BJFE / BearFoot fx Guitar Effects Community

Hi Folks!
it's nice to be back:-) haven't checked in here for a while.
I'm just back from a little tour, and i want to share my impressions using some of Bjorn's pedals.
took 3 pedals and a tuner. flights were involved and everything had to fit into my gigbag, which i always carry on.

btw the highlight of the trip for me was seeing Ian McKellan(should i say Gandalf?) and Patrick Stewart (Jean Luc Picard) in Beckett's "Waiting For Godot" at the royal haymarket theater in london on an off day....two incredible actors in an overwhelming, effortless performance!! i'll never forget it.

but back to pedals
most of the times i had to use Twin Reverb RIs and on the england leg of the tour which was mostly clubs (Slim, if You read this-probably You been most of the places, it's Sherman territory!!) they gave me a Mesa Boogie (i cant remember the name..it had two rows of knobs, 50w 1x12). both very bright and a little sterile sounding.
here the SBEQ worked wonders. not only is it the most beautiful of Bjorn's colors IMO,but man its REALLY USEFUL i'm a newbie to this one, because i had just got it from openE before the tour started. i used it as probably most of You do: left it on all the time and reshape the sound of the amps. this pedal's a true lifesaver.
so i ran BBOD>SHOD>SBEQ, and SHOD formed the basic crunchy sound, being boosted by BBOD with gain way below noon. before i had always used the LGW or HB as the basic sound and this was quite different. the SHOD is definitely not shy on the treble side, plus it's les "comfy" than both LGW or HB. but man it CUTS thru like a knife. and the treble can be controlled to quite some degree with the middle knob. for the twin-situations i had to turn it almost all the way counterclockwise.
as others have said, i now realize that it's really different from the Honeybee. i love it, but i miss my HB :-/ . it didnt dawn on me until i used the SHOD in the same amp situations and stage levels....still, since i wanna downgrade to less pedals, i will keep working with the SHOD. it's fantastic, robust, dynamic and cuts thru. especially in stacking situations. my to-go stack on previous tours, the BBOD>LGW sounded awesome...but it can get lost in the mix too when it gets real loud.

so, i was HAPPY with my sound and this setup will be velcroed to my pedalboard for my setup here at home, with the addition of MGMV and a T-rex Delay i'll be able to do all i want.
here's two clips. slow blues (sorry ) thru the Mesa-Boogie and some uptempo thing where i used a Twin. You hear the SHOD, sometimes pushed by BBOD. Suhr Classic w Fletcher/Landaus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrdRorZp-mk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TONtQk3wzUA

and another little note. one night i was thaught a great lesson (and it wasnt the first time but quite impressive this time) . a scottish band named King King opened for us at a festival. guitar players name is Alan Nimmo. check him out! he used a generic fender strat and two boss pedals and a silverface Twin Reverb, that i had turned down in our soundcheck. he KILLED. i was standing there with my mouth open. shows me, that if You know how to use Your fingers and guitar, it doesnt matter what equipment You use...to some degree! he's a nice cat ad i wish i could have turned him on to Bjorn's stuff, but there was no time.

huckleboogie -- you and i are the SAME GUY on opposite sides of the ocean

nice work, love that suhr......Sharrie is a BIG BLUES MAMA! "all the way from saginaw, michigan!" lol.....

you made that rental twin sound good. those things are EVERYWHERE. here i am in SICILY with a red knob twin. why? why? why?????

wow, Sicily, love it!!
thx, Slim. hope our paths will cross one day.
btw talkin of Suhrs, i found that little thread on TGP with the pic of the sonic blue antique....You said You consider ordering one?
because i just pulled the trigger and ordered an Antique S in the same color, with river recovered maple neck in their 50s round neckshape = big ass neck ....gonna be killer
didnt tell my girlfriend yet where the salaries of the last tour are goin tho :-/

huckleboogie wrote:wow, Sicily, love it!!
thx, Slim. hope our paths will cross one day.
btw talkin of Suhrs, i found that little thread on TGP with the pic of the sonic blue antique....You said You consider ordering one?
because i just pulled the trigger and ordered an Antique S in the same color, with river recovered maple neck in their 50s round neckshape = big ass neck ....gonna be killer
didnt tell my girlfriend yet where the salaries of the last tour are goin tho :-/

those are AMAZING......i would love to order one, with the recovered "old" maple neck....

can't do it yet.....economy is still killing us, fiance is still unemployed but in school getting MCSE certified.

but my local store, MAE Music, is a suhr dealer.....and said they would get me one at cost drool.....

man.....i hope our paths DO cross.....but most USA blues artists that tour europe now use guys from over there, instead of bringing them from USA, it's cheaper that way....

just one more reason i have to move to europe.

sorry to hear that, bro....
situation ain't too good over here either. seems impossible for my girl to get a job - she's got excellent diplomas and good references....it's just because she's a mother of a 3yr old child: not flexible enough. times ARE crazy.
i thought i'd stick with my suhr for the rest of my days and just forget about lookin for more guitars.
i was just lucky enuff to score a major tour with a "best of" selection of artists that were big in the 70s when this place here was still the "German Democratic Republic". for some reason lots of people here get nostalgic about that era ,and so those artists do pretty well.
anyway, that job and the newfound cash lit my G.A.S. again, while i should rather save the money, i guess.

but i'll sell some pedals that are sitting around here. with the SHOD i really found something that works for me, and i just need to make up my mind what i want to combine it with for a nice 3-dirt-pedal setup. got the fuzz of my dreams coming, so i need to find out what other OD/dist to throw in for most versatile use. either one of my BJFs, but also the analog man KOT seems to work nicely. decisions, decisions.

i was just lucky enuff to score a major tour with a "best of" selection of artists that were big in the 70s when this place here was still the "German Democratic Republic". for some reason lots of people here get nostalgic about that era ,and so those artists do pretty well.

I suppose as musicians we should be thankful for nostalgia in pretty much whatever form it takes, since it provides audience for repertoire that might otherwise vanish. Interesting to contemplate nostalgia for the GDR era, given the (no doubt, somewhat distorted) impression we have of it here in the US as a repressive regime. Of course there's plenty of nostalgia here for the decade immediately following WWII when it was great to be white, middle class, and conformist; but really sucked if you were brown, black, or had any sort of "radical" social ideas.

Anyway, back on topic: I had occasion to take the infrequently used LesPaul on a gig and I'm happy to report that SHOD>LGW works (for me) equally well with that as with Strats (on this occasion into my '65 DR).

Slim, have you tried reversing the order of LGW, SHOD yet? Comments?

Strat-o-lux wrote:

Interesting to contemplate nostalgia for the GDR era, given the (no doubt, somewhat distorted) impression we have of it here in the US as a repressive regime. Of course there's plenty of nostalgia here for the decade immediately following WWII when it was great to be white, middle class, and conformist; but really sucked if you were brown, black, or had any sort of "radical" social ideas.

definitely right! truth is that in the G.D.R. , people were "taken care of" - as long as they would fit the system.... health insurance, free school and college and university for all, no unemploymet etc. lots of people who are in their 50s now weren't able to cope with the new circumstances after the wall came down, losing their jobs and finding theirselves in a "harsh" new environment. they forget all too easily that there was basically no freedom before 1989, no possibilities to travel and so much more. i was only 14 in '89 and didnt feel any of the downsides yet...but i could see what was goin on in my family, my brother having to do 3 yrs service in the army-otherwise they wouldnt let him go to university.
but i'm happy to say that most the bands on this "best of" package were mostly viewed as against-the-system or at least subversive. one of them was even forbidden. so this "nostalgia" is a funny mixture. and maybe in some respects not so different from anyone growing older and listening to what they grew up with.
funny tho to see how the GDR rock stars adapted. with their BMWs and I-phones

mmmm.......i have been honeymooning with the SHOD, and it has been giving me such great results that i have not gotten to experiment a lot yet. need to try the LGW/SHOD combos and see......i will be doing what i hope will be a "comprehensive" SHOD demo this week....

it's NOT a honeybee......but it sure is GOOD!

i would REALLY like it if someone who has SYOD and SHOD would do a comparison demo.......

funny tho to see how the GDR rock stars adapted. with their BMWs and I-phones

Life presents us with many ironies. There’s what is alleged to be an ancient Chinese curse that in English translation says: “May you live in interesting times” (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s neither ancient or Chinese but perhaps the work of some Hollywood screenwriter). However, far from being cursed, I feel fortunate to have grown up during interesting times, in my case the last years of our military involvement in Viet Nam and the various social and political revolutions that were occurring simultaneously at the time here in the US. I can only guess that your experience of the re-unification of East and West and the ensuing turmoil might have been somehow similar. I remember an exhilarating feeling of expectation (and many disappointments). I am leading up to what I think is a relevant point:

i'm happy to say that most the bands on this "best of" package were mostly viewed as against-the-system or at least subversive. one of them was even forbidden.

A powerful force during my adolescence was the radicalization of at least some popular music, which I think really helped push social and political change. In fact it’s difficult to imagine the changes that occurred happening without the soundtrack of the popular music of the time. There was more to Rock & Roll than simply Sex & Drugs hedonism (much as we enjoyed that). Perhaps our vocation is less frivolous than it may appear to some.