Odds And Ends

A little roundup music please.

I plan it all and I take my place
You break your promise all over the place
You promised to love me, but what do I see
Just you comin’ and spillin’ juice over me
Odds and ends, odds and ends
Lost time is not found again

“Odds And Ends” Bob Dylan

Bob is right, you know. Lost time is not found again.

Steve Cropper and Felix Cavaliere have been working together and have a record coming out.

This soul summit came about as a result of conversations between Cropper and producer/songwriter Jon Tiven. When Tiven moved to Nashville several years ago, he asked Cropper what he was up to. Cropper replied that he was focusing on live dates with Booker T & the MGs and the Blues Brothers, but harbored the desire to record some new music. But who would sing? The answer, it turned out, was Cavaliere, who, like Cropper and Tiven, now lived in Nashville. In fact Cropper and Cavaliere were no strangers: they had, with a few other well-known musicians, put together a band to play special events. The two hadn’t written together before, but agreed it would be fun to try.

The writing process began at Tiven’s Hormone Studios, followed by the recording of two songs, “One of Those Days” (the album’s lead track) and “Love Appetite.” Drummer Chester Thompson, a veteran of John Fogerty, Frank Zappa, Genesis and Frank Black, signed on as drummer, and suggested a bass player, his friend Shake Anderson, who was Curtis Mayfield’s protg. The assemblage grew to include two backup singers, Mark Williams and N’nandi Bryant. And that was it. No special guest stars. As Tiven wrote in the notes, “This isn’t one of those albums where you have to guess who’s doing what — every guitar lick is Steve, every keyboard is Felix, and all the songs are originals.”

To me, that sounds like something worthwhile-looking forward to that one.

Gary Grainger has posted some info about his effects set up.

I think non guitar players would be surprised to know the amount of effort and sometimes angst that goes in to the “tone”.

I have all of these pedals mounted on a piece of ¾” ply that was left over from a job at home. I got some heavy duty Velcro and use that to attach the pedals to the board – sometimes though the Velcro is stronger than the glue holding the rubber base of the pedal to the pedal itself. I’ve attached a handle to the top edge of the board to make it easier to carry. I’ve mounted a 4 way mains distribution board and use a mains adaptor with a spider device to power all of the pedals apart from the phaser, which has a different mains input and has its own mains transformer.

The pedals are connected by a variety of patch leads and jack to jack connectors (straight and cranked). The GK pedal at the top of the picture is the channel/reverb pedal from my GK amp – it carries out the same function in my current set up.

I am not 100% sure about the order of these pedals yet, but it will be fairly easy to make changes if I want to. I quite like the idea of having a proper pedal board/case, and there are some on the market here in the UK via ebay that are pretty reasonable – though “reasonable” depends on how financially stable you are!

When I recently put all of this stuff together, I had 3 hours were I wasn’t getting a signal to the amp. I got extremely frustrated and tried each pedal one at a time, adding pedals to the chain. After walking away from it, my son said “What about the connectors?”. And he was right – one of the cranked connectors which doesn’t appear to have any moving parts was faulty.

As I’ve mentioned in the piece about my amp, I can and do play without effects, but I do like the variety of sounds that they offer me. I’d consider adding a wah and a good volume pedal at some point in the future.

Read the rest over at Gary’s place.

Speaking of gear, Tris Mahaffay has a new triple output amp head.

Yup! it has THREE separate independent power amp output stages (with volume control for each w/ line level effects loops) Rated at 33 watts each output ..think of it, you can run 3 of your favorite cabs or varying sets like 2×12 s , 2×10 s cabs or ANY combination set of speakers powered up all off the SAME amp x3.

How about THREE 4×12 cabs ? LEFT and RIGHT cabs, Stereo!!! and Center DRY!!

Any speaker configuration you can think of. You will never have to worry about impedance matching or what cab or speakers to use. Use them all!

Tris notes that most big league players use some type of multi-amp set up and his new head is a way to accomplish the same thing with one box. Haven’t tried it but, here’s what I know; Tris builds stuff well, hand wired and done with care and, he has a definite knack for tone. So, it’s an interesting piece of gear.

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Tags: Bob Dylan, felix cavaliere, gary grainger, Guitar, Jack, Music, Pat, Steve Cropper, Tris Mahaffay