New things at GGG

We have just released a new Digital Reverb Kit. The kit was brought about by the work of my friend Alfonso Hermida. This is an absolutely fabulous sounding reverb and we will have some demo samples soon. The release of the kit marks the beginning of a some new things happening at General Guitar Gadgets. I'm somewhat overdue letting you know about what's up for the future at GGG. This post has some updates and thoughts about our future projects and offerings.

Our policy since the site's inception, over 10 years ago, was to offer free stuff to DIY stompbox builders. Since we began selling PCBs and kits a few years ago, we have kept the free information for builders to be able to do any project that we offer for sale. This policy is one of several distiguishing features that takes GGG a cut above our competitors. We will continue this policy and always supply lots and lots of free information. There may be a few minor exceptions to the PCB masks in the future, not to increase our sales, but only to offer better products.

How many of you have realized that the professionally made PCBs we offer are designed so that they can be etched at home by DIYers? We have kept that in mind as a design factor on all of our PCB layouts. There may be PCBs coming in the future with new projects that are not etchable at home, not because of copyright issues or as a ploy to increase PCB sales, but due to the fact that we can offer PCBs in a smaller or better format if we can disregard issues related to etching your own. I've struggled with this several times already while designing some of the PCBs. Should I continue to keep it in an etchable format, or if I could just add some traces to the top layer or reduced the width of the traces I could get the PCB down to a smaller size and make it more versitile to use in smaller enclosures, etc.

Some of you may have noticed that many of the PCB that are etched in-house here at GGG are running out of stock. I'm announcing to the public at this time we will no longer be doing any in-house etching. We still have some of the etched PCBs in stock. We will be converting most of these PCBs to the better quality ones with solder mask, thru-hole plating and screen printed tops. As mentioned above, as much as possible we will keep these in an at-home-etchable format on the projects pages as they are converted. We are running behind on converting the PCBs, but everything that is "out of stock" will be restocked with the higher quality PCBs.

So, back to the new Digital Reverb Kit relating to some of the above discussions:
1 - This Digital Reverb kit will be the first kit we will offer that we do not have a PCB mask for builders to use to etch their own PCB. The PCB belongs to Hermida Engineering and we have access to it only as part of the reverb kits at this time.

2 - The Reverb kit will be the first time that we will not be selling the stand-alone PCB for it. It is only available as a kit at this time. Again, the PCB belongs to Hermida Engineering and it is for the kit builders at this time.

I hope none of you think these changes are bad. We will continue to be the best source on the internet for building stompboxes and hopfully be able to offer more really cool stuff. Please reply with comments if you feel the urge!

Happy stombox building!
JD Sleep

Newsletter Phobia

The purpose of nearly all private enterprise email newsletters is to increase sales for the organization. That is indeed the purpose of the General Guitar Gadgets Newsletter. To date, we have not had any valuable technical information in the newsletters. We prefer that all the technical information we can generate be posted freely on the site. This blog serves the purpose of providing details on updates or inside information about GGG. If you are not on the list to receive GGG newsletters, you are probably wondering why would you ever be on the emailing list at this point! Most people feel that they get way too much email and don't have any desire to sign up for more.

Every newsletter we've sent has provided a coupon code for a special sale that is available only to newsletter subscribers over a limited period of time, usually a few days. It saddens and bewilders me to be in the midst of a "Newsletter Sale" and see orders come in that haven't taken advantage of the sale (especially from regular customers!). I want to make it clear to everybody, if you think there is even a remote possibility that you might ever buy something from GGG, you need to be on the newsletter mailing list!

I want to also reiterate our iron-clad policies about the mailing list:

1) It is secure. You email address will not likely be hacked.
2) Your information will never be sold or given to anyone else. It is for the purpose of sending you a newsletter every once in a while and that's it.
3) The newsletter content is not a "snow job" or any kind of annoying deceitful information to try to make you buy something you don't want. We are not in the business of "closing a sale", we are in the business of making great guitar effects available to you at an affordable price.

To subscribe to the GGG Newsletter, just logon at the site and then go to the bottom right side of any page and check the e-Newsletter box and press the Subscribe button. It's easy to do!

JD Sleep
General Guitar Gadgets

PS - Top secret information to non-subscribers: There's a newsletter sale going on right now and you are missing it.

Analog vs Digital

The title of this post is so "ho-hum", it's pathetic. This is a subject of so much "blathering" on the net, I hate to even bring it up. I got an email question about this a few days ago and I thought I'd share my thoughts about it. My thoughts on this subject sort of "jelled" as I responded to the email.

The eMailer's question was, why would I spend $300 (or whatever) on some kits, when I can buy a $400.00 amp that has tons of effects and even lots of different amp models.

First of all, let me say that I'm not an "Analog Snob" and I don't think I have a unbalanced bias against digital effects, as many might be thinking that I would have. I have lots of good digital gear and I even use some of it from time to time ;-) Anyway here was my answer to the question (slightly edited):

It depends on who you are and what you like - in sound and in touch and feel. The amp modeling and digital multi-effects units are great, but some players feel like there is something missing when they play them. I don't know how to explain this in words, but I do think that there are times when there is something missing in some of the digital sounds. A good player can actually "play" an analog effect, there's a certain knack for getting a great sound out of it. But a digital effect usually plays itself.

It hit me as I wrote that last line..."That's it!" There really is a way to "play" an analog effect, but a lot of digital effects don't have that playability. I'd love to hear your comments. Maybe I'm missing some of the finer points of the digital effects.

I want to close by saying that I didn't post this blog to try to sell kits. Analog, digital, who really cares, it's 99.9% player and 0.1% gear isn't it? In the long run it's the music that counts. I just want to put it out there and see what you think about analog. Bob Moog had some interesting things to say about analog sound in the DVD movie "Moog"

http://www.moogmusic.com/detail.php?main_product_id=205

Check it out if you haven't seen it. It got a lot of bad reviews, but I liked it, it was all live footage(not a narrator overdubbing the course of events showing photos) so a lot of Bob telling and sharing stories. The short segments with Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman (two of my musical favorites when I wa s a teen) were icing on the cake for me!

Welcome

Welcome to the Blogspot for General Guitar Gadgets. I'm JD Sleep and I'll be hosting this blog. I thought it would be good to have a place where people could get sort of behind-the-scenes information about what's going on at generalguitargadets.com. I'll try to post lots of useful or at least interesting information here that goes beyond what you see on the "News Flashes" on the site. This also provides you with an easy way to give feedback to me and other readers by posting comments.

First item of discussion is the General Guitar Gadgets e-Newsletter. It's been almost six months since we introduced the email newsletter on the site and we have only a few hundred subscribers. If you are not subscribed you have missed three fantastic sales including a week long sale 30% off of everything on the site sale this fall! I'm not sure if there is a fear of being spammed from signing up or maybe the Newsletter sign-up is not prominent enough on the site, but the numbers are discouraging. I can assure everyone, you will not get spammed or sold out by signing up and I won't bother you too much, only with important news. Newsletter subscribers have the best opportunities for special sale prices!