Filed under: you are not us

Pedal Fix

You may recall that I bought a lovely new Dan Electro echo pedal last year. Tonally and effect-wise, it was great, but it kept cutting out on me in the middle of practices. I did a bit of background reading and discoveed that Dan Electro pedals have a bad reputation for the quality of jacks used in their otherwise brilliant pedals - the build quality of the unit is sturdy and reliable, the jacks are made of plastic and prone to failing.

Danelectro Dan-Echo

I couldn't return my pedal because I got it cheap and unboxed, so Simon and I set to work repairing it. My plan was to hard-wire some make your own George L patch leads directly onto the circuit board and lead them out of the jack holes in the pedal housing, then fasten replaceable George L jacks at the other end, so the pedal could be plugged directly into other pedals/units. Simon has the electronics skills so I let him figure out how to do it.

Inside the pedal the jacks are conveniently located on a small easily removable circuit board. A ombination of solder, four hands, and elbow grease saw the end of the retched plastic jacks.

Simon solders the joints of the plastic jacks


One down


After successful removal of the Jacks we then had to figure out which part of the George L lead was the signal and which was the ground - we guessed. After soldering the right bits to the output part of the circuit we discovered our guess was good.

Fixing George L to the circuit board


Fixed


The second lead was much harder to replace - trial and error saw us solder the signal and lead to various permutations of points. I think the complication was in the fact that jack triggered a power switch when a a connection was made - I'm sure Simon can explain better. We got there in the end though.

Impotent evil - the second jack pwned


Possibly the winning connection - I can't remember


Next we put it back together and shoved the exposed wire ends through the jack holes before screwing on the George L jacks.

The coolest looking pedal I own


I've now filled in the holes with blutack to stop the leads getting wrenched off the board. The good thing with George L is that if the connection goes at the male end of the lead you can snip off some wire and re-make the connection.

More kit

Just had a shit day at work so cheered myself up by ordering this in the mail:

It's an all valve Fender Blues Junior combo amp with a modest, but punch-packing, 15Watts of output.

It should arrive in time for the next Yanu practice session and definitely in time for the May gig.

Gig report / New Year Plans

Well, the gig went a lot better than the last. We weren't exactly note-perfect but that's not really the point. We sounded better thanks in no small part to the engineer at The Louisiana who did a great job, and we performed pretty well I think. We had a decent audience and loads of people I'd never seen before (who I imagine were there for the headliner). The other bands (The Exhibition, and The Corrections) were both really good and well worth staying for.

This time we can offer no photos, or video - WAG and official photographer Chloe was off sick and I forgot my video camera. However, at some stage we should be getting a recording of the gig and will no doubt post the results here and update our woeful Myspace.

This is most likely it for 2007. Plans for the new year include studio time, a charity gig (plus as many other gigs as we can get), and a video (I have a killer idea for a cheap pop-promo). Yanu has been great fun this year and incredibly rewarding to get on stage - thanks to everyone who's encouraged us to persevere and for letting us know that they think our music is good.

Have a lovely Christmas and a happy new year.

Love, Yanu

Yanu is Broke / Gig Looming / New Song / Guitar Trivia

Sadly the £50 that Yanu has so far earned in its vainglorious career has run out. We spent the last tenner yesterday at our regular practice room The Muse Rooms. We had an excellent practice in which we sounded tight, and ready for the Louisiana gig on Thursday. As mentioned before we will be supporting EMI-signed The Corrections.

It should be a good gig - we've always wanted to play the Louie as a band. The other band Ali drums in, Kabuki Mono, played there a week or two ago and he said that the sound-desk did a wonderful job - so we should be sounding good - for those of you who were dissapointed at the aural soup on offer at the Fleece gig.

We also worked up a new song yesterday, working title: "Ben's Pop." It's based around an arpeggiated A Minor with a traditional verse chorus structure and Yanu's trademark dynamic build. It then breaks down to an unexpected A Minor/F Major 'chill out room' before vamping out on an equally surprising A Minor / D7/11 curve-ball. As yet, no lyrics.

In other news, I've reinstated a my blonde Telecaster as my guitar of choice, having replaced the unwieldy 11-gauge strings with some 10s.

Blonde Tele

I'm now putting the whole guitar and pedal board through my ART Tube pre-amp, which is giving it warmth, tonal fullness, and a little overdrive. It was sounding really good.

ART Tube Pre-Amp

Gig Video

We've got a few videos of our debut gig to upload in the next few days - here is the first. It's an extract from '3over4' - the show openner. I beseech you to use earphones or decent speakers to watch and listen as the sound quality isn't great (recorded through handycam mic) and will sound awful on tinny computer speakers. Alas, Ali's drums, Ben's bass, and my guitar are barely audible in this clip - but you may get the idea.

A huge thanks to Jody for bringing his camera along and shooting it.

More to come very soon.

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo