The title kind of sounds like a spam ad, doesn’t it? But it’s totally serious!
We’ve all heard of or even personally experienced guitars straps coming off their strap buttons, potentially causing serious harm to them. I’ve played for years without mishap without using strap locks. I’ve had some close calls, but no catastrophic accidents. My buddy Phil warned me awhile back that I was just asking for trouble by not having them on my guitars. I just said, “Yeah, I know I should do it, but hey, I’ve been lucky so far…”
Well, my luck almost ran out because I almost had a terrible mishap the other day. If you follow my blog, you know that I’ve just gotten my new Prestige Heritage Elite. I was in my studio jamming, and at the end of the song I was jamming to, I did a harmless thing: I reached over to my amp to turn it down; at which point, my body must’ve been at the right angle, and the strap came off the bottom strap button. My guitar quickly swung toward my amp, aimed straight at the grille cloth! Luckily for me, I was able to catch the guitar and press it against my leg to prevent it from doing any serious damage to either itself or the amp!
Soon after, I put the guitar down, turned off my amp, walked back into the house, told my wife I was going down to the local music store, got in my car and got a set of strap locks. I will NEVER be without strap locks again! Once I got them, it literally took five minutes to install them, and I thought that this would be good forum to share my experience, and to share how I installed them.
Installing the Strap Locks
I got Schaller strap locks because I could also use the locks on my Strat that came stock with Schaller butttons (Fender owns Schaller), so it was a no brainer to decide. So here’s how I did it:
First, remove the original buttons with a screwdriver.
When they come out, you’ll probably notice that the screws are a bit thicker with wider threads than the Schallers. This is not a problem.
To be safe, as opposed to using pure wood filler (I used Plastic Wood because it dries evenly), I happened to have really thin dowel material that I could use as a shim in addition the wood filler. I placed the dowel in the screw hole, and marked where it would be flush with the surface of the guitar, then simply cut that length.
Once the dowel was cut, I put some Plastic Wood into the screw hole, and with a toothpick, spread it up and down the hole. Take your time with this, and be as neat as possible. Then I wiped off the excess from the hole, then inserted my dowel. This made some Plastic Wood ooze a bit, so I cleaned that up as well.
Then with my little power drill, I screwed in the new Schaller button.
Repeat steps 3 – 5 for the next hole.
Let it dry for a couple of days.
Install the locks on your strap. That’s it!
That process took literally ten minutes! My strap ain’t coming off any time soon!
When I first saw the pictures of the new Deluxe Memory Man, I wasn’t too impressed only because I didn’t see the actual size difference between the old and the new version. But Electro-Harmonix has done it: They’ve made a DMM with a smaller footprint. I’ve played the DMM before, and really dug it. There is a certain mojo about this analog delay. But I never considered it because of the real estate it would require on my already space-starved board (though admittedly, it’s time to get a bigger board if I want all my pedals on a single board). Now, with it’s smaller size, this is definitely a pedal I’m going to consider – especially since I’m in the market for a good delay pedal. In any case, here’s the press release from EH:
The original Deluxe Memory Man is considered to be the finest analog delay ever designed. Organic and musical, it has been used by rock and Roll legends and countless musicians since its introduction in 1978. With the desire to make a flawless and smooth transition, Electro-Harmonix proudly announces the “new” Deluxe Memory Man in our rugged and pedal board friendly die-cast enclosure.
Exactly the same components are used in order to maintain the superior analog sound with exactly the same performance qualities. In this case, downsizing to a more rugged chassis was important and only second to maintaining the legendary sound. The exact same sound!
The original Deluxe Memory Man will still be available for a limited time. Musicians in the US and UK can now choose to get the new Deluxe Memory Man, or opt to get the classic. Musicians in the EU can now choose to get the classic original (as right now they only get the die-cast)
For the last couple of years, I’ve had a serious case of GAS – not that I pulled the trigger and bought a bunch of stuff during that time – I did get a couple of pedals here and there to slake my appetite, but no major purchases until recently. Now I can say I’m gassed out – at least for now. If you’ve followed my blog for any amount of time, you’ll know what I’ve purchased, but I’ll recap the major purchases I’ve made in the last couple of months.
Aracom VRX22 Head with a custom Aracom 1 X 12 cabinet with a Jensen P12N
What an amp! I’ve shared with Jeff Aragaki, founder and designer of Aracom Amps, that the VRX22 is the perfect amp – at least to me. It’s a low power amp that packs a HUGE punch; both in tone and volume. It’s something I can use either in my home studio, or gigging. No matter what volume level I’m playing at, the VRX22 simply sounds awesome, never getting flabby in the low-end, and sporting what I consider to be the best Master Volume in the business.
The more I play this guitar, the more I fall in love with it. When I first got the guitar to evaluate it, I felt that all the adornments were a bit over the top. I’m a fairly uncomplicated guy, and I appreciate beauty in simplicity. But as time wore on, and I got to know this beauty queen better, the more she grew on me. So I decided to keep the guitar. Her new name is “Sugar” because amazingly enough, not only does she sound and play sweet, she actually smells like bubbling brown sugar! Could be because of the maple, but when I opened up the case for the first time, I was overtaken by the sweet smell of this guitar! So that’s how she got her name. She’s an incredibly expressive guitar, capable of producing gorgeous, ringing cleans to heavy grit. Brightly voiced, her tone just cuts through a mix like butter. I am really enjoying this guitar! Here’s a clip of both the VRX22 and the Heritage Elite:
In answer to my wife’s latest question, “Honey, how many guitars do you need?” I use the standard answer, “Just one more…” This was the exchange we had when I told her I was having Adam Hernandez, a close friend and founder of Saint Guitar Company, build me a guitar. It’s a Goldtop with a twist: Instead of the classic single cut body, I’m having the goldtop done on a double-cut. The body back is solid walnut with a maple top, and rock maple neck topped with an ebony fretboard. I wanted to go for a totally non-standard mix of woods that would produce a very bright tone. The bright tone, combined with the super sustain of Saint guitars in general, promises to be one sweet sounding tone machine. Of course, time will only tell, but I have high hopes for this guitar!
This isn’t even mentioning the smaller things I’ve purchased, but at least for now, I’m GASSED out – I’m also broke – again. 🙂
Summary: Based on the original “RoxBox” (no longer available), the VRX18 sports an improved master volume inherited from the VRX22, and a reworked, smoother overdrive profile.
Pros: As dynamic and expressive as its 22 Watt sibling, the VRX22, but oozing that bright, chimey EL84 goodness. When driven, produces a nice, tight overdrive.
Head Cabinet
Standard Tolex: Black Levant. See options below for other colors.
– Dimensions: 19″w x 8″h x 8.25″d
– Weight: 23 lbs
Also available in 1 X12 and 1 X 10 combos (or Jeff can custom build one to your liking)
Tone Bone Score: 5.0. When I can swing it, I’ll be getting this amp to complete the VRX Series!
Jeff Aragaki, founder and builder of Aracom Amps, always chuckles when I tell him that he’s onto something with his VRX (short for Vintage Rox) series amps. With the VRX22, he seemed to have stumbled onto a sweet spot that produced an amp that has an incredible and beautfully balanced tone that bring out the best tonal aspects of the 6V6 tube. He’s done it yet again with the updated RoxBox 18, now renamed the VRX18, but incorporating many of the same features he built into the VRX22.
I just purchased the VRX22, having fallen in love with the tone that it produces, and I’ve fallen love yet again, but now with the VRX18. I’m like a hopeless romantic that loves two women for their individual virtues, but in this case, the women don’t mind – they can co-exist with each other. Okay, bad analogy… 🙂
I originally reviewed the RoxBox 18 back in December. At the time, I totally dug its tone, but took marks off because of the mildly harsh breakup at lower volumes. There’s nothing harsh about the tone of this amp now – at any volume! It’s a great amp to play, and as expected, it’s pedal friendly, and responds really well to overdrive pedals. Also, I played four guitars through it, and it sounded incredible with all of them!
I won’t go into a lot of detail, since I already covered pretty much all the descriptive information I needed to in the original review, so I’m going to cover some important things I’ve learned about the VRX 18 and the VRX series in general. But first, as opposed to doing this last, here’s a short clip featuring the VRX18 to show you how kick-ass it sounds:
For this clip, I used a Strat with just the middle pickup, plugged directly into the VRX18. I just dig that EL84 grind! I had the Channel 2 volume dimed, and the master volume at halfway in full-power mode. It was very loud, much to the chagrin of my wife. 🙂 But I needed to capture at least some of that EL84 compression.
What’s cool about the EL84 is that it compresses nicely when pushed, but still seems to retain a certain openness in its overdrive. This is unlike something like a KT-66 that compresses so much when pushed you lose volume.
The Best Master Volume in the Business
I don’t say this lightly when I say Jeff has the best master volume in the business. I’ve played many amps. But when Jeff created the VRX22, he did something with the master volume that is pure magic. It has a nice, even volume sweep that seems to act independently of the channel volume. This means you can crank the channel volume to get some serious grind, but control the output via the master, and it won’t suck your tone! I’ve found this to be a real problem with other amps. That master volume is incorporated into the VRX18.
The Best Half-Power Switch in the Business
A lot of manufacturers use a pentode/triode switch to achieve half-power settings in their amps. I’ve played several amps with this feature. But in half power mode with the pentode/triode configuration, I’ve noticed a distinct tonal difference between the two modes in amps configured this way. It’s not that the tone is bad. In fact, many I’ve played around with sound great in half-power mode. But it’s like two different amps.
Jeff Aragaki takes a different approach and instead adjusts the B+ voltage to maintain the usage of all pins in the power tubes. I’m not an electrician, and can’t even begin to explain this technically, so I’ll just say it this way: When you switch to half-power mode in any Aracom Amp, the amp doesn’t change its tonal characteristics. It sounds and plays the same!
The Difference Between Old and New
In addition to the great master volume Jeff incorporated into the VRX18, the first thing I noticed was that it was nowhere near as easy to get this amp to overdrive in channel 2 as it was with the original RoxBox 18. This is not a negative thing at all because as I mentioned in my original review, the overdrive was pretty harsh at lower volume levels. I spoke to Jeff about this, and he said that based upon my original tests and review, he decided to mellow out the extra gain stage in the VRX18 so you could get a nice overdrive tone at any volume level.
You won’t get over-the-top gain with the VRX18. But for that, I have a simple fix-all: Get a great booster pedal like a Creation Audio Labs Mk.4.23 (again, the best booster on the planet), and SLAM the front-end of the amp. 🙂
But all that said, if you’re in a venue where you can dime both master and channel volumes, you will be rewarded with gorgeous harmonics and overtones and luscious feedback!
Overall Impressions
Like I said, this is my next amp… It just rocks the house! And at $895 for the head, you could get both the VRX22 and VRX18 for under the price of a single boutique amp! This isn’t a sales pitch. The value proposition of the VRX series is something that should be seriously considered. You’re not getting a production line amp that’s built overseas. With the VRX series of amps, you’re getting a US-made, handwired amp for under a grand!!!
Admittedly, I was a little skeptical when I first ran across Aracom Amps. But I’m now a believer, and a faithful customer!
Over the weekend, and after a few years of owning it, I finally replaced the original speaker on my Hot Rod Deluxe with an Eminence Red Coat “The Governor.” I had already replaced the original tubes and had some other mods done to the amp to smooth out the drive channel, but there was always something missing, and that turned out to be the speaker. What a difference that has made! I feel like my Hot Rod is now no longer a Padawan but a true Jedi. 🙂
The Hot Rod was my very first tube amp, and when I bought it, I just loved the sound, but as time wore on and as I played some really great amps, my love for the amp faded, and while I’d use it for some applications, it just didn’t have a sound that I considered to be first class. With the new speaker, it is now – in my opinion – a first class sounding amp. The cleans are gorgeous and the overdrive tone is nice and open, but well-defined, with no flabby bottom end. I’m in love again! Now with my Aracom VRX22, I’ve got two great amps!
Here’s a clip I put together while playing around this evening that demonstrates how gorgeous the clean tones are:
I used my Strat for the rhythm part – amazingly in the middle pickup, which I’m really starting to love – and did the simple solo with my Prestige Guitars Heritage Elite with both pickups with about 60/40 mix of bridge and neck, respectively. The reverb you hear in the solo is the spring reverb in the Hot Rod. I have to say that Fender does reverb right. 🙂
If you read this blog with any regularity, you’d know that I have this thing about overdrive and distortion pedals. Not that I’m a shredder or let alone a virtuoso at guitar. I just love tone, and there’s something about overdrive that never fails to bring a smile to my face. But ever since I started playing with some great amps, and now that I’ve got a great new speaker in my Hot Rod, I’ve been relying less on overdrive for my grind tone, and much more on the natural breakup of my amps. Enter the Creation Audio Labs Mk.4.23, what I consider to be the best clean boost on the planet.
A lot of pedal manufacturers claim to have transparent boosters, and I’ve tried several that come close, but the Mk.4.23 totally delivers true transparency. You get the natural tone of your guitar and amp – just a lot more input gain that will send your pre-amp tubes into saturation. Mm-mm-good! I already wrote a review of this pedal, but thought I’d do a follow-up on how I’ve been using it over the past few months.
I’ve been using the Mk.4.23 in a few different ways (in order of how much I apply it):
First, I use it by itself with the volume dimed on the pedal into my drive channel to slam the front-end of the amp, and seriously overdrive it. In this mode, I usually don’t use any other effect in front of it, though I might use a compressor with my Strat to fatten up the tone. That way I know that I’m getting my guitar’s and amp’s true tone.
Then I use it by itself to boost my clean channel when I need just a bit more volume when I’m doing a clean lead break to get over the band. In this mode, the volume’s set just past unity gain. I also set the volume knob on my guitar to about it’s midpoint so I can fine-tune the volume via my guitar.
Finally, I use it in conjunction with one or more overdrive/distortion pedals to add even more gain to what the other pedals have to offer. Using it this way doesn’t really add any appreciable volume, but the effect is that the overdrive tone gets super thick and raunchy. It’s not all the pretty when playing chords, but single notes absolutely scream!
For such a simple pedal, the Mk.4.23 has really changed the way I approach achieving different tones. For more information, check out Creation Audio Labs’ web site!
After having my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe for a few years now, I finally decided to swap the stock speaker for an Eminence Red Coat “The Governor,” which is a moderately-priced ceramic speaker. What’s difference now? The Hot Rod Deluxe is a very mid-rangy amp in the first place, but at higher gain, the tone became a little flabby. In fact, when I knew I was going to play at gig volumes I had to dial down the bass to about 9 or 10 o’clock, and set the mid and high around 3pm to get a more crisp sound. I was able to alleviate a bit of that flabbiness with better tubes than the stock Groove Tubes, but I always suspected that the speaker had a lot to do with the flabby bottom end. I don’t know why I waited to do this simple, simple modification. It literally took 10 minutes to swap it out.
So why the Eminence Governor? Mainly because I wanted a nice mid-range focused speaker that had a smooth bottom end, and slightly sparkly highs. I had also played the Governor in a couple of different amps, and was really impressed with its brighter voicing. Here’s a frequency response chart for the Governor:
As you can see from the chart, the bottom end portion of the curve is a nice, smooth line. In the mid-range, the frequency response is fairly complex, then in the highs, you get some nice peaks in the 2-3 kHz range, finished off with some subtle motes above 10 kHz. The tone in the amp reflects this well. The bottom end is there, and very tame, and the mid- and high-freq response creates a gorgeous, and spacious tone. I’ll probably have some clips in the next few days, but here are clips directly off the Eminence site:
Clean
Heavy Distortion
Overdriven
All in all, this has got to be the most significant improvement to my Hot Rod’s tone!
Just got home from my weekly gig at the restaurant where I was really able to put the Tuff-Tone Tri-Tip through its paces. I’ve never played with a Tri-Tip shaped pick, let alone gigged with a Tuff-Tone, so it promised to be interesting – especially if I didn’t like the pick – because like a dummy, I forgot to bring a spare! Fortunately, I didn’t need a spare. The Tuff-Tone worked out great!
Admittedly, I was a little nervous, not because of the Tuff-Tone material itself but because it’s a lot thinner than what I’m used to playing. If you’ve been following my blog, you’d know I’ve been using a V-Picks Snake and also a super-thick prototype Red Bear Tortis as of late. The Snake is 4.1 mm thick and the Red Bear is 4 mm. I believe the Tuff-Tones are only 1.75 mm thick. I really didn’t know if I could make a clean adjustment. All my nervousness was washed away within a few bars of the first song I played. The pick felt so natural in my fingers, I just played without thinking. Whew! That was a relief!
So how did it perform? Practically flawlessly. The Tuff-Tones feel a lot more rigid and dense than their Tortis counterparts, but the material seems to weigh much lighter. That perception could be due to having played with thick, weighty picks. But to be perfectly honest, I really loved playing with this Tuff-Tone. As I mentioned above, it felt very natural in my fingers, and all the accuracy that I’ve come to expect from rigid picks was there from the get go.
Dave mentioned that in blind tests there was no difference between the tones of the Tuff-Tones and Tortis picks produce. But I noticed a definite difference. The Tuff-Tone produces a much brighter, jangly tone than the Tortis picks. Tortis picks, on the other hand, produce a smoother, more evenly balanced tone. Neither is better than the other; they’re just different. For me, when I want a brighter tone, I’ll use a Tuff-Tone. But when I want a fatter tone, I’ll use a Tortis.
I played all sorts of tunes tonight, ranging from full-on strum songs to songs that combined strummed chords and single note runs. I could be as expressive as I wanted with this pick, and that’s really the test. Lighten up your grip and let the pick glide, and the tone it produces is marvelously bright and ringy. Dig in and be greeted with a nice snappy tone. Want to do some quick alternate picking runs? No sweat!
This is a great pick, people, and a pick I highly recommend trying out and adding to your arsenal! I know that kind of goes against the common thought of using one pick for everything, but I’ve come to realize that using different picks will produce different kinds of tones, and different “moods.” It’s kind of hard to explain, but I’m now a multi-pick player.
Late last night, I was lurking (and posting) on my favorite gear forum The Gear Page, when I ran across this thread: Stacking ODs? where a player was asking if anyone had stacked any overdrives. I’ve been doing this for years with different pedal combinations, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Through my experiments, I found that stacking works best on amps that have a much more open distortion character; that is, the power tubes don’t compress too much. For instance, I tried this on an Aracom Custom 45R that KT-66’s in it, and the compression was so intense that it sucked away all the tone. When Jeff swapped out the tubes with 6L6’s, it was a totally different story. However, I’ve gotten the best results with amps based on either 6V6’s or EL84’s. These tubes don’t compress the signal as much when they saturate as their bigger siblings and maintain a much more open distortion character.
To hear what stacked OD’s sound like, here’s a clip I took out of a song I’ve been working on. Here’s the signal path:
The TS overdrive is set at about 2pm, the Holy Fire’s overdrive is set a 12, with distortion just past 2pm, and the Mk.4.23 booster is dimed for an extra 24db of boost. 🙂 The SM25 is StackMode (both channels run in a series with an extra gain stage), with gain at about 12. Here’s what it sounds like:
This is the raw, unmastered track. It’s really aggressive, but as you can see, it’s not super-compressed.
Update
I’m probably going to buy a Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret in the next couple of days. This pedal was made for stacking, much like the Creation Audio Labs Holy Fire. It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like on my board.
Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Blue Image c/o Seymour Duncan
Seymour Duncan is known for its outstanding pickups, and I’ve known they’ve made pedals for awhile, but haven’t really paid attention until they came out with the Twin Tube Blue (SFX-11). This is a very cool little preamp/overdrive box that sits – gain-wise – right in the middle between their Twin Tube Classic and their Twin Tube Mayhem.
Run by two 6111 mil-spec, USA Philips-Sylvania tubes, the Blue can get you some nice, pre-amp snap, to sweet, sustained gain. Here’s the description from the Seymour Duncan site:
Too often, inexpensive tube gear runs in “starved plate mode,” where the tubes function like clipping diodes and do not actually amplify. The Twin Tube Blue’s high-plate voltage and 100% vacuum tube signal path allows the tubes to operate at their fullest potential and provide maximum dynamic range. This means you get the most gain and all the smooth tone you expect from a high-quality tube preamp. Two channels provide versatility. Like all Seymour Duncan stompboxes, the Twin Tube Blue is true bypass and features a fully encapsulated toroidal transformer for quiet operation. Heavy duty steel chassis.
Guitar Gear 