The one-dimensional concept of "louder is better" has already been mentioned; most mixes nowadays are "pushed" pretty hard (compressionwise) even before the mastering stage – maybe that can explain why the difference is minimal... there's simply not always a lot of headroom for a mastering engineer to work with (although a good mastering engineer should care enough to tell you if this is the case!).

Also, regarding different speakers; remember that different rooms (and speaker placement for that matter) also affect what comes out of those speakers, and in turn what your ears register (muffled/crisp/?..).  In my experience there's always a difference when comparing mixes in the studio and in my living room, even with the same speakers.

(e)

yeah we sent them out.... i would have been a pain in the guys butt if i had been there. trying to control everything. i was a different guy than mixed it too. i wanted to be there for the mixing, but that part turned out really well.

the mastered version sounded mufffled to me on two different sets of speakers. but then i got it home, and it was crisp. i almost couldn't tell any difference between the mastered and unmastered. so maybe g wood is right, garage fans like it more raw, right to the point that my home speakers are more thin than other peoples....

maybe, i don't know.

Larabee said:

I generally agree with G. Wood's comments.  Mastering does affect the overall volume level but it also can shape the sound of each track.  Shmo, I can't tell from your post whether you attended the mastering session, or whether you sent the tracks to someone to master and they sent them back to you.   I recommend that if you get the opportunity to attend a mastering session, that you do it.  And while you are there, ask all of the questions you have about the mastering process.  I also recommend that you have the tracks mastered by someone other than the person who mixed (and/or recorded) the tracks.

Great comments! I would add that there is much debate regarding how "hot" one's mastered tracks should be relative to other people's music, vs preserving the dynamic range of one's own music (i.e. the "loudness war").   There is definitely a tradeoff, and you'll want to hear the difference.   Luckily, most mastering engineers will for the same price give you a set of hot masters for the web / broadcast / iTunes (where dynamic range is less important than impact), and another full-range set for mastering to CD or vinyl. 

IMHO, mastering is most useful in making tracks hang together as a collection.  So, if your tracks a) all come from the same recording/mixing session, or b) aren't destined to be released as a CD or LP, one could argue that mastering just offers a final opportunity to tweak the eq, compression and loudness of your tracks.  If that is indeed the case, and the untweaked versions sound just fine to you, heck, save your money.

In the end you have to trust your ears.  When THEE DIRTYBEATS mastered its debut, we went with light compression (ie broader dynamic range) mastering for everything.  That just seemed to sound more like the vintage garage rock records we loved. 

THEE DIRTYBEATS - maximum vintage garage
Free download at http://theedirtybeats.bandcamp.com

I generally agree with G. Wood's comments.  Mastering does affect the overall volume level but it also can shape the sound of each track.  Shmo, I can't tell from your post whether you attended the mastering session, or whether you sent the tracks to someone to master and they sent them back to you.   I recommend that if you get the opportunity to attend a mastering session, that you do it.  And while you are there, ask all of the questions you have about the mastering process.  I also recommend that you have the tracks mastered by someone other than the person who mixed (and/or recorded) the tracks.

Yeah, good question. Mastering consists mainly of setting EQ, and making it consistent throughout the album, applying compression, and setting master volume. At 58, my ears are pretty much unreliable. What sounds good to me is a lot of highs, but this sounds too brash to most people with better hearing. Compression is a tricky thing, the right amount sort of glues everything together, too much makes everything sound kind of muffled. 

Garage fans like a rawer sound than regular humans, so we're sort of disabled in that way. In the end, I'd say, Mastering: Yes. Then there's the little issue of finding someone who knows what they're doing. Different people will produce a different sound. Your mileage may vary!

Fire Bad!

http://www.reverbnation.com/#!/firebad

Los Tiki Phantoms from Spain.

Good call on Atomic Suplex! We played with them earlier in the year and they damn near brought the pub crumbing to it's foundations. Amazing band.

Gotta love Clinic as well, especially the first few records. They've gone a wee bit softer in their old age, but are still an amazing band.

oldtimer here:

Rain Parade. Plan 9, Plasticland, The Inmates, Chesterfield Kings, just about anything on Midnight Records too, The Lyres, Soft Boys, Dream Syndicate, Creatures of the Golden Dawn, Dead Moon, The Prisoners, The Fleshtones, The Embrooks, Flamin' Groovies, Hoodoo Gurus, Long Ryders.  Just to name a few:

Thanks John! I thought I made that Screamin' Lord Such cassette for Shari! But I do remember that story and I still have that very record to this day.

Records were incredibly hard to find in those days! Especially old ones. Reissues were just starting but they were mostly European so it was hard to find in California. I remember how legendary 'Easter Everywhere' was back then. There were sightings from time to time. I remember that there was a record shop in Orange County in 1983 that had a copy of 'Easter Everywhere' behind the cash register on display with a price tag proudly of 100 dollars. Now, that was a fortune for a record back then! Today I can probably go down to the local shitty record store (CD store??!!) in the train station in my town and find a CD copy for ten bucks!!

John Carlucci said:

I Love that photo! lol!!! BTW, I dig the Jackets lp. Hope to see you play one of these days!

Oh... and speaking of the old days... let's not forget how hard it was to find some of

the records that are now readily available on CD or the internet these days. I recall hanging out with you & you gave me a cassette of some Screaming Lord Sutch material I had been looking for for ages. I brought down the cassette to Fuzztones rehearsal and suggested we cover Jack The Ripper & All Black & Hairy,

 and we did & they became some of my favorite covers we did with the band. both eventually making it on to record. I have since found a vinyl copy of that Lord Sutch record. 
 
Gringo Starr said:

Just gonna chime in quick here. I grew up in Greg Shaw's 'Cavern Club' in L.A. in the '80s. I saw all the bands playing in those days like the Unclaimed, Pandoras (Paula taught me how to drive!), Gravedigger V, Untold Fables, Thee Fourgiven, The Miracle Workers (who I lived with), Primates, Tell Tale Hearts, etc. Here's a pic of John Carlucci and I (plus some others) at the Cavern in 1986:

I Love that photo! lol!!! BTW, I dig the Jackets lp. Hope to see you play one of these days!

Oh... and speaking of the old days... let's not forget how hard it was to find some of

the records that are now readily available on CD or the internet these days. I recall hanging out with you & you gave me a cassette of some Screaming Lord Sutch material I had been looking for for ages. I brought down the cassette to Fuzztones rehearsal and suggested we cover Jack The Ripper & All Black & Hairy,

 and we did & they became some of my favorite covers we did with the band. both eventually making it on to record. I have since found a vinyl copy of that Lord Sutch record. 
 
Gringo Starr said:

Just gonna chime in quick here. I grew up in Greg Shaw's 'Cavern Club' in L.A. in the '80s. I saw all the bands playing in those days like the Unclaimed, Pandoras (Paula taught me how to drive!), Gravedigger V, Untold Fables, Thee Fourgiven, The Miracle Workers (who I lived with), Primates, Tell Tale Hearts, etc. Here's a pic of John Carlucci and I (plus some others) at the Cavern in 1986:

Just gonna chime in quick here. I grew up in Greg Shaw's 'Cavern Club' in L.A. in the '80s. I saw all the bands playing in those days like the Unclaimed, Pandoras (Paula taught me how to drive!), Gravedigger V, Untold Fables, Thee Fourgiven, The Miracle Workers (who I lived with), Primates, Tell Tale Hearts, etc. Here's a pic of John Carlucci and I (plus some others) at the Cavern in 1986:

Agree wholeheartedly with John C. bout The Miracle Workers and The Pandoras.They were my faves too.

One question that always came up in our little clique was "The Chesterfield Kings or The Tell Tale Hearts?"

thank you pulsebeats!!! i thought Die antwoord " i fink you freaky" was gonna be the best video i saw this year. oh this  is awesome. do you know where to find lyrics for it?

whatwave dave said:

That video is hilarious!!!!  Love the animated parts!!!!

The Pulsebeats said:

I've recently come across an ace band from Valencia by the name of La Moto De Fernan by way of this, perhaps one of the best videos I've seen in a long while. Takes me back to the days of Ren & Stimpy!

There's a band coming out of Salford, England right now as well called The Calimocho Club. They're playing stipped back blues like early Black Keys, but before that they Were The Black Knights. Glorious trash blues...and not a bass note in sight.

That video is hilarious!!!!  Love the animated parts!!!!

The Pulsebeats said:

I've recently come across an ace band from Valencia by the name of La Moto De Fernan by way of this, perhaps one of the best videos I've seen in a long while. Takes me back to the days of Ren & Stimpy!

There's a band coming out of Salford, England right now as well called The Calimocho Club. They're playing stipped back blues like early Black Keys, but before that they Were The Black Knights. Glorious trash blues...and not a bass note in sight.

I've recently come across an ace band from Valencia by the name of La Moto De Fernan by way of this, perhaps one of the best videos I've seen in a long while. Takes me back to the days of Ren & Stimpy!

There's a band coming out of Salford, England right now as well called The Calimocho Club. They're playing stipped back blues like early Black Keys, but before that they Were The Black Knights. Glorious trash blues...and not a bass note in sight.

One of my bands, Tombstone Hearts, has no bass player; my other band, Nero Burns, does - the best of both worlds! It's apples and oranges, really. Gotta admit, I love the sound of early Cramps, but when they added the bass....it just wasn't the same. But then again, where would the Ramones have been without Dee Dee? It's apples and oranges, really.

Usually the band is unsigned, has released no albums (or only a self-produced CD), and the article was written by the band.

Damn, that would be us...

I had one embarrassing experience with Wikipedia in my other life as a political reporter. 

Back in 2008, I had an interview with then U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who was doing a fund-raiser for a local Congressman. (This of course was before he was Obama's chief of staff or mayor of Chicago.

Before the interview, I read Emanuel's Wikipedia entry just to get some basic facts. Here's one of those "facts":

"He was in a one-man Klezmer band called Rahmbunctious Eman."

How could I not ask him about that? It had a linked footnote and everything.

So I asked. And he looked at me like I was crazy.

"No," he said.

According to the footnote in Wikipedia, the klezmer claim supposedly was in a 2005 Rolling Stone profile. However, looking over the article afterwards, there's nothing about Rahmbunctious Eman or Rahm Emanuel in that article.

The line in Wikipedia had disappeared by the next day.

G. Wood said:

Yeah, anybody can, but they have hordes of no-no volunteers whose hobby is finding articles to recommend for deletion.

James Porter said:

Hell, I didn't even know it took much to get on Wikipedia in the first place. Can't anybody just write anything? Most Wiki articles I see have some outlandishly wrong factoid in the first place!

We should name this thread, "No one cares about Wikipedia" lol!

i own a Joyo Tremolo pedal.

i was lured by the cheap price - turns out to be a mighty expensive paper weight.

it kind of does what it's supposed to but overall sounds like crap, hard to dial in.

i heard Joyo clones pedals by famous makers, i don't know what this is a clone of but it's not good.

my suggestion: if you want cheap imported pedals buy used Boss products.

i have bought and sold enough fuzz pedals over the years to rival the entire effect pedal inventory of any Guitar Center store (not really bragging, just sort of a fuzz enthusiast).

one pedal i came across that will give you a very convincing 60's sound is a Catalinbread Merkin Fuzz, here's a youtube clip that's pretty impressive - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMe2Sfe8c9A

i currently own one and it is raw and raspy as all hell (i.e. no smooth fuzz) and has a lot of adjustablilty. they can be found well under $125 used which ain't bad for a very reliable 'boo-teek' pedal.

This is a really cool sound. Just listened to the 2nd song -- She Wants Me Dead -- thanks for posting to the cloud for all to hear and appreciate. And incidentally, two and a half minutes might just be the perfect song length. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all kinds of music, and dig on opus-like songs from Pink Floyd, Mars Volta, Sleep, Grails.... but sometimes bands just need to get to the point and kick out the jams.

Polyvinyl Craftsmen said:

Wobbly Lamps from the UK. Check their new single here

Good recommendations all around. Now I've got plenty of new stuff to listen to throughout the summer.

Err... yeah...