jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

hiwatt? there's a pricetag. The ehad alone is a 1.5-2k buy in for a good one on a good day!

the hotrods aren't reliable.... pretty much the vintage designs are the reliable ones, dude

Well guys, drawing conclusions I chose to shop the Standard Strat, beacause I'm definitely sure that with a "traditional" guitar I can play it safe. The Offset's Mustang is a "risk", perhaps it sounds really good too, but if it doesn't have the timbre of the vintage Mustangs than that guitar isn't properly for me. Thank you all!

the recorded guitar sounds that are your bench mark have been through gobs of processing, the difference between a mustang with a strat bridge and a mustang with a mustang bridge will probably be less noticeable to you than the fact that you have a different amp, different speakers and you're not being recorded by an expensive mic into a neve 1073 and a distressor

just play as you man, you're overthinking this.... find some guitars you like to play and embrace them for what they are.... when you wanna chase some toens down the rabbit hole it'll be when you're expanding your guitarsenal, not starting it

I can promise you any of the bassbreaker models has to sound vastly better than a hot rod of any kind, those hotrod and 'blues' amps are the most mediocre amp fender has ever produced.... at least the outright bad fenders have character, hot rods are like if you let peavey engineers design for fender... nothing wrong with them but nothing right either.

I've never had an amp with all those effects and things.... it never seemed like a desireable thing to me, even in a practice amp. Whenever I go for a practice amp I get a little amp like a champ or ac4. I think the littlest bassbreaker is 5 watts, single ended like that, not sure. YThe one that's closer to a marshall 18 watt or ac15 is 15 watts....

exactly, I can't get to the screen where I drag and drop my gear into my categories

i haven't tried one because i always use a hot rod, drri or ss to demo guitars on, i feel id like the bass breaker but not be in love with it like the 3 i mentioned

actually, the hot rods share way more DNA with the bassbreaker series, not blackface at all.... both series are based on the tweed bassman (and the bassbreaker joke is that narshal's bluesbreaker was a slightly modified tweed bassman, bassbreaker, get it?).... but the small ones are more like marshall's 18 watt though and that's a purely british amp knocked off the Watkins Dominator MK1

based n so many reviews and now 2 of you EB kids raving abut the squire j mascis I am hovering my finger over the buy it now on one on ebay.... buy it?

I usually don't for recreation, but I just happened to have it open for something work related that the government portal only works in IE (it even says so on the state's site, microsoft kickback anyone?) and opened EB in a new tab and found it no longer loads right in IE

Try a telecaster or jaguar or jazzmaster while you are at it. Fender also

Sure thing. I tried a Telecaster a few of months ago, and it doesn't really like me. Great guitar absolutely, but to me it sounded to much thin and sharp.

thats a abd tele, bridge probably doesn't have the vintage correct baseplate.... a tele should be fatter in the mids and bottom than a stock strat, even a strat with modern overwound pickups. It will also have more upper mid cut if that's what you mean by sharp, but its got less true high over that upper mid fcus and even the sot udnerwound 60s style tele bridge pickups are still pretty full. Fender's thickest sounding vintage singles, hands down. the old style bridges cotnributed soem too and I don't know the new american and mexis tandard bridges itneract with the bridge pickup's magnetic field the same way.... brass saddles will also thicken the tele up, but even my 60s type tele with steel saddles and underwound pickups is still fuller than a stock strat with classic specs. Maybe we define our words differently. A strat is definitely better balanced in tone than most teles, but thicker? I am not seeing it unless you played an off the shelf mexican standard or soemthing else that fender just throws together for beginners. I sued to prefer the strat to the tele, but the more years of professional playing I put in the more I liked the stock teles focused and cutting sound in the band and the more I favored its ultra stable tuning. Its something people are drawn to aesthetically early on or that they have to grow into as they gain more playing experience. Its not for EVERYONE, but it for msot people if they give it a chance.

go used, be a bottomfeeder and try to get 2 at once... HAGGLE ;-) Last time I helped somone pick a 'stang was over a decade ago but we got a great deal on a very nice used japanese fender reissue in fiesta red for very little money and even today I think if your budget is over a thousand euros you may be able tog et an older, used japanese mustang and maybe still swing the new hotrod with the strat bridge or something similar. Also, if you don't have to have trem, the duo sonic is almost the same guitar just with a fixed bridge. The bridge design is loosely based on the tele and it sounds good. You can often find duo jet reissues for a pittance because they aren't associated with Kurt Conain (the #1 reason mustang prices remain shockingly high for a teenie bopper guitar). You can then mod the duo sonic to your hearts delight. I can't remember if its the musicmaster or bronco thats the guitar or the bass, but one f those is just a rebranded duo jet from the 70s, still pretty cheap, great guitars if you like 'stangs.

just got home, when I tried to categorize my board again I still got this generic EB error page when I hit save: UPGRADING OUR EQUIPMENT, PLEASE CHECK BACK SOON. IN THE MEANTIME, CHECK OUR TWITTER FOR UPDATES.

here's what my startpage looks like in IE all of the sudden:

http://imgur.com/a/vjuTB

notice the oddball font and how there's weird overlapping text.... its doing this to some degree no matter what I do my font size as in IE's preferences and its laggy too, whereas on the same machine in chrome its fine; looks normal, runs fast (though i can't organize my equipboard, it fails every time I hit save).... additionally, every other site I've glanced at in IE is loading normally, its just ours that's being screwy. Its not a huge deal to me, but it might be to someone so now you know.

I suggest you get 1 or 2 of everything you're into, one very traditional, one more hot-rod of possible. That's what I always do. Which is probably why I have a whole huge clsoet that's mostly filled with guitar cases....

I'm an absolute novice in guitar recording, microphone choice, placement, etc., so does anyone have advice to get close to Richard Dawson's sound? For example where the mic should be placed, since we can quite clearly hear the reverberation of the room it's being played in... and I find that delicious.

Thanks and here's hoping this thread comes alive again!

try close micing but with a figure 8 mic like a ribbon so that the backk of the mic is getting reverberation. Try a clsoe and distant mic. Try an omni condenser. Try a close mic and a boundary mic stuck to the wall. Try mid-distance cardioid mics front and back. Try mid-side techniques with 2 mics.... all of these can capture room sound to varying degrees with varying degrees of level and stereo control (from pure mono to ridiculous stereo that may be over the top for some parts). The question is are you recording ina room with sound worth capturing? Get a book on recording. Any recording technique is suitable for an amplifier and guitar, but learn about the different mic patterns, types, placements, stereo techniques, mono multi-mic methods.... READ and TRY. Don't even dip into preamps until you know the types of mics well and all the cool ways to sue them and a general idea what to expect from all these mics and techniques. Then the world of preamps is worth exploring within your means, but its a lot more subtle than just mic selection and placement....

I gotta go.

Hey Jim, I'd love more details. We need to look into all this stuff, if you're experiencing it I'm sure you're not the only one!

every time I try it this morning it tells me you're upgrading your equipment with that splash page

Every time you try what, exactly?

to organize my equipboard, should I try again now that microphnes were added?

if I try internet explorer it just won't work at all.... in fact, the whole site doesn't load right in internet explorer since Wednesday's (or maybe it was Tuesday's) mandatory windows 10 update

Can you be more specific about "won't work at all"? Is the way it looks messed up? Or does it actually not function or load? Any way you can email a screenshot to michael or I of what it looks like on IE?

yeah, when I get a sec I'll show you the glitchy IE version of EB, maybe this evening, have to go get the kid froms chool in a few though

the site doesn't run on internet explorer anymore on either of my machines

Again, what do you mean "doesn't run"? That sounds like a pretty crazy bug we need to take care of asap!!

the way it loads is weird, it loads a tiny times new roman font for msot of teh text, the buttons and hyperlinks are in the wrong palces, everything is jacked up... and its taking like 10 minutes to laod each page, but only in IE, though on both my work machines which both just got a mandatory windows update.... I'll hit you back when I get a sec to load soem fo the pages, make screenshots, and put them on imgur

i prefer, in this order:

1. super sonic
2. bassbreaker
3. deluxe reverb

I have a feeling the OP will dislike the bassbreakers, they are very tweed/british and that's not really his bag. But yeah, the bassbreakers perform impressively, though i wonder at their reliability. Its pretty budget construction going on. Tube amps do best when theya re super sturdy and not built like a laptop with a vacuum tubes jammed on the PCB.

the deluxe reverb is going to be the best clean tone for sure and have the ebst feel when pushed because of the tube rectifier.... also, channel switchers are inherently less reliable ebcause even high end gold plated relays are sensitive to changes in temp and humidity and have a much shorter lifespan than all the other parts in the amp.... and the supersonic also has a lot more features even not controlled by relays! all those mini-pushbottom PCB switches are also prone to failure and if they fell in a 'full off' position they will disable the channel. Will this happen to YOUR supersonic? Got me. But its more to worry about if you're gigging/touring without a backup. For all the reissues faults I would feel safer with the clssic, bulletproof design of the DR even though its built on a budget friendly PCB (I am not entirely antiPCB, but fender doesn't use military grade ones that I feel great about and even the toughest PCBs are more delicate to work on in a dressing room right before a show whereas traditional fender eyelet construction used up until 1980 is easy to do simple repairs to in a hurry without fear of making a new problem while fixing the old one).

in favor of the supersonic? its clean channel gets in the ballpark of the 2 blackface preamp voicings (bassman and everything else -- yes, every BF fender but the bassman shares the same preamp)... its 2 channel and the gain channel soudsn pretty good as these type of designs go (some people really like this whole style of amp, me? not so much, but this one's well done, especially at this price point) and is capable of a lot of shades of dirt. The whole amp is pretty versatile and comes in 2 wattages that both sound pretty good and you can get the one that's right for you. Oddly, for this amp I prefer the extra headroom of the 6L6 version. Downside apart from fear of the complicated circuitry failing at a show? Lots of knobs to set. If you use channel oneof a DRRI its a volume bass and tone. You can get a sound up in seconds, especially if you're a pedal guy and you just need the ebst baseline tone. Just dial up bass 2, treble 5 or 6 volume between 3 and 6 and lean on your effects which regardless of your effects setup will work with like every pedal ever designed at any settigns thata ren't completely stupid in basically any room on the planet. Try it and see..... on the other side of it even the clean channel of the supersonic has a lot more to set and worry about before you can start playing. Its the sort of amp that will need some recall marks drawn on gaff tape over every knob so you can get your baseline tone at a gig in a hurry. Unlike voxes fenders do not sound good at EVERY setting.... a vox never does fender well but it always soudns awesome even at seemingly random and stupid settings because there are very few controls and their range is limited and itneractive ina musical way whereas the fender is a whole different thing where the the controls have more range than they need because the preamp was designed to make lots of different size amps work with any electric isntument, not just guitar. So the simpelr the fender you can get the faster you can set up and the less need you'll have for recall sheets or stickers. And that reminds me of the last point inf avor of the supersonic, in abssman mode channel oen can be used for bass and if you get the 40 watt 6L6 version ina head you could wire it up to a big cab and use it for bass live in a pretty big venue and get a good aproximation of the 60s bassman sound. The deluxe reverb will never do that.

last point? the supersonic looks cool but its not as iconic as a vintage cosmetic blackface. I like what they did modernizing the brownface and blackface design for the sonics, I do, but there's soemthing great about the old fender models just like the look of a towering marshall stack, an ac30, a pair of Levi's, converse chuck taylors or a Harley Davidson. Some thigns can't be improved on, not because theya re perfect, but ebcause they have represented a whole style and aesthetic for so long. I like to have some classic look on me and behind me ons tage, wearing levis or a beatles suit while standing inf ront of an old amp gives me confidence that I'm part of a line of good guitar playing and sounds going back to the birth of amplified sound. Consider that the look oficonic amps is so iconic because the designs and sounds are iconic. Maybe they can be improved on but they are part of the world's music vocabulary like the violin, snare drum, accordion, whatever.... I find that ts great to have access to some soudns that everyone knows as 'electric guitar' in the way a stradivarius is what classical people imagine when you say 'violin tone'. Its great to innovate too, but man, its good to have the legit, real deal classic and the DRRI is clsoer than the supersonic.

If you can afford it get an original silverface deluxe reverb. Its about 99% of the best blackface examples, almost the same amp in every way that contributes to tone.

also, the reissue silverface is actually nothing like a realy silverface, tis designed with elss headroom than a blackface or DRRI, whereas a real sivlerface has a little MORE headroom, although both the real silverface and reissue silverface are a little less sparkly than an original blackface all things like tubes and speakers being equal. If you don't mind the tendency to beak up early the silverface reissue actually soudns ebtter than the blackface resissue to me, it just isn't as good an effects paltform at gigs. Used on its own its a better amp for the buck though. Bets value for dollar to me though is still the original silverfces. They are pricey but bulletproof and great sounding with the kinda transformers that only come in boutique amps nowadays.

You may also wanna check into Allen amps that makes a pile of boutique variations on the brownface and blackface princeton, deluxe and princeton/deluxe reverb amps (whicha re all super similar designs apart from power tube bias, rectifier tube, phase inverter design and channel count. VERY similar. I actually like the princeont better than the deluxe for tone in blackface though I really like the brownface deluxe without reverb, its a beast, halfway ebtween a tremolux and a deluxe reverb, a real rock machine with a touch of clean.

I'm not quite sure what MY preference is FOR YOU, but for me I would go DR based on proven reliability, quick dialing in of tones and just being so sued to that amp because its been amplifying guitars longer than I've been playing them! Its a sound we all know and a control set we can all handle without thinking, but it does the 60s fender thing and NOTHING else and it won't bark unless its at 9 or 10.

get a guitar YOU like.... don't worry about whatr its usually used for, be an innovator and not an immitator

you can play any kind of music on any guitar..... even a floyd rose equipped, 80s poodle-metal axe can be employed to play some jangly shit if you set your amp right (in fact, floyd guitars are really good at that, they just don't look the part)....

okay, nitty gritty on mustangs and strats etc.... first off the mustang pickup is a flat-poled strat pickup so tis very similar in response to a strat used individually. Used in series or out in or out of phase you willg et some brian-may like tones instead of the strat 2 pickup 'quack'. They are less iconic but more useful fender soudns especially if you use a 1 channel tube amp and want thin and clean, light-dirt and thick solo tones controlled just from your guitar. Electronically the msutang and strat have differnt 'gimmick' soudns but the core tone is the same with just a little elss emphasis on the D and G strigns from the msutang. Where the BIG difference is is the bridge and scale. The mustang bridge lacks the strat's sustain block and while its a better design to me than the strat I have to say the strat bridge with the steel block anchoring the strings and the springs that resonate in sympathy with body produces a sound that's not imitated by another bridge assembly. If you get a mustang with a strat bridge it will be stratier when using just 1 pickup at a time. But it will never produce the steely twang of a strat ebcause it is a tiny 24" scale and can't produce the breadth of harmonics the strat is capable of. Without the 25.5" neck scale of the strat the information those 2 strat-like pickups get from the string will just be less compelx. I find the fender short scale is less tight and focused on the fundamental than a Gibson too. So don't expect the sustaining fundamental of a single-equipped gibby either, the gibby is still a longer neck. However, the fender short scale neck does have a cool 'plunky/rattly' quality with the mustang and jag/jazz bridges that's a sound all its own.... if you can fit your fingers in the frets of a mustang or jag then I gotta say they are a unique thing because of the little necks.

food for thought

the jazz chorus is user error, whoever psoted it posted it wrong back in the early days of the site.... ir emember early on amplifiers used to be a confusing and murky category but in the last eyar or so it tightened up as GC and Michael tighted thigns up.... but there are still holdovers.

Wouldn't microphones be studio equipment? Even the lowly 57 and 58 are commonly used in the studio....

it seems like a great method but its not working for me.... every time I try it this morning it tells me you're upgrading your equipment with that splash page or if I try internet explorer it just won't work at all.... in fact, the whole site doesn't load right in internet explorer since Wednesday's (or maybe it was Tuesday's) mandatory windows 10 update... its fine in chrome and firefox though other than the new sort feature.

Did I just miss the boat on this because I was too busy to try it yesterday? Did you take it down because it was just a beta test or something?

but yeah, also, the site doesn't run on internet explorer anymore on either of my machines.... not a huge deal, but just a heads up you should be aware of.

https://youtu.be/a0BuPgrBwHU

I feel the same way about new music most years as southpark felt about this election (if only they had known just how bad the US general election was going to become in the long run, but I digress)

however, I like many of the tunes (and some of the arrangements and mixes if not the overcompressed mastering that hurts my poor ears) off this appealing oddball Zaqary and his wife turned me on to...

https://soundcloud.com/tomreveal/sets/joan-apwbld-promo-album-mp3

and I'll give a runner up slot to Depeche Mode's 'Spirit' just for their persistence all these years since Wilder left.... and because they're fucking Depeche Mode and when they're phoning it in they still school almost everyone to turn on a synthesizer since. Sure the album lacks a track with a great vocal line, classic lyric and 1st rate arrangement, but I hear worse every time I'm subjected to top 40 radio.

Other than that I haven't heard a new record I liked enough to listen to more than once. Its a struggle tog et to the end a lot of the time when someone is pressuring me to check some of these records out. I have to sit on my hands not to press stop.

I am going to brave the 2 artists you mentioned as I have no clue who they are. Maybe I'll be surprised.

when I was in a touring band I restrung and checked setup every show even when we were just playing at home I would get the 2 or 3 guitars I planned to use at home gigs teched up the ay before the show (on tour or for big opening slots I might have a guitar tech to do my bidding, otherwise I did the work myself and would check the rhythm guitarist's guitars once they were restrung the day before the show).... otherwise when not gigging away from home heavily with ourre hearsals being 3 days a week in that band I would restring a guitar before every rehearsal and play the one restrung the previous rehearsal and I would generally give them a look over to see if anything drifted from spec about once a month unless something sounded or felt off to me at a rehearsal. While recording an album with guitar sessions pretty much every other day? everything got restrung and the set-up checked out every week.... every guitar brought to the studio and if something got seriously funky with one and it was too ahrd to straighten out in a day or two we retired the guitar from sessions and got another example... same with tube amps, tubes were tested weekely with backups available, bias cheks if needed. Anytime anything sounds weird to me I get my tools. The tiniest little buzz makes me insane. I hear it. I'm less uptight about it now, but I sued to be psychotic about maintenance. For real and if you are taking thigns seriously you should be too. When you change strings make sure to check intonation once your tuning is stabilizing (should be pretty fast if you put your strings ona dn stretch them correctly) and if intonation is off before you touch the bridhe assembly check your neck. Make sure you keep detailed measurements of YOUR proper setup in each case. With basses in the studio I like to have a flatwound 'dead strings' bass available, something passive like an older P or J. Then the rest of the basses will get treated like the guitars with round wounds, maybe one with pure steel and another with round nickel for varying degrees of brightness that compliment the electronics. The bassist will have a lot of input on this obviously, but we'll have bass options to try out for every song just like trying out different bass amps and cab setups, micing solutions and DIs a big aprt of the sound will be the instrument tone and each abss will be setup for the sessions to provide a distinctive flavor of the bassists range and all but the dead one will get the strings changed with the guitars. But we'll still be checking the intonation and relief on the dead one every couple days just in case. I do a lot of recording at home these days and I Iike to go fast, but time permitting I still like to change strings and go over the setup (although one of my teles has had the same strings for a long while because it sounds good 'broken in')

for a hobbyist? Is et my guitars up once a year. That's sufficiently precise for my purposes... I also tend to use coated strigns a lot and they last me 6 months of the comparatively light use my guitars get now that I no longer gig regularly or toure (and also now that I have twice as many guitars and play each one less frequently in addition to not playing for multiple hours a day)

so in short, depends what level you're doing things at, but if my ears are sensitive then ineveitably someone's ears in the audience are too and they will think your guitar sounds off with dead strings that don't intonate and/or a warped neck... so keep on top of it as a working musician. Maintain your instrument. Know how every part works inside and out and how you like it to perform and know how to make it play that way in a day or less of small adjustments. Learnt eh tricks to making your tuning and setup adjustments pretty stable....

edit:

but yes, tos econd boom, the dead string sound is a thing amongst bassists.... know that the trick for that is to periodically take them off and boil them to get the corrosion and crust off.... they won't get the new tone back but they will continue to intonate which with the crusta nd corrosion dead bass strings will not do after 3 to 6 months of heavy use. but by heavy sue I again mean pro grade use, 3 long rehearsals a week and 2+ gigs or touring schedules with frequent gigs and a lot of exposure to temp and umidity changes. As a bassist you can use dead strings for the retro dead string sound (and yes, flatwounds are the classic dead string sound and labellas are very popular flatwounds that hold up well for a long time) but if you are on the road or even gigging heavily locally where the sintruments are going from a hot or cold van into a climate controlled venue? check your setup a lot. If you have time to check your intonation before the show? do so (you seldom do though). But remember, the better maintained the truss and bridge assembly the better the whole thing will hold up to the rigors of regular gigging so that you tune up spot on at every fret at sound check every night regardless of wether its winter and the venus is hot or if you toured your ass from NYC to Savannah GA as spring turned to summer and your guitars went from weather that was on the chilly side to sweltering in a matter of weeks...

stay on top of it and it won't feel like a chore. Ignore it and it can get so bad it's going to seem impossible

you're both wrong, the casino is from the first run of epi branded Gibson designs in the late 50s after Gibson had owned epi for a while and was running out of epi pickups and other proprietary epi parts.... it is most definitely a rebranded ES-330.... the early ones don't even have an oversized headstock, it more Gibson shaped. Basically if an epi has a Gibson pickup on it (p90, bucker, minibucker) then its a psot-buyout design. Some are very much rebrands like the Casino, others have slight changes like the riviera and Sheraton and some are built with the same techniques as LP jrs and SGs but have whacky shapes like the coronet and that whole family of solid bodies. But almost every epi still in production is a Gibson design. Hardly any original epis models have survived. Just the emperor that I can think of...

there's a whole story about why Gibson did this that ahs to do with the exclusive territories they allotted to authorized dealers and ted McCarty being a sneaky mofo using epi to skirt his exclusive contracts with stores.... I think prior to that idea Gibson was gong to nix the brand when they ran out of parts. They had already closed the NYC factory....

I think with it being delay into chorus its trying to be like the deluxe memory man and aquapuss

the casino is not an original model, its an ES-330 and always was

you probably souldn't use both iputs for the same basic signal unless the wet delay signal is long beyond the has effect withminimal feedback

heck, I am not even sure that the roland will allow you to use both at once, fenders will, early amrshalls will, jcm800s will not, the signal is out of phase and wired to be an 'either or' affair

we should probably change the title of this thread to "Boom's Musical Autobiography" so his fans can have an easier time finding it

Gibson has admittedly been cranking out some junk in their extreme low end lately, but an average Gibson standard version of any of their classics is like 2 leagues out ahead of a top of the line epi and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong. I will pit either of my SGs (a standard and a studio, just off the shelf guitars apart from a changed bridge pickup on the standard which is ALSO a stock SG pickup, just one from 40 years ago) against any epi SG copy any day of the week because I know its just not a contest. Gibsons still makes a good guitar.... they vary but that's because all the detail work is still done by humans. I also like fully CNCed guitars where the only variation is from sanding during finishing (fender, gretsch)... you don't get any dogs in this style of guitar making, but you also don't get any extra special ones. I will also point out that the basic models are NOT overpriced. American labor is expensive and they are employing americans when few companies still bother... and if you look at the huge rate of inflation a basic Gibson like an SG or LP standard has not actually gone up in price since the 50s. It took months of saving for theaverage working musician in the 60s to save up for a new Gibson and it still does. These were enver budget guitars apart from the melody maker.

I will also pit any of my Japanese set-neck guitars against any epi equivalent from any era. Just looking at them enxt to eachother the difference in workmanship and attention to details will be glaring. Sit my Greco next to a decorative Epi and you are going to notice the Greco has nice binding material and you can see hat its been hand cut, sometimes in really artistic ways to flatter the guitars curves and you can really see the hand sanding on the bevels and stuff.... its just a real work of handcraftsmanship whereas the epi is a Monet. it looks like an instrument at a distance but its really not when you're holding it.

probably, if you have no control over the power and grounding where you will be using them... daisy chaining 2 different amp brands will usually cause a ground loop and you will get loud hum... also, your 2 amps can be out of phase and daisy chaining will cancel the preamp signals and you get next to know audible sound even at 10.... even when everything works, when you daisy chain you are effectively blending the preamps of the 2 amps sonically like when you jumper channels on a plexi, so its not precisely the sound of 2 individual amps, its a new thing....

there are so many things that can go wrong

you need an ABY that's worth its salt, isolated outputs, a phase and ground lift on one channel.... maybe active circuitry so your signal isn't halved (because that's what happens in passive units as you surmised and the loss of volume is less of an audible issue than the reduction in gain which will change the way your 2 amps sound).... personally I think the best ABY going is the radial 'switchbone', but I have one so I'm biased, but mine has served me VERY well for about 15 years... they also make what I consider to be the best passive box, the big shot

most buffered stereo pedals also make good ABY boxes in bypass and work without hum or buzz 90% of the time... my flashback X4 does this trick really well and is capable of giving me some pretty cool ping pong delays between 2 amps but I've never tried using it in place of my dedicated ABY outside my house because my full rig is routed a little more intricately than just that

an epis is not a Gibson and I wish you all would stop comparing them

high action sounds better... it is known

but seriously, the factory spec for Gibson action is pretty damned low to the point where its too low on some of their guitars and there's a hint of buzzing through the amp because the neck angle might be slightly off of spec (its wood, glue in necks vary)... maybe your definition of low is even lower than mine....

personally I usually want my Gibson action up some from factory spec

I'm not talking about set-up.... a good guitar with a bad setup is still a good guitar if you know how to look past the set-up. I'm talking about clunkers. Guitars with dead spots on the enck, weird feel to the fretboard, bad neck sets, inadequate fret dress... you get a lot of this stuff these days but people don't seem to notice

most old guilds (pre 75ish?) are about 500 to a million times better than the dano, harmony, kay, supro, silvertone and airline guitars that are so popular now.

I suspect Narcy was talking about a 80s guild beginner model or something. Most of the Guilds made in Newark and Westerly are killer.

waving middle fingers and penis

see, I like this, because if your gear is 'misused' maybe an amp can be an effects processor or a turntable can be a midi controller?

and what have we all learned? when life hands you lemons, don't take a chisel to your budget guitar...

I was being kinda tongue in cheek.... sorry, I always forget the internet doesn't have a sarcasm button. We get these replies on ehre where people are like "I am looking for a stable whammy for my paul" or "is there an amp that's less than 20 watts that cops a good marshalls tack tone" and folks pipe up with "I like fender's whammy bars, get a fender or "I can get a passable classic rock tone with such and such OD pedal and my solid state practice amp, or that's what my mom tells me when I'm practicing" and I'm just like if I someone asks what the best tasting cheap brand of iced tea is don't reply to them by saying "lemonade is cheaper than iced tea and just as tasty." So my sarcasm ramps up. Sorry. Disgruntled old tech here... don't listen to me!unless you wanna learn a lot. I know things....

but I was half wondering if you just worked at Fender!

if I squint and think way back I kinda remember that feeling

its your vox now, I have a bunch of my own still, don't worry

my gear collection really started in earnest when I was 16 and worked at starbucks

its actually happening? damn!