The "New" Little Blue Trailer, Part 1

Once upon a time, we had a little blue trailer for hauling wood and such.  But it wasn't big enough.  In fact, I wrote about it five years ago:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2011/04/little-blue-wagon.html

Here's a picture of it:

Notice the blue color?  Well that was kind of by accident.  I had white paint that I added a can of dark blue paint, and that's the color it gave me.  It was what we call a happy accident.  You see, that color blue almost glows at night.  So when we were driving down the road at night, the trailer could be seen from a half mile back. 

But Dad said the little blue trailer wasn't big enough.  He needed a trailer with dual tandems (a total set of four tires on it.)  That's right, it had to be super heavy duty.

So he bought one with dual tandems.  It was working well until a construction worker with a crane set a 4,000 pound log on it, and then pushed down with the crane.  So, it's now time to rehab, rebuild, and repaint the "new" little blue trailer.

Here's what we are dealing with:

Right now, the wood has been pulled off of it.  Namely, the wood was so banged and torn up that it needed replaced.  So here is the trailer stripped of wood, and the frame halfway painted.  It looks orange in the picture, but it is closer to Spiderman red. 

Here is the beam that was bent.  It is going to need replaced.  Hence, why it and part of the trailer have not been painted yet.

Here's the view from the back:

And here's the view from the side that still needs welded:

So this leads us to the wood.  Since the last blue worked so well, Dad decided he wanted to go with that same blue.  So we went to Home Depot, eyeballed the blue colors, and came up with the blue closest to what we had on the old blue trailer.

Heck if I can tell the difference between the two.  This time, we are doing it right.  The guy at Home Depot colored our primer the same as our paint.  So I am putting both primer and paint down on the wood.  Now, the wood on the upside will get torn up, but it will be protected from water damage on the underside. 

As of this moment I have the primer put on all the wood.  I am letting it dry until tomorrow when I will start adding the regular paint on it. 

So there is still a lot of work to do on it.

1.  Weld the trailer in a few spots.
2.  Replace the bent beam.
3.  Continue with the red paint after all the metalwork is complete.
4.  Continue painting the wood.
5.  Install the wood into the trailer. 
6.  Somewhere in there make sure all the trailer wires are off the ground and working.
7.  Once the wood is completely installed it will probably need another coat of paint.  Since the back of the trailer gets so dinged up, it 's good to have a thicker coat of paint there. 

I will post Part 2 in a week or so once most of the work is complete on the trailer.  Stay tuned!

New Pedal Day: Biyang Overdrive

Lately, I have been buying Biyang Pedals direct from Hong Kong.  I have found they are amazing pedals, and the price can't be beat.

Here are some previous reviews I have done

The Reverb Pedal:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2015/03/new-pedal-day-biyang-reverb.html

The Blue Pedal:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2015/02/new-pedal-day-blue.html


I always wanted a good Tubescreamer pedal.  However, the real ones cost a good chunk of change.  And the cheap copies tend to sound just awful.  A long time ago, I bought the Bad Monkey Overdrive pedal used, and it just sounded cheap to me.  Since the Biyang pedals have really surprised me so far, I decided to take another chance on their Tubescreamer copy.

First off, I had to decide between the OD-7 and the newer OD-8.  The OD-8 is kind of neat in that it comes with multiple chips that you can change out to adjust your sound.  I honestly want to plug and play so I decided on the OD-7. 

I have to say, it nails that Stevie Ray Vaughn sound.  I had a Danelectro Wasabi Overdrive that I used as a bright boost, and this does that sound, only better.  I've found that I tend to put all my controls straight up at 12 o'clock, and that is a perfect sound for me. 

The OD-7 has an interesting feature.  It has a switch so that you can flip it to, TS, Bright, or Warm.  I run it at Bright all the time.  I kind of found the other settings were not needed.  You can get the same sound from the bright switch, just adjust the tone and drive settings.  I guess if you needed to change the sound on the fly it would be good for live settings, but otherwise, I think they could have skipped the switch, and left it on the bright setting all the time.

One thing I think is cool is that the "on" light is a brilliant shade of green.  Like classic Tubescreamer green.  In the darkness, it is very bright so you know whether it is on or not.  I really like running the OD-7 along side the reverb pedal.  It's like they were made for each other.

Like other Biyang pedals is has true bypass, and can be plugged right into your pedalboard.  So you can either run a battery or an adaptor for it to work.  I also love the hard metal casing.  This thing could survive the end of times. 

Something I really like is that this pedal pretty much adds another amp to my collection without me having to buy another amp.  Right now, I am playing a Laney GH-100-L through Warehouse Guitar Speakers Veteran 30 speakers.  My Laney head is equipped with the British sounding EL-34 tubes.  So my whole set-up is very British sounding. 

But when I put my amp to a clean setting, and engage this pedal, I get a very Fender/American type of sound.  It's like I changed rigs with just the step of a pedal. 

But here's the great question, what does it really sound like?  Well, here's a review of the pedal on Youtube.

Most Tubescreamers start around $100 and go up to over $200.  This pedal is as good and maybe better, and I paid $45, and that includes shipping.  I would completely recommend this pedal to any player needing a Tubescreamer pedal.  Again, I would put this pedal up against any other Tubescreamer type pedal, as well as other Overdrive pedals.  It's really just that good.

New Pedal Day: Biyang Reverb

A while ago I wrote a review of the Biyang Blue pedal.  Take a peek:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2015/02/new-pedal-day-blue.html

I have a few moderately hilarious thoughts to begin with.  I actually ordered the Biyang Reverb pedal before I ordered the Blue pedal, but it took it a while to make it here from China.

So why did I order a reverb pedal?  Well, my main amp right now is an older version of the Laney GH 100L.  Here's the link to it:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--LNYGH100L

It's a heck of an expensive amp, so you'd think that there would be every toy on it.  Well, it's kind of missing something, and that something is reverb. 

So I bought the Biyang after seeing it on Ebay, and watching some videos of it in action.

Here's the photos of mine:

So here's my review of it.  This pedal starts where other reverbs end.  It can get a huge almost tremolo effect.  I was messing with it, and turned everything way up, and my Sister started complaining.  Why?  She said I was trying to do what the Smashing Pumpkins did, but I was doing it much worse.  Now you have to understand my Sister hates everything I do, but she was right about the Pumpkins. 

The sound had that huge delay/molten ball of garbled mess that the Smashing Pumpkins had in a lot of their songs.  But honestly, you can get a very nice sound if you put both knobs at 3 o'clock.  You can get a huge reverb bordering on delay if both knobs are at 12 o'clock.  After that, everything starts to go into delay territory. 

I will say one thing that made me go "huh?" was when I put the settings up high, it sounded like a drum splash cymbal was being hit, and coming through my speakers.  I have never heard anything like that ever come through my speakers.  It just surprised me.  I didn't know what to think of it.  In fact, I still don't.  If I was playing with a full band, it might come through as being pretty cool. 

Something that this pedal has that kind of surprised me was the A/B input/outputs.  If I wanted to have fun I could run two of my amps at the same time with this pedal.  One of these days for the fun of it I am going to do that. 

Like the Blue pedal it also has true bypass, and is built like a tank.  It has the built in adaptor connector so you can attach it to a pedalboard or 9V adaptor. 

So my vote is, I love it.  I already have the TS Overdrive Biyang pedal coming at me in the mail.  So expect a review on it in the near future. 

New Pedal Day: Blue

In the farthest reaches of Ebay, I found something I could not live without... more musical equipment.  (Surprise, right?)  I found some really nice pedals that are made with high quality parts, and are pretty inexpensive from Hong Kong.  I think the only reason they are not known or liked in the U.S. is their unfortunate name.  The name of the company is Biyang.  Again, a really bad choice for a name for the U.S. market.

I had been wanting to buy a Boss Blues Driver, but had never gotten around to it.  So I found the Biyang Tonefancier Blue BL-8 pedal on Ebay.  I looked up some reviews of it, and really dug it.  So I found a place in the U.S. that had one, and bought it for $45 off Ebay.

I haven't gotten to play it as much as I would have liked, but so far I like how different it is from my normal set-up.  I normally play British style amps with EL-34 tubes, so I have a lot of mids.  This pedal is more of a Fender (American) crunch with a heavy low end.  This pedal didn't really mesh well with my Laney amp.  However, I have an old solid state Rocktron amp that I bought for like $80 years ago, that this pedal just slays on it. 

This pedal is actually more crunchy than I would like in some cases.  I want just a bit of break-up, and it gets crunchy a little too fast.  The one thing I would recommend is to have your amp set as clean as possible.  That way, it balances out a bit better. 

So it's hard to describe sounds over the internet as everyone seems to hear things very differently.  The best thing I can say is that it sounds like the electric guitar in Jace Everett's "Bad Things," from the True Blood soundtrack.

There are a few things I really like about it.  It is adaptable for pedal-boards as it has the input for a Boss style adaptor, or 9 volt battery.  The casing is also a very durable metal.  It is also true bypass.  I really dig that the guitar cable input and outputs are extremely tight. 

The only thing I think it's missing is the overall "tone" control.  The Blues Driver has one, and I think this pedal could really benefit from it.  But if you want a very simple pedal this is it.  It has level (volume) and drive.  That's it.

To make up for having no tone control, I think this pedal sounds best with very clean vintage style pickups whether they are humbuckers or single coils.  I think filtertron pickups would sound really good through this pedal, but I don't happen to own a Rickenbacker at the moment.   

Biyang also makes other pedals.  I have been wanting a Reverb pedal for years so I bought one of their Stereo Reverb pedals.  I will review it when it gets here in a few days.  I have also been wanting a TubeScreamer clone, and Biyang makes one of those as well.  It's simply called the Overdrive OD-7.  They also make an OD-8 that comes with changeable chips, but that's more than I need.  I will be ordering the OD-7 later on in the week.

I know a few people will be asking, "Well, if you wanted a Blues Driver why not buy one?"  Well, the Biyang is anywhere from 25% - 40% cheaper than the Boss.  It is also made overseas.  They are both made with good parts.  So why pay more?  I have played both, and I like both in different ways.  But overall, I am happy with my purchase. 

So I will post more reviews once the pedals start coming in.