Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Amplify Nonsense, a podcast that is technically about amps, but is driven by your random voicemail questions. Your hosts are Charles Henry of Silktone, Chris Benson of Benson Amps, and Brian Sowers of Sowers Sound Transformers.
Speaker: My name is Emily. I'm the producer of this podcast, and I'm here to keep these three on track. And before I get too far into this episode, you can call on into 513-334-3803 and leave your own voicemail question for our hosts.
Speaker: How are you guys doing? Pretty good. Good. I'm tired. I'm good. I was just on vacation. You saw the whole family, right? ah Yeah, my side of the family. whole Whole family.
Speaker: How was the fishing? I saw a photo you posted of a fishing trip. Was that... um Did I post a photo of that? Oh, wait. No, it was a text message. Oh, just a text. Sorry. yeah I don't post stuff anymore about my personal life. But yeah, I did text you guys a picture. Was that your twin brother in the photo? It is because those were the only people I knew. Right.
Speaker: My brothers, my two brothers, and then my dad. but Yeah, right. My dad's the old guy, believe it or not. You look like your dad. Yeah. Also, like your one brother doesn't look like you at all. Yeah, that's my twin. Also, did they loan you fishing attire? You are dressed to fish, man. oh dude, that's just what I wear now. I'm a shirt tucker now. And it says Rodcaster. no it says Roocaster, dude. That's like my friend Cameron's guitar company.
Speaker: And he's awesome. Oh, I thought it was Rodcaster and it was a fishing shirt. He's also a fishing guy. So I think there might be some crossover there. That's cool though. did who Who caught the fish?
Speaker: ah My dad caught that one, but we caught like 18 fish like that. That was a big too. What are those? Those are king salmon, but they put them in the Great Lakes to eat an invasive species called alewives.
Speaker: Uh-huh. They did that in the 60s, I believe. And now there's just like gigantic Pacific salmon all over the Great Lakes. That's cool. We did a um last weekend. We did ah the like yearly family camping trip, too. It was kind of fun. Mayu got to come and like meet a bunch of family members. She met my uncle Charles and he was held with me the whole time. That's pretty funny. But we fished up there and nobody caught anything like the whole week. Where'd you go? Pinecrest Lake. It's in the Sierras, like past, kind of near a yo Yosemite, but not.
Speaker: There's supposed to be a bunch of trout up there. We've caught trout there before, but yeah, this year, nothing. Yeah, we had a really, really good time. That's cool. I just got in last night. Oh, hell yeah. Looking at this laptop all day, trying to catch up. Right on. Brian, did you you'd go camping like you said you were going to, or did you just shut down at home? What did I do? Oh, over the weekend or in general? In general, i'm just working. it's like all that happens at least he looks so happy so bummed i mean i'm but i'm so of i'm crispy right now like thinking about just uh becoming like a soap maker or something like what is like the most low-key i'm a tea brewer and i brew tea for a living you know what is like the most low-key profession that i can be even reasonably artistic
Speaker: Brian, do you you want to start ah an iced tea food cart? I mean, i would I would get in on the ground floor that pizza restaurant you keep threatening to open. Oh, boy. what was What was the name of it?
Speaker: Cancer on Cardboard, something like that? no I think... No, my my idea is to have a pizza chain and the low-hanging fruit name is you just take the first part of the town name that you open it in and add pizza.
Speaker: that Port pizza. Yeah. It's a Milwitsa. New Yitsa. new yza Or a Giza.
Speaker: Just instant franchise. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yep. Zero thought in the name. Low hanging fruit. Indeed. And it only serves two, two things, a cheese pizza and a pepperoni pizza.
Speaker: That's, it but that's it. That's it right there. Like this is, this is the pad Thai theory. Like if you, okay. If you go to a pizza place, you want to get cheese pizza. If you go to a Thai restaurant, you get pad Thai. If you've never been there before.
Speaker: I mean, if you want this right, like that is the the bar right there. The dish to best judge a pizza place on is their cheese pizza. Cheese pizza? food Who?
Speaker: Who does that? I only eat cheese pizza. That's such a vegetarian. It's the truth, though. what are the What are the main ingredients of pizza? It's the dough. It's the sauce. It's the cheese. Everything else is ancillary. You're...
Speaker: Your toppings are external to the bulk, the purity. Tell a kid to draw a slice of pizza, then you bet there's going to be pepperoni on that. Your kids are wrong. nah.
Speaker: now You want to judge a place? I mean, i eat whatever you want. like it's you know like Enjoy your life. like Eat whatever you want that makes you put a smile on your face and you know makes your belly full. I'm all for that. I'm just saying, i'm just saying it if you want to truly experience what a pizza place has to offer, it's minimal ingredients. It's cheese pizza.
Speaker: dude i will fight you people on this i will fight quattro farmaggio or whatever the thing i mean again that's what that's what separates again it's it's the purity of the pizza right there what are you guys's go-tos for uh cheese pizza no mexican food if you if you try a new taqueria what's what are you ordering first man i usually just get pork tacos yeah that's a carnitas or something it used to be chicken burrito but now it's pork tacos right on Yeah, mine was chicken taco for a while, and then it was pastor, but I'm with you now. I just get carnitas to kind of judge a place.
Speaker: That and pinto beans. I'm a big pinto guy. You want to know my opinion on this? Sure, Brian. Cheese quesadilla. You get a side of beans, you get a side of rice, and you get inside a side of tortillas. Quantify the quality.
Speaker: I can't even remember what the hell I said. No wonder you listen to death metal. You're just trying to feel something. because of your diet. Well, I mean, I'm a small business owner, so like by nature, I'm dead inside. Man, i started ah i stopped I stopped buying chips. I only buy organic tortillas, and I make my own chips. Avocado oil, tajin, salt, lime. Man, honestly, that's a pro move, and I'm sorry, I take it all back.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm like, i I don't even buy potato chips anymore. The next time I eat potato chips, it will be because I make them. but That's right. Have you ever done that? Have you made? No, I've made, I mean, I've made tortilla chips a ton. potato so I buy this 50 pack.
Speaker: of tortillas for 13 bucks directly at the, what is the technical term for ah or a tortilla store, a tortilleria? I'm butchering this beautiful language. don't think ever said it out loud before. Yeah, I mean, I don't i don't know the word. Tortilleria? No. That's not right. Tortilleria. No. It's tortilleria or tortilla bakery.
Speaker: What? That is, no, I feel very white saying that. Is that like if you get diarrhea from eating a bunch of tortillas? You got to stop talking about your bodily functions, Charles. That's bad.
Speaker: Okay. So, okay. Tortillaria. okay. That's how we say it. would say it in Ohio. I bet you. I think. I don't know. Yeah, just because it has Rhea on the end, the L's don't become L's. It's still... Tortilla Rhea. It still feels wrong. But anyway, um yeah, I just go directly there. And it's like 13 bucks for 50 of them.
Speaker: And they're like the craziest quality I've ever had in my life. And now I'm just like, you know what? Screw it. Just take everything down to its like most essential ingredients.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, making your own tortilla chips out of tortillas is like at least three times better than any tortilla chip that you can buy from the store. So good. Yeah, it's super good. And so we're pulling potatoes from the yard right now.
Speaker: So I'm like, all right, we're going to do chips. Dude, yeah, get a potato peeler and just slice yep chips off. Going to do it. Super good. I've done that a few times. It's it's really, really, really good. Do you all want to take a call?
Speaker: Sure. Sure. Sure.
Speaker: I bet people ask you guys for free stuff all the time. ah do you deal with that? do you have like an official policy or something?
Speaker: i just usually send them to Charles.
Speaker: Yeah, I got one today. um That was wild. I shared it i shared it with all these guys already, but I don't have a policy. It just depends on my mood, and today it was really annoying, so I i ended up asking them. It was a guitarist from, i don't know, some some group, and they said... ah oh, it'd be cool if you can send me a complimentary expander or any other pedal you can give me for free. And then in the email specifically said, i can't promise to post or talk about it at all.
Speaker: ah but but someone But if someone asks me about it directly, I'll give them my honest opinion about it. And I thought that was pretty funny. Which is funny that his only promise is that he's not going to lie to his friends. Yeah, i'm not I'm not going to post about it or thank you publicly whatsoever. But I will be honest about it if someone asks me. so i yeah Only specifically that. Like, he could lie about something else.
Speaker: Right. He's leaving it open. I mean, you never know, like maybe this guy's like a pathological liar and, you know, admitting that he'll do that is actually like this big first step in changing his entire life. I hope so. I hope my response changes his entire life and how he thinks about approaching people. But I responded and said,
Speaker: ah can you come play a show for me uh in december fly out here play my wedding for free and i won't tell anybody about it i won't thank you at all and uh if anyone asks me i'll i'll give them my honest opinion of how you play so did they write back he did actually he wrote back a big ass letter saying oh my god i didn't mean to offend you at all your serious yeah yeah oh okay wow So, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I feel like there might have been some sort of something lost in translation because it didn't seem like English was his first language. Maybe. That's that's maybe true. I'm hoping.
Speaker: but No, I think English is Charles' first language. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, they're always annoying, but sometimes people are less annoying. i don't know.
Speaker: We generally don't give anything away ever unless it's like to a demo artist who is performing a service of making a demonstration on YouTube. A trade of services.
Speaker: That's a lie. You gave me a fuzz pedal. Well, I was trying to nicely take over your business. So that's why I gave you a fuzz puddle. It's kind of a Trojan horse. I saw the Odyssey. It's just so weird. Like I've given stuff to friends. I know you've given stuff to friends. I give stuff away, but for some random person to email you for the first time ever and be like, Hey, I really love your stuff. Can you give me something you make just for free for nothing, for no reason at all? Obviously that's just, this is wrong. It's just so strange. I mean, I have like a whole thing with samples. Like I get people that want to want to sample something and sure it's actually, you know, you you should charge Charles for samples, dude. Oh yeah. He is the worst offender. yeah to Start charging him. I think it's,
Speaker: I've been thinking about it lately. I, it might, it might be a bit of a problem because I've sent like, cause I get really excited. Like if someone wants to listen to something, I mean, again, we're talking about like people who like are established, you know, I don't, you know, it's like, Hey, I'm a one person company in my basement. Can you send me something for free? Like I can't, you know? But like if it's someone that we're talking about doing design work with and we're looking for like audio samples, not samples, you know, like places to start. I get really excited and I want to send them like everything. Right. So I ask a lot of questions. And so when someone just wants to hear one thing, I inevitably will send, you know, three to seven. Like I'm just like that.
Speaker: And I think it's it's gotten me into trouble. I think that it's like option overload for some people. But then the other thing too is just like getting someone... i think a pedal is a little different. like plug it in turn it on.
Speaker: Does it do the thing? you know Am I enamored? does it Does it lock me in? But a transformer such a different thing. It's like there's so much more work going into like tacking one in. you know There's potential break-in. There's there's all that stuff. but just I feel like it's just like a bigger...
Speaker: ask almost but then i'm like overloading people and then people will go like dark for like a month and i'll be like hey you know did you listen to stuff or what and then i find that i have like all these samples like out in the world and i'm like oh it's i got payroll you know they're like dude i was just your uber driver stopped texting yeah basically Well, usually they're calling me up and they're like, hey, my name is Chris Benson and I really want to hear this. you know And I'm like, oh, yeah, for you, dude? Yeah, totally.
Speaker: I feel like I'm probably your lowest maintenance client. Don't answer. Don't. Don't. Don't. No.
Speaker: You might be. Hey, Charles, you are definitely not. Thank you. That was very merciful. Yeah, you're easy. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, i don't I don't give stuff away unless it's for a real service.
Speaker: I will give a small artist discount to people who full-time musicians or working musicians in some way. Yeah, same. And that that's kind of the same across the board.
Speaker: doesn't matter if you're huge or just a low level actual working musician, you kind of get the same deal. so Yeah, or other industry people too, stuff like that. like I give pretty cool discounts for that kind of stuff. But it's so weird for just some random that still seems so weird to me. I know it's just a numbers game. I'm sure 100 other companies got the same exact email today.
Speaker: And all it takes is one of them to be like, oh sure. And then the dude's got a free pedal or whatever he wanted. But that's lame. It's a weird use of time. Yeah. I've also had people just send me stuff, which is all, which I mean, people are also very generous on the flip side of it. So you guys want hear a really crazy use of time?
Speaker: No, not at all. I've had people go to my website and guess artists like discount codes and get them right. I have to. I totally have to. Are your codes like deal 20, deal 15? not anymore.
Speaker: they One of them used to literally be artist and and some nink and poop got on there name can and just bought a pedal off my website using an artist discount code, which I just hand out to artists. I was like, who are you?
Speaker: He's like, ha ha ha, I guessed it. so I said this. and but Yeah, yeah. and then And then I wrote him like a five paragraph letter about how that wasn't good behavior.
Speaker: i mean It's kind of on you for having www.bensonamps.com discount code artist. Whatever. I, it's not that anymore. Obviously.
Speaker: I honored it for the dude that guessed mine. Mine was like, ah no, I, I honored it too, but I just sent a really rough email. as well I'm going to give this to you, but just so you know, i did one long ago.
Speaker: That was, i stalk you on Instagram. Yeah. And a lot of people used it. It's no longer operational. Nice. You all want another question? Yeah, sure. Sure. All right.
Speaker: Hey, guys. Complete hypothetical question here. Let's say you were in a two-piece band, you know you and a drummer. and you really needed to fill up the the frequency of sound.
Speaker: you needed an amp with bold lows and sparkly highs. And you're running it with a rat pedal and like a muff pedal. You really just need a clean pedal platform amp that can get really loud.
Speaker: What's the amp for the job? you know In this hypothetical, what would you choose for that amp to do that thing? Be pretty much a clean, loud pedal platform that just sounds As good as you think it could be. Bonus points it's under $1,000, but not necessary. Okay, bye.
Speaker: Do you want to make our own products off limits so it's more interesting? or What? Wait, what was the last part he said? Did he say $1,000 limit? under No, he said under $1,000 bonus, but not necessary.
Speaker: Oh, okay. i mean, I'm already confused by the question because, I mean, does two drummers make a band?
Speaker: There you go. Yeah, he got it. Where were you, Chris? No, i I got it. Yeah. yeah But then the second answer I want to have is like like a lot of amps, like multiple. Like, okay, if you're going to two-piece thing, okay, what's a successful two-piece?
Speaker: Of course, what what you know quantifies a successful two-piece, but... um The ones I can think of usually have something split. Like they have bass amps and they have guitar amps.
Speaker: Unless you do, or know even like even like the local H thing. Like I wasn't really a fan of that band, but like it's a guitar player that has, that plays bass and guitar. i think he's got like bass strings on his guitar and two pickups and it splits out.
Speaker: And so he's playing bass and guitar on the same instrument at the same time. And it sounds really good. That doesn't count. It's two amps though. It's be one amp. Oh, one amp? I'm done. i don't make amps anymore. I would, I mean, if none of my stuff that I'm working on, if it's just like readily available, d or one of three i don't know.
Speaker: That, okay. That that's, that's the best answer. That's it right there for like your, your common stuff. You know, that's absolutely what I would go to. I was going to be like, well, what's the wattage? Like what's the volume, but you just did it like a DR one Oh three on a, on a four 12, like you're done. You you've got most of the low end you'd ever need. You'd have plenty of top end. It's one of the best amps ever made, I think. i mean, if you want to get interesting, Benson Babylon, a Silctone Planet Queen when they come out. But DR-103. What I would do, i'm going to modify it. i was going to say HiWatt as well, but i would run two different cabinets because for me, cabinets make a much bigger difference than amps ah for stuff like that. If you're just trying to occupy different frequency ranges, like the speakers are kind of the limiting factor. So I would say...
Speaker: a 212 or a 412 guitar, like closed back guitar cab, and 1 or 215 ported bass cabinet. Sick. So that I, because I think that you're actually going to get more mileage out of that than multiple guitar amps. That's solid. That's solid.
Speaker: Thank you. The classic slotted PiWatt 412 is pretty versatile for me. There's a couple of different variations on the porting.
Speaker: I think the one you're talking about is the slit, right? Yeah, the slit on the bottom. That's a good one. Yeah. I mean, part of that too is if you got the right fanes, then, you know... Yeah, it's not it's all about the fanes. I tried to recreate the slotting on a, like a cab experiment thing instead of doing an open back thing for my ah Planet Queen, and it was terrible.
Speaker: The one, it just didn't match the speakers. Yeah, you got to have the right resonant frequency. And then also keep in mind too, those things like there were different high watt cabs with the medium magnet fanes, which I really like. I like those a lot. And then the bigger fanes, like the high gauze fanes, those are the ones that all got the ported cab stuff.
Speaker: And I'm pretty certain that the bandwidth was a lot more in those. with those speakers, which again, matches the cab. I agree. I still miss the one I got rid of.
Speaker: it was stupid to get rid of it. Cause they're so much more expensive now, man. I missed an opportunity for one recently. There was one up in like, um, Eureka or something like or Ukiah like up northern California. It was a vintage 70s head and 412 with like the cab I like. I didn't get a look at the speakers but I imagine it was you know the the good ones. The set was like 2800 or something. I contacted the dude he was like oh I sold it yesterday I'm sorry.
Speaker: My old guitar player bought a half stack, a DR-103 half stack made in, i want to say 78. And that was about 1500 bucks. When? Oh, long time ago. This was probably 2015. Yeah. I sold mine for about 1500 bucks in like 2015.
Speaker: and amp or half stack amp and cap yeah okay cool yeah i mean not cool you should have kept it i was like i know it's the stupidest thing i was funding like silktone r&d and i was like i'll just sell this stuff so i can buy it because i was you know needed money for parts and stuff basically started this like on a pizza delivery salary and didn't have any money for r&d so sold all my stuff and uh i was like i'll just buy it back after i sell some and then the prices skyrocketed what was the name of the pizza place that you worked at round table oh i would have made something up actually dominoes at the time it was dominoes at the time went round tables oh no i worked for round table for seven years and then dominoes for like three months
Speaker: The only thing funnier is if you would have said CeCe's. Y'all know about CeCe's? no No. It's a pizza chain in Florida. It's CeCe's Pizza Bar. It's all you can eat pizza. Oh, no it's not just in Florida. oh is it? It's outside of Florida? Okay.
Speaker: The only people who ever celebrated CeCe's were Floridians. It's awful. All you can eat pizza is pretty gnarly. That's crazy. It's like real bad. We have a place called Mountain Mike's here. and They do all you can eat buffet for lunch.
Speaker: It's pretty good. I mean, i think all you can eat is probably a recipe for, you know, low quality in general. Dude, it's the grossest concept to me. It's horrifying.
Speaker: Let's do it with under $1,000 amps now. I don't know any. oh Yeah. ah PV. ah Okay. Yeah, a PV. A mace. A mace would be rad. A mace a good answer. Yeah.
Speaker: Um, I love that phaser on the mace. It's a really good phaser. It's real good. Yeah. Yeah. The mace all around is, is cool. If you need drummer to carry it with you, that'd be rad.
Speaker: Cause those things are like 300 pounds. I have a mace with a phaser in it and I have the, uh, session 500 with the phaser it. I just feel like a really, really lucky man.
Speaker: There's the Heritage VTX. I think that had the same phaser too. Yeah, you're right PV Mace is good. i mean, I'm still of the mindset of like, get a get a power amp, get like a solid state, like a crown power amp and run it with a preamp pedal. But that'd be right. Chris's stank face says that's that's incorrect. I bought 120 watt c create amp a 606 tube head and 412 $120.
Speaker: I was going to say, like a a good like crate 100 or 120-watt tube head. Dude, they were if you turn the treble all the way down, it was a really good sounding amp. You to turn the bass all the way up, treble all the way down. Don't the treble up at all. or or You have to turn the treble knob all the way down and then break it off with a hammer. let's glue it Just glue it in. Well, it's a little tiny... plastic shaft so it breaks off just by looking at it wrong just seriously no trouble sounded cool you have to pot every component and every connection in epoxy yeah but that'll get there if you if you get a cool hundred dollar 100 watt crate head it's like a fender twin it sounds yeah y'all are speaking as if you were never in a band with someone that owned a crate blue voodoo it was awful awful i mean ah i think we covered that with the eq settings
Speaker: Still awful. Dude, I would, I almost bought a blue voodoo last year just to... What, to prank someone? it It was a self-prank. The cop had selections in it. It was cool.
Speaker: The guitar players in my first band all had ah PV Bandits. Those are cool. And then they got 412s and just chained them to the 412s. That's a good move. Sounded. That was TransTube, which John Snyder swears that the patent on the TransTube stuff is really cool, which I'm like...
Speaker: Why didn't it sound cool then? Yeah, so I'm like, yeah, and tell me tell tell me you've you've never been in a band with someone playing a Peavey Bandit before. Yeah. Dude, those... I like the cleans, or cleans, quote-unquote. The trans-tube stuff just sounded like...
Speaker: fish flavored chalk or something he he gave me like a 10 minute dissertation on how like the design concepts were really amazing i was like wow that does sound really cool but man did it sound bad too bad it's a bummer yeah have we answered this guy's question i think i think we beat it to death to be honest with you I don't, under $1,000. Have you guys, I imagine you've played the Varelin tube things, right? I've been curious about those.
Speaker: Not enough to try them at all. but um What tube things? The solid state things that look like tubes. Oh, i haven't i haven't actually heard one yet.
Speaker: But I'm sure they're great. Yeah. I'm looking forward to hearing them. I heard good things, but never tried them out. There is an interesting thing for anyone who's thinking about trying it with one of my amps. They don't work with paraphrase phase inverters.
Speaker: So don't use it with my amps. Interesting. Do you know the specific technical reason why? did I just say specific? Specific. You said pacifical.
Speaker: That's awesome. I knew I was tired, but I didn't know i was that tired. the The reason why, and I don't think I'm giving anything away, it clamps the negative swing going to the first tube.
Speaker: And since that's clamped and that's where the next that's where the signal goes to the other side of the paraphrase from that point, you know what saying? Since it's clamped, that's where the phase flip happens.
Speaker: And so when it goes to the next PI tube, that negative thing that was clamped Becomes a positive thing, but you don't get the the waveform back.
Speaker: So in other words, it has OVP on the grid inside of it, or on the grid input. Yep. And it's probably like a Zener diode network or something like that, and it clamps early. Yeah, it's it's something like that.
Speaker: Yep. He's going to he's make going to make another version that does work with paraphrase, but it's basically for like loud, long-tail pair style guitar amps. Hmm. um I think it it'll work. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work in like a cathodyne.
Speaker: But yeah, the paraphrase doesn't work at all. It's the highest out output swing of any inverter. Actually, I'll tell you, Dave from Non-Human Audio put it in his Chimera, and he was the one who asked me about it because he was like, dude, this doesn't sound right.
Speaker: And then I asked Ben, and Ben told him he doesn't work with Paraphase. Ah, drag. Yeah, Sean from Scythe put some in his um power station, and he said it really tightened things up. Makes sense.
Speaker: I like the concept a lot, and I'm sure they sound great because Ben's got good ears. Got one last question for y'all. Cool. Okay. I'm going to throw curveball here. other Big red or spearmint.
Speaker: Both spicy, but for different reasons.
Speaker: It's big red. Get it? that's That was the the tagline? yeah Yeah. There you go. Wasn't that from cheerleading movie? I don't know. I never really consider myself a fan of cheerleading movies. Bring It On was pretty cool. It was from Bring It On. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. The tagline is ah when... Oh, crap.
Speaker: What is it? It's Big Red. it's big ri come on come on come on come on you guys were born in the 80s come on you gotta know this kiss a little longer was one of them yeah kiss a little longer make it last a little longer when breath comes to have the freshness it's big yeah whatever that means when fresh breath no come on think you're thinking of another thing I'm not
Speaker: I'm go googling it Say goodbye little longer, make it last a little longer. Give your breath long-lasting freshness with Big Red. Also, the answer is Big Red.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, Big Red's great, but I wish it would actually last a little longer. Or be fresh. Like, you don't have fresh breath with Big Red. Like, come on. That's not that's not fresh breath. It's like spicy cinnamon breath.
Speaker: Yeah, you smell like you just ate a churro. Thank you for listening to this episode of Amplified Nonsense. Our goal is to release a new episode every other week, so please subscribe wherever you listen. If you have a question for Brian, Charles, and Chris about amps, pop culture, or relationships, please call five one three three three four three eight zero three and leave a voicemail.
Speaker: If you enjoyed this episode of Amplified Nonsense, please leave a rating and review. Thanks again, and we'll see you soon.
