Download the “Kills Fascists” Liveset

This Liveset is ONLY compatible with the BOSS GX-10 and GX-100 modelers.

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WARNING: This post may get salty. I’m not trying to go out of my way to offend anybody in particular. But. If you’re bothered by coarse language, you probably want to skip this one.

If you’re MAGA? Yes. I’m totally referring to you guys. Fuck off. Fuck you.

I’ve been trying so hard to keep my politics out of this project, because at the end of the day. Music should be for everybody, unconditionally. But shit isn’t getting better. Every day is a whole new onslaught of corruption, cruelty, inhumanity, greed, lies, felonies, and the motherfucking murder of innocents.

Tragically, this isn’t a point in history that we’ve never seen before. We’ve seen it plenty. And we’ve responded in a variety of ways. Some more productive than others.

Punk is one of those ways.

Yes, some punk strays towards promoting anarchy. I get it. I don’t share that perspective. But I get it.

For me, Punk is the music that emerged from musicians who were angry. But who wanted to be a catalyst for change. And so they shared (and continue to share) their vision, their protest, their defiance, their optimism, their hope, and their calls for unity through their music.

For me, it’s not “BURN IT ALL DOWN!”

For me, it’s:

“Tear down the status quos and institutions that are fucking hurting people intentionally, in order to make room to build something ‘better’. Something more compassionate. More equal. More equitable. More humane. That defends and lifts up, not exploits and abuses, the most vulnerable of us.”

Setting the Stage

At the time of this writing, St. Patrick’s Day is on the horizon. My maternal lineage are all Poles. But my paternal side is of Celtic descent. So I’ve always dug the holiday.

I’m an active member of a pretty cool church. They often let me program music and themes for services when I ask to. With the upcoming St. Pat’s holiday and the daily shitshow we’re all living in right now, I really needed an outlet for All The Feelings that were starting to bunch up. So, I pitched the idea for a St. Pat’s related service.

The theme: “Defiant Joy and Communal Resistance“

My proposed setlist:

Prelude: “Rocky Road to Dublin” (along the lines of the recent version off of the “Sinners” soundtrack, which starts things off more traditionally before slamming into a more punk rendition)

Anthem: “For Boston” (Dropkick Murphys)

Meditation: “Times They Are A’ Changin’” (Flogging Molly’s take on it)

Offertory: “If I Ever Leave This World Alive” (Flogging Molly)

Postlude: “Shipping Up to Boston” (Dropkick Murphys)

Have the Vision. Need the Sound.

Many of the songs start out with a clean guitar, often acoustic, that typically plays the intro. Then the band does a gear shift and brings the OI! Guitars switch to their dirt channels, and they’re off and snarling.

In my journey to build a patch that would do the job I needed it to, I got curious and kept building. The end result were two patches that look functionally identical, but sound remarkably different.

My first patch was built with the idea of evoking the sound of an Irish pub in full on rock mode.

The second patch is a variation on that, that trades the pub for an American basement venue (RIP all my fellow bass players who also had to navigate those awful, steep flights of stairs made out of concrete and suffering).

Let’s explore ’em.

The Patchlist

For reference, I included the two punk patches from the Atlas.

• “No Masters”: American Punk
• “London Calling”: UK Punk

If you’re looking for a place to start exploring the punk sound, those are good places to start. They’ll help set up the baseline that we’re going to be building off of.

“Black & Tan”

This is my “Irish Pub” patch, and is the one I’m going to be using. It’s got two parts to it. A Clean channel and a Dirt channel.

The Clean Channel

NOTE: The Clean channel is shared across both patches.

Simply, it’s my Clean channel. No dirt. Built for my Gretsch 6118T’s neck pickup, it’s built to let the Gretsch sound ‘acoustic-ish’. Less jangle, more body.

Why the Matchless Combo model: ‘Traditional’ punk was rooted in roaring Marshall amps and cabs. I wanted something that sounded a little more modern, that would pair well with the Dirt channel. I went with Matchless because I really liked the greater headroom, less compressed mids push, cleaner low-end, and less in-your-face saturation.

The flanger block is there to give me some movement when I want it, and in the context of the songs I found I preferred a flanger to, say, a chorus or vibrato.

The room reverb helps soften the edges while helping to set up greater contrast with the Dirt channel.

The Dirt Channel

I’ll use this with both my neck and bridge pickups.

Why the Matchless Combo model: Matchless amps are traditionally known for being great clean and low to mid gain amps. But why a Matchless instead of the more traditional Marshall for this? Because I had this sound in my head:

• Pub aggression
• Celtic rhythm engine
• Mid-forward chord machine
• Percussive strumming

That means, I was shooting for:

• Tight low end
• Forward mids
• Controlled highs
• Moderate saturation

The Matchless Combo over Brit Stack: Delivers low-mid body, while having a “Vox-esque” top end chime.

Brit Stack would have pushed me more into straight punk rock. Workable, but not what I’m going for.

Matchless Combo keeps the Celtic articulation clearer.

“Basement Stage”

Remember: The Clean channel is identical to the previous “Black & Tan” patch.

The Dirt Channel

The Thought: Opting for the Matchless Combo over the Brit Stack worked out really well (IMHO). So, thinking back to the “No Masters” and “London Calling” deltas and the reasons behind them. I got to wondering if I could build out an ‘American’ version of the “Black & Tan Patch”.

Something with tighter low end, more preamp saturation, more authority in the low mids, more “amp doing the work” instead of the TS pushing it.

More “shoulder” less “head voice”.

I opted to swap in the Boogie model. Yes, it’s an iconic American brand. But so is Matchless (even though Matchless amps tend to be Vox adjacent). Rather Mesas have distinct characters that come out best when allowed to push.

• The amp itself provides thickness.
• The TS becomes more of a contour tool.
• More disciplined low end and ‘chest voice’.

I liked the clear contrast between the Mesa model and the Matchless model in both clean and dirt channels. And it sounded and ‘felt’ like a basement gig instead of a pub gig.

“Wood & Wire”

“Wood & Wire” is simply the Dirt channels from “Black & Tan” and “Basement Stage“, with the Clean channel omitted. I included this patch for those who might want to more easily A/B the different dirt channels.

Though if you’re feeling brave, hey. Run them in parallel and see what happens.

End Results

Compared to the Matchless, the Boogie felt and sounded:

• More compressed
• Like it possessed more ‘mass’
• Less string separation
• Less chime and top end

Was it ‘right’ for the Celtic Punk sound I was shooting for? For the Dropkick tunes? I think it would work and work pretty well. For the others? It didn’t really work for me.

The Boogie brought “The Chug” and demands aggressive plam muting.

By contrast, the Matchless wants unmuted chords that are allowed to ring.

So for the upcoming St. Pat’s Day gig, I’m sticking with the Matchless. But it will be fun to explore the Boogie patch in other settings.

I’d love to hear from others about their thoughts and experiences with the patches!