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Artist / Heroes,
Greg Weeks of The Red Chord Plays the Soundblox Multiwave Bass Distortion
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Posted by: Jeffrey McAlack | Posted in: Artist / Heroes,
Have you ever traveled half way around the world and met someone for the first time that lives just a couple of miles from your home? This is exactly what happened when we met Greg Weeks, the bass player for The Red Chord, at this year’s NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA. If you don’t already know, The Red Chord are an incredible metal band out of the Boston, MA area. Initially, Greg was lured to the Source Audio booth simply by the look of our Soundblox pedals, but after plugging in, he was seriously impressed. We got to talking and soon enough realized that we were all from the same town—of course, the old Boston rock camaraderie instantly kicked in. It was the beginning of a relationship that we hope lasts a long, long time.
I went to see the Red Chord shake the foundation of a club in Holyoke, MA about a month ago. It was definitely a relentless display of hard driving in your face metal—great stuff. I also got to see how Greg uses the Soundblox Multiwave Bass Distortion at live gigs—when the band’s guitarist takes a solo, Greg boldly fills the vacant space with one of the pedal’s multi band octave distortions. I’ve heard a lot of great funk and groove oriented players use the Multiwave to great effect, but this was something different entirely—Greg definitely confirmed that the pedal sounds awesome as part of a full on metal assault. If you haven’t heard The Red Chord you should absolutely visit their MySpace page and check out the video for “Demoralizer”—it’s finely crafted piece of heavy rock with plenty of tremendous playing.
A couple of weeks ago, Greg had some time off between The Red Chord’s Spring tours of Japan and Europe, so he stopped by the Source Audio laboratory/office to hang out, show us what he does with the Multiwave Bass Distortion and try some of our other pedals. It was a blast, he plugged in his Traben Greg Weeks Signature Chaos bass and proceeded to pump out one monster riff after another. The below video contains a few highlights from that visit. We even pulled out a prototype of our yet to be released Soundblox Bass Envelope Filter (in Prince approved purple), so you’ll definitely dig hearing what that sounds like. Check it out.
Greg was also kind enough record a song with the Multiwave Bass Distortion called “Blue Box”. In the tune, you’ll hear him use a technique similar to the one used in the first clip of the above video—he achieves some really interesting sounds by simply varying his picking force. With foldback distortion, playing softly generates a subdued tone, but plucking harder pushes the pedal and increases the intensity of the foldback—the effect is noticeable and quite dramatic. Greg creates a very cool and menacing vibe with this technique. Check out Greg's Source Audio Artist Page and give the tune a listen—it’s really cool.
We’re very proud to add Greg to our list of endorsing artists, please check out his artist page for more info and links to The Red Chord’s websites.
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