brandon_deitz

My MIM strat was purchased new in the mid to late 90's. It's undergone some modifications (EMG pickups, new bridge, etc) but it has always been my most versatile and sweetest sounding guitar. The best thing about this out of the box was the neck. The feel is so nice and it plays extremely well, even to this day. I've been complimented over and over throughout the years at how good the neck feels. A fun aspect of the Stratocaster is how easily you can customize your look with pick-guards and pickup covers. To me, the MIM is a best bang for the buck across the board. You can use it in anything from heavy/hard rock to blues/country, jazz and ambient work. It's a workhorse. I give it a 4 instead of 5 stars because the hardware, tuning keys and pickup poles all corroded fairly quickly. However, strats are fun and easy to mod in all of those areas, and the MIM is a great platform for doing so.

I wanted something that would go between my stratocaster and Les Paul, and this pretty much does just that. The reasonable price makes this easily accessible, and the quality is above it's contemporaries. The stock sound desirable, but there were a few things I had issue with. The first was how muddy the signal got when I would roll back the main volume knob. I fixed this by installing a "treble bleed" kit from TV Jones. From then on, the volume knob was very useful to me. Depending on the style of music you're playing, the blacktop Filtertrons might be the perfect sound. I found them to be a kind of slightly "hairier" take on the classic Gretsch sound. They didn't have as much sparkle, but they had plenty of attitude. This proved to be a little much for some of the more delicate, ambient stuff I play from time to time. I still own mine but I have changed the pickups out to get a smoother response. The Bigsby tremolo is good, the tune-o-matic bridge had some rough edges which were resolved with a little bit of light filing. All around I'd recommend it for the price.

This comp is like having 3-in-1 at any given time. Of particular interest is the way they utilize their tone print technology to give the user the ability to really shape their tone. In my experience, multi-band compression is king for bringing out the sweet spots, and this lets you do just that. The second most useful feature is the blend knob which allows for parallel compression; a great way of letting the natural tone fill out the signal. One down side would be that the number of options tends to slow down the process of getting your tone set. For the price, this is a good one to have on hand.

I have the rev 2 casing (solid red with yellow stencil painted markings) with the internal components updated by Montez (owner/designer/builder) to the rev 9 board with the pro-chip. It more resembles their "hand-wired reissue" without the side switch. This pedal is incredibly transparent and is a wonderworker for my stratocaster. Since the updated board, it's more friendly to dual coil pickups, but this compressor can be a little selective by my evaluation. There is an internal pot to adjust for input gain which helps a great deal. If you come across an older style pedal, you can contact Montez and he'll update it for around $70. If your wheelhouse is strat/single coil guitars, then I don't think you'll find a better comp. The best way I can describe is to say that it doesn't place an "effect" on my strat tone as much as it brings out the best of it. Highly recommend.

This pedal has undergone a number of design revisions, but I own and use the one pictured in the image (Black box design, black knobs, white rectangle logo). This is a stellar overdrive pedal with a host of adjustments from internal trim pots to a push/pull bass boost knob. The title of this review is the best descriptor. It's easy to quickly get a solid OD sound, although I prefer keeping the gain around 50% or less. The push/pull is handy, but I do find that I often bump this knob when it's pulled out. The flavor is more of a TS808 inspired tone, only a little more transparent and with more "umph". I've seen these used for a great price and would absolutely recommend it. It's a great "boutique" spin on a classic OD for less than boutique cost. Not to mention, David Barber is great at customer response.

I recently acquired the FSR western noir version (Black faux-tooled leather vinyl covering, wheat grille cloth, Celestion G12H Greenback speaker). The amp was everything you'd expect from a classic Hot Rod Deluxe. Takes pedals well, lots of out of the box clean Fender tone to work with. As others say, the distortion is wimpy, but low gain settings might be useful. I would recommend this for most churches, and venues where where guitarists will be mic'ing their amps. A Sennheiser e609/906 against the grill is a great, easy combo for this. I have already swapped the tubes on this little amp with a combo that I will swear by for a long time to come. 3 Tung-Sol 12AX7 preamp tubes and 2 TAD 6L6WGC-STR power tubes yield a pretty phenomenal tone from this amp. Compared side by side with another Hot Rod Deluxe III, the swapped tubes (with the G12H speaker) came very close to a much beloved tone I found in a vintage silver face Twin Reverb. This isn't to say it's the same; it's not. However, with the bright switch engaged, it is in the direction of the scooped mid and spongy hi's and lows that the SFTR produced so well. This is now one of my most favorite amps due to the combination of it's tone, portability and price.

I've owned my Ampeg R212R for about 10 years now and have had a love/hate relationship with it (although "hate" is a strong word for such a fine amp). Most of the time, I love it. However, I've encountered some problems with getting it to stay as clean as I want in certain applications, especially when a gig calls for some delicate ambient guitar work. I finally buckled down to do some major experimenting by using various combination of tubes, running through different cabinets, etc. I can say I'm pretty close to getting the amp to it's ideal spot, and have learned in the process that this amp is something like a Fender but with more "muscle". The amp has punchy cleans and plenty of "bark", but that sweet-singing sparkle that I enjoy so much is harder to find on my amp. I made the biggest impact by replacing every tube with it's Tung-Sol equivalent. I later switched to TADs in the power section briefly to see if I could get something a little more bodied, but the clarity suffered a little. In the end, I like Tung-Sols in the power section, but I think I need to get creative with my preamp section. A JJ ECC803S at V1 and a Mullard 12AT7 at V3 will be my next approach to working on the tone/breakup. The distortion channel has never been an issue, and is very desirable, although I tend to run pedals for everything. This Ampeg is my go-to in the studio for some mid-heavy guitar work, and it's a match made in heaven with my Les Paul. People looking to purchase one of these amps should expect something that is hard to beat for jazz and blues. The best way to describe the clean sound is that, to my ears, it produces the guitar in a way that shares some tonal characteristics of a nicely compressed signal. The shimmering/breathy highs are less noticeable but the trade in this area for it's punchy and articulate attack is something that can easily work well for a variety of applications.