These are real concerns from real customers with real questions.
My Email address: firstname.lastname@example.org
WHERE IS DAN? WHY HAS MY EMAIL NOT BEEN RESPONDED TO?
Top of the list 😉 you like that right?! I’ve got a balance between answering emails, building units, shipping units, and the REST of real life (new baby, church ministry, wife, friends etc). I filter emails and deal with constant spam (every customer that gets a virus sends an email to this1smyne….) so sometimes emails get caught, sometimes they get deleted, sometimes they’re redundant questions that i’ve answered and your spam filter has prevented their delivery. PLEASE learn to use Google or do a search on Thegearpage.net forums or other such sites before writing me 10 emails with the same questions. Pedals ship with confirmation, you will get confirmation when pedals are shipped. Please don’t ask when an item will ship UNLESS its been 3-4 weeks on a standard order, at which point it might have jumped the queue or gotten lost in shipping or something. I do my best. and work extremely long hours every day to try to get all your orders to you in as quick a turn around as possible. Estimated wait times are on the website, these are usually fairly accurate but holidays/family situations trump everytime. Your AB box is not as important to me as my kids and ministry…
If you need a refund on your order: please write a NEW email FROM THE PAYPAL ACCOUNT USED, with your order number/date and ‘refund’ in the title of the email and it will be dealt with immediately. RE:RE:RE:RE:FW type emails will hit the spam filter
Nothing seems to have generated more offense than the SWP (squeaky wheel policy). It has been removed at the request of the online community. My only request is please don’t harass me or my family and use perspective when writing regarding T1M online. I do my best to answer as many emails as I can as often as I can to provide the best customer service I can. I answer 100+ emails and inquiries a day, and sometimes some fall through and don’t get a reply, that doesn’t mean I hate you or am intentionally ignoring you. just means that business is busy and ministry is busy.
Can you add tap tempo to my XYZ pedal?
This is by far the most commonly asked question: can you add tap tempo to my TR2? DE7? DD3? Carbon Copy? the answer is no. without a complete overhaul of the clock and the new circuitry of a new digital clock to read/transmit/receive tap tempo commands it is simply not worth the investment. if you need tap tempo there are a plethora of very good quality tap tempo units available on the market. I can do the speed mod (put an EXP pedal jack for the speed control) to most pedals, where it won’t be tap tempo, it can sometimes be better 😀
What tap tempo do i order for my delay?
Different delays need different types of tap tempo: NC (normally closed) and NO (normally open). If you have a boss style delay they read the ‘hit’ off of the BREAK of the stomp, so a NC stomp is BEST, but not necessary (see ‘tapping tempo’ below). Default is NO. there is no readily available silent stomp NC switch, so if you want a silent mini tap than we need to use the NO type switch.
No matter what i do my delays won’t synch, I’ve tried everything….
check your cables, check your units for polarity. sometimes the clock functions are slightly different calibration: so they’ll be at the same tempo for a minute and drift after that. such is life.
When I synch delays they only stay in time for a few measures, I need to tap once and have them synch together for an entire weekends gig! Why is this? What should I do?
There are a few things to consider when synching delays via tap tempo:
1. When that delays clock reads the tempo
2. What style of stomp that delay has built in (or recommended)
3. How many stomps the different delay units read off of
4. Does it AVERAGE the stomps or take the time distance between the last two
Most delays average tap tempos (they take the distance of time between the last 4 stomps and average them to get your BPM… meaning if you stomp 4 times and the ‘times’ between each stomp are 120, 122, 118, the song will beat in 120. but if you get excited, and stomp more erratic (it happens…) 120, 126, 122 ~ 122.666 if the song is 120 you are going to rush. in the first example if you are synching a DD5 with say a timefactor you will get 118 on the timefactor and 120 on the DD5, in the second example you will have them be almost in synch (122 TF and 122.666 DD5). So how do you do it? you tap in time… which brings us to the NC NO thing:
My delay beats on the release of the stomp for tap tempo instead of the stomp….
than it reads off of break instead of make. the key again is to tap tempo IN TIME WITH THE SONG. if you’re playing a song in the key of E and someone nails a Bb everyone will notice and likely cringe. So when you play in E its important to stay in the key of E. Music = Math = Logic. SO if the song is in 120 BPM, than you have to play in 120 BPM (in various subdivisions of triplets or 1/16 th notes or whatever) and when you don’t play in the tempo of the song again, things screw up. Part of being a musician is being able to play in time. a Tap tempo stomp will not give you better meter, it will merely translate the meter that you already have to a pedal that answers to your foot. If your delay is off beat than the most likely issue is that your foot is sloppy, or you have a broken cable (if you tap in 120 and get a ridiculous number like 65 than the tap is missing a beat)
Ok ok, so I have to actually be able to play. what about the NC vs NO stomps?!?!
Yup, I’m getting there. back to the tap tempo. for the sake of sanity, we’re all perfect and stomp a perfect 120 every time. the delay should be in synch NO MATTER WHAT. If your stomp is steady AND your release is steady, the time between down stomp 1 and down stomp 2 is 120BPM, the time between the RELEASE is 120… now if you leave your foot down on the unit for a while or a differing amount of time, than you will have issues, but again, its about meter… You will hear the pedal TRIGGER on what it triggers on (so you stomp down on a NO switch, and hear your DD5 ‘catch’ on the upstroke, which is not the downbeat of the song….) but the ECHO’s will be echo-ing WHAT YOU PLAY. so if you stomp and release steady, and play properly to the beat of the song, the INITIAL tap may sound ‘off’ as it corrects, but every additional echo will echo what you PLAY, not the tempo that you tapped in. so you tap in 120, and play a song in 140, your delays will no longer be 1/4 note or .1/8ths. This is also the reason that you can obtain .1/8ths notes through a 1/4 note only delay pedal. if you count the beats, and hit on the ‘and’ you can trick a 1/4 note 0f a faster tempo to be a .1/8th note of slower tempo. for the math nerds you can find the charts (there is one in the DD series manuals… or the RC series at least) but the easiest way to think of it is in whole numbers: a 1/8 note of 120 BPM will be a 1/4 note of 60 BPM and so forth. Tempo is all about timing: so a normally closed and normally open switch can in theory be used for any type of delay, its just a matter of how good tempo and how steady your foot.
My El Capistan’s delays turn off when you tap tempo, can you mod that?
No, Strymon designed it this way on purpose, maybe in the timeline? i’ve actually grown fond of this function (its on the ML JR as well)
What about the El cap tap tempo switch? Can you mod it to be silent?
On version 2 of the el cap i can add an external tap tempo switch. on v1 (with the click switches) it is not practical to do so. strymon caught up and released the v2 to fix this issue.
So is perfectly synched delays just a fairy tail?
Not necessarily…. there are units out there that generate and receive MIDI data clock signals, (TF/Timeline/M9/M13 and others) these units will change according to the host units on board tempo if they are set up correctly. Other units have BPM screens and if you set the tempo to the screen of that and another it will synch. There are many ways to get perfectly synched studio style delays live, unfortunately its just more expensive than a $20 mod. Sorry folks, there’s no easy way around it other than having the right equipment.
All this1smyne effects use standard boss negative center style barrel plugs and are designed for 9v operation. There are a few exceptions to this rule, and those exceptions are listed on the item description. Please be careful what you plug in and where.
REGULATED POWER MATTERS: ever tried drinking from one of those hyper water fountains? you know… the one where you go and put your head down and it shoots it all up your nose and into your eyes with such force that it literally cascades off your face and onto that really cute girl walking down the hallway? yeah… those are not fun moments. too much pressure. regulated power supplies solve this issue and will only offer a given mA of power to your effect. ex: the Cioks DC10 9v outputs are regulated at 100mA. meaning that the MAX output of that output is 100mA of power. it won’t give more, and your pedal can’t take more than 100mA at 9v. it is regulated. UNREGULATED are generally units like 1 spot, dc brick, some of the trex supplies and the cheaper ‘brick’ types you can find online may CLAIM regulation, but they have a shared 2000mA (or some other high number) that will be distributed to whatever pedals are in chain. there is no limit to the amount they will ‘push’, its dependent on what your unit will take. an unregulated power supply will ‘work’ until something goes wrong (dirty wall power, another unit being selfish or having bad caps that are leaky) and than you end up with broken pedals on your chain. i’m having to build regulators into my pedals now to protect them against cheap power. we spend a lot of time and money on our pedalboards, POWER THEM PROPER to protect them. its worth the investment (arguably over higher end patch cables). Unregulated power supplies are usually the cause of excess noise in chain.
Most T1M pedals are too small for a battery to fit. If you are in desperate need for battery operation please email me and I’ll have to make the unit larger than normal to accommodate the size of the battery.
Do you have a Return Policy?
Standard items only, contact required within 2 weeks.
The mini buffer doesn’t help my crate amp sound like a dumble, do you do refunds?
Yes. As good as my products are, they’re not magic beans. If you are unsatisfied with your purchase, email me with your purchase order #, and I will issue a refund of the purchase price of the product. So if you buy a tap tempo for $25 plus $6 priority mail shipping, you will get $25 when the item lands back on my doorstep. If your item is a STANDARD ORDER and is in unused condition (no velcro, scratches, everything works etc) than you can return for whatever reason you’d like within a 2 week window of receipt, and a refund will be given minus shipping costs. generally trade ins of used gear is not going to be worth what you think it might be worth…. again, my prices are low which means you can probably get more selling an item used than trading it in to ‘upgrade’.
I bought a looper from you last year, its been sitting in my closet, can i return it to you?
No. I’ll do what i can to help you sell it, keep my ears on the ground and even bump up your TGP thread. But when someone comes to me for a custom looper they want it built to their specs, not your specs…. This applies to ANY custom order. If something doesn’t work the way you wanted it to work we can work on the situation and get it working for your needs. Building custom units is fun and unique, but they’re not useful for everyone else’s purposes.
What about trades?
I can take items in trade, most likely NOT at the new retail value (typically 75-80% of market) , but I’m willing to make a deal. If you’re looking to give me ‘market’ pedals/guitars/amps for custom work feel free to make an offer, but if I can’t sell it and I likely don’t have a use for it, I’d probably pass unless its a sick deal. i’m a junkie just like most of you guys… can’t help myself sometimes. This includes towards standard builds and custom pieces, I know that the economy sucks and musicians don’t tend to have a mess of cash, so I’m open. throw it by me, you never know what I might grab!
Where do i ship my pedal to be modded? DO NOT SHIP A PEDAL WITHOUT AN ORDER NUMBER.
Pedals come through the door without orders and not getting paid for and they won’t get worked on without an order number to get them on queue.
You can ship your pedals to me at:
2193 sandy point lane
mount pleasant, SC 29466
My Email address: email@example.com
Please email me before you ship anything, and include relevant information in the box: mods to be done, specifics of those mods to be done, diagrams?!?, your return address and your paypal address for billing. If you put cash in the box that’s cool too, but still make sure I get your return address. Oh yeah: PLEASE don’t show up on my doorstep unannounced. EVER. I’ve got a pit/lab and rottie/lab mix that are ridiculously protective of the house and I will not be held responsible for their damage to your face or arms. when they know you it is a sign of affection (i’ve got scars too) but when they don’t know you they’re good at pack hunting… and 150 pounds of dog wrestling you to the ground is not something i want to deal with. also: they love our daughter. a lot. and you being a stranger…. lets just say it won’t be pretty. please don’t show up without making an appt.
Where is my Pedal?
When units ship they ship with confirmation, which is sent to the paypal address used on the order. If its a standard order, and you’ve not yet received a confirmation email it means the unit is still being built. So its here.
How will my pedal be shipped?
Almost all orders are shipped USPS priority mail, with delivery confirmation. Flat rate boxes fit most my pedals, and are the easiest/simplest way to ship.
Can you overnight my pedal so i can get it faster?
I’ve overnighted in the past, and its always been a hassle and at a loss for both parties financially. If you need a custom unit by a certain date let me know when you’re ordering the unit the date that is ‘do or die’. In short, NO. I’m no longer offering overnight shipping. time management is important. if you need something by the 21st of the month don’t wait to ship it to me till the 15th. mail it on the 1st and let me know ahead of time and i’ll have it done
How long will my item take to get here?
First class shipping international is USUALLY 6-10 business days. Priority is 5-8. Both end up taking about the same amount of time, and more often than not spend time in customs in the destination country. Again, can’t bypass customs. Its a little slower internationally than domestic. Usually the item shows up the day you send me 3 emails demanding to know where it is and wondering how a pastor can live with himself while scamming the world of their hard earned cash. Literally, this has happened dozens of times. People get fed up and the local carrier delivers that very day. Patience is a good thing.
The tracking information only says ‘Item received in Mt Pleasant’ its been (insert choice number here) days and it hasn’t changed….
There is not a GPS tracker installed in my pedals. I’m sorry, I’m not that hi tech. (yet!) Customs forms marked ‘accepted’ mean they are on their way, and when the information changes you will probably have the item in hand, or your customs police are holding it hostage, but it’s out of my hands at that point.
Import fees in my country are high, can you declare lower value so i can save a few bucks?
Here’s my compromise: my pedals are already cheaper than most, unfair taxes suck. But integrity is more important to me. If a pedal is worth $40 I may mark it as $25, but if you ask me to mark an item less it means you’re probably a dishonest person at heart, so I’ll probably mark it at full price just because…I’m just saying…
Will your pedals function on EU power?
So long as you use the proper 9v – adapter, YES. T1M functions on 9v standard boss negative tip. REGULATED POWER PLEASE!
I’m too cheap and won’t pay the import taxes to get my pedal out of customs. can i get a refund?
yes, when it gets returned, and minus all shipping charges. typically internationally unclaimed/unpaid for units take around FOUR MONTHS to get returned stateside if the taxes aren’t paid. pay the import taxes. please. it makes it easier and its usually only a few dollars.