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Archive for the ‘gear’ Category

Am I GAS’d Out?

Posted in gear, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, Music on June 29, 2008| 11 Comments »

It just occurred to me that I haven’t gotten any new gear lately. Okay, I just got a new PRS SE Soapbar II guitar a couple of weeks ago. But the thing that struck me was that I wasn’t really even in the market for a guitar when I got it – I wasn’t even thinking about getting a new guitar! The opportunity just kind of presented itself, and I acquired it.

My approach to guitar gear lately has been much like the graphic to the left. Think of the signs being different pieces of gear that point the way to different paths in a journey for tone. I’m at a huge fork in the road right now, and don’t quite know which path to take.

But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Come to think of it, I’m pretty happy with my tone right now. Unless something mind-blowing comes along, I’m probably not going to be looking to get any new pedals for my rig. I would still like to get a new amp; especially one that has a tube rectifier in it because I love the voltage sag you get from a tube rectifier and the reverb-like tone it can give you. But I can live with what I’ve got for probably years to come.

All that said, I think I’m in a good place with respect to gear, and you know what? I’m actually okay with coming to this fork in the road. It’s a bit liberating because unlike the picture, I’m not really scratching my head trying to figure out which way I want to go tonally. I’ve got my sound, so all things being equal, any path is good – at least for now.

But ever one that has dreams of attaining gear, here are some things completely beyond my current budget that I’m dreaming of getting one day (not necessarily in order of acquisition):

  • Either a Victoria Double Deluxe or a Victoria Victorilux
  • King Amplification Uptown 33 (Kenny Neal plays one and it SCREAMS!)
  • Vox Virage
  • Gibson Les Paul Double Cutaway (this actually is not too far out of reach, but it would be tough now).
  • Vox AC30 (I dig that tone!)

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Picking Up the Scent of a New Guitar

Posted in gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, musicians on June 24, 2008| 5 Comments »

Yesterday, I received the following comment on my rating system page:

Hey , I just purchased a SAINT GUITAR COMPANY “bechmark” model From MESA/Boogie  Hollywood. It is  by far the nicest custom instument I’ve ever Played . Y’all should  check them out. The only reveiws I’ve seen for these is on harmony central.Any who . .  check em out .

At first, I thought it was spam, but wanted to be fair and do some research first before I marked the comment as spam. So I called the Mesa Boogie store in Hollywood to see if they carried the guitars, and they confirmed that they did, but only sold them on consignment. The sales guy did say the guitars both played and sounded awesome, so that was encouraging and piqued my interest even more. Then I read the reviews on Harmony Central. Every review just raved about how playable and sweet sound the guitars play, which made me a little leary because it’s entirely possible that they could’ve been planted. I did find the company’s web site, but it’s so new that a lot of stuff doesn’t work on it. I also left a message for what appears to be the founder of the Saint Guitar Company – hopefully he’ll call me back.

It has been a long time since I’ve heard of any truly new guitar brand; I mean, this brand came out of the blue for me! It’ll be interesting, to say the least, to get the low-down on these guitars.

BTW, if you have any other information on the Saint Guitar Company, please let me know!!! 🙂

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Need Gear? Here are some tips…

Posted in buying gear, gear, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians on June 21, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Lots of people ask me if there’s a process I go through when I want some gear, if I have any tips for buying gear, so I thought I’d share some ideas. Before I dive into details, let me advise that you should first evaluate your need. I came up with a great way to do that – as long as you’re completely honest with yourself. Check out my GAS Management Page.

So let’s say you’re definitely going to get some gear. You’ve done the GAS test, and it says, “buy, Buy, BUY!!!” You still need to come to terms with acquiring it. If you have the resources, it’s a simple matter of ordering, but if you’re like many of us with limited financial means, you need to find some creative ways to get the gear. So here’s some do’s and don’ts….

  • DO: Try bartering first. I’ve bartered my talents as a web developer for lots of things. It’s a win-win for both you and the seller, and most of the time, all it takes is time.
  • DO: Wait a week or two to see if your wanting settles down. In many cases, you’ll find that you don’t really need the gear, though it would be nice to have.
  • DO: Put gear on layaway. It’s a financial commitment to buy within a certain period of time, but you don’t get charged interest.
  • DO: Negotiate the price. Everything is negotiable in some respect. If you can’t get the price lowered, see if the seller will throw something in with the gear. You’ll find that even major retailers will do this. I’ve gotten lots of sets of strings this way, to the point where I haven’t purchased any strings for a few years. 🙂
  • DON’T buy on credit or financing, unless you plan to pay off the entire purchase within a couple of months. I’ve racked up thousands in the past doing this, and it’s not a pretty sight getting rid of that debt.
  • DON’T be impulsive. Make an acquisition plan, and stick with it.
  • DON’T bail and settle for something cheaper. You’ll be sorry you did. But let me qualify that.  If that something cheaper  fits your need better than the  more expensive item, by all means get it. I did this with my Strat, literally saving $2000!

Oh well… that’s it for now… If I come up with more DO’s and DON’TS, I’ll post more…

Rock on!!!

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When in doubt, gig…

Posted in gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians on June 10, 2008| 1 Comment »

In my humble (or not so humble 🙂 ) opinion, there’s no better way to evaluate gear than to gig with it. It’s one thing to play with a piece of gear in a controlled environment; it’s an entirely different matter when you use it to perform your music. Gigs can be a chaotic affair, and when you gig with something, its quirks and strengths show themselves.

For instance, let’s say you want to evaluate a new amp. It’s easy to twiddle with the knobs in the shop or in someone’s garage to evaluate the sound it produces. But when you gig with it, there are a lot of factors that come into play such as transport weight, the ability to cut through a mix, tonal quality when played in a crowd – lots of things that aren’t apparent when you’re in a controlled environment.

So if you’re evaluating a new piece of gear, ask the person or shop selling it if they lend it to you, or if you can rent the gear so you can try it out before you buy it. That way you can bring it to where you’ll be using it the most – studio, rehearsal, etc. – to see how it performs. Personally, I wish I had done that with my Line 6 Flextone III amp. Once I got it, it was great for studio work, but transporting it was painful (the damn thing weighed a ton), and it sounded horrible when I gigged with it. Had I evaluated it before I made a decision to buy it, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. Oh well, as a friend of mine once said, “You just got levied a learning tax.”

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

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Review: PRS SE Soapbar II

Posted in gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars on June 6, 2008| 21 Comments »

PRS Soapbar SE II

Summary: Made in Korea? Who the hell cares! Workmanship is incredible, the paint job is impeccable, and with the two P-90’s, this dog’s got bite! But roll off the volume, and it becomes a sweet, cuddly puppy.

Pros: Real simple controls: Two knobs and a 3-position pickup toggle. Very versatile tones from nice, almost chimey cleans to bright, crunchy breakup.

Cons: Not a whole lot of sustain, but that’s to be expected

Price: $250-$500 Street depending on condition

What better way to chill at the end of a busy work week than to come home, strap on a guitar and let your fingers do the walking. Even better to have a great guitar to play with, as I certainly just did with the PRS SE Soapbar II! My good buddy, Phil, from a local cover band, Phil ‘N The Blanks lent me his SE Soapbar II today to try and perhaps buy. He told me I wouldn’t be disappointed. Aw shucks! Looks like I’m soon gonna be adding to my collection! Ne’er to worry, the sound this guitar produces will more than make up for the money I’ll be shelling out. Let’s get into the details, shall we?

Fit and Finish

First of all, this is one gorgeous guitar! The one I played has a translucent teal finish that beautifully fades into a glossy black lacquer trim; and as a dedicated San Jose Sharks fan, what better than to have a guitar that’s the color of my favorite hockey team!!! The neck is also finished in glossy black lacquer. Very nice. Phil has taken great care of this guitar. There were no scratches on it whatsoever!

As far as the build quality is concerned, I couldn’t see any obvious joints or imperfections on the body. This is one well-made guitar!

The body is solid mahogany with a flame maple top, whose grain is visible through the translucent finish. It’s stunningly gorgeous. The neck is a solid mahogany set neck with a rosewood fretboard. That alone attracts me to the guitar, as I just love a rosewood fretboard and the warmth it adds to your tone.

Playability

When I read other reviews of the SE, I was a little dubious, as most people talked about the wide, C-shaped neck. I have relatively short fingers, so neck diameter is a real important to me. All I can say is that the neck on this guitar is just how I like it. It’s wider than my Strat’s neck, but despite that, it’s just a dream in my hands. The semi-flush heel also allows someone like me with short fingers to comfortably reach notes above the 18th fret with ease.

Phil had the action set on this SE a bit higher than how I usually like it, but despite that minor nit that can be easily remedied, the neck is fast, and the frets are perfectly finished – not too deep and not too shallow, so you can bend and easily articulate nice vibrato without going out of key.

One thing I really like about this guitar was the simple controls: Two knobs and a 3-way toggle. The volume knob is perfectly positioned for rolling up or down volume with your pinky – very convenient. From a playability standpoint, PRS truly made this guitar with a gigging guitarist in mind. Everything it about how you play this guitar speaks of convenience and playability with minimal fuss.

The SE also sports a bit shorter scale length than the Strat – 25″ vs 25 1/2″ – it doesn’t seem like much, but the shorter scale length does help in getting around the neck.

How It Sounds

To test how the SE sounds, I plugged it into my trusty 5 Watt Champ, which I’ve found is a great way to test out guitars as all it has is a volume knob. Tone and sustain all have to come from the guitar when plugged into this amp, and from that perspective, the SE simply shines. It’s truly the first guitar I’ve played in a long time that is SUPER-responsive to volume rolls. With any pickup you can go from clean to dirty simply by rolling the volume knob. The neck pickup produces a nice, hollow clean tone, reminiscent of using the bridge and center pickups on a Strat; but unlike the Strat there’s no ringing. The tone is deep and smooth. Rolling up the volume produces just a tiny bit of grit, that you can increase significantly by attacking the strings more. In fact, in all three settings the guitar responds incredibly well to pick attack. You gotta love it.

My favorite pickup setting was with both pickups engaged. In this position, the tonal quality became a lot more complex, with a noticeable midrange boost (something I prefer), and just as with the neck pickup,
the responsiveness to pick attack was still present – probably even more so in this position.

With the bridge pickup selected, you get that classic P-90 tight, bright honk. I’ve traditionally not been a bridge pickup kind of guy as the highs on most guitars are just too over the top for me. But with the SE, I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn’t the case. Yes, the treble boost was there, but it was quite pleasing to me!

Summing It Up

I saw a video on YouTube with PRS himself with Mike Ault demonstrating the SE, and PRS said the mission of the SE was to be the best value guitar on the market. Frankly, I don’t know how true this is in reality, but I’m willing to bet that that’s not a very far-fetched statement. For the money, you get what amounts to a tone chameleon! You want blues? You got it? Wanna do some classic rock? No prob. High gain? Got it covered. I will warn that this guitar may not appeal to thrash metal guys, but hey! You never know.

So the verdict? I’m going to have to explain to my wife why I need another guitar… 🙂

ROCK ON!!!

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GuitarGear.org GeoCache

Posted in gear, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars on May 27, 2008| Leave a Comment »

This past weekend, I discovered a new hobby: GeoCaching. From geocaching.com:

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What is Geocaching?

Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.

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I had a total blast searching for caches over the weekend with my son, and considering my recent health problems, it’s a great way for me get outdoors and get some exercise to boot. I’m so inspired by this that I’m going to create a GuitarGear.org GeoCache, and fill it with custom printed GuitarGear.org picks. It’ll be a great way to share the love!

Stay tuned for GuitarGear.org’s GPS coordinates!!!

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Vintage Gear Find: ’64 Epiphone Futura

Posted in amps, gear, gear reviews, guitar gear on May 27, 2008| 4 Comments »

The big drawback of being a gear freak is that it can be an expensive hobby. But at the same time, it’s a hell of a lot of fun discovering new gear, or discovering little-known vintage gear. I was in a local use gear store the other day, and happened upon this amp. What a classic! It’s all-tube, with 4 – 8″ speakers. As far as tone goes, think Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, and perhaps a little quieter Dick Dale. In other words, this produces pure, clean surf guitar tone.

I tried it out with a number of guitars, and could never get it to break up. Talk about headroom! I do have to say that with a drive pedal, it didn’t sound too good. Actually, it sounded awful with a drive pedal.

Here’s the cool thing about this amp: If you run across one, and you like its sound, you can get it for around $500. For a clean tone vintage amp, that’s a pretty awesome price!

As far as features are concerned, it has two completely independent channels. The first channel only has EQ, while the second channel adds Presence, Reverb and Vibrato. Unfortunately, the vibrato on the amp I tried didn’t work, but the reverb was nice and thick, and reminiscent of old surf music. It sounded best with a semi- or hollow-body axe with the reverb kicked in about halfway.

There aren’t too many of these floating around, but you can find ’em.

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Review: BOSS CS-3 Compressor/Sustainer

Posted in Effects, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, Guitars, Music on May 15, 2008| 9 Comments »

BOSS CS-3 Compression/Sustainer
Summary: If you’re looking to really squeeze your signal, this box’ll do it.

Pros: 4 knobs provide great flexibility to shape your compression. For the money, it’s a pretty good deal.

Cons: Has probably some of the most severe compression I’ve ever experienced, which results in a loss of tone. Sounds okay with solid state amps, but horrible with tube amps.

Price: $89 Street

Back when I was looking for a compressor to fatten up the tone of my Strat to compensate for the really bright Tex-Mex pickups, I evaluated a bunch of compressor pedals, from the high-end (Maxon, Demeter) to the low-end, one of which was the BOSS CS-3 and MXR DynaComp.

I recently went through my review notebook and saw that I didn’t do a review of the CS-3, so here goes…

To start with, if you don’t want to read the entire article, if you’re a hard-rock/metal player, I think you’ll like this pedal. It’s real squishy, and combined with an amp that produces a tone of low-freq, it will definitely get you that super-compressed distortion. On the other hand, if you’re a jazz/blues or classic rock player, you will not like this pedal as it can really muddy your clean tone.

That said above, the CS-3 is not a bad pedal. It’s well-made, and compared with other BOSS I’ve owned in the past, it is probably just as reliable. But the CS-3 follows in pretty much the same formula as other BOSS pedals: You get decent tone for a relatively cheap price. They’re made for a mass market audience. Not that that is intrinsically bad, but if you’re a real tone freak, it won’t be up to par tonally with what you’ve come to expect. But high expectations aside, as I said, the CS-3 is not a bad pedal, and with the right amount of tweaking you can get a decent tone from this box.

One thing I really liked about this pedal is its configurability. It has four knobs for Level, Tone, Attack, and Sustain. The Tone knob really comes in handy as you increase the sustain, as I found that increased levels muddied the high-freq tones. The Tone knob helps to compensate for that to a point. But dial in too much highs and your tone becomes really “tinny” irrespective of the guitar you use. Having an Attack knob is a pretty cool feature as well, as you can adjust how fast the compression kicks in. Not bad for a $89 pedal.

The unit I tested was a little noisy when engaged, not matter how much I tweaked the knobs. It wasn’t so apparent when tested with a Roland Cube 60, but with a tube amp (tested on a Fender Twin and 65 Super Reverb Reissue), the soft hiss was a bit annoying. But with either type of amp, as I mentioned above, this thing really squeezes your signal to the point that there’s a noticeable difference in tone between the unit being engaged and not engaged. In comparison, my Maxon CP-9 Pro+ when engaged retains my tone even at higher levels of compression, but just “feels” fatter. Very transparent.

All in all, the BOSS CS-3 is a decent pedal. For someone on a budget who wants to add some compression to their signal, as I said above, this will do the job. But if you’re looking for transparency, this isn’t the pedal for you.

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Customer Service – When It Comes to Gear, It Really Does Matter

Posted in gear, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars on April 25, 2008| 1 Comment »

Customer Service Cartoon

If you’re like me, you dread calling up any company’s customer service center. Nowadays you never know if the person on the other end of the line is even in the same country as you. But when customer service is good; that is, the rep listens attentively to your problem, and can offer a solution, or short of that, does his or her best to solve your problem, you come away feeling good. Perhaps more importantly, the “feel-good” image you get about the company will most likely make you a repeat customer.

About a week ago, I called up the Jim Dunlop company in search of some parts. I stupidly misplaced the extra wires that came with my Dunlop DC-Brick, and needed to get replacements (and some extras just in case). I got routed to a tech support guy who helped me get the right part numbers, and he transferred me to a sales rep who promptly took my order – all in the space of about 3 minutes. Very quick, very efficient. I was impressed.

A couple of days ago, the wires arrived. I excitedly opened the box, and my heart sank as I realized that they were the wrong wires! I didn’t get mad mainly because I thought that I might have not provided a good enough description for the tech to get the right part. But I resolved to call the company and make a new order for the right wires.

I called them up yesterday, and mentioned to the tech that I probably ordered the wrong wires, and said, “What I need are the wires with the 1/8″ male on one end, and the center-negative female on the other. The part number for the ones I ordered were […].” The tech replied, “Hmmm…. that’s actually part number for those wires, but you got 1/8″ males on both ends. Our mistake. In that case, I’m going to take your information down right now and we’ll ship you 4 of the correct parts free of charge.”

Wow! I was so impressed with that level of customer service that I offered to pay the shipping, but he insisted that since it was Dunlop’s mistake, they needed to rectify the situation. Now that’s great customer service, and even though I hadn’t been a Dunlop customer prior to this, they’ve moved to the top of my list for companies that I know will provide great customer service should I have a problem.

Customer care is important, folks. Since I’ve become a real gear addict, it is one of the things that I consider before purchasing anything. Especially if I’m going to buy something that’s expensive, I call up a company’s customer service to ask questions and see how they respond. If I don’t feel comfortable with their customer care, I don’t feel as comfortable with buying the gear. Take, for instance, this review about the PRS DGT. A reader, Jimi Ray Clapton, had been waiting 9 months for his new DGT, and it still hadn’t come. He even spoke to PRS himself at a show with no results. Every time he called, there were further delays with very little action or follow-up. Consider that if you spend a few thousand dollars on a piece of gear, you want some attentive customer service! I would at least…

I know it’s a bit of a pain, but do yourself a favor and include customer service as part of your buying decision. You’ll want to know that the company you’re dealing with is going to be responsive to your needs.

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Review: Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe

Posted in gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, Guitars on April 21, 2008| 6 Comments »

5 Tone Bones - Gear has stellar performance, value, and quality. This is definitely top of the class, best of breed, and it’s a no-brainer to add this to your gear lineup! Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe

Summary: Looking for that vibey sound? Look no further. The Micro Vibe serves up a range of vibe tone from chimey chorus to thick, soupy psychedelic in nice compact stomp box.

Pros: Incredibly versatile vibe that has multiple personalities depending upon where you set the knobs.

Cons: A little tricky to set up in your chain, and can be finicky with overdrive pedals, and can make your low-end really boomy (not hard to overcome, though).

Price: $149 Street

I wrote a comparison review between the Micro Vibe and the Fulltone Mini Deja Vibe, two excellent ‘vibe pedals out on the market, but since I recently purchased the Micro Vibe, I thought I’d do a full review because my original evaluation was done in a more controlled environment A/B’ing the two pedals.

First off, this pedal is extremely easy to use. Two knobs control intensity and speed, and toggle switch turns the unit on and off. This pedal is true-bypass as well, so when it’s off, it’s really off – very nice to find in a relatively affordable pedal. To get that psychedelic sound, you set intensity about 4 or 5 o’clock, and the speed anywhere between 11 and 2 o’clock. For a more chorus-like effect, I set both Intensity at 12 o’clock and speed at about 1 o’clock. I’m still playing with it, but so far, so good!

Like the Fulltone, the Micro Vibe boasts a faithful reproduction of the original UniVibe’s circuitry. I’m not much of an electrical guy, so I’ll take their word for it. However, in the previous comparison review, I mentioned that the Micro Vibe has a slightly darker tone than the Mini Deja. To me, it has a rich tone that really brings out the lows – though I found through my latest experimentation that you really have to be careful about your EQ. Too much low-end, and you’ll get a really muddy sound. I found that with both the Mini Deja and the Micro Vibe, but a bit more so with the Micro Vibe. It wasn’t too hard to overcome with a little EQ adjustment, though, so that was just a minor problem. All in all though, the two pedals sounded very similar, giving off that ‘vibe sound that I just love.

What the Fulltone has over the Micro Vibe is a Vibrato mode, that gives you the pulse from the photoresistor without the phase effect. It also costs almost twice as much. For me, I wanted a dedicated ‘vibe pedal with no other accoutrements, and the Micro Vibe serves that up just fine!

One thing that I found really nice with the Micro Vibe was how the pedal’s intensity responded to the input gain from my guitar. Higher gain produced higher levels of intensity. That’s very cool because it’s possible to dial back the intensity of the effect from your guitar.

In any case, here are a couple of sound clips I recorded to demonstrate a bit of the Micro Vibe’s capabilities:

TS-808 plus Micro Vibe:

Micro Vibe with a bit of reverb:

Both clips were played with my Strat and output through a Fender Champion 600.

I did find it a bit challenging placing the Micro Vibe in my signal chain. Placed before my overdrive pedals, it was pretty tough to control, and the resultant pulsing drive wasn’t too pleasing to the ear – though it was correctable with some minor tweaks to the OD pedals. I found that it worked the best (at least so far) at the end of my chain, right before my BBE Sonic Maximizer. It’ll stay there for awhile, then I’ll switch its position to see how it compares.

Here’s an interesting thing that I found that I forgot to mention: The Micro Vibe sounds absolutely horrid with a Fulltone OCD. I really wasn’t expecting that. It probably could be the chip that’s used in the OCD. Whether I put the Micro Vibe in front of the OCD, or after it didn’t matter. The combination was UGLY! But it sounds awesome with Tube Screamer-type pedals like my TS-808 and Bad Monkey.

In conclusion, if you’re looking for that vibey sound, the Voodoo Lab Micro Vibe delivers that in spades, and at a very affordable price!

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