Stranglehulled and Boss BF-3 Flanger

The following is a guest post by Dave Parsons. If you are interested in guest posting, please contact me! Dave is struggling with his Boss BF-3 for his bass, and he writes about it below. If you have any suggestions, please comment below!

Nobody asked me but if they had, I would tell ‘em that there’s only one band who should be covering “stranglehold” by Ted Nugent, and the name of that band is Killdozer.  There’s a remote chance that some of the personnel in the cover band I play bass for has heard of the movie, but there’s no way any of them have heard of or listened to Killdozer, and I am certain that most 46 year old guitar players who still wear asics wrestling shoes on and off stage haven’t either.

So we (the cover band) are playing on a flatbed at the end of main street in Ione, Wa.  I have my Boss BF-3 flanger sandwiched between a fender tuner pedal and a tube screamer.  The reason why I’m running a tube screamer is because a friend of mine turned me on to the concept of a “buffer”, after I whined to him about how un-flangey my flanger was the last time I used it for this song.  Conceptually, the powers that be in the band told me to keep the flanger effect off until the song breaks down in the middle, that way when I get to the flanger part it will be “really special”.  Anyway, back to the show, here comes the “really special” part, I step on the flanger…not enough enveloping, not sounding very special.  I step on the tube screamer, and that helps a little.  The tube screamer is set with hardly any distortion, because I didn’t want the low-end of the bass to be zapped out by it.  There’s a dude who looks to be in his mid-50’s, and he’s loving it, but he most likely did way too much spray-painting out in the garage with all the doors closed back in the day, so I’m not trusting his reaction.  My ears are hearing total suckage, compared to what I am envisioning the sound should be.

I can’t remember what the occasion was (I’m thinking it was a DARE sponsored event?) but Ted Nugent spoke in front of the students at Hellgate High several years ago, and apparently was dropping fuck bombs every other word.  I would earmark this as the last interesting thing I ever heard re: the ‘Nuge.  I saw him years later on TV, crawling around his compound/home on a “hunt” or whatever, he seemed so completely un-interesting.  I listened to a fair amount of Double-Live Gonzo and Weekend Warriors back in 6th grade, and he occupied that “wild-man” section of likeability with me, but I never really cared much for what he was doing.

I may set something up differently for our next gig, which is in Victor MT.  Our collective volume needs to remain low enough for the waitstaff to shout in their chicken strip orders, so even if I do get the mucho flange-o I seek, it’s going to be a totally vanilla churchey low-volume delivery. I do have one other pedal, a Marshall distortion, and I may try that in lieu of the tube screamer.

Let me know if you’re planning on attending, I’ll be sure to Febreeze my loincloth.