Jake Behrens

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New Tubes

In an effort to tinker with more things, I have ordered a new set of tubes for my Vox AC30 Black Comet. Here’s what I ended up going with:

Preamp:

  • V1: Tung-Sol 12AX7
  • V2: Tung-Sol 12AX7

Phase Inverter:

  • V3: JJ ECC83-S/12AX7

Power amp:

  • V4: JJ EL844
  • V5: JJ EL844
  • V6: JJ EL844
  • V7: JJ EL844

I went with the Tung-Sol valves for the majority of the preamp because they are apparently really nice for bringing out the “chime” the AC30 is known for.

The phase inverter was really just a toss in the wind. I kind of wanted to go with a 5751 because they are known for pushing a lot more clean tone to the power amp, but I don’t want too much clean headroom, so I ended up with the JJ ECC83-S. I read good things and it’s supposed to be nice in the PI spot.

The power amp was a dice roll between the JJ EL844 and the Mullard Re-Issue EL84. The Mullards are supposed to be really nice, but I kept reading about the big bottom end and the high gain…and I’m really not about that. I love my clean and like to add bottom and gain with more control. The other factor was that the JJ EL844s are the lower power version of the JJ EL84, which means lower volume, but same tone. Since I play in the house, I don’t mind if I can crank the amp a bit higher for breakup without crazy volume.

We’ll see.

My Shure SM57 comes this week, so I’ll post a before/after audio clip of what I end up with.

    • #Vox
    • #AC30
    • #JJ
    • #Mullard
    • #Tubes
    • #12AX7
    • #EL84
  • 5 months ago
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Pedals.

As people following my Instagram account know, I’ve been building my arsenal back up for playing. I thought I’d walk through my pedal setup and talk about why I chose what I chose, etc. I’ve done a lot of searching lately to come up with the choices I’ve made, so hopefully this will help someone out since rig info/recommendations for my typical genres of music (Ska/Punk) aren’t usually found online.

These are in the order I use them, so assume the guitar is first.


Preamp…

Ernie Ball Wah

I like the Cry Baby as much as the next guy, but I wanted a wah with a bit more subtlety. When I watched videos of the Ernie Ball Wah side by side with the Cry Baby, it was the general complaint…for me, it’s just what I wanted.

BOSS TU-2 Chromatic Tuner

This is standard. If you’re going to have a non-rackmount tuner, just get the BOSS one. It’s rugged, dependable, and it works perfectly. Mine is old, hence the TU-2, there’s a TU-3 now.

MXR Dyna Comp

I wanted to spiff up some of my clean tone solos. As I practice more, it’ll be less of an issue, but soft hammer ons next to loud pull offs or flat picking a repeating melody and getting more or less attack each time kill me at the moment.

The compressor pulls things together and gives a more even sound. Initially, I tried to use it to boost my distortion for leads, but the distortion compresses the signal to where the compressor really doesn’t do much boosting. It’ll pull things together a bit, but that’s about it.

So it turned out to be a wonder in disguise. Great to clean up solo work or repeating melodies. Not great for boosting. You’ve been warned! :)

Wampler Sovereign Distortion

Ok, I may be playing Ska/Punk, but I love some “oomph” in my rhythm distortion and enough gain to glam out on 80’s solos. This pedal is perfect. You can get strong overdrive tones all the way to pure metal, but it really hits the “brown” sound well and gets you close to a Marshall JCM800 head when you want to. For me, that’s what I wanted. The ability to dial it in, but not an amp-in-a-box.

JHS Banana Boost

OMG, I love this one. You might say, “It’s just a boost pedal, no big deal.” You would be wrong though. Put after my distortion, this pedal pulls my entire rig together. I’m currently using a Vox AC30 Custom Classic and its clean tone is a wonder, however, you have to turn up the channel volume and then dial back the master volume to break up the sound and saturate the tubes. No more. The Banana Boost takes care of this for me and allows me to dial in a great overdrive just from boosting the signal volume into my amp.

The other side of this pedal is that when placed after my distortion, it will not only boost the volume for solos, but it’ll help dial in a bit of treble boost as well. Funny enough, my distortion pedal has a boost switch that I could flip, but this pedal does it for me with a stomp. And if I’m not using my distortion pedal, it helps push my amp just over that breakup point.

I’m overly satisfied. It’s a freaking fabulous pedal.


Effects Loop…

Tech 21 Boost D.L.A.

My delay pedal needs were VERY specific. I wanted 1 - Infinite repeats possible, but I needed trails. Trails are where you actuate the pedal, play something, then turn it off and keep playing, but the delay keeps “trailing” on. This pedal not only does meets both of these needs, but it has a really nice grouping of dials to get the perfect mix of wet/dry that you want.

I had read that I should place delays in the effects loop, if my amp had one, and it does. This ensures that it’s the final sound that delayed and not something that the breakup of the tubes will muddle.


So what’s next? I’ve found that I’m quite the pedal whore. I enjoy the fiddling with tiny knobs to see what sound I can get. To be honest, I’d really like to get a nice reverb pedal that will do trails (so far, I’m looking at the Strymon Blue Sky) and I’d like to find a good octaver/pitch shifter to muck around with cheesy 80’s solo glitz live. Past those two “necessities,” I’d say a phaser or flanger would be fun. I have a BOSS PH-3, but I’d like to get something a bit more analog. We’ll see.

    • #guitar
    • #wah
    • #compressor
    • #distortion
    • #boost
    • #delay
    • #pedals
    • #ska
    • #punk
  • 9 months ago
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Special Disaster Team - Eve of Destruction (2004)
Recorded in 2004, this was the last album of my Ska/Punk band Special Disaster Team. The band was made up of Jake Behrens (Vocals/Guitar), Greg Johnson (Vocals/Trombone), Marcus Spitz (Trumpet), Joey Powell (Bass), Brian Stansberry (Drums), and Grant Slater (Trombone).
1. 288
2. Fan Club Girl
3. All the Time
4. Hit the Ground
5. G.G.P.
6. El Segundo
7. In Syndication
8. Hidden Agenda
9. Ask 4 Action
10. Leave a Message
11. Keller’s Dog
12. Don’t Stop
13. Maybe Sometime
Download Here
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Special Disaster Team - Eve of Destruction (2004)

Recorded in 2004, this was the last album of my Ska/Punk band Special Disaster Team. The band was made up of Jake Behrens (Vocals/Guitar), Greg Johnson (Vocals/Trombone), Marcus Spitz (Trumpet), Joey Powell (Bass), Brian Stansberry (Drums), and Grant Slater (Trombone).

1. 288

2. Fan Club Girl

3. All the Time

4. Hit the Ground

5. G.G.P.

6. El Segundo

7. In Syndication

8. Hidden Agenda

9. Ask 4 Action

10. Leave a Message

11. Keller’s Dog

12. Don’t Stop

13. Maybe Sometime

Download Here

    • #music
    • #ska
    • #punk
  • 1 year ago
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Jake Behrens - Dasher and Vixen (2010)
Recorded on a whim, I finally made a Christmas song. The song was recorded in ghetto fashion in my bathroom.
1. Dasher and Vixen
2. Dasher and Vixen (Band demo)
Download Here
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Jake Behrens - Dasher and Vixen (2010)

Recorded on a whim, I finally made a Christmas song. The song was recorded in ghetto fashion in my bathroom.

1. Dasher and Vixen

2. Dasher and Vixen (Band demo)

Download Here

    • #music
    • #ska
    • #punk
    • #Christmas
    • #acoustic
  • 2 years ago
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    • #Apple
    • #Infinite Loop
    • #IL1
  • 3 years ago
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About

Hello.
I'm Jake.
I live in California.
I work at Apple.
I help devs do amazing things.
I make music.

Catch me, if you can

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