In my previous posting I wrote extensively about my experience building several generations of guitar pedalboards, and ended my discussion by suggesting that one last action I might take would be to replace the board’s power supply. I was using a Pedaltrain Spark, which fit flush to the underside of the board and offered 5 independent power channels ranging from 100mA’s to 500mA’s. Since I had 11 pedals on the board, it required daisy chaining some of them to shared power channels, which depending on how they were arranged could create unwanted amp noises.
To the left, you can see one of the great advantages of the Spark. It was designed to mount neatly and efficiently under a Pedaltrain board. My guess is that because of the limited number of isolated channels, the device may not have sold many units; consequently, the Pedaltrain company ceased production. After detaching the Spark from my main board, I will use it as an external power source for my smaller detachable board which currently only holds two pedals.
When building the 3rd generation board, I became a bit of a Walrus fanboy, so when I tumbled onto the fact that they manufacture a power supply that offers 15 isolated channels, I decided to acquire one to replace the Spark. Here’s a short promo for the device Walrus… it’s “homemade” affect is amusing and endearing:
To the right, you can see the underside of the board with the Spark removed and the Walrus Phoenix poised for installation. Eventhough the Phoenix was designed to fit neatly beneath a Pedaltrain board, there was no readily apparent way to mount it. Sadly the existing Spark mounting hardware would not work and Walrus discontinued their mounting kit, which did not look that effective to begin with. There are examples on YouTube of people drilling holes into their boards to mount a Phoenix, but I am reluctant to do so. Any wrong move with the drill and a big mess could be made!
You’ll note also in the above image that I had to pull several of the pedals off the board to get enough access to remove the Spark and subsequently mount the Phoenix. This was not a problem as I intended to rewire the whole board with fresh George L cable to ensure that my patch cords were as good as I could make them!
Instead, I opted to go with Scotch fastener strips. They’re like velcro fasteners, but on steroids. Three strips fit across the width of the Phoenix and I pressed it down onto an underside cross-member of the board. There is a bit of wobble because only about half of the Phoenix’s width is held to the board, so this is not an ideal, apocalypse-resistant mounting, but sometimes “good enough” can be “good enough.”
The Phoenix arrives from Walrus packaged with a generous supply of longish power cords to connect pedals to the power supply. The channels are either 100mA or 300mA which covers a wide range of pedal power needs. Some of the 100mA channels can be switched between 9 volts or 12 volts and one even goes to 18 volts. Sadly the 18 volt channel is only powered at 100mA because my Origin Effects Cali76 Stacked Compressor would benefit from the added head-room the 18 volts would give it, but it requires 108mA at that voltage which exceeds the 100mA of my 18 volt channel. I contacted Origin Effects to see if I could get by on 100mA but they never responded. The Walrus people think I should give the 18 volt set up a try. Perhaps I will in time.
To the right, you can see the finished installation of the Walrus Phoenix onto the Pedaltrain board. The eleven power cords that I deployed bundled up very cleanly with zip ties.
The results of my rewiring the George L signal chain patch cords are also partially visible under the board. The pedal to pedal patches were made with red wire. The noise suppressor loop was made with blue and black wires. The blue wires identify the loop feeding into the Boss suppressor and the black wires feed back into the unsuppressed portion of the signal chain.
Below is the finished job as seen from above:
Even with the rewiring and addition of a pro quality power supply, there is a modest hum that can be heard from the amp until the Boss Noise suppressor is activated. The Boss NS-2 cleans up that last bit of hum! Winning…
Or, my zig zag journey through the guitar signal chain,,,
Taylor 914ce
Introduction
When I returned to serious guitar playing about 5 years ago, I was almost exclusively devoted to acoustic guitar playing, so when I sauntered through my local guitar shop and observed the glass cases full of smallish, multi-colored, knobbed-up, rectangular metal boxes (i.e. pedals), I was simultaneously curious and intimidated.
Though I’d played guitar, on and off for many years, it was straight up, non-amplified acoustic music. It was only after I returned to serious playing that I decided to purchase an amplifier for the first time by acquiring a nice new Fishman Loudbox Artist. Even then the onboard “effects” such as reverb and chorus were a mystery to me, so I did not deploy them.
Fishman Loudbox Artist
It was not until I decided that I wanted to experience playing an electric guitar, that I first considered acquiring an effects pedal. Without giving the initial guitar purchase the deeper thought and consideration it deserved, (a common theme for me), I acquired a Gretsch Silver Falcon, which was a very showy guitar that was way outside my capabilities, but I eventually adjusted to playing it. I never could shake the fact that I felt a poseur owning it and never could get the instrument to not sound thin and reedy to my ears. It was not the amp, because I played it through a Fender Princeton Black Face reissue.
Gretsch Falcon and Fender Princeton
After consultation with my guitar teacher, I followed his recommendation and purchased my first pedal to “fatten-up” the Falcon’s sound. Consequently, the first pedal I owned was an Electro-Harmonix Soul Food overdrive, which was, as explained to me, a clone (copy) of one of the most famous overdrives ever made called the Klon Centaur. People pay big bucks to acquire an original Klon, but a clone was fine with me as it was relatively inexpensive. The purchase of this pedal is a good example of me failing to do my own due diligence and research the Soul Food pedal before acquiring it. My reliance on others to recommend pedals because of their mysterious nature has led me to frequently buy, trade and replace them, which is not the low cost means of building a pedal board! On the other hand, my experience with pedals is that you really must live with one in your signal chain for an extended period before concluding their true value and worth to your music.
Soul Food pedal in the background
I used the Soul Food lightly and judiciously, meaning that I did not crank the key drive effect up as the sound it produced from the guitar was pretty distorted and did not suit my sensibilities. At heart I am a “clean” player being influenced largely by my years of playing acoustic guitar, straight up, with no sound effects. A metal, head banger I am not nor will I ever be. So, for quite a while I was satisfied with owning a single overdrive pedal and using it in the most subtle fashion..
Perfomer using a largish pedal board to great effect at Open Mic night..
Then, one Friday night at an Open Mic Night at our local coffee shop (Cup of Joe), I listened to one of the performers who’d been sitting with me at my table and was fascinated by the sound modulation of his guitar, which I subsequently figured out was tremolo. When he sat down after performing, I asked him what in the world he’d done to get that sound. He said he’d used a pedal! I’d heard tremolo on records before like the bridge section (see below) of the Rollings Stones’, Exile on Main Street tune, Rocks Off, or Tommy James’s Crimson and Clover, but I was unaware you could do the same thing in the Coffee Shop (naive me)…
Jumpin’ In With Both Feet
My first pedal board, second iteration
As a result of attending the aforementioned Open Mic session, it finally occurred to me that pedals can offer an interesting opportunity to alter the tonalities of a guitar. Being so new to electric guitar playing, I was totally unaware of these possibilities! Consequently, at my next lesson, I spent a session with my guitar teacher specking out a pedal board.
To begin with, a physical platform to mount the pedals is not entirely necessary, as one can simply link the pedals together on the floor to create a signal train from the guitar output cable through the pedals and finally into the amp. A board, typically metal, to mount the pedals is much more elegant, stable, and portable solution.
I learned quickly that to create a series of connected pedals frequently referred to as signal chain, you must have the following:
A line out from the guitar that connects to the first pedal in series (there are more complicated arrays that can include “effects loops” with single and multiple amps or noise suppressors, but I like keep it pretty simple, which enhances portability and field set-up).
Connectors lines between pedals referred to as patch cables. There are many types of patch cables to choose from ranging in appearance, connective quality and price. In my judgment, quality signal transfer is paramount, given the investment in guitar, amp and pedals themselves… the wrong place to economize is with patch cables. The guys in my local shop swear by the George L patch cable system, so that’s what I went with. They’re pricey but very flexible particularly in terms of desired patch cable length between pedals..
A board to mount the pedals. Boards can be homemade or store bought. They’re made flat or inclined and in varying sizes, depending on how many pedals you wish to mount. In my case, I bought a Pedaltrain board constructed of welded steel (I think), mostly because that’s what my shop sold at the time. The board was big enough to hold 4 vertically arrayed single purpose “standard sized” pedals. Buying such a small board was a huge mistake… I did not think “big” enough at the time and soon found myself wanting to add to the board and having no room, so I had to reorient two pedals to the horizontal position to squeeze another on. I’ve seen pedals mounted using zip ties, but I prefer the velcro approach that Pedaltrain recommends. In that case, you put pressure sensitive adhering strips of the fuzzy stuff on the board and the grippy hooked stuff on the bottom of the pedal. It helps to remove any rubber “feet” from the bottom of the pedal before applying the grippy velcro.. The pedals hold like glue onto the board! It can be a pain to move pedals around because the velcro works so well.
Pedals require a power source. In most cases, but not always, pedals can be powered by a 9v battery. Sadly, batteries die at the most inopportune time and they sometimes leak making a mess where they’re installed. For that reason, I like to use an external power source. For a small board, like my first one, it was easy to power it with a daisy chain apparatus that powers all the pedals with a single wire and wall plug in. My guitar shop offers the Trutone One Spot.
Finally, a line from the pedal board to the amp, usually a guitar cable.
With my teacher’s advice I added the following pedals to complement my Soul Food overdrive:
A Boss CH-1 Super Chorus, which splits your dry (original) guitar signal into multiple slightly moderated pitched signals and feeds them back into the output with the dry signal, creating an effect similar to voices in a chorus. This is often considered a basic must-have if you’re interested in signal modulation. Listen to Boston’s famously chorused guitars:
An Electro-Harmonix Memory Toy, which is a delay pedal. As defined by Reverb, “Delay is a time-based effect that copies your incoming signal and plays it back one or multiple times after a period of time.” To me, a delay is an essential almost always on effect that creates depth and expansiveness to your guitar tone. Listen carefully (best with headphones) to the “slap-back” effect in opening guitar riffs which is created by delay!
I myself specified a Looper pedal because I thought it might enhance my practices by allowing me to prerecord a rhythm pattern and play along with it. In retrospect, it’s nice to have but not essential.
Shortly, after my initial build I added a Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner, which is a heavily used and essential pedal to have on any board. I cannot tune by ear, and clip-on tuners can be a real trial to use sometimes because they’ll refuse to recognize the guitar string. It was the purchase of this pedal that led me to realize that my board was too small and subsequently had to rearrange the board in an unorthodox method so that all would fit.
Waiting for my 15 minute Open Mic gig…
Note: the original pedal purchases were all acquired at my local shop, so their inventory and the store owner’s and my teacher’s predilections had huge impact on my purchasing decisions. Over time, I dumped the Electro-Harmonix Soul Food, the Memory Toy Delay and the Boss Chorus because I found pedals that perform the same function in a more satisfactory way to my taste.
In sum, I really enjoyed using my first pedal board. I was particularly delighted with the delay effects combined with the chorus. I used them to great effect at Open Mic nights at our local Coffee Shop. Further, the small board packed into a nice fabric enclosure and was so portable and easy to deal with when moving gear around. As you can see on the left, I was not embarrassed to show up for my 15 minute gig with two axes, a guitar stand and the pedal board. Having a smallish board made life that much easier.
I Finally Think Big (Sort of)
Pedal array at Bob’s Guitars in Cedar Falls, IA
It wasn’t too long after I completed building my first pedalboard that I became more and more curious about the array of tonal variations that you could create with additional pedals. I began spending a lot of time staring down into the pedal display class case at my local shop and asking questions about what the various devices do. As a result, I wanted to add more pedals to “complete” a new list of “must haves” that I now had in mind.
A new more expansive pedal board…
First off, I wanted to add a compressor, which is often recommended to “smooth-out” the sound of a finger-style player by altering the dynamics of a musical performance, making the quiet parts louder and the loud parts quieter. The guys in my shop all loved the JangleBox, which was relatively pricey acquisition, but nothing wrong with trying to get the best (sadly, it was not, and it eventually joined a long line of pedals I off loaded). Secondly, I purchased an ABY pedal so I could easily switch my guitar between an acoustic and tube driven amp. My shop had a nice Orange brand.
With new pedals acquired, I needed more space on my pedal board. You can see in the image above I purchased a larger Pedaltrain platform. As a result of my own timidity, I had one of the guitar shop guys make the transfer from the small board to the larger, and add the two new pedals into the array. That was the last time I would pay anyone to set-up my board, because I finally realized it can be done relatively easily, and it’s fun. Further, the shop guy cajoled me into trading the small board in as partial payment for the set-up job labor. I was stupid to agree because I was given a pittance for a practically new (used) board, and I actually could have used that small board later on. I am still irritated about that and I won’t get fooled again.
Second generation expanded large board with auxiliary smaller expansion board
In very short order, I went on a tear and filled the new larger board with new “must-have” pedals and replaced two of my original acquisitions. Here’s a brief summary of what I did:
Added a Boss TR-2 Tremolo because that’s the tone effect that sent me down the pedal board rabbit hole in the first place.
Added a Boss VB-2w Waza Craft Vibrato. Vibrato and tremolo work and sound differently but both create a warbling, variable tone affect. I thought I should have one, but am still not sure I really did. Below is a Beatles tune that makes use of guitar vibrato effect.
Added a Boss RV-6 Reverb, which is an essential pedal to create expansiveness and depth in your guitar tone. The RV-6 can simulate varying room sizes and varying reverb technologies. Well designed reverb pedals offer so many variables, it can be a bit overwhelming to select one. Below is a great example of Pink Floyd applying heavy reverb in a recording:
Added a Boss Super Octave OC-3 because I like the way it can thicken the tone by adding additional octaves created off the dry signal. The pedal can also create a abruptness in the tone which is interesting. This pedal is fun but should be used judiciously. Jeff Beck’s Come Dancing below is a great example of Octave tonality on a guitar. Bass players frequently use this effect too.
Added a Boss GE-7 Equalizer because I thought I was supposed to have one… in retrospect, I did not really need one… many of my other pedals had onboard tone controls, which are easier to use so I hardly deployed its capabilities. Further, this box created a great deal of signal noise at the high end if it was used to adjust those particular frequencies. I’ve seen a JHS video discussing how equalizers are important and can be used, in addition to sound frequency tone control to create distortion, but in the end, this pedal lasted for only a while on my board before I pulled it and sold it on consignment at my local shop. I am embedding the JHS video below because it did influence my purchase.
In fact, you may notice on my second generation board pictured earlier above, that it is dominated by Boss pedals. This is largely because my local shop had a huge inventory of them, they are reasonably priced, are built to withstand an apocalyptic event, equipped with relatively easy control features, and are solid middle of the road performers. In fact, if you take the time to review the following JHS video, you’ll note how important Boss was in terms of originating pedal technology and circuits. This video had great influence on my purchase choices when I built my second generation board:
In addition to the new Boss Pedals, I also replaced:
My original Electro Harmonix Memory Toy Delay with a Dunlop Echoplex Delay. I decided after a time that the Memory Toy was just a muddy-sounding delay, so in a panicky mood the afternoon before I planned to perform at Open Mic Night, I ran to my guitar shop and auditioned several other delay pedals and landed on the Echoplex, which electronically simulates one of the original tape-based delays used decades ago. I loved its crystalline clarity, ease of control and the ability to simulate worn tape sounds, if I wished. I traded the Memory Toy and never looked back. The Echoplex is still on my board today.
My original Electro Harmonix Soul Food with a Mesa Tone Burst, I finally decided that I do not need an overdrive like the Soul Food. Instead, the Tone Burst is a much more subtle minimalist application of overdrive, with excellent tone controls and a nice clean boost to the signal if needed. This substitution made sense to me as I am not an advocate of distortion created by strong overdrive.
Second generation board with lower auxiliary mini-board.
You can see in the image to the left of my second generation board that I added so many pedals it became necessary to install an additional smaller board to the signal chain. What’s nice about this arrangement is that the main board can be easily detached and taken to performances. The pedals on the auxiliary mini-board never have to leave my house!
Opening a Can of Worms
When you move from a small pedal board to a larger one, there are consequences, which in my case were largely unanticipated:
Pedal Order In the Signal Chain There are does and don’ts regarding how various types of pedals are ordered in the signal chain. There are many resources available that will suggest conventional wisdom for proper order. For example, it is good form to start a signal chain with a tuner pedal and to follow it immediately with a compressor. The tuner is a “neutral” pedal; however, the compressor cleans the guitar’s signal early before entering other effect transformations. Nevertheless, most resources suggest that pedal order is not written in stone, and leave the final decision up to the musician’s predelictions. In some rare cases there are no location recommendations for pedals like a synthesizer, so you’re left to your own devices. I try to follow best practices and will discuss this issue later when I speak to my third generation pedal board.
Amp Noiseand Independent Power Sourcing: This one really caught me off guard. I had no idea that when I started stacking pedals onto my board that I would be creating the possibilities for annoying hisses, hums, squeals, and tea kettle-like whistling! At the time that I built my second generation board I played my electric guitar(s) through a relatively new Fender Princeton Reverb (Black Face) reissue. A wonderful tuneful amp, but it simply did not play well with a full board of pedals. Worse, the noises that emanated were variable and came and went, particularly a tea kettle-like whistle. To tackle the noise, I took the recommended route of reducing the number of pedals that were daisy chained together. To do this I added an independent power source to limit the number pedals daisy chained together.
Underside of pedalboard showing multi-channel independent power supply
To the right, you can see the underside of my board where I (very neatly) attached a Pedaltrain Spark, which offered 5 independent power channels varying from 100 to 500 mV’s. In addition, I lassoed together the noisiest pedals, including the compressor, the octave, and any drive pedals into a separate circuit that passed through a Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor.
Despite the aforementioned heroic actions, I still experienced occasional and random noise issues with the Princeton. Finally, fed up with the Princeton, I traded it in for a Mesa Boogie Filmore 50 which, beside being a superior and more powerful amp almost eliminated, but not completely, my pedal related noise issues.
Second generation board with Boss Noise Suppressor shoe-horned into the upper right section in horizontal configuration adjacent to Boss Chorus
I lived with this second generation board for quite a while, though I did make some minor changes here and there. For example, I exchanged the Boss Equalizer for a Mesa Flux Drivebecause I thought I needed more overdrive… I never really liked it, nor used it very much.
On the left you can see my basic second generation pedal board. It worked well enough, though I often wondered if I was too invested in Boss pedals. The Boss pedals are solid performers, but I came to the conclusion after months of working with them that they are like blunt instruments, beset with older generation electronics, and lacking in precision, subtlety with the tones they produced. And frankly, they are clunky and ugly too. The guys at the shop occasionally spoke of new circuitry being developed by the smaller boutique manufacturers that produce new soundscape magic. I ruminated about Boss versus boutique pedals for several months and then like a dam breaking, I just started replacing pedals wholesale to create a third generation board!
A Third Generation Pedal Board Materializes
Boss Synth which replaced the Mesa Flux Drive
Now this may seem contradictory. As I just previously discussed, I was feeling over-represented by Boss products on my board. Further, I was getting bored with the pedal array I had and was looking for some new tone possibilities. Consequently, one Saturday afternoon, I went to my local shop with two of my guitars (the Collings I-35 and the National Resolectric) plugged into a Mesa Boogie amp like I have at home and auditioned a Boss SY-1 Synthesizer Pedal. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. Using the synth to alter some of the tunes I regularly play blew away some of the guys in the shop because they viewed the synth pedal as a novelty and not particularly useful one. But as they listened to me play they realized that the synth could be very interesting sounding indeed. The Synth pedal is challenging in that it offers a broad array of possibilities, many useful and many not so useable. I traded the Mesa Boogie Flux Drive for the Synth and took it home. I still have yet to pull the potential from that pedal, but am committed to it longterm. Grabbing the Synth and replacing a pedal that I did not like was like pulling a finger from the dike. A slow trickle would become a flood of change.
What truly broke the dike open was when my friend Grant started preening about a Keeley compressor that he’d recently acquired on the cheap from Reverb. It was at that point I really tumbled onto the fact that I wasted a pile of money on the Jangle Box compressor, which in my experienced judgement had far too limited control features with almost no documentation for how it should work, didn’t sound all that interesting either and it was noisy. I decided it should be replaced and went out into the marketplace looking for a seriously good compressor. This time I would do the necessary research before completing a purchase.
There is an incredible amount of information about pedals on the internet, particularly YouTube where reviewers of all sorts abound. In addition, there is printed literature, such as the huge coffee table book shown to the left. If you take the time, you can triangulate in a what to expect from a particular pedal. Since there is always someone, somewhere who will like any pedal, you should be thorough and consider multiple opinions.
I like to start with online rankings. For example, I start with a search engine phrase like, “rank the best guitar compressor pedals.” Several lists typically pop up and I will scroll through looking at the various choices they’ve selected. I will not necessarily choose the number one listed pedal, rather I will look over the pedal landscape and then dig into the individual choices that look most interesting to me. Companies with heavy marketing campaigns like Boss and Strymon will always show up on these lists, but its the ones I’ve never heard of that I’m looking for. Further, I am interested in standard sized pedal box enclosures. I don’t like mini pedals because they look under-engineered and have limited controls. On the other hand, I don’t like the larger, space intensive, over-complicated or multi-purpose pedals either. Size matters as it affects how much you can pack onto your board.
Following are the latest changes I’ve made, which now comprise my 3rd generation pedalboard:
Cali76 Stacked Edition Compressor
Compression: After due diligence, I decided to replace the Jangle Box with an Origin Effects Cali 76 Stacked Edition. Inside the Origin Effects stacked edition are two side-by-side paired compressors similar to what recording studios often use. Each compressor is individually controllable, and as seen on the left there is a golden knob to control the feed of the first compressor into the second. Further, the final output mix of dry signal and compressed signal is also adjustable, which was a feature sadly missing on the Jangle Box. Origin Effects offers several recommended fundamental set-ups and I’ve chosen to use the “always on” arrangement. The pedal enriches the sound of any guitar plugged into the signal chain. It’s quite lovely. In addition, like British textile manufacturing equipment I worked with in another lifetime before, the Cali76 is one of the most solidly built pedals I’ve ever owned! It’s a keeper.
Phaser: For starters, I never really connected with my Boss Waza Craft Vibrato. A little bit of it went a very long way, and if overdone, it was disorienting to the listener… in fact, it could make you a bit seasick… seriously. Consequently, I used it ratcheted way down so it was barely sonically evident out of the amp. In sum, I disliked the effect and was underwhelmed with the new feature set included with the expensive Waza Craft version. To replace vibrato, I considered other modulation effects like a Univibe or Flanger, but finally settled on a Phaser. Phasing is an eerie SciFi-like but pleasant sound and is better explained here then I can do it. Here’s two great examples of phasing at work:
Walrus Audio Lillian Phaser
Searching for “the best” phaser led me down the Walrus rabbit hole. A fascinating pedal manufacturer that eventually sold me three different modulation pedals. The first one I purchased was the Lillian Phaser. In addition to functioning well, the pedal has great graphics. It’s named for one of the actual rare World War II woman aircraft pilots.
I am very pleased with the phaser effect. I’ve used it at Open Mic night and it adds a fat, eeriness to a tune that catches the attention of listeners, but it should probably be used judiciously.
Though I am not interested in doing so, it is possible to push the Lillian into vibrato if necessary.
Walrus Audio Julia Chorus
Chorus: The Boss Chorus pedal always sounded shrill to me on any of the guitars I played through it. I was about to give up on chorus effect until I discovered the Walrus Julia.To me, it is a richer, more subtle, and more refined Chorus when compared to the Boss version (including their latest Waza Craft edition). Again, great graphics on the box and perfectly intuitive control feature come with the pedal. As a bonus, my guitar teacher has ongoing fantasies about Julia when he sees the pedal. Finally, like the Lillian Phaser, this pedal can be pushed into vibrato mode.
Here’s another notable tune known for its use of chorus guitar effects:
Walrus Audio Monument Tremolo
Tremolo: Well, after the acquisition of the Julia Chorus, I had the Walrus fever and decided after studying its specs and reviews that I would dump the prosaic Boss Tremolo for the Walrus Monument, which is a more sophisticated device, including, for example, tempo control and harmonic output.
I am very fond of tremolo and will use it whenever I think it’s appropriate. Tempo, rate and depth all have a major impact on the tonality produced.
Below I am including one of the more famous uses of tremolo effect by electric guitar pioneer Dick Dale:
Neunaber Reverb
Reverb: After replacing the Tremolo pedal, I continued on my mission of dumping whatever Boss pedals I could. To that end, I’d reached the point where I thought that the three Walrus pedals, as good as they are, were enough of that brand for my board. In addition, I did not find a Walrus reverb that persuaded me to acquire it. So I went back out to review the lists of best pedals and eventually found the Neunaber company, named for it’s owner and chief creator.
My research suggested that the Neunaber Immerse Reverberator was cutting edge technology. Similar to the Boss RV-6, the Immerse offered a wide array of reverb selections, but their proprietary W3T (Wet v3) algorithm separated the pedal from the crowd. I just simply sounds great.
Unless there’s compelling reason not to, the Reverberator is an always on pedal because of the depth and expansiveness that the pedal brings to the guitar’s tonality.
Me on the left at Open Mic Night. Note the 3rd Generation Pedalboard below my knee.
Under scrutiny by the shop guys
After I acquired the Neunaber Reverberator, I thought I was done with my 3rd generation pedalboard renovations. As you can see above I used the board to support my playing during the June 2021 Open Mic Night at Cup of Joe. Further, I was delighted to have two of my young friends who work at my local guitar shop attend the activities and when I closed the night with some work on my National M1 Tricone they scrutinized me like Talmudic scholars.
When I was done, they were kind and congratulated me for my bottleneck slide playing and then they closely examined my pedalboard renovations. They knew I’d been up to something because I sold my old pedals on consignment at their store and occasionally asked their opinion on different pedals. In sum, they were impressed with the board except they thought I needed a more serious gain pedal. “You need more grit” was their consensus.
Well… I gave their critique (or encouragement) some thought and after a while I went out into the marketplace looking for some grit in the form of a gain pedal.
Neunaber Intelligent Gain
Gain: There are so many gain/overdrive/distortion pedals in the marketplace it can be overwhelming trying to sort them out. I already bought and later disposed two of them (Soul Food & Flux Drive) so I was dubious about finding one I could like or use successfully. What I wanted was the ability to apply a subtle and gentle amount of grit depending on which of several guitars I own
In the end, I went back to Neunaber and after studying the pedal extensively, purchased the somewhat idiosyncratic Neuron Gain Intelligence pedal because of its deep control features it offered and the ability to save settings for various guitars, as well as the ability to use a tilt control to universally shift the pedal settings when moving from, for example an amp to a PA system.
Thus far, I am reasonably pleased with this pedal and am committed to sticking with it.
Summary
3rd Generation Pedalboard
Shown above is the finished and completed renovation of my pedalboard. As I explained earlier, the lower mini-board is detachable so that I can transport the main board to playing engagements. As with the 2nd generation board, the Compressor, Octave, Tone Burst, and Neuron Gain boxes are electronically lassoed together to pass through the Boss Noise Suppressor located on the upper right. The ordered arrangement of the pedals in the signal chain reflects basic conventional wisdom. What’s missing in this final set-up is the Boss Synth SY-1 pedal, which may eventually replace the Tone Burst in the near future. Because of occasional pedal based noise issues, I am also giving some thought to replacing the Pedaltrain Spark power supply with a Walrus Phoenix power supply because it would completely eliminate any pedal daisy chaining.
The final addition to the board was the installation of 26 red George L. Stress Relief Jackets to the patch cable jacks to keep their screw-in connectors locked in place. They also look way cool.
If this posting was of interest to you, please see my follow-up post here.
“The Mississippi Delta Was Shining Like a National Guitar” – Paul Simon, Graceland
Introduction and Background
When I first picked up a guitar, I wanted to be a flat-picking bluegrass player. Sometime thereafter, I concluded that I did not possess the speed or accuracy to play that style, and adopted fingerstyle guitar with Travis picking as my basic playing approach. It was the best decision I ever made regarding the instrument. When I took a quantum leap in focus and interest in guitar playing my pathway to achievement was to learn Acoustic Country Blues, which happens to be huge body of music with many different sub-styles to choose from. The structure of Country Blues was appealing to me because it speaks to my sensibilities as a musician, is distinctly American and it serves as the foundation for a large swath of the music I grew up with in the 1960’s and ’70s.
Fender Resonator…
After one of my ongoing lessons at my local guitar shop some years back, I walked by a Fender resonator guitar hanging on the wall and it occurred to me that a resonator might broaden my Country Blues sound palette. I responded instantly to the distinct sound that a resonator cone makes when the guitar string is plucked and merrily played a couple of Mississippi John Hurt tunes that I’d been working on. The Fender string action was supple and easy to play, sounded good too, but it felt insubstantial in construction. I decided at that moment that I would pursue the acquisition of a resonator, but guitar snob that I am, I wanted to acquire a fine instrument. Of course, what’s “fine” is open to debate and a matter of taste, but with my limited knowledge at the time I referred to Paul Simon’s lyric from “Graceland” and decided to chase after a National guitar.
Catfish Keith and a National Tricone
I found myself on Iowa’s legendary bluesman Catfish Keith’s website whilst doing research on resonators. At that moment, I was a bit overwhelmed by the numerous models and resonator types to select from. In correspondence, Catfish was kind enough to write me a brief dissertation about Nationals and recommended that I consider a single cone guitar for starters. In short, resonators are typically manufactured with a single large, spun aluminum cone, or three similar but smaller cones, referred to as tricones.
Catfish and Penny wintering in Mexico in happier times before the pandemic…
As a side-note, both Catfish and his wife Penny are incredibly gracious and generous people and I had the great, good fortune of taking a private lesson with him at his home in small town Iowa. He taught me the nuances of playing his arrangement of “Police and a Sergeant,” a variation of an old Robert Wilkins tune.
Catfish is a representative/distributor for National guitars and sells them new from his website. At that moment I was ready to take up Catfish’s advice by acquiring a single cone resonator, but I decided to go on the used market to save some money. I’ve written before about the savings that can be made by purchasing used guitars online from Reverb… there’s quite a drop in value when you drive a new guitar off the lot. I’ve subsequently revised my opinion on buying used versus new, as I’ve experienced set-up issues, cracked bodies, sketchy electronics and twisted necks when buying used. In fact, all 6 of my current and varying style guitars were purchased new, because I’ve traded off my pre-owned ones.
National NRP B Single Cone Resonator
Nevertheless, my first National resonator, was a mint conditioned and bargain priced NRP B steel, single coned guitar. I was delighted when the NRP arrived but was astonished at how difficult it was to play, compared to the Fender resonator that I tested in my local guitar store. I subsequently realized that the action was set-up pretty high for slide playing, rather than finger picking, which was not clearly elaborated on the Reverb website. This high action play was initially viewed by myself as a disaster of biblical proportions, but then I decided to make lemonade from lemons and go down the bottle-neck slide rabbit hole and never looked back!
National Resorocket WB
Metal resonators have their own distinct sound and vary somewhat depending upon the type of metal from which they are constructed. My NRP was steel so it had a bold and present sound. To my ear, you could even say it was a bit harsh sounding, which is actually appealing to a lot of blues players. Overtime, I wondered if a wood bodied resonator might be more appealing to my sensibilities and returned to the marketplace for a used wooden body resonator. I subsequently, through Reverb again, found a sweet deal on a wood bodied National Reso Rocket (WB model), which I subsequently equipped with a Hotplate electronic pick-up system so I could run it through an amp. When the WB arrived, I quickly discerned that the guitar was also set up with high action to facilitate slide playing. Even though I would have preferred to have had a resonator that I could easily fingerpick, I was loathe to have my local shop grind away at the nut or biscuit bridge to lower the play, so I resigned to playing slide on both resonators. You’d think by then that I would have learned not to buy resonators, used online…
At a workshop with Mike Dowling… I am holding my WB
I played my wooden body in Open D and the steel body in Open G for a couple of years or so, and then it occurred to me that I was not playing the steel body near as much as the WB, mostly because it was super heavy and I found it unappealing to my ears. It was time to put the steel NRP on the trading block, which I did and the complete story of my acquisition of a National Resolectric can be found here. In my review I don’t think that I mentioned that while testing out the Resolectric I was also interested in auditioning an M1 Tricone; however, the one that had been in the store had sold the day before my arrival. I had seen and heard an M1 Tricone when I attended a guitar workshop taught by Mike Dowling in Minnesota a couple of years earlier. I thought it was an interesting guitar and never forgot about it.
Me and the WB…
I played a lot of hours with the WB on my lap, but became increasingly frustrated that I could not play the guitar fingerstyle, which was always my original intent when I set out to own a resonator. At Mike Dowling’s suggestion, I investigated the use of the new National Revolution aluminum biscuit to adjust the WB’s play, which I installed but eventually removed. I wrote about that experience here and here. At some point thereafter, the notion of trading the WB for an M1 that would be initially set-up for fingerstyle arose from my subconscious. In fact, I asked Dave’s Guitarshop for a trade quote on the WB when I saw an M1 for sale at the store, I got a very nice trade deal, but the M1 sold before I could arrange an appointment to visit the store. The National M1’s don’t collect dust at Dave’s Guitars, but move very fast out the door. That was February 2021. My contact at the store told me that they had another one on order and that I should check the store’s website for its arrival, which I did almost everyday since February. I also kept the correspondence that documented the trade-in value of my WB.
I Purchase a National M1 Tricone
When I was considering the acquisition of an M1, I did my due diligence and researched the Youtube universe for reviews and tone examples. One of the best videos I found was a direct comparison between three of National’s wooden bodied resonators: The El Trovador, a deep bodied single cone guitar, an M1 Tricone, and finally a Resorocket WB, like I owned. This really excellent comparison was produced by Organic Sounds:
In the video, the El Travador is bold, rich sounding, loud and offers clean highs with great bottom end low frequency tonality, with the mid-range tones taking a back seat. It’s little wonder that recording artist Mike Dowling favors the El Trovador among all the wooden bodied Nationals. I like the El Trovador, but the deep body would be sure to cause me shoulder pain. On the other extreme is the Resorocket, which by comparison, sounds most metallic, more twangy and perhaps even a little pointed/shrill sounding. Furthermore, the Resorocket, which I am intimately familiar with, has some sort of frequently occurring overtone that sounds like a cat yowling. That overtone I do not like and experienced far too often when I played mine. Finally, the M1 sounds refined, sweet, balanced, very clean and musical, with individual notes clearly differentiating from each other. The tonality is also nice and even from high to low end frequencies with the mid ranges well represented.
Tricone resonator
Single Cone Resonator
It is not surprising that the John Dopyera, who created National Guitars with the introduction of tricone technology was reluctant to start producing less expensive, larger single cone variants at the urging of his partner George Beauchamp. He revered the “fine instrument” sound of the tricone. In fact, Dopyera quit National and founded Dobro with his brothers in part because of the tricone vs single cone controversy. Still today, the three smaller cones of the Tricone design are considered by many listeners to be more refined and balanced sounding and I tend to agree with that assessment. While the terms “refined and balanced” are positive sounding terms, the more forward, in your face, perhaps brash sound of the single coned resonators are favored by many, particularly blues musicians.
Here again we can see a different take on the M1 versus the El Trovador as played by Mike Dowling. Dowling has a long connection with National, and I believe he prevailed up them to reintroduce the El Trovador into their product line. Dowling is arguably one of the finest resonator players walking the earth:
By Dowling’s description, the El Trovador is “more pointed” and “dryer” sounding than the M1, while the tricone offers more complex coloration. The differences between the two instruments are a function of cone size, cone number and chamber size caused by the 4 versus 3 inch body width. As I watch Dowling’s body language and commentary closely, I think he prefers his beloved El Trovador, but I like the M1 and decided to chase one down if I could.
For me, the easiest place to acquire an M1 would be Dave’s Guitar shop in LaCrosse, WI. It’s 2.5 hours away from my home by car and they make trade-ins absolutely painless. The challenge is to move quickly when Dave’s gets an M1 in stock because they move out very rapidly. So, for four months, I would routinely check Dave’s website for M1 availability.
Dave’s vintage guitar collection
Then, Friday night a couple of weeks ago as my wife was calling me for dinner, I did a quick check at Dave’s, which I had not done for a day or so and, low and behold, they had a new delivery of an M1 showing on their website. Knowing the M1’s don’t last long, I grabbed it and paid for it immediately and planned to head over to LaCrosse the next Saturday morning! I invited my wife to come along and we made a fun day of it. It was a beautiful day for a drive and we stopped in the nice Iowa town of Decorah to eat lunch at a bagel bakery, whose owner we knew.
After lunch we headed over to Dave’s in LaCrosse. During these late pandemic days you still need to visit by appointment. I called early that Saturday morning and Dave himself answered and set things up for our visit.
When we arrived, Annette and I were ushered in. I dropped off my Reso-Rocket WB and it was accepted with no fuss whatsoever. Before I could say Jumpin’ Jack Flash they had a new price tag on the WB and by Monday it was advertised online. I think it sold by Wednesday. Wooden bodied Nationals move quickly and that’s why I was given an excellent trade-in value and they subtracted it from the online price that I paid out the night before. No muss, no fuss and that’s why in my experience Dave’s is one of the smoothest operations in the U.S.
Me and my new M1 getting acquainted at Dave’s
The new M1 was sitting by the front desk waiting for me. I popped open the case, pulled it out and looked it over. It was a stunning piece of industrial artwork. As a new guitar should be, it was immaculate. One of the standout features of the M1 is the lack of the silver/chrome hubcap like cover over the resonator cones. Instead there is a metal cover that is painted the color of the mahogany wood that comprises the body. It is a unique appearing resonator unlike any other in the National product line.
I sauntered over to a quiet corner of the store to try the M1 out. I wanted to make sure there were no problems before I walked out of the store. I threw my iPad, which contains my tune charts on an amp, grabbed a stool and tried to play, but the guitar was woefully out of tune because the new factory strings on it had never been stretched, so it took me a few minutes to get the tuning stabilized. I played through a few charts in standard tuning with fingerstyle technique (I never use a plectrum ever) and realized quickly that the set-up was to factory specs, meaning that both slide and fingerstyle play were easily and effectively possible! One of the store techs who visited me to discuss installation of a pickup confirmed my conclusion about the guitar’s set-up.
I find a 1950 Fender Broadcaster!
I stretched the strings again and then re-tuned the guitar to Open D and pulled out my National solid brass Tonedome slide and played a couple of bottleneck tunes too. There was a young fellow wailing away across the store on a Stratocaster which made listening to the M1 a bit challenging; however, sometimes good enough is good enough and I concluded the axe was definitely a keeper.
Me in front of Dave’s Guitars iconic street signage
Annette and I concluded our visit by visiting Dave’s famous and extensive vintage guitar collection where I was delighted to identify Leo Fender’s first electric guitar model, the Broadcaster, a truly historic instrument. Next to it was a “Nocaster” and finally the first Telecaster, which was the Broadcaster renamed because of a trade name dispute with the Gretsch Company.
On the way out, we stopped so Annette could photograph me in front of Dave’s Guitars iconic street sign. As you can see I posed with my new axe. Afterwards, I stowed the guitar in the rear of my hatchback and headed home across the Mississippi River back to Iowa. A good day indeed was had by all…
I Review My New National M1 Tricone Guitar
To the right you can see the National Reso-Phonic M1 that I purchased from Dave’s Guitars and brought home to Iowa. It’s a slot-headed, 12 Fret, bound mahogany neck, ebony fretboard, layered mahogany body, tricone resonator, with grained ivoroid binding. The appearance is unique as compared to other National Reso-Phonic guitars in that it is wooden constructed, but most conspicuously lacks the “hub cap” type cover that is typical with single cone resonators. The fact that the metallic tricone cover is the same color as the body gives the belly of the guitar a more uniform appearance. The design of the sound porous screens that protect the resonator cones, combined with the slanted grid openings in the upper bout of the sound board give the guitar a distinct art deco sensibility. It is a stunningly singular appearing acoustic guitar.
M1 Tricone Slotted Headstock
Let’s consider the M1 from the top at the headstock and follow the string line down to the tail piece. Again, you’ll note that the guitar is equipped with a traditional appearing slotted headstock. Unlike the Reso Rocket WB that I traded for the M1, the headstock does not have a pearloid veneer, but is instead stained wood embellished with a traditional product logo decal. This is similar to the Martin guitar approach where for many of their beloved models they stick a decal on the headstock. For the cost of this M1, an inlaid logo would have been a nice and expected adornment. On the other hand, I like the overall look of the guitar, so I’ll stop complaining.
The tuning machines, with exposed gear works, are clustered in groups of three and equipped with attractive ivoroid knobs. All tuner actions are smooth and precise, unlike my old Reso Rocket which had a very stiff and difficult to use D-string (standard tuning) tuner. Finally, you’ll note that the outer strings on the fretboard (E & e) are strung into their respective tuners from the outside to the inside of the headstock, while the remaining strings (A, D, G & B) go from the inside to the outside. This stringing technique which can elude guitar store guys, prevents the outer strings from chafing the headstock wood. Finally, the strings enter the fretboard by passing over a bone nut.
M1 Fretboard
To the right you can see the M1’s fretboard, an ebony strip of wood bound to the mahogany neck. The ebony is black with blond striations, which is the sustainable fashion begun by Bob Taylor several years ago when he bucked tradition and refused to toss aside ebony wood that was not perfectly black. I like the blond hints on today’s ebony fretboards. The comfortably wide neck is bound with grained ivoroid. Finally, the guitar was strung with John Pearse 13’s spec’d for resonator guitars.
The neck attaches to the guitar at the 12th fret. This particular model has no cutaway, which is one of the features I miss when comparing the M1 to the Reso Rocket WB. When playing bottleneck it’s nice not to have to be crowded by the body at the 12th and 13th frets.
The M1’s upper bout
To the left you can see the M1’s upper bout, with its rounded shoulders, the art deco sound port grills, and the inlaid Mother of Pearl dots that adorn the fretboard. The soundboard, like the guitar’s sides and back are manufactured from layered mahogany. There are some very rare exceptions when National makes a guitar body from solid wood, with the preponderance being layered. The layered body and its shape serve the role of imparting a woody tonality that colors the sound produced primarily by the three small resonator cones.
The top’s mahogany veneer does a great job of revealing the wood’s grain and reflecting the rich reddish brown stain that gives the wooden Nationals their distinctive appearance.
The M1’s lower bout
The M1’s lower bout is where the rubber meets the road. You can see on the right where the triangular-shaped metallic cover sits above the three resonator cones. The metallic cover is cut with art deco shaped openings that allow the resonator tones to escape. A silvered metallic grill protects the cones.
The guitar strings each rest in a groove cut into a wooden saddle that is glued to an aluminum t-shaped bridge, the ends of which each contact a resonator cone. The t-bridge transmits the vibration of the strings to the cones. The metallic cover has a raised t-shaped shield to protect the saddle and bridge. The strings then exit the saddle/bridge area and are bound down to a standard National tailpiece which is held in place by a combo screw/strap button located in the bottom of the guitar.
Examining the t-bridge indicates that the heavier strings are biased towards two of the cones, whereas the lighter strings are handled primarily by one cone, although all the strings in some way affect all three cones. This relationship of string locations, t-bridge and distribution of vibration to the resonator cones is what gives the M1 its balanced and sweet tonality.
Above left you can see the neck join to the body. The neck is held in place by a “stick” that runs the length of the body’s interior. As with most modern, premium guitars the neck is equipped with a truss rod to adjust play variations that might result as response to humidity in the ambient environment. Also visible are the grained ivoroid bindings on the body. The M1 is a neat, precision constructed, manufactured product that benefits from competent highly trained builders along with the use of numerical, computer controlled machine tools.
You will note the absence of a guitar strap button at the base of the neck. I intend to have one placed by my local guitar shop; however, I plan to order a Waverly white ivoroid button and felt washer from Stewmac, because my guitar shop offers only prosaic silver and/or black metal buttons, or high end Schaller strap lock buttons, which I don’t want to use with this guitar.
Also, above right you can see a shot of the M1’s back. The stained veneer of the layered wood back shows off the beautiful straight grain of the mahogany from which it is constructed.
Finally, as with all premium guitars, the instrument is supplied with a custom-made hardshell case. The guitar fits in snuggly and the outer side of the upper lid has the National logo embroidered into it, which is quite stunning. A word of caution about the logo though… it is easy to muss up if it comes into frictional contact with another object like an adjacent guitar case while traveling in the back area of a car.
To close out this review, I am sharing some sound bite examples of the M1. These were recorded with amplification through a Fishman Loudbox Artist with a Shure SM-58 mic. The actual recording was done with an iPhone 11 equipped with a Shure MV-88 and processed through Apple iMovie.
I would prefer to have a pickup on the guitar but that’s been more challenging than I anticipated. The go-to pickup on resonators, in my judgement, is made by Highlander. I had one put into my steel NRP and it worked well, though you had to haul around a battery powered preamp. Sadly, it appears that Highlander is no longer in business. Further, I was not sure I wanted a guitar tech drilling holes in the M1. Now it seems that the go-to pickup are those made by Jason Krivo Flores out in Portland, OR… I have one on order. The tone samples online sound great; however, the pickup is a bit idiosyncratic in that it attaches to the guitar with blue tack. I will probably write a blog entry about the Krivo after I’ve worked with it for a while.
Anyway… below are two bottleneck tunes recorded in Open D followed by a fingerstyle piece in standard tuning…
In conclusion, I feel fortunate to own a National M1 Tricone. The wait time on a new M1 is currently 6 to 8 months and I’m not getting any younger. The instrument itself is a beautiful example of industrial art and with its balanced tonality plays well, as currently set up in either bottleneck or fingerstyle mode. Highly recommended.
With mass vaccinations of Iowans occurring daily, by most visible measures life is slowly returning to pre-pandemic normal. Though masking is still a prevalent and required, people are involving themselves in old routine behaviors like eating at restaurants, visiting coffee shops, and in the case of this posting, attending musical events such as Open Mic Night! We had the great good fortune of access to a most excellent coffee shop, Cup of Joe in Cedar Falls, to host such an event.
The Conditts perform at Open Mic Night
My friend Grant Tracey and I hosted our first Open Mic Night together this past Friday evening, May 7, 2021. In a previous blog posting I wrote in some detail about the technical aspects of hosting an Open Mic scenario, particularly the use of a Bose L1 Pro 32 PA system.
To the left you can see the general set-up situated in the rear of the coffee shop. Between the two performers, on the floor, you will note the Bose subwoofer, the line array speaker tower and hidden behind the singer a T4s mixer that all comprise the PA system. The Bose 32 is spec’d for a larger space than the coffee shop so it easily performed admirably without stress and filled the room with a pleasant level of performance sound. Audio level adjustments of volume, bass, treble and reverb were easily executed. Audience members commented positively on the quality of the sound, which was a relief to me since I personally invested in all the PA hardware. You’ll also notice guitar and mic cables everywhere, stools, mic stands, guitar pedal boards, guitars, and guitar and music stands.
The fact is, there was a great deal of schlepping to get the performance space properly set up. Even though the Bose PA is valued for its portability, by the time you pack in the PA, cables, stools, mic stands, guitars, guitar stands, and guitar pedal boards, its quite an effort! You can see below, in the image of me performing, all the surrounding support hardware required to pull off the event. At first glance, it might not seem like a lot, but it was a lot to haul from home, and then get from the parking lot into the coffee shop. I am grateful that we planned to take 90 minutes to get set up for our first time, and we needed every minute, considering that Grant had to make an emergency run back to my home to fetch a music stand and my iPhone which contained a Bose app to remotely control PA sound quality.
Me and my Collings I-35 knocking out my first set…
I would make the following preliminary conclusions regarding the Open Mic set up to consider before Grant and I do it again:
Get to the Coffee Shop early, because set up takes time. I still think we need 90 minutes. Perhaps we will be able to streamline matters in the future, but we’re not there yet.
Contrary to my above assertion, as advertised, the Bose L1 Pro 32 snaps together very quickly and gives solid performance. Its the routing of mics, guitars and pedal boards that take extra time.
It seems to me easiest to use the 3 channels available on the Bose L1 power stand because the sound quality can be easily manipulated using the Bose app on my iPhone. The app allows me to wander anywhere in the coffee shop to check sound level and tonality and easily adjust it where I stand. With a variety of performers using different guitar types and styles, quick and easy adjustments of sound are of great value.
That first night we set up three mics, but I think two is enough. Dropping to two will save time, space, and reduce cables.
The two guitar channels and a mic will run off the power stand. An additional mic can be routed through the T4s. This set-up is not written in stone.
I do not think we need 2 stools and am thinking one is enough.
It is my understanding that there are music stands in the basement of the Coffee Shop, so we do not need to haul one in on Open Mic night.
Grant Tracey and his Les Paul playing his set…
All in all, it was a good night. I’ve seen the coffee shop more crowded on previous Open Mic nights, but there are still some residual pandemic fears keeping people away, and there was an outdoor music venue in operation around the corner, down the street, which was drawing people in. Nevertheless, we had a respectable audience for our initial First Friday Open Mic night.
To the right, you can see fellow host Grant Tracey playing through his set. One of the perks of hosting Open Mic is the chance to play your self and depending on the number of performers who sign up, you may get to play even more.
Playing my National Reso_Lectric in a second set…
In the end, both Grant and I squeezed in two sets each. Anticipating that I might have the opportunity to play more than the standard 15 minute open mic set, I brought along two guitars, both of which made their first public appearances: my Collings I-35 Semi-Hollow bodied electric and my National Reso-Lectric, as seen with me on the left. In addition to the guitars, making a first public appearance, I, for the first time sang publicly. Ever since, Mrs. Silliman, in the 3rd grade, tossed me onto the “inadequate singer” refuse heap when sorting students for participation in grade school chorus, I’ve believed my singing voice somewhat suspect; however, with the encouragement of my wife, Annette, and others I decided to give it a go. Playing finger-style Travis picking technique is also a challenge when trying to sing simultaneously; however, after 5 years of concentrated dedication to guitar playing, I finally broke through this Spring and was able to play and sing simultaneously, which is no mean feat for me!
Here was my playlist:
Set One
If I Needed You – Townes Van Zandt
Long Distance Call – Muddy Waters
Pancho and Lefty – Muddy Waters
Vigilante Man – Woody Guthrie (arranged by Ry Cooder)
Set Two
Paris, Texas – Ry Cooder
You Got to Move – Mississippi Fred McDowell
Railroad Bill – traditional (arranged by Tom Feldmann)
Corrina, Corrina – traditional (arranged by Stephen Grossman)
Baby, Please Don’t Go – Big Joe Williams
Annette was kind enough to film a couple of my tunes… you can view one below, warts and all… I dropped a few notes along the way. This was my rendition of Muddy Waters’ “Long Distance Call.” A bottleneck tune played in standard tuning… You will note that the Coffee Shop was quite noisy and I found it a bit of a distraction, but powered through…
Steve Surles, waiting his turn to play at the Open Mic
If all goes as planned, I will be hosting First Friday Open Mic in June on the 4th. My regular co-host Grant, to my chagrin, is tied up with a local theater engagement, so Steve Surles, who also played the open mic with us on the first night, has volunteered to guest co-host in June. Hopefully too, my son Parker will come back from college in Iowa City to help haul equipment and listen-in which will be a great delight for me! See you then!
What to do? What to do with yourself in retirement that continues personal development? What do I like to do? I love the road and photography… Seeing live music is always fun too, but it’s even more fun to make music. Nevertheless, I’m not ready, nor interested in solo gigging at this time nor playing in a band… what is realistic for me is 15 minutes behind the open mic… I’ve missed the open mic as much as anything during the pandemic “lockdowns.”
Cup of Joe on Main in Cedar Falls, IA
Now consider this… What could be more fun than playing at an open mic night? Not only playing open mic night, but also hosting it! You get to play, organize the event, and operate the sound tech, and I’ve always loved tech. For example, I had a ball building a proper pedal board.
In my experience, the best existing open mic night in the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area is hosted by Rick Vanderwall and Bill Guernsey at the excellent coffee shop, Cup of Joe on Main Street. Yet it only happened (pre-pandemic) once per month on the third Friday.
It occurred to me a couple of months ago, as the pandemic began to wane somewhat, and I finished out my two Pfizer vaccinations, that it might be possible to add another open mic night at Cup of Joe on the first Friday of the month. I believed the interest would be there for an additional open mic session. This is especially true when you consider the sizable increase in guitar sales during the “lockdown.” My guess is there is now a more-than-modest increase in the number of live-performance aspirants with new guitars and open mic night is the place to start!
So… I asked Dawn, the proprietor of the coffee shop, if she would be interested in providing the space for an additional open mic night. Along with the request, I promised her that I would provide a “world-class” PA system to support the event… and, to my great, good fortune she said YES! Her only request was that I apply energy to make it a success by marketing the event in the community… fair enough!
A World-Class PA for Open Mic Night
Grant (left) and me (right) checking out axes at Bob’s Guitars in the days before COVID. I love the optical illusion in this photo. In real life Grant towers over me, but in this shot he looks like my little buddy…
I should note that before I embarked on this project, I enlisted my longtime-Iowa-best-friend and guitar playing partner in crime, Grant Tracey, as a cohost for open mic night with me. Running one of those events is really at least a two person operation. Without reservation he agreed to participate. Like me, he saw this as a routine way of getting to play publicly in an easily manageable way.
With Grant on the team, the next step was to acquire a sound system. Cup of Joe does not own a sound system, so a portable one is required to schlep in on the night of the event. A functional small venue sound system would offer multiple channels permitting a few microphones and two to three instruments, which are almost always guitars. Gigging performers at Cup of Joe often use multiple amplifiers; however, a multi-channel portable PA (short for public address system) is also commonly used. In fact, Rick Vanderwall, who hosts the third Friday open mic night has used a Bose portable PA system successfully for several years.
Rick Vanderwall (center) and his PA (seen arrayed behind him)
To the right, you can see Rick’s Cup of Joe open mic set up, with his early model, Bose portable line array in the background. Note in this image that he has three microphones and two instruments “plugged-in.” The Bose system is referred to as a “line array” because it uses a narrow vertical tower containing multiple two inch speakers alternatively angled left and right. In addition to the tower, which handles the mid and high ranges, there is a sub woofer to provide coverage for the lower sound frequencies. Sitting on a chair behind Rick you can just see a section of a mixer used to add extra channels to the PA and to manage tonal balances. I’m not sure about Rick’s, but some mixers, like Bose’s T4s also provide effects such as delay and reverb.
As I said earlier, I promised Dawn (of Cup of Joe) that Grant and I would deliver a quality sound system for our open mic nights. I did not want to beg or borrow a system, nor did I want to chase anyone around for funds. This project was initially my idea… I wanted to make it happen quickly and without complication, so I made the personal commitment to invest in a good PA. In the event that I ever do a solo gig, I would also be set up with a personal PA. These systems can be pricey, but I saw it as an investment in my primary retirement avocation. My retirement counselor at TIAA stated bluntly that if you want to do something that’s important for yourself, then do it now if it’s within reason and resources… don’t wait! So there it is… I went shopping for a PA.
I did some initial shopping at the local guitar shop and googled around on the internet, but I must admit I was predisposed towards Bose primarily because Rick Vanderwall’s system worked so well and reliably during the many open mics I played at Cup of Joe. Further, I’ve owned several Bose products, including floor standing speakers, bluetooth speakers, Wave radios and earphones. They were all solid products. In the end, if Bose was good enough for Rick, it was good enough for me!
Selecting a Bose PA for Purchase
Bose L1 Pro line of portable array PA’s. From left to right: Models 8, 16 & 32 (with two choices of subwoofer)
It so happened that Bose just introduced a whole new line of vertical array portable PA’s in late 2020, so I had available to me the latest Bose technology to select from. Referred to as the L1 Pro Systems, they came in with three different models. The diminutive Pro 8, the middle size Pro 16 and the full sized Pro 32. The numeral refers to the number of speakers in the vertical array.
I must admit that I was a bit astonished when I first saw Rick Vanderwall’s Bose with the narrow vertical tower. The vertical array of smallish speakers accompanied with a sub woofer is relatively new technology, but it’s been widely accepted (and copied) since its introduction some years ago. Following is a Bose PA introduction from Youtube:
I spent a good deal of time studying reviews of the various Bose L1 Pros. Many of the reviews were simply regurgitations of Bose marketing literature; however, out in YouTube world were several independent reviews which helped clarify my final decision as to which model to purchase.
Interior layout of Cup of Joe
First a word on the space in which the PA must perform for open mic night. As you can see in the image of Cup of Joe, it is a long, relatively narrow space. The performers are located way down at the far end of the facility, so a PA system would have to possess the power to project along the entire length and width of the space. The music should project evenly so that sitting and standing people get roughly the same sound level, as well as from front to back of the room. Fortunately, Bose claims a properly spec’d and set-up L1 system meets those requirements.
The disassembled L1 Pro 16, with small plastic spacer (center) that locates between the subwoofer and the speaker array.
In sum, my conclusion was the Pro 8 was underpowered for the venue in which Cup of Joe is located. The Pro 16 appeared to be a logical choice as it had the power to cover the space adequately, was reasonably priced and did not appear to be particularly cumbersome to move around. As you can see on the right, the Pro 16 comes in three pieces: the subwoofer, the longer array of sixteen two inch speakers and a 8 inch blank spacer that resides between the woofer and the speaker array. The purpose of the spacer is to raise the height of the sixteen two inch speakers to get a proper sound distribution. Unfortunately, the decision by Bose designers to use a “plastic” spacer has raised some criticism. Some reviewers claimed the spacer was insubstantially engineered resulting in wobbling of the tower. Other reviewers complained of a high pitched hiss emanating from the speakers. As I understand it, PA’s do come with a built in “noise floor” that varies by speaker design and system wattage; however, a high-pitched hiss is not what I wanted to contend with… period. I contacted Bose technical staff, but they were either evasive or oblivious to the critiques of the Pro 16. No help there…
Though it was more money than I initially wanted to spend, I decided to acquire the L1 Pro 32 because of the issues raised about the Pro 16. Bose offers either a very large Sub 2 or a smaller, (but big enough) Sub 1 woofer to pair with a two part vertical, floor standing tower. I chose the smaller Sub 1 because of its more manageable size and the low frequency sound profile was more in tune with live music, rather than DJ bass thumping that the Sub 2 is best designed for. Because both sections of the vertical array are substantial metal columns that lock into each other and because the column sinks several inches into the floor power stand, there is very little, if any, wobble.
L1 Pro 32 power stand into which vertical array is mounted.
The power stand offers a chunky, substantial, and stable base from which the vertical array arises. The stand connects to and powers the subwoofer with a proprietary cable, which is nice as only one 120 volt AC receptacle is required to power the entire rig. The stand also contains jack access to three channels. Two are 1/4″/XLR combo jacks, and the other is a 1/4″ jack with various other auxiliary possibilities, including bluetooth access. Lots of flexibility with channel tonal controls are available. The tonal controls are also remotely adjustable through an iPhone/Android app, which is super convenient. Finally, Bose has a baked-in library of tone profiles for various instruments and brands that can be deployed to fine tune the mix.
Here’s a Bose summary review of the L1 Pro 32:
Bose T4s
Because the L1 Pro 32 power stand offers only 3 channels, I decided to acquire the Bose Tonematch T4s mixer to provide an additional 4 channels. The mixer attaches to the power stand with a ruggedized LAN cable, which transmits digital instruction to the L1 and receives power from the L1, thus keeping power needs simple. The T4s offers deep functionality in terms of sculpting sound profiles and will take me some time to master to its best advantage.
Experience to date with the L1 Pro 32
The Bose system arrived a day later than expected because of a freak snow storm that prevented UPS from getting to my home, so I was delighted when it finally arrived. I set up the L1 tower first, which went together easily and quickly. The connection to the Sub 1 also was rapidly accomplished. Sadly, I could not use the T4s because Bose recommended a firmware update and I had to order a cable from Amazon to connect my computer to the mixer.
Sub 1 with race track speaker (left) and section of vertical array of two inch speakers (right)
Without the T4s attached, I still had three channels and was able to test my Collings I 35 electric, my Taylor 812ce, my National Resolectric and a Shure SM 58 microphone all in my living room. In fact, via Bose software, I saved individual tonal setting in the system’s memory for each guitar. The system played clean as country water and interacted nicely with my pedalboard. The combination of the racetrack subwoofer and the 32 neodymium 2 inch drivers offered a consistent ear pleasing sound.
32 speaker vertical array
According to Bose literature, the speaker tower offers a floor to 7 foot high vertical sound spread outwards that also arrays itself 180 degrees, side to side. My experience was that you could sit anywhere in the living room of my house as long as you were not behind the tower and hear the music perfectly well. I made this test by bluetoothing my iPhone to the system and then playing the Beatles’ Revolver. When I disassembled the system and moved it up to my garage, the sound produced by the L1 could be heard across my yard quite easily when either Grant or I played guitar and sang.
Initial Disappointment and Concerns with the PA/Tonematch Combination
LAN cable to Connect T4s to L1 Pro
I will cut to the chase. After I updated the firmware on the T4s Tonematch mixer, I had intermittant success connecting it to the L1 Pro 32. In short, the instruments or mics channeled into the T4s received the signal as evidenced by a green flashing light, but failed to make it to the L1. It actually worked for a while in my living room, but when I disassembled the L1 and moved it to the garage, the T4s was a total fail! No matter what I tried, I could not get it to work.
Bose L1, T4s, my pedal board, an SM 58 mic and my Collings in my garage.
The fail was on a Saturday, and on Monday Bose frontline technical help in the Philippines had no suggestions to remediate my problem of connectivity, but agreed to replace the entire system including the L1 and the T4s. The new L1 came the next day, but the T4s took almost two weeks to arrive. Even then, after replacement I had some initial difficulty making the connection between the two devices. I concluded that the weak link is the LAN cable and unless it is solidly connected, signal failure will occur. When queried about this shortcoming the Bose people were evasive. This time around though I was able to get the device to work in my living room, and after disassembly and reassembly up in my garage. So we’re good to go, but I do have some remaining qualms about connectivity issues between the two devices.
To be prudent, I plan to run another garage set-up to calm my nerves and make sure the system is functional.
We are Good to Go!
My son Parker who is a dual major at the University of Iowa, including Graphic Design put this poster together for us, so in a month we will be at Cup of Joe!
A year or so ago, I posted a blog article about replacing paper with electronic charts using an Apple iPad, combined with the forScore app bluetoothed to a PageFlip DragonFly foot pedal. The pedal enabled page flipping for a multi-page tune. I use all this tech because I play a lot of country blues tunes, but simply cannot memorize them. While I develop finger-muscle memory for the tunes, it is necessary for me to have the chart as a cue when playing.
Smallish iPad Air in my practice zone…
In sum, with an iPad Air, a mic stand, a Hercules tablet holder, and finally, a DragonFly foot pedal, I replaced an ungainly, non portable music stand and sloppy, wrinkly, taped together hard paper music charts that flopped all over the place. How did it work out over time? Good, but after a while, I wished I’d purchased the larger, more expensive iPad Pro to make reading the music easier (the Pro screen actually projects a size equivalent to single standard 8×10″ page in a paper chart). Still, I made the investment in the smallish iPad Air and was initially loath to waste money by trading it in, much as I wanted to.
PageFlip Dragonfly foot pedal…
It’s important to note too that while the foot pedal functioned properly most of the time, I found it a challenge sometimes to stay focused on the music and simultaneously stab my foot out to find the proper forward shift pedal and avoid going accidentally backwards. Furthermore, the pedal would go to sleep when not in use for an extended period of time, and required multiple stomps to wake it back up, which was frustrating when immersed in the middle of a tune. Finally, the “in-screen” keyboard on the iPad was disabled by the pedal when active, which made typing annotations onto the music chart impossible.
Then, one day I was annotating a country blues chart and did a web search to see if it was possible to cut and paste lyrics or move a music bar to another location while using forScore. After finding online instructions for how to execute that capability and then fumbling around for an extended period of time trying to accomplish a simple cut and paste, I finally discovered that you had to be a member of forScore Pro to access that feature!
forScore Pro is similar to one of those patreon accounts that are so popular now for financially supporting online activities. For an additional small annual fee, you get added features like cut and paste and also support future improvements for the app. I joined because cut and paste is a very, very useful feature to arrange and annotate a chart. You also get occasional new update notes from forScore as a Pro member.
Apple True Depth Camera tech…
What I soon discovered after joining forScorePro was that the 2020 iPad Pro equipped with their True Depth Camera technology, combined with the latest iOS 14 operating system would allow page changing within forScore with facial gestures! This is the same highly sophisticated technology that allows a person to log into an iPhone or iPad with facial recognition.
12.9 inch iPad Pro
The enhancements offered by the new iPad Pro were enough to push me over the edge. I wanted a larger surface area to see the charts and I was really interested in using facial gestures to replace the foot pedal! So, easy as pie, I arranged a trade-in for my year-old iPad Air and ordered a 12.9 inch iPad Pro. When the new iPad arrived, I transferred forScore and my music library over to it in short order.
I found out right away that my existing iPad mic stand holder no longer worked with the 12.9″ iPad. I owned a Hercules holder (lower right) and really liked it as it was very stable and easy to get the iPad in and out of the holder, but sadly it does not open wide enough to easily get the larger iPad Pro into the grips. So, after searching around I found a “decent” holder manufactured by Caddy Buddy (lower left). It’s good enough, but I still would prefer the Hercules device for ease of getting the iPad in and out of it and it’s more robust in construction. It would be a relatively easy design change to fix the Hercules device, but I see no evidence that the manufacturer is planning to do so.
Caddy Buddy iPad Holder
Hercules iPad Holder
Once the iPad is mounted in the mic stand at roughly the same level as your face, it can then be set-up via forScore to activate facial gestures to turn pages in a musical chart. As a reminder, you cannot access this feature in the settings menu unless you are a Pro subscription member (lower left). Inside the Pro settings (lower center) you can access Face Gestures and activate a calibration procedure for facial recognition purposes.
Settings Menu
Facial Gesture Calibration
Fine tune Facial Gesture
You have two face gesture choices, which are “turning your head” or “moving your mouth” in a kind of smirk to the left or right. I hoped that one of the gestures would have been a head tilt, but that was not available, and when I queried the forScore people about adding that feature they demurred. Head turning made little sense to me because you have to take your eyes off the music, and to be frank, I could never get it to work reliably.
Lip movement to change page
On the other hand, lip/mouth movement does work! After calibrating the iPad to recognize you with 1) a relaxed face, 2) lips moved right, and 3) lips moved left the device will flip pages on command. In the upper right image you can see that there are sliders also available to fine tune sensitivity. There’s also a test protocol to see how well you’ve tuned sensitivity by ease of moving small blue dots on the screen by shifting your lips.
So… How does it work???
For the most part it works pretty well; however, I do have some concerns with over sensitivity of the device. Sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, the page will flip without command. If you reduce sensitivity with the calibration slider to much to avoid phantom page flips, then you must really wrench your face to flip a page, which is distracting to you and an audience. Consequently, it takes time to fine tune the system’s sensitivity to your facial movements. I have some concern that changes in ambient lighting may also affect the reliability of the page flip. Also, I play sitting down and am concerned about seat height variation from home to perhaps a coffee shop open mic stage seat also affecting page flip accuracy. Finally, on occasion when I am playing for someone I will miss a note, then grimace at the pain of musical failure, and at that moment the device will sometimes respond to my dismay by flipping the page on its own, which makes matters all the worse.
Cut and paste option for moving lyrics to the chart…
In conclusion, the iPad Pro combined with forScore Pro is a keeper… I really like the larger surface area for viewing a musical chart and the cut and paste option for annotation is a great addition to the app. As far as page flipping goes, I am intent on working with the facial gesture feature, but will probably keep the foot pedal on standby to reverse unwanted spontaneously flips. There you have it…
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Bill Collings: “The world is made of stuff that’s OK… just fine… but when something’s made by a group of people that really know what they’re doing, engineering, time and passion are put into it… it doubles it…”
Guitars are back, baby! Or so says the New York Times… For me, they were never gone, but according to several news articles and anecdotal information from guitar stores, the COVID 19 “lock-downs” of 2020, resulted in a sizable upward swing in guitar sales. As a result guitar shops are suffering from some inventory deprivation because the guitar manufacturers are having difficulty keeping up with demand resulting from pandemic depleted work forces. What’s driven guitar sales? To a large extent, it’s probably the quarantine produced time and space available for people to chase new pursuits and guitars apparently fit the bill.
Summertime is National time…
Since I am retired and an avid student of guitar, I did not need the added incentive of quarantine time to focus on the instrument; however, because of limited opportunities to do other things outside my home I am even more obsessed with the guitar now!
To that end, I have a very nice collection of instruments, descriptions of which can be found here… Even though I possess a nice stable of guitars I, not unlike lots of other guitarists, fall into the psychological trap of believing we are always one guitar away from completing our musical dreams… it’s a sad affliction, but also fun to indulge as long as you don’t overtax your personal finances like Johnny Depp‘s done…
What drove me to my latest purchase was the human psychological need for novelty, which is somewhat more exacerbated by the limited stimuli associated with quarantine lock down. Further, I was suffering some doubts regarding two of my Taylor electric guitars. Seen below is the T3 on the right and the Walnut Solidbody on the left… While both are lovely guitars, I decided that their controls were too gimmicky… too many pickup selection opportunities and odd tone controls that I could never quite master to suit my ears…
Taylor Walnut Solidbody
Taylor T3 Custom
Taylor Solidbody Custom (left) and Taylor T3/B (right)
The truth be known, the Taylor’s are excellent guitars and beautiful in their own right and any difficulty managing them, sound-wise, is really on me. Still… in the back of my mind, for quite a while, I considered trading them off for a different guitar. But, it was not going to be for just any run of the mill electric… For example, I was totally not interested in a Fender Strat or Tele (never liked their necks nor fretboards) or a Les Paul (too awkward and heavy for me) and I had my run with a Gretsch a few years earlier and unceremoniously dumped it. Perhaps the endlessly fascinating Gibson ES-335, but there is so much commentary out there in the guitar universe about sample to sample variability in quality and tone. That said, I just don’t believe I have the acumen to identify, nor access to enough samples to find that perfect one. So, I looked around for several months, not totally convinced I could unload the Taylors for something I would find better… It would have to be a helluva a guitar to move me forward…
Then, one day I was noodling through the Dave’s Guitars website, which I do on occasion, and found a guitar worth considering… way worth considering… It was a Collings semi-hollow bodied electric guitar… At that moment, Dave’s inventory contained four Collings electrics, two of which were semi-hollows. I’ve been aware of Collings since I first picked up a Yamaha guitar in the early 90’s… In guitar magazines of the time, Collings advertised factory produced but immaculate, boutique quality acoustic guitars that successfully replicated the highly sought after pre-war Martin aesthetic. They were top-drawer prestige guitars, reserved for the most committed players. The prices too were astronomical.
Taylor 914ce
I have a brief story, from a few years ago, about my first, in person, interaction with a Collings guitar. When I returned to serious guitar playing about 4 1/2 years ago, I took lessons in Rochester, MN while I was up there for an extended period of time receiving radiation treatment. I found a very nice re-introduction-to-the-instrument teacher at Avalon Music, a local store, which sadly no longer exists. I remember my teacher playing some nondescript beater guitar during lessons, which took place on the second floor of the store.
Downstairs the owner sold guitars, specializing in Taylors, a brand that I regarded very highly, and after several weeks, I traded in an older Taylor 700 series for a drop dead beautiful Taylor 914ce, a top of the line spruce and rosewood grand concert sized guitar… there are arguably not many guitars better than that 914 in both design and quality… The purchase was a statement to myself that I would fight through the radiation treatments and come out the other end… When I showed up at my next lesson with the new axe, my teacher was apoplectic when he saw the guitar… why, I am not totally sure, but perhaps he felt “shown-up” by this lovely instrument residing in a rusty old reentry guitar player’s hands… Well… the next week my teacher returned to the lesson room with a Collings in his hands! I suppose he wanted to show me who ruled… it was an enviable guitar, both in appearance and how it sounded… I made note…
So, back to the future… There it was on Dave’s website… A Collings guitar, but not an acoustic… this one was electric… I’d been vaguely aware of Collings’ electrics for a few years… Primarily because a recent Facebook acquaintance purchased a pre-owned solid body version called the City Limits (inspired by the Gibson Les Paul)… he made quite a public production of his purchase and was way pleased with himself…
Gibson ES-335
After my dalliance with the Taylor Solidbody and some in-shop fiddling around with a Fender Strat, I was done with planks (solid body) guitars… As a dyed-in-the-wool acoustic player, the semi-hollow electric is, in my mind, a perfect complement to my style of playing, which is largely finger-style and bottleneck country blues. A highly regarded, and prototypical semi-hollow bodied guitar is the Gibson ES-335. There are others like the Gretsch Falcon, but the ES-335 has legendary status.
If you are curious as to what a semi-hollow bodied guitar is, I borrowed a few shots off the Collings website below. You can see below that the Collings guitar body is routed out of a solid piece of mahogany where the hollowed chambers on each side of the center are visible. The hollow chamber gives this guitar its characteristic tone, which differs significantly from a plank guitar. According to the Sweetwater website, “These guitars… [offer] the tightness and focus of a solidbody electric guitar but with a hint of that more round, acoustic tone of a hollow guitar.” I would agree with that…
Center Block
Routing Out the Hollow Chambers
Finished Lower Body with Center Block and Adjacent Chambers
The term, semi-hollow body comes from the practice of inserting a block of wood into the center of the guitar between the hollowed chambers. The carefully designed Collings center block can be seen in the above photo on the top left. The center block reduces the propensity for feedback when the guitar is played at loud volumes. Not all center blocks are equal and can affect the tone of the guitar by how it’s designed and what it’s made out of. Design versus tone of the center block is above my pay grade, but from what I’ve read, the precision of the center block design is one of the reasons a Collings electric commands such respect and stands out with tonality.
As I dug deeper into the Collings aesthetic, I found this wonderful overview of their electric guitar production:
And here, world-class guitar player Charlie Sexton speaks to the design of Collings electrics… He is playing a SoCo, which is one of the Collings designs I was considering… it is a semi-hollow bodied guitar with a single cutaway, as opposed to the I-35, which has a double cutaway, giving it the characteristic “mouse ear” profile similar to the Gibson ES-335… Anyway, below you can hear Charlie wax poetically about Collings electric guitar design…
If you are wondering who Charlie Sexton is, one of his main gigs is lead guitarist for Bob Dylan’s touring band. Below are a couple of shots I took of Dylan and Sexton playing in Cedar Falls, IA ten years ago… a great show!
If you really want to understand what distinguishes Collings guitars from all the rest of production instruments, then you have to understand the singular drive for design and manufacturing excellence that Bill Collings demanded of himself and those who worked with him… sadly Bill Collings succumbed to cancer in 2017… here’s a brief biography of this extraordinary man:
So, after due diligence I concluded that purchase of a Collings guitar could be a real “jewel in the crown” acquisition. There were some Collings electrics available pre-owned on Reverb, but in my case I thought purchasing new would be, perhaps not least expensive, but the best route for me. Now, to those of you who read my blog this decision probably comes across as contradictory. This is because I wrote a whole blog entry on the cost-benefits of buying used; however, I’ve also been burned on used purchases mostly because I do not possess the wherewithal to identify problems with a used instrument, and they do exist, such as I’ve experienced… i.e. poor set-up, cracked lower bouts and twisted necks…
To purchase a new guitar, it made perfect sense to me to shop for a Collings at Dave’s Guitars in LaCrosse, WI which is about 2.5 hours by car from my home. Last winter, before the attack of COVID 19, I purchased a National guitar from them and it was, as I wrote on this blog, an excellent experience. Nevertheless, I was still tentative because I had two guitars to trade and there was still the overall sticker price on the Collings guitar which was a bit prohibitive… I proceeded to see what I could work out, and was pleasantly surprised… Overnight, I received two very fair offers for the Taylors and they reduced the new guitar’s price by 15% because it was a 2018 model and had been hanging around the store far longer than Dave wanted it! So it was off to Wisconsin to test the guitar and make a deal!
In Dave’s parking lot…
Because of the pandemic world we live in, Dave’s only took clients in the store by appointment, which I promptly made for the next day. The following morning I got in my car at 7:30 am to make a 10:30 appointment.
My wife was a bit anxious about me making the trip as Wisconsin was a COVID 19 hot zone, and this was my first trip out of town since the pandemic’s onset in mid-March, 2020. Undaunted, I grabbed a mask, stuck a carbon filter in it, and took off. It was good to get out and it was a pleasant drive through the late harvest farm fields and small, backwater towns of Iowa. I had a full tank of gas so I would not have to expose myself to the virus by making any unnecessary stops along the way. Making good time I arrived 30 minutes early and it was especially nice that they took me right in so I would not have to sit in a cold car for 30 minutes! To the left you can see me in the parking lot, with the iconic Dave’s sign over my shoulder.
A pair of Collings semi-hollow bodies… the SoCo in the foreground and the I-35 behind.
There was no time wasted, which suited me… The handful of floor staff are always very pleasant and were all masked up and pretty good about physical spacing. Nevertheless, I decided to get in and out as soon as practical; however, I still wanted to take my time checking out the Collings electrics.
I dragged my two Taylors in for the Sales Manager to look over, and he guided me over to the store section that had a handful of Collings guitars hanging way up high to keep the hoi polloi from pawing over them. I narrowed the choices down to the I-35 Deluxe and a SoCo. Curiously, Bill Collings decided to name his electrics after the roadways in and around Austin, Texas where his factory is located.
Inside Dave’s… dropped the mask momentarily for the photo…
Fortunately, I was able to plug into a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp like I have at home. I spent most of my time with the I-35, which is the guitar that initially moved me into undertaking this journey… the SoCo was nice but did not call to me. The whole process was a bit stressful… I was not warmed up, nor was I acclimated to the I-35’s fretboard and neck so my playing was not particularly admirable… no one seemed to care, but they could hear me, so I was a little rattled because I can play better than I did in the store.
Eventually, after floundering around for about 30 minutes with the I-35, I decided to acquire it because I was confident, given some more time that I’d be able to play this thing and it was sweet to my sensibilities. I was particularly taken by the capacity to separately control the volume and tone for each pick-up and to blend the two together when played simultaneously, something neither of my Taylor electrics could do… Booyakasha!
While we were closing the deal I had the great good fortune to meet the Dave, who was in an exceptionally good mood because he had just acquired a vintage “transition model” Gibson ES-335 for his extensive, museum quality guitar collection housed on the second floor of the store. They wiped my new Collings down, put fresh strings of my choice on it (NYXL’s), and then threw in a Dave’s Sweatshirt to boot! I was out the door and on the way back home in about one hour… All in all, shopping for premium guitars is a great experience at Dave’s!
Ameritage Case Damage… a Tolex tear on the top of the case
My only criticism of the purchase process was the condition of the guitar case. Collings sources out their cases for electric guitars from the Ameritage company. They are premium solid cases, but frankly, I think both Taylor and National do a better job with their cases in fit, appearance and interior appointment. In a video I recently watched, Bill Collings also expressed some dismay with sourced-out cases and in response built a line of cases for some of his high-end acoustics, but in the end dropped the case business project because it’s too expensive.
Red Bubble Collings sticker…
Further, and most irritating, the case that came with my guitar was damaged. The Tolex coating was torn about the width of a thumbnail and could be pulled back to expose white fibrous matter beneath. There was also some scuffing on the case too… Besides being ugly, I was concerned the tear would continue to propagate over time. I should have made a point about the damage, because I found out later that they had the ability to repair the case in the shop, but I wanted to get the hell out of there and get into my car away from other people. In the end, in a very nice personal touch, Steve McCreary, General Manager of Collings guided me, via telephone, through the repair process. The case, though not perfect, looks pretty good now. Even so, I decided to acquire a Collings sticker from Red Bubble and laid it over the repair so I wouldn’t be irritated by it anymore…
Collings I-35 Deluxe
Now let’s review the guitar… Holistically, it is a stunning example of industrial art. When I’d mentioned to Steve McCreary (see above) that I thought the guitar was an object of fine art, he responded saying that “we [Collings] really appreciate when someone gets what we do here…”
The guitar has a mouse eared profile/shape reminiscent of the Gibson ES-335 from which it is inspired, but Bill Collings, after thorough research, reduced the lower bout width by an inch and designed more angular curvature, making the guitar somewhat smaller and lighter thus enhancing it’s playability. I’m not a big guy, so the smaller profile had greater appeal to me, especially after coping with the larger bodied Taylor T3 and the Gretsch Falcon, which was really a beast. While I was at Dave’s playing the Collings, the sales manager brought over an ES-335 and it looked large and unwieldy by comparison. I said, “please take it away…”
Solid Honduran mahogany lower body and neck
What you pay for when you acquire a Collings is engineering, design, manufacturing precision and all around fussiness. I don’t think there’s a guitar manufacturer who puts more care into high end wood quality than Collings. Only the finest woods are selected for their instruments, considering variables such as appearance/figuring, moisture content, tensile properties, specific gravity, and most importantly acoustical responsiveness. The I-35 is comprised of a carved, solid flamed maple top, the body is routed from a solid piece of Honduran mahogany, with a single piece mahogany neck as well.
In my mind’s eye, I imagined the guitar would be red, but in reality this particular model’s color was referred to as “amber sunburst,” which does a nice job of displaying the soundboard’s flamed Maple striations underneath the multiple layers of polished lacquer. This is my first lacquer finished guitar and it is remarkably shiny and classy looking.
The lower bout, with controls, 3 way switch, F holes, and bridge area visible.
Here it is very important to point out that not all semi-hollow bodied guitars are built the same. As shown in photos earlier in this post, Collings routes out the lower body from a solid piece of mahogany and the top is carved from a single piece of solid maple. Conversely, the Gibson ES-335 is manufactured from laminated maple and poplar layers and constructed similar to an acoustic guitar where the sides, back and top are separately cut or shaped in a press and then combined with glue. The center blocks are also engineered quite differently from each other. To me the solid wood routing of the lower body, the art-carving of the top, and the precision engineering of the center block pushes the Collings I-35 to a completely different aesthetic level in construction and subsequent tonality. During roughly the same time period Gibson produced a similar “tonally carved” solid wood design in limited quantities that they designated the CS-336, which I think is available by special order through their custom shop.
On the image shown above, you can see the four tone/volume control knobs, the body binding, and the pick up rings are all manufactured from grained ivoroid. Ivoroid is a plastic-like substance that is created by dissolving cellulose in the form of short cotton fiber and then restoring it through extrusion into a solid form. The grained version is extruded to give it fine lines to simulate ivory, which was considered a luxury material since ancient times. Obviously grained ivoroid production and its use is far better than killing animals such as elephants to acquire the substance. The ivoroid knobs and pickup rings are custom made at the Collings shop. It’s very satisfying to get up close enough to the ivoroid to see the fine grain lines or to twirl the tactilely pleasing knobs. For an acoustic guitar, I prefer wood binding, but almost all electrics use some sort of manufactured substance for bindings and grained ivoroid is about as cool as you can get.
Tail piece/bridge section… note the section of grained ivoroid pickup ring.
This particular version of the I-35 uses a clean and neat appearing Kluson bridge and tail piece assembly which is fairly common hardware for Gibson semi-hollow bodies. In contrast, my Taylor T3 semi-hollow body deployed a heavy, cluttered Bigsby, which I never really used to purpose, so I don’t miss it, particularly during string changing.
The pickups are where the rubber meets the road for an electric guitar. Bill Collings selected vintage-like Low Wind Lollar Imperial humbuckers for this guitar.
The combination of “throwback” 1950’s wiring, the low wind humbuckers and the vintage pots and caps are the “pixie/fairy dust” that Collings sprinkled into the guitar to create the vintage sound he was searching for. Having never played a vintage ES-335 nor possessing the ear to recognize one, I can only take the I-35’s spec on face value for being “sonically vintage;” however, I can attest that it is a fantastic sounding electric guitar, at least to my ear, my wife’s and my friends who’ve heard it.
As to whether the I-35 Deluxe produces verifiable vintage sound, that may be open to debate. For example, the ES-335 was manufactured with a laminate top, while the I-35 is unusual in that it has a solid top. The solid, non-laminate nature of the top was really appealing to my own aesthetic, so I like it and the “unique” sound it produces… it possesses throaty, round, woody, clean and defined note definition, with excellent sustain.
My guess is some of the fussier former Gibson/Gretsch players did not like the sound palette created by the solid top because their ears were more acclimated to the tonality created by laminated wood. To that end, Collings introduced an LC (laminated top) version of the I-35 and it is very popular. Nice for them, but I’ll take the sold top baby!
Fretboard
Headstock
Bindings
In the images directly above you can see some of the reasons why my I-35 is also designated Deluxe. The rosewood fretboard is adorned with parallelogram inlays, the headstock tuners are sourced from Gotoh, and equipped with grained ivoroid knobs, and as I mentioned earlier grained ivoroid appointments grace the instrument throughout.
In one of the Collings marketing videos, Bill Collings describes what elements are key to excellence when manufacturing an electric guitar… He says tone is a given… the guitar must feel right and be eminently playable, and finally it has to have a look… all those elements combine to give the guitar its character… that Collings character…
It’s one thing to read the marketing materials about Collings guitars, but it’s another thing to experience it first hand. They truly are remarkable instruments… As I said earlier the I-35 is a manufactured object of art…
Below I am adding some performance examples for my I-35… you can find other jazz and arty examples for how the guitar plays by accomplished musicians on Youtube, but my sound cuts will be just a regular guy doing the best he can to make some music. My genre is country blues, which I play on acoustic guitars, resonators and also electric guitar… I am no Muddy Waters, but he played the same music on all of those same type instruments… Here goes…
First, here’s a rendering of Cocaine Blues which is a Stef Grossman arrangement of the Rev. Gary Davis tune. I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel (which I almost always do). I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. All my pedals are disengaged except my Dunlop Echoplex, which is set for a slight slap back:
Second is a rendering of Coffee Blues which is a Happy Traum arrangement of the Mississippi John Hurt tune. Again, I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel and I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. All my pedals are disengaged except my Dunlop Echoplex, which is set for a slight slap back, and I added my Boss RV-6 Reverb which is set on Hall:
Third is a rendering of Police and a Sergeant which is a Catfish Keith arrangement of the Reverend Robert Wilkins tune. Again, again, I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel and I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. This time the pedals include my Dunlop Echoplex, which is set for a slight slap back, my Boss RV-6 Reverb which is set on Hall, and some light vibrato through my Boss VB-2w pedal:
Finally, here’s a partial rendering of Long Distance Call which is a Tom Feldmann arrangement of a Muddy Waters tune. This my first bottleneck tune in standard tuning. As with the above tunes, I am playing through a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 amp on a clean channel and again I am blending both pickups with the neck pickup predominating. Pedals include a Jangle Box Compressor, a Mesa Boogie Tone Burst Drive, a Boss CH-1 Super Chorus, a Boss TR-2 Tremolo, a Dunlop Echoplex, and my Boss RV-6 Reverb which is set on Hall.
Well… there it is… my review of my new Collings I-35… I’ll sum it up by saying, I think I will keep it and will hand it down to one of my kids one day… it’s a family heirloom now!
If you have any comments please leave them below… and thanks for checking in!
Last week I posted a blog entry in which I compared video recordings of me playing my National Reso-rocket WB with the new Revolution Biscuit/Bridge, with and without the addition of a wooden gasket that sits between the biscuit and the resonator cone. The posting can be found here…
As I usually do, I shared my blog posting on my Facebook page, as well as a few other FB guitar enthusiast pages, including one dedicated to National Guitars users/fans. Sharing on Facebook gets my entries better exposure… in fact, people from all over the world have checked in to what I have to say and I am grateful for the time people take to read my articles and to comment on them.
My previous two articles about the Revolution biscuit received quite a bit of attention, but none more so than the most recent one. In fact there was quite a bit of consternation and dissatisfaction about how the guitar sounded with the Revolution biscuit, either with or without the wooden gasket. Someone suggested that the guitar strings may to too light… in fact, they’re quite heavy. There was even a bit of mysticism, one commenter suggesting that the installation of a Revolution Biscuit in a friend’s guitar removed its ghost, thus diminishing its sound quality. Another implied that perhaps my playing was at fault, which may be true, but I think the dominant variable was the Revolution Biscuit itself.
Reso-rocket WB, cone and biscuit removed…
I decided then that it might be useful to explore more closely a before and after comparison of the traditional wooden biscuit versus the Revolution biscuit. I had not done this before. The only other comparison that I am aware of that is publicly available is the one created by Steve James in his workshop, which you can find in this posting. It was hard for me to tell much difference between set-ups in James’s posting.
So, to respond to the sound critics I decided to do my own A/B comparison on the same exact guitar. I recorded myself playing first with the Revolution Biscuit (with wooden gasket deployed), then I disemboweled the guitar and reinstalled the original wooden biscuit and recorded the same tune again. The transition of one to the other was made easier because each biscuit was equipped with its own cone. If you’re interested in my recording technique you can find that information here. I recorded myself playing Muddy Waters’ tune I Feel Like Going Home, which I learned from Tom Feldmann’s excellent Guitar Workshop DVD. The guitar is tuned to Open G and I am using a heavy, solid brass Tone Dome slide.
Well… here are the two recordings:
First, the recording with the Revolution Biscuit installed:
Second, the recording with the tradition wooden biscuit re-installed on the guitar:
After completing the recordings and editing them a bit on my MacBook Pro with iMovie, I did some intense comparisons… I listened, comparing section by section of the tune, on my MacBook speakers, then through some nice Grado headphones, and finally piped it through my very nice Marantz/Paradigm sound system using Apple AirPlay. I also had my wife Annette and my Iowa-all-time-best-friend Grant listen to the recordings too and share their impressions with me.
In sum, everyone, including me liked the traditional wooden biscuit sound far more than the Revolution biscuit. The sonic and tonal differences were quite obvious. I am not particularly articulate when it comes down to discussing guitar tones, but I will try. The traditional wooden biscuit tones were more present, more naturally acoustic sounding, perhaps more resonator twangy sounding. The Revolution biscuit tones sounded more truncated, lacking tonal subtleties, and were flatter and more compressed sounding, with the compression increasing as the strings got heavier.
I’ve decided to climb out of the Revolution Biscuit rabbit hole and leave the wooden biscuit installed on my WB for the time being…
In conclusion:
I was persuaded to try the Revolution Biscuit because it would allow me to improve my set-up in terms of playing action. My strings were a bit too high for comfortable finger-style playing. One of the key selling points of the Revolution Biscuit is the easy raising and lowering of the saddle using set screws to adjust the guitar’s action. Plus it was cool looking… I like the high-tech machined aluminum appearance of the new biscuit… To state the obvious, how a guitar looks is very important, but not near as important as it sounds…
I did not expect a noticeable or negative tonal difference when replacing the wood biscuit, based largely on Steve James’s recording, but detected some immediate difference. Not doing an A/B comparison initially, I was not sure how much difference there really was and at that point I was too lazy to switch back and forth… it was a lot of somewhat stressful work setting up the Revolution biscuit the first time…
Later, I accepted Steve James’s offer to try out the wooden gasket that sits between the Revolution Bridge and the cone mostly because I wanted to see if it would alter the tonal qualities in a positive way. There was some change in tone (positive I think) which I reported on earlier.
In response to “sound critics” on Facebook, I finally did an A/B comparison of the two biscuits and as I perceive the results, the wooden biscuit is more natural sounding.
Caveat: in another lifetime, I was a statistician (having minored in the subject) during my doctoral studies. My conclusions about the Revolution Biscuit are probably best applied for the National Reso-rocket WB… this was not an extensive factorial analysis… there may be other important variables at play such as saddle-type (i.e. wood) and guitar type (i.e. metal vs wood body or size) that may interact and cause noticeably different results!
In my last posting I discussed the installation of National Guitar’s new machined aluminum biscuit/bridge on my Reso-Rocket WB. You can find that posting here. Just as I was wrapping up that discussion, it came to my attention via a YouTube posting by Steve James that National was now producing a wooden gasket to place between the aluminum biscuit and the resonator cone. Since I had just completed my installation, I was naturally curious as to what purpose the wooden gasket served. To that end, I sent inquiries to Steve James, Mike Dowling and National Guitars. Both James and Dowling are recording artists and they represent/sell National Guitars so they would have the inside scoop. I was interested in their take on the purpose and value of the gasket. I contacted National to see if I could acquire one as the gasket was not yet available for sale on their website.
Biscuit gasket awaiting installation atop the WB…
After receiving a response from all the aforementioned contacts, there were basically two thoughts regarding the gasket. Steve James believed the wooden gasket which was located between the aluminum cone and aluminum biscuit would bring the guitar’s tone back closer to the sound of the older wooden biscuit design, which he thought was important.
On the other hand, Mike Dowling believed the gasket served the purpose of enhancing how the aluminum bridge “seated” onto the resonator cone during installation, particularly when using a “used” cone that had a wooden biscuit removed from it. According to Dowling, the used cone was “dimpled” by the wooden biscuit which prevented a uniform contact with the Revolution biscuit during subsequent installation. The gasket mitigated this problem. In Mike’s opinion the gasket was totally unnecessary when the Revolution biscuit was installed on a new cone. Mike was pretty firm in his recommendation even though he shared that the president of National thought the gasket might “mellow” the guitar’s tonality.
Since I had installed my Revolution biscuit on a new cone, I was inclined to drop the subject, especially after National confirmed, via email to me, Mike Dowling’s same position on the gasket. National Guitars seemed to have more than one opinion regarding the gasket. It is indeed true that two things can be true at the same time!
Almost immediately after hearing from Mike Dowling, I decided not to pursue the wooden gasket any further. Somewhat ironically, I was simultaneously contacted by Steve James and he basically insisted that I give the wooden gasket a try. In fact, he arranged with National Guitars to send me one! Despite the fact that Steve James did not know me at all, he was super nice and exceptionally accommodating during this process. Below you can see Steve’s initial YouTube posting about the wooden gasket:
In just a day or two, the gasket arrived from National… in fact they sent me two! The gaskets were very thin and flexible wooden shim-like contrivances designed to fit snugly into the underside of the Revolution bridge. To the left you can see the resonator cone I disassembled from my guitar with the Revolution biscuit sitting upside down upon it. The gasket is shown fitting snuggly to the underside of the biscuit. You can also see the the gasket is cut away to make space for the center mounting apparatus that is used to screw the biscuit into the cone. In sum, the gasket is sandwiched between the biscuit and the cone. Since it is so thin, it is basically moldable when the biscuit it screwed into the cone, yet it maintains a thin wooden layer between the two.
Revolution biscuit, Maple saddle with gasket…
To the right, you can see the Revolution bridge attached to the cone with the wooden gasket sandwiched between. Also visible is the Maple saddle inserted into the biscuit. Because the gasket raised the height of the saddle, I had to remove it and sand it down to compensate for the gasket’s thickness. Removal of the bridge is quite easy and one of the selling points for the Revolution biscuit. It took a bit of trial and error but I got the saddle sanded down to get the string action that I wanted. If you refer to my earlier posting on the subject you can find the tolerances I was shooting for.
After I reassembled the instrument I made a recording of the guitar with the gasket installed and compared it the an earlier recording that I made after initially installing the biscuit (without the gasket). The clips are shown below. I am playing Muddy Waters’ “I Can’t Be Satisfied.” The first two recordings are “unplugged” and the last one is the guitar plugged into my Mesa Boogie Filmont 50 and through a series of pedals:
Revolution Biscuit Bridge – Initial installation without wooden gasket
Revolution Biscuit Bridge with wooden gasket installed
Revolution Biscuit Bridge with wooden gasket installed and guitar “plugged-in”
The tonality differences between the guitar with and without the wooden gasket are, I think, subtle; however, after repeated listenings, I believe the gasket fattens and lends a woodiness to the tone. I plan to keep the gasket installed. Feel free to comment below what you think.
I believe it was on Flipboard, the online, choose your own content magazine, that I first learned that National Guitar Company had redesigned it’s bridge and biscuit, which they referred to as the Revolution Biscuit-Bridge. Having owned 3 National Resonators and still possessing two of them, I was naturally interested in the innovation, but decided at first glance that it looked a bit too complicated to install and it was expensive… still, I remained interested and would occasionally look for a review… when I queried one of the National Guitar Facebook groups about the new bridge all I heard was crickets… So, I pretty much forgot about the subject…
Mike Dowling on Zoom…
Earlier in the Summer of 2020, I had the great, good fortune of spending several Zoom sessions with recording artist and highly accomplished performer, Mike Dowling. Being prevented from doing his usual summer festival and workshop gigs because of the COVID pandemic, he was recruiting guitar enthusiasts to study with him via Zoom from his home in Mexico. So, I spent several hours with him over the course of a month.
My favorite Mike Dowling recording…
If you’re not familiar with Mike Dowling he is a guitar virtuoso and I discovered him because of his particular artistry with National Resonator guitars. He’s made a couple of excellent educational DVD’s for Happy Traum’s Homespun Music Instruction enterprise. That’s how I found him as I was looking for some basics about how to play bottleneck guitar.
After working with his DVD’s, I was delighted to learn that Mike was performing at the Creek House venue in Minneapolis in May 2018 on a Friday Night and the other two days he would host a guitar workshop. Having never done a workshop before, I decided to attend! The concert was sublime and the workshop was great fun though I was in over my head, surrounded by guitarists far more accomplished then me.
Me and Mike Dowling at Creek House Workshop
To the right you can see a shot of me and Mike at the Creek House Workshop. You will also note I am holding, what was at the time, my recently acquired National Reso-Rocket WB (wood body). Mike is holding the metal version of the same guitar.
I involved myself with resonator guitars because of my interest in playing country blues. I tried out an inexpensive Fender resonator at my local guitar shop and really liked it; however, I thought it was a little under-built and decided to go with the gold standard and purchased a National NRP Steel resonator online through Reverb. I liked the NRP but thought a wood bodied guitar might be even more to my liking so I subsequently purchased the WB from Dream Guitars near Asheville, NC via Reverb. I remember sitting at a concert in the balcony of the Englert Theater with my wife in Iowa City, and covertly communicating via text with Dream Guitar’s owner Paul Heumiller. He made me a great offer and we closed the deal right there… I was stoked! The short Youtube segment below gives more detail about the WB and it’s developer Steve James:
Reso-Rocket WB with Hot Plate
On the left, you can see that my WB has two knurled knobs for tone and volume control when the guitar is plugged into an amp. The sound pickup is a single coil design located between the guitar’s bridge and finger board. This whole arrangement is referred to as a Hot Plate and was actually designed by Mike Dowling. In fact, Mike sold me mine. In addition to performing and teaching, Mike also is an agent for National Guitars. You might be interested to know that Mike also worked with National Guitars to resurrect the deeper wooden bodied El Trovador model.
All this brings me to the fact that during our time on Zoom, Mike brought up the new Revolution Biscuit-Bridge, which he had installed on two of his resonators. He enthused about the flexibility of the bridge, particularly that it could be raised or lowered with set screws while the standard one could not. As he described it, he would lower the bridge when playing finger-style and raise it when he planned to play bottleneck. I became interested because the action was very high on my WB and it made playing anything other than bottleneck-style difficult, which was not really a monumental problem because I had plenty of other guitars that would serve for finger-style, but I was intrigued anyway.
Screen shot of Revolution Biscuit from National Guitar website…
Mike also mentioned that the new biscuit was machined aluminum, thus appearing shiny and metallic, which was very different from the black painted wood of traditional National biscuit/bridge combinations. I inferred from his discussion that traditionalists might be put off by the shiny metallic appearance of the new bridge. He informed me that National was considering selling painted black versions of the new bridge in the future and that I might want to wait. I was not particularly bothered by the shiny appearance of the new bridge and actually like it a lot.
Screen shot of National resonator cone…
About a week or so later I ordered a Revolution Biscuit bridge from Mike. He said he would be happy to consult with me during the installation, and strongly recommended that I purchase a new cone along with the bridge. The traditional biscuit is both screwed and glued into the cone and removing it leaves a dimple that can prevent the new bridge from seating properly unless the dimple is sculpted out, which is difficult given the fragility of the cone. Since I wanted to DIY this conversion, I purchased a new cone with the Revolution bridge to avoid sculpting the older cone.
Various Bridge saddle woods available from National Guitars… another website screenshot…
In addition to the newly machined biscuit, National now offers a choice of bridge saddle woods, including, maple, ebony, rosewood, walnut and holly. I was under the impression that I would receive the full set of saddle woods with my order, but only received the traditional maple one, which is just as well because it was a bit of a stressful effort to “fit” it out for the biscuit. I do remember Mike recommending the maple saddle wood and I like the way it eventually came out in both appearance and sound. Just today in a note to me, Mike wrote that in a “blind” sound test he cannot tell much difference in the various woods or between old and new biscuits. To him the real value of the Revolution Biscuit is the ease of string height adjustment.
So, the package arrived from National about a week or so later. Contained therein was the cone, the aluminum biscuit, a single maple bridge saddle, a length of synthetic sandpaper, and two small Allen wrenches… Why the sandpaper? Because the saddle wood must be shaved down to achieve the proper string to fretboard action…
Measuring string height bridge to biscuit…
For starters Mike had me measure the string height off of the original biscuit and from there he recommended that I shave one 1/8th of an inch off of the bottom of the new maple saddle. Below you can see an image sent to me from Mike Dowling illustrating how to mark the saddle wood for trimming. You will note that he angled his where-to- sand-to mark so that the saddle is slanted, which would allow for the treble string to be closer to the fret board than the bass string. He recommended, in the end, for the bass string to be 7/64 of an inch off of the twelfth fret and for the treble string 6/64 of an inch off of the twelfth fret for a good nominal setting. I had to do quite a bit of sanding in stages, fitting the saddle into the bridge and then measuring before the process was completed.
Before (left) and after (right) images of saddle wood as a result of trimming.
Reso-Rocket sound cavity exposed…
To the right you can see the Reso-Rocket with the original cone and bridge removed. To avoid having to restring the guitar, I controlled the strings on the neck with a capo and used electrical tape to hold the string balls within the tail piece. This way after setting the new cone and biscuit in place it was easy to refasten the tailpiece and tune the guitar back up.
As I said earlier, I went through several stages of sanding the saddle, placing it in the biscuit and mounting the biscuit on the cone. Then I would drop the cone into the guitar, replace the coverplate, remount the tailpiece, retune the guitar and then make my string measurements. The bridge guard was also removed and stayed off throughout the fitting process. During one iteration of fitting, I realized I had to make sure that there was more of a slant sanded into the base of the bridge. I think I did this three, maybe four times… it was a tedious process and not for anyone in a hurry.
Above you can see the two cones, side by side with the new one on the left. If you’re not familiar with resonator technology, the string vibration is intercepted by the bridge, then transferred down to the cone via the biscuit. The cone then amplifies the string vibration giving the characteristic resonator sound back outwards to the listener. The original biscuits were wood, so the transition to an aluminum biscuit makes some traditionalists uncomfortable. Some posters on FaceBook do not like the new biscuit, either on face value or after they’ve tried it out. There are others who have adopted the new approach.
To the left you can see a close-up of the new aluminum bridge and maple saddle mounted onto the cone. You will note that there are three holes set into the saddle that are located in between the carve-outs where the guitar strings traverse. The holes allow access to set screws that are located below in the biscuit itself. Adjusting the set screws can raise the height of the saddle and consequently the height of the strings off of the fret board.
The saddle fits very firmly in the biscuit. The biscuit is machined with a slight zig-zag shaped channel and the saddle is shaped to fit snuggly in the aforementioned channel so that there is only one way for the two to combine together. I really had to press firmly to get the saddle into the channel and the only way I could get the saddle back out was to raise it with the set screws and then pry it out with a small flat head screwdriver, being mindful that the Maple bridge was pretty delicate and kind of expensive.
I was not prepared to make a wood vs aluminum biscuit comparison after completion of the project; however, below you can see a quick A/B comparison made by Steve James:
I do have below a couple of short videos of my WB with the new Biscuit installed. Just below is a short clip of me playing Muddy Waters’ I Can’t Be Satisfied in Open G tuning, bottleneck style. I am using a brass Tone Dome slide purchased from National:
I Can’t Be Satisfied… McKinley Morganfield
I am also presenting a brief finger-style tune on the same guitar. Before I installed the new bridge, it was very difficult to play finger-style on this guitar because the action was so high. Here now I am able to do it, but I must admit because I followed Steve James advice on Youtube and installed a heavy set of Newtone Archtop strings, it was more difficult for me than it should have been… those strings are fine for bottleneck playing but a bit heavy for me to play finger-style… another lesson for me in the school of hard knocks and dirty socks! This is a Stef Grossman arrangement of the Rev. Gary Davis’s Cocaine Blues in standard tuning.
In sum, I am pleased with the biscuit conversion… I believe the saddle as currently located is in a sweet spot where I can play it bottleneck or finger-style without adjustment; however I think I will eventually migrate to the lighter string gauge I was using before following Steve James’s advice.
I like the sound of the guitar too; however, I just noticed during this writing that National Guitars is now recommending placing a wooden gasket between the aluminum biscuit and the cone which probably alters the sound somewhat… According to Mike Dowling, in correspondence while writing this blog, the gasket may be most important for people mounting the Revolution biscuit on an older cone… While the folks at National believe the tone may be mellowed out with the wooden gasket, that remains to be assessed… I may explore this wooden gasket further…
