well hello friends and welcome to
0:34
another Ask
0:34
Zac today we're gonna have fun looking
0:37
at my retro
0:39
90s pedal board we're gonna dive
0:42
deep into uh into this
0:45
board and uh all the the pedals on it
0:48
this is a
0:49
these are some of the the pedals that i
0:51
had back in the 90s and then
0:53
some reproductions that i had to use
0:56
like this 808 i had an original 808 and
0:59
sold it so this is a reissue but
1:00
otherwise these are
1:02
my old pedals from uh from the olden
1:06
times
1:07
so uh yeah we're gonna have fun so while
1:10
you're thinking about it
1:11
uh if you've been enjoying the show uh
1:13
subscribe if you've already subscribed
1:15
please go to askzak.com and go to the
1:18
store
1:19
and you can pick up a t-shirt or a mug
1:21
or there's the tip jar information
1:23
in the description so all right
1:28
so this was kind of inspired by the
1:30
clone episode i did last week
1:32
and uh you know talking about the 80s
1:34
and 90s and the beginning of the
1:36
boutique stuff made me think
1:38
about the what i was using during that
1:40
period of time because i
1:42
i didn't have any boutique stuff i guess
1:45
i guess you could consider this demeter
1:47
kind of a a boutique thing
1:49
but otherwise it was you know boss and
1:52
ibanez stuff
1:53
so let's talk about this
1:57
board uh so first off
2:00
this is a boss bcb6
2:04
pedal board it was originally released
2:06
in 1983
2:08
and it really was the standard for pedal
2:10
boards at the time
2:12
and of course it was limited in that it
2:14
was really only designed to
2:15
to hold boss pedals you could
2:19
uh put smaller pedals like it like you
2:21
could with this
2:22
uh trimulator but if you put anything
2:25
bigger like this 808 is actually
2:26
slightly bigger than a boss pedal and so
2:28
i had to hollow out
2:30
some of the plastic i just kind of
2:31
chipped away at it
2:33
but yeah that was that was the standard
2:37
and so that's what you saw on television
2:39
and so uh
2:40
i used to you know stay up late at night
2:44
uh after i was supposed to be asleep as
2:46
a
2:47
teenager and uh actually probably yeah
2:51
starting you know about 13 14 years old
2:54
i would
2:54
i would go to bed and then after my
2:57
parents went to sleep
2:59
i would go and i had a little television
3:01
in my room and i had headphones it had a
3:03
headphone jack and i'd plug that into it
3:05
this was an old tv with you know rabbit
3:07
ears on it and i would get
3:09
i could get nbc which that was the
3:11
channel i wanted to watch because i
3:12
wanted to see the tonight show
3:14
you know with Johnny Carson and then
3:16
after that i wanted to watch letterman
3:18
because letterman was my favorite
3:20
because i really liked the band because
3:22
i liked doc severance
3:23
and and the you know the the jazz you
3:25
know kind of
3:26
tv jazz that they were playing which was
3:28
great and i had respect for that and
3:30
also the musical guests they had they
3:31
had great guests on the tonight show
3:33
but i really enjoyed watching uh the
3:36
most dangerous band
3:37
you know on letterman and so i loved
3:39
hiram bullock the original guitar player
3:42
and he used one of these full of petals
3:45
and will lee had won
3:47
one of these full of pedals the bass
3:48
player and then when
3:50
hiram left when they got sid mcginnis he
3:52
had one of these two and it was
3:54
right there in plain view you could see
3:55
it and then people would come on the
3:58
show
3:59
and uh so you'd see uh guys
4:02
you know whether it was the tonight show
4:04
or or letterman i remember
4:06
seeing like john jorgensen have one i
4:09
remember seeing john leventhal
4:11
duke levine who was playing with mary
4:12
chapin carpenter
4:14
in the 90s and uh you know but uh you
4:17
know saw these guys you know kind of
4:19
using
4:20
this board and uh
4:23
you know i ended up just kind of finding
4:25
one by you know blind luck
4:28
so uh my first you know to kind of give
4:30
a little bit of context my first pedal
4:32
was a dod chorus
4:34
and it got stolen from the high school
4:37
uh
4:37
equipment locker you know that because i
4:39
played in the jazz band in high school
4:42
and uh my little bag that had my
4:45
chorus in it and a wawa that i borrowed
4:47
from a friend
4:49
got stolen and so i
4:52
i took care of my buddy who lost his
4:55
wah-wah
4:56
and at least i think i did and then i
5:00
bought a ce2 you know boss chorus
5:03
you know from the ams catalog and at the
5:06
same time i decided i wanted to try
5:07
getting an overdrive pedal so i got the
5:09
boss sd1
5:11
the yellow pedal with three knobs then
5:14
i decided i really wanted to get into
5:16
delay
5:18
and again this is about 1990 at this
5:20
point
5:21
and so i i from clawson's music in
5:25
corpus christi texas hello bob and
5:28
bubba i ordered a boss dd3 delay
5:33
and like many from that era you know i
5:35
was used to just using batteries in my
5:37
pedal
5:38
my pedals so i get the dd3 i put a
5:41
battery in it
5:42
well it lasts one gig and then it it
5:46
starts the delays
5:47
time starts going away and
5:50
i'm like what's wrong with this pedal
5:52
and my guitar teacher had to tell me
5:54
well that's a digital delay it'll eat a
5:57
battery in a night
5:59
and he said you're going to have to get
6:00
a an adapter for it
6:02
i was like what's that i mean i didn't
6:04
even know what the jack was on the back
6:05
of the pedal that's how
6:06
ignorant i was and none of the music
6:10
stores in corpus christi even
6:12
had nine volt power supplies you know
6:14
and uh
6:15
and it was kind of like you had to use
6:17
the boss power supply with it you know
6:19
there wasn't even the knowledge of okay
6:21
it's a nine volt center pin
6:23
negative you know and it's filtered and
6:25
such there was no
6:26
knowledge of that so i had a special
6:29
order of boss psa 120 power supply
6:32
and this was back when it was a
6:34
transformer you know it was heavier than
6:36
you know they don't make that power
6:38
supply anymore the one they make now
6:39
is uh is a digital switching power
6:42
supply so i got that
6:45
so now we get to i was
6:48
in my hometown of kingsville texas and
6:50
there was only one music store there at
6:52
that point
6:53
because the music man that i had worked
6:54
at had closed
6:56
so there was this uh this one store
6:59
called getch
7:00
that was more of a piano shop and then
7:03
there were some pawn shops
7:05
that would routinely have some
7:07
interesting gear in them so usually at
7:09
least once a week of course
7:11
i would go to the pawn shops well i
7:14
happen to be digging through this one
7:15
pawn shop
7:16
and there was something that i guess i
7:18
had just hadn't noticed before
7:20
but i found one of these boards
7:24
in the back covered in dust and thick
7:27
dust
7:29
so they didn't have a power supply to it
7:31
and the pedals were just sitting there
7:34
and i asked the you know the owner i
7:36
said what do you want for this
7:38
and he said and he said i don't know 200
7:41
i said well how can i try it out
7:43
he said i don't know i don't know i said
7:46
well
7:46
how do we know if it works he said i i
7:48
don't know
7:50
so i said uh well i think i might have a
7:53
power supply at home but
7:54
would you do a hundred dollars for the
7:56
whole thing because it was the plastic
7:57
board
7:58
full of pedals and it had you know
8:01
an analog delay and it didn't have all
8:04
these pedals in it but it had it had
8:06
this exact cs2 compressor and this red
8:08
pedal
8:09
and had the dm2 it also had like an eq
8:12
pedal and a ce3 chorus and some other
8:14
things that i've gotten rid of through
8:16
the years
8:17
and he agreed and so i ran
8:20
home got my boss power supply
8:23
plugged it in but didn't play through it
8:26
because i just wanted to make sure that
8:27
it you know everything powered up you
8:29
know because i didn't want to lose the
8:31
deal
8:32
and i gave him a hundred dollars and uh
8:35
you know i took it home and began i
8:36
took everything apart and cleaned it and
8:40
then uh
8:40
got it uh got it back together and
8:42
everything worked
8:44
you know perfectly everything was fine i
8:46
was just amazed
8:48
so uh anyway so that's how i got my
8:50
first pedal board a boss
8:52
bcb6 and just to give a little uh
8:55
you know kind of context it came out in
8:57
1983
8:59
and it was a hundred and forty dollars
9:02
and all it came with
9:03
was the the the plastic board itself the
9:06
daisy chain
9:08
and the little megami molded plugs
9:12
and that was 140 which in today's money
9:15
would be
9:15
330 dollars for what some guys on the on
9:19
the gear page called a tupperware
9:21
pedalboard i think it's very handy i i
9:25
love it i mean i
9:26
i kinda after playing through this i'm
9:29
kinda tempted to go back to using
9:31
something like this because it actually
9:32
works really well
9:34
okay so in the board you know starting
9:36
off you have the psm5
9:38
and a lot of people thought this is a
9:40
power supply it's not because the power
9:42
supply has to plug
9:43
into it and then it has a daisy chain
9:45
coming off of it all this is an
9:47
av box it's all it is the way they set
9:50
it up
9:51
was where you would plug in the guitar
9:53
here and your amp here
9:54
and then it would go in between either
9:57
looping through all the pedals
9:58
or going straight to your amp i
10:02
figured out pretty quickly what it was
10:05
and i wired it differently and so what i
10:09
did was i ran it to the
10:11
the tuner and then out on the last pedal
10:14
so that i could switch in between either
10:16
tuning which also muted my signal so
10:18
that i could tune or change instruments
10:20
or go through the pedals
10:23
the the tu-12 when it was released
10:26
in 1983 it was a hundred dollars which
10:29
is
10:30
236 in today's dollars
10:34
is it starting to add up this was an
10:35
expensive board okay
10:38
so then and the tu-12h is still a great
10:41
tuner you know it's not it's not like
10:43
it's some inaccurate horrible
10:45
tuner okay next you have the cs2 and
10:48
this the compressor was released
10:51
in 1981 and went through 86 and it was
10:54
then was replaced by the cs3
10:56
i loved this compressor and
10:59
i just thought it's a great sounding
11:00
unit
11:01
[Music]
11:03
and uh it's perfect for uh you know this
11:06
kind of thing
11:13
[Music]
11:19
[Laughter]
11:24
it's hard to get that last uh chime in
11:27
there
11:27
but uh yeah like like playing that
11:30
pretenders
11:31
solo to uh to kid which is one of my
11:33
favorites and honeymoon scott actually
11:35
used one of these live i think
11:37
in the studio when he recorded that he
11:38
used a tele
11:40
you know direct and i'm sure they had
11:42
like an la2a or something like that
11:44
but uh yeah cs2 is a great
11:47
compressor uh it's pretty squashy
11:50
sounding
11:51
you know even if you set the sustain low
11:53
like i've got where it's you know that 9
11:55
10 o'clock range it still has a bit of
11:57
squash to it
11:58
but to me this is you know that's this
12:00
is what like vince gill and stuart smith
12:03
and
12:03
tons of guys were using these in the 80s
12:05
and then they went on to the cs3 later
12:07
on
12:08
all right then you have the 808 this is
12:11
a reissue
12:13
unfortunately you know i had a real one
12:16
back in the day
12:17
that i paid 30 bucks for and
12:20
uh i sold it in the late 90s for 350
12:24
bucks
12:25
but i still regret it to this day but so
12:28
this is a reissue
12:29
the original 808 was 50 in 1979 which
12:32
would be 150
12:34
in today's money and the uh
12:38
the reissue tsa to weight in today's
12:40
money is 170
12:42
so it's more expensive now than it was
12:44
when it was released which i think is
12:45
pretty funny
12:46
uh i haven't played through a tube
12:48
screamer in forever because i've been
12:50
using you know most orations or the
12:51
karma
12:52
or you know even a nobles or something
12:55
like that and so it was a kind of a hoot
12:56
to uh
12:57
to play through this
13:15
it has a lot a lot of mid-range and you
13:18
know we'll just
13:19
turn this uh dd2 on too to kind of
13:22
get the full effect because that's the
13:24
way i would have used it was you know
13:25
with the dd2 on here and get that
13:37
it's a nice uh yeah
13:40
it's fun to revisit the tube screamer
13:42
they don't they don't sound as bad as i
13:44
remember them sounding i know that
13:46
sounds elitist so anyway
13:49
and of course uh you had to have an
13:51
adapter which they didn't sell adapters
13:54
at that point so
13:55
what i did was i went to radio shack and
13:58
i got
13:59
a female you know boss style
14:02
jack and then i got a you know an eighth
14:05
inch plug
14:06
and i just wired them together i
14:07
soldered them together and made a
14:09
converter so that i could plug the daisy
14:11
chain
14:12
into the 808 and use it on a power
14:14
supply instead of having to run a
14:17
you know battery in it and then have to
14:18
remember to unplug it
14:20
i had to do the same thing with this
14:22
next one so this is the the tremulator
14:24
which of course was released in 82
14:27
by a demeter and of course you know with
14:30
a often told story
14:32
is you know that uh rya cooter wanted a
14:35
tremolo pedal no one was making one at
14:36
that point
14:37
and so uh demeter made one that was
14:40
based on his uh
14:43
his blackface twin reverb so
14:46
go to the go to the neck pickup
14:48
[Music]
14:51
we still have the 808 on yep
14:54
all right so we're going to the neck
14:56
pickup on the this is my uh
14:58
my kabichi body dano caster neck
15:01
uh adder neck pickup uh ron ellis
15:05
60t bridge pickup and it's got a glazer
15:09
b bender on it and yeah
15:13
so here's the again this is the
15:15
compressor and the tremolo on
15:27
[Music]
15:38
[Music]
15:43
again you know this pedal has been
15:45
sitting in a box for years
15:47
i only used it and uh it was nice to
15:50
pull
15:50
you know pull the pedal out again and
15:52
hear it and it's a great sounding unit
15:53
and
15:54
and i've heard that these early red knob
15:56
ones are supposed to be
15:57
good i don't know i don't know i i think
15:59
i paid
16:00
i can't remember what i paid you know
16:02
for that pedal you know used many years
16:04
ago
16:05
all right so there's the trimulator and
16:07
here's the boss dm2
16:10
and you know this is
16:13
the second version of the pedal it
16:15
doesn't have the coveted
16:17
early chip it has the later chip which
16:19
was also in the dm3
16:22
to me still i prefer actually the sound
16:25
of the dm3 over the two
16:28
no matter the different chip in it
16:30
because i think the three
16:31
is uh is cleaner sounding and i just
16:34
like it better
16:35
so of course i'm not going to get rid of
16:36
this thing because i've had it forever
16:38
and uh and its repeats are really kind
16:40
of thuddy
16:42
so you know but it's good on a
16:44
telecaster you go to the back pickup and
16:51
[Music]
17:03
you
17:09
[Music]
17:25
so yeah d dm2 is great for uh
17:28
fattening up a telly thing and you know
17:30
getting a good
17:31
slapback uh the dm2
17:34
when released was 200 in 1981 which
17:38
would be like 472 dollars to
17:40
today okay
17:44
that's that's more than what we think of
17:47
as the inflated price that we pay for
17:50
used ones
17:51
all right the dd2 might as well kind of
17:54
give the stats on that
17:56
the dd2 was released in 1983
17:59
it was two hundred and twenty dollars
18:01
then which would be like
18:02
five hundred and twenty dollars now
18:08
all right this is the way i set it i set
18:11
it at
18:11
uh the 800 milliseconds on the mode
18:14
i set it you know straight up and then
18:16
the feedback and levels
18:18
at nine o'clock so you get this kind of
18:21
[Music]
18:26
thing
18:32
[Music]
18:50
the dd2 i think is one of the sleeper
18:54
delay pedals
18:55
i mean they're still relatively cheap
18:58
uh i mean they can be bought for in the
19:00
hundred to two hundred dollar range
19:02
depending on how clean they are
19:04
most of them in the 120-150 range and to
19:07
me
19:08
if i were only going to have one delay
19:10
pedal on my board because normally i use
19:12
two
19:12
because you can tell you know you know i
19:14
had two delay pedals one for long and
19:16
one for short
19:18
like but if i only had one it'd be the
19:20
dd2 because it just has that right
19:24
it's not as study as the dm2
19:27
but it's not as clear as later petals it
19:31
just and i don't know i've had to do
19:32
with the big chip that was used on these
19:34
or what but
19:35
these just have a really really nice
19:37
sending repeat and i
19:39
yeah if i was only gonna have one delay
19:40
pedal it'd be the dd2 that'll be another
19:42
pedal i never you know if i you know
19:45
i'll never get rid of
19:47
so anyway that's that's kind of the
19:51
the board and uh what's really
19:55
funny about about this is one i need to
19:58
talk about
19:59
so i was telling you how how much it you
20:01
know each one of these pedals cost
20:03
when new so if i wanted to buy this
20:05
board you know back in the day
20:06
you know brand new it would have been
20:08
one thousand one hundred and twenty
20:09
dollars
20:11
and if i wanted to and so if you take
20:12
inflation into account this would be two
20:14
thousand
20:15
six hundred and ten dollars yeah
20:19
so one of the real funny things about
20:21
this is is a realization because you
20:23
know you think that you're
20:25
kind of evolving as a player and
20:27
sometimes you're kind of coming around
20:29
full circle
20:30
so i'm going to put my guitar down
20:34
and uh and so this of course was the
20:36
pedal board i used in the 90s
20:42
well this is the board i use now notice
20:45
any similarities
20:47
they're both straight in line they're
20:49
both
20:50
have a tuner a compressor
20:53
a tremolo an overdrive and two delay
20:57
pedals
20:58
it was kind of this weird thing of
21:01
finding out
21:02
you know what i've i'm using the board i
21:05
used back in the 90s but just kind of a
21:08
i don't know maybe a slightly updated or
21:10
you know version so of course
21:12
this has an isolated you know power
21:14
supply on it and is more compact
21:18
but yeah you have a different flavor of
21:20
distortion
21:22
but
21:24
[Laughter]
21:26
there you have it all right well guys
21:30
i hope you've enjoyed today's episode
21:33
uh where we took a look back at these uh
21:37
old pedal boards that uh again i saw my
21:39
heroes use back in the 80s and 90s and
21:42
that
21:42
i hadn't used for a long time you know
21:44
probably was until
21:46
in the 2000s that i got a you know pedal
21:48
train board or something like that
21:50
so anyway well i hope you've enjoyed
21:52
today's episode i'll see you next time