A couple of new pedals

[gwEm]

I question wether to post stuff here any more with so many people no longer regular, but I figure why not.

Heres a couple of new pedals I put through their paces on the weekend.

The Catalinbread Sabbra Cadabra is meant to be the Black Sabbath tone in a box. It has a treble booster and a JFET simulated Laney Supergroup head. Its now my favourite distortion pedal.

The other pedal is a Rangemaster from Joe Doc music in Berlin. It has adjustable frequency response and the switch is able to cut out some of the top end hiss if needed. I like it, and it has a very different character to my Thundertomate Phil Hilborne  treble booster. The Joe Doc has more sustain, and a more raw/vintage sound to it. The Thundertomate is more hifi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh3X1ElmPpw

[dave_mc]

Sweet, nice scores

with so many people no longer regular

not sure that was the best way to phrase that...

[AndyR]

I don't get too excited about pedals... but the Rangemaster attracted my attention (for the obvious Rory link).

Just checked out his vid - cool!

[Plenum n Heather]

Glad to hear you like the Sabbra Cadabra; I've been wanting to try one for ages!

[gwEm]

I don't get too excited about pedals... but the Rangemaster attracted my attention (for the obvious Rory link).

Just checked out his vid - cool!

I find it hard to believe you've never tried a Treble Booster Andy. If that's the case and you haven't, you owe it to yourself to give one a go. I must admit the name isn't very attractive - why would you need more treble? The effect works best on vintage humbuckers and many kinds of single coils. It adds drive and seems to make the guitar come alive. I don't particularly notice much more treble, maybe a bit more prescence

[gwEm]

Glad to hear you like the Sabbra Cadabra; I've been wanting to try one for ages!

I've never been a big fan of distortion pedals. The only one I kept using was the MI Audio Crunch Box. The DS-1 and Hyper Metal from boss have temporarily held my interest at various times. The Sabbra Cadabra is good because it has a hell of a lot more dynamics and subtlety to it than a Boss style distortion.

The way you dial in the tones is quite unusual. You start with the treble booster range - more range adds more low end but also fuzz and gain. The gain knob is clear how that works. Then there is the presence control which adjust the high end in quite a sweet way. The volume 4 control is just the output volume.

There is a load of gain on tap, but it has a vintage 1970s vibe to it. You could use it as a fuzz pedal, but I like it because you can dial in only a very small amount of fuzziness if you want, to make it sound big. The presence control helps preserve note attack.

[Telerocker]

Interesting pedals. I have to try sooner or later a Rangemaster.

[Plenum n Heather]

Glad to hear you like the Sabbra Cadabra; I've been wanting to try one for ages!

I've never been a big fan of distortion pedals. The only one I kept using was the MI Audio Crunch Box. The DS-1 and Hyper Metal from boss have temporarily held my interest at various times. The Sabbra Cadabra is good because it has a hell of a lot more dynamics and subtlety to it than a Boss style distortion.

The way you dial in the tones is quite unusual. You start with the treble booster range - more range adds more low end but also fuzz and gain. The gain knob is clear how that works. Then there is the presence control which adjust the high end in quite a sweet way. The volume 4 control is just the output volume.

There is a load of gain on tap, but it has a vintage 1970s vibe to it. You could use it as a fuzz pedal, but I like it because you can dial in only a very small amount of fuzziness if you want, to make it sound big. The presence control helps preserve note attack.

Sounds like the setup for the Naga Viper (which I own and love), but with more gain on tap.

[blue]

I'm a big fan of treble boosters, with the right guitar and amp they are amazing things.  That Sabbra Cadabra sounds pretty interesting.

I know what you mean about the forum.  It was a thriving community for quite a while, but it seems very flat these days.  Not quite sure how that happened

[dave_mc]

^ I think it was gradually going that way for a while (facebook and similar stuff, I assume), but (and I could well be mistaken here ) I think the big thing was that time the forum went down for a couple of weeks. It was down long enough that a lot of the regulars from here migrated to the fretboard forum (I was already on it before the forum here went down) and kind of stayed there and didn't come back here.

[gwEm]

^ All I would add to that is that the forum also lost months of posts when it came back up which was pretty demotivating.

I've signed up to the fretboard and had a look at the BKP Facebook group. But I think my preference so far for still preferring this forum is purely aesthetic - I like the look of it and the way it's laid out.

There was definitely a time here with lots of high quality advice and interesting chats about the music styles I prefer, from a bit of jazz through to NWOBHM. I don't quite see that going on elsewhere, and not here either any longer sadly.

Everything changes I guess.

[gwEm]

I got put on to some great pieces of gear on here I must say - treble boosters, Boss OD-1, coily cables, strat baseplates, Theile cabs, maple neck throughs, value for money vintage guitars and so on.

Also, I made some fine real life friends: Feline, Philking, WezV, Plenum n Heather and perhaps AndyR, PhillyQ, HeavierThanHell, AfganDave and DMoney also (actually, theres more than this from the meetings we had way back)

Plus I've expanded my musical tastes with some killer artists, John Sykes for example, and Rory Gallagher is now one of my favourite players.

Hopefully I've passed some tips on myself - although I must confess a lot has been learnt here over the years(!)

[PhilKing]

being an anti-social media type of guy, I don't do Facebook or any of the other IM type sites.  I am on the Fretboard, but don't really contribute much.  I still like this site, and I've met a lot of the older members in real life.

Going back to your pedals, I've tried the SabraCadabra and liked it.  Actually I have one in my Juansolo BriTon Bender (along with their AC30 booster and a clone of my Jumbo Treble booster).  It does give that Tony Iommi sound (with the right amp and guitar of course).  I like treble boosters and have an older Rangemaster clone, which has the original components, but has a range switch, to give a full range boost too.

The Joe Doc one sounds interesting.  I've been using a J Rocket Archer Icon with the gain down for clean boosting, but just pulled out the Rangemester to replace it.

[AndyR]

Everything changes I guess.

Yep, it's kinda sad how the forum's gone so quiet compared to how it was... It's definitely one of my favourite corners of the interweb, but nothing lasts for ever.

I'm on theFretBoard too, been on there for ages, but only recently started posting. I'm getting used to it there, but it's still not quite as comfortable as it is here.

[dave_mc]

^ All I would add to that is that the forum also lost months of posts when it came back up which was pretty demotivating.

I've signed up to the fretboard and had a look at the BKP Facebook group. But I think my preference so far for still preferring this forum is purely aesthetic - I like the look of it and the way it's laid out.

There was definitely a time here with lots of high quality advice and interesting chats about the music styles I prefer, from a bit of jazz through to NWOBHM. I don't quite see that going on elsewhere, and not here either any longer sadly.

Everything changes I guess.

Ah I didn't realise (or else forgot) that we lost a lot of posts too- that would be annoying.

And yeah definitely at one point this forum was great. Hasn't been like that for a while, unfortunately. That goes for a lot of other forums too, I guess, lots of them seem to be getting less traffic than they used to.

Hopefully I've passed some tips on myself - although I must confess a lot has been learnt here over the years(!)

Ditto (and elsewhere too). I knew very little about guitar (still don't, lol) before I found online forums.

Everything changes I guess.

Yep, it's kinda sad how the forum's gone so quiet compared to how it was... It's definitely one of my favourite corners of the interweb, but nothing lasts for ever.

I'm on theFretBoard too, been on there for ages, but only recently started posting. I'm getting used to it there, but it's still not quite as comfortable as it is here.

Yeah. I mean, I do like the Fretboard, and some of the regulars are great, but you do need a bit of a thicker skin and it's not quite as friendly as some of the smaller forums. That being said I've seen people who've been on the Fretboard forum since it started (and from the MusicRadar forum before that) complain that it's not what it was, either.

I guess the problem is, if you don't expand the membership, the forum gets smaller (since some people inevitably stop posting, or stop dropping in as often at least), but if you expand the membership the place is likely going to change...