atypical outstruments

This was published in a zine about the A-Band over the summer, and shows some of the diy instruments that I play. People ask me what I play in the A-Band quite a lot - and this is why my answers are a bit vague. I used to draw comics quite a lot, but slowly gave it up.... There are photos of most things illustrated in this set.

Shatterbox to Bardobox

Ah - the lure of the super-rare cool-looking fuzz! In this case the John Hornby Skewes Shatterbox! Such a cool name, in a cool wedge shaped box, cousin of the even more rare Zonk Machine! When this circuit (or at least the stripboard version) came to light earlier this year thanks to ElectricWarrior at FSB /DAM, I had just made a Kruscher (TB 1 variant) for a rabid 60s fuzz fan in Birmingham. I was happy he liked it. He asked if I could make him a Shatterbox, and I said yes. That was my first mistake. I was soon to learn that the Shatterbox is basically a crap sounding bassy fuzz with a nice treble boost added. I should have built the circuit first and told him it was crap and not to bother, but I didn't. He wanted a Shatterbox, so that's what I made him. But: it did sound pretty crap. I knew he didn't have much money and felt bad sending him a lemon, so I offered to mod it to make it sound more like the benchmark ear-hurting fuzz sound of the guitar solo in the Third Bardo garage-psych classic 'Five Years Ahead Of My Time' that he wanted. It was hard! I came close to totally rebuilding it, but managed to make some mods to fit the bill better - a louder, more trebly fuzz, combining with the icepick treble boost to go to a place where most people don't want to go. It still sounds horrible, but horrible in a good way, for his most singular needs. If I was building from scratch, I would just hard-wire the 2 effects in series rather than keeping the pretence that the fuzz sounds any good by itelf, and cut out the fuzz control completely, leaving it on max the whole time. I'd call it the BardoBox! As it was I repainted the Shatterbox to reflect it's new and more horrible guts. Hopefully he will dig it. Ok - halfway through is the solo that inspired this - have a listen.

Updates!

I've been building a JHS Shatterbox for Sean in Birmingham, and getting stuff together for two Pep fuzzes for The Rave-Ups in California, and designing labels and logos for my forthcoming low-level pedal building enterprise (Good Fuzzy Sounds), but there are other things going on too. First of all the poster for my guitars + pedals exhibition is up on the London Underground, from Stepney Green to Sudbury Hill and all points in between - here's one at Embankment, the exh is on until May: Plus, I've been doing some 4-track recording, using the same stuff as at the February gig, and have added a v short lo-fi phone video from the gig to my soundclick page. The new track is less extreme than what you'll hear there, and is 19 mins long - I might have to upload it in 2 parts. Here are some photos fom the gig too - in the first one I'm adjusting the Thumpa Thumpa Box (subject of a future post), and the second, playing the Monatron: Ok - proper post soon.

Windmill gig, 16 Feb 2009

feb 2009 setup (flash) Originally uploaded by simonm1965

I did a solo gig the other night and it was good. Victor (ex-homocrime collective) asked me to play at a night he was organising at the Windmill in Brixton. I was kind of viewing it as a test to see if I wanted to do this again, and I enjoyed it. There was no time for a soundcheck and I was stressed, but the whole thing came off pretty well. I had 4 sound sources going more or less continuously - a Raagini electronic tanpura (white box on floor) as a background drone, Duotone oscillator box (aka Ben's Simple 40106 Tone Generator), Thumpa Thumpa Box (a primitive rhythm box, 1970 Simonton design) into Digitech delay, Monatron > vol pedal > Jen Fuzz + Sustain > Boss DD6 delay. I tuned these all to C at first and then slowly adjusted each one in turn to make simple chords and dischords, then bringing them approximately back to unison, but the the Raagini staying on C the whole time.... the other bands, Maria and the Mirrors and Headfall were good too, but the headliners - Jer Reid's Isshi taiko drummers (billed as Tcki Tkcy taiko drummers) were astounding! The tracks on his myspace page give an idea of the sound, but live it was incredible! check their myspace page and play loud.

Den outing (no 2) - The Stratford Hoard

Eight of my guitars and nearly my entire output of diy pedals are in an exhibition at Stratford Underground station (near the entrance to the DLR platforms) for the next couple of months, curated by Alan Kane. The exhibition showcases the collections of local people, and this is the third phase - my stuff and a ton of Beatles memorabilia. The previous phase had wind-up toys, black baby dolls, lots of different kinds of adhesive tape and packets of sugar, and 8 copies of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' LP. Here I am on the day they were installed, along with a couple more pics I took at the weekend. I'll probably upload some more photos to the set on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/30379212@N03/sets/72157613275768898/ also: Transport For London blurb, not up-to-date http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/projectsandschemes/artmusicdesign/pfa/artists/alan-kane.asp

Tim Escobedo's Uglyface - a modern classic!

So mainly I like old stuff, but one reason I got into DIY was to discover new sounds. The Uglyface is one of THE classic DIY pedals, designed by an unassuming and generous experimenter, Tim Escobedo. I've built four of his pedal designs, and an ambitious double synthstick built into a guitar (more on this later). I think he came up with it in 2003. A lot of people on DIY Stompboxes were raving about it, so I built mine in 2006. By this time my Dymo tape aesthetic had reached the mature stage, although I probably should have the knobs away from the footswitch. In the DIY effects pedal world, there are clones or rare pedals, and there are home projects that become retail Product, and there are pedals that exist only in the pure DIY realm, because they are too weird or horrible-in-a-good way to have mainstream commercial potential, like the Uglyface. Guitarists are conservative as a group (= market). Tradition weighs heavy on their shoulders, and their music is boring. Most of them don't want a pedal that makes their guitar sound like a raygun. I didn't record this clip (Tim did), but it gives you a good idea of what this thing does. Here's another , from homewrecker/runoffgroove - if this doesn't get your attention, then we can't be friends. I built it from scratch on plain board with holes, called perfboard, or just perf. This is one of several building methods, and it's probably my least favourite. I don't use it much, but there was (and is) a perf layout of the Uglyface at homewrecker.com. It was one of my first builds beyond the basic fuzz circuits and I didn't really know what I was doing exactly at the time, but I put it together paint-by-numbers style. it took a while to get it right, but I got there in the end. The trickiest part for me was the Vactrol, which adds the envelope follower wah-type sound. I colour coded the wires carefully and made notes, so I wouldn't get too mixed up, and left myself plenty of space. So what is it? The clips should tell you all you need to know, but if I had to describe it, I'd say it's kind of like a fuzz, but instead of just taking the wave form from your guitar and amplifying/clipping it to make a square wave (like most fuzz/distortion boxes), the Uglyface takes your signal in on one side, but what comes out of the other side is a whole new signal that tracks the changes in a fuzzed out version of the input signal, but can't follow it exactly, or reproduce its complexity, so what you hear is a big wall of glitchy, synthy guitar noise. I love it. The basic envelope follower makes it even less guitar-like. Certain settings will get you the Star Wars thing going. There are a couple of ther DIY circuits that apparently have some similarity to this floating around - John Hollis' Crash Sync /Auto Crash and the 4ms Noise Swash, but this is the simplest to build, and best documented. There have been stripboard layouts and a modification or two in the last couple of years. Tim Escobedo rules. I can't help forming mental images of people I've never seen; I imagine Tim has short-ish dark hair and a full but closely cropped beard, a bit like David Fair from Half Japanese perhaps.