Jax Music Supply Top 10 products of 2011

It has been awhile since we posted on our blog. We will try to make 2012 a little more consistent. Thanks to all for making our 2011 a success for Jax Music Supply!  Let's take a look at the most popular products of 2011.  While we introduced a lot of new products this year, for the most part our top selling products consisted old favorites.

Number 10: MXR M-133 Micro Amp
This pedal has been around for over 30 years now. The Micro-Amp is a clean boost designed to push your tube amp into the overdriven sweet spot! Simple to use and inexpensive.

Number 9: MXR M-102 Dyna Comp Compressor.
After 30 years this is still one the most popular compressors on the market. Like all MXR products it is super tough and inexpensive.

Number 8:  MXR M-169 Carbon Copy Delay

A relatively new entry for the MXR company, it is a true “bucket brigade” delay.

Number 7:  Fulltone OCD Overdrive

One of the original boutique overdrives.   Next to the Tubescreamer this is probably the most cloned overdrive in the world, but the original still rules!

Number 6:  SN-2 Snark Tuner.

One of two Snarks on our list, the Snarks are the definite New product of the year.  Simple and cheap, people buy two or three so that one is always available.  Amazing that this type of product can be built for almost nothing!

Number 5:  Wampler Ego Compressor

The second boutique builder on our list built the most popular compressor we sell.  High quality components and superior design make this compressor a winner.

 
Number 4:   Qwik Tune Guitar Professor

The GP-1 is another old favorite of our customers.  It is a tuner with a built in complete chord library. 

Number 3:  Snark SN-5Tuner

The second of the Snark products on our list. 

Number 2:   WamplerPaisley Drive

Boutique tonemeister Brian Wampler’s second entry on our list and the his first “signature” effect pedal.  One of the finest overdrive’s available. 

Number  1:  Planet Waves Pedal Board Kit

Our number one product this year.  We find that many people order more than one for to assemble their pedal boards.  Includes cable and connectors.  Lifetime warranty and low price.  No wonder it is so popular. 

Guitar Pedal Review: ModTone Mini-Mod Guitar Effects

After a long wait we received the new Mod Tone mini-mod effects pedals. These pedals feature true bypass and low prices, all priced at under $50. All of the mini-mods are constructed very well. We found that the jacks lived up to the marketing being very solid and the metal cases are super tough. The true bypass switches seem to be high quality too. One thing we noticed with all these pedals is how quiet they are. Even the distortion and overdrive pedals, which usually have a lot of extra noise, are quieter than normal, even using single coil pick ups.

The big impact of these pedals is their small footprint. These pedals are about 2/3rds the size of the standard “bud box” size pedal with a tapered end forming a wedge shaped pedals that allows for fitting in tightly packed pedal boards. After playing for a few minutes, this is what we found out:

Mod Tone Mini-Mod Delay: Nice slap back echo sound and very adjustable. Warm echo sounds out of this digital delay. The only drawback is that the delay time is very short, maybe 500ms at the top end. This limits is use in certain situations but, tough construction, true bypass, and $49.95 price, you can find some good uses for it.

Mod Tone Mini-Mod Chorus: Some tone thickening but generally found this pedal lacking in any type of rich chorus sounds, just some slight modulation. You won’t be able to do any Johnny Marr imitations with this pedal and we recommend that unless you need just a little chorus and hard up for space that you pony up a little more mullah for a MXR Micro Chorus or an Electro Harmonix Nano Clone.

Mod Tone Mini-Mod Flanger: This was by far our favorite of the Mini-Mods. Excellent flange tones from Van Halen thickening to 60’s psychedelic. You cannot find a better flange tone, with true bypass, in this price range.

Mod Tone Mini-Mod Overdrive: The standard overdrive model painted yellow instead of green. No surprises – just good basic overdrive with the traditional mid-range hump expected from most overdrives. The tone was warm and the tough construction and true bypass puts it a notch up for most overdrives in this price range.

Mod Tone Mini-Mod Distortion: We found the clipping to be quite harsh on the ears using P-90s. It just sounded very artificial with no warmth. To be fair, I am not a big hard distortion fan and have found few distortion sounds that pleases in pedals that were priced below $150. Old ears perhaps!

Mod Tone Mini-Mod Fuzz: Excellent old school fuzz. Everything from Satisfaction to Kinks buzzing. This was our second favorite pedal of the bunch. Cool thing about it is that there are few fuzzes with this build quality, footprint and price out there. Go ahead and put one in the gig bag just in case – perhaps when you are playing that club that requires the China Strat instead of an American standard.

There are some definite tone keepers here – especially for the small footprint and price with these pedals. They are tough and you should feel confident in gigging situations. If nothing else, these pedals are perfect for that smaller pedal board as well as situations that you do not want to expose your boutique pedals to the wilds of the gigging world.

Peace and Joy,

Jack

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Blog is back baby!

Hi All. We haven't posted on our blog(s) in awhile. We have been in the process of launching our new version of our website. This, combined with various troubles with Wordpress, resulted in our decision to move the blog back to Blogspot, which most people like in any case. For continuity purposes, we have re-published all of our original blogs on this site. Unfortunately, we could find no way to add back the comments.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to subscribe. We will be posting more gear reviews and observations in the coming weeks and month. Thanks!

Jack / Ed / Josh

Jax Music Supply

Effect Pedal Review – Guyatone Mighty Micro Torrid Fuzz (TZm5)

Originally posted on January 2, 2011 by admin

Happy New Year! I took the Guyatone Mighty Micro Fuzz for a spin over the holidays. I was mighty impressed! This has got to be the quietest fuzz pedal I have had the pleasure of playing. I do not know if they built in some type of gate (I couldn’t hear any gate delay) but even with my Rickenbacker it was passing hardly any noise. With humbuckers it was whisper quiet.

The Torrid Fuzz delivers up awseome fuzz tones. I was easily able to classic fuzz sounds from The Rolling Stones to the Kinks. However, this baby was not a one trick pony. Highly shapable, I was able to dial in some gnarly fuzz options that bring out your inner punk rocker! You can even shift the phase of the fuzz with a flick of a switch. This can make your fuzz sound really wild and generate unique harmonics in your tone.

One thing about this fuzz, as well as all of the Guyatone Mighty Micro Series is that they are all small footprint and very light. These are not pedal board hog. Although I am not a zealot for these things the pedals feature true bypass so if you are so inclined this is a major plus.

If fuzz is part of your tone stack, I highly recommend this pedal.

Jack

Review – Snark SN-3 and SN-4 instrument tuners

Originally posted on December 25, 2010 by admin

We just got in the Snark SN-3 Guitar and Bass Tuner and the Snark SN-4 instrument tuner this week. These tuners feature relatively easy to read displays, built in metronomes, pitch pipe, and built in microphone to tune acoustic instruments.

The SN-3 tuner although chromatic, is meant primarily for guitar and basses. It a bright color display and very fast tuning. I found the tuner very fast and accurate with no problems tuning the guitar. Hard to believe but you can actually pitch calibrate this tuner. This is not something I use often but you never see this feature in a tuner in this price range.

The display is really nice and shows just how far you are from being in tune with a nice graduated display. However, not all is gold in Snark land. You have to be looking at the display directly to be able to read it. Looking at it at an angle made it look like the display was completely on and impossible to read.

The metronome is very basic with a little heart beat display and a basic “beep” like tone. It is tap generated which is a nice feature for a tuner/metronome combination . The metronome would have been much nicer if you could have silenced the beep and just use the visual cue. Without the metronome silencer, it makes it impossible to use for practice without disturbing others who may not enjoy the beep!

One last thing I liked was the finish. It is made of plastic but it has a metallic look to it. Better yet, it feel like it has been infused with something – almost a slightly rubbery feeling, that keeps the tuner from sliding around.

Overall, pretty good for $12.99 or so. If you are a pro, a good pedal tuner might be better. If you just need an easy to use and inexpensive tuner/metronome combination, this should work well for you.

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!

Jack

Web: http://www.Jax-Music.com

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Snark SN-3 Chromatic Tuner

Snark SN-4 all instrument tuners

Quick Review – Danelectro 56 Reissue Electric Guitar- Aqua – Humbuckers

Originally Posted on November 17, 2010 by admin

Spent a few minutes tonight playing the new 56 Dano reissues from Danelectro. Chose to play the aqua colored model with the lipstick humbucker pickup in the bridge position and “dolphin” headstick.

The build quality seems to be first rate on these reissues. None of the guitars we got in had any quality issues – even with the tape which has been a traditional issue with Danelectro. I found the tuners to be first rate and the guitar’s intonation was fine right out of the box.

The neck was smooth and not very deep in the back. However, the fingerboard seemed wider than on previous reissues but was no problem to play. The tone was typical Dano with the twang and treble overtones. This guitar was very low noise and did not notice any excessive hum, even in the neck position pickup. The lipstock humbucker, unlike traditional humbuckers, did not product a lot of drive; just provided a little warmth to the tone rather than any type of severe clipping of the signal.

Played it through a Visual Sound Route 66 pedal (with compressor and overdrive) and that is where this guitar really came through. I was able to get very good bluesy notes out of it and then with a little echo (again, Visual Sound H2O) it was surf city.

Danelectro has worked hard over the last couple of years to increase the quality of there guitars as well as keep the price steady. With this guitar, they have really succeeded. Excellent playability, cool looks (love the clear “D” pickguard) and classic tone, you cannot really go wrong for this price!

Guitar Pedal Review – Tech 21 Boost R.V.B. Reveb pedal

Originally Posted on November 3, 2010

Took the lovely Tech 21 Boost R.V.B. for an enjoyable spin this evening. This not your normal reverb pedal. No fake sounding “room” or “cathedral” sounds here. Somehow, Andrew Barta and the folks at Tech 21 have managed to put a plate and spring reverb, along with a shower room echo chamber, in small package. This puppy nails the spring reverb sound for sure, it sounds better than the actual spring reverb in the Danelectro Spring Reverb pedal. In fact, it is much more flexible than most amplifier reverbs.
The reverb has several ways to adjust your tone:

1. Time – controls the decay time (length) of the reverb.
2. Tone – like a tone knob of the guitar it effects the high end of the reverb (wet) signal.
3. Feedback – This is really cool. It feeds back the reverb signal to the input to increase the amount of reverb. I was able to get some really cool sound right at the edge of oscillation. Letting it go over produced some neat feedback but I wouldn’t recommend doing this much.
4. Mix – 100% dry to 100% wet. Really cool feature I have not seen on other reverbs. Using the 100% wet signal sounded like you were listening to a guitar player in the distance. An interesting effect that could be put to good use.
5. Rumble- basically a tone control for the low end. Crank it up for baritone guitar like sounds.
6. Level/Boost signal – adjusts the overall output of the signal up to 9db.
7. Trails- this is a cool feature. If the “trails” button is engaged, it will put in natural reverb decay when you switch out of the effect. Avoids the abrupt effected signal loss common with most effects.
I ran through various surf (think Dick Dale) type riffs as well as Buddy Holly song. This baby was made for 50’s and surf music. This reverb is highly shapeable, which allows you to dial in various spring and plate reverb type sounds along with the shower room echos.

If you are a surf music nut, it is a must have. If you like digital reverb with lots of room options, look elsewhere.

Jack

Jax Music Supply

Pricing: eBay, Amazon, and a website

Originally Posted on October 22, 2010

Happy Friday! I know a lot of you all are out gigging tonight but I thought I would add a quick post. I’ve noticed lately a lot of questions about our pricing on our website versus eBay and Amazon. Some sellers will offer lower prices on their website to offset the fees (12% for eBay) for selling on these large marketplaces. Here at Jax, we do not adjust our prices for these costs. We try to keep a consistent pricing model across all marketplaces.

For Jax, the big difference on many of our products is due to shipping being “free” on our eBay listings and Amazon versus a calculated shipping model on our website. Of course, there is no true free shipping. The cost has to be made up somewhere so it is included in our prices when on Ebay and Amazon. Ebay gives preference to those listing with Free Shipping so that is our default shipping model for eBay. On our website, we want to be able to show the lowest prices possible and our customers are given the choice of how to ship their items. What do you all think? Should we offer free shipping (included in the price on our website) as we do on Amazon and Ebay?

Quick Review of the Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo

Originally Posted on October 19, 2010

Tonight, looking to see if I could get close to Johnny Marr’s sound on The Smiths “How Soon Is Now”, I picked up the Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo. Fiddling around with it, I found that I could approximate the trem sounds on The Smith’s song, but it feel short in a number of ways. Marr is clearly using a more modern sound on his tremolo, not to mention a delay and probably layers of guitars. The Danelectro gave much more of a vintage tremolo sound, think “Mona” by Bo Diddley or the bridge on the original version (Tommy James’) of Crimson and Clover. Very much more of a vibrato sound rather than the choppy tremolo sound, even when set at on the “square wave” hard tremolo sound. Having played a Tuna Melt in the past, I believe it would be better suited to the less classic tremolo than the Cool Cat. Bottom line, if you are looking for a classic, “Fender Sounding” tremolo, the Cool Cat will meet your needs. If you need hard core tremolo sounds, I would look elsewhere. We will review the Visual Sound Garage Tone Tremolo soon, using the same characteristics, to see how it stacks up.

Keep Rockin!

Jack – Jax Music Supply

True Bypass or Not True Bypass, that is the question!

Originally Posted on October 4, 2010

There has been a lot of controversy in the effects world about the benefits of true bypass and the alleged tone sucking properties of non-true bypass pedals. For those who do not know, True bypass means that the dry (non effected) signal is passed through the pedal without passing through the circuitry. Non-true bypass pedals pass through the circuitry.

Tone suck. You hear that term associated with non-true bypass pedals. What people are referring to is the frequency loss associated with a non-effected signal going through the circuit. Back in the old days (think 1960s to 1980s) this was a common problem. In fact, you could sometimes hear a whisper of the effected sound when in bypass mode! I can remember having some cheap chorus pedals that sounded almost full effect when in bypass mode.


Since starting Jax Music Supply in 2007, I have had the opportunity to try a lot of different effects pedals. Many had true bypass, some did not. Generally speaking, I didn’t notice that much of a difference. I did notice some tone loss on lower priced pedals, such as the Danelectro DJ series, but it wasn’t what I called significant. In fact, I’m not sure the newer guitar player would even notice the difference.



Many more expensive pedals that use non-true bypass, such as Visual Sound products, I doubt anyone could tell the difference except that they may sound better than true bypass pedals. Visual Sound’s tone buffer is amazing, especially when you compare a true bypass pedal and a Visual Sound pedal using a longer (20 foot) instrument cable. The buffer circuit they are using really keeps the tone loss to a minimum.


Many popular pedals do not use true bypass – Boss, Ibanez, Visual Sound, and some MXR, to name just a few. The fact that these companies are successful says something about the mythology of True Bypass. Having played lots of pedals over the years, I can say that very few pedals really benefit from a True Bypass switch. Can anyone give an opinion about True Bypass?