All about Static of the Gods » vox

i strained my thorax.

ben — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:33:26 +0000

i’ve been fighting what I thought was just a pulled back muscle for a few weeks now. but normal life, hauling gear, playing shows and whatnot have gotten the best of me. a good ol’ thoracic strain coupled with a nice trapezius strain, I’m stuck laying down for days on end.
after two emergency room visits, multiple tests and lots of pills, I’m on the road to recovery. the moral of the story is, take care of yourself… cause the pills are nice.

our beloved Vox AC30 which we thought was fixed is acting up again. mike’s working on it, trying to get it up and running asap.

getting this record done, slowly but surely. more updates soon…

ben.

the twin

Pietro — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:17:45 +0000

We spent the better part of Saturday on Amp patrol. We dropped off the AC30 at Boston Guitar Works to get it looked at and to get a new reverb tank installed. They’re the place to go if you need a boutique amp and have some amazing gear. After spending a some time perusing and drooling over their amps, we decided to head back into town to make the Fender Twin acquisition.

We’ve used various Fenders in the past, but this is by far the nicest sounding one I’ve heard. It has the perfect Fender sound – and its reverb is just beautiful. Once in the van, we made a beeline back to your recording space to give it a full run through at full volume.

Besides it being a damn loud amp, it sounds “just right”. Just plug in and play – not much else is needed. After spending a lot of time struggling, and not succeeding in getting the right sound for a few of our songs, this amp got us there in a few minutes.

One of the many good things about the Rick that Ben is playing, is the way it feeds back. That’s also why he’s standing so close while he’s playing (i’m sure his ears will thank him later). Once it’s starts to feedback, you get an amazing lush wall of sound which fills up space so nicely.

Now, if we only had an AB/Y switch that was quite so we could get both channels pumping at once. We actually have 2, but they are way too noisy for your liking. The Divided by 13 Switchazel looks real nice, but it’s also $275.00 – i think it’s going to have to wait.

Once we get the AC30 back (hopefully later in the week), these two amps will be singing together proudly.

Now the “30 day” clock is ticking…

the tank is empty

Pietro — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:53:21 +0000

So we finally got around to taking a look at the reverb tank in the AC30 (that’s the thing that make’s all the cool, dreamy sounds). Sure enough, the thing is all sorts of broke.

There is supposed to be 3 springs stretched from one end of the tank to the other, but none (which is what we have) is decidedly less than the aforementioned 3. I’ve read reports of other AC30 owners having similar issues, so it seems that the stock reverb tank is pretty cheap.

I spent awhile today trying to track a new one down, but I didn’t have much luck – at least not if i wanted one sooner than “a few weeks” anyway. I think our best bet now is to bring it in the Mr. Amp Dr. and she if they can get it fixed sooner.

In the end, the amp needs to get looked at anyway, so I now is as good a time as any. That Fender Twin we’ve been looking at may need to be aquired sooner rather than later to take the AC30’s place.

You’re really cr[amp]ing my style

Pietro — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:34:07 +0000

Well, the vox doesn’t seem to be any happier today than yesterday. It’s still not sounding right, and to add insult to injuiry, the reverb just just decided to stop working. Loosing the reverb in and of itself isn’t a game changer since we use a Holy Grail for most reverb duties, but it does point to there being something not good happening somewhere deep inside it’s mysterious innards.

As far as we can tell, the tubes look good, but I’m thinking that replacing and upgrading them anyway isn’t such a bad idea. The tubes would not account for the reverb crapping out, but it would be one less thing to worry about.

On a side note, who the hell designed the layout of the newer AC30’s. I highly doubt that it’s a similar design to was used during the classical vox years, becuase they make it pretty damn difficult just to get at the tubes. I’m no amp designer, but c’mon – you can do better than that!

fender jaguar

Pietro — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:26:53 +0000

About half of the songs we’re recording will feature some fabulous Fender Baritone Jaguar; in some songs it plays a leading role. It’s beautiful sounding guitar with a ton of character and depth.

Trying to record it though, is a little bit more difficult. It has a tone somewhere between a guitar and bass, though it definitely leans more towards the lower, bassier side, since most of the tone we user comes from a bass rig (Ampeg SVT-VR head and 6×12 cab).

Lately, we’ve found that we get the best recorded tone by also playing through a Vox AC30, which adds some bite, clarity and high end responce that isn’t there through the bass setup.

To record the bass side of things, we end up with 4 tracks; 2 mics (AKG D112 and Shure Beta 52), a direct from the SansAmp, and direct from the head. On the AC30, we’ve found that a Rode NT5 right against the grill sounds great, helped out by the old stand by Shure SM57, and a Shure KSM27 a little further away.

Anyway, i’ll post some audio samples of what all this sounds like shortly. But for now, it’s time to enjoy what’s left of a beautiful sunday evening.