This month, Chris Burgess takes a look at some recent advances in the plectrum. The entire office got in on the act, testing a slew of new picks, ranging from quirky to revolutionary to downright practical. Once we had picks on the brain, it was hard to stop. What else could we do but start Googling? A sort of pick-obsessed society became apparent through a quick search of the web. We soon learned that a legion of guitar pick collectors worldwide have been showcasing and trading picks online for a while now. The result? Massive pick collections! Some collectors have nearly 1000 picks displayed on their websites, and online trading has enabled them to grow their collections in ways never before possible.
Most of these collectors don’t appear to be guitar players—or web designers, for that matter—but that doesn’t mean that the websites are useless to players. Ever wonder what kind of picks your favorite guitarist is using? Chances are there’s a picture of the pick, front and back, on one of these sites. And if you really want to take that extra step in snagging a specific guy’s tone, you can log onto one of the trading sites and procure one of the picks that he personally used.
One of the biggest pick-trading networks exists on PickNET, where collectors from around the world can post messages about anything pickrelated and list trade offerings. It uses a Yahoo!Groups message board, and anyone can join.
If you’re just looking to browse, there are plenty of sites for that as well. In fact, most sites we found serve as a simple bragging device for the collector. The flashy section titled “My Picks,” is usually followed by a flashy disclaimer that reads, “Sorry, not eligible for trade!”
And when we say flashy, it isn’t necessarily in a good way. Most of these sites look as though they were built in the early days of the internet, and aren’t updated frequently. Others have compatibility issues with newer browsers like Firefox. But it’s hard not to be impressed by someone who owns nearly 1000 picks, and takes the time to upload a picture of every single one. If you’re looking to get into pick collecting or copy one of the basic elements of your idols’ tone, these websites are worth a look.
Get your pick on at:
home.att.net/~StevieLeavitt/join.html
picks.fr.st/
guitar-picks.com/
guitarpicks.co.nr/
The Ones That Got Away
Feel like saying ohhhhhhhhhh over and over again? Head over to The Ones That Got Away blog and eat your heart out on post after post of sob stories. Forget about that cute girl at the bus stop in college, we’re talking long lost Silverfaces and Thinline Teles. The blog is the creation of Jaimie Muehlhausen, who appears to have traded in more guitars in his lifetime than our entire staff combined. Not every story is from Jaimie, however. Readers are encouraged to commiserate with their own stories of love and loss.
The stories range from gut-wrenchingly painful to hilarious. More than a few center around trading in a beloved instrument to pay the bills—and are accompanied by warnings against doing this, pleas for the return of their instrument, or both. Other stories actually feature instruments that were once happily unloaded, with detailed descriptions of the guitars’ shortcomings, along with cringe-inducing current values.
What really makes the blog a good read—and might keep you reading archived posts for a while—is Jaimie’s style of writing. He winds in stories from his personal life, that at times perfectly capture a moment of time (being psyched about a friend’s Delorean, for example), along with astute and funny gear reflections (“You wear a Rick on your sleeve if you know what I’m sayin’,” he says about Rickenbackers).
The blog is surprisingly active, with 86 different stories so far this year, which averages out to about nine per month. There isn’t something new every day, but there are generally a few posts each week. If you’ve ever pawned an old Strat to keep the water on, or tried to trade up only to be let down, this blog might ease your pain.
Throw a pity party at theonesthatgotaway.blogspot.com
EBS BassIQ Blue Label Triple Envelope Filter Pedal
The EBS BassIQ produces sounds ranging from classic auto-wah effects to spaced-out "Funkadelic" and synth-bass sounds. It is for everyone looking for a fun, fat-sounding, and responsive envelope filter that reacts to how you play in a musical way.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
