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
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Effect Pedal Review – Guyatone Mighty Micro Torrid Fuzz (TZm5)
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
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
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JaxMusic
My Space: http://www.myspace.com/jaxmusicsupply
Snark SN-3 Chromatic Tuner
Snark SN-4 all instrument tuners
Guitar Pedal Review – Tech 21 Boost R.V.B. Reveb pedal
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
Quick Review of the Danelectro Cool Cat Tremolo
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!
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?
Are, Echo, Reverb, and Delay the same thing?
September 29, 2010
This question in the music world is like talking about religion or politics anywhere else. We have debated this question a couple of times at Jax with neither argument winning out. I personally believe that they are all related with minor differences in timing.
Wikipedia defines reverb as “A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air”
Echoes are defined as “…echo (plural echoes) is a reflection of sound, arriving at the listener some time after the direct sound.”
Delay “…is an audio effect which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time.[1] The delayed signal may either be played back multiple times, or played back into the recording again, to create the sound of a repeating, decaying echo.
I see a lot of similarities here. The words echo and decay are mentioned several times in the definitions. Looking at them, and thinking about how they each sound, I fervently believe they are all manifestations of the same phenomena. The only real difference is the timing of each effect.
Reverb, when listening, sounds to me like a lot of fast echoes with an accelerated decay time. You can debate the variances of how the echoes are produced (spring, plate, digital, etc.) but they all share the same features – high number of echoes and rapid decay. Echoes are reflected sound and play a role in reverb and delay. Delay (in an audio sense) is a reflected sound with time in between. Sounds (pun intended) a lot like reverb.
Why all the debate? They are the same thing. You can use a delay pedal as reverb by adjusting the number of echoes and decay time. You could also use a reverb pedal as a basic delay but usually you cannot adjust a reverb pedal’s speed enough to make a true delay sound. Can anyone really debate that echo, reverb, and delay are really different takes on the same thing?
Jack
Jax Music Supply
Guitar Pedal Review: Danelectro FAB Fuzz
July 23, 2010 
The Danelectro FAB Fuzz is another addition to the FAB series of pedals. As is the norm for the FAB series, the FAB Fuzz is designed to be an inexpensive solution for the beginning guitatrist or something to mess around with for the more advanced player.
The Danelectro D-7 FAB Fuzz is advertised as “A Fistful of Fuzzy Fun!” (although admittedly I’m not really sure what that means.) The FAB Fuzz features three control knobs: one for tone, one for the amount of fuzz to apply to the signal, and a third which determines the level at which the fuzz mixes is with the original signal. The FAB Fuzz is powered by a standard 9V DC input, as well as he option of using a 9V battery for power.
The FAB Fuzz is housed in a plastic case and features a stomp button that is the same as the other FAB Pedals, and also features an LED to signify whether the pedal is on or off.
Overall I feel that the FAB Fuzz could best be described as “ok.” The FAB Fuzz certainly did not exceed my expectations (in the same sense that the movie “Snakes on a Plane” was exactly what it said it was going to be – a movie about snakes on a plane) but after playing it I found the FAB Fuzz to be a bit lacking in the tone department. Guitarists who are looking for a fuzz pedal to mess around with or beginning guitarists will probably not notice this too much. Guitarists which are a bit more picky will certainly not feel lied to in any way with this pedal. After all, it’s hard to argue with the FAB Fuzz’s price tag of $23.99.
For the price point that the FAB Fuzz is designed for it does the job and does it well.
Guitar Pedal Review: Danelectro FAB Delay
The Danelectro FAB Delay is the newest addition to the FAB series of pedals. Like the other pedals in the FAB series, the FAB Delay is designed to be an inexpensive solution that gets the job done.
The Danelectro FAB D-8 Delay is advertised as a “Thick and Rich Delay” featuring a maximum of 600ms of delay time. The FAB Delay is your pretty standard FAB pedal, featuring three knobs protruding from the back of the pedal along with the standard 9V power input. The three adjustable knobs alow for controlling the amount of delay (which from my testing seems to control the mix of delay with the original signal), a knob for controlling the overall time of the delay, and finally a knob for controlling the number of repeats. The FAB Delay can either be powered using a power supply (we used a Visual Sound 1-Spot for testing) or simply a 9V battery.
The FAB Delay is housed in a plastic case and features a stomp button that is the same as the other FAB Pedals, and also feautures an LED to signify whether the pedal is on or off.
Overall some interesting sounds can be achieved using the FAB Delay. During testing I played my standard fair of U2 songs while testing a delay pedal, and was satisfied with the results. The knobs allow you to adjust the delay to taste and after a bit of time fiddling with the controls, you can achieve some interesting tones to mess about with. At $29.99 list, one can only be satisfied with the sounds the FAB Delay provides.
For the guitarist with more demanding delay pedal tastes, I would recommend something more along the lines of the Line 6 DL4 Modeler Delay, the MXR Carbon Copy, or possibly the Wampler Faux Tape Echo.
All in all the Danelectro FAB Delay is a great pedal for the price. I would recommended it for those guitarists who have never really used a delay pedal and would like to try one out at an extremely affordable price.
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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?