You're talking about the Blue Box, which isn't a compressor. Trurl specifically was talking about compressors, when he mentioned "the famous blue box".Originally Posted by Zeuhlmate
You're talking about the Blue Box, which isn't a compressor. Trurl specifically was talking about compressors, when he mentioned "the famous blue box".
Well, as I said, Belew definitely used a Dyna-Comp all the time, he said as much at the time (and Henry Kaiser complained about it, too).I'm getting my boxes mixed up... yeah, I'm thinking of the Dyna-Comp but picturing the Boss in my headBoth Belew and Fripp seemed to have the same general super compressed clean chorus tone in the 80s band...
I think part of Fripp's thing in the 80's was he was trying to blend his and Belew's guitars together, so that at least when they were doing the "gamelan guitar" stuff, you couldn't necessarily tell who was doing what. So it would make sense they would both be using compressors. I know they both used the Roland Jazz Chorus 120 for amplification, which Fripp apparently was great for clean tones but "appalling" for distortion.
Anyone else seeing this thread title want to start singing "Fripp's tones, meet the Fripp's tones..."
Not until just now.
Haha! I recall seeing that Fripper setting a while back when I was looking at a G3X at Geetar Center. I really should have test driven that setting when I saw it, but I believe that was back when I was "allergic" to multi-effects pedal systems. I've mellowed a bit since then.
Their HiWatt model doesn't distort very much (I'm not sure how realistic this is), so the distortion is mostly being generated by the Big Muff.
If you've ever played a classic Hiwatt 50 or 100 watt head or combo, you'd find out those are rather *clean* amps. There's not much breakup on a Hiwatt until the volume's up somewhere near window shattering levels. A Hiwatt is more or less a slightly darker sounding version of a Fender Twin Reverb or Dual Showman -- loud and clean. Contrast that with a classic Marshall plexi, which starts getting dirty at 3. Angus Young plays a pair of 100-watt Marshall plexi heads on stage with the volume set at 4 or maybe 4.5 at the most.
It was harmonic distortion, but probably not accompanied by a lot of clipping. The effect you were getting was primarily resonance, due to the sharp cutoff or band shaping that the filter produced through its Q setting. I do the same thing with a Yamaha Nathan East Signature NE-1 Parametric Equalizer.
In Fripp's case I think his signature is more about the amount of compression and sustain he got. Did he use a stomp compression, like the famous blue one?
Unless a studio mixing engineer was applying compression during a recording or mixing session, vintage-era Fripp got his compression from the natural compression of the fuzz box (Buzzaround or BigMuff). He just stuck to his volume + wah + fuzz pedal board and didn't get into anything fancy until much later.
I've owned a Crimson King for a little while now and it certainly does a good job at doing the triple germanium transistor Buzzaround (darker) fuzz and even a good job of doing the similar ToneBender MKIII (brighter) fuzz.
I also have a chrome Vox V830 distortion pedal that I bought in the mid-90s that sounds something like the Crimson King meets a ProCo Rat. As I turn the Level and Drive settings past twelve o'clock it begins to steadily sound more and more like the world is coming to its end, creating all sorts of strange otherworldly ring-modulator-like sonic artifacts along with the extreme fuzz.
The Big Muff hit the pedal scene in 1969/1970, so 71/72 certainly sound plausible since EHX was already cranking out Big Muffs pedals as fast as they could by then. He definitely began leaving the Buzzaround (he owned 2 by that time -- one was a backup) at home during tours, using the Buzzaround only for recording studio purposes. After going with the Big Muff for touring, Fripp was known to have continued using the Buzzaround afterwards for use on the Fripp & Eno records and Bowie's Heros album.
In the mid 80's, 85, I think it was, Fripp was featured on the cover of Guitar Player again, in connection with his announcement of the first Guitar Craft seminars. There was a sidebar piece on that one about gear. Fripp said that cheap Farfisa volume pedal he got in the early 70's he continued to use all through the 70's, until Boss put out a volume pedal circa 1980 that used some kind of "magnetic drive" (or something like that) which did away with the conventional potentiometer arrangement (and thus all the scratching noises that you get when the pot wears out). He said the Boss pedal was the first volume pedal he came across that he liked as much as the old Farfisa one.
Hmmmm.... "magnetic" doesn't make much sense. Sounds a lot more like he was talking about an *optical* volume control. My old Morley PFW (Power-Fuzz-Wah) pedal, which I've had since the late 70s, uses an electro-optical circuit to control the volume. I've had to replace the little tungsten lamp three times in nearly 40 years. No scratchy sound -- ever. Otherwise, I believe the old Roland volume pedals were the first to have a minimum volume setting control, which was probably quite useful for Fripp's style. (???)
I also remember he mentioned using Big Muffs and a Guild Foxey Lady, which I think I eventually found out was essentially the same circuit as the Big Muff. He talked about having a switching system built thta would allow him to mount all his fuzztones in a rack, and then switch around from one pedal to the other, depending on what he wanted at the time. This was back before everyone had these fancy effects switching systems that are commonplace now.
Starting in the 80s, Fripp got complicated. This was certainly due to him working with and being influenced by Belew. I know he got heavy into using the Roland GR-series guitar synths fairly early on. By the 90s, he had a rack full of various TC Electronic 19-inch rack-mount gear following him around everywhere along with the use of Fernandes Sustainers.
Did Andy Summers get Fripp into Roland guitar synths or was it the other way around? Or just a coincidence?
Don't know, but, I'd heavy bet on The Frippster for that sort of corruption of a fellow geetarist.
Fripp's tone: haughty and a bit condescending, with an occasional touch of sarcasm.
I don't think it was either. Fripp was using the GR-300 on Discipline, which predated I Advanced Mask, I believe. And Andy first using a Roland GR-500 on Walking In The Moon (though I think he admitted you could only barely hear it in the final mix). SO I think the two of them came to the guitar synths on their own, before working together.
He was definitely talking about the Boss volume pedals. I think "magnetic field" was the phrase they used in their ads at the time. I've got several Guitar Player magazines from 1980 that have the particular ad in question. I get the impression that it was different technology as to what Morley used on their pedals.
There have been some volume and wah pedals that have used Hall sensors to sense pedal positions. A Hall sensor senses a magnetic field and produces a corresponding voltage. I've used Hall sensors to count shaft revolutions.
That it's! "Hall magnetic field" I think was the exact phrase Boss used in their advertising at the time.
Apparently, Summers started playing the Roland GR-series guitar synth around 1980 for the Zenyatta Mondatta album.
By that point in time, The Police were a well-know band and Roland was probably supplying Summers with a GR synth and bleeding edge firmware and patches. Fripp was likely also getting supplied by Roland in the same way. Guitar synths at that time were still buggy and temperamental. So, maybe there's half a chance that Summers and Fripp initially met up at Roland's support office in London.
Well, it's actually called The Hall Effect. Speedometers and pedometers commonly use Hall sensors.
I stole a Hall sensor off of a cheap pedometer a while back to build an equally cheap shaft revolution counter circuit for winding (and rewinding) guitar pickups with a sewing machine.
Based on the Rick James comment someone made above, I assume it's this clip. A favorite of mine. I watch it over lunch at least once or twice a month.
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