Q Cycle is proud to welcome the Adageo Energy Pro Cycling Team to the family of Exustar-sponsored athletes. The team will ride on Exustar shoes, pedals, and helmets, plus what Commodore Bill describes as “assorted goodies”– cages, bags, etc. Other notable equipment sponsors include Leopard carbon framests, Pactimo apparel, American Classic wheelsets, and eyewear from Smith Optics.

The 2010 Adageo Energy roster features a mix of American and international talent that includes Australian Cody Stevenson (winner of Stage 1 of the 2009 Tour of Wellington), American Tommy Nelson (stage winner at the Southern Nevada Stage Race), Swiss national (U23) team member Tobias Eggli and accomplished American track talents Bennet van der Genugten and Danny Finneran.

You can follow the Adageo team as @adageocycling on Twitter; Adageo Energy Pro Cycling on Facebook; on their main web page; or via the team blog.

We’re psyched to have such heavy hitters on Exustar. Welcome, guys!

Friend and bandmate Neil has been developing his own line (SixDayOldString) of guitar effects. I can’t really say if I’m biased or not but everything he’s created sound real good. And the names and designs are really cool too.

You can find out more about his creations by goign to his blog: http://sixdayoldstring.blogspot.com/

Also you can view his YouTube channel for demos: http://www.youtube.com/user/sixdayoldstring

Good day, God bless!

Friend and bandmate Neil has been developing his own line (SixDayOldString) of guitar effects. I can’t really say if I’m biased or not but everything he’s created sound real good. And the names and designs are really cool too.

You can find out more about his creations by goign to his blog: http://sixdayoldstring.blogspot.com/

Also you can view his YouTube channel for demos: http://www.youtube.com/user/sixdayoldstring

Good day, God bless!

The Christmas Season has arrived!!  If you have a guitar player in your family and you are reading this blog then your in luck!  We are going to take a look at a the perfect gift for any guitar player in mind.  Whether your specific guitar player plays blues, metal or country, this gift is used by the entire electric guitar playing community.  We are talking about the Ibanez TS-9Tube screamer.  In terms of ease of use it couldn’t be simpler, 3 knobs, didnt take long at all to run my tube amp to the gain and sound I wanted it at. At first I was a bit worried about using it for an overdrive/crunch sound but I was wrong. I had recently got my Moody GA 40 amp fixed as an aussie made amp from 1963. Kind of a vox/fender sound. All tube, class A, pure vintage heaven. I used to use a DS-1 for most of my distorted sounds and was happy with it but i just needed something that had a little bit more claristy,bite and rock’n'roll. My friend then sold me his TS9 because he upgraded to a MARK IV mesa and was previously only using it for a solo boost/gain on top os a DS-1. Once I set it up I got that classic Marshall Plexi rock’n'roll sound I was looking for, think AC/DC or Cold Chisel. It can do alot more than that as i only have the gain set at 1 o’clock. Pump it up and it can get driven hard for harsher tones.  The pedal can also be used as a compressor if you turn the gain know all the way down to zero and run your amp with high distortion.  As for durability, Ibanez always makes their pedals like a tank and it’s perfect for live gigging as it can take a whole lot of abuse.  Ibanez is also known for good customer support.  At an average price of $90, this pedal remains one of the pricier ones but I think its well worth the money.  Check out Amazon.com for used TS-pedals!  Merry Christmas!

(c)Marcello Gasdia 2009

“It’s not about the bike; but the journey back to life.” –Lance Armstrong

All of you have ridden a bike at least once or twice in your life. So, you know the basics. But if you’re going to become a triathlete, you need to know how to bike…fast. Which means you need to build up your quads, hamstrings, and–surprisingly–shoulder muscles. Think of pro-bikers like Lance (above). Do they sit on their bikes with their backs up and hands barely grasping the handlebars? No. They are hunched over in fierce determination, palms gripping their race handlebars (usually shaped in a backwards “L”), with their eye level at a 50 degree angle to the ground. 

So, that sounds pretty intense, right? The right bike will help with every single one of those movements. Learn more about them here. 

Once you have a racing bike (mine is a Cervelo P2 C) make sure that you’re comfortable on it! Choose the right fit and style to ensure maximum efficiency. Meaning, make sure that a trainer or someone knowledgeable fits you. I’d also recommend clip shoes that you can interchange with pedals. Always use clip shoes during a race!! 

Ok, next post I’ll show you HOW to bike more effectively. Get ready!

Peace+Love+Tri, 

Martha

Difficulty Level: Medium – Difficult

Time Required: 45-60 minutes

The Logitech G25. Probably one of the sweetest, most nerdiest things I personally own. and i’m proud of it. I have played a few games and i’ve been just dying to mod it, and i’m sure you have too.

But for ~250$ new, i’m sure it’s not something you feel like voiding your warranty over. and let me repeat – this WILL void your warranty, especially if you are a messy modder.

Good thing you have a guide like this, with plenty of pictures to base your modding decision on.

I went as far as removing the shifter knob, and shifter boot to realize i don’t want to mess around inside of it, and for the most part i use the paddle shifters (with the exception of a few muscle cars).

1. Your going to need the proper tools, here are a few i used. You’re going to need a few allen wrenches,   and a few phillips head screw drivers, plus (unless you’re super manly) a set of vice grips/pliers to make sure you don’t strip anything out.

*side note: If you get stuck you can use the vice grips to hold on to your screw drivers like so:

2. Start by removing the allen bolts that circle the shift knob in an X-Pattern. If you are unfamiliar with the X-Pattern you should kill yourself.

3. Once you have the bolts removed, pull a tad bit up on the leather shift boot to lift it off the shifter housing, you can pry gently with a flat head screw driver if you want..

4. Obviously, you need to remove the shifter to completely remove it. Go ahead and take a small flat head screw driver (or just use your fingernail as i did) to remove the cap.

5. There is a phillips head screw with washer on the inside of the shift knob. Unscrew it from the shifter, but do not unscrew it from the knob, this way you won’t lose any important parts! Lift the knob up, and remove the boot.

6. Now you can see the inner workings of your H-Pattern shifter. Pretty cool. There are 3 hidden screws around the top of the shifter housing. They are very tight. do NOT strip them.

7. if you decide to go any further, there are some other hidden screws on the bottom, and you have to remove the fast clamp mounts on the bottom of the shifter. This is where i called it quits. i decided there wasn’t any need for me to go any further.

For you it might be a different story.. I more or less, just wanted to see the inner workings of my beloved G25, There are many guides out there on Google about how to do the actual modding, I just wanted to give everyone a better idea of what they are getting themselves into. I, as a Mechanic for 3 years decided I didn’t want to mod it, partly because I didn’t have the materials, and partly because the shifter is “fine”.

Good luck to all of the other modders out there!

I’ve been very busy for the past weeks working on my Music, also working with a few other live projects. On the top of that my regular job also requested more time, so I haven’t had the chance to upload something new. In exchange, I am uploading something old . This is from 2002 (if I am not mislead by the files dates) when I joined efforts with Frenchman Lionel Gibaudan, working together on a set of transcriptions of Chris’ basslines, to which I added an mp3 audio file with bass only. This happened after an invitation from Chris’ former site webmaster. Eventually I was told that Chris himself suggested him to include the mp3 files along with the transcriptions online. I was really overwhelmed with that gesture of kindness from Chris. I am sure he must be an incredible person, beyond the little I know, and before the musician he is.

So, I am making a video out of the transcription really… no special effects this time But I will put the transcription soon available for you at miguelbass.com. The bass used was my Fiesta Red Fender Jazz – originally, Chris didn’t use the Rickenbacker, he played the song on his white MPC Electra which had the Flanger effect incorporated on the bass itself. I used my old Boss ME-6B multi-effect pedal-board. IIRC, the bass was plugged into the ME-6B, onto the Sansamp. The strings were Rotosounds and they were new – that was good cause the tone has got plenty of harmonics and it makes the Flanger shine as it should.

The transcription – Again, it’s impossible to transcribe everything – it never is enough to replace the actual hearing of the bassline, but I still think it’s the notation that works best for me. I understand a lot of you may prefer tablature. This is just me playing the bass and no original recording at all. I can try to upload the song mixed-in later, if you think it’s a good idea! I haven’t re-checked the notes all these years later, so maybe I would hear (and play) something else, so there you go… I tried to adapt the bass pedal notation using the notation for piano pedals. I know that this, formally, doesn’t exist. This with other “improvisations” doesn’t make this transcription absolutely compliant with the standard notation, so please bare with it

My friends, I hope you enjoy the material, that’s what I came up with for now. As I said, I’ve been busy somewhere else and you know how the title of the song says…

Though this may be a short post, the length at which you can browse through the link below more than makes up for it and if you’re a Radiohead fan it’s a bit of a gold mine! I stumbled upon this while doing some research on ‘Everything In It’s Right Place’ which has exactly the kind of vocal sounds I want to reproduce for L E N S.

Be wary though, some of his claims are potentially unfounded (in regards to what pedals were used) but the research involved looks pretty thorough, enjoy

“How Did Radiohead Make Everything In It’s Right Place”?

Skip the intro it’s painfully long and loud. (Hover over the bottom right hand corner and you’ll find a ‘GO’ button)

And the song itself below (the vocals being manipulated via a Kaoss Pad)

Well over ten years ago, my band played a show with Pound, WI. Russell Hall, the guitarist (who now plays in the spectacular United Sons of Toil), was using a Ross Distortion. I thought it sounded great. Sometime around 2001 or 2002 I picked one up at a secondhand guitar shop. I really loved it. I still own it and I still love it.

Sometime soon thereafter, when I began to research pedals for fun, I discovered that the MXR Distortion +, the Ross Distortion, and the DOD Overdrive 250 were all essentially the same circuit with only slight differences. After looking at the schematic, I had a lot of ideas for possible mods, but I never got around to trying them.

Let’s jump to 2007. My friend Scott Evans of Kowloon Walled City had a number MXR distortions. He had one that he really liked, and sounded different than all the rest. We had a little shootout.

What we discovered is that the one that Scott really liked had a broken clipping diode. Essentially, it was as if a diode was removed. It sounded great, just rough edged, loud, and rude. I kind of wanted to do this to my Ross, but it was a nice old pedal, so I refrained.

This year Kowloon Walled City released their second album, which is astoundingly good and can be downloaded for free! I figured I would force them into an endorsement deal while simultaneously doing something I’d wanted to do for a long time; make my ultimate version of the Distortion + circuit. I pretty much just declared that I was making this pedal, and Scott and the other guys in the band were very excited.

So, what did I do? Not much, actually. I guess that’s a bad thing to say given that I want to sell these. I started building pedal with the belief that I wanted to be open and share information, so here goes.

Op amp:741. This is the classic MXR op amp. The Ross uses a 4558, but yeah, the 741 does sound better. People say it’s because it has a shitty slew rate and is just kind of crappy by technical standards. I’ve never measured, I just know I like the sound.

Resistors: I pretty much use the stock value from the Ross.

Caps: I almost use the stock values from the MXR. There is no 10pf in the negative feedback loop of the op amp, since it’s the 741. the one big Change is that I have raised the value of the input coupling cap from .01uf to .1uf. Since Kowloon Walled City tunes down to stupid, this will allow a bit more of fundamental to get through. The risk is that the distortion can get farty with too much low frequency input. I don’t care; I’m not looking for a tight metal distortion.

Clipping Diodes: I put in sockets so that the user can choose and change diodes whenever and customize their sound. The version I built for Scott has two Germanium 1N34s, which can be kind of quiet. However, I added a knob to the pedal called the GSE knob. That knob adds resistance between ground and one clipping diode, simulating Scotts broken pedal. Personally, I prefer one Ge diode and one LED. The pedal ships with a variety of diodes for user tweakability. It can also be run with no diodes and will act as a boost pedal.

So, here is the first production model.

Thanks for reading!

A top-selling Toyota Camry is on display in a Richmond, Va., showroom. Toyota Motor Corp. will replace accelerator pedals on 3.8 million recalled vehicles in the U.S. to address potential problems with the pedals becoming jammed by the floor mats.(Steve Helber/Associated Press)

Toyota Motor Corp. will replace gas pedals on 3.8 million recalled vehicles in the United States to address problems with sudden acceleration or the pedal becoming stuck in the floor mat, The Associated Press has learned.

As a temporary step, Toyota will have dealers shorten the length of the gas pedals beginning in January while the company develops replacement pedals for their vehicles, the Transportation Department said in a statement provided to the AP.

New pedals will be available beginning in April, and as a precaution some vehicles will have brake override systems installed that cut engine power if the accelerator and brake pedals are pressed at the same time.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, was expected to provide more details Wednesday on the fix. The Japanese automaker announced the massive recall in late September and told owners to remove the driver’s side floor mats to prevent the gas pedal from potentially becoming jammed.

Toyota Canada has not yet announced if it will follow suit in replacing the gas pedals, but the Canadian subsidiary of the Japanese automaker in September did follow the U.S. in issuing a recall for the problematic floor mats.

Popular vehicles such as the Toyota Camry, the top-selling passenger car in America, and the Toyota Prius, the best-selling gas-electric hybrid, are part of the recall. It includes the 2007-10 model year Camry, 2005-10 Toyota Avalon, 2004-09 Prius, 2005-10 Toyota Tacoma, 2007-10 Toyota Tundra, 2007-10 Lexus ES350 and 2006-10 Lexus IS250/350.

On Tuesday, Toyota announced a recall of 110,000 Tundra trucks from the 2000-03 model years to address excessive rust on the vehicle’s frame.

4 died after pedal became stuck

The recall involving the accelerators was Toyota’s largest in the U.S. It was prompted by a high-speed crash in August involving a 2009 Lexus ES350 that killed a California Highway Patrol officer and three members of his family near San Diego.

The Lexus hit speeds exceeding 190 km/h, struck a sport utility vehicle, launched off an embankment, rolled several times and burst into flames.

Investigators with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration determined that a rubber all-weather floor mat found in the wreckage was slightly longer than the mat that belonged in the vehicle, and could have snared or covered the accelerator pedal.

The U.S. government has attributed at least five deaths and two injuries to floor mat-related unintended acceleration in the Toyota vehicles and has received reports of more than 100 incidents in which the accelerator may have become stuck.

A Massachusetts-based safety consultant who has investigated the Toyota cases, however, has found more than 2,000 incidents involving 16 deaths and 243 injuries potentially tied to the Toyota gas pedals.

To fix the problem, Transportation officials said dealers will shorten the length of the accelerator pedal on the recalled vehicles and in some cases remove foam from beneath the carpeting near the pedal.

They said owners of the ES350, Camry and Avalon would be the first to receive notification because the vehicles are believed to have the highest risk for pedal entrapment.

The Canadian Press, 2009

Toyota discloses U.S. findings on floor-mat safetyToyota returns to profit

There is now information up on the fantastic Fuchs pedals. Fuchs are well-known for amazing amp with ‘Dumble-esque’ tone, but for those of us who can’t afford to drop that kind of wedge on an amp their pedal range should help tide us over, for now…

Sold a guitar, modded a guitar, and did some spraying. Delicious fumes, both solder and clear-coat.

First up was Hansi. I play with Hansi in Truxton. Here he is with a fake moustache holding our band-mate Jeremy’s brand new daughter (2009 model). He’s a red-haired, fair-skinned Swedish guy. If anyone should have bought my Hagstom Natural Viking, it would be him… and it was him. He loves it. Today, I did the generic setup; I put on new strings, adjusted the action, and tried to tweak the intonation.

After that, it was Stephen time. Stephen has been moving away from his Strat and more and more toward his Tele. His tele has the very popular mod of having a humbucker in the neck position. However, it’s been just a touch too murky for his tastes. He decided to get a Duncan Mini Humbucker as a replacement. However, the guy at the guitar shop suggested moving up to 500k post from the stock 250k. Why didn’t I think of that? Am I slipping?

So the first thing we did was replace the 250K pots with 500K pots. This began to help. Stephen actually really liked the middle position sound now. We knew we had at least one option that would work. However, the mini-hum was already in the new, pre-cut pickguard. We just had to try.

Three solder joints and ten screws later, and the pickup was in.

I plugged it in first because I’m a selfish bastard. I hit a couple notes and it just sounded correct. By itself it had a nice low content without too much woofiness. There was a good treble articulation but without a lot of the 5kHz that makes a Tele bridge pickup jump out. It was soft on the 300Hz to 600Hz, providing a slight, but not overwhelming, mid cut.

We did do one tricky thing that we always do. Stephen likes to coil-tap his humbuckers in the middle position. It’s pretty easy to do. The tone of the middle position of the tele, with the stock bridge and half of the neck pickup, was really, really awesome. It kicks the treble up a bit as one would expect, but it also did a bit more of a mid cut in the 800Hz to maybe 1.2kHz range. To me it sounded like the best element of the in between Strat positions, plus a bit more fullness in the low, and without the filthy stigma of being a Strat player.

This was a very successful day of tweaking. Stephen looks happy, right?

Right before I started writing this entry, I put the clear-coat on the upcoming Kowloon Walled Bunny (KWB) pedals. My friend Scott is in a band called Kowloon Walled City, who have been doing very well recently. He and I both love love the Ross/MXR distortion circuit. Scott had this one Distortion + pedal that sounded better than all else. We had a little shootout one
day to figure out why.

It turns out a clipping diode broke and went open in his favorite pedal. The result is a rougher-edged distortion and a LOT more level. For the KWB, I added a knob (the GSE knob) which removes a clipping diode. Essentially, it can be pleasantly broken to Scott’s preference in adjustable amounts. In addition, I took some component values from the Distortion +, some from the Ross Distortion, and adjusted others on my own to my personal taste. The result is more low end and more touch-sensitivity than the standard circuits off which this was based. In addition, the GSE knob plays both the roll of a tone knob, and a “rudeness” knob, if such a thing can exist.

Today I applied the graphics and a clear-coat for the first five units. Mmmmm, fumes.

Thanks for reading!

there are times when i think, you know, maybe i should spend my money on something else.  for instance, it would be nice to ride bikes to Canter’s with my roommates someday, or get into photography and invest in a great camera.  i think this way for about as long as it has taken me to write the previous sentence before i remember that my feet were exclusively designed to stomp on boxes and my hands to turn dials.  let my christmas turrets continue:

electro-harmonix cathedral stereo reverb

we’re in a recession, so i left the addition to one.  a cathedral at christmas…i know this pedal would hold a special place in my pedalboard’s heart if i got it (sigh).  i’m probably going to get it.   if i really do give into my lust, i might trade my DL4 in to get some analog delay.

I was out at Ian’s house in Clane shooting the cover artwork for his forthcoming debut album as The Former Soviet Republic. I shot scenes from his bedroom and his front room on 120 Film and brought the digital as back up. Here are a couple of sneaky shots from the digital. I get the prints back next week so fingers crossed they turn out good!

This handsome aul doggo is Charlie, who belongs to Ian’s neighbour and sat very obediently for photos. I thought I’d get a nice portrait of him while he was being so good!

A small selection of some of Ian’s pedals he used to record with.

Musicians. The most hard working people on the earth.

a)   Taking abuse.

Letter From Manager

b)  Giving a tough crowd a good show. (Click to see larger image)

The Crowd

c)    Decoding Jiberish

d)    Coping with the insanity.

Normal Life? - Yeah Right!

e)    Keeping ontop of the fan mail.

Fan Mail

f)   Being an unofficial electrician.

g)   Balls Of Steel.

Could You Get Up On This Stage?

Musicians. Gotta hand it to ‘em.

Lee Ann, Becky Forney and kayaks in Lewes Canalfront Park

 Two days ago I got the chance to participate (with about 40 others) in a Paddle, Pedals and Pints event sponsored by Quest Fitness and Kayak, Dogfish Head, and Lewes Cycle Sport. You couldn’t have asked for better company, better beer or better weather.  You can read all about it on my friend Dennis Forney’s blog.

on the mix pedaaalz.

pa para para para