The finished BYOC Classic Delay kit (Photo 1).
For this DIY adventure, we’re going to be walking through the steps of building the Classic Delay pedal from Build Your Own Clone (BYOC), a company that has been a big player in the pedal-kit game for quite a while. This is a little more complicated than building a fuzz or overdrive, so I’m going to explain the process with great detail. Let’s get started.
Tools You’ll Need for This Project
- Soldering Iron
- Solder
- #2 Phillips screwdriver
- Wire strippers
- 8 mm (5/16") nut driver/wrench
- 10 mm (25/64") nut driver/wrench
- 1/2" nut driver/wrench
- 14 mm (9/16") wrench
- Flush cutters
- Small needle-nosed pliers
- Third hands
These tools are available via a variety of suppliers, including StewMac, Allparts, and Amazon.
Step 1: Review the Instructions
The kit as it arrives (Photo 2).
Each BYOC kit comes with a detailed set of instructions in the form of a PDF that can easily be printed out. The Classic Delay’s instructions can be found at https://www.byocelectronics.com/classicdelayinstructions.pdf. They are 32 pages long, and I suggest following their steps as you read this article. Here, I will refer to specific page numbers that correspond with the steps. I’ve also taken photos to coincide with the steps. Within the instructions, we find a table of contents, pictures of the fully assembled pedal, a list of parts included, and step-by-step instructions from internal population and soldering to external assembly. With any kit, always read the instructions carefully before you start building.
Step 2: PCB set-up
Photo 3
A lot of pedal builders use PCB jigs that are specifically designed to hold several printed circuit boards so that they can be easily populated and soldered. These jigs are great tools. However, they’re not something a casual DIY enthusiast will often have. Essentially, all we really need to do is elevate the PCB off of the working surface so that the leads of the components can pass through the bottom side of the PCB. This is most helpful with components that can be soldered from the top side of the PCB. “Third hands” or “helping hands” (Photo 3) are a good tool for this job. So, what can we do to elevate the PCB if we don’t have access to third hands? Simply turn the enclosure upside down and place the PCB perpendicular (Photo 4). This will elevate the PCB enough to allow the component leads to easily pass through.
Photo 4
Step 3: Populating Resistors and Diodes (instructions page 9)
Photo 5
When populating PC boards, we typically like to work lowest to tallest in regards to the seating. Seating is how far above the PC board the component rests. Resistors and diodes sit pretty low to the PC board, so populating them first makes sense.
Resistors: Remove the resistor from the paper ribbon, bend the leads (Photo 5), and place them through the corresponding pads (Photo 6) as directed. (A pad, by the way, is the term for the designated surface area of a component’s electric contact point.) A good practice is to populate all resistors of the same value before moving on to the next value. Populate all 1k resistors, then all 10k resistors, and so on.
Photo 6
Reading resistor color bands can be confusing, so don’t forget the reference guide on page 7 of the instructions. Here, you will find a detailed breakdown of each value and its corresponding 5-band reading (i.e. 1k = brown/black/black/brown/brown). Once all the resistors are placed, we can go on to the diode.
Diode: Next, we need to place the diode. Just like resistors, remove the diode from the paper ribbon, bend the leads, and place them through the corresponding pads. Diodes are polarized and need to be oriented a certain way (Photo 7). Be sure to match the diode to the outline on the PCB, as shown on page 10 of the instructions.
Photo 7
Step 4: Solder Resistors and Diode
Photo 8
Fire up the soldering iron! Once the iron is up to temperature (650 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on how fast you work), it’s time to get to work. Resistors and diodes can easily be soldered from the top side. So no need to flip the PCB over. Place the solder tip to the pad and feed the end of the tip a bit of solder. What we’re looking for here is solder that covers the entire pad, encapsulates the lead, and has a nice shine to it. Think of it like a shiny Hershey's Kiss shape (Photo 8). Repeat this step for every part. If you’re new to soldering, you should consult our concise guide to soldering, online or in PG’s October 2015 issue.
Soldering tip: Shut the iron off between population steps. Use a small, tabletop fan to blow the solder fumes away during soldering steps. Quick tutorial videos on YouTube are also of benefit here, for builders new to soldering.
Step 5: Trim the Leads
Photo 9
Next, place the PCB upside down to expose the leads (Photo 9). Using flush cutters, trim the excess leads (Photo 10).
Photo 10
Step 6: Soldering IC Sockets (page 11)
Photo 11
Place the 8-pin and 16-pin IC sockets into the corresponding pads on the top side of the PCB. We need to solder the IC socket pins from the bottom side. This means flipping the PCB over without having the IC sockets fall out. For this, I like to use a small piece of foam (Photo 11).
Photo 12
I place the foam on top of the PCB (Photo 12), then flip the foam and PCB simultaneously so the foam is below the PCB and the bottom side of the PCB is facing up (Photo 13).
Photo 13
For this soldering step, we’ll want to solder ONLY 1 pad and then flip the board over to ensure that the IC sockets are sitting flush. If the IC sockets are not flush, go back to the bottom side and reflow that solder pad while pressing the PCB downward and keeping it parallel to the work surface. Solder the remaining pads (Photo 14).
Photo 14
Step 7: Soldering the Voltage Regulator (page 12)
Photo 15
Place the voltage regulator into the three corresponding pads, while keeping mindful of the orientation. The flat side needs to match the outline on the PCB. Now, we’re ready to solder. This can be done from either side. Flush-cut the excess lead and we’re done here (Photo 15).
Step 8: Soldering the Trim Pot (page 13)
Photo 16
Place the trim pot (Photo 16) into its corresponding pads. For the trim pot provided, I found it easiest to solder the two exposed legs from the top side (Photo 17) and then the remaining leg from the bottom side.
Photo 17
Step 9: Soldering Ceramic and Film Caps (page 14)
Photo 18
Place all ceramic (pill-shaped) and film (red) caps into their respective locations. Again, use page 7 of the instructions as a reference for identifying the correct capacitors (i.e. 100n film cap, which may say “104” or “.1” or “u1” on the body). We’ll need to solder the pads from the bottom side. So, once again, the piece-of-foam trick can be your friend here. Flush-cut the excess lead and we’re done (Photo 18).
Tip: An alternate method would be to bend the leads away from each other so they stay in place when the PCB is flipped over (Photo 19).
Photo 19
Step 10: Soldering Electrolytic Caps (page 15)
Photo 20
Let’s do the same thing here as we just did in Step 9. One thing to note is that electrolytic capacitors are polarized and need to be populated in the correct orientation. This is denoted on both the PCB and the component itself. On the PCB, the positive pad is denoted by the square pad. On the electrolytic capacitor, the positive lead is the longer leg. Additionally, the negative lead of the cap also corresponds to the white strip on the body (Photo 20).
So, let’s go ahead and populate the caps and solder them with either the foam trick or by bending the leads. Flush-cut the excess lead and we’re done (Photo 21).
Photo 21
Step 11: Battery Snap and Hook-Up Wire
Photo 22
This DIY kit offers a battery option for those that feel so inclined. (See page 17 of the instructions.) For this step, we’ll need to connect the battery snap to the PCB. Before soldering, we’ll want to first feed the two wires through the holes directly below the solder pads. These holes act as strain relief for the battery snap and have + and - signs next to them (Photo 22). Then, simply solder the red wire to the positive (+) pad and the black wire to the negative (-) pad (Photo 23).
Photo 23
Next, we need to cut and strip the included wire (page 18). We need four 2.5" pieces of wire, and one 1.5" piece (Photo 24).
Photo 24
Place the 2.5" wires into the top side of the solder pads for in, out, and the two courtesy grounds—all handily marked. Then, solder from the bottom side. Do the same for the 1.5" wire going to the ring pad (Photo 25).
Tip: If painting the enclosure is desired, this is the last chance you’ll have to do it. After this, there will be components mounted to the chassis.
Photo 25
Step 12: Install DC Jack (page 19)
Photo 26
Place the DC jack into the large hole on the back heel of the enclosure and tighten the nut using a 14 mm (9/16") wrench (Photo 26).
Step 13: Potentiometers and Status LED (pages 20 and 21)
Photo 27
The included instructions for this next part have you mate the PCB to the inside of the enclosure. This will help line up the pots and LED. However, afterwards it will make soldering the remaining wire more difficult. Here’s a trick we can do that gives us the benefits of using the enclosure to help with pot alignment without needing to take the PCB out afterwards to solder the remaining wires. What we’ll want to do is simply use the face of the enclosure to hold the pots and set the LED height. Additionally, we can use the flush cutters to help balance the PCB (Photo 27). Be sure to have the long lead of the LED mate with the square pad, then solder away!
Step 14: Final Hook-Up Wire
Photo 28
My steps continue to vary slightly from the instructions throughout the rest of the build, so you might want to do a side-by-side comparison. Let’s finish the wire for the DC jack next. Cut and strip three 1.5" pieces. These need to be placed into the three power pads at the top of the PCB marked -, +, + , as in Photo 28.
Photo 29
Next, cut and strip five more 1.5" pieces. Place these in the footswitch pads at the bottom of the PCB marked 1, 2, 5, 7, 8 as shown in Photo 29.
Photo 30
Last wire! Cut one 1.5" piece. Only for this one, strip half an inch off of one side (Photo 30). Place the short-stripped side into the footswitch pad labeled 4.
Step 15: Footswitch prep
Photo 31
For the footswitch, we need to jump lugs 3 and 6. To do this, we’ll use the remaining wire. Place the footswitch into the correct hole on the face of the enclosure. Then, cut a 1" piece of wire and strip half of it. Feed the exposed wire through lug 3 and into lug 6 and then solder both (Photo 31). Cut the excess wire.
Step 16: Insert the IC
Photo 32
Now, we’re ready to insert the integrated circuits into their respective sockets. These need to be placed in the correct way, and there are two ways to identify them. Pin 1 is the top left leg of the IC—which is the rectangular black object in Photo 32. These legs are marked with a small dot in the top left corner or the upside of the IC is marked with a debossed half circle.
Step 17: Mounting and Final Soldering
Photo 33
PCB: Now for the real fun! We’re ready to start inserting chassis-mounted components. Let’s start with the populated PCB. Place the PCB with the three pots lining up with the drilled holes, place the pot washers on the shafts, and then tighten the pot nuts using a 10 mm (25/64") nut driver/wrench, for the results in Photo 33.
Photo 34
Footswitch: Now that the PCB is securely tightened, let’s go ahead and do the same for the footswitch. Remove all hardware from the footswitch bushing except for one nut and the lock washer (Photo 34).
Photo 35
Feed the footswitch through the footswitch hole, making sure that the footswitch has the two poles that we soldered together facing the bottom left (Photo 35).
Photo 36
Next, place the plastic washer onto the bushing (optional), and tighten the hex nut with a 14 mm (9/16") wrench (Photo 36).
Photo 37
Lets go ahead and solder the footswitch wires to their respective footswitch poles (Photo 37). See the instructions’ page 26 for pole-numbering reference.
Tip: Solder from the top row down—i.e. 1, 4, 7, then 2, 5, 8.
Another tip: Remember that the wire for pole 4 also connects to pole 9.Step 18: DC Jack
Photo 38
Next, we’ll need to solder the three wires that go to the DC jack, as explained in page 22 of the instructions. Start with the middle wire, since it sits the lowest and will be easier to get at without the other two wires in the way (Photo 38).
Step 19: Audio Jacks
Photo 39
The last chassis-mounted components are the two audio jacks. Let’s do the stereo input jack first. Go to page 24 of the instructions to see how these jacks are oriented. The lock washer goes on the bushing first, then gets placed into the hole to the left of the DC jack. Then, place the washer onto the bushing and tighten the hex nut with a 1/2" nut driver/wrench.
Follow the same steps for the mono output jack. And then, it’s the final soldering step: Solder the wires to the appropriate lugs on the audio jacks (Photo 39), as on instructions page 28. Then, finally, place the knobs on, tighten them down, and we’re done!
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Bruce Springsteen: the last man standing.
Maybe these aren’t the first thoughts you’d expect to have after a rock ’n’ roll show, but rock ’n’ roll is getting old, and one of its most prolific stars has been telling us for the past few years that he’s getting his affairs in order. His current tour, which continues his 2023 world tour celebrated in the recent documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, follows his latest LP of original music, 2020’s Letter To You. That record was explicitly and thematically an exploration of the Boss’ mortality, and this year’s jubilant roadshow continues that chapter with shows across the U.S. and Canada.
“The older you get, the more you realize that, unless you’re über-wealthy, you probably have a lot in common with the characters in Springsteen songs.”
I was at the Montreal show on Halloween night, where Bruce, the E Street Band—Steven Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg, and Roy Bittan, along with Soozie Tyrell, Charles Giordano, and Jake Clemons—and a brilliant backing ensemble of singers and musicians performed for roughly three hours straight. The show rewired my brain. For days after, I was in a feverish state, hatching delusional schemes to get to his other Canadian shows, unconsciously singing the melody of “Dancing in the Dark” on a loop until my partner asked me to stop, listening to every Springsteen album front to back.
“The stakes implicit in most of these stories are that our time is always running out.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
I had seen Bruce and the E Street Band in 2012, but something about this time was different, more urgent and powerful. Maybe it’s that the older you get, the more you realize that, unless you’re über-wealthy, you probably have a lot in common with the characters in Springsteen songs. When you’re young, they’re just great songs with abstract stories. Maybe some time around your late 20s, you realize that you aren’t one of the lucky ones anointed to escape the pressures of wage work and monthly rent, and suddenly the plight of the narrator of “Racing in the Street” isn’t so alien. The song’s wistful organ melody takes on a different weight, and the now-signature extended coda that the band played in Montreal, led by that organ, Bittan’s piano, and Weinberg’s tense snare rim snaps, washed across the arena over and again, like years slipping away.
The stakes implicit in most of these stories are that our time is always running out. The decades that we spend just keeping our heads above water foreclose a lot of possibility, the kind promised in the brash harmonica whine and piano strokes that open “Thunder Road” like an outstretched hand, or in the wild, determined sprint of “Born to Run.” If we could live forever, there’d be no urgency to our toils. But we don’t.
Springsteen has long has the ability to turn a sold-out arena into a space as intimate as a small rock club.
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Bruce has never shied away from these realities. Take “Atlantic City,” with its unambiguous chorus: “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.” (Then, of course, an inkling of hope: “Maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”) Springsteen used those phrases on Nebraska to tell the story of a working person twisted and cornered into despair and desperation, but on All Hallows Eve, as the band rocked through their electrified arrangement of the track, it was hard not to hear them outside of their context, too, as some of the plainest yet most potent words in rock ’n’ roll.
In Montreal, like on the rest of this tour, Bruce guided us through a lifecycle of music and emotion, framed around signposts that underlined our impermanence. In “Letter to You,” he gestured forcefully, his face tight and rippled with passion, an old man recapping the past 50 years of his creative life and his relationship to listeners in one song. “Nightshift,” the well-placed Commodores tune featured on his 2022 covers record, and “Last Man Standing,” were opportunities to mourn Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, his E Street comrades who went before him, but also his bandmates in his first group, the Castiles. It all came to a head in the night’s elegiac closer, “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” performed solo by Bruce with his acoustic guitar: “Go, and I’ll see you in my dreams,” he calls
I’m still trying to put my finger on exactly why the show felt so important. I’ve circled around it here, but I’m sure I haven’t quite hit on the heart of the matter. Perhaps it’s that, as we’re battered by worsening crises and cornered by impossible costs of living, songs about people trying desperately to feel alive and get free sound especially loud and helpful. Or it could be that having one of our favorite artists acknowledge his mortality, and ours, is like having a weight lifted: Now that it’s out in the open, we can live properly and honestly.
None of us know for sure what’s up around the bend, just out of sight. It could be something amazing; it could be nothing at all. Whatever it is, we’re in it together, and we’ll all get there in our time. Until then, no matter how bad things get, we’ll always have rock ’n’ roll.
Amythyst Kiah began learning guitar at the age of 13, then later attended a creative arts high school, where she found her people among all the “misfits and weirdos.”
Amythyst Kiah - "God's Under the Mountain"
“I’ve stayed away from writing songs where I’m just strumming for a really long time,” she prefaces, “because I was worried that it was going to be too boring to not do fingerstyle. But then I realized, there’s so many [strummed] songs that are super powerful, and you can still make it interesting rhythmically.
“I started to listen to more rhythm guitar players, like Cory Wong, and reconfigured how I was viewing rhythm guitar,” she continues. “It was a matter of finding a way to do it that was exciting and interesting to me. Now, it’s really expanded the songs that I can write.”
All of the demos for Still + Brightbegan with strumming, says Kiah. When working on ideas, she would “play rhythmically as much as I could,” then open GarageBand, choose a tempo she felt comfortable playing to, and add programmed drums—often going with a modern R&B pattern. But when she brought her songs to the studio, she discovered that she was struggling to replicate the guitar parts she’d recorded at home.For Kiah, who’s always had a very strong sense of self and vision for her sound, that was a bit discomforting.
In the making of Still + Bright, Kiah’s fifth full-length album, the songwriter strengthened her skills as both a rhythm guitarist and a vocalist.
“I had a moment of, ‘I can either spend way too long trying to replay this part that I’ve been playing from muscle memory at this point,’” she shares, or hand it off to her session player, Nashville guitarist (and, coincidentally, Premier Guitarcolumnist) Ellen Angelico, and focus on her lyrics and vocal delivery instead. “I used to be very much like, ‘I have to be playing guitar on everything.’ But there’s a team of people here that can help, and make things go along more smoothly. My ego shouldn’t be getting in the way.”
She did, ultimately, play guitar—acoustic or electric, or both—on five out of 12 tracks, and banjo on two. Angelico performed on each track, alternating between mandolin, dobro, pedal steel, and acoustic, electric, and baritone guitar. (You’ll also hear Billy Strings, with his unmistakable, rapid-fire bluegrass licks, on “I Will Not Go Down.”)
The finished album exudes a spirit of triumph. It rings as one extended anthem, beginning with “Play God and Destroy the World,” a reflection on a childhood rejection of religious hypocrisy, and ending on “People’s Prayer,” an avowal of humanistic compassion. “S P A C E,” one of the more pensive songs in the collection, features Kiah playing clawhammer banjo. “God’s Under the Mountain” builds and undulates with a communion of syncopated vocal melody, fiddle, pedal steel, dobro, and background vocals by producer Butch Walker and Avi Kaplan. Then, the waltzing “Dead Stars” unwinds with simpler, judicious instrumentation supporting a mournful theme, before swelling with Morricone-like eloquence as it closes. “This is the first album where I really had a concept about everything, from the logo to the color palette, and everything else,” says Kiah, “and I had an incredible team who was able to really bring to life what I was envisioning.”
Amythyst Kiah’s Gear
Some of Kiah’s building blocks for her fingerpicking abilities came from classical training in high school and old-time studies at East Tennessee State University.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
Effects
- L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic DI
- TC Electronic Polytune
Strings, Picks & Accessories
- Acoustic: D’Addario light
- Electric: Ernie Ball medium
- Dunlop .73 mm picks
- Paige capo
Throughout the record, Kiah’s propulsive singing voice is the glowing flame to the hearth, acting as a centerpiece to the already luminous, Americana-fueled full-band arrangements. Like rhythm guitar, voice was another essential element that she cultivated while creating Still + Bright.
“I kind of diminished that power of having a voice,” she admits, explaining how she’s always been preoccupied with measuring up on guitar, and has long held multi-instrumentalists such as Prince in high esteem. But something shifted when a sentiment expressed by her manager, Dolph Ramseur, years ago, finally sunk in. “He said, ‘Amythyst, you know, you could just stand in a room and sing a cappella, and people would sit there and listen, and they wouldn’t get up and leave, and they would not be bored.’ And then it really dawned on me—it’s a powerful thing, people that can just sing; there’s a power and strength there, too. It’s just understanding where the power lies, and then embracing it, as opposed to feeling inadequate.
“It’s just understanding where the power lies, and then embracing it, as opposed to feeling inadequate.”
“I have this ongoing obsession in the back of my mind that I’m never doing enough,” she continues. “So, anytime I remove something from the equation, I worry. That stems from social anxiety, and being overly concerned with, like, ‘Am I making the right decision?’ But it doesn’t matter how long I agonize or rethink or redo something; at the end of the day, the decision I make is still going to be spontaneous. Because there’s only ever ‘now.’” She adds, laughing, “I’m a big Alan Watts fan.”
Now, she’s started doing vocal warmups before shows, “and through that, I’ve expanded my range and I’ve also been able to gain even more control over my voice. It also means that I can write more challenging songs. Those two things—expanding [rhythm] guitar and expanding voice—have let me open a whole new side to my sound.”
Spiritual themes appear frequently on Still + Bright, in both Kiah’s song titles and lyrics. The opening lines of “Empire of Love” include, “My religion is none at all / I build my own cathedrals and let ’em fall.” On “Let’s See Ourselves Out,” she sings, “So many matrices we create to escape / Sometimes I wonder if we’re just a mistake.” And, on more than one song, there’s mention of how “we’re all made from stars from above,” alluding to the scientific evidence that the elements of the human body were created by stars that went supernova.
Kiah was raised in a predominantly white, Christian suburb in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as part of a Black family who didn’t attend church. She identified as an “alternative” kid, vacillating between agnosticism and atheism, shopping at Hot Topic, and drawing inspiration from The Matrix’s theme of breaking free from societal constraints. (She remarks on her younger self’s “cognitive dissonance” of buying “‘alternative clothes’ at the mall.”) As a self-proclaimed introvert, she dealt with social anxiety, and spent a lot of her time at home alone on the computer. But when she began learning guitar at 13, and later started attending a creative arts high school, she finally felt like she fit in: “’cause everybody there was misfits and weirdos.”
Spirituality is a common theme in Kiah’s music. Her current beliefs draw mainly on principles of Zen Buddhism and Taoism.
Photo by Kevin & King
Though still adamantly individualistic, her spiritual views evolved when she took courses in both Western humanities and Eastern religion in college: “I realized that people have created narratives about how to live our lives for thousands of years. So, this idea that only one group of people got it right and everyone else is wrong; that threw all of that out the window.” Today, she says that Zen Buddhism probably best captures her personal belief system, but, “I hesitate to call myself a Zen Buddhist because I feel like I still have more to learn,” she says. She also rereads the Tao Te Ching by Laozi “pretty regularly,” lauding the principles of Taoism as another strong influence on her philosophies.
At the beginning of our 1 p.m. Zoom call, Kiah shares that she typically spends her mornings alone and in silence, meditating, writing, and reading, and lightheartedly apologizes for enthusiastically “going on”—saying she’s had a lot of time to think before speaking to another person. When I ask her about what modern artists she’s listening to lately, she has more to say about what she’s been reading. One of the books in her current rotation is The Lost Art of Silence by Sarah Anderson.
Growing up, Kiah identified as an “alternative” kid, and was something of an “anime mall goth” who often shopped at Hot Topic.
Photo by Tim Bugbee/tinnitus photography
“It goes along really well with meditation and learning to live in the present,” Kiah says. “It’s been interesting to explore those different perspectives on silence, and make more of an effort to find time in my life to be quiet. I find that I’m getting more and more comfortable with myself and my thoughts, and I feel less like I always have to block out anxious thoughts. Or, if I have anxiety about something, I can come up with an idea of, ‘Okay, well, how can I alleviate this? Can I do anything about it?’, and solve the problem as opposed to starting the spiral.
“Impostor syndrome was the big driver for my social anxiety, and now, I feel like I’m on the other side of being an impostor,” she reflects. “I’m doing what I’ve been wanting to do for the past 12 years, making a living doing this. There’s stressful things that happen, but you have to decide, what are you willing to be stressed out about? To try to seek a perfect, happy life where nothing ever upsets you—that’s called emotional repression and it’s really unhealthy. It’s just about accepting the fact that, hey, some days, some weeks are gonna be shit, and to find ways to take care of yourself that are as least self-destructive as humanly possible.”
“It doesn’t matter how long I agonize or rethink or redo something; at the end of the day, the decision I make is still going to be spontaneous. Because there’s only ever ‘now.’”
And while she’s outgrown a lot of her social anxiety, she says it’s been a challenge adapting to the stress that comes with the unpredictability of touring. “When I would be at home, I would establish this really tight routine, and then I got completely knocked on my feet when I would leave,” she explains. “I had to get to this point where I would just be focusing more on the present and less on trying to micromanage how my day’s going to be, because it’s not gonna always go the way that I want things to go.
“That’s been also helpful in my creative process, because then I’m not as anxious and worried about all these other things that I don’t have control over, and I’m able to just … enjoy the process of living.”
Ellen Angelico's Gear
Guitars
- Dismal Ax Barnstormer
- Cervantes Telecaster
- GFI Expo S-10
- 1980s Kentucky KM-250S mandolin
Amp
- 3rd Power Dream 50 Plexi
Effects
- Peterson StroboStomp HD tuner
- Line 6 HX Stomp
- 1981 DRV
- MXR Timmy Overdrive Mini
- Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Boy
- Strymon Flint
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL
- Wegen picks
YouTube It
On WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, recorded in Knoxville, Tennessee, Kiah performs an evocative, stripped-down version of “Empire of Love” from Still + Bright.