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Paul Wesley

Certifiably Surly
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    1993
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Everything posted by Paul Wesley

  1. In the era that Big 12 quarterbacks were McCoy and Bradford and Graham Harrell, we got so used to seeing passes hit receivers right on the money... it was kind of weird to put the TV on a mid-tier SEC matchup and see those QB's consistently throwing at the running back's ankles on a screen pass, or sailing balls way over the WR's heads... and then seeing their fans beat their chests about DEFENSE when the game ended 13-6. That region of the country put out tons of NFL-caliber athletes, but those offensive schemes/execution were a decade behind.
  2. I always appreciate the contributors to threads like this one. Terrestrial radio is long dead, and on a lot of modern platforms (bloggers/reviewers, streaming playlists), I have a hard time finding my personal "signal" above the noise. I'll be checking these out. Thanks to all of you.
  3. This is why I think polls are arguably becoming less and less predictive of actual electoral outcomes... because (like Trump) Walker is brutally and undeniably unqualified for public office in every way. And a lot of *R* voters responding to polls understand that fact. But, you know, party over country, party over faith, party over morality, party over domestic violence, party over raising your children, party over a functional level of intelligence, party over grade-school-level command of the English language... And then after misrepresenting their intentions, they'll celebrate when Walker outperforms the polls, because "fuck the experts, amirite?"
  4. Have you considered a TwoRock Studio Pro 35? Very compact and relatively light. Best EQ I’ve ever heard on any amp, and possibly also the best reverb. Great overdriven sound and also the perfect clean “pedal platform.” I’ll bet you’d love it.
  5. Thanks for posting. Pre YouTube, I used to hang out on recording forums where engineers would share behind-the-scenes rehearsals/alternative takes/demos/etc. It used to feel like you were really getting a privileged "insider" look, but I think a lot of that stuff is widely available now. I find that stuff interesting. A little tempo change, different instrumentation, a key change... you realize how many songs that are among the most-played album tracks in history sounded like a shitty garage band five or ten minutes before the take that's been heard a billion times. No one watching this in real time would have predicted where this would land: I realize Boston is a polarizing band - the overly dramatic lyrics and the overproduction sometimes get really cornball. But you've got to tip your hat to Tom Scholz for making a highly polished/produced record like this in a basement in the early 70's. That's a remarkable work of imagination, engineering, and perseverance. And Brad Delp... wow.
  6. It’s always interesting in a 2-guitar band to see how the guys choose their instruments and amps. This was a good exercise:
  7. I've had a DC-30 on the bucket list for a long time - I always thought they sounded glorious - and I was just poking around Reverb to see if I could find a used one. I had never heard of their "Laurel Canyon" model, so went down the rabbit hole of online demos, and the more I listened, the more I was convinced that it's really 100% in my wheelhouse. I only buy amp heads these days. No more combos for me. I have a 65Amps 2x12" speaker cabinet, and that's what most everything goes through. Buying amp heads is 1) a lot cheaper (especially used ones), 2) takes up considerably less space, and 3) is much better suited to recording, when you can have the amp sitting next to you in the control room and really crank it up and let it sing, and put the cabinet in another room so you're not going deaf. I'm also convinced that 15 or 20 watts is *plenty* of power. If you read the Matchless description of this model, they have a feel-good story about it being a tribute to the singer songwriters who lived in the canyon ...which strikes me as odd marketing, because none of those Laurel Canyon singer/songwriters were known for their electric guitar tones. When I looked at online reviews and gear discussion forums, several people describe them as being sonically between Vox and Fender. I might be missing something, but that's not how it sounds to me. Like I said, I hear it as a nice Vox sound with that EL84 chime. It seems like it gets a little more growl than an AC30 when pushed, but it maintains really nice note separation when hitting chords (I realize that Tim Pierce could sound amazing on almost anything). Anyway, I can appreciate all kinds of guitars and all kinds of amps, but the tones that seem to resonate with me emotionally are disproportionately semi-hollow guitars, P90 pickups, and Vox-flavored amps. I'm also not a good soloist... so I care less about killer single-note tones and more about playing chords and partial chords and getting inspired by low-to-moderate gain guitar tones as writing tools. Probably a lot longer answer than you wanted.
  8. It’s gonna be a few days. I posted those demo videos so that y’all could watch them and subsequently talk me into buying it, but then I watched them again after I posted them and realized I didn’t need any more convincing. It was like a self-hypnosis thing.
  9. A few cheesy songs in this first demo, but damn, I *really* like the way it breaks up. To my ears, it seems like a slightly more aggressive and more "modern" (more harmonic saturation) version of an AC 30. Wheelhouse.
  10. Just scanning channels during a commercial (because, you know, I'm a dude), and the 2:30 lineup of games is a bunch of meh outside of these two powerhouses on the plains.
  11. The line was UMass +32
  12. *Chef's kiss* on the punter flop to open the game.
  13. *Immerse (I blame autocorrect)
  14. Immense (the one in that demo video above)
  15. Yeah, I've been through several reverbs. The Strymon - is great, but it has a big footprint and requires high current (my Phoenix power supply only lets me have a few of those high-draw outputs). It's also a bit overwhelming in terms of big, deep menus. Hall of Fame - also requires one of my high-current outputs. Sounds good, but not great (a lot of the settings sound kind of thin and digital to me). An old TC Electronics Time Line - really like this one, and I think it sounds nice and was ahead of its time, but it's a huge footprint and also a very unique voltage requirement, so it has to have it's own DC brick on the board. Big footprint + needs its own wall wart = naga... naga... nagonna be on *this* pedalboard anymore. The neunaber fairly small, draws low amperage, and has a simple dedicated-knob interface. It also sounds richer and lusher to me compared to the Hall of Fame. $199 for that combo of attributes is super appealing. I wonder how close the spring setting gets to your Topanga...
  16. No posts on this thread since July? Disappointed in us all. I just got an email from Neunabar that they're doing Black Friday pricing. Versatile and cool reverb pedals that sound great and have comparatively easy interfaces (i.e. dedicated knobs and no menus). https://neunaber.net/collections/all-products
  17. I like Buffet's material but his fans are annoying as shit. I feel the same way about the Grateful Dead and Jesus.
  18. unbelievable sark never ever learns
  19. I mean, any play action on either 1st or 2nd - with a simple toss to Sanders or Whittington - and it's highly likely a first down
  20. Feels like when we target Sanders or Whittington, we have pretty high success %. On all these road collapses, it feels like we're either running Bijan into a stacked box or throwing some almost-never-successful deep balls to Worthy.
  21. So my buddy -- who is a superb recording engineer -- got his first big studio job as an assistant engineer at a big studio (Ocean Way) in Nashville. And it was literally his very first morning in the room for one of these major-label recording sessions. The artist was a female trio making their debut record (no, it wasn't the Dixie Chicks). And I can't remember who the producer was, but it was a very high-power Tony Brown-type guy. Anyway, it's the first morning, and the ladies were struggling to sing some harmony. And they keep doing take after take trying to get a part down, and it wasn't going well. At some point, the producer took a few steps over and picked up the landline, dialed a number, and said, "Yeah, Bob... I think I'm gonna have to punt on this one" (presumably talking to the label executive, obviously). And then, without saying anything to the engineers or to anyone else, the bigshot producer just gathered his things and walked out of the control room. Meanwhile, the band was standing out in the live room in front of their respective microphones --- headphones on, just waiting for feedback and for their next pass, totally oblivious to what happened. The studio had to tell them over the talkback mic, "Ladies, can you come back in here for a second?" and then tell them they no longer had a producer -- and maybe no longer had a record deal. That was his Day One in a major studio.
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