Category: Gear

Class or Ass: Tel-Ray Morley VOL volume pedal

Doktor Ross Sewage4 Comments

This is by far the biggest pedal you’ll ever find that does so little. The Morley VOL volume pedal is a gigantic chrome monstrosity, powered directly by AC and it does one thing: turn you down. Looking at an original from the ’70s, gleaming and polished, it’s definitely a beauty, but is it worth it?

Morley VOL volume pedal

The first thing ya gotta ask yerself, do you need a volume pedal? Guitars and basses usually have a knob that does the same thing right there next to your hand. You should try using it! There are those, however, who might use a volume pedal for swells and, uh… that’s pretty much it. Presuming you need a volume pedal, it’s best to take a closer look before you make room on your pedal board for this one-trick pony that’s the size of a pony.

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Operating Theater: Ampeg SVT-200T

Doktor Ross Sewage13 Comments

Ampeg rewrote the book on high power amplification in 1969 with the introduction of the SVT. That was the Super Valve Technology amp which pumped out, a then unheard of, massive 300 watts from six huge valves (or “tubes”). Marshall invented THE rock guitar amp and Ampeg followed it with THE rock bass amp. And then… through the ’70s and ’80s, they never topped the SVT. Sure, they had a few other good products, in-between changing ownership as numerously as Michael Jackson was changing his nose. So in the late eighties, they just started throwing the SVT name around like baby batter at a bukkake convention. And hence, the SVT-200T, produced from 1987-1994: featuring no valves at all.

Ampeg SVT 200T

I like to think I’m less dumb than I used to be. When I bought this SVT-200T solid-state amplifier, I thought I had an SVT. It was loud, the right shape, it said SVT… shit, I just played grind core, what did I know? It had that “Ampeg” tone they dial all their amps towards and it sounded awesome. Sounded. One night in 2005 it took a dump. Or maybe I took a dump. Did I have the wrong speaker set up? Was the club’s power screwy? Was it just old? It took me a lot of learning over seven years, but I finally got this tubeless, sad sack out of the closet and farting again.

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Tools of the Trade: Light Bulb Limiter

Doktor Ross Sewage5 Comments

It’s easy to slap an LED onto a pedal. At least, it’s easy for me now. I’ve moved onto bigger and badder. Largely through trial and error, I’ve managed to make a few sick amps well again. I’m still a novice, but I’m learning and it’s fun. The online world is a treasure trove of knowledge and helpful people. Those helpful people told me I was doing some stupid things. I was able to rectify at least one of those things.

light bulb limiter

This is a light bulb limiter. You can’t buy one and they’re all built a little different. It’s extremely helpful when dealing with a broken amp. In a previous repair of a Peavey XXX guitar amplifier, I was blowing fuses left and right (maybe center, too). The light bulb limiter is a D.I.Y. device that coulda saved me a lotta pain.

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Building a better Rat trap 2

Doktor Ross Sewage3 Comments

Just why does Pro Co only make one pedal? Because they got it right the first time. The Rat distortion box is legendary and it sounds killer, in my humble opinion. Okay, okay, Pro Co has made a few other stomp boxes, but they’re all based around the original Rat circuit and the legendary LM308 IC op-amp. The Turbo Rat, the Rat2, the You Dirty Rat, the Deucetone Rat, and the Rat R2DU rack mount are all descendant of the original: the gnarlier then gnarl white face Rat.

This is a white face Rat from around 1984. There are a few cosmetic differences, however, as I put some modifications into this little guy. A fella I knew asked me to do this before either of us realized the value this pedal could have probably scored on the eBay marketplace. So be it… he ended up trading it to me for some other work I did and I’m happy to call it “mine.” One of my earlier forays into pedal modifications, I’m pleased with the simple changes I made.

Class or ass: Morley SEL Select-Effect

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When Tel-Ray Morley was started, guitar effects were in their infancy. It was novel for a guitar player to have even one effect on stage. The Morley design didn’t seem so ridiculous then. Wouldn’t you want your one pedal to be a nice, big, beautiful chrome monster? As the 1970s continued, guitar players only added a couple pedals to their line-up, the price being prohibitive and the pedals being enormous. Then BOSS introduced their still distinctive line of affordable, compact pedals in the 1980s; the world of ridiculously large pedal boards began. Enter the Morley SEL.

Morley SEL

As far as I can tell, this must’ve been Morley’s attempt to keep up with the times. It’s got that distinctly enormous Morley look they kept for over a decade, but it doesn’t do something new. It’s an effect switcher. It’s not a true-bypass box, it just bypasses up to five effects. So do those effects’ on-off switches. Pointless? You can see where this is going.

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Operating Theatre: Peavey XXX

Doktor Ross Sewage2 Comments

During the months we traveled with GWAR, Sean “Bloodbath” McGrath’s Peavey XXX performed robustly. It’s modeled after a Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier, but minus the almost baffling amounts of bells and whistles and the outrageous price tag. Sean likes his stuff simple and cheap. Other than the embarrassing faceplate I replaced previously and the goofy knob names, it’s been a champ and sounded awesome.

Peavey XXX

And then the XXX crapped out. It stopped working two minutes before stage time at one of the last dates on our headlining tour. Sean was supposed to take his head into the shop upon our return, but was aghast to find it under a dog pile of costumes in our practice place. He said, “Nah.” Well, I dug it out to see what I could accomplish.

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Wrought in Hell: Road Case Revisionism

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There used to be a day when I would put my amp under my car seat for travel. It was an Ampeg B2. I found out that was a good way to have all the EQ knobs broken. Years later I toured with an Ampeg SVT-2Pro rack mount amp… and never bothered rack mounting it. Sure, a guitar always goes in a case. Why bother with an amplifier? It’s just that thing that MAKES IT LOUD.

I got older and poorer, though, while my amp choice got older and more valuable. The folly of youth left me. There was no way was I going to leave on a huge tour again without making sure every amp had a case, especially the vintage Ampeg V4B I was now playing through. When we headed out with GWAR, Sean borrowed a case, we got Dan one while on the road, and I… of course, I had to cobble something together that was special.

I started with this little gem that was tossed for junk outside our practice studio. It was broken and battered, but had a lot of potential.

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Operating Theatre: Ampeg V-4B

Doktor Ross Sewage5 Comments

This last tour we did was killer… I mean it killed a lot of stuff. Not only were the stages littered with the bodies of the slain, but the gear suffered horribly, too. We did six weeks with GWAR just before and had nary a hiccup. The following excursion was three weeks of headlining buffoonery that really did us in. iPods were lost, speakers blown, casters shot, cords frayed, pedals shorted, and antennas snapped. The two most tragic losses were amplifiers. Without an amp, a metal band you are not. Tenacious D be damned (funny, I find them not). Sean’s Peavey XXX took a hit and still remains defunct. My Ampeg V-4B, with a bit of tuning up on my own workbench, will live again!

ampeg v4-B apart

When I last plugged in this disheveled beast, it was at Philadelphia’s Kung-Fu Necktie. Occultist had just finished a rousing set. I turned on my amp and it winked at me. The power light went on and then off. This was not good. A quick check of the external fuse revealed it had not blown. I couldn’t fathom what was wrong, but when I borrowed an amp, I found that I had a blown speaker in my 2×15. How and when I did not know. My amp, however, was expecting a 4Ω load and instead got 8Ω. Pop.

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