4049 invertors and lap steel: match made in heaven? maybe

[Mark Hammer]

Last month I finally finished restoring an old Goya lap steel I had bought from the estate of former forum member, the late Peter Snow.  The nut was busted such that only 5 strings could sit on it, so I used a piece of ebony I had lying around and machined a new improved nut (in truth, you don't really "carve" ebony).  The pickup was one of those wimpy Japanese ceramic jobs, so I heated it up with another 600 turns of #43 wire.  Strung it up with a set of 12-thru-56 and got myself a nice heavy Dunlap slide bar.

Last night I finished restoring a heavily modded Anderton tube sound fuzz I had made over 15 years ago that had been sitting around with some switch and scratchy pot issues.  This pedal was the progenitor of something I had given to David Lindley about 5 years ago that became the 49-er project on the gauss-markov site.  (I made it especially for Lindley because I thought it would sound great with lap steel.  Absolutely no idea if he ever used it, and I had only used it with normal guitar.)

This evening I finally plugged the lap steel into the pedal, and holy freaking t'underin' lord jebuz murphy!  There is something about lap steel output, perhaps the fact that there is no quick decay (so it continues to do whatever it does at the start of the note....for longer), but I suppose the girth of those heavier strings as well, that just makes 4049-based pedals sound huge, like a monster truck...with chains on the tires....angry and coming right at ya.  Had it plugged into my little Fender Sidekick stereo chorus amp.  Turned on the chorus (wet one speaker, dry the other, just like the JC120, except much smaller) and huge became even huger.  I'm afraid to use it with 12" speakers.  It might hurt small children, or the foundation of my house.  Like many, I too am "crazy about a Mercury", but I felt like I was being thrown under one.

I don't usually rave about stuff, but this is one of those matches that was destined.  If you have a lap steel, whatever design strikes your fancy, be it Red Llama, Anderton/EPFM TSF, Frank Clarke's Hot Harmonics, Stellan Lehrberg's Slowfinger, the 49-er, the original EHX Hot Tubes, Snarling Dogs Black Dog or Tweedy Dog, or whatever; just build it.  Lap steel and 4049's is better than peanut butter and chocolate, hotter than Pam and Tommy, richer than Bill and Melinda.

So, yeah, I kinda like it.   

[Bad Chizzle]

Cool!

It's good to get excited about things. I don't have a lap steel guitar, but you almost made me go out and get one. Maybe I'll just lay one of my guitars down and go at it with a 4049 circuit I built once. I've got a couple of slides somewhere.

[jasperoosthoek]

I just finished a UBE Screamer from Run Off Groove with a slightly modified circuit. It's basically a TS808 with 4049 distortion and tone section. It really sounds much better than the TS808 with JCR chip that I also built.

These inverters really rock big time!

[StephenGiles]

Any chance of a sample Mark?

I was listening to a recent Brad Paisley gig this morning, on one track he was having a solo jam with this pedal steel player - unbelievable!!