Andras Fabian

This one is my first serious electric guitar and probaby the last one that I'd ever part with, as the old ad says. To be honest, not particularly for the quality of the instrument, but for the adventures, bands and stages we've seen together. I like the idea of being buried with it, or probably pass it over to a good friend who'd take care of it rather than sell it. Mine is an 1990 factory second, having a finish that wears off very easily, giving it a nice road-worn look. I think people pay extras for this these days, but I got hold of it for a bargain price. It has a blonde color with a rosewood neck, that has a very chunky U profile. This may be unusual for the American Standard that usually came with a more modern C neck in later model years. I replaced to original pickups to a set of Texas Specials, which did improve the sound a bit, but I still regret that I sold the original Delta-tone set. Apart from that, it is all original, and now lives in a black deluxe wooden case. This is my main stage guitar I've recorded most of the music on my Soundcloud profile playing this guitar.

The Austin Special was designed by former Keith Richards guitar tech and Texan luthier Ted Newman-Jones.I’ve first seen his design in David Dalton's Stones bio, "The first twenty years", and fell in love straight with this dynamic, offset-waist shape 5 string guitar, that Keith Richards used during the late seventies, but I had to wait some ten years before I got one that shows some authenticity with the original 5 string prototype. I first saw these, mass produced in a Chandler ad from a 93 Guitar World mag. Although the ads did not refer to Ted N-J, but the presence of the 5-string model as well as the "Austin" brand made it clear. A few years later I managed to get hold of one in a local guitar pawnshop in Budapest. Mine is labeled No.23 and made in 1992. There ‘s no “made in” tag anywhere on the guitar, but the materials, feel and finish show a close resemblance to my MIJ strat, so I believe the guitar has a Far East origin. It is lightweight and relatively small guitar, with good balance. It has a simple, offset waist, contoured black body with chrome hardware, and a pearl binding. I believe they came in off white or black exclusively. Mine's black, but this was the only stock photo I've found so far. The two-piece maple neck is scarf-jointed at about 2/3 of its length, closer to the tilted head stock, otherwise it is very similar to a standard telecaster neck. The headstock is strongly tilted backwards, and feature vintage style Kluston keys. The neck has a nice, vintage satin lacquer finish and feels good to touch. The bridge humbucker is in fact two singles in a line, of which one can be muted by pulling the tone control. I tend to use this feature: I play single most of the time, and only push it form more gain when necessary. This forms a H(S) / S arrangement, that consists of 3 lipstick pickups made by Chandler The bridge is hard-tail strat syle with string through body and provides excellent sustain. The lipstick pickups have a transparent sound with low output. I added an EMG afterburner push/pull booster for some extra gain. This guitar sported a retro look before retro was hip, having the klusons, the pearl binding, lipsticks, and on top of all that: chicken head controls. While providing a visual feedback, these turn a bit too easily, and I tend to turn down volume accidentally when I strung a big chord. Also, the push and pull mechanism easily turns the tone flat. I usually turn the tone midways between flat and sharp, since the guitar has a treble sound already. What else can I say? It's a classic, rare, and excellent guitar, which looks cool, plays great, and capable of a great sound with the help of some pedals or onboard gadgets.

This is by design a 72 Deluxe / Custom hybrid, and the Custom II tweaked even more on it by adding those great Duncan designed P90’s. The result was so great, that Fender even nicked it back from Squier, like the ‘51, making a Vintage modified Fender. There’s not many Fenders that actually originate from Squiers. I’d probably post this to the Custom II, as the humbuckers in mine had been replaced to Seymour Duncan Phat Cats before I got hold of it, which are basically humbucker sized P90’s, shifting it closer to the Custom II. For this reason I cannot comment on the original sound with Humbuckers, but the aesthetics of the guitar is still closer to the black and chrome Customs, so I chose to post here. All I know the sound with the Phat Cats is very impressing, which together with the playability and 72 looks of the guitar makes is a great instrument. The comfortable maple neck has a satin finish over a somewhat flamed wood, which provides a very nice touch. Being a standard telecaster player, I’m sometimes puzzled by the double controls, and switch pickups accidentaly with the strangely “Les Paul” positioned pickup switch. Other than that, the guitar has a decent sound at all positions, and I like the option to roll back tone separately on the bridge pickup to cut high, while maintaing the transparent warmth of the neck pickup. I keep this in open E and with moderatelly hugh action so that I can also slide on this. Last time I recorded I took my new Gibson Les paul Junior to the studio with the intention to record with that, but then I ended up recording the better half of the album with the Squier VM Custom. Should you be interested in hearing the recorded sound of Custom with a pair of Phat Cats, see “Side A” of my 2018 album “Oszi Kikelet” on Soundcloud.

This is my first tube amp. I had been saving my money for a Fender for years, until I had the opportunity to trade this amp for a bunch of pedals in about 2010, and never turned back. It's size, weight and capacity was ideal for my profile, and I fell in love with its rich warm sound. Mine is the older model with the rectangular front panel, reverse control board, and no option to footswitch boost. The drive channel is footswitchable, but it has a different, flatter equalization than the clean one. An EQ pedal in the chain may help, but I've found that I come out better driving the clean channel with a stomp-box to have a rich drive sound. The built in spring reverb is perfect for me, always keep it on, so I never use the cheap plastic foot-switch. I once tried the greenback speaker mod, but I've found that the stock (blue marvel) speaker's voicing better suits the amp's sound characteristics. Shortly after purchasing the amp, I managed to get a matching EC30 extension cabinet, that incredibly enhances the output in a live environment, so I soon found myself dragging a half stack everywhere on stage. The only issue I ever had with it in 8 years was a melt plastic tube socket, that was replaced with ceramic.

This is a budget version of the classic 6-string Weisenborn style electric lap-steel favored by Ben Harper, marketed by Amazon. The guitar is made of solid wood, with dimensions of the original that can serve as a good platform to upgrade. Mine came with a wooden nut and a simple bridge, that seemed to be replaced with better steel part by the maker in newer versions. The tuning pegs are classic Kluson types, that serve well, but the electronics is truly crap. The P90 pickups look cool, but having low output, and high noise, they are not ideal for a lap steel. The steel knobs do not fit well with the otherwise nice flamed maple finish that provides a Les Paul look to the guitar.

Probably not the best sounding but definitely the coolest looking mini amp.

I'm using it as a clean booster for already overdriven solos in the first place. Sometimes, when I'm using more guitars on stage, I'm putting it into the other guitar's loop to even volume differences. It's a great clean booster with more than enough headroom and a tone control option. My only issue is that the pots are prone to turn accidentally, so I put felt washers under the controls to hold them in place. I'm usually boosting at 10 o'clock (a bit thickening) tone and 2 o' clock on the volume.

I purchased this pedal because it was relatively cheap for a brand new tube tremolo, and also because I could not find any useful reviews about it. I was looking for a pedal to serve as an extension to a practice amp. Reverb could be better, but tremolo looked like a natural choice, and I thought a tube tremolo with a master volume option might also serve as a preamp powered by tube gain. Wrong. Let me start with the bad news: despite of the tube drive, you cannot use this pedal as a plain pream, because the tremolo effect is present at even minimum level of all controls. Secondly, the "master volume" option should rather be called an "attenuator" option, since it only starts boosting the signal when set past 3 'o clock, leaving the majority of its range for volume UNDER the bypass volume. This is weird. Does anyone want to reduce volume with a tremolo activated? As for tremolo unit: my ears are not trained enough to judge if it's a opto or a real tube bias tremolo, but I suspect the latter. One thing for sure: the effect differs from any settings of any tremolos I've heard before. It has a very prominent, choppy, staggered sound at all settings of the wave control, even at minimum setting, smoothing it a bit indeed, while it provides the staccato of a machine gun when maxed. Quite the same with the rest of the controls: The "Speed" range extends from carpet dusting to machine gun speed, and "Depth" sets the effect from prominent to very prominent. No subtle pulsating wobble is possible, the effect is straight in your face at even minimal setting. When recorded and mixed with other instruments it curiously sounds cool, no blending, it is just there, natural, asymmetrical, and if a tremolo can sound "warm" it is warm then, the tube does the job. The thing that I'm missing here is an "effect level" knob to mix the rate of dry and tremolo signal, but since I've never had the opportunity to drive a real onboard trem of a Vox or a blackface Fender, maybe it's the good old, familiar and simple stompbox trem sound is what I'm looking for.

A great sounding, versatile trem in a shitty, oversized box, with clumsy controls. The box literally fell apart when I acquired it. First I had to glue back the metal sheet to show the lettering of the cheap plastic controls on the case. Then the pedal still staggered sound when it was switched off, so I had to take it to a tech guy. He said it looked like it had been put together in a hurry, before evacuating a factory, he had to re-solder everything. What I’m left with is a well functioning, and good sounding pedal, with lots of options, but I had to work for it. Output level control is a great addition, unfortunately missing from several trems that suck volume, like Boss TR-2. There’s a high filter that reduces the effect on higher pitch notes when turned up, which I’ve found very useful for fills and sevenths over trem base chords. The pedal is slightly larger and heavier than a Boss pedal, but less sturdy, I believe dropping it on the wrong side with the cheesy pc board mounted knobs would destroy it. Despite of it is being functionally outstanding, it did not make me a fan of Nobels pedals. I only wonder if Nobels “legendary” OD-1 was put together so carelessly, how did it make to be a legend.

If I'll ever start a second career, I'll design stompbox cases. Not that I have the slightest clue of electronics, but I can see clearly what a mistake is packing otherwise great functions into an ugly and unpractical casing. That's the point with the ToneCore series. Huge, heavy, and somehow still cheesy, featuring a double-hinged, but still loose switch, that you can never be sure if engaged or not, especially with the "tap" feature, which is always on. This is the thing that I hate with all "tap" pedals. I'd much rather connect a separate tap pad, switch, or button than trying to combine it with the main standby switch of the pedal, which is just prone to error. I'm having this pedal for years now, and STILL fail sometimes to kick it hard enough to switch on or off, rather than going into the blinking "tap" mode. Try once more, and you fucked up the tempo. Not that setting the tempo by tapping would be so easy: you'd better tap double time than what you'd expect would set the desired tempo. BUT, apart from that, this is an excellent tremolo, with some great sounds, all the features you need, and a bit more. Firstly, the pedal can make a stereo pan effect, and can also forward stereo signal thru the pedal. The "Bias" mode is supposed to reproduce an onboard tube tremolo, good to have it, but I believe the more subtle and symetric "opto" mode is what we usually expect from a tremolo pedal, and it more than meets my expectations. The sound is transparent, well controllable, and noiseless, with no noticable volume drop. The "peak" control is a nice addition to the usual septh/wave/speed set. This will add a dynamic range to the speed, that will increase when you hit the strings harder. As the chord decays, the speed sets back to the set speed. I kind of preferred the other way round, setting a speed for normal output, and slow down when the chords decays, but it is still capable of reproducing the dynamic trem you can hear in songs like Bob Dylan's "Everything is broken". All in all, it's one of the best budget trems, for which I subscribed, I only hope that Line 6 will update the tonecore docks with something more compact and user friendly.