Not a Second Thought

Robert James

Okay, this one is all about being a guitar gear nerd.

Wet/Dry. You play through two amplifiers. One amplifier gets a dry signal and the other gets all of the effects. The idea is you can crank up the effects without having to worry about the sound getting muddy and hard to work with because the dry amp stays clear. When you mix the two signals together it can sound HUGE.

On this song the rhythm guitar part is way too loud in the mix because I just couldn’t get enough of it. It’s one take, played with a Gibson ES-335. There are two tracks, one panned all the way left and the other panned all the way right. In your right speaker you will hear the guitar into a Klon KTR overdrive pedal into a Fender Bassbreaker 15. That’s the dry amp. In the left you hear the guitar through the same overdrive pedal into a Vox AC15. There is a tremolo effect built into the amp and it is on here. Not a lot, but it’s there. In the mix I added a delay that repeats on the quarter note, and some room reverb. That’s the wet amp.

I am kinda loving the way this sounds. The lead guitar was still the ES-335, and it still played through both amps, but it was the same signal path into both, and the same effects were added to both in the mix. Also, the two amps are panned right in the center. There’s also a second overdrive pedal, a Malaise Forever Black Lives Matter.

The song itself is okay. I don’t think I was planning on anything this ballad-ish, but I’m pleased with it overall.

Chorus
not a second thought
not another look
not a single glance
at an open book
‘nother battle fought
‘nother victory
time to take a chance
time to let it be

Verse 1
first step is a giant leap
right until you’re in too deep
drag yourself up out of sleep
stand up to the mystery

verse 2
let yourself enjoy the view
check out what it does to you
anything you want to do
everything becoming new