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Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2026 9:33 pm
by Frankie99
OK - I get a 90 break in my choring for the evening so I run out to the practice space. Fire everything up. Fuck that sounds terrible. What happened?
Turn off one amp, listen only to the other. Sounds fine.
Same process in reverse, this amp sounds like garbage. Tone knobs aren't doing what they should. High pitched weirdness at volumes there where it should be clean, quiet. Ok - signal chain, anything unplugged, backwards? No? everything is off on the pedal board. Fuck with all kinds of settings for forever on the pedals to see which one might be causing it? Like a component dying? Can't make this thing sound right at all.
Fucking preamp tubes? that's some weird ass microphonic feedback at high levels and DAMN it sound BAD.
Turn off amp, inspect all connections in the back, turn on, check tubes, all *looks* fine. Those tubes are less than 5 yrs old, surely that's not it.
Plug in direct to amp, bypass everything. Hot damn that sounds good! But what's wrong? No pedals on, no LEDs, but it's the pedalboard somewhere.
I start going through and disconnecting everything one by one when I get to the end of row one and see a long patch cable that shouldn't be there going to.....I remember, oh yeah, I patched in a wah pedal way over there to test. Haha it's cocked all the way and on isn't it? You dummy.
35? minutes dicking around and that's all it was.
I need a wah pedal with an LED lol.
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2026 12:58 pm
by llllllllllllllllllll
I feel this. Every single time I’ve had ‘amp’ issues at a show it was because some fucking pedal or power supply or cable or something. With every pedal you add an additional chance of failure.
I fixed this by adjusting my guitar style to where I could do everything with an overdrive (that sounds more raucous than it is because of the way the amp is set), a Jimmy Page style slapback, and a tuner. The guitar straight into the amp is my baseline sound and nothing ever stays on a whole song.
I started a different project and still stick to that basic setup because I think it just sounds better. It does take some experimenting but as long as your group’s basic sound is filled out w/o a PA you will sound good anywhere. In my old band our practice space was so big we had problems in smaller rooms, but I eventually figured out that I just needed a 4x12 or 2x12 under a 15-20 watt amp.
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2026 11:43 pm
by losthighway
Frankie99 wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2026 9:33 pm
OK - I get a 90 break in my choring for the evening so I run out to the practice space. Fire everything up. Fuck that sounds terrible. What happened?
Turn off one amp, listen only to the other. Sounds fine.
Same process in reverse, this amp sounds like garbage. Tone knobs aren't doing what they should. High pitched weirdness at volumes there where it should be clean, quiet. Ok - signal chain, anything unplugged, backwards? No? everything is off on the pedal board. Fuck with all kinds of settings for forever on the pedals to see which one might be causing it? Like a component dying? Can't make this thing sound right at all.
Fucking preamp tubes? that's some weird ass microphonic feedback at high levels and DAMN it sound BAD.
Turn off amp, inspect all connections in the back, turn on, check tubes, all *looks* fine. Those tubes are less than 5 yrs old, surely that's not it.
Plug in direct to amp, bypass everything. Hot damn that sounds good! But what's wrong? No pedals on, no LEDs, but it's the pedalboard somewhere.
I start going through and disconnecting everything one by one when I get to the end of row one and see a long patch cable that shouldn't be there going to.....I remember, oh yeah, I patched in a wah pedal way over there to test. Haha it's cocked all the way and on isn't it? You dummy.
35? minutes dicking around and that's all it was.
I need a wah pedal with an LED lol.
Mine's not as funny as a half cocked wah, but I run two amps also. This week at practice I kept feeling like one of the amps was anemic and quieter. We move fast and I could hear the other one so I tried not to obsess. When we wrapped up I went to unplug everything I noticed the instrument cable going to that amp was only partially plugged in.
Happens to the best of us.
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2026 8:13 pm
by Garth
I think the worst development in gear is adding "try restarting it" to the list of troubleshooting steps when it's not working as expected (and on me forgetting that it's now very much a thing and probably has been for a long time).
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2026 4:30 pm
by ChudFusk
One of my most shameful gear confessions is that many many MANY years ago I sold a "broken" Sovtek MIG-50 for $25 that probably just needed a fuse or tube job. This was long before I was a gear guy and it was something that got abandoned in my possession so I just wanted to get rid of it, but Jesus Christ.
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 12:21 pm
by Dr Tony Balls
Forgive me, Father Torlex, for I have sinned.
One of the backline amps I built for Main Drag was having an issue. Went by yesterday to check it out and repair it and the issue was I had FORGOT to solder one connection. I suppose kudos to my workmanship that the lead dress alone held for nine months of near daily use, but boooo to my quality control.
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 4:04 pm
by benadrian
Hi friends.
So, I can't stop trying to look for a more convenient , loud, rock guitar rig. Whenever I find something, something always sucks and the quest continues. Then, I'll plug into the modded Traynor that I've had for like 17 years and it just sounds absolutely incredible and blows everything else away. Yet, for some reason, the idea of carrying around a full size, 50 watt guitar head a couple times a month makes me feel like I didn't win at gear, evern though I'm clearly winning at gear.
In addition, I kinda don't like using the gear that I make at my day job.
I will clarify.
I truly believe that I make very cool, excellent sounding gear at my day job. I use it for recording. I use it for a few bands and projects. But for noisy rock, I want to be as "duh" as possible. It feels better to rip all the options away and force myself to make the best music with the most reduced setup. In fact, in recent times I've ditched my pedalboard (consisting of a tuner, two drives that I built, and a noise gate) and replaced it with a Boss SD-1 and TU-2, running on batteries, with no board. I just put two pedals on the ground like it's 1988 and let it rip.
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2026 8:54 pm
by Frankie99
benadrian wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2026 4:04 pm
replaced it with a Boss SD-1 and TU-2, running on batteries, with no board. I just put two pedals on the ground like it's 1988 and let it rip.
I bought 8 of these little feet that I discovered through the tremolater pedal I've mentioned, and they rule for a non pedal board, but still sticking to the surface kinda thing. I use 2 pedals on the amp that I'm testing the Bass VI thru just to see what I can get done on that with amp reverb, a big muff and the tremolater.
https://www.amplifiedparts.com/products ... 6-32-screw
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2026 6:18 am
by WeStartToDrift
Frankie99 wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2026 9:33 pm
OK - I get a 90 break in my choring for the evening so I run out to the practice space. Fire everything up. Fuck that sounds terrible. What happened?
Turn off one amp, listen only to the other. Sounds fine.
Same process in reverse, this amp sounds like garbage. Tone knobs aren't doing what they should. High pitched weirdness at volumes there where it should be clean, quiet. Ok - signal chain, anything unplugged, backwards? No? everything is off on the pedal board. Fuck with all kinds of settings for forever on the pedals to see which one might be causing it? Like a component dying? Can't make this thing sound right at all.
Fucking preamp tubes? that's some weird ass microphonic feedback at high levels and DAMN it sound BAD.
Turn off amp, inspect all connections in the back, turn on, check tubes, all *looks* fine. Those tubes are less than 5 yrs old, surely that's not it.
Plug in direct to amp, bypass everything. Hot damn that sounds good! But what's wrong? No pedals on, no LEDs, but it's the pedalboard somewhere.
I start going through and disconnecting everything one by one when I get to the end of row one and see a long patch cable that shouldn't be there going to.....I remember, oh yeah, I patched in a wah pedal way over there to test. Haha it's cocked all the way and on isn't it? You dummy.
35? minutes dicking around and that's all it was.
I need a wah pedal with an LED lol.
I have this same issue but with volume pedals.
Re: Gear confessional - shames and blames
Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2026 3:39 pm
by kerble
WeStartToDrift wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2026 6:18 amI have this same issue but with volume pedals.
I have the
Visual Volume Pedal by TrueTone that has a runway of 10 LEDs on the left side that show you where your vol is. Got it maybe 15 years ago? Super useful! Discontinued (?), but I think they go for like a hundo at this point on Reverb.
My shame is I keep coming up with new tunings for my guitars and now I lug around like four-five to play a set. I blame myself, but it all sounds so good.
