HX Effects + Katana Set-Up

I bought an HX Effects at the end of March, from those nice people at GuitarGuitar Camden, where you can buy any guitar you like as long as it’s a Strat and costs £2,000+ (I am exaggerating only slightly. It is cheaper than Denmark Street where the prices start at £2,000 and ascend very quickly.) Since then I haven’t written anything about my endless Tone Journey.

Imagine being dropped in a guitar shop, given the keys to the pedal cabinet and told to play around all your like. That’s what getting an HX Effects is.

I’m playing it through the Katana, (edit: 9/6) using the Instrument In, pre-amp gain at zero, pre-amp volume nearly dimed, Mid-EQ dimed, Treble and Bass at 12:00. The power amp is set at “0.5W” (/edit) and I control the output with the Master volume.

I’m playing mostly between 65-75 dBA, and have made the following very important adjustment to the amp positioning.

I sit on a barstool about two metres away, on a chair about a meter away, depending on whether I’m using the HX Edit program.

Brief acoustics digression. When the wavelength of a note is less than the diameter of the speaker, that note and those above it will start to “beam” out of the speaker. For a 12” speaker, that frequency is around 1100 Hz, which is about the highest note on the guitar. BUT, guitar strings produce a lot of overtones - fifths and octaves - which are not a lot quieter than the fundamental tone - so that playing A440 produces second harmonics of 1,760 Hz, which will go out like a lightbeam from a big speaker (okay, there are lobes to the side, but only if you’re doing a science degree). Stand to one side or above the speaker and those higher harmonics will pass you right by: the sound will be smoother and lack bite. What I heard over at my friend’s place, where we sit with our heads at speaker level, were all those higher harmonics, which gave the impression of bite and air. This is why mic-ing speakers is more of an art than it should be: where you put the mic affects what exact mix of overtones and bass notes you get.

Chasing tone is to acoustics what cooking is to chemistry: there’s a science underneath it, but mostly it’s applied magic.

The towel under the front of the speaker means I get the overtones beamed at me, so I hear a sound with more air and snap than I would if the speaker was pointing parallel to the floor. This makes a BIG difference to my appreciation of the “tones” I’m setting up on the HX Effects.

I have one Preset with nothing in it, to send the guitar output unchanged to the amp, but despite that the sound through the HX Effects sounds a little tighter and snappier. I’m assuming that the ADC-in / DAC-out conversion, plus any other system circuitry in this “empty path” through the HX Effects, creates some compression. I’m not complaining. It has given me back the neck pickup, which sounded too snarly and nasal through the Katana.

Okay… set-up over. Actual tone-chasing next.

Geoff Marshall

There are transport nerds, and then there’s Geoff Marshall. He’s at Dovey Junction in this video. It’s about passing loops and platform lengths, and where the station entrance is. This what I watch when I’m having supper. It’s so soothing.

Angela Collier

That would be Doctor Angela to you, though she’s working in the private sector. She has a mug with a proton on one side and a hydrogen ion on the other, because that’s a joke about physicists and chemists (it’s the same thing). She’s darn good at explaining science stuff and isn’t afraid to throw math at you, because of course you math, right? This is a good explanation of temperature, but be warned, the explanation involves entropy.

Digging To China

China. Economic powerhouse? Future super-power? Communist nightmare? Land of glittering skyscrapers? There are a handful of channels about China, of which I’ve long liked this one. The place is a dysfunctional mess that almost makes the UK look well-organised… almost. This channel provides a good look at a country with about 15% of the world’s population.

The B1M

The world is full of building projects the ambition, size and cost of which dwarfs anything in the past. I think the front pages of newspapers should carry progress reports about all of them, so we can see that some useful things are being done in the world. The papers don’t, so this channel does.

Tanya Shpachuk

Somewhere in the quieter parts of the Ukraine is a workshop full of luthiers (guitar makers and repairs), and Ms Shpachuk has a channel. Marvel at how much work goes into getting the neck of a guitar right. The neck and frets are precision engineering in disguise.

Brandon D’Eon - Cliffs of Dover

Cliffs of Dover is a venerable Eric Johnson instrumental that seems to be for electric guitar what Angie was or is to acoustic guitar. Brandon D’Eon is a twenty-something jazz guitar graduate with a theatrical manner and what looks like a well-subscribed guitar course. 

   

 Yep, it’s gratuitous catch-up time. Eight YT channels I’ve been watching on and off recently.