Snarling Dogs Pedals - Wah to the Bone
October 13, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Charlie Stringer is to effects pedals what Jerry Springer is to day-time talk shows—loud, controversial and whole lot of fun. Like your ex-girlfriend’s transsexual lesbian lover, his Snarling Dogs pedals slap you silly with their incredibly over-the-top effects, outrageous sound quality and knock-out prices that even a Wal-Mart check-out clerk could afford. But don’t be fooled by the fact that his products are more fun than a hot tub full of strippers and cheaper than a date with a White House intern: Snarling Dogs pedals are professional-quality effects that even the most persnickety tone snob would gladly step on.
Recently, Stringer has been exploring the wonderful world of wah, giving birth to an impressive litter of Snarling Dogs puppies. No matter how perverted your taste in wah, chances are Charlie makes a pedal that’s just right for you. We tried out eight different models—actually seven wahs and one black sheep: the Erogenous Moan. We’ll get into that later.
The pedals, which were designed by Kenny Segall, have several features in common: heavey-duty steel cases, foot-shaped rocker pedals that resemble the gas pedal in a Seventies-era custom van, and a vicious-looking dogface logo with bright red LED eyes that light up when the effect is engaged or “wink” at you to indicate when various modes are on or off. In addition, each pedal is painted in colors that must have been inspired by the evening wear in a Long Island hooker’s wardrobe.
The Wonder Wah 2 (discontinued – but still available on the streets) is the simplest pedal of the bunch, featuring and effect on/off switch, classic and vintage mode, input, output and jack for a 9-volt adapter. This is a great utilitarian wah with a deep, throaty growl and a vocal-like midrange but none of that overly piecing treble that makes so many wahs almost unusable.
Stepping up the options, the Whine-O-Wah has the same features as above but adds a volume control and a three-position switch that lets you select different eq characteristics—“Shaft,” “Voodoo,” and “White Room.” As the name suggest, “Shaft” has a pronounced treble bite that’s great for percussive, muted-string effects, “Voodoo” provides a rich, classic wah effect with a thick, vowel-sound midrange, and “White Room” has a darker tone with deep, well-defined bass (no indecipherable mud here). Stringer also offers a “tamed” version of the Whine-O, which offers a narrower eq sweep range. A bass version of the Whine-O, called the Bawl Buster (recently discontinued), has all the features of that pedal with a more-pronounced bass eq.
Adding even more features to the fun, the Super Bawl Whine-O has all the gizmos of the regular Whine-O plus an on/off switch for engaging the hormone control, which features a rocker switch to select the gentler “estrogen” tone or the balls-to-the-walls “testosterone” setting. In addition, the Super Bawl adds on a “twinductor beef boost” that, when activated, thickens the “wah” until it feels like the pedal is sitting on your chest. With all these tonal options, the Super Bawl Whine-O can sound like just about any wah pedal imaginable. Stringer also offers a variation of the pedal, the Super Bawl Fire Bawl 2-Alarm Wah, which eliminates the three-position Whine-O tone option.
Combining the Snarling Dog’s Blue Doo distortion circuit with the Whine-O wah, the Blues Bawls is described as “Wah That Hurts.” Fortunately, Charlie isn’t talking about that wallet in your back pocket. The distortion circuit is engaged with a footswitch on the top right corner of the pedal, and separate volume and distortion controls allow you to dial in tones from screaming blue overdrive to vicious metal raunch. The addition of a distortion circuit is great for players who like to use wah on their solos and need some extra “oomph” to cut through the mix.
And now for something completely different: the Erogenous Moan. Although it looks like a wah, it’s actually a reverse-tape simulator that imitates the swells of a backward guitar when you rock the pedal up and down. At the pedal’s uppermost and lowest sweep points, a slightly audible click is produced to imitate the shaper attack of a pick hitting the strings. It takes some coordination to produce a convincing backward effect, but once you master it, people will think you’ve channeled Jimi’s spirit.
The End Line
These Snarling Dogs inject a whole lot of badly needed fun into the pedal business, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the heyday of Electro-Harmonix. Once you play one, you won’t be able to stop. http://www.snarlingdogs.com/
Buy Sell Trade Music Equipment at G-V Classifieds
John Lennon of the Beatles
October 12, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
John Lennon’s blend of pop instincts and restless experimentalism set the agenda for modern rock music. His driving, feisty rhythm guitar work energized the Beatles’ early singles, and his imaginative songcraft elevated the three-minute rock tune to an art form. Rock’s first intellectual, Lennon profoundly influenced all of the sixties great guitarist-poets, including Pete Townshend, Ray Davies and Roger McGuinn. To this day, on one level or another, every rock group defines itself in relation to the Beatles. Read more
Kiss Gods of Thunder
Kiss is one of those definitive rock and roll bands—y’know, the ones both critics and parents loathe, but the kids love anyway. When looking back over the history of rock, however, one can surely ask why. Read more
Jimi Hendrix The Ultimate Guitar Hero -R.I.P
September 17, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
The Greatest Guitar Hero, Jimi Hendrix still remains one of the most influential forces in rock music. Pulling unprecedented sounds out of his Fender Strat, Hendrix challenged musicians and guitarists to explore a wild new world of tones and textures, dazzling and confounding guitar greats like Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton, who still speak of Hendrix with a hushed reverence. Other players before him might have experimented with feedback and excessive distortion, Hendrix turned those practices into an art fashion. He was the first player to use the whammy bar as an instrument unto itself, making his Stratocaster talk, scream and howl. Read more
Judas Priest Screaming For Vengeance
September 13, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Judas Priest Screaming For Vengeance
(Columbia, 1982) Read more
Les Paul’s journey to Gibson Guitars in 1951
September 3, 2008 by Chazders · 2 Comments
Around the same time that George Beauchamp and the other early electric guitar pioneers were active in southern California, a guitarist and radio personality named Les Paul was in Hollywood working out his own vision of what the electric guitar should be. Born Lester Polfus, he became an established guitarist in the Thirties, performing country music under the names Red Hot Red and, later Rhubarb Red, and jazz as Les Paul. In 1939, Paul began to put together what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four length of solid pine to which he attached a Gibson neck, homemade pickups, a crudely fashioned bridge and vibrato tailpiece. Like many other innovators of the guitar, Paul wanted to eliminate the uneven harmonic response produced by an amplified hollowbody guitar. Although he sawed an Epiphone hollowbody in half and attached the two sides of his four-by-four block of pine, this was more for aesthetic than acoustic reasons—to make the thing look like a real guitar. This supremely quirky instrument, now enshrined in Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, is another sacred relic of the electric guitar’s evolution, the product of an inveterate tinkerer and one of the century’s most original musical inventors. Paul also pioneered multitrack recording and anticipated the home recording boom by a good 30 years.
Paul used the Log on recordings he and his trio made with Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters and others. But when he brought the instrument to Gibson’s headquarters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1941, they laughed at him. “I took the Log to Gibson and I spent 10 years trying to convince them that this was the way to go,” recollects Les. “But it wasn’t easy. If it wasn’t for Leo Fender, I don’t think that ever would have come off. Leo saw more in it that Gibson did.”
True enough. A venerable company, with origins tracing back to the 19th century, Gibson had taken a conservative, classicist approach to the electric guitar, producing electric archtop hollowbodies like the ES-150, which was introduced in 1936 and adopted by jazz players like Charlie Christian. Other “old school” manufacturers like Epiphone, Harmony and Kay had taken a similar tack. But with the huge success of the Fender Telecaster in the early Fifties, Gibson decided to “go California” and get in on the solidbody market. Suddenly Les Paul’s Log didn’t seem like such a crazy idea. “Better go get that kid with the broomstick,” someone at Gibson is purported to have said.
The man who made it happen was Ted McCarty. A shrewd businessman with a good eye for design and a flair for building teams of like-minded visionaries, McCarty is another towering figure in the early development of the electric guitar. Originally a buyer for Wurlitzer, McCarty joined Gibson on 1948, and in 1950 he was made president of the company. It was McCarty who oversaw the design of Les Paul’s “LOG” Guitar. http://www.gibson.com/
Gear-Vault Classifieds is an eBay alternative. Come sell your used guitars and amps with us, for FREE!
Frank Zappa Unsentimental Guitarist
Frank Zappa never had much use for sentimentality. As a lyricist, he could be sly, silly or bitingly sarcastic, addressing anything from groupie sex to the perils of yellow snow. Read more
