I used to plug my $12 guitar into an old shortwave/AM/FM radio cassette player my grandfather gave me... straight into the Line In. It distorted nicely and could record straight to tape ! Hours of beautiful noise.
Yup. Had a cheap guitar and multi-fx unit(🤫) that I plugged into the mic-in on a hand-me-down hi-fi. Ended up jamming along to CDs of acts like Leftield, Future Sounds of London and other psychadelic styles. Think I still have some embarassing Gilmour-esque attempts recorded on cassette somewhere.🙃
I remember when it was too late in the house to turn my amp on, I used to rest my chin on the guitar body which would amplify the sound in my mouth and head! It really works.
Lol. I can honestly say I didn’t try to “plug it in” to anything it didn’t belong in. I had a pretty cool high school sweetheart so I didn’t do much “experimenting” by myself, hahhahaha.
My first 2 years of electric guitar playing I ran into a "Australian Idol" branded karaoke machine that happened to have instrument jack inputs for the mics, and a built in reverb. Probably explains all my favourite tones now.
My kids had a very cheap karaoke machine with a built in echo/delay. Was okay on guitar but absolutely awesome as a blues harp amp, just using the cheap mic that came with it. Instant Chicago 1950s. I did manage to kill it using it like that unfortunately.
When I was a young kid, with my first electric guitar, through a series of adapters, I was able to plug my guitar into the phono input on my parents vintage console stereo, and I was in heaven!
i did something like this but it was a disregarded record player receiver and speakers...i dont know what happened to the turn table but i used the receiver tuner as an amp to learn electric on for a year or so until i could borrow a practice amp from someone who quit learning...then i got a fender 212 FMr for Xmas eventually .
This brought back all the excitement of my first electric guitar ! For three months, the only thing I had to plug in to was older sister's portable Cassette Recorder. You couldn't listen 'live', but you could play back what you recorded. One hundred and twenty seconds of latency 😄
I hope someday I can get my glasses from forehead land into “sports mode” as smoothly Mick. They’re like an extension of himself the control he has of them. Eye-opening as ever gents. ❤
When I was in college, I had a housemate who was big into the tinkering world of guitar. Regularly modded pedals and amps and things of the sort. In the house I lived in, we had a very high end toaster oven that we had won at a bingo night on our college campus. The toaster oven had speakers in it and would read out the mode it was set to and how long was left on the timer. You see where this is going. One night, after a few (perhaps too many) pints, he had decided to play his guitar through the toaster oven. I don't know what mods he had to make, but in a bout an hour he had it going. It sounded closest to that tiny bluetooth speaker played early in the episode, but it was hilarious. Toaster oven part still works, and I believe my mate still uses it regularly (for toasting, not guitaring). Great episode!
The bullhorn segment was cool. One of these rigged with a wireless output and placed on a drill, cheap turntable, or pottery wheel would create a cheap Leslie type sound.
What a fun episode! Ending is ace😂 17 years ago I started playing the guitar. My parents got me a western electro-acoustic guitar. After some weeks of playing „dry“ of course I found out that you could plug this acoustic guitar into an amplifier. My sister had a karaoke system which conveniently had a line input. Of course I plugged my guitar into it and suddenly I was able to make louder noise than before. THIS was true POWER! I was learning to play Metallica on the acoustic guitar and suddenly Seek&Destroy sounded actually good (or so I though anyways haha)
Age 12 I had a mono cassette recorder with a mic you could plug in to talk into. I put the mic inside my very cheap acoustic guitar and turned the recording level up and played a root and fifth bar chord and played along to living after midnight by judas priest. Thanks for bringing back those memories guys 😍
This takes me back! My first guitar amp was a Boss MA-5 Micro Monitor - it was 1982. I took its line out and ran it into my bargain basement, catalog store stereo. I plugged headphones into the MA-5 to turn of the speaker… then DIME’D the MA-5 volume to completely overload the stereo’s input. It was glorious to my 14 year-old ears.
This episode was very unique! You just look at an isolated clip of the guys showing that you can play your pedalboard through the TV, and you might think that's it's an April's fool joke. But this is no joke! Things can be done. Very creative, guys!
I remember using a 3 channel maplin microphone mixer which had just 3 level controls for each mic, it was powered by a 9v battery, into our home stereo system, a Goodmans I think, and turning the mixer up full. It sounded fuzzy and awesome!! I remember learning the intro to Layla playing along with the record!! It just makes me think of the saying “Necessity is the mother of invention”
My friend and I both plugged our service merchandise guitars into our parents home stereos and radios before we had real amps. I blew up one of the channels on my parents receiver/8 track player, but they never figured out it was me that did it! I eventually figured out how to overload the signal and make it distort way before learning about pedals. Thats how I got the nickname "Mickey", as in Mickey Mouse. My alternate job in our band was Mickey Mousing electronics in order to get them working/do what we wanted them to do. These days, when I'm not Mickey Mousing our guitars, pedals, and amps, I tune electron multipliers for machines owned by NASA and MOOG among others. Thanks for the great show guys!
Tks guys! My tube blew up last night as I was practicing, and all I had was old Bluetooth speaker and wire. It worked and has some more sound then just electric guitar with no amp sound! Ty!
When my family did a road trip from FL to Maine I made a homemade travel amp by soldering an input jack to the play head of an inexpensive walkman knockoff. Add a switch to turn the motor off for battery life. I learned Diary of a Madman in the back seat going up I-95.
After getting my first electric I remember sitting next to a hollow wall in my house and pressing my headstock against it for amplification. Worked best with gypsum walls.
This is a wicked fun episode- I thought it was gonna be all about IRs and amp sims, but you had a lot of fun - and honestly I was shocked how clean and nice it sounded just plugging into a speaker. Fascinating-
The first electric guitar amps WERE literally radios that ran off dry-cell batteries in the 30s before those first circuits deleted the radio in the tube circuit. Leo Fender (a radio repairman) made some of the first dedicated electric guitar/lapsteel amplifiers.
My dad had this Radionette cabinet with radio on one side and a record player and a tape recorder on the other side. That tape recorder became my first amp...
I love this video! I love just trying stuff because you can. Not to prove a point or chase a sound. Just thinking outside of the box and who knows... you might discover something!
In 1971 I soldered the wires from the needle line of a record player to a jack and had an amplifier for a year and a half. It was an old hack from back in the day.
I could honestly see your inner child shining through when you were filming this lads. That may be the secret to staying young, just plug into whatever can make a sound.
Love the video! As a kid I seem to remember plugging my first electric guitar (Satellite LP copy anybody?😅) into the mic socket of the family music centre. By engaging the record & pause buttons (I think!) along with the tape monitor switch & adjusting the recording levels, it was possible to be heard through the 2 speakers. Of course, I may just have imagined all this, because it was a very long time ago...😂
my first "rig" was plugging in a free, big hollow body guitar into mt Radio Shack Stereo. I didn't have any pedals, just played clean guitar over rock riffs. I love you guys! You crack me up, which is much needed these days. Happy to report I've upgraded to a Two-Rock CRS head and cab in burgundy suede, Thanks for the great info and inspiration. Long live TPS!
What a joy... I really enjoyed watching you guys play in your environment. This took me back to when my dad wired in a quarter-inch jack to my big huge Motorola record player. You're a great team and I love that you're both just big kids at heart... with impressive intellect. Thanks as always for what you do. Edward in San Diego, California
i grew up in the 90's and broke me dad's new Yamaha neutral sounds stereo at the time... do this. turns out they had ns-1000 that i might have broke the tweeter of too. he's cool now. somewhat 30 years later only comes up at the holidays when he has no music to play! hahaha
I think it’s great if you are travelling and you can’t bring your amp and pedalboard with you, but you have songs you need to learn with solo parts ect. Being able to bring everything you need in your guitars gig bag is pretty cool for that!!
I used to teach in my office, after work hours, plugged a Joyo preamp pedal (brittish overdrive) into a bluetooth speaker ˆˆ, worked pretty well, no power cables needed
In the early 80's l had no amp. I plugged into the family stereo thru the cassette deck. You had to put a blank cassette in, push play,rec and pause. Then crank up the input sensitivity, it would help with distortion that way. I did this for a while until l finally got a amp.
One of the best RU-vid videos I've ever seen. There will be thousands of electrical devices blowing up this weekend as we all try to figure out what else you could possibly plug your guitar into. I'm off to see if I can run it through the car stereo using the USB aux. If I manage it the missus is in the back from now on and the passenger seat is reserved for my strat to make getting stuck in traffic a bit more bearable. Imagine how fun traffic jams would be if they all resulted in an impromptu jam session.
As someone with an orange rockerverb collecting dust in my apartment( I have a Princeton I’ve been using at home mainly). But I have started dabbling with guitar plug ins on PC and was blown away by the neural dsp mesa boogie one!! I just have a small focusrite interface and it’s a great solution for those challenged by volume constraints!
Great video! I, too, used to plug things into other things just to see what happened. Here's a list (sorry if it's long): 1. When I was a trucker, I plugged my Pocket Pod into the stereo, threw the fader to the back, dialed in a sound I wanted, and recorded some things onto my phone. Keep in mind that trucks in the U.S. have bigger sleepers than in Europe. The recordings weren't so great, but the sound in the sleeper was AWESOME! 2. I once ran a guitar through a Hyper Fuzz and into a practice amp, out the headphone jack, and into the mike jack (I tried the aux jack, too, but forget that for a sec) of one of those 90s component stereo systems. The output from the amp clipped this intense fuzz sound; let's just call it a matter of taste, but anyway, I recorded that, too. 3. I once ran from my guitar and pedals into the mike input of a little tape recorder with no tape and set it to record, then ran the headphone output to that same practice amp. The record head was picking up stray magnetic waves, and the feedback was highly variable. It was quite a lot of fun, but the rest of the band hated it, so I never did that trick with them again. 4. I once had this H&K combo amp that had a messed-up effects loop. I ran my DOD Classic Fuzz through the effects loop, and the broken circuit only ran the bass frequencies through the fuzz, which meant all the treble bypassed the fuzz separately. The mids mostly dropped out, if I recall correctly. It was a fun sound, but very weird. I lost that amp in the pawn shop during desperate times, but I always wanted to screw around with that weird sound some more. I gotta know how y'all wired that box up to the megaphone! It looks like something that's commercially available; where can I get one? Or did you modify it? Thanks again for a very fun video; and to everyone else, remember that stuff like this is how new sounds and genres are born!
Absolutely love this video! This is your wheelhouse, as far as I’m concerned. Watching the two of you work your way through a journey of discovery, Dan having moments of recollection of the huge vault of technical know how that he holds and Mick keeping things comprehensible to the viewer. These are the videos I get excited about on the channel.
Man what fun that was. Love those creative explorations. I recently saw an old cassette deck that was used as a tape delay. This could be a fun project for you guys. Keep rockin'!
Out of a combination of needing to be able to play silently with headphones and sheer laziness, I've got my guitar plugged into a Snouse BlackBox OD 2 into a DI, into my interface and out to my studio monitors. Works for me! Great video, and I loved to see you both stretch out of your comfort zones, smashing job! Matching impedence is super important to getting a good sound - I've got a piezo pickup on my upright bass, and I always run into a combination preamp/high pass filter that converts the 1Meg Ohm signal to 10K (or 100K?) Ohm signal, so I can run through pedals and into a standard bass amp.
My first "guitar amp" was a Pioneer audio system with a turntable, tape player, AM/FM radio, and... a quarter inch microphone jack. It did me well! Still sometimes enjoy playing through it.
Absolutely loved that! ♥️ Dan’s enjoyment playing through the TV was amazing! 😂 This really takes me back, nothing was safe in our house- my poor parents 🙈 What a brilliant video, thank you!
My take on Dan’s playing is the result of puzzling over the baz-zillions of different styles that come out of him. I think, although he may seem a bit scattered in his playing, Dan is racing through his vast knowledge of Music each time he’s called upon to “make some noise” so that we can hear the next 3,423rd “pedal of the day”. I know for a fact that when he needs to focus…he’s Focused! From what I’ve seen, Dan’s a friggin’ Genius. G3 anyone?!! JJZ…(°¿.°`)
@@ThatPedalShow Mick and Dan, I have to say that when I saw the genuine, and heartfelt praise dawned upon you two by Mr. Paul Reed Smith, I got all fuzzy inside. Ha ha! Seriously, He made quite a few SPOT-ON Points about the importance of Your contributions to this Global Community most of us just see as T.V. “…you’re in the Hub of this thing !”, he said. Just blows me away that You Two are able to stay organized enough to keep your show going; always coming up with new ideas to actually help. It’s a beauty! JJZ…(°¿.°`)
You can use an old watch as a microphone (the one that plays polytune melodies, uncover the back lid and use the white round "token" it has two connectors - that's your microphone, stick it to your guitar and run cables via jack or if you have cassette player, and connect to the head where it touches the tape..
I use the A+ CabZone LE IR based Cabinet Simulator. It fits in the palm of your hand. You get 10 of the world's most famous amps cabs including the Vox AC30, Marshall 4x12 & my favorite the MESA Dual/Rec cab. It cost me $100.00 USD and you can put it in your pocket if you want, lol. It is designed so you can even put it thru a open backed combo amp & from the center of the club you are hearing a convincing stack. You can still do a direct to the board thing or record with it or do all 3 at the same time.
My first teenage setup was an old classical guitar that I'd restrung with steel strings, with a soundhole pickup running into my Midi (not MIDI) system through a cheap Maplin vocal mixer. I used to loop the channels into each other to overdrive it, before I could afford any pedals. Got quite a decent fuzz tone if I remember right. I still have all the gear stashed away 30+ years later - may connect it back up and relive the early years.
Yesss! What can I listen to That Pedal Show through?!? My tv, my iPad, iPhone, my treadmill tablet, my truck radio, my bedroom Bluetooth, my AirPods, my tv on my refrigerator, my Nikon camera, my overhead projector shining on my Shop door (outdoor style for lots of people)….😂😂! 👏 You guys are awesome! Keep up the good work
I don’t think I’ve ever seen you guys have so much fun! My first amplified guitar was a nylon string from my sister’s closet. Enter the reverse headphones turned microphone. One ear piece on the top and the other ear piece on the back. So the headphones have straddled the guitar’s body, and the headphone plug is in the aux input of a ‘70s Panasonic tape recorder with a built-in compressor/limiter. Coolest feedback…ever! JJZ…(°¿.°`)
Ha, ha, great one! Brings back lots of memories of blown-out hifi speaker tweeters, hearing (and seeing the guitar signal on a mini-oscilloscoe) plugged directly into an outdated Electromuographic amplifier (muscles themselves also produces microvolt signals to be picked up by electrodes, so 1+1=...). Emergency replace-gigged once with that pocket pod on my buckle... Amazing toy... Also remember cross-connecting inputs and outputs of two tapedecks with a DIY switch to reverse recording direction. Wow, flutter and Dolby b/c, produced pumping multitracks that a Deco would be very jealous of. Utterly unusable, but fun.
My 1st amp was a tube radio called an EMVD Rekord Senior that my grabd father had purchased in West Germany when he was stationed there in the late 40s. It is probably around 1W and sounds lovely. Thankfully I still have it.
Amazing. Took me back to 1987. Soldering an aux jack in place of a 1/4" jack and plugging straight into one of the auxiliary inputs on the back of my yellow Phillips Ghettoblaster (D8304, the wonders of Google) to be able to play outside in the summer. I still own the Kramer and still own, and use daily, the Boss DS1 that I abused it with. Great episode. Thanks for bringing back the memories.
That was a fun video! IK Multimedia has released the Tonex pedal recently, and going guitar > tonex pedal > headphones sounds absolutely amazing. Very low latency (3ms) and all the amps in the world at your fingertips!
The manually-operated Leslie simulation with the megaphone at the end was inspired, lads. So good that once you breached the 100db you were finally having real fun again 😂.
I would always sit on the floor, next to a wall in my house (wood framed, north america), with my head stock touching the drywall in between 2 studs. The guitar's vibrations would transfer into the drywall and get it vibrating and turn the wall into a very quiet, but noticeable, speaker that worked well for lower notes and not at all for higher notes. Still do it occasionally today. I'd walk around the house and try it on different surfaces too. Doors, the refrigerator, anything I never even thought of trying to find a VCR or something to plug into. My dad had an entire hifi setup too, but I wasn't allowed to touch it My car has an aux input and came with a decent little Sony amplifier from the factory 🤔 I have some experimenting to do Edit: I see you had the same thought!
Thanks for the videos, the laughs, and the inspiration. Traveling around the USA for weeks at a time in my Kenworth and tractor trailer I use a 10ft lead with 1/4" on one side and 1/8" on other side. I can sit on my bed in the sleeper and plug my guitar directly into my radio aux input on the dash. My MIM Strat has seen all the contiguous 48 and NEARLY every Canadian province bordering the US. I tried the IK Pro and messing around with all the cables and using headphones sucked all the fun out for me. In the 70s I remember plugging into my folks HiFi 1/4" input. When distortion happened and happens now in the truck it is unique. Honestly I wish I had that sound as an option I could achieve at home! (I have a Hotrod Deluxe, Rocker 32, Blackstar HT5R, Bogner Line6 DT50 212, Marshall MG10cd, 11 Rack and rack power amp, Line6 HD500X, original Yamaha THX10 and none of them come with me anymore. Just a guitar and a chord. Keeps me in practice and helps pass the time when sitting at a loading dock for 8 hours or over the weekend in NoWheresVille 1500 miles from home) One day I'll pick my first stand alone pedal (instead of hd500 or 11rack) and I expect it will be like the opening of flood gates. Maybe a green pedal? Or an OCD. Or a D&M Drive!
Brilliant. When I was a teenager in the 80s dual tape decks were all the rage. I had one from a brand called Emerson. I could plug straight into it, record a guitar part to a tape (from the speaker through the built in condensor mic), then play back the tape and play along with it. I could even record the overdub, and then do it again and again. A chorus pedal and a distortion (both from Arion) to spice it up. Hours of fun and creativity.
The Dream 65 gets the job done for me. NYC apartments don’t lend themselves to loud guitar amps. Take it out of preset mode and mess around the cabs and mods and you can get some great tones.
Mick's playing thru the filmosound with the LP was insane, I remember plugging into my old Pioneer all in 1 home stereo unit, using the mic inputs, a Y cable, and a MXR Distortion +
First thing I used for a guitar amp was a 1950s valve radio. Sounded lovely. However there was a kid in my school who put a mains plug on the end of his guitar cable and plugged it straight into the wall. Didn't end well for the guitar. He was ok but you may be shocked (pun intended) to hear that he didn't continue learning the guitar.
I used to plug my cheap guitar into my grandparents old combo record-radio-tv unit that was tube driven. Through the microphone input and max out the volume for OD through the 6 and 8 inch speakers in the heavy wooden cabinet. Glory days. In the early 70s.
To add to my slightly less, erm, mature comment earlier, I reckon Dan is absolutely playing his ARSE off in this video. Can’t help but feel it’s because he’s not being psychologically stymied by thousands of pounds worth of high end pedals and amplification and can just let it rip. There is most definitely a lesson in there
Yah, we reflect on that a little bit. The only true freedom is being detached from form and thought. Ie, being the observer of your mind in space, rather than identifying with the content of thought.
I appreciate that it's difficult to film everything in one take and that you want to catch your audience but one of the things I really love about TPS is the lack of cuts. It's why most vlogs cost me energy to watch, TPS usually doesn't (this intro does). Appreciate all the work but please make it yourself a little easier again! (just my 2 cents obviously)
For anyone who says playing through a phone or a computer with plugins etc is a good or even great experience imagine this: you have 30 minutes or so to play. You make all the connections, run apps, sims, power on speakers. As you guys said your inspiration may well be gone by the time you hear your first note. For this very reason I will always recommend a proper amp for home/bedroom use. It may be a 3W Blackstar Fly or a fancy Yamaha THR. But nothing beats simplicity and instant gratification of this simple, hassle free setup. Beginners don't know this and sales guys don't care. But we all seem to learn by our own mistakes (not others') Great and amusing video as usual!
Fun episode!!! Brought back memories from the 80’s being a teen and plugging my guitar into my tape deck recorder into my stereo system with some chorus and delay to sound like Purple Rain or Zeppelin or whatever . Good times for sure!
I used to plug my guitar a stereo via a handycam camera cable that splits into red white n yellow. Yellow is normally for visual but to get stero sound through both speakers I'd to the yellow and white plug and the into the stereo with any aux inputs normally reserved for early surround sound systems.
I remember plugging my Gibson EBO bass guitar into aux input of my dad's big wooden console stereo back in the early 70's. I think he would cringe, just hoping that I wouldn't blow his speakers. Thanks Dad!!!
Latency kills me! I did plug into my parent's stereo system back in the day. I had great fun with my original POD plugged into the living room stereo while it played music!
When I got my first guitar at 16, I used radio shack adapters to run it into my bookshelf stereo. It was so quiet and boring, but it was better than nothing. I do the same thing with the Bluetooth speaker now at late hours, but run it through the pedals first. You can still get a decent representative tone that way. If you're starting out, at least get a Joyo or other cheap distortion or tube screamer pedal and run the guitar through that before the aux in on the Bluetooth speaker. It will make a world of difference.
I didn't do much of this as I was blessed with a dad who plays and has a bunch of killer Fender tube amps. And a very fun girlfriend all through high school 🤣😎⚡
My first one was my sister's old karaoke machine. Terrible tones, but what a memory. I then was able to pump through my dad's old pioneer setup for his turntable. When I got a Line 6 Spider, I thought I was on cloud 9
I used to travel a lot for work - 3 nights a week away from home for months and months on end. I used to leave a guitar with the hotel concierge. Anyway, I went though this long process of finding a working solution for playing in a hotel room. I'm not an Apple user (I use Android and PC laptop) and I ended up with an IK Multimedia interface and AmpliTube running on a PC laptop. It allowed me have volume using headphones in a hotel room - with the added bonus of a ton of virtual amplifiers to play with.
Fun idea for the spare TV at the office : Custom digital signage by placing an Apple TV behind it. Create a photo album of favorite TPS moments. Also a cool way to show people things the come to the office with screen mirror from your phone
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