git shit

i actually practiced twice this wk, which is something i ordinarily don't do, but stoogeaphilia is getting ready to break in new toonage and i've been noticing lately how the li'l roland amp has been sounding less snat than it did when we started doing the jam a year 'n' a half ago. i had z-man at sessions give it a once-over back in the fall, but last week in particular, the sound on the li'l stage seemed more cloudy and indistinct than i'm used to. possibly i could have alleviated this by _just turning up_ (all-purpose gtr player solution), but i didn't wanna upset the balance. anyway, in dicking around with my rig (one component at a time, za r-r-r-right vay), i discovered that while it's still not as pristine as, say, a twin would be, the tone clears up considerably when i dime the treble and set bass and mids to around 1 o'clock. it's really weird having these kinds of isu's with a solid-state amp, but one of the cool 'n' unique things about the roland is the warmth of its tone (thanks, keith). my theory: in a year and a half of jams, the internal workings have gotten so crusted with nicotine and bar funk that it's affecting the sound. worth fixing? prolly not, if it's even possible.

other discovery i made is that when the marshall bluesbreaker pedal i traded steffin the new russian big muff for is in its "blues" setting, it gives a pretty nasty edge to the tone, which you can make creamier and more well-behaved by backing off the gain, so it's actually useable for both jam and stoogeband situations. (the big muff was too in-yr-face for the jam no matter how you set it.) with this knowledge, i was able to sell zasko the yellow dod overdrive that i've never been real happy with (altho it was more reliable than the big muff), along with a coupla broken pedals i found in our storage shed and a box of assorted parts i inherited from robin sylar. good on two levels: 1) i like divesting myself of shit and 2) it gives me walking around money until i get a payday. as they say in corporate america, "it's a win-win."