Forgotten Genre Productions

I recently came across a boutique pedal maker by the name of Lovepedal. Initially I liked the aesthetics and vibe of the pedals but then as I watched some of the demo videos I was taken by the tone of these pedals. I have been wanting to have a tone night at the studio for some of my high end clients that are looking for more of a refined and pure tone than your average boss pedal. I also was killed by playing a DR. Z Carmen Ghia that absolutely ruined me for any other amps. The tone that came from this was quite possibly the best guitar tone I’ve ever heard. Since the amp was over a grand and my egnater rebel 20 is nothing to laugh at I started thinking about pedals. I called Sean Michael who designs and builds Lovepedals and next think you know I had 2 lovely boutique pedals on there way. I went with the Eternity Fuse and the Kalamazoo. The Kalamazoo I had to have because of the chrome finish and the glass know intrigued me. The glass know alows you to add high end to your tone without effecting the bass or low end. The pedal sounds great and reaaly gives me an excited edge to the tone. You have many options of tone with the 4 controls on the Kalamazoo. It gives me a really thick saturated tone that seems on the verge of feedback but the edge is controlled by the volume knob on my guitar. So I can roll up the volume to go over the edge or roll it town slightly to reign it in. it also gives a great drive tone for power chords. The Eternity became my favorite. It has a tone and a vibe to it that has won me over. This pedal to is thick but with the glass know allows my tone to be still chimy. It doesn’t turn your overdrive to mush like some cheap pedals do. You can still hear all the separate strings ringing out. Now again I have to give you this disclaimer. I typically do not go for tones that are super distorted. I am not a heavy metal guy and I hate that buzzy line 6 bumble bee tone. So when I set up my peadls I am looking for interesting saturation and harmonic color. I tend to set the drive lower and the level hotter. This is just what I’m into. It is possible that you could own these pedals and get something totally different tone wise from them. That is cool. It is fun to have vanilla and chocolate. Feel free to check these clips out and if you are a tone geek, contact me and I will put you on the list for a tone night.

I just saw this new item that was debuted at the Musikmesse Conference in Germany. It is a great tool for tracking guitars at home with some finesse. It is a little pricey but the remote feature is very cool. Enjoy

I came across this video in a typical meandering social media progression. My old acquaintance Charlie Peacock has a blog that I suggest you check out, that he referenced on his facebook page which showed up on my news feed. From there I watched this video and discovered That the female here is Joy Williams who I did a show with years ago when I was touring with Waterdeep. They loved Joy and already had prior knowledge of her work but I heard her for the first time that night. She has a beautiful voice and has teamed up with this gent, John Paul White. This song is hauntingly beautiful and gets me in the way much of the Deadman music gets me. Also to note is the use of the Heil PR20 mic on Joy’s voice. As some of you may know I am a big fan of the Heil mics and have and use quite a few of them in the studio myself. Actually we used the same mic on Jennifer Lewis’ voice for the Trash & Glory project. Of course we used the gold grill and refered to it as the “Diva” mic.I will have to do more research on the Civil Wars but for now enjoy this video and check out Charlie’s post of the background of  it here.

 I realize I have been hung up on a lot of guitar toys lately but this one takes the cake, or at least fills a gap for something I have been waiting for. As all you gear savvy engineers out there know NAMM 2010 just wrapped up in Anaheim CA. For all you unsavvy engineers. NAMM is the trade show for the music products industry. This is the time when all the manufacturers show new gear and get you hyped up about it. Electro Harmonix released the Deluxe Memory Boy and a few other cool pedals but it is the Deluxe Memory Boy that catches my attention. Heres why. Back in the day (the zeros you know, naughts if you will.) I had a line 6 DD4 delay which I liked. It had some great sounds and you had the ability to have 3 different programs on one pedal. It also had the looper feature blah, blah, blah (not something I use or care about) of course one of the handiest features was the tap tempo which allowed you to quickly adjust to fit into different songs and helped me to pretend or at least try to convince others that I was playing the same song that they were. As is the case with much of life eventually the DD4 hit the wall due to over use and abuse by friendly borrowers and my self. I am not a big Line 6 fan as many of you know and this pretty much sealed their fate in regards to my meaningless support of their products. Their was no way I was spending another 250 or 300 bones to replace the delay. Of course the only delays that I used consistently in the DD4 was the analog w/ mod settings which consequentially was modelled after the EHX memory man. So in my travels I discovered the MXR Carbon Copy which I absolutely love. It is a tone machine and has a warmth and realness that I just like from the get go. I decided to replace the DD4 with a carbon copy. There was only one down side to this plan and that was tap tempo or the lack thereof as the case may be. I even considered some day adding another Carbon Copy and having one set to a lead longer delay and the other set to a shorter slap back kind of thing. Since my Egnater Rebel 20 has no reverb the extra option was even more intriguing. Then I discovered the Memory Boy and the Memory Toy from EHX. 2 different updated versions of the old Memory Man pedals. They were affordable and had that great analog tone. I thought that the memory boy was a little hard to control with the modulation being a little over the top for me but the Memory Toy was just right. I was demoing one for a while and liked what I was getting from it but felt some innate sense that I should just wait. I had long since given up on the tap tempo delay. Alas as I was dutifully trolling the NAMM releases to keep informed I came across my dream, The Deluxe Memory Boy WITH tap tempo people!!! It’s too good to be true. So now I have to wait untill they actually release them. Feast your ears on this video clip.