nick_desimone's Reviews

FUTURE

The Evertune bridge is truly one of the coolest things to happen to the guitar since the invention of the amplifier. Came out of the box perfectly in tune after being shipped across the entire country...the manual says to check your tuning once a day - didn't think it was possible, but it is. A little on the heavy side compared to my other 6-strings, but the heft really translates to great tone as well. Plays like butter, this is one of the LTD line's better-playing guitars. I'm super excited to never have to tune again. This thing will take an absolute beating from me on the road.

the future is now

I don't know if there's a better option out there...I'm still very new to this unit, but the Axe Fx is truly the best sounding box available, this thing came from the future. Impossible amounts of amp sounds, all of which are responsive and lifelike. I haven't broken it in live yet, but I'm sure it'll be a joy when that day comes. Can't believe I was farting around with a POD HD for so long when the future was out there the whole time. It's complicated, make no mistake - there's a lot of buttons and knobs and submenus, you can get beyond granular with all of it, but even the presets sound great for hobbyists who just want to plug and play.

I will never settle for less in my digital boxes, ever again.

wicked looking, not bad

My first seven-string, bought on craigslist mainly because I thought it looked sick as hell. The build quality was great, ESP makes the best guitars in the world by my money, their explorer designs are actually pointy and dangerous looking, and this if nothing else made me fall in love with how slick matte black guitars look rather than the usual gloss finishes. Stock pickups are very muddy, and the scale length is slightly shorter than usual, which makes it a pain to hit low tunings without going way out of my comfort zone stringing with with super high-gauge strings.

bang for the buck

For the money, this is hard to beat. This was one of the first guitars I ever had, and the first I ever bought with my own money. I contend that ESP maintains some pretty strong build quality on their lowest-end models, and this thing has held up to over a decade of abuse both on and offstage. I still keep it around and play it on the couch once in a while...it had so many songs in it then and still occasionally gets me inspired.

get what you pay for

It's definitely the cheapest option for a wah, and it's the classic. Personally, I think the sweep is terrible and honky and there's a noticeable tone suck when this is in your chain. I was happy to have this as a teenager, but I'm not particularly interested in mods to make it better so it's bigger and better things these days.

lots of options, none of them great

This was given to me by a friend for peanuts, can't say I'm a Disturbed fan but the multifx in this box seemed neat as a discontinued unit. The amp modeling distortion settings are based off of a Randall Warhead, as is the case with most Digitech stuff, they're extremely fizzy. Actually has a pretty decent flanger, radio box style fuzz effect and sitar simulator if that's something you think you'd ever need. This only stuck around for a few months but it was fun to play with.

baby's first halfstack

Baby's first halfstack, purchased for $200 with dishwashing money at the tender age of 16...this thing is an absolute beater and not at all a good amp in the traditional sense. Solid states of course don't respond well to being cranked, and this one doesn't cut particularly well at all unless it's dimed. Fine as a kid, of course, but sold this one to someone who needed a backup head on tour and can't say I missed it at all.

fun and versatile

I had this guy for a couple years, roughly 2011-2013 on a trade. It's a neat guitar for sure, korina is a very unique, midrangey wood that offers a very "dry" sort of sound that's cool when played clean and coupled with stuff like reverb and a light flange. Heavy sounds fall in the classic rock neighborhood for sure, which is not at all for me as I normally tune low and don't play in Skynyrd. I worked on a fair amount of post-rock sort of material with this in the time that I owned it and found it was very cool in that application.

fun junk

This isn't a boutique pedal, clearly...the classic Behringer plastic design is about as junky as you can get, but has remarkably held up since I bought it with dishwashing money when I was 14. This was the first pedal I ever got, not really understanding the difference between a distortion pedal and an overdrive. It doesn't necessarily sound "good," but it has a neat character and helps clean up noisy combo amps. Good for beginners for sure...it found a home in my bass rig many years later as a neat dirt sound - sucks the low end completely out, but had a neat character and pick attack for certain moments. Lots of fond sentimental memories of learning guitar attached to this guy.

disaster

If the aim is to get the most horrific sounds possible, then I guess don't turn it down if it's a gift. I got this for free from a friend back in our days of playing in a black metal band together. It certainly worked okay in that application, but understand that this pedal is 110% treble, screeching feedback, and digital fizz. It sounds like shit and has zero practical use besides intentionally making bad noise. 5/5 stars for bad noise, 0/5 for usable tones

excellent floorboard

Line 6's customer support and updates to their softwares might be a total mess, but a lot of the gear they're building these days is rock-solid as far as actual craftsmanship goes. This board is a tank, I never put it through the beating that I'm sure it's capable of taking, but if I'd stuck with Line 6 gear I'd have brought it on the road without hesitation or fear that something might go wrong. My only complaint is unfortunately for a feature that I consider really useful - pressing the expression pedal all the way down in the way that would normally engage it triggers whatever midi assignment you have on the button, and if you're a physical performer like I am, you're accidentally disengaging your wah or switching to volume all the time. Stellar build quality regardless of that.

solid, but not for me

The clean tone was just sublime, even on amps that were admittedly kind of shitty at the time. It's one solid hunk of mahogany, but is surprisingly pretty light. The stock pickups are absolute mud when it comes to high gain tones, though, and the slightly shorter than average scale length combined with the wraparound bridge make it really unstable in lower tunings. It was so nice that I was kind of afraid to hurt it, so it was never played live, but was nice for clean tone jams at home.

solid as hell

Workhorse bass...this is legitimately the only bass I've ever owned, I washed dishes for a month to get it at 14 and I've had it ever since. Active P/J pickup configuration, gives it punch and a nice midrange, especially playing with a pick. There's obviously a universe of basses that play better, but it's been with me so long that it's still a staple should I need to track bass on demos.

massive options

Endlessly versatile pedal, if you're a delay nut you'll probably never put this thing down. I got one thinking it was going to fill a hole in my sound that ultimately had a lot more to do with needed good reverb, and I could have gotten by with a simpler delay unit in the same product line. It's also a tank, as Boss pedals always are, and will take any beating you can throw at it. I used to carry my pedalboard in a suitcase because I thought i was clever, and it survived years of more abuse than actual use.

great value

One of these guys straight out to the board has been my live sound for the last few years. Mine is loaded with the HD Metal amp pack, which elevates it from "above average" to "really quite good" as far as some high gain sounds go, particularly the 5150 model included. I'm not really an obsessive tone tweaker, I generally find a few sounds I like and stick with them. Before the new amps came out, my heavy sound was based on the Rectifier model, which was not quite as full sounding but suited industrial-tinged music well. I never quite got the crunch sounds where I wanted them, but the clean tones were solid, as are the onboard effects. Can't extol the virtues of these boxes enough in the modern age; it beats hauling around a pile of amps!

good for demos

The interface itself is as simple as it gets. This is great for having an extremely simple backpack rig for demoing on the go. Pod Farm is great for beginners, and though I'll give myself some credit and say that I put the work in and made it sound pretty damn good, it takes a TON of tweaking and EQ to make a tone that'll sound good in a mix. I used this for quite a lot of demos between 2011 and 2015.

great value

Very much enjoy the hollow-body vibe of this, there's nicer ones out there but this is a solid workhorse for the money. It's a rhythm log for sure and not exactly a shred machine, but it lends itself really well to big washy reverbs and clean sounds or lower gain crunch. As is the case with all of my guitars I normally keep it in Open C tuning and it holds that very well, but it held its own playing guitar in a Soundgarden cover band as well, between standard and drop D. They're often on sale at Guitar Center, I recommend keeping one of these around.

solid DAW

Probably selling myself a little short using such a barebones DAW, but writing and recording tend to be the same process for me, so it's important to have a plug and play sort of situation so I don't get lost in the technical while trying to slap demos together. It does the job perfectly fine, is updated constantly, and is extremely cheap for a personal license.

thump

This thing is a god damn tank, it's lived with me for over 10 years and survived my earliest days on the club circuit in Providence. Bad venue power, falling down flights of stairs, it just keeps on kicking. Great, punchy tone for what you pay for it - it won't cut at insanely high volumes or anything, but it's got a nice, easy XLR out for gigs, so the sound guy can slap a cable into it instead of miking. It's not pro gear, but it's been with me for a long time and it's so reliable that I have to show the love here.

brutal!

I got the tele version partially out of guilt for having so many pointy guitars, but I've totally fallen in love with the tone of alder instruments in the context of low-tuned heavy music. I keep this in Open C tuning; being essentially a drop G on the low end, the baritone scale was pretty necessary for me to keep things stable and take out flubby string tension. One minor complaint is that the middle pickup might need to be lowered significantly depending on your picking hand; for me it's totally necessary as I dig in and pick hard. Otherwise, it's a great sounding axe...I'm still getting a feel for the extra scale length, but it plays like butter.