And hello new pedalboard.
I'm still around. But I haven't been using Heritage guitars much because I fell on some hard times and had to sell most of them. All that I have left is an H-137 with a badly done, but functional, headstock repair. As you know, that even though I like classic rock, I'm not exactly a classic rock person. That being said, I still listen to a lot of prog (Yes, King Crimson, old Genesis, etc). I like a lot of different music, and much of it is newer.
I was recently recruited into a Boygenius tribute project. They are a band of 3 women, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker, who do some fantastic vocals and are very gifted. They have won several Grammys, and have done very well for themselves. Julien is a multi instrumentalist (piano, mandolin, banjo, guitar) who has performed with the National Orchestra at Kennedy Center. In addition to vocals, piano, etc, she played lead guitar with BG. Lucy just released a new album that is rising in the charts. Phoebe is working on new music. Together, they formed what what was considered a supergroup. BG was a side project for all of them. I would categorize their music as sapphic pop. Let's just say that it's very... gay.
Anyway, I'm playing lead in this project and have been working on dissecting Julien's solos, background guitar work, and the effects she used. She layers effects. It's not uncommon to have multiple distortion/OD, multiple delays, choruses, etc all layered on top of each other for one track. In the past, I usually used distortion/OD, and that's about it. So this is new territory for me. I was also never much of a lead player. That's changing. I'm using Strats for this project because I need tremolo bars. She uses a Tele with a Bigsby. I have Strats, so that will have to do.
I was lugging around a pedal board weighing about 17 pounds for this. And tap dancing in the middle of songs was getting difficult. I almost tripped while doing it at rehearsal last week. So something had to change. And this is less expensive than the copay for a broken leg. I'll offset the cost by selling most of my analog pedals.
The Boss GX-10 that I bought has 170 effects built in. I can chain up to 17 effects in one patch. I can arrange the patches into a set list so I can pull them up sequentially for a performance or rehearsal. It's a nifty little package. It's also more intuitive than any multi effects unit I've used. I can edit via the screen on the front panel or my laptop. And there are many patches available for download. I'm wondering why I didn't do this sooner.
Here's a sample of some of the stuff I'm learning.
This is another song we are working on. All the strange sounds in the background are Julien's work.