Thanks for the info Danny!  Sounds like one of those boxes that you really need an online tool to help you visualize what to do.

I'm currently running three pre's:  A VHT Valvulator GP3, A Mesa Boogie Rectifier Recording Pre and a Peavey Rock Master (loaded with NOS Mullards).  All of these go through my discomboluator (also known as a patch bay) so that I can get my TC Electronics G-Force into the mix before sending the resulting mess to a VHT 2/50/2.   I'm pretty sure that a decent guitarist could get just about any tone they want out of it (especially when all of my modded pedals are added).  My results, however, are still hit or miss of course!  LOL.

Jonbouy

All of these go through my discomboluator

 
Aha, some real technical talk at last!
 
 
Correct me if I'm wrong though I think you were referring to an actual discombobulator which is of course slightly different to what you described there...

Mine's the X2a version (not quite correct).

Wow!  You certainly never disappoint with your replies!  LMAO.  I like it.
 
No, "hit or miss" really has to do with my current abilities, or should I say, inabilities to play as well as I want and use my gear as well as I want.  I'm WAY too left-brained so I've got my setup wired where I can try tons of variety.  Avoiding the normal issue that you end up spending all your time trying new things and never getting anything done (which is all I'm doing right now anyway), I sometimes don't get the best tone I could because I've got too many things going on or the routing is causing some tone-suck.  I try to keep the jacks on my patchbay cleaned (you roll up a small piece of that really fine, black, sandpaper and carefully twist it inside each jack), but the path with the fewest connections is usually the best.  I do use the buffered input on the GP3 so I don't have the roll-off on the highs that you would normally get with longer distances and multiple connections.  I still remember someone interviewing Lenny Kravitz and exclaiming "Wow!  What a tone!  What do you have going on there to get that???"  Lenny turns, points to the amp and says "I'm actually just plugged directly into the amp."  Heh...
 
As for the Mesa, it's really my fun favorite when I don't want to think about pedals and such.  I don't play "live" except at my home but I do have the "live" outputs coming out to the patchbay so I can send 'em to the 2/50/2.  The recording outputs come out as well so I can send those to my DAW (at least once I get that set back up again).
 
I believe the G-Force might have distortion but I would never have used it!  I've always been one to believe that distortion should be handled elsewhere and let the effects units handle effects (which the G-Force does great - I've got the Artist card for it and there's tons of good ideas on that).  I originally bought the G-Force over other contenders because it has intelligent harmonizing - still love it for that.
 
Funny that you should mention Richard Cranium.  I actually met a guy in So. Cal. who legally changed his name to that!  Weird guy - an Albino who always wore black leather, quite the look!
 
If you're curious what my guitar stack looks like, you can check it out HERE.  The Intellifex you can see above the 2/50/2 is still there and STILL doesn't have a power supply or I'd sell it - LOL.

craigb


Wow!  You certainly never disappoint with your replies!  LMAO.  I like it.
 
No, "hit or miss" really has to do with my current abilities, or should I say, inabilities to play as well as I want and use my gear as well as I want.  I'm WAY too left-brained so I've got my setup wired where I can try tons of variety.  Avoiding the normal issue that you end up spending all your time trying new things and never getting anything done (which is all I'm doing right now anyway), I sometimes don't get the best tone I could because I've got too many things going on or the routing is causing some tone-suck.  I try to keep the jacks on my patchbay cleaned (you roll up a small piece of that really fine, black, sandpaper and carefully twist it inside each jack), but the path with the fewest connections is usually the best.  I do use the buffered input on the GP3 so I don't have the roll-off on the highs that you would normally get with longer distances and multiple connections.  I still remember someone interviewing Lenny Kravitz and exclaiming "Wow!  What a tone!  What do you have going on there to get that???"  Lenny turns, points to the amp and says "I'm actually just plugged directly into the amp."  Heh...
 
As for the Mesa, it's really my fun favorite when I don't want to think about pedals and such.  I don't play "live" except at my home but I do have the "live" outputs coming out to the patchbay so I can send 'em to the 2/50/2.  The recording outputs come out as well so I can send those to my DAW (at least once I get that set back up again).
 
I believe the G-Force might have distortion but I would never have used it!  I've always been one to believe that distortion should be handled elsewhere and let the effects units handle effects (which the G-Force does great - I've got the Artist card for it and there's tons of good ideas on that).  I originally bought the G-Force over other contenders because it has intelligent harmonizing - still love it for that.
 
Funny that you should mention Richard Cranium.  I actually met a guy in So. Cal. who legally changed his name to that!  Weird guy - an Albino who always wore black leather, quite the look!
 
If you're curious what my guitar stack looks like, you can check it out HERE.  The Intellifex you can see above the 2/50/2 is still there and STILL doesn't have a power supply or I'd sell it - LOL.

Haha glad you enjoyed the read. :) Man, that's really good stuff there. You got a better arsenal of guitar stuff than I do. LOL! I've sold most of mine now as there just was no reason to keep it. I got lots of amps but don't use any of them. I sort of started buying them and vintage guitars over the years just as investment type things. Now they are taking up every room in my house. LOL!
 
Oh man....Intellifex! That piece was so groundbreaking for the times. Still good to this day really. It's one of the first "instant program changers" ever made...and the sounds are great in it. The Chameleon's I have here are based on the same technology. There's a killer guitar pre for ya...the best transistor pre I've ever used hands down.
 
Yeah you'd hate the distortion in the G-Force....it's not very good for the stuff we do. Good for quickie ideas...but nothing like your tube pre's for sure.
 
LOL @ the guy with that name....priceless....he must have earned it though! Hahaha!
 
15 hour work days for next to no-dough, are you serious?! That's what I'm afraid of here James. I thought of getting out of the studio business a bit. Not totally, I just want to cut down my hours and enjoy life a little more. I work from 6 pm until 9-10 am the next day, religiously just about 7 days a week unless I have a gig. I love it, don't get me wrong...but my arse isn't liking all the sitting I do. I used to have such a nice lil....nevermind. LOL!
 
I got rid of my main building I was using and work out of my house now. I still have the new place down the shore for the big jobs and am there 2 times per week, but I really didn't need the other place. What I did there, I found myself doing here without having to drive there with the same results. So I got rid of it, moved all the gear here and am enjoying things a lot more now. 
 
But I've often thought of what I would do if I weren't doing this. I'd be working some slave job for 15 hours for next to no dough the same as you because well, I never finished school and was happy being a laboror. Left college after 6 months because my dad offered me insane money to work in his business and heck, if you can literally take home $800 AFTER taxes fresh out of high school with the option to own and take over the business, what do you do...stay in college, spend the money and "hope" you end up doing what you went to school for? I just couldn't take that chance...and I wound up staying with my dad's company from 1986 until 2005 when I sold it.
 
I think it would sort of nice to have a 9-5 job with benefits and be done with it. Then again, I don't know what I'd do as music has become my life and it's all I really know. Heck at this point, I thought of taking on a job loading trucks at UPS just so I wouldn't be stuck paying for my health benefits that are now approaching $600 per month! UPS gives you benefits for part time....I figured, go be a loader from 4 am till 9 am and save that $600 a month nut that thankfully I never had to use other than an appendix a few years back. I dunno man....I'm thankful my studio is doing wonderful, but I definitely have to cut the time down that I'm here. The thing is...with this economy, they last thing you want to do is mess with a fine oiled machine, ya know?
 
I tried to cut my work down a bit by getting rid of some of 3 clients I had that were 90 day pay. It's hard to carry someone for that long especially when you have YOUR bills coming in every 30 days. So I tried to work a deal with them, they declined and I walked from them. I come to find out they were worth anywhere from 18k per year to 30k per year. DUMB move Danny! LOL! But, it's been nice not to have their deadlines and misery coming at me every day. Money helps, but if it becomes aggravation, it's not worth it really is it? I have a little more time now and really have been enjoying that.
 
Not to mention, I'm no longer called at 4 am to do something extra for them nor do I have to be at their beckoned call all the time. Great accounts, but tiresome really. I've since been fortunate enough to gain clients that pay instantly on a weekly basis now and enjoy working with them so much more. Then we have the walk-ins and call-ins that need stuff done asap too...so in the end, though I lost a little cash, none of it affected me and I'm enjoying things a lot more these days. I just need to cut down on the hours a bit and I'll be fine...so I can relate to an extent brother. :)
 
Between the work I get here, the work at the other studio and making sure the engineers are doing their jobs, my VH cover band, my original band, the guitar plugin and beta test work I do, taking care of my father...it's a full schedule. LOL! If I were married or had a girlfriend...man, she'd be pretty mad at me. That's probably what will change my life. I'll meet someone that will take my breath away and I'll wind up altering my life to spend time with her. I know that's what's gonna happen....it's finding the right one though which at this point, I literally would have an easier time becoming pregnant! Oh the cash one could get if that were possible eh? LOL! Ok, that's just creepy and though I'm a tough lil guy, I ain't as tough as a woman because there's no way I could handle that! LOL! :)
 
-Danny

  Danny- I hope you can take a breather there. A person can't go on like that forever.
 Having a regular job has some benefit but it can also drive a person insane. The one way I cope with it is I tell myself that even though it's monotonous, monotony is so much better than the sh*t hitting the fan. I mean, some of the things that could happen to break the monotony might not be good things know what I mean?


 I think most people are creatures of habit,even the creative ones who want their "freedom". Most of us don't like change....for goodness sakes look at the people who are still using Sonar 9.

  Life isn't a one-size-fits-all either....sometimes I think about getting a larger space and putting out a shingle but I usually talk myself out of it. I hope you find a happy medium there that fits with what you like and can still get the rest you need.

I don't like to talk about that stuff and I resent it when people refuse to evaluate factual information without it being delivered by someone with a known pedigree. I just think that is laziness. That is why I like to talk tech and facts and see if someone can step up to the plate and have an actual conversation. If they roll back on their heels and don't want to consider the facts... I'm not interested in making anyone feel better about refusing to think. I think that's why a lot of folks struggle to find ways to denigrate some of the stuff I attempt to share here... I don't coddle people and some people get angry when they are not catered too.

 
 
One criticism that you would dismiss as 'heckling' due to selectively choosing the parts you don't mind hearing is that you will often demand that people furnish YOU with these types of facts and yet when you are involved with various things that you personally enjoy there is every bit as much fantasy and sentiment as a real good audiophile and there is a distinct absence of supporting evidence to support anything you say, even when it is asked for.  The example lately would be the DIY mic body you've been bigging up. 
 
Laziness is indicated here by the observation that so often you will only choose the easy bits of a conversation to address.
 
The comments about your personal experience within the autistic spectrum however do serve as an explanation to much of what I find exasperating about your interaction and have been enlightening.
 
Thank you for sharing that, that's why I don't like the lazy observations that you are being hated and your suggestions that some might be elated at the idea of pointing out some of the behaviour you engage in that is difficult to understand, there are some aspects of humanity aside from the point scoring that occurs between us where I am not the ogre you'd likely find it more convenient to class me as.
 
Life affects us all Mike and we all have different obstacles to navigate.  Hate is something I'd deal with very sparingly as I have not had much occasion with it previously and will certainly never extend to anyone I'd engage with on a forum.

Starise


 Hey Mike, I did edit my post. I kind of though off the cuff a little here. I know of another person who reminds me of you. I see and communicate with this person regularly. He is a medical doctor who graduated at the top of his class and he has a high functioning form of Autism. You two are probably not similar but some things remind me of you and I kind of jumped to a possible conclusion. FWIW my wife thinks I have ADHD and I think she might be right.

I think what I was attempting to say was that some people are wired to think differently and so they don't always connect with others in a way that makes sense to them. I guess you can label that anything you want, but essentially it means that two people might be talking about A and B and someone else comes along with point C which to them makes complete sense but to others it might not seem to apply. I seen where you were coming from with the theory but I couldn't really fit it into my context right then.

If this were the only post where there was some friction I would have been more surprised but there is somewhat of a history and I think this magnified the  negativity in the posts here. The fact is Danny has a lot of real world hands on experience with guitar that he doesn't necessarily always tie in with a theory. He has tried things and found a solution that works...you OTOH feel qualified to comment on certain aspects of the sound we get from guitars by nature of your knowledge of the components in an amp. Some of your conclusions are spot on but none of us are 100% well rounded in every discipline, so I think there needs to be some give and take. If you have an idea that isn't holding up then the most sensible thing to do would be for those who don't agree to show how and why the idea is either hogwash or agree that it works.

I don't want to speak for Danny, but it looks like he feels some frustration at what he perceives as you who are viewed as a newbee to him coming into a discussion and offering input you are unqualified to give. I think you have qualification to comment on the electronics end to some degree but when it comes to techniques and real world use then Danny has a definite edge...in any case I never intended for this to become any kind of a comparison between you and Danny.

I think the best way for a forum to operate is to listen to all views and understand that if Donald duck wants to comment here he can. Respectful disagreement can and does help in any kind of a discussion. Shooting someone down because they come from left field or because you personally don't like them,bullying people to show some kind of dick measurement or because you yourself are miserable just makes for a kind of sad entertainment that has bad results for all involved.

Can't we all just get along?

 

Excellent post, Starise. Spot on in everything. Here's my issue. The discussion was going perfectly well until I jumped in and quoted Mike. Again I apologize to YOU for that. Regardless of the technical information being correct or not, this sort of commenting seems to come up way too often in places where it shouldn't with him. I made it a point to quote each part of his post because it simply had absolutely nothing to do with anything and was so far off the mark, I couldn't believe what I was reading.
 
In reality, it would be like me jumping into a camera discussion and adding a bunch of technical information that was irrelevant that also didn't address the problem with any kind of remedy. I admit to being wrong for allowing things of this nature to bother me, but when you keep on seeing it and seeing it, it strikes a nerve. Then you'll see Mike attack someone like Karl (FBB) or some other poor soul for no apparent reason. To me, Mike said more in his last post that made sense than he did in that electronic post that had absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand.
 
Did gain vs. square wave need to come up? Did we need to bring a silly scope into the discussion? Do we find it credible to listen to people that talk yet do not lead by examples? I don't know about you or others reading, but I'm going to get guitar lessons from a guy that can truly play over the guy that can't that just knows a bunch of theory because he went to school for it.
 
I don't know about you, but I'm going to listen to the guy that has a great tone that may not have a clue how it all works internally before I listen to the guy that posts acoustic guitar videos singing old classics. Granted, if a person comes on here and knows what they are talking about and makes sense in a language anyone can understand, their skill level matters NOT.
 
I have tons of friends that can talk the talk and know their stuff. But for some reason, they can't seem to nail things either because they are not physically skilled to, or they may not have the resources to do so. That doesn't discredit them...at least they can talk in the same conversation and truly can deliver the proper communication it takes to get their points across.
 
Take Zungle for example. He made a mention of his name in mine in the same sentence etc. Though I found that an awesome compliment, the dude is without a doubt, as experienced as me or anyone else that has a grasp on sounds that have loads of gain in them. He spoke in a language anyone could understand and did not attempt to sound more intelligent than he really is with technical jargon that had nothing to do with your issues. Even if I disagreed with him, his opinion and experience is completely valid.
 
This is the problem I have with audio discussions as well as reading books by people "in the know." This stuff has lots of variables and aesthetics. This we all know. But in my opinion there is no reason to send people on a wild goose chase because a person chooses to talk like a scientist. Yes, there is science involved in this. Yes, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer and will admit that sometimes I simply cannot comprehend things nor do I have the attention span to learn them....yes, I'm a theoretical dope and do not have the skills I should have. BUT....I sincerely feel I make some decent music and have good results production wise, (even if my clients and I are the only ones who believe it) so I must know something? We don't need goose chases. What we need are results and examples of remedies.
 
I type novels that not everyone reads. I know that....but I also share examples all the time backing up the things I say. Whether someone agrees or likes what I do will always be subjective, but I back up everything I say...I don't just talk about it or lose people because I feel like intimidating them with words. It just doesn't have to be that way man...and when someone comes into a discussion and does that, it's a voice for the sake of a voice. It's no longer an opinion. When it happens in several areas and you see it constantly, it's like the Pete dude that bashes everyone into the ground, brags about a $5000 Dumbal amp, and a POD being better than my 18k rack "of junk" and then posts a song full of loops in the forum and people welcome the dude with open arms. How credible does that make him? See my point? It's misleading, it's wrong, and his delivery as well as Mikes, need work as they come off totally pompous and arrogant for no reason at times.
 
You ever see me just strike at someone for asking a question about something or cop a tude with them for asking a question or presenting something? Right...and you never will. When I strike...someone is ludicrously polluting the forum at will with garbage or has attacked me in a manner I feel is done in cowardice. Someone has to speak up and tell them they are out of their tree...might as well be me because well, I actually care. :) 
 
We can all get along just fine when certain others can respect the experience as well as the feelings of others on this forum. Anyone denying the apparent "snarkiness" of someone like Mike has been on the wrong forum. In turn, he deserves it when it comes back to him as well as when someone calls him on things. Most times, he starts a confrontation and runs away because he doesn't have an answer or he's been owned. He'll give you several other reasons why, but those of us that know, understand how he works. This is common with him. Or he'll fire back at you with something totally off the wall or bring something up that happened in the past just to rattle your cage.
 
You'd be surprised at the long list of members who would post "+1" if they really wanted to. But then we'd be wrong for "eye-poking" and "gang tacking" when in reality, it's like a neighborhood. Act like an arse, the neighborhood gang tackles you until you get a clue. We don't see enough of that here and sometimes we should. Nothing wrong with majority policing. When someone is wrong, the masses should speak up. When the mods see the community fighting back against one person, I bet they do something to that one person. Hopefully it doesn't come to that though....the neighborhood usually has enough of an impact to where someone knows when they've been a jack-a-lope and curbs their issues. :) But I digress...
 
-Danny