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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 7:12 am
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riversitter wrote:
nikininja wrote:
good for eric.
on a good day i can hear if the pedals on or off :D

personaly i dont believe he can hear the difference in batteries. Its far more likely that he can hear if a battery has started loosing charge or is tip top. It would be like saying he can hear the difference from the wall sockets connected to seperate powerplants.

Not sure if he still does it but I read that he doesn't ground his gear because he can hear a tonal differnec when using grounded plugs.


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“I plug into the same positions on the power strips every time, because once you get the polarity right, the tone is more consistent. [Note: No part of Johnson’s rig is grounded, because the vintage amps and Waber power strips don’t have AC ground pins. Johnson also feels that ground pins attract “dirty” power. Therefore, he has carefully arranged the polarity flow of each piece in order to prevent hum or shock.] I figure out which position has the best tone with the least amount of buzz, and I mark it. I also use separate power strips for each thing, which makes the sound more pure, although I’m not sure why. The dirty rhythm head plugs into the main power strip that goes to the wall. The lead head plugs into another strip that feeds off the main one. The Fenders’ power strip feeds off the lead one, and the pedalboard’s power strip feeds off the Fenders’ power strip. If I plug everything into one power strip, the distortion sounds hashy.

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“Eric is trying to change the folklore about being such a detail-obsessed sonic tweaker,” says Jeff Van Zandt. “He’s slowly getting there. He’s starting to become that guy. The thing he has the most difficulty relaxing about is dirty power. At an old theatre, we will search until we find our own isolated circuit that offers us the best clean power. When we plug into the P.A. power, his AC line level drops every time there’s a spike from a kick drum. He also thinks that all the dirty electricity goes to the ground pins, so his rig is completely ungrounded. He has all the amps plugged into certain sockets in certain power strips according to polarity to achieve the best tone and avoid getting shocked.

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So maybe he really can hear batteries and wood piecing. :shock:


I wonder if Eric can hear what an idiot he sounds like making these mythical claims.


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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 7:54 am
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Quote:
“I plug into the same positions on the power strips every time, because once you get the polarity right, the tone is more consistent. [Note: No part of Johnson’s rig is grounded, because the vintage amps and Waber power strips don’t have AC ground pins. Johnson also feels that ground pins attract “dirty” power. Therefore, he has carefully arranged the polarity flow of each piece in order to prevent hum or shock.] I figure out which position has the best tone with the least amount of buzz, and I mark it. I also use separate power strips for each thing, which makes the sound more pure, although I’m not sure why. The dirty rhythm head plugs into the main power strip that goes to the wall. The lead head plugs into another strip that feeds off the main one. The Fenders’ power strip feeds off the lead one, and the pedalboard’s power strip feeds off the Fenders’ power strip. If I plug everything into one power strip, the distortion sounds hashy.

Source


Quote:
“Eric is trying to change the folklore about being such a detail-obsessed sonic tweaker,” says Jeff Van Zandt. “He’s slowly getting there. He’s starting to become that guy. The thing he has the most difficulty relaxing about is dirty power. At an old theatre, we will search until we find our own isolated circuit that offers us the best clean power. When we plug into the P.A. power, his AC line level drops every time there’s a spike from a kick drum. He also thinks that all the dirty electricity goes to the ground pins, so his rig is completely ungrounded. He has all the amps plugged into certain sockets in certain power strips according to polarity to achieve the best tone and avoid getting shocked.

Source


:lol: That's too rich; it made me weep with laughter.

I've always had huge respect for Eric Johnson, so I'm very glad to hear that “Eric is trying to change the folklore about being such a detail-obsessed sonic tweaker”. We'd hate to see him misrepresented.

Dirty power, huh? Sounds like the militant wing of the pornographers association.

...-C


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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 11:03 am
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now dirty power or dirty electricity as its refered to in the uk is something that is very easy to hear. Even my missus can spot it on my amps. Its down to the power from the wall socket not being constant. It peaks and troughs and affects the amps, when it peaks the amps hum like crazy, when it troughs the amps sound thin. All A/C wall power fluctuates,in areas that suffer dirty electricity the peaks and troughs are higher and lower.
Ive found that surge protectors make my amps warble too but i dont know why.

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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 11:19 am
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Monster makes a surge protector that controls the fluxing of electrical current and keeps it steady. I bought one for my flat screen tv , believe it or not. They had an instrument that showed the noise or dirty current coming into different wall sockets and then plugged up the surge protector from Monster and it flat lined the noise! :)

It was not cheap , somewhere between 150 and 200 dollars! Worth it as I have everything of importance plugged in it!


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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 3:18 pm
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Thankyou Fhopkins.
That warrants further investigation. I wonder how the surge protector causes flux :?

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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 3:25 pm
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Is it the HTS950 model?

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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 5:49 pm
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Here's an interesting Eric Johnson interview. A quote from it:

Quote:
I know that at one time you had said that you prefer one-piece bodies whenever available. As the Eric Johnson Strat features a two-piece body, I wondered would it have been pretty hard for Fender to specify one-piece bodies instead for these guitars?

EJ: It would have, and I have kind of come off of that a little bit because I noticed that some of my old Strats are two-piece, and they happen to be great sounding. Sometimes I don’t know if once you figure out ,“Oh, this is what makes something sound good,” if tomorrow will come and prove you wrong. It’s almost as if it’s mojo. I really think it’s the inter-relationship of the sum of all the parts that makes it a beautiful instrument more than saying, “This one part needs to be like that,” because tomorrow you may be proven wrong (laughing).

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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 9:55 am
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nikininja wrote:
now dirty power or dirty electricity as its refered to in the uk is something that is very easy to hear. Even my missus can spot it on my amps.


Er, just to stick up for myself a tad here, I wasn't laughing at the idea of "dirty electricity": even an electrical ignoramus like me has heard of it.

I was laughing at Eric Johnson's desire to lose his reputation as the ubergeek of tone. Far too late, Eric...

Cheers - C

PS Though I feel there's acres of jokes to had from the phrase "dirty power".


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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:10 am
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nikininja wrote:
Thankyou Fhopkins.
That warrants further investigation. I wonder how the surge protector causes flux :?

What I was trying to explain is that the voltage coming into your wall sockets fluctuates, it's not the same voltage at a steady current it can differ anywhere from 0 to 5 or more volts and this protector keeps it at the same voltage coming out of the protector. If that makes sense? I know nothing about electrical theory but I did see it in my house with the elect. tech. showing me the readings on his instruments. :? Maybe some of the elect tech. on this forum can explain what I'm trying to say? :wink:


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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:13 am
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ah mate i wasnt having a pop at you. I was simply stating how you cant blame him for being particular about it.

Dirty Power. the campaign slogan of any decent 80's politician.

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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:20 am
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nikininja wrote:
ah mate i wasnt having a pop at you. I was simply stating how you cant blame him for being particular about it.

Dirty Power. the campaign slogan of any decent 80's politician.


I understand but I tried it with a $50 SP and it did not help but of course the $200 one kept a steady elect. current. :)


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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:28 am
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nikininja wrote:
ah mate i wasnt having a pop at you. I was simply stating how you cant blame him for being particular about it.

Dirty Power. the campaign slogan of any decent 80's politician.


Haha! It's all right, I have a thick skin. Well, I'm fairly thick, anyway...

I wasn't even laughing at Eric, except in the most affectionate way. Actually, I deeply want to believe that he really can hear the difference between brands of batteries in his pedals. And if anyone could count the number of peices of wood in a body by ear it would be him.

It's just there's something about all that stuff around which socket on a strip to plug which bit of gear into that reminds me of my grandmother, who used to turn off the switch on an unused wall plug socket to stop the electricity leaking out...

There's a little part of me that doesn't really believe in electricity, because I can't see it. And I know the earth is flat...

:D - C


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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 10:43 am
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nikininja wrote:
Is it the HTS950 model?

It is the HTS 1000 stage 2. Looks like I got ripped off though as I was just looking at some on the web and could have got one like the 800 that would probably done the job for 1/2 the price. I'm a sucker for a salesman! :oops: I told you I did not know much!! :lol:


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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2008 12:07 pm
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Dont be downhearted mate the hts950 is £130 at the current rate of exchange that would make it $260. Ofcourse thats not the case we have all kinds of taxes. non the less if it protects your gear its worth it.

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Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:48 pm
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One would think that Eric Johnson would travel with state-of-the-art voltage regulators, etc ...

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