jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I'll give you metal as a genre that's now distinct from the broader rock genre in some ways and we could do that. From a gear perspective it has genre specific needs generally. I'm not seeing Christian Contemporary as too distinct from a musical and technical aspect than adult contemporary and the elss urban pop and more modern mainstream country. This is a gear site and the lyrical content doesn't effect the equipment needs, right? Think of it from a tech angle and my POV might make sense to you...

but hey, opinions are like assholes! we all have them and some days they stink

"... turn your fuckin gain down." i did and the recording is awesome.

I'll bet it is, there's a lot going on in a guitar signal and the tube amp twists and adds to it as do pedals of course.... and then there's everything downstream of the speaker from the room to the control room speakers! like I try not to compress dirty guitar because its already beign levelled by the clipping, but I still compress the mix buss or I might group the guitar and some other tonal elements to a parallel compression send to 'glue' a mox and taylor some attack and decay characteristics in context to enhance the groove... and in those applications I am adding THD to the guitar in the mix... I woulda asked before I gave my opinion or if it was that hard to deal with and I couldn't find a chain that controlled the audio correctly while minimizing the artifacts that were unpleasant I woulda prefaced it with "its your music and your band, and maybe its your goal to make my ear uncomfortable and to sit back in the mix no matter how I balance it, BUT... you're new to guitar and can we try 1 pass with the gain down?"

I modified my last post a bunch because I realized I sounded like more of a dick than I actually am. I think I said some sensible stuff you might wanna read being new to guitar and relatively new to pro audio.

no no, this is true of live too.... this isn't about the aesthetics of when a lot of distortion serves the song, its a question of how a room reacts to distortion, how it interacts with the band dynamic and also how every piece of gear capturing it will add distortion of its own as well as changing the harmonic balance in ways that might increase the audibility of the 'distorty' components of the guitars hamronics making it far more mushy than you think standing in front of the cab.

On live guitar? I did FOH off and on for years, guys use too much broadband distortion, they disappear in the mix and sound smaller even if they're blasting loud. Worse still they will get that big rectifier bass sound on their guitr and eat the bass sound so its an indistinct mush behind my great drum sound and no matter how much I tweak the PA the stage volume in anything less than 1000 seats will keep it muddy. Its like a tinny can of bees anyhere but in front of the amp or the very back of the room on axis with the front of the amp where a 4x12 wants to throw the sound, but then in the back it peaky, fatiguing mids and non-musical thumping. Its sound REINFORCEMENT, particularly in mid-sized and small spaces. I am filling in and helping, but I can't help a bad sound. It could be frustrating when you would talk to a young band who was dong their first decent sized show opening maybe and you wuld sound check get as good as you could and hit the talkback and go "are you open to a suggestion or 2 in roder to maximizethe impact you'll have on the audience? I promise that unlie most sound guys I won't suggest you turn your VOLUME down." and then they go, "no, we're ready to rock, good job on monitos, it sounds great up here. Most of the time the only faces gainiacs (and I love that term) are melting are their own. For indescribably distorted guitar sounds I would rather guys use in-ears and I get something DI like a fractal. You see more and more of that in the heavy world because they don't want to turn the distortion down but they need like a STUDIO mix to stand a chance of it melting the faces of even the 1st row. Alright alright, I am way off on a tangent. Maybe you got something from this though, I've been at this a long time, especially counting my non-professional time lately.

if you are really interested I can tell you so much more, but live is literally THE WORST with distortion from a dedicated amp/speaker rig with a mic on it. you're getting acoustic interference, bleed from the drums and bass, the microphone adds THD (and its usually a shit mic like a 57 where the crap output transformer adds gain and balances it but it distorts like a mofo when hit ahrd and on guitar? well, for recording uses I like to take the transformers out of 57s, try it)... then your console might have some THD , you might have a gate to help with bleed but that adds some clipping because there's gain staging in that VCA, compression at the desk? even justa cross the mix buss? even the cleanest comrpessors distort subtley at times and they are definitely grabbing harmonics and cranking them up making distortions sound more distorted.... PA speakers???? should I go on? Don't even get me started on EQ, even so called linear phase EQ has distortion induced by the phase shift of overlapping fitlers....

this is just applied science applied of course to the observations of a guy with good ears and a lot of experience with all different music situations

EDIT:

notice that though I mouth off on this forum ad nauseum, when I work with other people's music and I have an opinion I ask if its welcome first... maybe my opinion holds no water in some instances because murky can of buzz is what the band's vision is and their definition of good sound, because tis just subjective, these are generalities.... but there's a point where stylistically compromised sound quality is just bad sound that an audience doesn't connect with on a high level if at all... sometimes its just listener error on my part though and I always allow for that and if no one wants my thoughts on the sound I just keep it to myself and work with what I get

although this is why I don't miss commercial recording and doing live sound -- I'm super opinionated but super respectful too and it just gets me all bothered some days... tis better just to not do it for other people even if they beg! its not like there's money in it, its a labor of love

I mean, if you think you're melting faces and you look at the audience reaction and the reaction you see is face melt who am I to tell you those faces haven't melted and that they're a bit unsatified? If you're satisfied then I am wrong. If you wind up let down or unsatisfied or whatever though? don't blame me, don't get dejected. You made decisions x, y and z and people wanted a, b andc. If you wanted people to like you? you could pay attention to that audience and you could listen to people's suggestions.... if you follow your muse its all about you and you can't expect any specific reaction. If you make a challenging record with harsh sonics then be prepared for a negative response from the majority or to be ignored completely (at least initially) unless there's a real specific convergence of cultural factors making people unusually receptive. I think a lot of musicians aren't pragmatic and they don't manage their expectations. They want to be mavericks but they want to be loved too and its great if you can be both but its hard. You have to decide if in music Machiavelli applies...

I am way off in left field here but maybe someone will take something from this and it will inform their work and they'll do something special in the studio or their shows will get better or different or whatever and they'll better manage their expectations and their working relationships which will help them have a signature sound... its people behind the gear and on the other side of the speakers and that's kidna the secret of tone and just music.

I think tags are a good idea! there are too many genres and sub-genres in the wider music world already. Its so confusing and most of us creating music, especially we bedroom/project studio indie types? we're always busy trying to fuse even fairly disparate and obvious genres and obliterate boundaries. And a genre like 'Christian rock' is a really artificial boundary. Its just rock music with a very specific set of lyrical concerns. From a marketing standpoint I get it, Crhistians want to know that there's rock music that expresses their point of view rather than, say, Iron Maiden who would be directly opposite (even if they're tongue in cheek), but this isn't a record store. This is a place for musicians and other music business specialists to congregate and share knowledge and just generally bullshit. I gotta say I don't give a fig about whats int he lyrics of a song as long as their good so to me and all of the guys I know 'Christian rock' as a genre is kinda pointless. It has no musical perspective and is a category for a more commercial, consumer/fan driven site. I'll cringe if we add more genres, I like how we have a tiny handful of broad umbreallas right now and that a diverse artist might get to shelter under 2 or 3 of them. But if you want tags, like the subgenres on soundcloud that cue people who care about that stuff? I say more power to you we should have those tags here because I can ignore them if I want and have my classic, musician-centric equipboard whereas a more casual musician who is more of a fan can really be looking at those tags from his or her consumer standpoint...

I have a lot of stuff up where I was actively avoiding the guitar or at elast avoiding guitar that sounds like guitar, the songs are good under the Depechemodey-ness but I hamstrung myself not using my primary instrument more so I am revisiting them all and repurposing the songs to be more of a hybrid pop thing like the last 3 songs I did. I'm not ditching everything I had but I am definitely adding guitar and experimenting with muting synth channels, samples and such to see what I can do with the mood of the songs from 2016 to give them a more original and interesting overall voice.

just friend me on soundcloud so I can see/hear what you're up to too... or I'll hit you right now while I'm slacking off work. Wait, you don't have a link on your e'board

Hm. I like loud blasty type distortion, to a point. if it loses tone I'm no longer interested.

there's a lot less distortion in my amp-based sounds than than you might think you're eharing on my recordings. The distorted qualities poke out of a mix. In general less is more with all distortion the minute you're going through a mic and a mixing console or other gear that might exaggerate those harmonics. When iw as still an engineer professionally Iw as always trying t talk the punk bands into using less gain for a muscley and more powerfully raw guitar sound. Those who listened to me were always happy in the end.

DS-1 or RAT on it.

I love the rat, but I seldom bother with my rat-type dirt box set to a typical rat sound.... I just let the amps talk and they talk loud! you would laugh if you saw the presets on my nova drive, I have like one with a decent amount of gain. Into a dead clean amp my main 2 presets (one for singles, one for buckers thata re very similar, just slightly different midrange response and gain/output) are barely adding any dirt, but they goose an amp that's breaking up in a really musical way because the rat and tubescreamer sides are in parallel working different frequency ranges with some clean blend and a slight output boost overall. I can't even imagine using a rat type of pedal the normal way, it just eats up all your dynamics and touch. I don't think I've turned an OD or Dist up past 3 on the gain knob in 10 or 15 years other than for testing purposes in the store. I just don't wanna hear that. Well, not into an amp anyway. What I'll do recording DI through like a moog filter? well that's another story but then its less of a guitar sound and more of a synth thing and I tend to gravitate to the sansamp in those scenarios

a high gain vox? with reverb? what, you mean some kind of modern models?

I am about to go off, so if you don't want to hear some tone snobbery stop reading:

as far as I am concerned vox only makes 6 models with various tweaks over the years: AC4, AC10, AC15, AC30, AC50, AC100.... and I don't like those custom classic ac50 and 100s, I don't get what vox was doing with those, they sound like everything else in channel switching... oh, and there's the notorious ac120, that's a weird beast that's actually pretty cool with the 4 band EQ, but its not terribly voxy... the rest of the stuff is really meh and I don't like to think about them. A stock ac30 from one of the better runs is so perfectly what it should be that vox could justs top trying to innovate. I kinda wish they would. I mean, there were a few vintage voxes with spring reverb, but no one used the reverb because it was a bad circuit designed specifically to avoid the Hammond patent because Tom Jennings didn't want to pay the licensing fee, cheap bastard. Adding anything to an ac30 apart from a some voicing switches for bright, hot, half power or a post phase inverter master is like total blasphemy to me. The ACs are the most 'right' factory amps stock. Like, fender comes up with some cool new stuff sometimes and should keep at it, but the brits? Marshall, Hiwatt, Orange/Matamp and Vox? They all could just keep making the models they are known for and nothing else. Marshal's last good ampw as the silver jubilee. Everything up to that point was gold. After the Jubilee? They made one passable amp, the 900SLX. Which is very much a single channel jubilee versus the other 800s. Marshall is just defined by the pelxi fronts, the 2203/04s and the jubilee and they can just quit with those, theya re all perfect at being what they are. Orange? they made 2 cool amps recently, the terrors and the sadly discontinued rocker 30. Nothing else worth much of a damn. I am curious to try the custom shop but I suspect its the one amp that's like the old oranges which were really amazing and unique amps. Every version of the 80, 120 and 200 were ass kicking in different ways and they just can't improve on them. Hiwatt? They have 3 legit amps, the 50, 100 and 200. All great designs, just scaled power sections of the same killer sound. Hiwatt tried some other things after Dave died, but none of it measures up though the 80s 30 watter is an interesting side story. They still coudla just quit with the original 3 models which I believe was DR's intention ebfore his untimely death. Vox coulda stopped designing around '65. As interesting as the UL amps are they aren't that great and they just didn't do anything since then that holds up. All of Dick Denny's great design work was over after he did the 50 and 100... being the 1st guitarist who designed an amp he hit the nail on the ehad so squarely with his amps that he coulda just rested on his laurels. Sound city shoulda just kept making the L100 and nothing else (the concord is like the crappiest amp ever and the mk4 50+ and those amps with multicolored knobs? so weird stock, not a primary stage amp or even useable for a lot of music), Watkins coulda made the dominator mk1 and nothing else and been legendary. Selmer? all they did was wreck their existing models in the 70s, in the 60s you had the two zodiacs and the treble and bass heads like mine and those designs were just awesome during their heyday.... let the new guys at the table design new tube amps, oldsters? keep cranking out the fabulous amps from your heyday with modern components! Its hard to beat an 800 or an ac30 so why try? just give me more of those!

Sorry about that, I'm new on the forum, my budget is around $400-500

in your shoes I would check out a ac4tv head and look at 2 cabs, maybe a 1x10 for the bedroom and a 2x12 for gigs, but that's me... I think if you go that way you can be ready for anything, you will have adequate clean and a great amp based drive tone which a lot of dudes lack in these days of 5 dirt box pedalboards with lots of options and sketchy, ill defined crunch/solo tones... I lean on my amps and no one ever accuses me of having a weak dirt tone for any genre, even metal and I cut the mix like a hot knife through butter at any volume level without swallowing any other parts of the arrangement and on tape? or harddrive these days? I have much better guitar sounds than a lot of whats on the radio... good SE, class A tube amp will get you in that ballpark with enough power for small clubs and the ac4tv has that great rock n roll voicing and speaker options will be the thing that helps you blow it up, shrink it down and get some different colors before you need to stomp any gadgets... and its going to give your buckers and strat singles equal lovin' unlike some designs that excel at clean with fenders and dirt with gibbies and that's that --- you have to play the amp though, tis half your instrument and its a dying artform... kids today play their pedals but a lot of that gets lost by the time it gets to the 2nd row of the audience but the amp? playing into the amp and working your guitar controls? that hits the back of the theater or club

if you need to do metal though, that 1 little tube, lack of phase inverter distortion and the small, low iron output transformer will be a little weedy and midrangey no matter how you shape whats coming into the amp, but for every other type of music from jazz to alt rock to Clapton/beck stuff? good way to go

Can you imagine joining a website just cuz you're such a gear dork?

I know, who would be THAT lame?! Xaq? I say this in defense of my gear/instrument fetish though, I use everything (as you know through our open music exchange) and if I don't use something for 6 months I consider selling it.... everything needs to have song-based utility or its just an object. Its not gear unless you are making music with it. Ya need to try not to be sentimental and look at the things as tools and/or creativity 'sparkers' or you get buried in stuff.

I am going to be a weiner and bump my own 'new song' thread in a vain attempt to get more feedback on the rough mix.

There's also the Vox AC4TV, or even the AC4C1 model which go for fairly cheap. If you want to cough up around $200 more, you can probably get the handwired version.

yeah, the C1, that's the topboost oen that's closer to the HW circuit but with a 10" cab, inferior components and no 'hot mode'

the handwired is really a nice sounding amp... I just like playing really loud and Iw asn't using it after the initial honeymoon phase so I gave her to Narcy.

yeah, Line6 gear? it pretends to shoot you in the knee and depending on how picky you are you may or may not give a yelp of pain.... or maybe you'll give a pretend scream to convince your friend your tone's legit

I mean, everything has a musical use, I just think maybe you should make your primary amp and guitar the best quality thing you can get that's suited to your sense of music and the guitar. And I kidna feel that way with instruments and studio equipment in general. Your primary, workhorse pieces should be the ebst thing you can afford that expresses who you are. The trouble with mdoelling amps, soft synths and any of these all in 1 solutions to my ear is that they tend to express some marketing guy's viison of music unless you really, really fuck with them or misuse them. Whereas, like an old plexi? well it can do the cream and zep sounds sure (if you have the chops and can emulate the touch of a Clapton), if that's what you wanna express, but you can play an unusual guitar through it and set it up for a clean tone maybe and all of the sudden its expressing you and your playing and no one is saying 'oh, yeah, the old marshall stack sound again." And there's no digging tog et that sort of expressiveness, tis fast. You can just turn the volume down, grab a telecaster? boom, you are doing something a little off the ebaten path that's not going to be a preset on the spider combo amp. Oh yeah, and the old tube amp will sound really good in general because it was handmade with some love... but on the other hand you can misuse crap technology and do some neat things. I've been using a beaten down old fender frontman a lot lately as a preamp for guitar and synths because it just sounds so raunchy with the awful distortion circuit engaged, volume cranked and then a padded signal off the speaker output into the recorded via a DI... or it interesting to reamp a synth, right? but use the frontman driving good speakers like some of my celestion blues or old green and silver backs or even a fullr ange PA cab just tog et way on the other side of the spectrum. Bought the frontman for like 10 bucks outta a GC's used area on a whim. I modded it a little and decided its an effects processor now. As an amp? eh, I have real amps. Vitnage stuff, boutique stuff, fancy tube and solid state hifi power amps... PA gear. But as an effect, embracing the bad sound and weak design? well? it was worth 10 clams

I wouldn't call 30 to 50 watts a practice amp, its big for a lot of modern clubs. I find myself taking the modern ac30 or the matchless outta the hosue with me so I have the half power modes and master volumes just in case because that 30 watts or so is pretty loud even playing clean. Too loud for a lot of people's delicate ears even though I think it feels pretty reasonable.... I mean, tis an electric guitar.

define 'budget' and tell me about your effects usage.... got lots of pedals or do you need an amp that will do the heavy lifting on drive, compression and general voicing? I like my guitar and amp selection to do the work and I sue my effects presets sparingly as like, flavoring.... I would sooner turn an amp up to 10ish and work my volume knob than kick on an overt distortion pedal but I am part of a dying breed.

to me, for the primarily bedroom guy who plays with people once in a blue? can't gow rong with an ac4tv for under $200 used.... I personally prefer the TV models to the ones with the 2 band top boost tonestack (other than the HW, but that's outta your price range I think --- I actually sold my ac4hw to fellow moderator narcist alst year ;-) but by all means try both the TV and the topboost! I think the TV is cheaper though.

define affordable? I consider anything under a grand in USD to be an affordable amplifier and anything for 500 or less to be a budget, workingman's amp or in the used/bintage market to be a lucky find or a sleeper model

like my '62 ac30? not an affordable amp, it was sort of affordable when I bought it 15 years ago, but now? can't touch one unless you are wealthy.... on the other hand my 70s Arbiter-made AC30 was super affordable, needed some servicing out of the gate and is beat to shit cosmetically, but it was almost in budget-gear territory around that magic $500 mark.... cheaper than either of my reissues and really a cool version with tis own voice.

I tell everyone to go out looking for vintage 60s/70s traynors if they wanna save money and sound fantastic... most of the models will straddle fender and marshall tones.... the bass models are more tweedish while the reverb/effects models tend to be more blackface fender leaning. Look to pay under $500 for one in good shape. People charge more, they are nuts. There are tons of thema round, they're indestructible and they just aren't that collectible. If you don't want to be loud look at some of the sleeper Gibson models, not super affordable like they used to be, but you can certainly find some nice 5 to 20 watt 2 tone or tweed Gibson amps from about '55to '61 that will go toe to toe with any tweed fender. Make sure you see gut shots though, people used to mod these and ruin them... stay away from anything that's not in the 2 tone leather/gnawgahide covering or tweed covering because after the tweeds/crestlines circa 1962? Gibson systematically went about ruining their amp line

I also recommend everyone try a tiny terror. Its a solid, portable, realitvely reliable modern classic that's like a hot-rodded ac15. Discontinued now but very affordable on ebay and such, they made TONS of them. Try to get a made in the UK one with an early serial #. People love the hybrid microterrors but Iw as not wowed. They don't suck though and the scarcity of controls makes them easy tog et a great base tone from in seconds..... plus they sound basically the same at bedroom and stage levels for sounds both clean and dirty though they excel at the modern orange dirt tone...

Stay away from amps with too many features, these are invariable tossed on crap circuits to cover the lack of tone with unnescasary versatility....

my personal preferences lean towards voxes and small to midsized tweed type amps, but I have a couple of big 50 watt el34 amps again now and have been into old marshalls and fender's blackfaces at times having had pricnetons, deluxe reverbs and a lot of the heads.... you really can't go wrong with a silverface deluxe or if a sivlerface is out of range maybe a reissue with a replacement speaker --- just a great alla rounder for the small club guitarist who isn't looking to join megadeth or children of bodom

I don't know if any of what I just told you will help though! I mean, apart from your budget whata re the considerations? What types of music will you primarily be using it for and what types of venues or recording spaces will it be seeing?

hi Mikey, my name's Jim and I'm a gearaholic

yessir, give me 3 points

get a better photo and I'll ID it for you, dude

some weird, fucked up asshat

I haven't heard/read the term 'asshat' since my wife died... keepin' it real here. Nice vocab.

Reading without glasses I thought that said in PRISON.

wait, all this time I thought Boom used to work as a prison guard so he was demoing guitars in prison.... you mean he just plays them in stores like the rest of us?

"No Deposit Valve"

this

How many Hawkins Brothers does it take to change a lightbulb?

None. They are in The Darkness.

nice! best joke so far

you doubted this song in this foirnat but.........

I used my1 remaing technics direct drive as control voltage for master track pitch converterded to MIDI bymy korg SQ1

so you WANT a blizzard of rusty nails? It'll be pretty abrasive, dude.... less so through the normal channel, but the normal channel aint much of a clean tone unless you are playing big band jazz....

Ironically, the Martin that I want at the shop has a missing endpin. There isn't even a cover, it's just a small hole!

stuff happens in transit or when the idiots at the store are changing strings, I'm sure it had an endpin when it left the plant.... not really a tough fix either

get the martin! Ibanez? well lets just say the Ibanez QC facility is not far from my house and the Martin factory is about an hour and change away and having been insdie both places many times, I know which I would buy after having had my Yamaha's bridge peel up (which, by the way, is an easy repair).

generally: crisp, detailed top with a round lowend punch? solid maple top.... bright and ultra jangly, zingy, thumpy? laminate top... warm, detailed mids, subdued treble and rich, smooth bass that you have to dig into to get the ebst tone out of? cedar top... s the sepele top solid or laminate? I though sapele was in the maple family of hardness and brightness because tis quite dense so laminating it would be pretty zingy

but the back, sides, neck, fingerboard and bracing style play into it and different combinations of these variables in different body sizes/shapes will present differently as well.... not to mention that every piece of wood is a lil different

just go play a bunch of martin 000s, try a taylor for reference and maybe try a seagull as well (they use crazy woods that sound great and alternative glues but are fantastic value for dollar and have a lot of sub-dread models).... if you see an used guitars form the 80s and 90s try them. Epiphone USED TO make a great acoustic back in their MIJ days.... OLD yamahas are great and really affordable.... like 80s Yamaha dreadnoughts are killer.

anyway

bah, the originals are noisy and delicate and won't hold tune, but the studio electronics se1 I have adds the MIDI, holds tune until you power down, brings the noisefloor down enough and is built to survive a war... but as much cheaper than it is than a voyager or the current reissue its still expensive new compared to the behringer msrp. My used, rack-rashed example cost a little mroe than Uli proposes a new Behnringer tabletop/eurorack unit would cost. Actually both are rack units here and that's probably a major cost cutting point.... the se1 is pretty old school too, no patch memory and I am sure behringer would follow that path to save money whereas to the best of my knowledge moog added patch memory as well as MIDI.... at least the voyager had patch memory.

what am I on about? I forget.

Least moderate moderating I have ever been targeted by. hahahah.... I mean... orange sherbert

Orange amps should create a Sherbert model. That would be cool.

anyway,, go get a vox already, you know you want one. So what if you can't get the muff to sound like anything but a blizzard of rusty nails?

https://reverb.com/news/behringer-ceo-hints-at-affordable-minimoog-clone

Its a great sound, great enough to obsessively collect different versions, but man does not live by vox alone! Well, sometimes this man does. But verily is it said, he who loveth the muff and the righteous punch of the 800 cannot long prosper with just the finicky top boost channel and ultra compresed Vox power section...

honestly, you would probably LOVE a late 60s AC50 (a mk3 or mk4 is somewhere between your 800 breaking glass sound and an ac30), but they are thin on the ground anywhere but England and Scotland, still relatively affordable vintage amps though... if you can find one they're a good value with just a little more headroom, punch and note definition than the ac30.... the earlier ones are more desirable but stock they have less gain and won't break up until they're LOUD, like a proto-hiwatt.

why don't you just buy an ac15 or ac30 and get a less scooped fuzz/distortion that's still in the big muff camp? Even the big muff with tone wicker might do it into an ac30 topboost channel with the tone wicker, ummm, wicking.... swollen pickle mk2 is a muff variant with adjustable mids.... proco rat and its variants and clones can get fuzzy/muffy at the top end but it has the mids though its light on bass (another thing the ac30 gets picky with), and you can buy into rat for peanuts with the Mooer mini version. Everyone loves that. You might want to just rethink a little. The muff is the be all, end all. Its just the first thing of its kind.

I have spoken, Terry shall buy a used ac30 or ac15 handwired and trade his big muff in for something more versatile unless he can find a recently serviced AC50 mk 3 or 4 for about 1k AUD. He should also find someone with a 50 watt JCM800 2204 who wants a 2203 instead (because that guy is now playing stadiums or contracted to use his guitar sound for enhanced interrogations at Guantanamo) and swap with that guy. So let it be written, so let it be done.

thread hijack over

frankly, for 900 you can get an old Japanese Burny LP Custom copy (with a 100 bucks left over for a night at the bar) that will be super well-made, have the same appointments as the epi, older growth, aged in wood, a thinner finish, and some decent old gotoh PAF clones (that maybe aren't as good as the maxon ones in tokais and grecos but still sound much better than the shit in epis)... of course, with old lawsuit axes you have to be patient because not every good model will be available every day, but they come up frequently enough that I would never look at an LP custom that wasn't at least made in Nashville.

ah the distortron, the finest drive I've ever failed to get on with.... I kinda wish I still had it because it would probably have sounded pretty good into my selmer, but thru the ac30s? nope

that's too bad... have you looked at used? I got my roland v-drums used and saved some money because it was just the drums and not the little 'brain' soundbanky gadget.... I used to trigger other stuff with them or play into cubase as MIDI and eventually got a really cool 3rd party, rackmountable soundbank too before selling them due to a lack of space in my walk up and a desire to entertain more often and get some actual furniture (that place was more like a music equipment warehouse with a nice eat in kitchen, a full bathroom and a futon jammed in the amp room than a home -- I don't even think I owned a TV back then). I wound up reclaiming the living room by ditching the V-Drums and moving my computer and racks further into a corner to make room for people to hang out and drink wine with me. It seemed important at the time, but all this electronic drum talk is making me want that roland setup back.

those are pretty grim, yeah.... even for modern epis! y'know, its a shame that epi has become Gibson's shit sub-brand because there was a time when they were mirror models like or unique designs like the 60s coronet and riviera etc.... some of those solid bodies and semis were kinda like the Gibson models but with a unique shape or different inlays and fingerboard and with different pickups but still made at the Gibson plant.... in the 70s theys tarted sending them over to japan and they got funky for awhile with some bolt on garbage and then in the 80s they got nice again but lost the minibuckers and by the end of the 80s when I was getting into guitar they just fully became the low end of Gibson with less of the unique models in the line and varying quality throughout the 90s depending on the Korean subcontractor. Some were pretty nice, but many weren't...

can't go wrong with a deluxe reverb... one of my 2 favorite all-arounders, right after the ac30 and only because the vox has a smoother slide into mean from clean and way more balls but with string articulation turned up into power amp clip... otherwise the DR is really a more intuitive amp to get a great sound from on an unfamiliar stage or in a tracking room you're not used to, so points there

I hear ya, a little over a year ago I was leaking money like a sieve! I ahd to part with anya nd every piece of gear that wasn't a 'use it all the time' item. Sold a tweed Gibson that was like very cool, my Marshall Studio15 (a very rare and awesome 800 series amp that's like if marshall made a gained up deluxe... their only 6V6 amp of the classic era), my oberheim matrix, the old filter factory, an spx90, a lexicon alex, my remaining vintage fuzzboxes, loads of boutique drives and analog modulation pedals, and worst of all my korg poly800. It was grim! I'm no stranger to selling gear in a crunch, but I've never liquidated so much stuff in such a short timespan. I would usually pick 1 piece that was collecting dust in the corner that was worth about the amount I needed, but man, nothing like a child custody battle to make you reassess your actual gear needs. If you don't pay for college? they get mad.... but if you don't pay your lawyer? bad idea (I did aquire a few guitars at the time, but nothing compared to the amount of money that came in from the fire sale)...

you'll get there, she will be yours.... it all evens out in the end! Lately I have gotten tons of stuff and the truth is I sue it all more than the stuff I sold.... its just a bummer because once in a while I am like "I need the fitler factory, the moog filter ain't cutting it on this source' or I think 'this part would be cooler on the Poly800. Oh well, gotta use the roland."

yes, but fender is good with the warranty on hot rods I'm told.... I think you get 5 years on solder joints and PCB traces.

Personally I wouldn't get ANY NEW PCB amp unless its seriously hightest shit like Soldano, tone king , bogner .... those were some durable motherfuckers (my 90s AC30RI has a prettys turdy PCB too, very reliable guy, but Marshall built it on contract, so...)

these days I find all the working-man amps seem to be reliability problems, but they're really easy to replace. A lot of marshall warranty centers will give you a loaner amp if you bring your shitty DSL or TSL in with a fucked up PCB or or cold joint... I remember they did that for someone I was in a band with before we were going out again. Amp died and they just gave him a loaner for the duration of our little tour and said his amp would be fixed when we got back.... another time we weren't touring and they didn't give him the loaner though and he wound up borrowing our neighbors 900SLX whch sounded way better and was built like a tank compared to the DSL50 he had.

Conversely, I never once needed to service the plexi or JMP and my showman was so reliable I never used to bring a backup. When I switched to the DC30 I didn't bring a backup for that either. Indestructible build quality. One of my superleads was PCB though and I also toured with a 50 watt 800 combo and those PCB amps were bulletproof.

What's my point ehre. OH! Get an old fender like a silverface or an 800 or something LOL, that's back when they made amps right. Now the bean coutners are involved and the Chinese are making things so competitive. If you don't keep costs down by outsourcing and degrading component quality you will lose a whole section of the market.... its a shame. Marshall still builds 'em in England for the most part, but some amps get more care than others and some amps just have better PCBs... they just enver got the whole DSL/TSL line roadworthy. Nor will theye ver make the hotrod line truly roadworthy. That's why you see guys on stage with multiples.

you guys know I'm joking, right? there's a small kernel of reality behind the joke, but I do NOT have a scar on my ass that reads "LEIGH<3"

aww man, I got to play/record pretty loud yesterday and with amps in big open spaces and not a deadened closet... one of the tracks I just stuck the ac30 in the room with my computer and shit and turned her up behind me and blasted the drum machine and bass synth through the monitors at my head while I threw down blaring ac30 chords with the red SG... fuck headphones, there was hardly a lick of spill and the performance and sound were right there

I love when I can just be as loud as I damned well please.... usually I have to have my guitar coming through the monitor speakers with the track or I have to wear headphones if I wanna be in the room with it and then I have to turn down as not to piss off the boy.... yesterday the voxes were breathing fire in the open air and everything else was blasting at very high decibel level through big 3 ways

I should get rich and buy a studio for myself and my friends.... anyone have any good get rich quick schemes?

oh and 1st guitars.... hmm, maybe you should get something in the SG camp instead of something in the strat camp. I was really enjoying my red SG yesterday.... they are a really player friendly design. Did I mention the Yamaha Revstars are fantastic value for dollar? Ever try a reverend Sensei?