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Looper's Delight
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> The funny thing about Holdsworth is that he claims those effects are all > very short delays that are augmented by his playing. He's also got a >little > bit of equiptment that he makes himself. The guy always blow my mind. >I've > got some video of him playing the Synthaxe, It is nuts. Have you seen his > instructional video. It's scary. > Jeff Collins As I recall, Holdsworth's reasoning is that a digital chorus effect is really nothing more than a bunch of very short delays. Thus he used an ADA delay unit for his sound. The equipment he has made is mostly in support of his tone philosophy that for his overdriven guitar sound he needs power tubes - preamp tube distortion is not enough. Thus he's made "juice extractors" that take the speaker output of any tube amp and convert it to a line level signal and "the coffin" (a recording chamber for his guitar cabinets - mostly sound-deadening material wrapped around the cabinets with mics stuck in). Yes, Rocktron used to market the Holdsworth Juice Extractor, but Holdsworth was unhappy with the product. They ruined his original design for the dummy load part of the product (it fools the tube amp into thinking there is a speaker connected to it). He spent a lot of time and effort using trial-and-error to come up with a particular concoction of resistors and other components but Rocktron reportedly changed his recipe for the dummy load. On top of that, he felt the final product was constructed with poor quality control. I think he still sells his own Juice Extractor (under a different name) on a made-to-order basis. I have not seen the video but I do have teh book Just For the Curious. His phrasing is unique among guitarists (e.g. lots of perfect fourths) because he effortlessly uses fingerings that most guitarists would not consider "comfortable". It's worth checking out for guitarists (and Stick players) who want to take their phrasing in a different direction. Cheers, Paolo Valladolid --------------------------------------------------------------- |Moderator of Digital Guitar Digest, an Internet mailing list |\ |for Music Technology and Stringed Instruments | \ ---------------------------------------------------------------- | \ finger pvallado@waynesworld.ucsd.edu for more info \ | \ http://waynesworld.ucsd.edu/DigitalGuitar/home.html \| -----------------------------------------------------------------