Seriously considering taking some of my garage sale or cracked cymbals and hitting them with a million drill holes to see if it achieves the same effect...
...this doesn't sound like any fun at all

penningtron wrote: Mon Oct 18, 2021 1:53 pm

twelvepoint wrote: Zildjian L80 quiet cymbals

I have a 20" 'ride' and it mostly does what it needs to do, and would probably sound acceptable at a very quiet gig if needed. But that's mostly going by the 'ding ding' sound as it would be useless to crash on.

Definitely not a fun use of $150!

Yeah totally. One may be able to use it playing a coffee shop gig with acoustic guitars, but it's not a rick sound or anything. The 18" "crash" is worse. Hi hats are pretty good though, maybe owing to the fact that one doesn't expect them to have long, complex decays?

I'm basically ok with this purchase, because it's a lot less than a full on electronic kit.

Roland TD-27 drum module.

For a mid-ranged drum module, it can't be beat. There are tons of options to adjust your midi drums to the right feel: from sensitivity of each pad to determining the height of your top and bottom hi hats for the choke, to pad compression. The module supports all kinds of Roland and non-Roland pads. This is just scratching the surface.

There's master stereo out, great for practice or live. There are easy-to-access knobs for pad volume/mixing on the fly, change the muting effects, or the instrument. Each drum kit has overhead, room, 3 types of effects, and compression for output. Direct output doesn't use the master volume and is used for recording purposes. You can adjust outboard routing, from which effects get routed out to which output. There's a ton more options for outboard routing.

Don't like the drum samples? there's tons of free and paid samples by third parties out there, some of which are pretty amazing. And did I mention you can tweak them to your liking? Oh, you want to use your own samples? You can do that too! Don't have samples for velocity? You can make your own!

In my opinion, the best thing about the TD-27 is that it is also a USB audio interface with 28 tracks out: 2 stereo overheads, 2 stereo room, mono/stereo for each pad. Combine that with the onboard effects, you can get all the compression you need before dropping tracks. Oh, and it supports a second crash and 3 extra pads, plus 3 midi pad ports and a pedal for volume/effects. Its about half the price of the TD-50, uses the same samples, but doesn't have the individual TSR outs and faders for the main pads. Well worth the money for a home recording and practice!

Caline Blue Sky CP-12 OD pedal.

This is the cheapest pedal I've ever bought, and I fucking love it. Full disclosure: I haven't just got it, I got it last year because I wanted an OD and it was so cheap and sounded decent on demos, but it has just returned to my board. I got it hoping it would be a transparentish low-gain drive, and it does that fine. Clean boost, too - it's also surprisingly good with the gain at 3 o clock (more than that starts to get noisy) - so much so that I'm half-tempted to get another one - and it's great at goosing distortion/fuzzes towards broken speakery sounds. Best of all, it's really dynamic, you can get from just past clean to some satisfying amp-like saturation just by through pick attack.

I feel a bit guilty about its cheapness, and the fact that I got it on a whim cos I was bored, but damn, it's perfect for me.

Montreal Assembly Count to Five

Wow, this is fun. Mode 2 is where I seem to be having the most success as I like the random playback function. I need to hook it up to an expression pedal as I think there is an entirely new level of wackiness that that can unlock.

Balls Effects Beluga Octave Fuzz: SHIT YEEEEAH I'M JIMMY HENDRIX

From the small questions thread:

tommy wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 8:49 am These are both pretty much the exact design I have with the tiny removeable filter. Like I said, they are way better than your standard Walgreens affair, but I'm hoping one or more of those slightly different designed ones (Eargasm, EarPeace, Earasers, Westone TRU, etc.) are better. Those ETY style seem to especially affect guitar, so much so I can't really hear any nuance to what I'm playing. I end up pulling them out of my ear a bit or not using them altogether.

I decided to try out EarPeace that FM penningtron mentioned recently getting. I went with the $39 EarPeace Pros in the middle (called High) -19dB reduction ones. After using them with myself (JMP 50-watt with volumes on 5, 4x12 Marshall cab) and a drummer (70s Ludwig kit) last night, I can say they are a noticeable step forward from the E-A-R silicone lawn dart looking ones I've had up until now. The reduction is pretty even without sounding too dull. I'd recommend these. Personally, I kinda wish I'd gone with the normal (called Medium) -16dB ones as I think it would suit my needs perfectly. Either way, these are going to get some use. My ears defo need a break.

I'll report back again after I've used these to see High on Fire this weekend.

WeStartToDrift wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:51 pm Montreal Assembly Count to Five

Wow, this is fun. Mode 2 is where I seem to be having the most success as I like the random playback function. I need to hook it up to an expression pedal as I think there is an entirely new level of wackiness that that can unlock.

Buddy of mine brought his over while I was working on a mix last February.
Strapped it to the patchbay and wooooooooo, what a trip! Really fun stuff.

Example from a youtube vinyl rip of the album:

Picked up an NOS Shure PS1A phantom power supply on the Bay for $39 CAD.
Not the most exciting thing, BUT, all my mic pres are custom rack jobs, with no phantom power, and for the rare occasion I'm using a pair of condensers this will come in very handy. Also cool because I can place it wherever works best, rather than sending shitty(less than 48) phantom supply down the tie lines.

Also waiting for a second DOD Gunslinger to arrive. Insanely good dirt pedal.
Been a long time since I found myself thinking "hey, I should have a backup of this".

Big ups to FM Isodore Nabi for pointing me towards JDS Labs. Their Atom DAC+ sounds great!