The blues jam at The Acoustic in Black Rock CT, Sep 30 2019. The actual music begins about 5+ minutes in; I’m playing for the first 30-40 minutes after that, and then again about 90 minutes in. The gear is a Joyo American Sound with a Shaker Dynamic mic (which died later that night, alas) straight to the PA. When the Shaker died I switched to the vocal mic, and that sounded good too–it certainly has a different feel than the amped up stuff. I had fun, not least because the sound was always big and tough enough for me to play without strain. I wore my new black baseball hat with lightning bolt (signifying Lightnin’ Rick) and my Hammer monsters T-shirt (so many lovely monsters!). Enjoy.

The next time I go to The Acoustic, I may be carrying my new blues pedalboard with a Joyo American Sound and 4 iStomps running a tape delay, a spring reverb, a multiphonic pitch shifter, and a vibrato with tap tempo. I’m really enjoying testing different iStomp setups–for example, learning that the Rotator rotating speaker effect produced too much distortion following the Joyo, and replacing it more or less instantly with the Magic Fingers vibrato, which adds less distortion to the signal. (The tap temp feature for vibrato speed was a very welcome surprise.) For a flexible blues setup, this is tops. For a battery-only setup, I bring the Joyo and either the reverb or the delay.

I intend to test the DM-2 delay model next. Why not? The tape delay sounds cool, but plenty of harp players seem to like the DM-2, so let’s see what the model sounds like.

If you liked that stuff, you’ll like this stuff:

the 21st century blues harmonica manifesto in sound

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the rock harmonica masterpiece

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