Fort Wayne, IN (June 16, 2015) -- Sweetwater Sound, the No. 1 online retailer of music instruments and pro audio equipment in the U.S., has announced that their GearFest 2015 was a bigger success than ever, breaking every record established by previous GearFest events. Launched in 2002, Sweetwater’s free, annual GearFest is the nation’s largest customer-focused music and pro audio festival, featuring exhibits from more than 400 manufacturers, workshops, clinics, seminars, live demos, special performances, a musician’s flea market, and much more.
This year’s two-day event, which took place June 12 and 13 at Sweetwater’s corporate headquarters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, provided more opportunities than ever before for thousands of musicians, engineers, and producers to participate in the festivities, with customers traveling from all over the world to attend.
Attendance was record-breaking, with more than 10,100 participants, up 27% over 2014, and with sales up by more than 35% over last year.
GearFest hosted a multitude of musicians performing and in workshops continuously on five different stages. Featured guests included guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Deep Purple vocalist and bassist Glenn Hughes, bassist Nathan East and jazz guitarist Mike Stern. Sweetwater's Mitch Gallagher hosted an historic panel discussion with three pioneers of synthesis and electronic instruments: Roger Linn, Tom Oberheim and Dave Smith.
In total, GearFest included more than 200 workshops and seminars on guitar, recording, and live sound, music creation with computers, acoustics, songwriting, and how to use electronic instruments. Housed in 19 tents, more than 400 manufacturers of musical instruments, music technology, and audio equipment were on hand to provide GearFest attendees a look at the latest gear.
Sweetwater Founder and President Chuck Surack remarked, “This year’s GearFest was one of the most exciting and humbling experiences of my career. I personally greeted thousands of our customers at the front door as they arrived and was astounded by the enthusiasm everyone seemed to have for Sweetwater, GearFest, and, in particular, for their interactions with our incredible employees. That, along with its continued growth in overall attendance and sales, has made GearFest a truly unique event in the music retail business.”
GearFest 2015 also served as the Grand Opening of Sweetwater’s hugely expanded and recently completed new Music Store. Now four times the original size and one of the largest in the Midwest, the Sweetwater Music store is backed by the largest on-site inventory of musical instruments and audio gear of any music store in the country.
Visually striking, warm and inviting, the Music Store layout allows the shopper to see virtually the entire store from the entrance, reassuring customers that they will find what they’re looking for.
The Music Store has vastly expanded demonstration areas, including a completely stocked drum room with interactive displays allowing musicians to simply pick up and play. Unlike most stores, electric guitars and bass guitars have been separated into individual rooms, allowing more space for both kinds of instruments. The acoustic guitar room has also been greatly expanded. These changes now allow customers access to more than 10,000 guitars.
A huge pedal wall has been built for customers to test out hundreds of effects. The live sound room contains numerous demo capabilities for comparing PA and lighting systems. The recording room boasts an extensive, interactive microphone display and a significant functioning collection of state-of-the-art recording gear.
“We’ve worked very hard to elevate the customer experience,” store manager Thad Tegtmeyer said. “We have more product out than ever before, more space than ever before, and unique features you won’t find in any other music store.”
For example, if customers can’t find what they’re looking for in the store, they can find it with the proprietary Sweetwater Digital Warehouse system, an innovation unique in the music retail business, and created entirely in-house. The customer can now interact with any of nine huge touchscreens located around the store to browse, view, and compare literally all of the gear Sweetwater has in its vast warehouse. Any item that is not in the store can be requested, using the Digital Warehouse touch screen, and will be brought out to the customer in five to seven minutes.
Following up on the GearFest event and Music Store grand opening, Sweetwater is sharing exclusive video footage with musicians worldwide. More than 30 videos, including interviews, product demos, and the Synthesis Pioneers Panel, were recorded and will be posted throughout June at Sweetwater’s YouTube channel at:
For more information:
Sweetwater
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediater Lesson Overview: • Learn different ways to arrange scales. • Combine various sequences to create more intersting lines. • Solidify your technique by practicing unusual groupings of notes. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
Neutrik’s Timbre plug, made for toggling between capacitors.
Let’s begin with some typical additional capacitance values that certain lengths of cable (or capacitors) can bring to your system:
• 10’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 3 meters) -> 1 nF
• 15’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 4.5 meters) -> 1.5 nF
• 20’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 6 meters) -> 2.2 nF
• 30’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 9 meters) -> 3.3 nF
• Ritchie Blackmore-style, ultra-long vintage coiled cable -> 4.7 nF
I listed standard values here, so you should have no problem getting caps to match them in any local electronics store or online; the type of cap doesn’t really matter and will mostly be dominated by size, but I’ll share more about this in a minute.
Let’s quickly summarize the first installment of this column from last month’s issue: From a technical point of view, added capacitance shifts down the resonance frequency of the pickups, so they sound fatter, especially when using overdrive. This is exactly the reason why a lot of distortion and fuzz boxes with a vintage voicing use an additional cap at the input section; the resulting overdriven tone is fat and warm.
This month’s mod, which involves adding a capacitor to your signal, works best with vintage-flavored single-coil pickups (approximately 2.4 H inductance) or a typical old-school PAF-style pickup (approximately 3.8 H inductance). Modern high-output pickups are often sporting inductances of 6 H to 8 H, and don’t sound very good with this mod—when adding more cable capacitance to such pickups, the result is a dull and wooly tone without any clearness and definition. If you want to make your single-coil guitar sound more Les Paul-ish, you should try a 4.7n capacitor. It will shift the resonance frequency of your single-coil pickups down to the typical PAF ballpark, making for a very cool and usable old-fashioned guitar tone. It might feel a little muffled when playing clean, but ultra fat and punchy when using overdrive! In general, values higher than 4.7n are not recommended.
We have two options for where to install our cap.
On the Guitar Cable
This is the easiest location to add additional capacitance to your system, with several mod options:
1. The lightest mod ever isn’t a mod at all—it’s to simply buy a vintage guitar cable and plug it in whenever you need it! I don’t know of any company that offers modern guitar cables with intentionally high capacitance.
2. The Neutrik company offers a special angled plug, called the Timbre Plug, that you can solder to any guitar cable of your choice. The plug has a 4-way rotary knob on top to toggle between different capacitors. In addition to a bypass setting, the plug offers capacitances of 1nF, 2.2nF, and 3.3nF, letting you simulate different cable lengths on the fly.
3. You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable. You simply open one of the plugs to solder the cap between the hot and ground—that’s it. Small, 2.5 mm contact spacing ceramic caps are easy to put into a standard plug and are your weapon of choice here. It’s essential to only add the additional cap to one of the two plugs, but it doesn’t matter if you plug this side into your guitar, an effect, or your amp. This method allows you to build yourself some cables that simulate their older, longer relatives.
You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable.
Photo courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
Inside the Guitar
You can also add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument. If you’re looking for added capacitance with all your guitars, you’d be better off choosing one of the techniques mentioned above.
1. The easiest way is to solder your additional capacitor directly to your volume pot; this way it has a fixed value that can’t be changed and is always engaged. This operation is very simple to do, and you can use regular-sized caps for this.
You can add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
2. If you want to make the cap switchable, such that you can run it either bypassed or engaged, you can install a SPST mini toggle switch or use half of a push-pull or push-push pot, which usually sport a DPDT switch underneath.
This drawing shows how to make your additional cap switchable.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
3. If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, your weapon of choice is a rotary switch, setting up a kind of Gibson Varitone wiring without the inductor. Because we are switching capacitances, it is essential to run an additional 10 meg resistor in parallel to each of the caps, and to use a make-before-break, not a break-before-make, rotary switch to prevent loud popping noises when using the switch while your guitar is plugged into an amp. Leave the first lug of the rotary switch open for the bypass position without an additional cap.
If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, use a rotary switch.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
4. If you want to make this mod even more flexible, you can add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system. The pot should have the same resistance as your volume pot, and should be wired to your volume pot. This way, for example, you can add a 3.3nF or 4.7nF cap to the extra pot, and dial in as much cable capacitance as you like.
You can also add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
On the Pedalboard
The idea of putting a rotary switch or cable-simulator-pot solution into an external unit to create a kind of extra-capacitance stompbox to use with all of your instruments is just around the corner, and yes, it’s possible! However, I don’t recommend this, because it’s physically located after the volume pot in the guitar, which means less volume (no unity gain) and less high end. But don’t worry: If you are looking for a pedalboard solution to simulate different cable lengths (which, as we defined earlier, means to shift the resonance frequency of the pickups), there are some active solutions on the market offering such a feature, usually in combination with a boost or buffer functionality. To name just a few, you should look into the Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster, Stellartone Micro Pedal, or the i2e Audio AG1.0 The PURR. Along with some other brands, these pedals will do the trick, and they’re not difficult to build if you are looking for a DIY solution.
So far, I’ve received several emails from readers asking for some more DIY guitar tools, so next month, we will look into some sustainable and environmentally friendly DIY guitar helpers—all of which you can build yourself easily by upcycling things you already have at home. Stay tuned!
Until then... keep on modding!
