Tone Pursuit: Analog vs. Digital

I did a series of two videos to present the pros and cons of the Line 6 Helix versus an analog pedalboard. I love all gear, and believe that there can be a time and place for their use. I hope these bless you!

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Jew Kit Hainanese Chicken Rice

Tucked in a corner of Bukit Timah Shopping Centre, this place serves really good chicken rice, priced beneath the benchmark Boon Tong Kee. All our chicken meat was juicy, and nothing was dry.

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Dinner at Saveur (Purvis Street)

These were taken with my new Canon EFS 10-18mm STM on my 600D. Apparently, ISO on a digital camera is not a "real thing", in that the brightness setting on a photo is post-processed. Taking a picture at ISO100 is apparently the same as taking it at ISO1000, just that at the higher ISO setting, the camera bumps up the brightness for you.

The limitation of shooting at a low ISO should be fairly obvious--your unprocessed images on the camera will be really dark, and you won't be able to tell very clearly if you botched the shot. But seeing as to how my lowly 600D has terrible ISO tolerance (anything higher than 800 and the grain is intolerable), I took a gamble. All these shots were taken at ISO800, 1/50s, and at f stops f/4.5 to 5.6, and on my camera, they were really dark.

All I did was raise the exposure of the photos in post, some with 0.5 stops of light, to 2 stops of light. Not too bad looking. But this still cannot beat my 5D Mark II.

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Shifting from Dayre...Again

Dayre announced that it was shutting down, which led me down a road of beefing up my Tumblr to get it looking the way it does now. Then Dayre didn’t get shut down, and I was in this weird limbo phase of managing yet another blog.

Then they announced a transition in management, and now Dayre is going to be marketed as a women’s lifestyle blogging platform.

Long story short, I’m back to being on Tumblr and Blogspot.

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Integrating the Line 6 M5 with the Mothership

The challenge was set before me. I knew that I wanted to replace my old combo Boss DD-7/PS-6 pedal for something a lot more versatile: the Line 6 M5, which is the swiss army knife of pedals, and has the potential for some amazing MIDI integration for preset switching with my Disaster Area DMC-8D, which can control up to four devices (currently at three because of the Strymon pedals).

However, as it is with all challenges, several circumstances were not ideal:

1. My pedalboard layout was fixed for the combo pedal, which was housed in an enclosure much smaller than the M5.
2. I will probably have to re-route some of the power and cabling to accommodate the top jacks of the M5. On my combo pedal, the in/out jacks were traditionally left/right.
3. I needed an extra MIDI cable to hook it all up, and it wasn't a long cable.

Aside from orientation and layout issues, I soon discovered that the biggest problem with the M5 is that the MIDI out is not a MIDI thru--it has to be the last device in a MIDI chain as it will only accept MIDI in commands!

At first, I tried to make do with the pedal in this weird orientation and the MIDI cable being quite haphazardly placed. It looked unprofessional, and it wasn't long before my disdain for disorder kicked in. I needed the cabling to look neat!

On the issue of orientation, if I flipped the M5 about, I had to extricate a power cable from the existing cable tie run. I found a set of black zip ties from my old Pedaltrain builds, cut the old cable ties off so I could re-run the power cable to the opposite side, and re-set the cable run with new zip ties. They're black in color, so at least the differences between Goodwood's cable tie runs and mine don't look too different.

With an improvised pedal riser, I managed to elevate the M5 so that the cable runs would be hidden by its imposing size.

I then had to reset the MIDI cable jack orientation. I have some experience in this as I got a MIDI cable from Disaster Area, who use BTPA cables. A flathead screwdriver and a good twist later, I managed to get both MIDI in and out cables from my Big Sky looking right.

Remember, the MIDI out on the M5 is not a MIDI thru!

Yes, this looks much better.

Check out my original rig-rundown post on my Goodwood Audio setup here.

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Project Mothership with Goodwood Audio (Custom Pedalboard Setup)

I did it. I bit the bullet and got myself a custom setup from the wonderful folks at Goodwood Audio. The following videos document the build process, some sound samples from the rig, as well as a full song demonstration of my pedals. I've also added a video on how to program patches on the DPC-8EZ and DMC-8D.

And for those who need pictorial summaries:

I hope these videos help you in your decision-making regarding pedalboard setups!

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An Olympus E-PL1 in 2018?

I recently ran into a photographer whose work I respect at a party. I'd have expected him to bring his crazy rig along, but he arrived with a Sony P&S camera, citing weight and usability for his girlfriend as factors for avoiding bringing a Sony A7RII.

I have a beat-up Olympus E-PL1 that I primarily shoot with a Panasonic Lumix 14mm f2.5. Playing with P mode, I tried to see how low I can go with ISO. The following shots were progressively stepped down from 800 to 200, and finally to 100:

Not bad at ISO100! It definitely looks like daylight is the best time to use this lens and body combo. I have found that anything above ISO800 on the E-PL1 makes things too grainy.

One of the major reasons why I got the E-PL1 in the first place was to use its Art filters. This is the dioarama effect, and it's pretty cool with the wide angle possible with the 14mm!

Again, this was mostly possible with daylight. I suspect it will be a much different story in low light. Will try it out more!

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Pedaltrain Nano Adventures for Christmas 2017 ("Last One", said No One Ever)

"Last Pedaltrain purchase, I promise."

"Yes, I'll change to the PT Junior, and ditch the PT Nano. I need the larger real estate."

I'm guilty of making empty promises. My wife knows me better. She knew that I wouldn't last half a month without my itchy fingers needing to tweak or change something up. Now that I've recently purchased a Canon 5D Mark II, I need to Purge some gear to fuel the camera Urge. Purge and Urge.

This iteration of the PT Nano sees a squeezing of 8 pedals, with the following signal path:

1. Hotone Soul Press
2. Hotone Komp
3. Xotic SL Drive
4. ZVEX Double Rock
5. GFI Clockwork V2
6. Hotone Tuner
7. GFI Specular V2
8. Mooer Micro DI

I built this with the following in mind:

1. I wanted a variety of drives in case the Double Rock was too limiting in any way. The SL is a bright and punchy pedal, which can shine through certain amps.
2. I wanted a dedicated DI box on my board with cabinet simulation for direct-to-board cases. For too long have I showed up at a venue only to find a sub-par DI box and no amps. With the Mooer, it's not the top of the line, but it gets the job done and I haven't had anyone come up to me after a show commenting that my "amp tone" was bad.
3. I wanted to double this as my acoustic rig. I'll obviously be avoiding the SL drive, but the Double Rock has clean boosts in it (identical SHO circuits on both sides), which may be useful to add volume to my passive acoustic pickup. With the acoustic, I'll mostly be using the Specular for those pad-like drones.
4. I wanted a lightweight solution to pack into a Mono Tick. No matter how hard I try to use a larger rig, I always come back to my Tick. It's the ideal size and weight for frequent travelling and gigging.

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Bring Me to Life: Trying NYXL on a Les Paul

The new string feeling is amazing. I took a break from essay writing by trying on a set of D'Addario NYXL strings. I had wanted to try a low tuning to play stuff from A Perfect Circle. As much as they aren't a good influence in terms of lyrical antithesis to my Christian faith, James Iha and Billy Howerdel are geniuses at crafting intricate but simple guitar lines.

My plan to play in Standard C# failed. As it turns out, the string tension when top-wrapping a Les Paul drops significantly, to the point that I didn't need to crank my tuners that much to raise the strings to pitch. At Standard C#, the strings were flappy and had very little tension, feeling like 8's and had a terrible time staying in tune.

I raised the pitch to Standard Eb, and it was a much better experience.

Oh well. Lesson learnt: I’ll try out 13 gauge and drop tune that next time!

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Monster Curry at Serangoon Nex

Monster Curry hasn't changed in price, but it has changed its practice of upfront payment. You no longer have to pay first!

We tried something different this time: their honey toast, which we think is a just-pass. According to wife, she says it passes the test to satisfy a sweet craving but it's not something to shout about.

In other news, we discovered that NEX has a Lego Store!

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