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Trying Out Some OF My Overdrives For Slide... Wanna See Them?

2K views 28 replies 12 participants last post by  Speck_WFTR 
#1 · (Edited)
Any questions you might have about any pedals here I will try and answer them.

This is my board trying out my old original SansAmp, a Barber Burn Unit and a Barber Tone Pump. Lately I have had a Honey Bee OD and a Zen Drive Gold in the slot.

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Some of the pedals I tested out. The mini pink one is a Shini Fuzz MHammer style.

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More OD. My tubescreamers and an old Boss OD.

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A couple of fuzzes I like.

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These are the switches on the SansAmp. It is actually pretty nice. I have had it for many many years. I don't
remember the last time I used it. At least 10 years.

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#9 ·
It's not really appropriate for slide, but that Foxrox Octron is a nice pedal.
As Lowell George, Paul Barrere, and Bonnie Raitt have all amply demonstrated, you can't go wrong playing slide with a compressor in front of whatever you decide to use for any additional drive. Myself, I'm partial to CMOS inverter-based drives for that sort of thing. The old Anderton Tube Sound Fuzz, the Way Huge Red Llama, and the EHX Hot Tubes fall into that category. A number of Laney amps also use a CMOS inverter for their drive channel.

Of course the shiznazz for slide is a horseshoe pickup. Originally developed for lap-steel, though they seemed to be strongly associated Rickenbacker basses, the strings run through the sensing area rather than over it. It senses up-down and side-to-side movement of the string, and provides added sensitivity as the note is decaying, allowing the player to "work" the note's decay. Think Ry Cooder and Blake Mills. Jason Lollar is one of the only people who currently produce them, that I know of, though I'm sure there must be some micro-businesses that do.

If a person wants to play slide, you can do a helluva lot worse than using a harmonic tremolo of some form.
 
#18 ·
For me it is multiple pedals, and two drive pedals. Any more and the noise gets to be too much to handle. So I use the Minstrel as the main lower gain sound, and add another drive to amp it up. I settled on the Barber Tone Pump, the Zen Drive Gold, and the 'Lil Mo as the additional drive pedal. The Zen Drive seems to give up the most for the least noise. The Barber sounds really good but it seems to be noisy, or has the potential for noise. The 'Lil Mo will get fizzy if I am not careful.

When I gang up 2 drives I make sure the 2nd drive I engage is at least as loud as the first drive, and usually slightly louder. This drive might be going into the first drive.
 
#27 ·
And Blake Mills demonstrating what a horseshoe pickup can do for slide.
I came here looking for info about what the Barber Tone Pump actually sounds like or is based on if it's not completely unique but when I listened to some of your first 'Coodercaster' guy video all I could think of was Blake Mills so not surprised to see you followed up with another video of Blake also playing in a similar style ;)
 
#17 · (Edited)
The 9 I have is the DSX Turbo. It has a 4 position knob that changes the focus of the pedal. For example, the bottom position
has lots of bass in it, the top position will be an 808 which has the mids and not much bottom. So you can find the eq setting you like. In my rig now, the TS808 was thin and fizzy. This is all low volume higher gain stuff and very much just my issue with my setup. When I crank the 808 up, it gets noisy. My TS808 has an old JRC4558D opamp installed. For the mojo...
 
#25 · (Edited)
This is another slide sound I really like. He used Dumble amps, and I have a Fuchs ODS 30, which is a Dumble clone. Apparently.



Live:

I made a 4049-inverter-based overdrive for Lindley when he was in town for Bluesfest, damn near 20 years back, because I thought it nailed his lap steel sound. I gave it to him and he was pleasant about it, but I have no idea what he ever did with it. For all I know it sits in a pile of stuff belonging to a roadie. That said, I should have loaned mine to you when you were over yesterday. They're nice for low drive needs.

The Ibanez MT10 Mostortion has a few things going for it, that set it apart from TS-type pedals. Folks can be distracted by its use of a fairly different op-amp chip (the Bi-Mos CA3260), but it:
- uses a higher clipping threshold, via use of more diodes, like the Timmy, King of Tone, and similar
- uses a less pronounced low-end rolloff than the TS and SD-1 (268hz vs 720hz)
- provides 3-band EQ


And Blake Mills demonstrating what a horseshoe pickup can do for slide.
 
#23 · (Edited)
It's not really appropriate for slide, but that Foxrox Octron is a nice pedal.
As Lowell George, Paul Barrere, and Bonnie Raitt have all amply demonstrated, you can't go wrong playing slide with a compressor in front of whatever you decide to use for any additional drive. Myself, I'm partial to CMOS inverter-based drives for that sort of thing. The old Anderton Tube Sound Fuzz, the Way Huge Red Llama, and the EHX Hot Tubes fall into that category. A number of Laney amps also use a CMOS inverter for their drive channel.

Of course the shiznazz for slide is a horseshoe pickup. Originally developed for lap-steel, though they seemed to be strongly associated Rickenbacker basses, the strings run through the sensing area rather than over it. It senses up-down and side-to-side movement of the string, and provides added sensitivity as the note is decaying, allowing the player to "work" the note's decay. Think Ry Cooder and Blake Mills. Jason Lollar is one of the only people who currently produce them, that I know of, though I'm sure there must be some micro-businesses that do.

If a person wants to play slide, you can do a helluva lot worse than using a harmonic tremolo of some form.
I had not tried the Octron 3 on slide but after watching Robert Randolph's Rig Rundown from 2011 he used a Cusack Screamer Fuzz (anyone have one?). Remembering you mentioning the Octron 3 I played around with the it. If I dial out the bass, I can get some great tones with the O3 into the Minstrel. The octave knob acts sort of like a tone knob. Thanks for the tip.

This is a cool lesson or tip on a Ry Cooder doing a slide "string drag" thing.

 
#24 ·
Some time ago I bought a Fathead ribbon mic (with the Lundahl transformer). I have never plugged it in, but I am going to
be doing some recording soon, so I will test it out with my pedals. I may post the sound files here if anyone would be interested
what I get these pedals to sound like interpreted by the ribbon mic.
 
#26 ·
Here's another guy with great slide tone (and control of his instrument). Lap steel, so perhaps not completely applicable. And of course, unobtanium amps.




Barber Tone Pump and Burn Unit, the SansAmp, the Zendrive Gold and the Aluminum Falcon II.


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When I hear people talking about 'stacking overdrives', I never took it quite so literally. Cool pics.
 
#29 ·
... an AC Booster maybe?
(i like mine more with an EL84 amp)
 
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