Category: Reviews

Preamp Mk II Automatone VS The World

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The Preamp Mk II Automatone is a gimicky, over hyped and overpriced overdrive pedal. At least that is what I thought at first when it was first announced and I saw those automated sliders flicking between presets. In a world where pedal prices keep jumping up to new levels, Chase Bliss leads the way in high priced gear, but after spending time and completely loving their Thermae, I understand why.

The Preamp Mk II answers with gusto the main critique I have will all pedals that employ favorites or presets, that when you switch to said preset you have no idea where the knobs are set. Sure some makers have come up with work arounds such as Stymon’s where turning the knobs will blink the light when you read how it is set for the preset, but they have all felt like cumbersome hacks. Chase Bliss and it’s fancy auto-faders have solved the problem, the sliders move themselves to the preset settings when switching. It seems like a gimmick, but man does it work.

Then came the demos by people who’s opinions I hold with regard, the final straw being That Pedal Show‘s episode where they put the Preamp Mk II up against some of the heavy hitters of the overdrive world and even Mick’s Fuzz Face. See their episode here. So I decided to give it a shot and ordered one direct from Chase Bliss (which said it had a 1-2 week backorder, but shipped out the next day) and shoot it out again my newly wired pedalboard.

At first I wasn’t impressed by the sliders, they felt too light and not quite as sturdy as I’d like for a $750 pedal, especially compared to the beautiful knobs that are on other chase bliss pedals. However after some use I realized that they have to be extremely light in order for the motors in the sliders to last forever. It’s sort of like picking up a guitar with super light wood, at first you it feels like a toy, but after a while you realize that it’s lightness is part of what makes it great.

Actually dialing in tones, especially if trying to match another pedal, it takes time a experimentation. When trying to match the high gain sound of my Hudson Broadcast, there was a top end that I found hard to match. In the end I had to turn down the treble and boost the upper mids in a specific frequency range to get it there. Sometimes you get the right high end by cutting lower mids in either the pre or post mid eq setting. It seems simple, but the controls are so powerful that shaping your tone can be more complex than expected.

In the end, I managed to match my King of Tone (at 18v), Hudson Broadcast 24v, Dumbloid Overdrive BTM Boost and even my Fuzz Factory 7 to an extent. While at first it seems like an overpriced bit of a one trick pony, it actually revealed itself to be a true chameleon of a pedal and is going to replace all four pedals on my board… well maybe.

I still love my other pedals, so they’re not going anywhere. It may be time to build my own pedalboard, just for the Chase Bliss pedals I have.

Support the channel and buy your own Preamp Mk II on Reverb.

How to spend your money in a day.

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Ok, I’m an idiot. Or maybe an addict? Hi my name is Andrew and I’m a pedalholic, and I’m ok with that. Sort of.

I go through a lot of gear, and typically I find the stuff I want to try out used at a bargain price. I am patient, calculated and nerdy enough to know exactly what price I need to buy something at in order to be able to resell it later and break even or preferably make a small profit. I’ve done well for myself, with my gear hobby breaking even after all the gear I buy and keep for myself.

Sometimes though, I go off the deep end. I spend every last cent I have saved up for gear and sell off everything I can. It’s been one of those days.

It started when I decided to pick up a used Chase Bliss Thermae for a pretty great price. A price that after selling my ARDX20 and Amaze0 had me in the green, while also being low enough that I could resell it and at least break even. So what happened? Well the ARDX20 after years of service is gone, and I’ve developed a new obsession with Chase Bliss. I’ve tried only 1 other pedal of theirs before (Brother’s Gain Pedal) and didn’t really find it to my taste, but the Thermae was so beautiful sounding, and so inspiring with it’s many options, that I just want more.

Soon after That Pedal Show released their “Tomatotone” vs Everything video and I decided it was time to give it a try, after all I was in the market for a good Fuzz Face and Klon Centaur or clones there of, so if it could do both and more it would make sense, especially now that I’ve started using Midi for controlling my rig (starting to see the cascade of rational yet?). Prices were crazy on Reverb, so I ordered direct (plus a Mood since I had just gotten rid of my looper) figuring I could always sell it on reverb and break even if we didn’t get along.

Speaking of getting rid of my looper, I couldn’t decide between the Mood or the Blooper, so I budgeted for both as they seem to compliment each other in many ways. The Blooper is still back ordered so that isn’t here yet, but just know that will also be on it’s way soonish.

Lastly searching for any other Chase Bliss pedals I might be interested in, I came across two crazily priced pedals on Reverb. The Ayahuasca Tremolo Fuzz and Generations Loss. While I love the sounds of the Generations Loss, I can’t justify the price they command right now when I can get some of the sounds out of the Mood, Blooper and Thermae. The Ayahuasca while really cool, was similarly priced insanely, but I did like it. So in order to ease my wanting, I setup a search with filter on Reverb for an Ayahuasca that would be $750 or less (still double the original list price) but had to be the “Spirit Molecule” coloring, of which there were only 10 made (#50-59). Low and behold a few days later…. well you get the idea.

Buy Chase Bliss pedals on Reverb today and support the site.

iZotope Spire Studio – Can it make me sound better?

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The iZotope Spire Studio is a standalone recording studio that’s portable and easy to use, but can it handle recording a guitar amp and how good can it sound?

iZotope Spire Studio

Having a full time job as well as being a father of two small kids, I don’t have much time or energy at the end of the day when it comes to recording. The desire to be creative and to share information that I wish I had however, continues to drive me to create videos on the gear that I find interesting. This means that I typically record using just the mic built into my iPhone 6s, not exactly the best for recording an amp at volume, but better than not recording. However recently a comment on YouTube brought in to sharp focus my recording technique. I was asked why some videos (like mine) didn’t sound as big and lively when recording the Two-Rock Bloomfield Drive, and I knew the answer came down to the lack of using a close mic and room mic to give a better mix and representation of the sound in the room.

Enter the SM57 close mic and iPhone room mic test, which successfully proved that some additional setup time could make my videos sound much bigger and crisp. The downside was cables strewn across the room and an annoying walk to setup and start recording, like trying to run a recording managing a recording desk in a studio while also performing in the live room, ugh. I’ve tried other solutions such as a Zoom portable recorder, or a usb interface with long cables, but ultimately I didn’t like having to set and adjust levels using headphones to monitor. Hopefully the Spire could be the solution.

Portability means I leave my mics in place and grab the Spire when I want to record. A high quality built in stereo mic means I can close mic the cab with the SM57 but also get excellent room sounds at the same time straight to the same DAW for mixing on the go (which is conveniently done on an iPhone or iPad wirelessly). The built in mic is high quality and does an excellent job of handling the output of a 40 watt tube amp cranked. The “Soundcheck” button gives me the one touch level setting that I always though should be on all interfaces, especially cheaper ones aimed at home recorders. Hit it and play for ten seconds or so and it sets the input levels to match your peak levels so you don’t clip, while also optimizing the track based on what it thinks your using to record (guitar, voice, etc). Mix the tracks using the graphical mixer, export in any number of formats (including mixed individual tracks in wav format for importing into a video editor), and you’re set to go in your video software in minutes.

So far the only real complaint I have it the way your phone connects to the Spire. You connect your phone to the Spire’s inbuilt wifi signal, which is fine and allows for high data rates, but which means you need to disconnect and reconnect to your home wifi before you transfer final mixes to a cloud location. The lack of USB port for file transfer from the Spire to a computer seems like a huge oversight as it would make for a great computer conferencing mic as well, but would also just make it less painful to transfer the large zip files created when sending multiple tracks of wav files.

I’ve only recorded one video so far, but it seems to be less painful than any other solution I’ve tried so far and the results are pretty good. But don’t just take my word for it, check my video and see what you think.

Buy a Spire on Reverb

Analogman DS-1 Pro Mod

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The Boss DS-1 is a classic distortion box used by many artists over the years. Known for it’s somewhat scooped tone and high amounts of gains, it’s really a pedal that lends itself only to the heavy metal/rock tones. Built to a price, cheap parts abound and a thin fizzy high end makes it unusable on too clean of an amp.

Enter Analogman Mike Pierra and his pedal modding wizardry. Refined over a couple variations, the Pro Mod replaces mod of the cheap parts allowing way more bass and mids to come through, and taming the top end fizz. This pedal can now be thrown in front of a clean amp (think Fender Silverface Twin) and gives are Marshall-esque tone that any player could find use of. With the gain all the way down you get a crunchy boost pedal that drives an amp from on the edge of breakup into full glorious gain. Maxed out the pedal invokes all kinds of beautiful harmonics and overtones while retaining a percussive clarity that drives rhythm tones without turning to mush.

When you want a high gain pedal, there are tons of modern alternatives that do a great job, but it’s definitely worth taking a look at this old favorite as it has some tonal qualities not found in many modern pedals. Plus who doesn’t love the classic orange box?

Buy one now on Reverb

T-Rex Replicator Junior

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Any amount of time spent searching forums or YouTube for tips and gear to give you the “ultimate guitar tone” will undoubtedly lead you at some point to consider a real tape echo unit. They are lauded for their liveliness, their clarity and the charm. But they are impossible expensive, unbearably noisy and require constant maintenance to keep running right, not to mention they are big and have to run off wall power, making their portability just a joke. A fair warning, this review is going to have lots of subjectivity to it. A real tape echo, even a well thought out and compact one like the T-Rex Replicator Jr, is not for everyone so lets dig in because, I adore them.

First of all, let me say that I am lucky. I have a large enough house with a finished basement and a funky split-like layout that means the bedrooms are far enough away that I can play loud without waking anyone. I can have a 30 watt PRS HXDA cranked without much problem, or run it wed/dry with a Bloomfield Drive combo and still be good. For those who have to play quiet, I’ve been there and I feel for you. I’ve had the 100 watt Mesa Boogie Mk III where you only just get the master turned on and even then you have to put a volume pedal in the loop to turn it down even farther to not disturb people at night. It’s not fun, and I hate to tell you, it pretty much disqualifies you from the real tape club. Even the modern quieter ones are noisy, and unless you’re able to turn up to the point where you drown out the noise, it takes away a lot of the charm. A quick test, turn your amp to your normal playing volume and strum some chords. If you can hear the clack of your guitar pick on your strings, then you likely don’t play loud enough to enjoy a tape echo.

Now that we’ve deterred half of your, lets talk about maintenance. It’s not rocket science, it won’t explode in a fiery ball or any other such things if you don’t take care of it, but it will wear out tapes quicker and sound “worse”. The good news is the T-Rex Replicator is pretty easy to take care of. Tape swaps are a breeze thanks to the cartridge system they use, just unscrew, push the slider down, pop out the old, put in the new, let go and replace screw. Takes one minute or less. There’s a dead simple adjuster on the record heads, simply back it off until there’s no signal, then move it in a quarter of a turn at a time until you have a clean echo. Done. Last is cleaning, a little isopropyl alcohol on a swab, clean the heads and reels and you’re good to go. All of this together takes less than 10 minutes and only needs to be done every month or two (or when it starts sounding “off”).

Still here? Great! Now we get to the good stuff, let’s talk price. Most vintage or new tape echo units are in the one to two thousand dollar range (USD), which puts them out of the range of most hobby players. T-Rex has made the Jr more simple, and therefore less expensive. A new one will still set you back a good chunk, but they can be found on the second hand market for around $400 making them about the same as a boutique digital recreation. The simplification also has another benefit, it will “fit” on a pedalboard. It is fairly heavy for a pedal, but it will fit on all but the smallest of pedalboards making portability less of a concern. One more quick not about portability, it also runs at 12v 300ma, which means most modern power supplies can get it going with at most a special cable.

So how does it sound? Well to be honest, at first I was a little underwhelmed by it. Now I’m not a huge delay user, having gotten rid of all of my delay pedals except for my Analogman ARDX20 with Amaze0 add-on. It’s not quite the night and day difference that some people would have you believe it is (granted this is a much less expensive unit than most, and it doesn’t have a monster pre-amp like some do) but as I use it more (on day 3 as of this writing) it’s really starting to grow on me. It definitely has a character to it that other digital pedals get close, but so far don’t seem to quite replicate.

So while my Analogman delay isn’t going anywhere, I’ll keep this noisy, heavy, difficult, fantastically glorious beast around. It may be converting me to it’s ways sooner than later.

Buy one now on Reverb

Hands On: ’61 Reserve by SVL

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I’ve had this guitar in my hands now for a couple weeks and feel comfortable enough to give an overview of the pros and cons (spoiler, not many) of ordering a custom guitar from over seas, and specifically for this guitar. So lets get right into the first impression.

This shipping was quick and painless once it was on it’s way and Fedex handled the import extremely quickly (especially compared to how long my Sabaddius Funky Vibe was stuck in USPS import) and I received me guitar in less than 2 weeks from when it was shipped. It was packed very well in a rigid gig bag which looks like it protects the guitar well in shipping. Unfortunately it must have gotten bumped pretty good at some point as the neck arrived crooked a bit, causing the low-E to slip off the edge of the fretboard on the higher frets. Luckily loosening the screws and shifting the neck back into proper alignment got everything straightened out.

The initial impression of the relic job was that it looks fairly good, if a bit obvious or repetitive in how it was done. You can pretty easily see how a drill with a rough sanding wheel or buffing wheel was used on the edge of the guitar to take off the paint all around. I am a bit disappointed, but it’s pretty well known that Simon doesn’t really like relicing guitars and prefers NOS. That being said, a lot of attention has gone into the rest of the guitar with all the hardware have a nice patina.

Lastly it is undeniably a beautiful guitar with it’s ‘just right’ flame on the neck and dark katalox fingerboard. The neck was ‘deshined’ which feels like it’s bare, and the fingerboard feels as nice as any vintage or modern Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard I’ve played. The edge is beautifully rolled which gives it a very comfortable played-in feel.

Speaking of feel, this guitar feels great in the hands. This is the lightest Strat style guitar I’ve played (vintage included) to the point of almost feeling ‘off’ at first (I’ve been playing my ’08 American Standard which is loaded with poly clear coat). The neck is a bit thicker front to back, but thin vintage spec side to side making it super comfortable to play thumb over low E Hendrix style licks. The custom ordered 7.25″ fingerboard and 6105 frets make for my favorite combination, allowing comfortable chords and smooth bends throughout the neck. Lastly the electronics are smooth but tight, with the selector switch being especially tighter than I’m used to, but which makes for easy position selection. Only change I made to the feel was to tighten the spring claw so the bridge is decked, giving a stiffer string feel.

Now what you really want to know, how does it sound? Well those smooth working pots and the caps tied to them are a thing of beauty. The taper on the volume pot which somehow retains almost all of the top end makes it a joy to ride for cleans or over-driven tones. In this respect it’s even better than my ’59 Strat was, which is the same when it comes to the tone pots. They don’t neuter the tone once you get to 8 or 9 like a modern Strat, instead taking just a tip off the top until you get down to 3 or so on the dial. This really lets you dial in the sweet spot for any volume and gain setup you want to use. And the tone pots are tied to the neck and bridge pickup, leaving the mid pickup wide open.

Talking pickups, the Mark Foley ’59 Reserve v.2s are so far the closest to the vintage ones I’ve heard yet. I’d say the neck and mid are 90% there in tone, and the bridge being better than the one that was on my vintage ’59. The vintage bridge pickup didn’t have a tone pot on it, and had no lows in it at all, and unlike some fine examples it did have some of the harsh brittleness in the top. The bridge in the SVL has a steel bar on the bottom which takes away a bit of the top spike and in general the pickup has more bass and sounds fantastic. In short all of the pickups are a step closer to the vintage tone than the PRS Silver Sky which was my previous closest sounding guitar.

The one thing I still want to try out tone wise is replacing the middle pickup. The SVL came with a reverse wound reverse polarity pickup to give hum cancelling in the 2 and 4 positions. Which this supposedly has negligible effect on the tone, there are many respectable players who say it does make a difference in the frequency response of the pickups. It may be small, but I’m only looking to get the last 5-10% closer so it’s worth a shot. I will post a before and after once I get the new pickup in.

So what do I think over all? Well it’s pretty much exactly what I hoped for! Tone wise it’s very close to the vintage Strat I got rid of, but with a much more usable bridge pickup for my setup and style. I don’t have to feel bad about replacing the pickup or making other changes as it’s not a respected vintage piece, nor do I have to worry about accidentally banging it around thanks to the finish and again lack of vintage providence. To sum it up, it is my new number 1 and I am already planning on selling some of my other guitars which won’t get used much anymore.

‘61 Reserve from Simon Law

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Today I received the first look at my soon to be here ’61 Reserve from SVL Guitars, and what a beauty it is. But let’s step back; who is Simon Law and what makes his ’61 Reserve special?

Simon Law is a UK guitar builder and guitar tech that works with many big names. His guitars are used by some of the blues greats (Robbin Ford and Matt Schofield to name a few) and are revered for feeling, sounding and playing like old guitars but with new guitar reliability. He also works as a guitar tech for a number of other artists, and in fact part of the reason my guitar took so long to complete (more on that later) is the fact that he was on tour with the WHO for some time.

So he definitely has the knowledge and ear to build a fantastic instrument, but there are lots of great builders, why go with him? Lots of reasons. His guitars are hand built, to spec, with old wood and experience of what makes a vintage guitar sound and feel the way it does, and how to get as close to that as possible. As good as the best at Fender, at a price that is remarkably doable, and with a much more reasonable wait. When some of the best blues players go to him for instruments that respond to their touch and feel, you know he’s doing things right.

So now let’s talk MY guitar. Vintage radius fretboard, Katalox fingerboard (like Brazilian Rosewood but more consistent) 6105 sized frets; this vintage with taller frets combo is what I’ve found to be the perfect mix of comfort and playability and was what I had on my vintage ’59 and Silver Sky.

Pickups are ’59 Reserve set from Mark Foley with some custom tone cap values, everything high quality and vintage spec. Vintage style hardware rounds out the build, and a medium relic to the black body with tortoise pickguard gives it a story.

All in all it costs only around the same price as a standard custom shop Strat from Fender, but with master built options and quality. The only downside? This is a one man operation and his main gig is with the stars, so from order to delivery your looking at around 9 months. Roughly the same amount of time an expecting father would have to wait, and certainly worth the wait.

Fire Custom Shop Overdrive and Kronos Delay

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When Fire Custom shop is widely known for their Carpe Diem overdrive pedal, but there is a lot more to this company than just that one pedal. A number of excellent pedals have come out from this shop and aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Today I am going to quickly go over 2 of these pedals that I find particularly good.

First up is the simply named Overdrive pedal. Even when running at 9v (many FCS pedals can take 18v) there is tons of volume on tap ready to drive you amp into sweet distortion. The Gain control also has a huge range, from clean and clear to near distortion levels of gain. The gain is sweet sounding with lots of harmonic content and just enough grit to cut without making it harsh.

The Kronos Delay is a simple delay unit with just the right amount of options and features. It’s Vintage/Modern knob lets you dial in a darker delay that falls off quicker, or a clean digital like delay that gives you bright repeats. The Tails switch is a welcome feature that lets the repeats finish after tuning the pedal off so you don’t get an abrupt cut (though you can turn it off if you need the echos to stop right away) and the Mod switch lets you add in some of the chorus and movement that gives you a tape echo vibe. With repeat length that go from super fast slap back to beyond analog vintage units on the long end, you will be set for anything less some crazy effect.

All in all these pedals are impressive in their character and feature sets, and can be had at a decent price. Right now I have a couple new units and some used ones up for sale on Reverb, so go check them out.

My Reverb Store

The Perfect “Bedroom” Amp

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Due to a change in living conditions (primarily some family members living above my studio area for a while) I have been searching for a quiet way to play and practice at night since I can no longer use my array of tube amplifiers. After some research I decided the most cost efficient thing to try was to go with a stand alone digital modeling amplifier, specifically the Yamaha THR10C. So far it has exceeded my expectations.

I had been intrigued by the THR10 series since it’s first introduction years ago, but never committed to buying one due to two simple facts; first I have some very nice tube amps with no need to turn down to un-toneful levels, and second I have been unsatisfied by digital amp simulators in the past. While I’ve had some that sounded great, like the Digitech GSP1101, they were not really inspiring to play and were not complete packages requiring external amplifiers to play out loud.

There was also the issue of option paralysis where I spent more time creating tones or sounds and not actually playing, an issue solved by the THR10C’s simplicity in controls. Amp, Gain, Master, EQ, 2 Effects and Volume controls are all that are here and are just the right amount of customization without ever spending too much time hunting for a tone. Speaking of tone, as much as I was skeptical from all the hype and buzz wording, this thing sounds fantastic and really does react and feel like a tube amp. Turning up the Master control gives a very satisfying compression as it would on a small tube combo and allows for some great variation in setting headroom or a more punchy tone.

Effects selection is simple and split between two knobs, one for modulation (Chorus, Flanger, Phaser and Tremolo) and one for time (Delay and Reverb). All of the effects are nice and simple to use with tap tempo for the delay (a Tape Delay simulation to match the vintage feel of the amp models) and sound as you’d expect. A tuner is also built in for ease of use as well as five favorite settings that are easy to assign and recall. There is also a suite of software that lets you customize more settings via usb, but I have yet to play with those so will report back later on that front.

The last feature I’d like to highlight has actually turned out to be one of my favorites and has redefined the use of this amp, and that is the aux in. While it sounds like a very simple thing, and indeed it is very simple to use with a stereo in port and a separate volume control, it makes the amp a much more world and practice friendly device. It allows me to play along to backing tracks with a dead simple ability to balance my guitar volume to the track volume (which by the way is always played through a flat eq in case you were worried) as well as use the amp as a loud speaker for parties (which it does very well).

Overall the Yamaha THR10C is an outstanding value that does everything it sets out to do very well. It is an outstanding practice amp that sounds great even at low volumes and a great loudspeaker for parties. I look forward to trying out the software side of it for tweaking and recording, as well as trying out my pedal board with it as I hear it takes to pedals very naturally. One day I may switch to a Fryette Power Station or a Kemper for my low volume playing, but for now the instant startup and quality tone for a price tag of $200 blemish unit, you just can’t go wrong. The one modern feature that I would say is missed which I would suspect would come in a future update is Bluetooth pairing for the aux input. That little quibble aside, there is nothing else I would want to see improved and am more than satisfied.

 

Can you Dumble?

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The Dumble Overdrive Special is an amp of legends. Smooth and creamy with nicely pushed mids, yet so tightly defined that individual notes ring through even with massive amounts of gain dialed in. Of course, this is what I’ve been told, or read on the internet so it must be true. There is no denying however that the sound you hear from various artists that use these holy grail amplifiers is alluring and inspiring for guitar players to listen to.

Now I can’t afford an ODS (yet! one day… ) but I do have a Two Rock Studio Pro 35 which is, through some levels of relation, based on the clean sound of a Dumble, and does do a very nice job indeed. A great “pedal platform” amp, it takes anything you can throw at it and makes it sound very good, but one thing I hadn’t tried until just now was mimicking the gain structure of an ODS. You see one of the things that sets apart the ODS is the fact that the overdrive happens after the tone stack of the clean channel, basically putting it where the effects loop of most other amps is. This got me thinking, why not put a gain pedal in the loop and see how it goes.

Now of course conventional guitar tone wisdom says that this would never work, but conventions are always being rewritten anyway so I might as well be the one to give it a show. My first try was a Paul Cochrane Tim, thinking the transparent nature of the pedal would help blend it into the sound of the amp and let me add just some hair to it as I do with the pedal going into the front. Strike 1, this did not work very well at all, it somehow wasn’t compressing in a way that felt right, now was it leaving the clean and clear overheat of the amp in tact. Maybe convention was there for a reason.

Attempt number two was much better. Much, much better. A tanabe.tv Dumkudo in the loop set to Dumble (green) mode and we are off and running. The Dumkudo offers a lot of volume and gain on tap with a mid boost that can be dialed in just right to get the amp singing. Turning the volume knob down on the guitar cleans up nicely, but loses a bit too much volume at the same time. Add a Keeley Compressor Pro before the amp input and the volume level stays more in the sweet spot while letting me adjust the gain with my guitars volume. The results speak for themselves, with high dynamic range (actually too much before the compressor was added), touch sensitivity, excellent sustain and works very well with additional pedal going into the front of the amp, it really is an all around win.

So some things to test in the future; I need to A/B the Dumkudo in front vs the loop as this pedal does just sound incredible all around so it may be that there isn’t that big of a difference wherever the pedal is, but I do need to try it out so I can see differences in sensitivity or dynamics. Also my testing was all done at semi-home levels, not bedroom but not live either. Turning up the amp and having the power section work harder may eliminate the need for the compressor and may yield different results. Lastly, I have only tried those 2 pedals so far, but I have many gain pedals so I should run through all of them and see which ones seem to work best to try and draw some conclusions as to guessing which other pedals may work well (I am looking at you Kingsley).

For now, how a listen and give it a try on your own amp if you have an effects loop. Worse you can do is learn what not to do.