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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
TWCAPNOHB
TWCAPNOHB
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Fudbutter
7 posts
May 26, 2020
10:10 AM
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During the last couple of months of staying home, I decided to build TWCAPNOHB (The World's Cheapest and Probably Needlessly Overdone Harmonica Board) for when (and if) the band ever gets back together.
I had been using an RP360 w/Hunter patches along with a LW Harp Break, a MM delay and a Mojo pad but after seeing someone lose a $1,000 multi FX processor to a glass of wine, someone else losing an expensive pedal to the foot of a “large” person stumbling by and someone abusing someone else’s board at an open mic I decided to cobble together something inexpensive that wouldn’t make me cry if got damaged.
The plan was to actually mount an unused small board with a few pedals and a daisy chain type power supply. It would be much easier to set up and I could just leave the “good” stuff permanently set up for recording in the home studio without having to dismantle it every time I use it.
I thought of using Boss pedals (you guys helped with those earlier before you made me get the other stuff) but still not cheap enough for TWCAPNOHB and they are occasional useful in the guitar array rotation.
So what comes to mind? Behringer. Sure they are made of plastic but for the price, they sound great (for the price). Plus they are cheap as heck.
I had a few on the pedal graveyard shelf and a small unused board so I only needed to order a couple of these. The goal was to make something portable, quiet and loud enough to match a particular bandmate who apparently can’t hear his instrument after enjoying a bit of imbibment (which is always)
Here’s what I ended up with:
CS400 Compressor. Never used one before but it helps to cut the squeal. Not completely but ended up being part of the formula. It really does smooth out the sound too, which is what it is supposed to do.
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UO300 Octaver. Never liked this for harp but I had a spare for the bass and plugged it in for the heck of it. I kept the settings low and found that in it completely stopped the overdrive squeal not stopped elsewhere to the point that I could turn the OD waaaaaay up
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NR300 Noise Suppressor. Plugged into the send/return is the OD. Tried a bunch and ended up with a TCE Tube Pilot from the graveyard shelf. With the compressor, octaver and this, it finally killed the scream. Don’t even need the Mojo Pad. The TP sounds great too. Turned up gives it a nice smooth light distortion and warms up the sound nicely. Way better here than for guitar.
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UC300 Chorus. Turned way up, it sounds great and only subtly effects the sound. I am surprised there isn’t more discussion here on using a chorus. LW just came out with a new one as there has been no discussion of it. Makes me wonder what the UniVibe would sound like but I do not want to unhook it from the guitar array to try and it was way too costly for TWCAPNOHB. Out of curiosity, does anyone here ever use a vibe?
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VD400 Delay. Set to a very light setting.
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DR600 Reverb. Also set to a light setting as the delay and reverb together can overdo each other.
I found cheap Hiree 10 place power supply/daisy chain so only one plug an no batteries are needed.
The result is surprisingly good. To test, I am using a small Bugera amp here so let’s see the result when I plug it in to something bigger away from home. I just hope that the feedback doesn’t come back.
I love effects. Back in the day, all we had were a wah and a fuzz so everything is fun to use for this old fella. They make this mediocre player sound like a mediocre player with much better sound.
Harman is bit by bit blowing out their products as they wind down their Digitech and DOD lines. As soon as the Jamman Stereo gets blown out, I get one for TWCAPNOHB and use a card filled in from the home studio for full backing tracks. This will be great for open mics to sing and play harp but also to teach the band types of music they are not in tune with.
No real point for this post and probably a source of mirth for you pros, but I thought I would report on it here because there is nowhere else to do so and there is so little discussion of effects. Plus the time it took to type this saved me from having to help the wife do some household chores ?
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Laurie McVay
10 posts
May 29, 2020
7:33 AM
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I play into a clean mic, in line with my harp heroes, Junior Wells and Little Sonny. So I can't be of much use, technically.
But I wanted to compliment you on your nicely written and funny post. As a PA nut, I can also vouch for the thought that Behringer gear, while cheap-to-mid-range, is perfectly serviceable, in the main.
Last Edited by Laurie McVay on May 29, 2020 7:34 AM
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Martin
1655 posts
May 29, 2020
9:04 AM
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It is refreshing to read something about an effort to keep down costs in the gear department. Quite a few of those with an interest in pedals and amplifiers of various types are seriously prone to a form of financial speed blindness.
I will not change my current set-up to Behringer stuff (can´t afford!) but when I or a bystander pour that proverbial beer over my pedal board it´s good to know that there are wallet friendly alternatives.
Last Edited by Martin on May 29, 2020 9:05 AM
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jbone
3219 posts
May 29, 2020
9:07 AM
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Yeah, I didn't say much since I'm out of my league! I've swapped some power and pre amp tubes and a speaker here and there but that's it. I leave the rest to the pros. I once fried a vintage crystal element because I failed to heat sink when I was putting new leads on it prior to putting it in a nice shell. Electronics is just not my thing. I like the simple approach.
I like a good well matched tube amp/ hi-z mic for some stuff I do and the old Silvertone 1482 12w 12" speaker does well with a NOS EV mic modded to hi z, a Shaker dynamic with an IMT, or a Shure 585. I have a Lone Wolf Harp Delay between mic and amp usually.
We don't do "strictly blues" these days so the hot dirty Chicago sound is not a fit all the time. For the roots rock and Americana stuff I play straight into our Yamaha Stage Pass p.a., via either a Shure SM57, or more usually just into the Beta58 I use for vocals. The p.a. has some good effects on board which gives me a bit of depth.
You guys who build amps serve the rest of us very well sometimes. Guy named Steve Clark, of Sligo Amps- no idea if he's still around- built me a '59 Bassman replica some 14 or so years ago. He h=used components as close to the original as he could find, put some good speakers for both low and high performance, and had a beautiful cab built for it. Not cheap but I got at least what I paid for. Great amp.
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Last Edited by jbone on May 29, 2020 9:09 AM
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SuperBee
6661 posts
May 29, 2020
9:56 PM
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I’ve collected a few pedals over the last decade. I sold 3, maybe hasty but I haven’t missed them.
I’ve borrowed a few too, tried them to see if I was excited.
All the stuff I currently have is Lone Wolf gear.
Order of acquisition:
Delay, Octave, Reverb, Attack, Tone+, mojopad Deluxe.
I bought a LW Shield and a Break. I disliked the Shield but in retrospect probably should have kept it. Things change. It was worse than useless at the time but now could be useful.
The Break just didn’t appeal to me. I know it’s an extremely popular pedal but I didn’t like it. I also couldn’t find a use for it, but again maybe I was hasty.
The other one I played with was a MXR UniVibe. At first it seemed promising but no matter how much more I played with it I never found the ideal approach and I was forever messing with it. It was good in a jam I used to attend where I never knew what would be called and so I could sometimes fudge my way along with chord tones fattened to sound like an organ padding out the sound but that’s as far as I ever got with it. Everything else I tried was kinda awful.
I played with a Boss Phaser and an AutoWah also some kind of Organ pedal but I can’t recall which. Even when it was here I’d forget what it was called. I think it was a behringer pedal.
That stuff was all very much like the UniVibe experience.
I don’t even get much use from all that gear I listed. The Attack is a great pedal but I would only use it in PA or with some other solid state or big clean amp. When I need it, it’s great but I don’t often need it. Might use it more though so it stays.
I have very little use for that Tone+ pedal. I call it Tone minus, because it sucks Tone from all my nice amps. It’s around for possible situations where I might get stuck with a really awful amp. I have tried it a few times of course to see how it might work with my rigs, but I hated it.
I took a long time to warm to the Reverb pedal. In fact I thought it was broken but I tried it against a brand new one and found the new one was just the same. I have to moderate my tongue slap/lift when I use it. Also, for a long time I just preferred the Reverb tank in my amps.
Eventually I worked it out and started to like it.
The Octave is a pedal I used a lot and is probably my favorite out of all of them. I used to set it up as a boost. It was good as a feedback fighter as well. The only problem was that once I stepped on it, it seemed everyone else would come up as well. That would have been alright except when they lifted the level they would stay there so I’d be artificially enhanced for the rest of the gig too.
My Delay was like a revelation when I first got it. It was like the sound I’d been looking for. I thought I was made. Over the years I came to rely on it, never felt quite right without it.
Yes, it probably is quite dark, and it really does drain batteries quickly.
The mojopad Deluxe is for when I get an amp which is high gain. I returned my old hotrod Deville to a more standard configuration and figured this pad would mean I could still use it but it’s also useful for a general backline amp. I have used it one time since I did that.
Once I had 3 pedals I started to find it very annoying to set up and eventually put them on a board with a power supply.
Then I had another bag to carry.
One day I was setting up on a big stage and things were running late, there were a couple hundred people in front of the stage and the stage engineer was running around organising stuff that should have already been done but was way more critical than taping down a power lead for my pedal board, and I just thought “I don’t need to be fretting about a bunch of effect pedals”. So I didn’t even unzip the bag. I just plugged into the amp and played the best show of my life. I didn’t spend any time on thinking about tweaking the delay setting or whether I wanted Delay or Reverb or a boost or more grit, I just played the harp and worked with what I was hearing coming out the amp.
It was big deal for me. Next gig I did it again. And again at the next. I realised I didn’t have enough attention to spare for those pedals. I was doing much better with the audience by giving my attention to them.
Then the Covid shut down everything so you know.
But right now and if we get going again I’m not planning on using that stuff for a while. Maybe in different circumstances, if I play on the side or when I get really slick on the front or become a different sort of player I’ll go there again but for now
I’m a pedal free player with around $1500 sunk into a pedal rig. Lol, as they say
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Fudbutter
9 posts
Jun 03, 2020
8:53 AM
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Great replies. Very helpful to me and others who may search the subject.
Getting anxious to get out there and play again.
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