Hi Loopman,

The compressor in the clips shown in the shimmer video were used to increase the “sustain” of the guitar.
I wanted the guitar signal to be heard for as long as possible.
A compressor will help achieve this by watching the dynamics of the guitar signal.
As the output of the guitar starts to fade out the compressor will slowly turn the volume up so it seems as if it will ring for ever.
Of course there is a point where the strings just stop vibrating, but a compressor lets you hear the guitar for as long as possible and for as loud as possible while the strings are still vibrating.

Bill

Its a bass guitar with EVERYTHING but the top frequencies roll off.
He thumb slapping the bottom strings.
A knockout pedal will get you fairly close.

Low knob 0
Dry knob 0
High knob 10

A Riddle pedal in high pass mode will do a similar sound.

Bill

I love this also!
Bill

The May issue of Premier Guitar with the Effectology article is now in stores.
My thanks to writer Rebecca Dirks and Premier Guitar

Bill

Thaks Narada.
What I do to keep things quiet is to run part of the chain before the preamp and the second half of the chain after the preamp and before the power amp.
Pedals like compression, distortion POG and HOG most often go in front of the preamp.
The volume pedal will be the LAST thing in that chain as it can silence any sound right before the pre amp.
Ambient effects like the Stereo Memory Man and Cathedral go in between the preamp and power amp.
This lets you distort the preamp if needed and still have a undistorted reverb.
That said you can change the entire chain up for certain effects, but this is what i start out with.

I do record direct.
For the entire Effectology series I have used a very clean fender Twin simulation and the amp.
Sort of a neutral sound.
You can hear what the amp sim sounds like by itself in the reverb show I did.
Its the first clip heard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAiUMx1Dsm4
.32 seconds in.
I like the Roland or Boss Fender amp sim.
Almost any unit out there has a Clean amp simulator.
Its just a very clean sound with nothing going on.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for watching!
Bill

Horns and percussion:

Below are the pedal settings I used for the video “Fanfare for the Uncommon Pedal.”

I have always been moved by the music of Aaron Copland. “Fanfare for the Common Man” is a favorite of mine. I thought it would be great to be able to play some these sounds on my guitar.

Timpani Drums:
To capture this sound I used a Ring Thing as a pitch shifter, a Big Muff for a slight distortion and filtering followed by a Cathedral reverb for a big ambient reverb.

To start, I slightly muted the lower stings on the guitar using my left hand index finger at the first fret.

Lightly touching the string without pressing down on the fret produced a soft high harmonic when the strings were stuck hard with my thumb. I lowered the pitch of this harmonic down one octave with the Ring Thing. This produced the timpani drum note or pitch.

The Big Muff added harmonics to the note. I used its tone control to remove some of the very high frequencies.

For reverb I used the Cathedral Pedal in the Accu Spring mode. This produced a very smooth, long reverb.

I used a small amount of pre-delay. Pre-delay helps a percussive attack stand out in the mix as it separates the start of the sound from the reverb. In other words, it delays the reverb from being heard till after the initial attack.

Below are the timpani settings:

Horns:
The sound I chose for the horns is a combination of a trumpet and a French horn. For this sound I used a HOG for filtering, a Riddle for a brass envelope and a Cathedral for a concert hall reverb.

A POG2 pedal can be used in place of the HOG.

The sound of the horns can be changed by altering the start and stop controls of the Riddle pedal. Brighter will produce a trumpet sound and darker will sound more like a French horn or trombone.

Last in line was a Cathedral pedal using the hall setting.

Below are the settings I used for the horn sound:

Optional

Thanks for watching,
Bill Ruppert

Thats a great question.
When I get a few free moments I will set both units up and post a Ring Thing setting that matches the frequency Analyzer.
Bill