Guitar Gear

I was watching a GREAT video on Rhett Shull’s channel today where he was interviewing one of the greatest session guitarists, Tim Pierce. Near the end of the video, Tim said something that I just had to share:

“I paid a lot for this amp but it doesn’t do everything… It just does one thing… That’s the thing you’ve GOT to make peace with…”

Here’s where he says it in the video:

I recommend watching the whole video because it focuses on how to use something near and dear to my heart: Overdrive!

But OMG!!! When I heard Tim say those words, “Make peace with it,” I said, “F#$k yeah!” out loud because that simple, short phrase articulates exactly where I’ve evolved to with respect to gear.

Other than my guitars, I’ve always been about versatility with all my other gear. But not in the way you might think. With pedals or amps, I will dial them into their sweet spot – at least where I feel the sweet spot is – then always keep them set there. But that said, I always wanted to know that if I wanted to do something different, the potential was there, and I could make an easy change.

For instance, take my BOSS Katana Artist. It is loaded with great BOSS effects. But I don’t use it that way. In fact, I use it like I would a tube amp. I have four channels to work with on that amp. The first channel I have the amp set to the edge of break-up. It’s the channel I use the most. The second and third channels I add a touch of reverb and both reverb and delay, respectively, on top of Channel 1’s settings. The fourth channel is my clean, maximum headroom channel where I texture my sound with pedals. I don’t use any other effects on the amp other than reverb and delay, and I use those sparingly. But it’s comforting to know that I have access to other effects on the amp if I need to add other textures. But to be honest, in the 2 1/2 years that I’ve had the amp, I haven’t used it any other way.

But making peace with what your gear does best is a pretty important thing. And make no bones about it, it’s an intensely personal matter as well. The sweet spot that you may find for something may be completely different than someone else’s sweet spot. Especially if you participate in online forums, it’s easy to fall into the trap of taking someone’s word about some gear, especially if that person is popular. That’s why I always say to evaluate gear yourself. The point is that you have to find the sweet spot that works for you. And it may very well be that you don’t find that sweet spot.

Though GuitarGear.org is still a pretty popular site, I only post a few articles a year now. It’s not so much that I’ve lost interest in gear. It’s really that I’ve found my sound and I know what I want and the gear that I have accomplishes what I need – for now. That may very well change. And if I’m really going to be honest, I’ll never get tired of overdrives. 🙂 Watching that video and Tim Pierce playing the Nobels ODR-1, I realized that – amazingly enough – I don’t have that one in my collection. I’m going to go to my local Guitar Center and play and perhaps pick one up today if I like it.

To be clear, it won’t be an impulse buy. I’ve actually been looking for an overdrive that works well with my Taylor T5z. Since I’m back playing regularly at my church gig again, I realized that the T5z needs a little help when I play rock and roll. I’ve been using my Timmy, and it’s okay, but it’s a little thin. I’m looking for a different kind of sound and I think setting up the ODR-1 with a slightly scooped sound will help a lot! I’ll just have to play it and find out!