Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Thank you Scott for sharing your pedalboard! I will share my pedal board later.

Tomo

tomo, i remember seeing a video of yours from years ago on youtube where you just got a wood cutting board from the kitchen, that is awesome!
after that video i became an expert in wood cutting boards on amazon haha.

but i bought a used medium mono board. it was a pretty huge board for me, took up the entire living room, shilpa did not complain but did not say its awesome either. 😅
i am so profoundly lucky. also not really portable.

scott, your wiring is so clean, well done.
also i always wanted to try that red panda. is it using granular synthesis?
(i am just using a term i heard from curtis roads, ucsb. i sat in on a few of his classes at the beginning for fun but just familiar with the term. )
i had the 1176 compressor for a while.
do you like the benson's pedal, i keep wanting to get his germanium pre-amp or fuzz.

mine was a complete "rats nest".
just took it apart now i have this:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/jszkFQsKuXJtVAXt5

but i'm still just using the tuner.
aby so i can use one each or both combos. i have a pedal for one combo but the other just has reverb dials.

i like this idea of a modular board with lots of small boards.

btw i have had the "smart wool darn tough" socks for over a decade, highly recommended :)

Thank you Sunil! Yes! I used to use that pedal board... a little too big now. Now I use D'Addario XPND pedal board. I will make a video later. (If I can find my phone!) Nice pedalboard!
PS, I own too many effect pedals! I love using a tuner pedal too.

Tomo

yeah, my breadboards were always the same in school, total rats nest.

worked but so hard to debug when something is changed or when something goes wrong.

i like rechargeable batteries.
but isolated power supplies are good.
less is more with the stuff i think now.
i want to just get to the combo, cable, pick, guitar.

also the more i practice,
the less qualified i feel to answer 😅

hey scott,

also tomo has some killer videos on his youtube ch about the tube screamer series, and the TF jan ray!

pretty cool...i keep wondering now about adding that subtle umami flavor when im listening to my guitar.

wondering if i hear it with different boosts lately, pot now, i was using tube pre-amp pedal before.

Thank you Sunil! I love Ibanez Tube Screamer TS808. Jan Ray for TF is so amazing! You just cannot get same tone from a regular Jan Ray. I am so grateful to have that tone.

Boost pedal is fun! I used to use Xotic RC Booster (Great simple clean boost pedal). I have many boost pedals too. Too many!

Tomo

Hi Scott,

Here are the rechargable batteries I have been using for a few years now.
I like them, super convenient.

The company is growing and they teamed up with Ernie Ball now, super cool!

I like to use one in my tuner, it's usually always in the loop, and first up. I feel like it provides some ground loop noise protection but I can't claim this objectively, just a feeling.

https://paleblueearth.com/blogs/journal/paleblue-ernie-ball-partnership

Thank you Scott for sharing! Hope you will enjoy it!
Please enjoy your pedalboard journey!

My Jan Ray for TF was limited edition so it is not available.

Tomo

Oh! I missed out then! I know they make good pedals.

Thank you Scott! I made this video for this special thread!

Tomo

hi scott,

i don't know if it's better or worse.
it's all good man! haha.
for me right now, like tomo is saying, i just want to be good at guitar, and i just want to be me. i feel like i don't have any time left to be for others anymore. (but i have a little family, so i want to be for them too :))

i like simple.
i like pure analog sound.
just the quantum physics of tubes please. :)

hi tomo,

thank you so much for this video,
i am learning a lot.

that must have been so humbling to focus on blues for 3 or 4 years after graduating. did you start teaching at berklee after this period?

i didn't know od can go before boost, i will experiment with that. also, i want to get the boss od-1 love those 80's sounds and i remember toto! i want to get the mini-ts also.

i think od-1 will be good for my silktone amp (like a fender black panel i believe); ts maybe good for swart (like a vox ac 15/30 maybe) i wonder what they will sound like on both amps in dual mono

you mentioned using more high end for dynamics. that's very interesting, i've heard you mention this many times.
still learning what this means.

You're very welcome Scott! Glad to be helpful! Those are technically ... yes but... indivisual pedal sounds far better! I have those too. Have a great day!

Tomo

nice!! i want to try those!

Sunil, believe me, they sound so good together! The Jan Ray is incredible.

i love the smaller modular units scott.

lately, with switching like lehle makes, as tomo mentioned, i started thinking about them like legos.

seems easier to troubleshoot too. i think.

i just unhooked my tuner and moved the tiny bit of board and cables left aside, then, boom, easy xmas cleanup.

i will set back up in the evening maybe.

just enjoying the day with family.
my 6yo is loving don hathaway "live" album. ...her piano teacher is a berklee grad and into making films too. (no limits to creative output, it seems :))

(also got 3 more pairs of those socks...one is exactly the same as the pair in last pic of my board 🤣 ...never mentioned the socks to shilpa...i mean santa...santa is amazing maan. :))

I'm so grateful that you had a peaceful holiday! Memories are totally worth it. AND more socks! What more can you ask for? Santa knows what you want, my friend, without you having to ask. LOL

miracles, in every direction my friend. :)
🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

Just the basics are left. Funny thing is that if my singer moved back home from Florida and my band got back together, I don't think I'd do anything differently than what I'm using now. Years ago we were much more into trying to recreate the exact sound and feel of the song. A few years farther down the road I think we'd have the attitude that we sound like what we sound like and we're playing songs that we all love. We don't need to sound like them, we sound like us, and that's really cool.

Funny story about that delay pedal too. I stepped on it once to turn it on, and the switch didn't spring back and it was making a terrible noise through the amp. When I managed to get the switch back up, I gave it a little shake and could hear some little pieces rattling around in there. When I got it apart the mechanical switch had broken into 4 or 5 pieces. And these were the early days of the internet, so online shopping wasn't really a thing yet. I did find something that told me that the original switch was a "momentary switch" so I just went to Radio Shack and found one that looked sturdy enough to go onto a pedal, so I drilled a hole in the pedal housing, soldered in the two wires and its been working like a champ ever since.

Lovely stereo setup Sunil!

Tomo

Thank you so much Tomo!
I really love the sound when everything is working right.

Once I got there, I started playing with the tone stack (this is what I think they call the treble-mid-bass dials) on each amp haha. I realized I need to increase volume to compensate when I use it. Kind of interesting.

Also, I am realizing modulation on one amp only is enough. Reverb on both sounds deep, it is nicer. But I am not missing both. I feel like it's a perception thing maybe?

And actually I removed the previous silicon fuzz, it was so noisy in my setup I realized!

But it is the perfect template to
try each fuzz in turn now.
The Analogman is really quiet up front.
Trying modified germanium fuzz face circuit (silktone) after it next.

So cool to get a baseline then make small changes, I am discovering.
Feels good, progress, slowly :)

Hey Matt, that is interesting to put the compression up front! Never tried that while I had a compression pedal.
Does it clean up the overdrive and (also stacked) delay nicely?

Very cool!
I love that you kept coming back to that set up! You know it, awesome!

Hey Matt,

I forgot to mention...check out the lehle pedals! (Tomo just mentioned them to me on Kurt's Practicing with Tomo thread it think).

Their foot switches are so simple and elegant!

Technology is so amazing these days!

Tomo

I agree with Tomo, Cruz!
That is cool.

I just was reading an article about a new ai researcher saying they would be replaced by 2030.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-do-scientists-think-this-is-all-going-20250430/

I think they should come to Guitar Wisdom next. :)

Also made me think of this documentary on Moog. It would be so cool to have that superpower man!

I don't think the ai systems will express human creativity as humans do. If you talk to the alphaGo/Deep
mind folks they'll say it has kind of an "alien" creativity. Kind of amazing right?

And that just makes me think of an octopus playing a piano. Haha!

Octopus pedal board. lol.

🤣, right? so funny haha

amazing that guy could "teach" the octopus maaan. haha. i've heard people think their intelligence (brains?) are distributed between something that's central and in their arms. so, an alien intelligence, compared to ours.

some betting alotta money on the tool that helped build your pedal (based on what it knows of all existing pedals, and probably of all past designs and designers...who knows? hahaha

that's part of why i am here.

still though...i keep thinking of the Gutenberg press.

how many years passed between when it was invented and when was close to 100% literacy for human beings reached on this planet?