Steve Lukather Getting It On With Multi-Tap Delay

Tired of conventional reverb washing out your tone, making you sound like you're playing from a bathroom in the building next door?  Let Mr Steve Lukather lay down the rules of using a multi-tap delay.

The concept is pretty simple.  Stack three (or more) delays of different delay time lengths together -- let's say 200, 600 and 800 milliseconds -- and have at it.  For added juiciness, pan the different delays in a stereo field to taste.

Of course you'll need a pretty slamming delay unit if you're going live -- in this vid, Luke demonstrates the vintage Lexicon PCM70.  Allan Holdsworth, another die-hard multi-tap delay loyalist helped design the now sadly discontinued Yamaha UD Stomp which featured no less than eight individual delays in a stompbox floor unit!

Or as Lukather puts it, "The most fun that you can have with your clothes on.."

Bambusa | Bamboo Solid-Body Guitar

Used for millenia in the Far East and prized for its strength, resilience and flexibility, bamboo features prominently in Asian architecture, furniture and in its musical instruments.

And bamboo grows extremely quickly.  Under the right conditions, growth of as much as 48 inches within a 24-hour period have been recorded, making it an abundantly renewable resource. 

Now Boston-based instrument company First Act has created the Bambusa, an eco-friendly guitar made entirely out of bamboo.  Although not a completely new idea -- Yamaha came up with the FGBM-1 bamboo acoustic guitar in 2000 -- this is the first time that a solidbody bamboo instrument is being manufactured. 

Like the Yamaha, the only non-bamboo part of the instrument is the rosewood fretboard.

And according to First Act, bamboo that is cut into strips and glued together to form a laminate, is stronger than maple and is a viable substitute for more common tonewoods.

At a MSRP of $399, the Bambusa could make an interesting conversation piece at that next blues gig. Ok, now I'm thinking out loud.

(Pic Source: www.firstact.com)

Pat Metheny's Orchestrion Project

For his latest recording project Orchestrion, jazz guitarist Pat Metheny teams up with an unlikely combination of pneumatics, solenoids and mechanically played instruments, instead of his usual Pat Metheny Group. 

Metheny is one of the few jazz guitarists who has always experimented with technology -- he was a keen user of the Roland guitar synthesizer, which he made as much a part of his musical voice as his warm toned jazz guitar, and was also an ardent supporter of the Synclavier digital composing and recording system back in the day.

But the Orchestrion is a different machine. Quite literally, it is a machine. 


Metheny recalls visiting his grandfather's home as a child and heading straight for the basement where he would tinker with an ancient player piano and boxes of piano rolls -- no doubt the awakening of his infatuation with music technology.  At the turn of the 20th century, the player piano idea was taken further with the Orchestrion except that the piano rolls now controlled percussion and calliope wind instruments like a pseudo-orchestra -- an early music sequencer if you will. 

For his Orchestrion project, Metheny sought out inventors and engineers to create an array of acoustic instruments that could be controlled from a central source -- he uses the technology from the Yamaha Disklavier piano, the modern electronic version of the player piano, for his central controller.  Pivotal also was an invention that used MIDI to trigger mechanical solenoids by way of control voltage which allowed for a wider dynamic range than was ever possible.  
 
Pat Metheny has really stepped out of the box with this one.  What is remarkable is that he makes a convincing statement out of what could easily have turned out to be a musical and mechanical disaster.   
 
(http://www.patmetheny.com/)

Visual Sound 1 Spot Pedal Power Supply

I'm a big fan of Bob Weil and his company, Visual Sound.

I own a couple of his pedals -- an original issue Route 66 overdrive (with the coveted new-old-stock JRC4558D chip) and the ultra-lush H2O analog chorus/echo. This guy makes a good product.

And Visual Sound's 1 Spot is hands down my favorite pedal power supply.

Doing away with conventional notions of bulky power supplies with toroidal transformers, the aptly-named 1 Spot handles up to 1700 mA (milliamps) -- compare this to the once ubiquitous Boss PSA adapters rated at 200mA.

Assorted multiplug cables are available as options, allowing one to daisy-chain pedals with standard 'barrel' power sockets. It's interesting to note that this connecter was pioneered by Boss/Roland around 1977 and is now the de facto standard that has been adopted by virtually every manufacturer.

For very old pedals, cable adapters for the early US-type 1/8" (3.5mm) are available allowing one to power 70's and '80s DOD, Ibanez, MXR and Electro Harmonix devices -- I successfully powered my original 1980 TS808 Tubescreamer on my pedalboard from the 1 Spot before deciding the 808 was too valuable to take out on gigs.

Also available are adapter options for Line 6 pedals and reverse-polarity adapters for Yamaha devices. And there's even a battery clip converter to power pedals that do not have a DC socket such as the earlier Dunlop and Vox wahs, or (if you have 'em and are so inclined), vintage Fuzz Faces and Colorsound Tonebenders .

I bought two 1 Spots five years ago and the one I've been using has proven very reliable through several hundred gigs and, touch wood, shows no signs of quitting yet. And I've not had reason to break out the spare at all.