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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Gear »

Permalink My B string is shrill through FRV-1

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Unlike the other strings, my B string is extremely bright and piercing when using my FRV-1 pedal. It happens on both my Strat and Tele. There seems to be some kind of oscillation occuring, and it goes away when the dwell is turned down but I have been having the dwell up all the way for more drip.

Any possible remedies other than not having the dwell on 11?

SinNombre wrote:

Unlike the other strings, my B string is extremely bright and piercing when using my FRV-1 pedal. It happens on both my Strat and Tele. There seems to be some kind of oscillation occuring, and it goes away when the dwell is turned down but I have been having the dwell up all the way for more drip.

Any possible remedies other than not having the dwell on 11?

There not being numbers on the FRV-1 knobs, do you mean not having the Dwell wide open? If so, dial it back some.

MIX is going to give you your drip. Try setting the MIX & TONE knobs to about 11:00 & 10:00 respectively & adjust from there. Anything not pleasing is simply going to get made worse by having the DWELL wide-open. (My FRV-1 seldom has its TONE above 9:30 or so.)

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

Badger wrote:

There not being numbers on the FRV-1 knobs, do you mean not having the Dwell wide open? If so, dial it back some.

MIX is going to give you your drip. Try setting the MIX & TONE knobs to about 11:00 & 10:00 respectively & adjust from there. Anything not pleasing is simply going to get made worse by having the DWELL wide-open. (My FRV-1 seldom has its TONE above 9:30 or so.)

By "eleven" on the dwell I was referring to Nigel in 'Spinal Tap' saying his amp volume can be beyond all the way up. I tried all knobs at 12 o'clock and still had decent drip, but the sharpness was still there. I had previously been setting the mix at 9 o'clock. The only way to get rid of the shrill on the B and e strings is to turn down the mix or turn down the dwell, but then there is little reverb. I tried the setting you suggested but to get any drip I had to turn the dwell to 12 o'clock and again the B and e strings were sharp. Seems I cannot sufficient reverb and drip without the sharpness.

I am using a 5 watt amp with a Champ type circuit, but with a gain and volume knob. Turning gain down and volume up did't seem to help. I think I will have to get my DRRI out and see if that makes a difference. Will get back when I have a chance to do that. Thanks.

Badger, just read your Reverb Wiki and it seems I am not the first person to experience this problem. I turned the pedal tone all the way down but with the mix and dwell high enough to get some drip, about 1 or 2 o'clock, the treble was back. Buying a DR pedal to solve the problem as per your Wiki does not seem practical.

I just tried my DRRI with similar results. The reason I have been wanting maximum drip is to play 'Baja' as it was meant to sound. I guess I could go full drip for that song and then dial back for other songs. Let me know if anyone has any other suggestions.

SinNombre wrote:

Badger, just read your Reverb Wiki and it seems I am not the first person to experience this problem. I turned the pedal tone all the way down but with the mix and dwell high enough to get some drip, about 1 or 2 o'clock, the treble was back. Buying a DR pedal to solve the problem as per your Wiki does not seem practical.

OK first things first. It's most assuredly not 'my' Wiki - it's a cooperative effort of the site w/many authors/contributors. I just put the link in my sigline to help people find it.

Your pedal might be misbehaving. I've still got mine stuck on a backup pedalboard - generally the Mix was at 10:00, Dwell at 11-12:00 and Tone (the smaller center knob) no higher than 9:30-10:00 or so.

By the way, when you're judging your objectionable treble are you doing that just playing the guitar by itself in a small room, or is it still overly spikey when playing with a backing track with some real kickass bass & drums behind it?

Finally, before someone else does...
as convenient as it is sometimes the FRV-1 is the reason this
Dead Reverb was created.

Cool

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

Badger, thanks for your input on this issue. Yes, I have seen the FRV-1 emoticon but for a reverb noob the pedal is a revelation and over all I am very happy with it. I have been merely dabbling with surf music, blues being my main interest, but I have decided to take it more seriously and bought the FRV-1. It goes a long way to creating the sounds I remember from the 60s when I moved to SoCal and surf music was getting its start. I was pretty into the surf scene then, and the fellow who created my avatar was a kind of mentor to me back then when I was in art school.

Regarding the spikiness, no, it is not really so noticable when playing to a jam track, it is most apparent when sounding notes on the high strings alone. I don't think the pedal has a problem unique to itself, I have just discovered an acceptable flaw in what to me is a good reverb for the price and size. If I become a good enough surf guitarist I can always pick up a re-issue tank or suitable alternative. Thanks again.

No worries, I'm not a basher (there are those). First reverb-like substance I had besides on-board amp verb. Still have mine & there are some who keep one in the bag in case their tank goes down. I only mentioned the backing track thing because it's unbelievable how much treble is prevalent because of what it takes to cut through a full-blown rhythm section. When I started recording some stuff it was like a curtain had been drawn back.

When it comes time for that suitable alternative, if you're handy at all or have a friend who is, I'd recommend a Surfy Bear FET Reverb unit. And way cheaper than even a reissue Fender tank.

Happy splash!
Cool

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

This sounds more like an issue with your setup (guitar and PUs) and choice of strings. You are aware that different kind/gauge of strings have a huge impact on the reverb? Steel/Nickel/Flats/Rounds, etc. The described problem pretty much sounds like a combination of 'wrong' strings paired with a 'wrong' PU height. Try changing strings and lower the PU on the treble side. It all just helps to solve the issue by 5% but in total (strings, PUs, settings, etc.) it will be the remedy for your ice picking. Hope that helps.

The Hicadoolas

Thanks Sancho, I am having the same issue with both my Strat and Tele. Neither has hot PUs or PUs that are very high. And I would rather not change to a different string guage just to remedy this issue. I will probably just dial back the "drip", which alleviates the problem, or allow the spikey notes to get absorbed into the mix when jamming to a track. And I might take another look at the Surfy Bear thread. Thumbs Up

Hello Sin ...its been my experience that the FRV1 just had a shrillness that is inherent in the design ,its the COSM rather than analog aspect. And its especially noticeable with my strats ,not as much with offsets . Minimizing the shrillness in a strat is best done by avoiding the bridge only setting ,or at the very least wiring a tone knob to the bridge PU and rolling off lots of the treble .
when i use my FRV (mostly just at home ,low volume) I have the mix and dwell set rather high and the tone turned way down ...lotsa drip ..
There's an abundance of ear piercing treble available in a strat or tele that you need to tone down ...I think the trebel timbre is just different in teles and strats compared to offsets ...I have my offsets tone knobs rather high in comparison because the treble is quite a bit sweeter,never shrill. Its just the nature of the beasts.

ArabSpringReverb wrote:

Hello Sin ...its been my experience that the FRV1 just had a shrillness that is inherent in the design ,its the COSM rather than analog aspect. And its especially noticeable with my strats ,not as much with offsets . Minimizing the shrillness in a strat is best done by avoiding the bridge only setting ,or at the very least wiring a tone knob to the bridge PU and rolling off lots of the treble .

That's a good point, hadn't thought about the COSM vs. tank thing. My JM is usually wide-open but I wouldn't have a Strat w/o doing the very simple jumper & re-wire to put the bridge pickup on its own tone-pot, 1st tone staying for neck/middle. (In fact my AVRI came that way.) Just rolling a bit off the bridge can help quite a bit for some things.

Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel

DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.

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