I know a guy named Kevin here in Seattle who builds his own designs on pedals. His brand is Softscience and they are highly sough after, one of a kinda or limited edition pedals.

Soldering takes time and practice. I had to learn to maintain my studio. I hate it, but I am glad I have the skill when I need it. My first projects all sucked and were blobby peices of shit, but I got better. It really is pretty simple if you just "Ape" things. Give yourself time to practice on "unsalvagable broken electronics" and see you can make things work again. That is how I learned.

Good Luck!

Check it out! http://www.buildyourownclone.com/

Fun with electronix.. I had some friends that took experimental electronics classes in art school and I've been trying to get them to crack me out a pedal... They would rather build robots... I've considered trying to follow some schematics myself, but I don't have confidence in my soldering precision... There's a boutique shop in brooklyn called Death By Audio (http://www.deathbyaudio.net/) and I hear they make some pretty crazy shit... They even have a custom section on their page. Would love to check their Fuzz War pedal. Anyone try that?

P-90s and a Rat pedal are a magical combination. I have P-90s in my '65 SG Special and with flat wounds I can get that guitar to sound either twangy for country, or get that cool Robby Krieger Doors sound (neck pick-up with tone rolled back a bit and the Rat about halfway on the Distortion and Tone), also that full Eric Clapton "Woman Tone" of early Cream (not that I care for that much) and finally that Ramones/Pistols punk sound when needed. The Country guys all roll their eyes when they see me break out the "Devil Horned Heavy Metal Guitar" (as they are all attached to their Tele's and Les Pauls) but the SG is a very versitile guitar and about half the weight of a Paul. The SG Special had P-90s and was the choice of guitarists like Pete Townshend until about 1972 (when he found them harder to aquire and switched to a Les Paul) I like it because it has a bit more wood around the pick up that a standard issue SG with Humbuckers in it. I toyed with putting in Alnico mini-humbuckers (from a Firebird V) but decided I like what I have so far.

The other pedal I like is a (not so) cheapo Ross Distortion Pedal. I got mine for $5 at a garage sale (my second one) and later saw one at a local music store for $100 or so. I just laughed and laughed about that. That store will never sell it for that price (even in total mint condition) they weren't that good. I could build a knock off with some circuit board and some over-the counter Ratshack electronics.

Go figure. There is another solution, Build your own dang pedals! There are plenty of schmatices out there to borrow from. Anyone thought about that?

Yet another vote for a vintage ProCo Rat. There_was_a smaller "Rat 2" there for a while that seems to work OK w/ solid-state amps~ you'd only see one used, now. A Sonic Youth fave, esp. w/ Jaguar + Jazzmaster guitars.

Danelectro's obscure Bacon 'n Eggs Mini Amp/ Distortion produces only one tone, but it's killer esp. linked to a P-90 pickup. When it's not doing that, it acts as a 1W battery amp w/ built-in speaker. Mine survived a trip to Burning Man~ still OK.

Sounds like I need to try some higher gauges. That's gonna be quite a difference if I get my Harmony with the thick neck. I use Ernie Ball. I'm gonna try find where I read that about the strings and distortion. Thanks for the help guys!

Hmmm - When did wound strings make their way into the market..? I know lots of the surf guys used Flat Wound Jazz style strings... Dick Dale was playing on 16 gauge flats... I play out with 2 guitars.. a Strat with 13 gauge D'addario Chrome jazz flats playing over EMG 81's, and a SG with 11 gauge D'addario nickel wound playing over 490 Alnico magnet humbuckers. I play the flats four our surfier / darker sounds are great for tremolo picking - and all of our rock punk garage stuff through the SG.

Jamie,
Go for pure nickel strings. I like Ernie ball "Rock and roll" pure nickels. Currently I use 10 gauage strings but think i'm gonna step up to the plate a put on some 11's for the Tele. Back in the day they used heavy gauge strings like 11's. Trust me those 11's are gonna make difference in your tone. There were no 9 or 10's until ernie ball thought of various gauges, thats at least what Mr. Detemple told me.

I use Rotosound Trubass black nylon strings on my PGW Phantom bass. They make the bass sound like a double bass.

I seem to recall reading something once about the strings in the 50's and 60's. I think it said that they were made of something that made it harder to get distortion. I wonder if that made a difference in the sound of Link Wray or The Kinks for example. What kind kind of strings do you use?

...if that's how they get their jollies. But, whatever. It's not like you can't just revert back to a previous version.

I don't care. If someone wants to do it, fine. But it's not high on my priority list or anything.

The guys pissed off about the forums being shut down would have a field day.

Go for it. Since I own this site, I'm not allowed to add a page on Wikipedia about it. Someone else will have to do it...

Who here's any good at wikipedia? If someone gets one started, I'm sure we can all contribute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Music_websites garagepunk.com needs to be here.

they are in no paticular order:
1. any one of the ramones first 4 albums(rocket to russia, leave home, ramones or road to ruin)
2. the who-who are you
3. motorhead-overkill or ace of spades
4. stray cats-hard to find there actual cd's but greatest hits will do
5. Loud, Fast & Out of Control: The Wild Sounds of the '50s [4cd Box] not your popular hits from the 50's but this shit rocks!
6. rolling stones- sticky fingers or let it bleed
7. any of cheap tricks first 3 cd's(cheap trick, in color or heaven tonight) live At Budokan: The Complete Concert is outstanding also
8. elvis costello- this years girl
9. deep purple- machinehead or who do you think we are? fireball, in rock and perfect strangers are outstanding too!
10.i'll have to finish this list off with...
anything from johnny cash!
i hope this helps ya out. good luck. jay

Someone from Lamps just put up a bunch of hard to find records on their ebay account: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZmisterbidjangles

start your own 'garage rock' collection.

manilow, hooker, real kids, missing persons, falco. if it's in your garage and you rock to it, you just did your own math.

*youalwayshavetohaveanexploitedalbum

sure do pm me and ill send some details

http://lowcut.dk/ Brutal Knights, Hip Priests, Hex Dispensers, Human Eye, Orange Sunshine, Baby Woodrose, Space Rock Spectacular, Live On Earth, Bohren and der club of Gore etc. 2008 will see Lowcut in a different form with running updates etc. and a new webmaster. Enjoy!

I had the pleasure of seeing them perform at Norton's SXSW showcase, Mary Weiss and the Reigning Sound, that is. Man, she sounded great!

Ditto !

I thought the Paul Weller forum was pulled due the constant porn spam that was being posted. It was also pretty much unmoderated, the record company or anyone connected to PW didn't seem to give much of a shit about the site, as most of it hadn't been updated in ages.

i first heard about it here: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=165875891&blogID=353093229 then after watching a coupla rob and big episodes, it came to fruition. i think i saw 3 or 4 spots. none including hr. maybe his spot will be during the finale of parental control. *fanoftheboilingpoints fortune

There were some great videos in there. Always love a Billie Childish performance. http://youtube.com/watch?v=xAW9e66Vuos Not sure if anyone else is interested, but Kevin Brown is a youtuber has a ton of great live performances: http://youtube.com/user/KevinBrownsvideos