THE SLEEPER.. 50s tweed flavored overdrive

 This Drive pedal, The Sleeper, has been made to afford a nice range of light to medium gain,colored overdrive texture that maintains the guitar's inherent sound. You play it, it doesnt play you. I wanted to keep the high side of the guitar clearly intelligible, the low mids full and its drive character had to be able to clean up to a fair degree when I dialed back the volume on my gretsch, tele or strat..( It does this particularly well if you have a treble bleed cap across your guitars volume pot. )
    The Sleeper Drive has both a "compressed feel" and "uncompressed feel" mode, as I dont think switching in and out clipping diodes merits me calling it a high powered or low powered tweed amp and no one else should use that hype either.  So, I can honestly say that when its in compressed mode (note" there is no discrete compressor circuit involved with this pedal, I'm merely using the term to describe the gain response/player feel) you are getting a mixed pair of Germanium and Silicon clipping diodes working with the unique high powered FET transistor.
Switch it to uncompressed mode and the circuit opens up in a nice, crisp bloom some breakup at higher gain levels. Single notes are juicy and chords break up evenly but with definition.
Other features include a presence cut switch that smooths out the high treble and is very useful for guitars w bright single coil pickups.
A second stomp switch on the left that defeats the drive knob and functions almost like a lead boost in the uncompressed mode, and more like an upper mids enhancer in the compressed setting if the gain control is set between 7 oclock and 1 oclock, good for bluesy solos.
This overdrive is a SLEEPER and has some power hiding under the hood, plus has some very nice componentry including Solen Fast caps from france (ooooh booteekery), xicon polystyrene film caps, metal film caps, switchcraft jacks and two really bright green LEDs. This pedal is one of my co-op builds involves 3 different independent craftsmen and the sum of all parts is the key to high quality and the finishing touch to a well built american product.

This is available for a limited run of 10 in cola sparkle (more cola than sparkle until direct light hits it) this will also include a crazy freebie, a Luchador bottle opener (colors vary but they are cool) 
introductory price is $SOLD-out

The NOCTURNE BLONDESHELL 63 Blonde Bassman welcomes De Lisle Amps!

What does the Nocturne Brain pedal and amp company have in common with De Lisle Amplification?? Not much... 

That is Until early this last summer when I asked De Lisle amps ( you know Jer D. as MUGSY on the GDP forum and G-T forums) if he would take over the responsibility of building the chassis for my Blondeshell 63' amps.

It actually starting rolling sooner than that when the review of my Blondeshell amp in Premier Guitar magazine didnt turn out like I hoped because there was a problem with the amp that must have occured in shipping that the reviewer wasnt aware of (wish I'd known before hand as the reviewer felt he needed the amp up at 7 and he should have had that same power at 4 on the volume)  This led me to ask for the amp to be send immediately over to my friend Jer De Lisle in the neighboring state of Indiana to see what was wrong with the amp. He found that the tubes were out of bias and said she was up to par.  I let the guys at Premier know about that situation and then the amp was ready for me to sell to a german customer.      This kind of response from Jer De Lisle in helping me solve the problem in the review, made it clear to me that I wanted to co-op with another american builder that is both gracious with his clients, knowledgeable, timely and dependable.  I need to insert that my time working with the last chassis builder came to a close because he is a full time IT guy and told me he didnt have the time to meet my needs in this season of his life.. All good, but I want to keep making my design of a hotrod Blonde bassman style amp.
The Nocturne Brain company will keep the Blondeshell 63 amp going and will be offering this 6G6-B style blonde amp now in both compact head version and a full size 1x15 combo.
If you havent heard about my Blondeshell amplifier, you can get the details at my website at the bottom of the Products page (site link is on the right of the GDP forum under sponsors) or email me through the GDP private message route.
The quick and deadly is this amp is based on the Normal channel of a 63 blonde fender bassman but its not a clone rather its built to sound and respond like a 50 yr old blonde amp does.
I personally wanted a top of the line amp that would give me ALL the sounds I've grown up hearing on  the Stray Cats albums and the more recent Brian Setzer Orchestra, in a nutshell Brian Setzer's Blonde 63 bassman rocking amp tone.  The sum of its parts creates its tonal and textural recipe so that it feels and behaves like only a 63 blonde bassman does.
     No baloney, just incredible quality parts and intensive american labor to yield an amp to my own gigging needs and to grab a hold of the rock'a hulabilly swingin surf'rod sounds I need from my gretsch and telecaster -ish guitar creations.
I'm very proud of this amp I have designed and more so to now co-op with Jer of De Lisle amps to keep the Nocturne Blondeshell amp going.

check it out here and see it in action on Buzz Campbell 's Video:
http://thenocturnebrain.com/blonde.htm

A colorful and rich textured Overdrive box based off a Greybox 250 preamp thats been hot rodded to drive any spring reverb amp or spring tank harder for more drip, sproing and over all twangy surf guitar intensity that a guitar alone generally cant afford.
Not really meant for the clean tone purist, unless they are looking for grindy switchable intensity available at their foot instead of walking back and moving the Tube Spring controls by hand( besides it should always be all controls straight up anyway)

What if you dont have spring reverb in your amp, let alone a vintage tube spring reverb tankl?? Remember the FEZ pedal still can rock the socks off a vintage greybox 250 Overdrive with a much greater range of EQ
control, its still all there if needed for a much better price compared to online auction prices for original grey box 250 pedals.

Okay whats on and in this Fez box:
This is based off the vintage Grey box 250 Overdrive Preamp's basic circuit. Liberties have been taken in adding a switchable low EQ and gain textures with additional presence cut control.
Hi quality components have been brought into this overdrive preamp circuit like metal film caps, xicon polystyrene fast caps, tantalum electrolytics. metal film & carbon comp resistors plus an  original Metal Can 741 op-amp. Long life true bypass stomp switch and dual LED indicator status on a powder coated cast aluminum heavy duty box with switchcraft jacks and alpha pots.

This Holiday run of THE FEZ is limited to 10 units in GOLDZILLA metal flake. Blinding sparkle gold flake sprayed over a black enamel base coat. BLING city!
THESE 10 GOLDEN FEZ overdrives
are AVAILABLE TO SHIP OUT WEDNESDAY DEC.19th, NO WAITING, these are ready to go..but when I run out they are gone.

Become a sworn member to the Order of the FEZ! 



check out a demo of this pedal in action with the Nocturne F-Bomb spring tube reverb tank!

http://youtu.be/uU0MZ0wKrjQ

$175.00    

my new Xmas EP is out.. White Nights n Blue lights, a Christmas honky tonk EP

I've got an EP for Christmas I recorded in Nashville with the help of Geoff Firebaugh from the Hillbilly Casino on Bass, Grant Johnson from Bobby Bare Sr on pedal steel and Jeremy Michael on kit (Jeremy also co produced this with me and masterfully engineered it)
This holiday EP is available on Itunes & Amazon.com for download, or CD here on my blog. The link is on the right. The CD is $4.99 + $2 shipping.

I wanted to do Christmas music a little different than my usual rockabilly style, so I
grabbed hold of my inner honky tonk and western soundtrack soul to create
this bit of holiday twang. Naturally I ran my sugarpine rutters tele guitar through a nocturne Atomic
brain preamp as did Grant with his 74' showbud pedal steel .  Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you.

Happy Rock-tober! new finishes happening this month.

Got some new finishes happening here this last week of Rocktober.
(RIGHT CLICK THE PHOTOS FOR A FULL SCREEN LOOKSEE)

 

the Nocturne Atomic Brain 

 is now available in Satin Metallic Purple, the Billy Brain is avail in Grape Ape, a deep gloss black with purple pinstripes and contrast purple and orange dual gorilla logo.

The stang switch has been dropped and now gets employed in the second half of the gain knobs rotation (beyond 2 oclock).

 

Coming back to the stable is the NOCTURNE BRAIN CLASSIC, 

this replaces the original BRAIN SELTZER (name has been changed to keep in the good graces of Brian Setzer's record label  SURF DOG RECORDS ) in keeping the original EQ but it now has a voltage doubled buffer that is partially borrowed from the Zoom space echo mod (using the FET transistor he suggests only) but brings the input buffer from a standard 9v to a full 18volts for increased
head room and impedance matching.Take my Nocturne Brain Classic and your favorite analog echo pedal and you'll be comping the Setzer picking dynamics just like an original Roland RE-301 space echo's preamp with your favorite rockabilly guitar.
You can even stick this pedal in front of an original
space echo be it the RE-100, the RE-150, the RE-201 or the RE-301 even the RE550.. and
you wont need to use the 50ft guitar cables Setzer has to use to match the guitar impedance to the unit. I've got you covered in this new and improved original
Nocturne Brain Classic! I've even added a treble cut for more sonic control than the original
space echo's preamp ever had. All top quality components in my preamps too boot; long life heavy duty true bypass stomp switch, switchcraft jacks, vishay and xicon metal film resistors, vishay sprague electrolytics and metal film caps, even the opamp is socketed and the circuit board has flying leads to hard wired jacks and pots. no flimsy PCB mounted jacks and crappy pcb mounted pots. This is built like a vintage amplifier should be, down to the double thickness recycled aluminum stomp box forged here in america with a based coat that is powder coated and baked on by an american cycle shop in NY.
I can say proudly, you get what you pay for and I live for making high quality preamp pedals here in southern california!

Also, I'm finally making a Satin metallic Purple Atomic brain!

SEPTEMBER SKIES & BRIAN SETZER's SOUND

It hardly appears to be September here in the Inland part of So Cal, and there are absolutely no hints of Autumn to speak of. The first hint in general for southern californians is usually at the end of October with evenings finally cooling off with a slight chill in the early mornings but oh no, not this year.. Its hot and muggy as hell. 
Instead of the leaves of the trees turning to their yellow, scarlet, and rusty orange our trees are putting out more robust green foliage and the insects are multiplying instead of hiding. Despite all this it is gonna be officially Autumn very soon and when the kids go back to school I always pull out the very first BRIAN SETZER ORCHESTRA cd (self titled 1994) and go straight to the best song on the album "SEPTEMBER SKIES".    
As I listen to its beautiful velvet swing, the old memories and feelings of a lifetime pass through my heart especially when I flip the CD over and see that glorious orange gretsch
I used to dream of owning. The G6120SSU Brian Setzer Signature model Nashville Gretsch guitar in orange flamed maple with gold hardware.

I remember my heart strings pulling as I'd look at this thing and hear the song September Skies get to the solo part of the song at 2:17.  Brian Setzer's tone has always been part of my early high school years rockabilly guitar hero fantasy with the Stray Cats and part unobtainable cool guitar factor with a then out of range Bigsby'd Gretsch hollowbody.
I wanted so bad as a kid in my own band to figure out how he got his sound and I couldnt find it with my fender coronado II and magnatone amp. For me then, I just chalked it up to his fingers and that magic gretsch guitar.
     That mystery remained in the back of mine until I heard Brian Setzer's Big Band on a live local radio morning show ( Kevin and Bean of KROQ). My mind was blown that Setzer had reinvented himself and it was like James Bond met the Stray cats. Obviously I had to have this album and then when I saw the guitar on the back of the CD I had to have that too.  Everything Brian Setzer was back on my radar and nothing else mattered in my musician world except to get his guitar, get a blonde 63' bassman and get his TONE! In 98' Dirty Boogie came out and in 99' Gretsch guitars made my very first Brian Setzer Signature guitar!
     Thats another story for another time but if you are curious about such details to Brian's gear I helped a friend out by sharing my deviant obsession about his rig here on GAD's Ramblings where he expounds in detail about How To Capture Brian Setzer's Tone and he is kind enough to mention my Nocturne Dynobrain preamp pedal and says this about it "This pedal has one purpose: to replicate the preamp from a Roland RE-301 Space Echo. He has done so brilliantly and packaged it up in a dead sexy stomp-box. This pedal alone adds it (whatever it is) to a Gretsch plugged into a Blonde Bassman. Even if you leave the knobs at noon (which I recommend), the Nocturne fattens up the Gretsch in a way that’s tough to describe. It’s louder, fatter, meaner… Gretschier. If you want that Sezter tone, but don’t want a giant Space Echo to deal with, you need this pedal "
Click here for all the info:
http://www.gad.net/Blog/2011/06/07/how-to-capture-brian-setzers-tone/
As final and important note to all this listening of Brian Setzer's September Skies, I was inspired to make this current run of my Nocturne Atomic Brain in Satin Tangerine Metallic with creme pinstripe graphics and vintage blonde bassman style creme blonde. Its available to order now in the dropdown menu to the right of this or directly from our
website.

http://thenocturnebrain.com/atomic.htm

here's Brian Setzer in a solo television performance singing September Skies from his BRIAN SETZER ORCHESTRA
album using that beautiful Gretsch

Duane Eddy's NOCTURNE DYNOBRAIN PREAMP on the Road!

Just thought I'd share a close up picture of DUANE EDDY's pedal board, he has incorporated our NOCTURNE DYNOBRAIN PREAMP for his signature gretsch guitar.
I'm wondering if anyone would be interested if I shot 10 pedals in the copper orange sparkle
I did for him.. maybe we could call the color Duane's Brain? I think I'll ask permission :)

Be sure to check out Duane's killer new album, its the perfect music for driving late night
trips on the highway.  "ROAD TRIP" avail on amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Trip-Duane-Eddy/dp/B004YDVPDA

and his Duane Eddy G6120DE signature Gretsch model guitar can be seen here:
http://gretschguitars.com/features/duaneeddy

you can give a listen to Duane running his sig model gretsch through his nocturne dynobrain
here when he played at the Sage Gateshead on his recent tour to England

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIe9OhP99sk