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. 

The Amplifier is a Foot!

So about six months ago I bought this Laney Amp.

It was in bad condition, and needed a lot of work.  One thing that it needed was a new foot.  Long story short, it seems one of them had been ripped out.  I figured that out by the way hole that was left was larger than the rest of the screw holes.

Even the old feet were really chewed up.

So, I had to make a new foot for it.  Well, I have this neat tool that makes round wheels with a hole in the middle.  Dad put it on his lathe, and cut it down to the proper size.  I went down to Ace Hardware to buy one whole wood screw.  I then recessed the foot, screwed it on, and came up with this.

Boo-ya!  It works great.  My amp now sits up the way it's supposed to.  So the next thing is to put the back screen on it to protect the tubes.  That will be another blog.

Awesome Guitar Weekend

I am going to try to keep this in a straight timeline as this might get confusing.  It first started with an awesome craigslist ad.  It seems this guy was selling one of the new Hagstrom Ultra Swede guitars (in trans black) for $195 with a Hagstrom tweed hardshell case.  I thought this was too good to be true, but he had a phone number.  So I gave him a call and got to talking to him.

It turns out this was the same guy I bought my Laney amp from.  If you read my blog then you will know I posted four blogs about it.  Namely about buying it and then cleaning it up, to finally getting it repaired. 

So the good news was I knew the guy.  The reason he was selling the guitar so cheap was that he lives in Winter Haven.  It's too far for people from Orlando to come there, and it's 50 miles from Tampa to boot.  But if you have someone dedicated like me, driving is no problem.  So I drove over there.

We got to talking and I really liked the guitar.  It actually reminded me more of a Gibson Nighthawk than it did a Les Paul.  Due to the basswood body, it's actually pretty lightweight.  It also has a neck that any shredder would enjoy.  Here the picture of it.

I changed out the pickups and added straplocks to it.  The only issue is that it needs a backplate.  I went to both Sam Ash and Guitar Center, and neither one of them had one.  Note:  It takes the wider SG type of backplate. 

Oh, when I pointed out a pretty good ding on the guitar, the guy knocked five dollars off the price.  He didn't have to, but he felt he should.  He really is a nice guy.

So now that I bought one guitar, it was time to sell another one.  I had an Ibanez Artcore that I never really bonded with.  So I decided to put it up on craigslist.  I was mainly looking for cash, but I did say if the right trade came along, I might be interested. 

Here's the Ibanez.

It's in dang good condition.  I can't find a ding on it, so if I was going to trade for something then I would want something pretty good.  Well something pretty good came up.  Namely this:

It's a 1999 Fender MIM Stratocaster WITH!!! a hardshell Fender case.  That's a win for me.  Except for one thing.......  I was supposed to be getting rid of a guitar since I bought one.  Now I have two new guitars.  I can't say I'm really mad at myself, since it's a problem some people would love to have. 

Now comes the fun part.  Deciding what pickups to put in the Strat.  I will say this, the stock ones aren't too bad.  They are usually just the most awful pieces of crap, but I actually played out with this guitar last night.  I had a lot of fun with it. 

So hopefully I'll get another blog out of working on the pickups for this guitar.  I'll make sure to take lots of pictures.

New Broken Amp Day, Part 4

Here are the previous parts of this post:

Part 1. 
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-broken-amp-day.html

Part 2.
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-broken-amp-day-part-2.html

Part 3.
http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-broken-amp-day-part-3.html


Well, here's what happened so far.  I bought some Electro Harmonix tubes for the amp.  After putting them in, and making sure the amp's switch was put to EL-34, I fired it up.  Shockingly, I actually got guitar sounds out of it.  But I also got a loud humming.  At this point I knew I had gone as far as I could with this amp.  It was time to take it to a pro.

I took it down to Diversified Audio where they discovered that the tube sockets needed reseated and soddered.  They also biased the amp to fit the new tubes.

So here's the rundown so far.

$90 - Amp
$15 - Gas and Tolls to go get the amp
$100 - Tubes and handle
$7 - Fuses and washers
$107 - Repair costs
$4 - Silver/metal polish

Total cost - $323

But here's the main question, what does it sound like?  It sounds awesome.  It is brighter than I thought it would be, has a touch of compression, and sounds like a high end amp should. 

On a side note, I decided to go with a "hard" tube quartet.  That means that the tubes won't overdrive as easily.  But there is a method to my madness.  This amp has so much gain on tap that it makes it more usable if I were to use tubes that won't distort as quickly.  It spaces out the gain more evenly. 

I haven't gotten to play it much, but I plan on taking it outside and really cranking it up. 

Here's the picture of it after all the work.

New Broken Amp Day, Part 3

Part 1:  http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-broken-amp-day.html

Part 2:  http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-broken-amp-day-part-2.html

I am on an online forum, the Dean Guitars Forum, that has a lot of guys with great information on guitars and amps.  One of the members made a suggestion that I check the fuse on the board of the Laney Amp.  I hadn't thought about that.  I knew it had two fuses on the back, but it actually does have one on the board.  When I looked at it, I could see that it was visibly burnt out. 

That actually means good news.  It means that the reason the amp was powering on and not having any sound come out of it was the fuse.  And fuses are cheaper than a lot of other things that could have been wrong with it.  So the cost of getting this amp back up and running could be somewhat affordable. 

Here's the picture of the replacement fuse.

Something I also had to do was replace the screws on the top vent.  Since the old ones where stripped they needed to go.  I decided to spruce it up with brass screws.  I kind of dig them.

My next step will most likely be the tubes.  Although I am still looking out for good deals on the feet, handle, and grill mesh.  Stay tuned.

New Broken Amp Day, Part 2

Here's the first part of this story:

http://angjellockheart.blogspot.com/2013/11/new-broken-amp-day.html

So here's the short version.  I bought this Laney amp for $90, and now I am trying to get it back into playing shape.  Today I had time to take it apart, and see how bad a shape it was in.  I also wanted to clean it.

In the next few pictures you can see all the rust, dirt, and grime.  I used silver polish as well as some steel wool to clean it up.  It worked wonders. 

The next thing I did was staple the tolex back down to the wood.  Originally glue held it down in places, but since this was so old the glue had started to wear out.  I just did what they should have done in the first place, put a few staples in it.

Next up, I cleaned the heat vent on the top of the amp.  Again, a lot of grime had built up, but a lot of elbow grease took care of that.

Here's a view of the inside of the amp.  It's in much better shape than I thought it would be.  I feel so much better after seeing this.  While I had it open I gave it a heck of a cleaning with electronics cleaner.

Here's the sticker on the inside of the amp.  It says it was made July 22, 1997. 

It's also amazing what a little Febreeze will do to the tolex. 

So here's what I need to do in the meantime.

1.  Replace the short screws that hold the top vent.  It'll cost more in gas than it will for the cost of the screws.  Ace Hardware here I come.
2.  I need 2 nuts to hold down the output jacks. 
3.  It needs all new tubes.
4.  It needs new feet.  I know it only needs one, but they come in packages of four.  And honestly, the three on there are pretty ate up. 
5.  I need to get a handle.
6.  I need to get a back mesh grill. 

Again, it's a lot of small parts, and some expensive tubes.  But if I can get this thing working it will be totally worth it with what I paid for it. 

So stay tuned for the next installment when I start adding parts, and getting her back up and running.

New Broken Amp Day

I used to work at a music store that carried Laney Amps.  Until I worked there, I didn't know much about them.  I kind of found out they were the "other" British amp aside from Marshall.  They are very well made, but they aren't too big over here in the U.S. as they are in the U.K.

To make a long story short I found a guy on Craigslist selling a Laney GH-100-L amp for only $90.  Normally they cost $1200 new, so I knew something was amiss. Actually, I have to be a touch honest in that, he posted that it was broken, and roughed up.  It had no sound coming out of it.  He didn't want to mess with taking it to a repair shop, so he was just getting rid of it.

Here's a funny thing.  He lives halfway between Tampa and Orlando.  So he had about 20 people interested in the amp, none of them wanted to make the drive for it though.  They wanted him to deliver.  I was the only one who would drive to him.  And to be completely honest, it was a 98 mile round trip.  That's what the car odometer said.

So I did look it over, and decided that it was a worthwhile investment.  But here's what's wrong with it.

1. No handle.
2. No back plate.
3. Missing a foot.
4. A lot of dust, and more rust than there should be. I mean, was this thing near the salt water?
5. Powers up, but no sound.
6. 2 of the output jacks are shoved inside the chassis. Why? I have no idea.
7. Some of the switches on the back are also not lined up with the chassis.
8. This is normally shipped with EL-34 tubes, but has a switch that lets you put in 6L6 tubes. Right now it has 6L6 tubes.
9. The one part on the side looks taped up for some reason.
10. This thing had set for 5 years or more without being fired up.

So here's what I'm looking at. I need to buy all new tubes. For those of you who know me, know I love EH tubes. This has J.J. preamp tubes, and Mesa 6L6 tubes. Nothing wrong with the Mesa tubes, but I bought a British amp to sound like a British amp. So EL-34's are going in this thing.

Since it's sat so long, I'm sure it needs a sodder job. That's one reason I'm sure that it will fire up, but not have sound come out.

I need to clean it up. No biggie on that, I can wipe dust and rust off.

I do need to buy a handle, foot, maybe a back plate for it. I also need to staple down the tolex in the back.

So here's the total cost I am estimating I'm looking at.  $90 for the amp.  $15 for gas and tolls.  $130 for new tubes.  $120 for sodder job (if needed.)  New, handle, foot, and backplate, $50.  I suspect that the amp was run in the wrong mode for the tubes it has in it.  That means that a few of the capacitors are burnt or wore out.  Depending upon the number of them, it could be upwards of $30. 

So it's not a cheap repair, but I will see if I can do some of it on my own.  Anyway, onto the pictures.