town Music in Portland, OR. Lisa and I already knew we were moving from Portland to a larger music city to pursue our dreams of being musicians full-time. We had sold the majority of our smaller belongings and placed our larger items into storage. We knew there was a possibility that we could come right back to Portland so we dared not sell our bed, couches or bikes.

Moving means saving money, which means not going to guitar stores, but my lust for gear persevered and I decided to bike into Old Town Music on a hot summer day in August. On my way out the door, I decided to try a Spring Reverb pedal by Malekko, a new boutique pedal-maker. I don’t remember what guitar I plucked off the wall nor do I remember what amp I decided to play through. All I remember is how great the pedal sounded and that I would soon be having to answer for spending precious funds set aside for moving purposes.

I called Lisa to tell her about the pedal. I needed to be talked down from the ledge. I needed to not spend this money, but she heard the excitement in my voice and decided to meet me at the store to hear it for herself. At this point in Copperfox’s journey we were still developing our sound, as we always really are, but we were a far cry from where we would end up. At this point I only owned a Zvex Box of Rocks and a Diamond Memory Lane Jr. I also owned an exact replica of a vintage Gibson amp but had no reverb to account for.

Lisa walked into the store and heard me play a snippet of the song, Sailor, which we had just recorded with producer and friend, Rian Lewis. She was as hooked as I was. We sat for a moment, no one pressuring the other, and Lisa finally caved and exclaimed that we had to have it. She knew as well as I that this pedal held an important role to the sound we were attempting to extract from our heads and lay into a sonic soundscape. I plunked down $160 for the pedal and it’s still with me to this day which is saying a lot considering how I rarely keep anything.

I’ve since picked up a true vintage Gibson amp with an excellent spring reverb which has made this pedal all but moot, but I keep it because for some inexplicable reason neither of us can part with it.  

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Pigtronix Quantum Time Modulator

I love the effect of chorus on other instruments more than I do guitar. I think it’s because chorus was so overused in the 80’s and I do not have an affinity for the majority of 80’s music. I know, I’m the weird one because I never hear anyone else share this opinion. In time I grew to appreciate what a good chorus pedal could do for a guitar sound. It can give the feeling of the sound becoming wider and gives movement to guitar parts that might be simple. I happened to pick up a Digitech Whammy V on the cheap and started to experiment with the shallow and deep chorus settings. I quickly found that I love the shallow setting with the foot controller backed off just a hair. Next thing I know, I’m starting to use it more and more and at one point I played it on every song for weeks. During this same time period I fell in love with Tame Impala. This was the kind of love that changes everything. I loved his washed out guitar tone and had most of the pedals to replicate it if I wanted to but there was one sound I couldn’t get, it was the slow pitch drifting of a pedal Kevin Parker had. What was it?

I found out the pedal in question was the Diamond Vibrato Pedal. I knew that vibrato added a pulsating effect but I didn’t know that a true analog vibrato effect would also add a fluctuation in pitch. It’s the sound of warped vinyl. That’s the sound that I had been wanting to hear. I had played a Zvex lofi junky before and liked it but for some reason that pedal didn’t do it for me. I think it’s because the speed wouldn’t go as slow as I wanted it to. I had a Diamond Memory Lane Jr. for a couple years and loved it but their vibrato pedal was definitely out of my price range. So how do these incongruous stories lead me to the Pigtronix Quantum Time? Well, this beast of a pedal but with small real-estate has a toggle that allows for both chorus and vibrato settings. The reasons I believe this pedal to be superior to others besides the Diamond Vibrato is because it has a slow speed setting that to my ears is perfect. The chorus can be shimmery, warm, hardly noticeable or right in your face. The vibrato can do leslie type speeds or it can deliver that warped vinyl effect that I was after. The drawback to this pedals is it’s a power-hog needing 300mA.  I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks but so far I’m definitely keeping it. Who knows for how long because the new Boss Chorus pedal that was just released has me drooling.

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Some background on myself. My name is Rory Mohon and I’m a gear and music addict. I wasn’t always this way. It all started out innocently enough when I asked my mother for a guitar before the start of my freshmen year of high school. I had just moved back to Wisconsin from Mississippi and knew that I would need a hobby to get into for the upcoming winter months. Much to my surprise, she said yes. I was surprised because my Dad has been a musician his whole life and his path has been filled with struggles and also because we never spent much money on anything besides groceries. My wonderfully supportive Mother took me to a guitar shop that very day and I got the Squier starter pack that laid the bedrock for many musicians’ careers. It was $120 for a black Strat, a cable and a Fender Frontman. I was over the moon.

I wasn’t very good at first, nor was I very good after six months, but boy did I love playing guitar. I practiced six hours everyday. I’d get home from school and play until I had to go to bed. I actually kept this practice up for the first six years. A couple of years in and my Dad got me a Roland Blues Cube. It was a 2X12 and heavy as sin but it was certainly an upgrade from my previous amp. This led me to wanting more things. I realized the difference a new amp could make but what about pedals? I didn’t have a pedal to my name and hadn’t thought of it before. The first pedal I saved for was an Ibanez Soundtank. It was a distortion pedal that was recently named one of the worst line of guitar pedals ever made. I’d have to agree with that. I later saved up for a Danelectro flanger. Why? I have no idea, maybe because I could afford it. I’ve not used a flanger pedal since. I made strange noises in my bedroom every day for hours (get your mind out of the gutter) and my poor Mother never complained once even though I know now that I was making noise and nothing that resembled music. I was happy.

By the time I was 16 I started playing in high school bands. We’d form and practice for a month or two, play a show and disband like emotional high schoolers do. Lather, rinse and repeat. When I was 19 I started playing in more serious bands and I was splitting my time between guitar and bass. At some point I fell in love with the low end and sold everything guitar-related that I owned to buy nicer bass gear. I played in metal bands for quite a few years which taught me much about music. It taught me harmonies, practicing to a click, paying attention to the picking hand, carving out frequencies to cut through a mix instead of turning up the volume, and many other things that I’m still mindful of to this day.

By the time I was 26 I was getting burnt on playing exclusively loud, heavy music and bass. I loved bass but I started to lose the ability to write a song that wasn’t metal and above 175 bpm, so I decided to sell everything again and get back into the world of guitar.

I hadn’t been doing any research on amps, guitars or pedals so I blindly entered back into the world of guitar after six years as a bassist. I bought a Fender Hot Rod Deville. They’re heavy amps but I was used to a 6X10 Ampeg cab so it was lightweight in comparison. I, for some reason, cannot remember the first electric I bought with that money but I do remember my Dad, once again, gifting me a guitar. It was a Brownsville Choir Boy. It was a cheap guitar but it played well and had unique pickups that sounded wonderful. It was also hollow-body so I could crank my amp and play around with feedback which is fun when you have neighbors that somehow put up with your shit. I played this setup for a year as I was happy to just have a clean tone drenched in reverb. I desired nothing for awhile until I moved two blocks down from a great used music store in Portland, OR. called Trade Up Music. This was my undoing. I’d walk over there during the extremely long and drizzly months just to get out of the house and too often I’d walk out of the store with a new pedal or toy of sorts. The problem was, the good problem, was that everything was priced cheap. You could pick up a Boss DD-7 for $60, which I did. I don’t know if I remember seeing a pedal for more than $120 which nowadays seems next to impossible. My pedal chain slowly grew and my desires for new tones grew with it. One day I got fed up with the stock speakers in the Deville and decided I hated the amp altogether. I traded it in and walked out with a Mesa Stiletto Ace Head and a 4X12 Orange amp. I actually named my price on this because both these items came in the door as I was shopping around and offered $700 for the two before the store had even priced them. I’m sure they had a relative idea of the value of these two items but keep in mind, this was when Ebay was the only way to price the value of used gear and that was if you could find the exact item on it.

This combo was great because it was loud, which was still something that I thought of as being most important in your sound, but in all honesty the Mesa head sounded muddy and like dog shit. It seemed that every time I jammed with other guitar players, I always had the muddiest sound. This was the first and last time I let a name brand hold power over what my ears told me. I would always trust that if it sounded good then it was good. Who cares about the name brand or price tag, if it sounds bad it is.

About two years later I impulsively sold everything and bought an acoustic guitar and with the extra money I moved to Maui with Lisa (Copperfox’s vocalist) to get away from it all, become a better songwriter and to soak up some sun, seriously there is no sun in Portland. I struggled greatly playing songs at a slow tempo and articulating each strum with a gentle attack. I was still used to playing hard and fast. I had to undo a lot of what I learned, not because it was bad practice but some of it just doesn’t apply to acoustic guitar. I couldn’t write a song to save my life for about two months. Everything I wrote felt very uninspired and I was wondering if my days as a guitarist were over. After days of playing like I used to, 6 hours or more a day, I finally wrote my first passable song. It was pretty and filled me with a purpose again. It also opened up the floodgates to many more songs.

The first song I wrote was Lovers which appeared on our first Copperfox EP made with Rian Lewis as producer and multi-instrumentalist. In the same time span I wrote James off of that same EP and it remains as our most popular song amongst fans. I practiced these songs constantly as my technique was changing and I was sloppier than I’d liked to be. Because of this practicing for hours, Lisa would start to mindlessly hum over the tunes and it was beautiful. It was leagues better than my voice which I was reluctantly preparing to sing over these tunes. For months I begged Lisa to start a band with me as I felt what I was doing was nothing without her vocals. One drunken day when we had moved back to the mainland, Lisa recorded the vocals to Lovers in her father’s studio by herself. She sent it to me, apologizing that it wasn’t very good, and the song punched me in the chest. I realized what I had been shooting for when making these demos and my purpose as a guitar player once again became clear.

I bought a better acoustic, a Guild, a better electric guitar, a G&L Tele, and I obsessed over the sounds of pedal steel. I wanted to make a spooky alt-country album with pedal steel adding the eerie ambience. One weekend in summer we did just that and with every record you make, you learn. I learned that some of the gear I had was sub-par for recording purposes. I can’t remember the amp I had at the time because I didn’t use it on the recording and quickly sold it. We ended up using a Fender Blues Jr. This was the first time I broke the spell that louder was better. This tiny and light amp sounded great in the room and recorded even better. The spring reverb was great and it could actually turn up loud enough to play with a full band. I knew I needed something like this. As an apartment dweller, having a 4X10 cab took up too much room but a Blues Jr. could fit in the closet. Seeing as how I never want to do what everyone else is doing I decided to find something similar in sound but I wanted something unique. This led me to years of researching guitar amps, tubes, watts, speakers, etc. and what it all means. I detail this in another post so I won’t get into it now.

From this point on I believe that my guitar tone has been superb even when I change up gear, in fact, I’m told this often when playing out. I finally have the guitar tone I’d been subconsciously searching for since I started. What’s so amazing about finding this fabled dream-land is that you feel that your instrument is speaking directly for your voice and nothing is lost in translation. It’s a spiritual feeling. Sometimes just turning on your amp and striking but one chord can feel relaxing and de-stressing. My guitar practice keeps me grounded and also elevates me. I’m connected to life because of it because without it, nothing seems very exciting. This is how I communicate to the world. This is how I feel the world is in communication through me. What I hope to detail in this blog is my constant journey through music and learning. Mistakes are fine because you will always learn from them if you’re open. If you keep learning you are successful. Life is changing and so too can your quest for gear and what you seek to express yourself.