jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

those marshalls used to go for around $60, but given the extreme rate of inflation since the 90s, between $100 and 150 sounds right (plus there's the shipping on that $170 to consider! back in the day you just plunked a couple 20s down at the local mom n pop music exchange or pawn shop.... check local pawn shops, they always have a few lead 12s in the back).

For $200 to $250 shipped you can likely score an ac4tv on reverb or ebay. So the ebay lead 12 is too pricey from a practical standpoint even if tis really worth the asking price in an empirical sense. I mean, if $50 to 60 more will get you a tube amp????

consider some of my other suggestions too, theya re cool amps, not worth more than $150.

when I still bothered to practice in a structured way I always played dead clean with no effects if I bothered to plug in at all. For a long time as an adult I used to just wander my house with a strat strapped to me doing exercises and scales and stuff... when I ad roommates I found that wandering around with a guitar annoyed them more than plugging in and being loud once a day. I've been told there's something freaky about living with a guy who just constantly plays plays an instrument you can barely hear and doesn't notice anything or anyone else....

I haven't played a pathfinder sicne the 90s, but they've been basically the same little solid state circuit since the late 60s or early 70s when Thomas ORgan developed it under license from Vox. For whatever reason it was a solid seller up until modelling came along, but it sounds like an early solid state design and has no output to speak of. Older ones came with pretty nice speakers and maybe that was the attraction. I dunno. If you must get a pathfinder, look for one from the 80s or earlier with a serious speaker in it (though they may be getting thin on the ground since its not very reliable as solid state goes).

for what a new pathfinder costs get a used ac4tv or get a more modern solid state practice amp... http://www.voxamps.com/uploads/Product_Gallery/AC4TV_Gallery_800x600_2.jpg

there are a lot of non-modelling solid state offerings that eat the pathfinder for breakfast. As previously discussed in another thread, the little EHX caliber/magnum amps have surprisingly good sound quality although you will need a speaker cab. People seem to like the ZT lunchbox too. The roland blues cubes are literally the tubiest solid stae amps I've heard. Not quite legit, but pretty darn nice and NO MODELLING. Great clean tone. Very Bassmany.

the various blackstar ID amps sound pretty darned good too and are pretty affordable (though like the blues cube, they have a lot more output potential than a pathfinder or lead 12). You get more features and a little less elgit tube simulation to my ear, but the cleans are on par with the roland. Not sterile at all!

in old solid state, the best practice-sized one is far-and-away the little Marshall Lead 12... it romps allover the vox pathfinder and is about the same output.... those old lead 12s usually have outstanding celestions in them too (you will often find nice fanes in 80s pathfinders). I have sued this as a bedroom amp and it sounds pretty darn good, especially for mid-gain sounds with additional dirt pedals out front. Marshall actually captured some of the vibe of the 800 amps in this little box of transistors. Don't expect it to be a Studio 15 combo, but its got the 80s Marshall DNA, and that's high praise because Marshall has really failed to capture the vibe of their flagship amps in their later solid state practice amps. Its even loud enough that you could play a small gig with it if you had to. Billy Gibbons reputedly recorded some ZZ Top overdubs with his in the 80s. They are everywhere, pretty cheap and Rev BFG approved. Go pan shop diving or watch ebay, I recommend this as the amp the Pathfinder aspired to be.... but the pathfinder was designed 10+ years too early to pull it off. http://www.alheron.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/image3.jpg

early 90s Trace Elliott hybrid amps (their answer to marshall's valvestates) sound REALLY good for hard rock and cost next to nothing evne though everyone admits theya re great sounding little amps (the big ones actually commend pretty substantial money) http://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/trace-elliot-tramp-179903.jpg

if you want a good clean pedal plaform ;ate 70s and early 80s Yamaha are like a solid state interpretation of a fender blackface that sound shockingly good as long as you keep it clean and get 100% of your dirt from floor pedals. The G50 may seem like its a little loud for a practice amp, but given that its solid state 50 watts is not all that loud and it will sound very good and come with good speakers. You want a G50 or G100 from the 1st or 2nd series. The 3rd series amps with multi-colored knobs and channel switching are a different circuit and don't sound very good. The original G series came with pretty nice sounding speaker(s) too.... I think the 50 and 100 came as heads too, but the ones that look like bizzaro world fenders are will suit you best.... I think they came in every speaker configuration though 2x12 was reserved for the 100 watter. http://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/yamaha-g50-112-433171.jpg

http://img.audiofanzine.com/images/u/product/normal/yamaha-g50-112-ii-147039.jpg

http://jucciz.com/jucciz.com/gfx/amps/g100212ii.jpg

http://img.audiofanzine.com/images/u/product/normal/yamaha-g100-87492.jpg

Sunn's big solid state amps from the 70s have long been held in high esteem byplayers like King Buzzo, but lesser known is the studio series of small solid state combos that pack all of that Sunn solid state punch in a lower wattage, portable package. These are one of the few all transistor solid state amps that excel at producing a little of their own dirt. The cleans are rich with harmonics because the rpeamps just don't have a ton of headroom and the power amp breaks up pleasingly if you wanna get silly. These still aren't worth much, but willc atch on eventually when people realize theya re like smaller, single channel versions of the concert, beta and coliseum series amps. All suns share the same DNA and are capable of big tones if you can handle them. http://www.chrisguitars.com/sunn-studio-lead.jpg

I grew up watching David Bowie and now he's dead so I can't stand vocalists who don't paint lightning bolts across their faces. Without that lightning bolt its just not happenin' for me....

He plays and SITS. I personally have quite a hatred to that, but that's just my opinion.

I just noticed this....

hatred is a really strong word for someone's guitar-posture LOL

is he in KISS? then he's not there to entertain you with his abiity to play while hopping up and down and spitting fake blood on the front row. Is it essential he stand up and deliver? Maybe he can't stand all night, he might have a bad back or maybe he just plays better sitting down (I can't play jazz standing up, it throws me). If you want a dance routine set to loud guitar, go catch Pink's next tour, that's her schtick. Maybe this dude doesn't have a schtick and doesn't have his act together because he doesn't have an act. Before you get down on him I would like to hear you outplay him and his band standing OR sitting.... wit, Russian Circles is not a terribly proficient group of musicians, maybe I just put my foot in my mouth.

You can be such a web-fascist about things like sitting while playing or bad grammar.

How's that Falcon working for you Corey? Did it appear at your ouse yet? If so I need to add a '59 ES-345 mono to my 'have it' list!

you want to talk about real life chaos, I have everyone here topped right now

sloppier than he is? I couldn't do that well either, but I seldom practice tapping because I don't like to wear spandex (its very binding around the testicles)..... my advice to you and him is that compression is your friend for a part like that. The guitar is not designed to be played the way he is playing it, so you need to make it behave electronically. Which means flatten everything after the initial attack of the note either with gain or with compression.... and 1176 would be ideal for this task. Also, when tapping it helps to put on some eyeliner and to tease your hair out with tons of hairspray. You may also want to periodicaly shout "Panama" while practicing the part....

their whole band is really sloppy and doesn't play well as a group, the opening of this recording sounds like 3 or 4 guys playing the same song in different buildings at a slightly different tempos

I gott a put in my .02 as always because the definition of 'vintage' has gone crazy since the turn of the millennia:

I am pretty sure they (low end stratotones and bobkats) don't have adjustable truss rods (if its the one I am thinking of) and a hard to find with straight necks though... also, that style of harmony pickup is really prone to microphonic feedback.... I used to see these bottom-end stratotones all the time. they are a little thinner on the ground now thanks to the hipster vintage catalog guitar trend. For its actual playability I would say this guitar is worth $250 max regardless of the market. Eventually the bottom will fall out of this hipster guitar trend and you will lsoe your shirt on dn-os, supros, airlines and harmonies unles they are the serviceable players.

These guitars are not actually cool in my book, theya re beginner guitars no one wanted but got for Christmas anyway. For some reason people think theya re cool now. Yes, they are made of great old growth tone woods. But every old guitar was. Most of these guitars are a nightmare to set-up, intonate and play. Its like wrestling. I gotta say that what's really guitar is a guitar that plays well, can be adjusted if it gets out of whack, and doesn't squeal unless you want it to. The story of guitar building and music electronics is one of continual growth and innovation. For some reason the 90s vintage craze has now convinced people that better music can be made with instruments and equipment that was under-engineered by the primitive standards of the era it was made and that by today's standards is pretty darn bad. Yes, some big name guys wrangle this stuff, but they have money to have top shelf techs make it work. And a guy like Jack White? You don't see him playing res-o-glass airlines anymore. He has custom modified, hand-made gretsches, now doesn't he? He put on a good show in "It Might Get Loud," but what's he got on tour these days? I know for a fact the guy who mods White's Gretsches also took the fretboards off his cheapies and added modern, duala ction truss rods to them as well as doing a host of other modernizations to make them behave a little better. When the Stripes were touring around before they broke Is aw them a number of tiems in small clubs and they sounded HORRIBLE. Jack's guitars were out of tune and completely un-intonated and he only got away with it because its a 2 piece. You could visibly see the guys truggling with the guitar too, which is cool in a way, but he probably did his joints irreparable damage that will haunt him in the next 10 years....

I love the SOUND of a ric but have never enjoyed playing one. They are undoubtedly well-made guitars, but they don't feel right in my hand so I never bought one. Not jealous at all, but you can be jealous if you wanna be. Try ric in person before you get TOO jelaous though, Duke. They are a unique isntrument, and that can be good or bad depending on what you like. They're the original neck-thru design and that's a cool thing for sure...

You will not feel much difference between a vintage ric and a new one, they have been very consistent through the years. The only thing they have changes is the pickups. The new single coils don't sound like the old toaster-tops and their mini-humbuckers that look like toasters are their own thing entirely. They started messing with the secret pickup formula in the late 70s and have never quite recaptured the old sound, though I understand Lollar's ric toaster-top reproduction are a pretty accurate drop-in replacement. Not being a ric guy I can only repeat what ric-loving friends tell me about the Lollars. But as for the construction and playability ric never changes. I've had a new ric right next to a road-worn mid 60s one, they weren't even the same model but they played the same... however the new one had a hotter output and a much more midrangey and compressed response thru the same amp at the same settings and just generally sounded more modern (not ina bad way, but I preferred the old pickups, pure early-period John Lennon). For a ric-equivalent british invasion 6 string sound I go with gretsches usually (I miss my duo jet, argh why did I sell that guitar). By the way, nice Falcon, Corey! I am really envious of that one. If I could afford to let the guitar collection grow to ridiculous proportions I would own one of those and a sparkle-jet for sure. What era is your Falcon from?

On ric 12 strings. Whenever I've done for-hire 12 string playing I would just borrow a Fender electric XII from a buddy of mine who has a decent reissue. A ric sounds a bit cooler, but the Fender plays just like a strat with extra strings, so its like putting on a comfortable pair of slippers! I actually dn't know many studio cats at any level who use an actual ric for 12 string parts. Almost everyone goes fender or fender-style, and a lot of these folks can afford a vintage 60s ric 12 like George Harrison's.

the ricochet looks really fun! especially since I suck at wah-type rockers being an inveterate foot-tapping, stage dancing type of player. My expression pedal work is too boring and on-beat to be interesting as I just can't keep my feet from keeping time perfectly. Maybe you have the same issue too.... I think playing bass for hire made me all rhythmic like this, when I sued to play bass I always ahd to keep my whole body in the groove if I wanted to lead the rhythm section effectively.

you didn't read the thread did you? I want basic with micro-tonal detune, 100% wet mic capability (or stereo with separate wet/dry outs) AND EXCELLENT TRACKING

I am just looking to thicken my multi-amp set-up sometimes with 1 amp detuned 5 to 10 cents for a wide Iommi but subtle double-tracked tone. The Keeley double tracker seems a but extreme sounding and is more flange in abbey road mode and it has too many detuned voices in regular double track mode.

I forget my Seinfeld, If you're George's dad does that mean you wear a Bro or a Manzier?

I dunno about the ac30 and a ric though, its a little thick. AC50 is more of the british ric mate... or maybe a hiwatt. Not that I don't love all my 30s to death, but they wanna be ridden hard and hung up wet so to speak.

I think its pretty well covered within the broader heavy rock framework of the dinosaur guitar site.

By the way, I've been hanging out here.

oh yeah, would you look at that, a metal site

its one of those chord capos that you can adjust up to 3 frets out on each string to capo a guitar into open tuning from standard, I forget who makes them. Look it up, its legit.... I guess buying one of those is cheaper than owning lots of guitars (especially if you might capo up your open tuning guitars to get that spanky capo sound or for whatever reason folkies and hipsters are always capoing their poor guitars), but its not nearly as fun. I'll stick to the 'stacks of guitars' method of managing alternate tunings, thanks. I am home today (don't get me started, me and my family are seriously annoyed about all the schedule rearranging we did this week for no reason thanks to my ex-wife and her last-minute BS) and while Lu was napping I played 4 of my guitars for about an hour.... and I still didn't have to open a single case. That's how ya do it!

I am an encyclopedia of popular song. And not-so-popular song too....

no one is really like einsturzende neubauten, even within that proto industrial genre that came up in Europe parallel to punk rock, but check out melt banana... you may like that

I am actually not a huge fan of Sunn, but it doesn't mean that I wouldn't go to see them back when I still had time to go to shows. I can only enjoy their music live when its more of a feel it experience than a listening experience. Its an incredibly ballsy thing to attempt and I appreciate that most of all. I don't know what Sunn's merits are apart from boldness, volume and spectacle, but that's enough for me to pay the price of admission when they tour.

they'll be around, seattle isn't any further from you than Florida is from me... its hardly any effort to tour down there for bands up here. You can do distances like that in a van comfortably. You'll see them, just wait.

you realize the flint is going to completely digitize your signal to do the job of a simple oscillator and gain stage... hardly worth it unless youa re going to dump your delay pedal and reverb and just use the strymon spring simulation (which is admittedly pretty good, but your amp already has tube driven spring reverb that will be better than any simulation... seem like a big buy-in for a digital pedal that you only need for one of its functions).... or you could just get a Fender or Ampeg with vintage trem and spring reverb if you like that stuff all the time ;-).... can't beat a Princeton reverb for those effects, and the PR is the same wattage and basic footprint as your blues deluxe and will basically eat the new fender designs for breakfast in the clean/pedal platform department

just sayin'

you have an awful lot of rics for a guy who plays a line 6 spider... aren't you required to get a vintage vox ac50 or blackface twin/pro/super reverb once you buy your 2nd ric? I thought that was like a rule, really.

https://billsandbrews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/COLBERT_PIC.png

I Wikipedia-ed these guys and found they STARTED their band after I quit professional music.... it just doesn't feel like that much time has elapsed where some hippies could start an alternafolk band and get on stage in Hitler's stadium, but I guess 4 or 5 years is a while! I felt old just reading that 3 paragraphs on Wikipedia.

so you can actually listen to mumford and sons? and choose to do so sometimes? every time I listen to one of their songs all the way through I'll reach over and touch me ear and when I look at my fingers there's a trace of blood... and I really like American roots music. Huge Alison Krause fan. I can put on old Guthrie and Seeger records and just zone out any time... but this mumford band, I dunno, man. Its not the same thing.

You guys (Europeans) have been copying and reinterpreting our music (old and new) forever now to the point that by the 70s much of what the UK and Europe sent back was unrecognizable and really was a new thing. But when it comes to our roots music, you guys are mainly copyists. It used to feel like a homage, but bands like the mumfords almost seem to be mocking us and our traditional musical styles. You guys have your own folk traditions, does anyone in Europe (apart from fucking Sting) pick up a lute and play European roots music? I'd like to see that....

but this? lute fail:

http://amoureuxdulangage.m.a.f.unblog.fr/files/2013/01/songs-from-the-labyrinth.jpg go get your P-bass out, dust it off and shriek "Roxane" at me, dude.

what amp are you using and how is it set? is it bone clean or breaking up?

it could also be that your signal chain needs a nice strong buffer somewhere in it or the buffer you have is maybe misplaced.... how many pedals are you running and are they all true bypass?

what precisely is the effect order you find works from guitar jack to amp jack.... and what are the orders that are you suspect cause the fulltone to sound weak?

without hearing the tone you refer to as 'weak' (or getting a much better decription of how you are trying to use it) its hard to know if its something to do with the fulltone's interaction with your other gear or if you are looking for it to produce tones its not designed to produce... get ready for one of my grizzled old road warrior gear dissertations (skip this if you have a short attention span, read if you like a lot of techinfo as well as practical advice for working musicians):

see, I think the supa trem is a sine wave trem (I might be wrong) which is a softer and subtler sound than you may want, but its very much the vintage fender LDR trem style which is a soft pulse that's fairly subtle at a lot of settings...I can't remember if fulltone copied the fender circuit with solid state components or if he based his trem on the Electronics Australia project, but both are subtle sine wave affairs, though different sounding and are the absis for MANY trem pedals. if you want a choppy supro or vox trem get a pedal with more of a square shape and a really wide range between the high and low point of trem's volume range... catalinbread's semaphore and valcoder do a great job...

also, Mike Fuller's about my least favorite person in the world of guitar... maybe you should take it back to the store (or try to return it to the original owner if bought used) and buy a boutique trem made by a nicer group of people than Mike and his crew. Which would basically describe every other small company.... people who want fender 2x6L6 blackface amp type trem in a pedal tend to go for the Demeter tremualtor over the fulltone. A lot of people swear by the classic boss trem (TR2, right?) which is a no-brainer for build quality and reliably strong sound... and a surprising number of people favor the simple, plastic danelectro pedal neither of which are amp-like, but are great AND versatile. I used it on a track on record over the trem built into the 2 blackface showmans I ahd at my disposal. It just sounded better than the trem channel on the old Fenders, dunno why.

Personally I stick with all tube amp trem most of the time. For choppy I like the AC30 vib/trem channel set to max chop or for a subtler square wave Supros like the dual tone have a heckuva trem sound. But my favorite trem sound is Fender's small amplifier bias-vary rem that is a power-amp based effect first introduced in the famed tweed tremolux and carried over into the brown, black and silver princetons (and also the brown deluxes, but they are rare as hen's teeth anymore). It kills.

resume reading here

if something is giving you grief in your rig, stop fucking with it and return it or sell it and buy something that sounds good to your ear in the store that also has a long-standing reputation for reliability... the most expensive thing is not always the best thing. Only you know your sound, match the tools to the job and keep your eyes off the price tags and marketing hyperbole.

my experience with even the nicest epis is that their number 1 fault is FRET WORK. They are not well fretted and the frets are not properly dressed or crowned. You can fix the latter, but the former is real problem even if it doesn't effect intonation substantially. The number 2 problem is fretboard plaining. There are whole batches of epis from every factory contracted to produce them that have a funky fretboard radius. Given that the radius of most Gibson bridges is a fixed 12" that's a problem, and there's no work around other than to get new saddles ad try to notch them to acomodate the fretboard's wonky feel without making some so deep the strings catch. Its a lot of work and expense when you can just get a used Gibson or a Japanese Gibson style that is made correctly. I often see reviews describe Epi models as having good fit and finish for the price point. I can eat that with a guitar finish, its just a layer of protection for the body, but with fretwork and fingerboard its either good or bad. There's no 'good for the money' because a guitar that doesn't play quite right just isn't a guitar that encourages you to make better music. Cheap Fender guitars provide good for the money fretwork, they might need a slight dress, but they are put in perfectly on a properly radiused fingerboard (and on a fender radius is less important because of the fender bridge designs) and they typically just have some sharp edges and don't need to be re-leveled like on a lot of epis.

I have picked up some epis with some pretty odd neck shapes that musta been oversanded prior to finishing, but in general the CNC machines cut a pretty consistent neck for the epi line. For whatever that's worth... I would enver buy or let anyone I like buy an epi sight unseen. Too much of a crap shoot. QC for epi is inconsistent to non-existent.

not that I am a fan of epiphone's output for the last 20 years, but you know action is not an inherent property of a guitar. There's a truss rod and adjustable bridge height for a reason. Unless its a used set-neck with a rise at the heel you can make any guitar with fender or Gibson appointments play at any action. I've even taken twists out of necks using a little steam and very gradual truss tweaks over the course of a week or two. And twists and a rise at the hell are usually not a product of bad craftsmanship but really a mix of exposure to extreme temperature and humidity conditions as well as some user negligence towards the truss rod when using oddball string gauges like heavy bottom light tops. Only in extreme cases would you need to shim the neck on a bolt-on or do a fret level. I can usually get the action foolishly low for guys who like it that way on ANY guitar, even one with problems to work around or a cheaps tudent guitar.... I don't know why they want their action so low, but I'll do it and I'll make sure there's not a lick of buzz when amplified. Frankly, high action often sounds better, especially if you are bold with your string bends and want sustain as you glide thru all those semitones.

I expect it just sounds like a Dokken or Winger album... but I don't know any specs for it, so maybe it, just maybe it says "giddy up" if you pull out the volume knob or something.

bear den? oh man... where do you find these guys?

anyway, based on the fake tort shell pickguard, basic binding and shape I think its part of Cort's entry level Earth series (which are probably fine guitars... Korea has always made a really good acoustic at an affordable price point.... and the Cort and Peerless folks are particularly good manufacturers with nice attention to detail)

to this day I am uncertain if my 90s Epiphone dreadnought is Japanese or Korean, if it had a sticker when I got it as a teenager when I didn't worry about this stuff, it fell off long ago and its from a weird period where some epi acoustics were still made in Japan (and mine was a top of the line Epi, limited edition anniversary model), but it could easily be a Korean guitar that got top grade, solid tone woods and more attention than the run of the mill dreadnoughts that were a bit cheaper. Either way it is a very good guitar and really holds its own with current American made big-name acoustics. I actually clocked in well under budget on my Ep back in the day and coulda bought a serious brand name, but the epi played and sounded better as well as having no laminated woods where I think they shouldn't be. I wouldn't take it toe to toe with a pre-war guitar, and it might not hand so well against the better 50s and 60s Martins, Guilds and Gibbies or even early Taylors, but against the high end shit most people have been buying new since the 70s its a match... playable and extremely toneful. So I'll bet if that guy plays a low end Cort its still a nice ass guitar. I am feeling tempted to pick up some budget friendly cort acoustics now.

in my one serious band that really made a go of the rock star thing we had some songs in drop D (the singer just liked the way I used drop D as opposed to the traditional heavy music 3 string barre and the odd add9 with no 3rd on every beat and would always root for more drop D and even to convert a new song into Drop D to see what I would come up with in those modified hand positions... it was annoying sometimes) and one song the singer started writing on piano in the guitar-unfriendly key of Cm. After much writing and arranging to do something really special with it I ended up putting a guitar into a weird tuning with the E strings down to Eb and A-D-G-B left standard so I could get some Eb drone in places with an open string over triads on the standard strings and voice some dense chord extensions on the bass strings instead of up top and eventually I wrote a part that highlighted interesting close-interval doublestops with easy to play shapes in the lead line that may have been tricky in that key in standard.... but boy I hated doing that song live.... it required a quick retune or a 3rd guitar on stage. Gah! Pain in the ass on small stages without a tech. I used to only want to bring more than 2 guitars to the big, important shows. I have plenty of axes, but 1 and a backup is plenty for 300 seat or smaller venues.

in all of these cases NO ONE ELSE retuned from standard. Even in drop D our bassist played in standard and when the rhythm guy came in he only played in drop D if we planned to double eachother the whole song and he played rhythm in standard tuning for the weird Cm song. It was fine. With one alternate tuning guitar and one in standard you can get some cool overtones when overdriven. The guitars interact in interesting ways especially when you are playing very different voicings facilitated by the dropped tuning. It can be magical. Or it can be trash...

welcome... and there's a "hello my name is" thread in the general section

if I were going to design an ap I would probably base it loosely on my old Traynor PA head (which is areally weird mutt of Orange, Ampeg, supro and Marshall features that has benefited from some tinkering with cap vlues on my part even though it sounded okay before), but I would go with the cosmetic style those guys picked for the amp in the NAMM show video. Its got an awesome 70s heavy-rock look. I might make mine even cheesier though.... I wonder if there would be a market for 50+ watt amp like this? Its actually a super versatile piece with a unique voice, but for a 50 watter its really low on clean tone because the preamp breaks up pretty easily even though it has average power amp headroom for a two EL34 amp. It really shines in that edge of break up zone with a comex and dynamic grit that you just can't get with a pedal, but its capable of all sorts of shades of full on power tube roar thanks to the unusual tone controls and presence circuit that's relly interactive and does more to shade the distortion than to actually change the frequency responseonce the amp is good and crunchy. The weird Supro-type grid leak biased inputs take pedals better than even a fender too.... I should make another one and fine tune the response further.

they seem really influenced by old 70s oranges and matamps as well as black Sabbath (who never really used orange apart from 1 European TV appearance on a show that had an all orange house backline)

I'll articulate a few words.

I think guys who are really happy with the sound of their guitar and amp don't like cluttering that combination up. That's how I feel most of the time. I kick something cool in and I am like "that's cool, but not as cool as my awesome core sound." Also, effects really get int he way of my playing sometimes, even fuzz and other dirt can be really problematic, masking what I'm trying to do unless its a part I specifically conceived for that gimmick sound. But there's no guarantee you would be as knocked out by my core guitar tone as I am, you might get bored with it pretty quick and wonder why I don't have more effects going. You might also be bored with my playing in some contexts, like "well that was well executed, but pretty tame."

the guy who submitted tis needs the item changed:

http://equipboard.com/pros/simon-gallup/gibson-sg-standard-electric-guitar

he thought it was an SG and its really a Yamaha Super Flighter, probably an SF1000

I dunno... go play them. Everything sounds pretty good in these demo videos. Youtube's limited bandwidth really compresses these effects so they all sound killer. Any company run by guys who can build working stuff and bring it to market with a booth at the NAMM show is legitimate in a very real sense of the word. I am sure their pedals are 'legit' for someone, every sound ahs its place and you know that.... I was hijacking your thread for the puroses of humor here (I generally prefer to be funny or informatice than to be speculative), I don't actually use a lot of pedals and even went thru a long period in the last decade where I only used an ABY box for my amps and occasionally a roland chorus-echo or mutron flanger. I don't get really excited about new dirt boxes usually as there are a billion and none of them sound as good to me as whacking a tube amp up into the badass zone.

Anyway, my opinion is NEVER RELY ON ANY EFFECTS YOU CAN'T BUY ON SHORT NOTICE IN WHATEVER TOWN YOU ARE PERFORMING IN. If tis not always in-stock at the local big box guitar store in Akron Ohio on a Friday night then you better buy 2 of 'em or be prepared to live without it if it breaks. Without knowing whats up with the circuits I couldn't guess as to their reliability. A tubescreamer or a Boss pedal is a pretty known quantity, there's not a ton going on to break and if they break theya re readily available EVERYWHERE THEY SELL GUITARS.

Same goes for that new T Rex tape echo you want. its a lot of money and it will be more risky to tour with than any other effect because of all the mechanical parts. If I were ging to buy one and try to gig it I would either use my flashback X4 as a backup (maybe program a toneprint to duplicate the T Rex as closely as possible thru careful AB listening). Or I would bite the bullet and buy a spare.

ya gotta ask yourself "how man retailers will actually carry these pedals?" The company may be 'legit' and might have distribution to every store out there, but no one can make the manager at each location order every model they make.There are a lot more boutique pedals ins tores these days, but its mainly the established players like Fulltone, Catalinbread, T Rex, pigtronix etc

on a side note, I love the cosmetics on their amp!

EDIT:

Having rewatched the awful Anderton's demo, I can guarantee that I know exactly what that bandwidth control is, it clicks thru multiple settings on a rotary. I promise you it adjusts the input caps from small (bass cut) to large (full bass response) much like the 'subs' switch on Z-Vex's distortron or the Orange FAC control on the older amps (and the 'tone' on the pentode channels of matchless, bad cat and divided by 13 amps) and may also have resistors in different values at each setting snubbing some top end. The mix of small coupling caps and carefully chosen resistors are what gives the tubescreamer its vaunted mid-push. They form a primitive bandpass filtercalled an RC network. The mid-push drives and distortions don't actually boost mids, they just seem to because they filter out treble and bass before the 1st amplification stage. The voice of the peal is determined by the components out front and the type of semi-conductor used to amplify and how it is implemented in the circuit. The height and freq controls seem to be 2 parts of a low-pass or variable shelving filter. They may have borrowed the Moog synth ladder filter like moog recently slapped on the minifooger drive (the voltage control via an expression pedal leads me to believe this) or they may have borrowed the shelving circuit from the high band of a parametric EQ. Freq is obviously the cutoff frequency and the height is the Q or steepness (resonance in moog filters) of the filter. My ear says shelving filter because there never seems to be NO treble, and that's what a low pass would give you as the frequency descends with the Q set steeply. Also, a nice low pass is expensive to build as the 'ladder' in ladder filter refers to a chain of transistors that would definitely up the cost of each unit substantially, and there's already a lot going on to jack the retail price up (tons of pots, a rotary switch, a custom enclosure etc)...

What I can't deduce just using my ears and eyes is exactly how they are achieving the pedal's clipping. It might just be diodes to ground or to the semiconductors bias potential (like in the OCD), it could be more of a fuzz with cascaded discrete transistor stages too.... I don't think it sounds like diodes in a feedback loop like the tubescreamer and SD1, but I could be wrong. If they configured mosfets as diodes or used a weird combination of LEDs or something it might be. But why be speculative? I can straight up tell you what's going on with the pedal's 'special' features.

these guys have combined a lot of cool ideas in their pedal, but just know none of it is original or innovative, its just creative to have combined all these different voicing options in one box. Anyone with a soldering iron and a little know how could make something like this, but why bother when there are plenty of much simpler devices out there that produce decent results within 5 minutes of tweaking leaving your day free to PLAY THE GUITAR. A pedal like this is like the mesa dual rectifier of drives, you could spend all day getting passable sounds and not playing without ever settling on anything. And then IN THE MIX with a band who knows if anything you came up with would really do the business at the back of the venue. Standing right in front of your amp you are getting a much different tone than what is reaching the back of the room and if you play at a low stage level and rely on the PA your ear is not hearing what a commonly used dynamic like a 57 or E609 is sending to the PA. A lot of the tried and true designs are meant to cut a mix all the way to the back of the room and to sound good close miced by a shure. If you want to improve on them its my opinion that the best way to do it is to follow their design philosophy but with an original circuit and that means minimal controls with a fixed voice that's specifically engineered to gig well. Tweak the treble and maybe bass to match your bypass tone and have at it. The sound that reaches the abck of the room will be right if the manufacturer did their job.

I was going to make a whole reply to this, but I am just going to say "okay, dude" instead.

Okay dude.

yeah, all I used on the Nova system was the detune, a little modulation, the 2290 delay and occasionally the drive and distortion (tough grudgingly and mainly more as a boost)....

now here's my Nova system dissertation if you are interested:

the standalone nova drive is a better unit with a better control set that makes all the difference for the way I am using it, the Flashback X4 smokes the Nova system's delays in every setting but the 2290 (which is identical) and in the editability department, the toenprint software is more comprehensive and easier to use than the parameters when you go menu diving in the Nova (although the nova has more tap subdivisions, I usually just play the dotted eighth, triplet feel anyway)... I didn't like the compression that much, its pretty functional studio style compression, but it just lacks character and I rarely use compression anyway because of the amps I play... the flanger and phaser were a bit digital sounding, I seldom use trem and when I do I like my vintage AC30's trem (its an amazing sound that isn't reproduced in a modern amp I know of), the AC30 has real tube Vibrato too and no digital emaultion can touch the real 60s vib/trem channel... the reverbs are great on Nova, but I usually don't want reverb.... it just seemed crazy to keep it when I only used the detune consistently

I get that...

maybe the kemper is to blame for the so called flat tone... my personal jury is still out on the profiling amp... its still a digital approximation of actual electrons and a run of the mill American strat is one of those guitars that can sound really unremarkarkable through a lot of gear in a lot of situations, you gotta bring it to life with bombastic technique and good amplification

not everyone needs a ton of effects though, not every piece of music calls for it.... maybe he uses the controller more in his bar band or at jams... its a worship band, they're usually pretty conservative with sounds as well as musical content because apparently God prefers to be bored on Sundays

but seriously, a lot of times a guitar can just be a guitar and not drenched in effects and that's okay if the guy playing it has nice touch and a good idea what hes doing...

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20140521/useretug.jpg

come on, you know him and his goth-as-fuck wife are always having it out when he leaves his lava lamp and dragon-shaped bong on the coffee table after guy's night

Lee Anderton comes off a lot better as a person (look, I'm a geek, guilty as charged... but Chappers there? he's only 1 step away from the comic shop owner in the simpsons... well, 1 step or 30 pounds of Cheetos away)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/79/The_Simpsons-Jeff_Albertson.png

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/siKcqbMdt4A/maxresdefault.jpg

but boy is Anderton a shit guitar player and a TOTAL shill for his biggest selling manufacturers... I can't blame him I guess (he spends all day around guitars while raking in the loot and constantly feeding his own collection), but that's why I could never hack it in music retail; MOREALS (I can't even make it as a vintage/used gear dealer, I am too honest with players about the shit guitars I am liquidating and I get too attached to everything nice that comes in my door... I am damned lucky I have managed tos tay a few bucks ahead in the hobbyist guitar trading game all these years)....

and one more Chapman gem to drive home my point:

https://a1-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/6/38a47fec3002473089daed7d774b0aec/full.jpg go ahead and have another helping, Fatty

that's just my .02, but I've owned and worked on a lot of amps and I have a pretty nice guitar sound by most people's estimation (though some of it is my guitars and some of it is my 25 years of playing experience), so you may or may not want to put what I've said in reply to you (and in other threads about getting a 1st serious amplifier) in the background

an old fender is a pretty good place to start looking for YOUR sound if you aren't going to start off trying to cop someone else's tone.... black and silverface fenders made from '63 thru '80 or 81 are a nice, reliable line of amps that provides a fairly neutral start point by guitar standards:

clean, but not too clean

punchy and percussive, but not overly so

bright, but not piercingly bright

made in huge numbers for almost 20 years, so there are plenty of them to go around (although in silverface I would stick with princetons, deluxe reverbs and bandmaster REVERB heads... pretty much everything else is better in blackface, though even if you go with one of the less desireable silverfaced amps, they still sound pretty decent compared to a lot of what's out there today... just stay away from Twins and other 4 power tube fenders, the 80+ watt vintage fenders from 1960 on are really loud and clean and utterly worthless for home use)

AND SUPER RELIABLE

I guess hes a decent player, not very nuanced, but he can make soemthign resembling music come out of the guitar every time he picks it up.... hes also one of the most annoying internet personalities in guitardom.... not as funny as Gearmanndude, not as knowledgeable as Pete Thorn, but probably better at Dungeons and Dragons than either of them.