Tasty stomp stations from top players.
Keith Urban
Since our last Rig Rundown, Urban has scaled down his pedal stash. He now uses only a single drawer of effects that includes a Wampler Ego Compressor, Visual Sound VS-XO Dual Overdrive, Xotic BB Preamp MP, Xotic BB Preamp, Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer, Mesa/Boogie Flux-Drive, and an XTS Custom Pedals Atomic Overdrive. According to Urban’s tech, Chris Miller, about 80 percent of his lead tone is the Flux-Drive, with the other pedals floating in and out depending on the song. A Fractal Audio Axe-Fx II handles all Urban’s delays, reverbs, and modulation effects. Each pedal is routed through an RJM Effect Gizmo, and Miller controls the entire rig via a Liquid Foot 12+ MIDI controller.
We rummaged through our entire backlog of Rig Rundown footage and photos to compile a guide to some of 2014’s tastiest, most elaborate stomp stations, including boards from the Cult’s Billy Duffy, Keith Urban, the Pixies, the Sword, Carlos Santana, Brent Mason, and more.
David Gilmour releases a special live version of the "The Piper's Call" from his solo album Luck and Strange.
"The Piper's Call Live Around The World" is a digital only release and was recorded at The Brighton Centre, Circus Maximus in Rome, the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles and Madison Square Garden in New York and edited together by Gilmour, Charlie Andrew and Matt Glasbey to form one seamless track recorded throughout the Luck and Strange tour.
David Gilmour “On the Luck and Strange tour, I played with the best band I've ever had. Their personalities, playing abilities and enthusiasm for my new music have made for a fabulous experience for Polly and me. Romany's voice really stands out and has its own particular character, she brings a sense of mischief and fun to the live performance, which I think we needed. Thank you to everyone who attended the shows in Europe and America and thank you for buying 'Luck and Strange’. I hope you found as much enjoyment in the music as we did while performing it.”
Luck and Strange was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is Gilmour's first album of new material in nine years. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with alt-J and Marika Hackman. The album features nine tracks, including the singles' The Piper's Call', 'Dark And Velvet Nights', and a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers' 1999 song, 'Between Two Points,' which features 22-year-old Romany Gilmour on vocals and harp; the lead-off track, 'The Piper's Call,' and the title track, which features the late Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, recorded in 2007 at a jam in a barn at David's house. The album features artwork and photography by the renowned artist Anton Corbijn.
The Luck and Strange tour began with two sold-out warm-up shows at the Brighton Centre before moving to Circus Maximus in Rome for six sold-out nights, followed by the same about at London's Royal Albert Hall before moving Stateside for sold-out evenings at the Intuit Dome and Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles before concluding with five sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Learn more: www.davidgilmour.com.
Lollar Pickups introduces the Deluxe Foil humbucker, a medium-output pickup with a bright, punchy tone and wide frequency range. Featuring a unique retro design and 4-conductor lead wires for versatile wiring options, the Deluxe Foil is a drop-in replacement for Wide Range Humbuckers.
Based on Lollar’s popular single-coil Gold Foil design, the new Deluxe Foil has the same footprint as Lollar’s Regal humbucker - as well as the Fender Wide Range Humbucker – and it’s a drop-in replacement for any guitar routed for Wide Range Humbuckers such as the Telecaster Deluxe/Custom, ’72-style Tele Thinline and Starcaster.
Lollar’s Deluxe Foil is a medium-output humbucker that delivers a bright and punchy tone, with a glassy top end, plenty of shimmer, rich harmonic content, and expressive dynamic touch-sensitivity. Its larger dual-coil design allows the Deluxe Foil to capture a wider frequency range than many other pickup types, giving the pickup a full yet well-balanced voice with plenty of clarity and articulation.
The pickup comes with 4-conductor lead wires, so you can utilize split-coil wiring in addition to humbucker configuration. Its split-coil sound is a true representation of Lollar’s single-coil Gold Foil, giving players a huge variety of inspiring and musical sounds.
The Deluxe Foil’s great tone is mirrored by its evocative retro look: the cover design is based around mirror images of the “L” in the Lollar logo. Since the gold foil pickup design doesn’t require visible polepieces, Lollartook advantage of the opportunity to create a humbucker that looks as memorable as it sounds.
Deluxe Foil humbucker features include:
- 4-conductor lead wire for maximum flexibility in wiring/switching
- Medium output suited to a vast range of music styles
- Average DC resistance: Bridge 11.9k, Neck 10.5k
- Recommended Potentiometers: 500k
- Recommended Capacitor: 0.022μF
The Lollar Deluxe Foil is available for bridge and neck positions, in nickel, chrome, or gold cover finishes. Pricing is $225 per pickup ($235 for gold cover option).
For more information visit lollarguitars.com.
A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.
Supro Montauk 15-watt 1 x 10-inch Tube Combo Amplifier - Blue Rhino Hide Tolex with Silver Grille
Montauk 110 ReverbThis month’s mod Dan’s uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel.
This simple passive mod will boost your guitar’s sweet-spot tones.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. In this column, we’ll be taking a closer look at the “mid boost and scoop mod” for electric guitars from longtime California-based tech Dan Torres, whose Torres Engineering seems to be closed, at least on the internet. This mod is in the same family with the Gibson Varitone, Bill Lawrence’s Q-Filter, the Gresco Tone Qube (said to be used by SRV), John “Dawk” Stillwells’ MTC (used by Ritchie Blackmore), the Yamaha Focus Switch, and the Epiphone Tone Expressor, as well as many others. So, while it’s just one of the many variations of tone-shaping mods, I chose the Torres because this one sounds best to me, which simply has to do with the part values he chose.
Don’t let the name fool you, this is a purely passive device—nothing is going to be boosted. In general, you can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there. Period. But you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent (so … “boost” in guitar marketing language). Removing highs makes lows more apparent, and vice versa. In addition, the use of inductors (which create the magnetic field in a guitar circuit) and capacitors will create resonant peaks and valleys (bandpasses and notches), further coloring the overall tone. This type of bandpass filter only allows certain frequencies to pass through, while others are blocked, and it all works at unity gain.
“You can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there … but you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent.”
All the systems I mentioned above are doing more or less the same thing, using different approaches and slightly different component values. They are all meant to be updated tone controls. Our common tone circuit is usually a variable low-pass filter (aka treble-cut filter), which only allows the low frequencies to pass through, while the high frequencies get sent to ground via the tone cap. Most of these systems are LCR networks, which means that there is not only a capacitor (C), like on our standard tone controls, but also an inductor (L) and a resistor (R).
In general, all these systems are meant to control the midrange in order to scoop the mids, creating a mid-cut. This can be a cool sounding option, e.g. on a Strat for that mid-scooped neck and middle tone.
Dan Torres offered his “midrange kit” via an internet shop that is no longer online, same with his business website. The Torres design is a typical LCR network and looks like the illustration at the top of this column.
Dan’s design uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel. Let’s break down the parts piece by piece:
Any 500k linear pot will do the trick, in one of the rare scenarios where a linear pot works better in a passive guitar system than an audio pot.
(C) 0.039µF cap: This is kind of an odd value. Keeping production tolerances of up to 20 percent in mind, any value that is close will do, so you can use any small cap you want for this. I would prefer a small metallized film cap, and any voltage rating will do. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original design, use any 0.039 µF low-tolerance film cap.
(L) 1.5H inductor: The original design uses a Xicon 42TL021 inductor, which is easy to find and fairly priced. This one is also used in the Bill Lawrence Q-Filter design, the Gibson standard Varitone, and many other systems like this. It’s very small, so it will fit in virtually every electronic compartment of a guitar. It has a frequency range of 300 Hz up to 3.4 kHz, with a primary impedance of 4k ohms (that’s the one we want to use) and a secondary impedance of 600 ohms. Snip off the three secondary leads and the center tap of the primary side and use the two remaining outer primary leads; the primary side is marked with a “P.” On the pic, you can see the two leads you need marked in red, all other leads can be snipped off. You can connect the two remaining leads to the pot either way; it doesn’t matter which of them is going to ground when using it this way.
Drawing courtesy of singlecoil.com
(R) 220k: use a small axial metal film resistor (0.25 W), which is easy to find and is the quasi-standard.
Other designs use slightly different part values—the Bill Lawrence Q-filter has a 1.8H L, 0.02 µF C and 8k R, while the old RA Gresco Tone Qube from the ’80s has a 1.5H L, 0.0033 µF C, and a 180k R, so this is a wide field for experimentation to tweak it for your personal tone.
This mid-cut system can be put into any electric guitar not only as a master tone, but also together with a regular tone control or something like the Fender Greasebucket, or it can be assigned only to a certain pickup. It can be a great way to enhance your sonic palette, so give it a try.
That’s it! Next month, we’ll take a deeper look into how to fight feedback on a Telecaster. It’s a common issue, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!