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Posts Tagged ‘GAS’

Gig Report: KASHA Overdrive

Posted in buying gear, effect pedals, Effects, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar effects, guitar gear, guitar pedals, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, overdrive, pedals, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »

KASHA KA-ODP-A

OMG!!! Just gigged with my brand-new KASHA Overdrive last night, and I was in tonal heaven! Even though I’d done a pretty good test on it in my original review, there’s nothing like using gear in a live situation. So here are my observations:

  • Incredible Dynamics – The one thing that is readily apparent is how this pedal responds to pick attack and volume knob changes. It is so amp-like, it’s uncanny! I set the pedal up in unity gain with just normal strums on my guitar. But if I dug in a bit more, the pedal responded just like an amp with a bit more punch and volume. Frankly, the volume swell surprised the hell out of me. It’s not huge, mind you, but the response is so amp-like, it really does take you by surprise. I totally dug that while gigging last night!
  • Plays Well With Other Overdrive Pedals – I love stacking overdrives, and the KASHA OD performs beautifully in this role. I set it up as a based OD pedal, then stack it with my Tone Freak Effects Abunai 2. Those two together are an awesome combination!
  • Lots of Tonal Variety – While my favorite channel on this is the Classic channel that adds a chimey mote to your tone, I also played in the Hot channel as well, and the grit and grind was super-sweet. But add to that the dynamic response of the pedal, and what you’ve got is a pedal that has a lot of inherent tonal variety. Last night, I ran it mostly through the clean channel of my amp. But later, I screwed around with it a bit more in my studio, with my amp set at the very edge of breakup. This is where the pedal just warms my heart! With its touch sensitivity, when my amp is set up at the edge of breakup, I can take my tone from gritty and grimy to sweet and chimey with just a touch of dirt simply by modifying my attack or adjusting my volume knob.
  • Open Distortion Characteristics – No matter what channel you use with the KASHA Overdrive, the overdrive never gets compressed. It just gets dirtier. The cool thing about that is that any kind of compression will then come from your power tubes. I’ve rarely liked that compression in pedals, save for my Abunai 2, which compresses in a very pleasing way, but for most overdrive pedals, I don’t want that at all, and thankfully, the KASHA Overdrive remains very open, no matter how hot you go on the channels.
  • Simple Design – Probably one of the best features of this pedal that I appreciate is its straight-forward design. Notice that it doesn’t have an EQ control. It doesn’t need it. It takes your signal, adds a voice to it, and that’s it! Set your EQ on your guitar and/or amp to where you want it, then set the gain knob on the pedal, and just play. What could be more simple?

All in all, I’m pretty much done with my search for an overdrive pedal. I knew it from the first time I played this; and combined with my other OD’s, I can pretty much say – at least for quite awhile – I’m set in the overdrive department!

I’m an overdrive pedal freak, and I can safely say that this is the best overdrive pedal that I have ever played! It’s hard to believe that this little black monster does what it does. I’m totally blown away by it, and I’ve only gigged with it once! I can’t wait to really start using it in all its modes!

For more information, go to the KASHA web site!

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Gear Announcement: Saint Guitars Releases Its New Vintage Series

Posted in gear, gear announcements, guitar, guitar gear, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, new gear, Saint Guitar Company, Saint Guitars Vintage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2009| 4 Comments »

This announcement is so new that Saint Guitar Company hasn’t even put it up on their web site! I first caught wind of this new series a few months ago when Adam mentioned to me in a conversation that he was starting to work on a new style of guitar. This new series was to be a mild departure from the modern rock-inspired designs he has been building for the past several years, and roll time back just a bit to create what he was coining his new “Vintage” series, which would be chambered, have retro styling, and employ P-90 pickups. I don’t have any final build details as of yet, but his first in the series sure looks fantastic. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment!

I can’t wait to do an evaluation on one of these. It’s really exciting! I love the body style on this, with the less pronounced horns, and rounder lower bout, and I dig that flat top! Very cool!

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New Gear: Way Huge Angry Troll

Posted in booster, clean boost, distortion, effect pedals, Effects, GAS, gear, guitar, guitar effects, guitar gear, guitar pedals, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, new gear, pedals, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Wanna slam the front-end of your amp with up to 50dB of gain, then be able to add some distortion? Then look no further than the Way Huge Angry Troll. I don’t have much information on it yet, but it’s a simple two knob affair. The left-hand knob controls the variable boost, while the right-hand knob provides 6 positions of “Anger” from no anger (clean boost) to a full fist. Here’s ProGuitarShop.com’s video demo.

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Gear Review: StageTrix Pedal Risers

Posted in accessories, buying gear, effect pedals, Effects, GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar effects, guitar gear, guitar pedals, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, new gear, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2009| 2 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!stagetrix_riser StageTrix Pedal Risers

Summary: Definitely one of those “why didn’t I think of that” kinds of products. Elevates pedals 1 inch and makes reaching your back row easy. Routing allows you to keep your wires out of the way!

Pros: Very well made, with convenient fuzz to attach your Velcro’d pedals.

Cons: None.

Features:

  • Raises the second row of pedals to the perfect height.
  • Front, back and side openings enable effective cable routing.
  • Premium 18-gauge steel.
  • Attaches to board via heavy duty hook-and-loop fastener on base, which holds firm up to 200°F.
  • Designed to withstand temperatures of up to 200F without melting, so leaving your pedal board in your vehicle on a summer day won’t result in a gooey mess with all the Velcro peeling off.
  • Works with most pedalboards. To be sure, check that you have an extra 1″ of clearance when case is closed. The vast majority do.

Price: $16.99

Tone Bone Score: 5.0 – I dig these things. No, they don’t improve my tone nor technique, but they sure make it easier to tap dance on my pedal board!

This will most likely be a short review because this product doesn’t do much at all – that’s not a bad thing, either… It simply elevates your pedals. But as an accessory, since I’ve installed a set of four on my board, it has proven invaluable to me! In one fell swoop, the StageTrix Pedal Risers made the back row of my board instantly accessible AND cleaned up my cable runs! Where I used to have to run my cables along the sides if my pedals, I now run them underneath the risers because of their built-in routing. My board hasn’t looked this good – EVER!

Admittedly, I was a bit dubious about their ruggedness when I first discovered them. But once I got them, that opinion changed quickly. These risers are heavy and it’s obvious a lot of attention was paid to the details in their construction. They won’t bend, and that’s a testament to their construction. I even stood on one (I’m not a small man), and the pedal riser didn’t budge!

On top of that, the Pedal Risers are set up for immediate and easy use. The entire base is covered with velcro out of the box, and the top is covered with a thin fuzz for attaching your pedals. No assembly required! I hate to attach velcro tape to stuff. It’s a pain in the ass!

Once I got my board set up, I hooked it up to my amp and started tap-dancing. I immediately started smiling because for the first time, I didn’t have to put my foot in an awkward position to engage one of my pedals in my back row for fear of messing up the settings of a pedal on my front line – or heaven forbid, engaging a pedal that I didn’t want to engage. Nothing like doing a clean solo, clicking on my vibe and simultaneously engaging an overdrive. No doubt, it’s a little unsettling. But that won’t happen any longer. The StageTrix Pedal Risers completely eliminate that possibility!

Currently, they’re sold out, so you can’t get them directly from StageTrix Products at the moment. But they should soon make it to retail stores. Check their site often, as they often update it with news!

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Words that Trigger Your GAS!

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2009| 3 Comments »

After I wrote my previous entry that I was taking a break from my GAS, I got into a conversation with my good buddy about things or words that trigger GAS attacks. Here are some that I’ve used that trigger that impulsive GAS:

“It’s just…”

“That’s a great deal at $150!”

“That would go great with…”

“That sounds so sweet!”

“Oh man! It’s half off the original price!”

Care to share?

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Taking a GAS Break…

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , on October 5, 2009| 5 Comments »

guitars

I was perusing the latest issue of a guitar mag this morning and started thinking about my new guitar, Goldie, and what gold pickup covers would look like on her. Talk about dissociative thinking! The article I was reading had absolutely nothing to do with pickup covers! Ha! I went to my computer, then did a search on pickup covers, found a place to purchase them, pulled out my wallet, then stopped. I stood up, closed my eyes, and said out loud, “This is nuts! What the F#%k do I need pickup covers for? I gotta just stop this sh&t!” That was a case of what I’m now calling “impulsive GAS.”

Basically, as the term implies, “impulsive GAS” is gassing AND buying purely on impulse. No calculation, no evaluation of whether or not I may need the particular item. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that! I think of something, get a dose of GAS, then pull out my debit card and either order it or if I’m at a store, buy it on the spot. What’s worse is that it’s happened so much that I don’t even have buyer’s remorse! I used to get it, but no longer. Perhaps I’ve just tucked all those feelings away.

Now you might just say, “Hey man, it’s just pickup covers.” But that’s the whole point! Those two words, “It’s just…” are enough to send me and I’m sure other gear sluts over the edge. It has gotten to the point where “it’s just” justifies everything! And that’s dangerous.

Admittedly, while sometimes doing things impulsively can be rewarding, making a habit of it isn’t good – I can’t tell you how much stuff I’ve purchased that I just don’t use any longer – and I know I’m not alone in this.

So this was a wakeup call for me. I’m definitely going to look before I leap!

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Gear Review: Pointless Picks

Posted in GAS, gear, gear reviews, guitar, guitar gear, guitar picks, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, plectrum, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on September 27, 2009| 5 Comments »

4 Tone Bones - Excellent gear, that exceeds expectations of its performance, value, and quality. Strongly consider purchasing this.

Pointless Picks

 Pointless Picks

Summary: Really out-of-the-box approach to picks. They’re perfectly round with a raised bevel in the center so you don’t drop ’em.

Pros: Really easy to hold, and strumming with these picks creates a nice ringing tone – not nearly as fat as I thought, but that’s okay! Works great as rhythm guitar pickup or for playing acoustic guitar where a lot of strumming is involved. Great to use as a strummer!

Cons: I found picking out individual notes only okay, and if you’re one of those folks that holds their picks at a 45 degree angle to the string, it’ll take awhile to get used to this pick. It works best straight on, and it’s not that bad. But it’s also kind of big. If it was a smaller diameter, I’d probably love it!

Features:

  • Made from Acetal, which is similar to nylon, but very durable.
  • Raised bevel makes holding onto the pick easy
  • Comes in three thicknesses: .58mm, .72mm, 1mm

Price: < $1.00 ea. through various retailers

Tone Bone Score: 4.0 – These aren’t bad picks, though they do require that you spend a bit of time with them. I actually thought that I’d like the 1mm pick the best, but actually, the thinnest one actually worked best for me.

If you’re a regular visitor to GuitarGear.org, you’ll notice that I rarely review name-brand gear. My thought is that mainstream gear gets lots of coverage, so I tend to gravitate to either the novel or less well-known gear manufacturers. Pointless Picks definitely fall into this latter category!

When I received the envelope from Pointless Picks today, I opened it up in anticipation, and was surprised by them. The pictures you see online really don’t prepare you for the real thing. They’re totally weird looking in a good sort of way. But I’ve learned to keep an open mind, so I took one of each pick (I got several), and went out to my studio to try them out.

I systematically tested each thickness of pick. As a thick pick lover, I thought that my favorite would be the 1mm pick, but the exact opposite was true. The one I liked the most was actually the .58mm pick. I believe this is because of how large a diameter the pick is. When you strum, the pick hits the string with a lot of surface area. With the thicker pick, there naturally isn’t much give, and with my heavy strum technique, the thicker pick didn’t really work well for me. But with the thin pick, it was a different story. I could dig in and the give of the pick made for much easier strumming.

If you’re the type of player who turns their picks around to play with the fat end of the pick, you’ll probably like this pick. Me? I’ll be honest. I like these picks, but I’m not sure I’d like them enough to switch to them exclusively. I even gigged with them this past weekend. As an acoustic pick, I dug them – or at least the thin pick. I was able to get some nice, fat, but also ringing tones from my acoustic. Not sure that I’d use them for electric though. The feel is a bit too heavy for my tastes. You see, I like playing with the pointy end. 🙂

All in all though, these are pretty cool picks.

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Gear Find: Pointless Picks

Posted in GAS, gear, gear find, guitar, guitar gear, guitar picks, guitarists, Guitars, new gear, picks, plectrum, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2009| 6 Comments »

Pointless Picks

I got a Twitter notification today of someone now following GuitarGear, so I checked Twitter to see who it was, and was intrigued by their website URL: http://www.pointlesspicks.com. Curious, I clicked on their link and was taken to their site. Sure enough, it was a product site dedicated to picks that were – as the name implies – pointless.

These are perfectly round picks, made of a polymer called Acetal. Acetal is a thermoplastic and apparently one of the stiffest and most durable plastics in the thermoplastic family. It has a variety of uses, and often competes with nylon for the same applications, according to the Plastics Web, such as the production of plectrums.

These picks are very interesting to me at first blush. As they’re round, there’s not a “wrong” way to hold them. And if you’re the type of player that almost always rounds off their points or plays with the fat end of a standard pick, then this pick may be appealing to you. It’s certainly a novel idea, and apparently they’ve got a lot of retailers selling them. They won a “Best in Show” at Summer NAMM last year, so obviously these picks made an impact on the judging panel.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many reviews of them, and the few that I found were pretty much copies from a single review, which was fairly short. I only found one video on YouTube that mentions Pointless Picks, and it wasn’t a review, though the guitar playing was pretty good, but you can’t see the dude using the pick!

Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about these. I love big fat picks, and these come in 1mm at their thickest. But if they’re really stiff, I may just like them. But it makes me wonder how to do fast alternate picking with them. I’m not a particularly fast player, but I hold my pick at about a 45 degree angle when I’m picking individual notes. It would seem to me that at that angle, the pick would just slide over the string. Maybe there’s some inherent friction…. Guess I’ll have to try them out to see what they’re like. But hey! Best in Show at NAMM is nothing to shake a stick at, so I’m game!

Anyway, for more information, check out the the Pointless Picks web site for more information.

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New Gear: Routed Pedal Risers from StageTrix Products!

Posted in effect pedals, Effects, GAS, gear, gear announcements, gear find, guitar, guitar effects, guitar pedals, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, new gear, pedalboard, pedals, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 18, 2009| 5 Comments »

stagetrix_riserOne of the things that completely pisses me off when I’m gigging is when I reach my foot out to activate a pedal in the back row of my board, and I end up also activating a pedal in the front row. Aiiiyeeee!!! This happened to me recently at a church gig. I was playing a nice, sweet, clean solo, and want to texture my sound a bit by adding some reverb.

To give some background, my reverb pedal (Hardwire RV-7) is the last pedal in my chain and it sits right above my Holy Fire overdrive. Instead of a toggle switch, the RV-7 has a switch plate, and the travel before it actually activates is enough so that I have to really point my toe so I don’t brush my Holy Fire’s knobs or accidentally activate it. Well, in this instance, I did both: I somehow completely dimed the overdrive knob AND activated the pedal. The next note I struck not only startled me, but also startled the prayerful assembly – enough so that some people actually squeaked! Yikes! No doubt, it was a bit embarrassing…

Then today, I got a Twitter alert that a new user called StageTrix was following me, so I went to Twitter to do an exchange follow, and on StageTrix’s site, I saw a Twitter reply from Premiere Guitar. Intrigued, I checked out their site, and was greeted with a solution to my problem: An 18-gauge steel pedal riser that you can use to prop up the second row of your board to make your back row of pedals more easily accessible! What a great freakin’ idea! It’s one of those ideas where you slap your forehead and say, “Now why didn’t I think of that?” 🙂

I had the opportunity to chat with one of the StageTrix guys a few minutes ago to discuss StageTrix’s invention. They’ve apparently been developing it for about a year and a half, and doing prototypes with various musicians. And their reason for building it? Exactly for what I was lamenting just above!

Here are some details from their site:

  • Raises the second row of pedals to the perfect height.
  • Front, back and side openings enable effective cable routing.
  • Premium 18-gauge steel.
  • Attaches to board via heavy duty hook-and-loop fastener on base, which holds firm up to 200°F.
  • Designed to withstand temperatures of up to 200F without melting, so leaving your pedal board in your vehicle on a summer day won’t result in a gooey mess with all the Velcro peeling off.
  • Works with most pedalboards. To be sure, check that you have an extra 1″ of clearance when case is closed. The vast majority do.

If you go to their site, they’re doing a promotion by putting several of these units up for bid on EBay, with a starting bid at a $1.00. These pedals list for $23.99 on their site, so it’s possible that if you get the winning bid, you could get one for significantly less…

Right now, they’re only available through StageTrix, but they should soon be available in stores. I will be getting a review unit within the next week or so, and will do a review.

Check out the StageTrix site now!

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KASHA Is At It Again!!!

Posted in announcements, effect pedals, Effects, GAS, gear, gear announcements, gear find, guitar, guitar effects, guitar gear, guitar pedals, guitarists, Guitars, Music, musicians, overdrive, pedals, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 17, 2009| 2 Comments »

large-relay-2

large-relay-1

How ’bout a completely different take on an overdrive pedal? Well KASHA is at it yet again, teaming up with Tone Box, Inc., with the brand-new Skull Crusher Drive! Utilizing KASHA’s RockMod technology, the Skull Crusher sports four voicings and a tone and gain knob. Plus with a 10db boost, you have 8 different analog overdrive possibilities in a single pedal!

Sounds hauntingly similar to the KASHA overdrive pedal I just tested last week. It is a bit different, as it has a Tone knob, which is different from the KASHA overdrive. But I can personally attest to the quality of the tone of the KASHA overdrive, so you can bet the Skull Crusher will have that same sweet tone itself!

BTW, my KASHA OD is in production and on its way. I got lucky, and will be getting one of the signed models with a handwritten serial number… Oh goody! Might be able to sell one of these for a grand in 30 years! HA!

In any case, I’ve never seen a pedal like the Skull Crusher before! This is a totally new approach to pedals, adding a visual as well as tonal touch to an effect. The pedal will be distributed by Tone Box, Inc. and will retail for $399.

As for the physical appearance of the box, each pedal is hand-sculpted stainless steel, and comes in four finishes: gun metal, stainless steel, aged and ancient. According to KASHA, there will also be 24K gold and Sterling Silver models as well. Damn! Imagine having a stomp box that’s worth more than your guitar! HAHAHAHAHA!!! I LOVE IT!

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