Blastronaut

Whatever floats your boat man! I'd imagine you'd need to be running loads of midi stuff to get much use out of it, and at that point you'd be aswel just automating all the midi commands. But I guess I can see how this would give more scope for, eh... spontaneity.

Honestly not my scene at all @Tom. Wouldn't fancy being a guitar tech and having that brought to me. Funny though, I was just talking about Matt Bellamy last night.

You're dreaming if you think we'll be back to normal next year. Some 400,000 positive tests in the few days over Christmas and thats with PCR test results being delayed and loads of folk being unable to get lateral flow tests. Significantly fewer deaths is the only success story, still far too many people stubbornly refusing to wear masks and too many people still getting ill as a result.

Anyone here got any experience with or opinions on the Hudson Broadcast? (Genuine question, I'm promise this isn't a bait and switch where I later reveal it's actually another Tubescreamer)

I see Matty Longstaff has just been recalled from his loan spell at Aberdeen. Not really the most promising of signs entering January.

Hey this pretty much sums up my last 18 months! Glad to hear you're okay though. Make mines a Guinness. Had my booster a few days ago, stress levels have been through the roof since but Ive got a sneaking suspicion that's got fuck all to do with side effects and everything to do with the fact Amazon stopped guaranteeing next day delivery yesterday.

@Kevin Carr's Gloves quick instructional video to get you started: Back on @Andrew's Precision Drive, I can't find anything on the gate circuit, seems to be on a separate board, stacked on top of the overdrive but yeah if you take away that and the aforementioned rotary control it's 99% identical to a TS808. There's two lower value resistors in the first clipping stage, that will you a hell of a lot more gain available on that "drive" knob than a stock TS808. Then there's two value changes in the tone section so the tone control might function a little bit differently, but to me that change looks like penny pinching rather than a design choice (stock TS808 has a sort of obscure 20k W-taper potentiometer. Probably saved a few quid in costs finding a way to use a more standard linear taper). That's all I've got for now.

Precision Drive seems to be yet another TS808 with a few more changes and a rotary switch. The rotary switch changes the value of the capacitor next to the pink bit on the schematic to change the cut off that high pass filter. * If you've ever heard Tubescreamers referred to as having a "mid-hump", it's that ~720hz frequency they're talking about. Worth bearing in mind the capacitors used will probably have a 10% tolerance so it will rarely ever be exactly 720Hz, could really be anywhere between 650Hz and 800Hz. Knowing that and considering how many other capacitors are in the circuit doing similar jobs could go some way to explaining why it sounds different. I'm not sure exactly what value capacitors are on the rotary switch on the Precision Drive but it's easy to guess. They changed the resistor to 1k so a 220nf capacitor would give you close to the stock TS frequency (723Hz). Would imagine the options are somewhere in this ballpark: 470nf = 339Hz 330nf = 482Hz 220nf = 723Hz 100nf = 1591Hz 82nf = 1940Hz 68nf = 2340Hz I'll need to have another look later for the other changes, doubt they'll be drastic but I did see it mentioned it might have some kind of noise gate tacked on.

Here's yer typical TS808 schematic. I've highlighted the changes in the NUX Steel Stringer: Apologies in advance for this, fully aware I'm about to reveal myself as an absolute wanker if it wasn't already widely accepted. Green bit: input buffer. A buffer just maintains unity gain of the signal, won't change tonal characteristics whether it's a Jfet, opamp or bjt. I'd imagine newer Tubescreamers use a BJT, the older ones would likely would've been jfets. For whatever reason the NUX seems to use a Jfet. Pink bit sets the high pass filter in distortion stage, Tubescreamers would have a 4.7k resistor here which would give harmonics above 720Hz the full gain of the pedal and anything below that would be affected progressively less. The NUX swaps this for a 3.9k, which just ups that threshold slightly to 868Hz. Yellow bits are just there to bias the circuit. Nominal change from the 510k resistor in the Tubescreamer to 470k. To cut a really long story short, biasing a circuit like this is usually just setting a mid-way point between 9volts and Ground (0v). The one near the output will probably have a small knock-on effect on the pedals output impedance, so it could potentially affect how it behaves with any pedals later in the chain, but I'd be sceptical. Looks like a TS808 to me, just a ballhair of low-end making it through unaffected.

Just for clarity im currently going by the word of a guy called Robert at PedalPCB who traces pedal circuits for a living (no affiliation) and tore one down along side another pedal it was rumoured to be a clone of:

I'm not meaning to shit on it, at all for what it's worth. This is just the pedal scene in a nutshell, and £40 for decent TS clone is a no brainer. I'll check over the schematic later to check if it's a TS808 or TS9 and roughly what tonal changes those two resistor values might yield, if any.

Two resistors are slightly different values and the input buffer is a jfet rather than a bjt. On paper it shouldn't sound any different at all, save for the usual difference you'd find due to tolerance going from one Tubescreamer TS9 to another. I'll see if I can find something from a more credible source, but it's even allegedly built on the same PCB NUX use for their OD-3, which is also a Tubescreamer.

Turns out it's been traced and isnt anything even close the Dumble-in-a-box it's marketed as. But no surprises why its it so popular. It's a Tubescreamer

I can't get on board with the whole "refs are bent" narrative. We hear enough of it up here, usually after a Rangers supporting ref gets photographed celebrating with Rangers fans a few hours after awarding their/his team a dodgy last minute penalty. Nope. All above board and definitely no bias with officials. 😉

Originals seem to go for fucking silly money but it's essentially a Big Muff with an additional germanium tranny that makes it gated. Had a custom order for one and found its really easy to mod to control the gating so it goes from stock V1 Big Muff to stupid amounts of unusable gating. Not my cup of tea tbh but there's admittedly some usable sounds in between. As for the Paul Gilbert Xmas stuff....I'm not listening to any of it again by choice but he gets a free pass for being Paul Gilbert. > 80p Germanium transistor. If I mind right this was the military spec 308v (or 308B?) from your Fuzz Factory? I've just got a few hundred of these for about 13p each. Dunno what I'm doing with them yet but they're really low leakage and great for Rangemasters, so worst case scenario I'll retire to a house in the woods built from Rangemaster pedals.

Dunno like. Kids ain't as prone to getting ill but they're the fucking harbingers of germs. There's one kid left in my sons class right now and while I don't like to make assumptions the gambler in me would bet his parents probably just haven't tested him.

That'll be me fucked then if the lad turns out to have that varient (thankfully doesn't seem to be the case so far). Heard today there's only one kid left in his whole class this week. Rest all off and covid positive. Oldest daughters class has been averaging about 10 still attending from 25 for the last month or so. Hear the guidance is changing from tomorrow so everybody with a positive case in the household needs to isolate, regardless of whether it's Omicron or not. Bit late but fair fucks tbh, makes a lot of sense. Really would've more logical to have kept that as the guidance the whole time, especially knowing there's way too many manky, selfish bastards out there that can't be trusted to even wash their hands, never mind wear masks or self-test a few times a week.

Yeah don't get me wrong I liked the first record, then lost interest until I heard they'd recently drafted in Roger Taylor's son on drums. Singles are entertaining enough but doubt I could sit through a full album of it.

Only ever seen his recent one on Cardiacs. Good to see him flying their flag but fuck me is he a bit of a stuck up tit. Ten minutes of him playing bits.of songs on his phone and saying "you won't get any of this unless you're smart like me or work really hard at trying to like it".

Nah, missus is away on her own. I got to play the "look at me being decent and self-less" card and say "it's fine, you go, I'll watch the kids". Currently 4 cans into a crate of Guinness and gearing up to watch Celtic get battered. Aye, I honestly wouldn't have minded seeing them at any other time. Class riffs, great songwriting and really amusing lyrics. Just a shame about that fucking tiresome falsetto.

Anyone familiar with the 70's Jen Jumbo Fuzz? Hadn't heard of it until a few months back, totally oddity of a pedal. Basically a V1 Triangle Big Muff but gated, except a lot of them were sold with the parts from the circuit missing making it essentially just another Big Muff. Really interesting take on a fairly common pedal circuit. Apparently the gated version is all over the Misfits album Static Age. Some totally fucking useless trivia for you all there.

PCR results back, about as good as could be reasonably expected. 5 negative but the lad is indeed positive. Good news is still no symptoms and it doesn't seem to be Omicron. Gonna be an absolute ballache trying to keep a hypermobile, non-verbal autistic 4 year old isolated from the rest of the family like. Probably just a case of the rest of us doing daily Lateral Flow tests and crossing our fingers.

Doubt we'll hit those numbers. The gameplan is clearly banking on the majority having mild or no symptoms and taking that to mean it's over and they don't need to get tested.

Buying them at £40 a ticket in the midst of a pandemic is what gets me man. Wouldn't mind seeing them but it's not gonna fucking sell out.