Rob Adam

Despite being a Ritchie Blackmore signature amp, this valvehead one has way more to offer than oldschool hard rock one might expect. It has some solid amounts of gain and crisp overtones in the highs. In comparison to its big brother (the Savage-service) it has an almost minimalistic approaches regarding the controls and is more middy (but in a balanced way) and transparent. Combined with an EQ or Tube Screamer in front this is my favourite allround metalsound for years.

This used to be my touring amp until it got replaced by the Kemper. It has some interesting features for dialing in some extreme sounds. Two distortion-channels (one solid-state, the other with valve-distortion) which both add a lot of gain to circuit. The tight-loose-switch works wonders in the valve channel. The 6-band-EQ is really nice for morphing the sound to your liking just as the density-presence-controls shape further to the hi- and low-end. So if you get pretty much control over the hi-gain-sound this amp delivers. But stay away if you’re looking for anything else. The clean channel is obsolete and reducing the preamp gain will not result in warm crunch sounds. This is probably due to the direct nature of the mosfet-transistor-poweramp.

Way smaller than I expected and way louder than I hoped for. Don’t be fooled by its size. The Micro Dark is powerful enough to kick a 4x12-cabinet to rehearsal volume level. Soundwise it has in general scooped mids and a very heavy low-end. The highs are a bit fuzzy but acceptable. The control options are kept very simple but the effects loop in the back makes up for it. To be honest I bought this for the fun of it. In combination with some pedals you can rival bigger (and more expensive) amps for sure.

The small battery powered MS-4 is more of a joke than a real amp. Of course the small speakers sound neither big or loud. The headphone out is sharp and annoying. If you turn up you get a really fuzzy distorted sound with no definition just some flat mids. I recorded this a few times just for the effect of sounding “small”, but whoever can create a serious sound out of this deserves my respect. Maybe I should give it a try... but this may result in hard work.

I've always been looking for a Ibanez-guitar with baritone-measurements. And finally Ibanez put this one on the market for good: straight design, no annoying tremolo, no sound potis, hi-gain-pickups… just a good guitar for heavy downtuned guitar playing. It's quiet cheap for such a well build RG-guitar though the string height had to be adjusted. Some changes gave nice improvements on this guitar: I exchanged the EMGs with some passive Bill Lawrence and the killswitch became a coilsplitter. But this may be a question of taste. If you are okay with the active pickups: this is your guitar.

This guitar is simply beautiful. The wood shines elegantly through the surface of the arched top. The Gibraltar-II-bridge is really comfortable as has almost no edges towards palms. Also this guitar has one of the fastest necks I have ever played on. So this guitar is big comfort zone. The only thing that bothered me were the lifeless and muddy pickups. I suggest to exchange the pickups to some with a more trebly response to get some balanced tones out of this one.

For guitarists it’s hard to get ahold of the basswork at times due to thicker necks. The Soundgear-basses of Ibanez have some of the most comfortable bass-necks on the market. They are fast and handy, especially guitarists will thank for that. Soundwise the active EQ works finely and lets you morph the sound of the bass in any direction you like. But this flexibility has a price as this bass lacks the character of basses that have significant coloration and frequency response like Music Man or Fender. But as with most gear, it’s a question of price. Especially for such a cheap price there’s nothing wrong with the solid Soundgear-bass.

Swedish death metal of the early 90’s had a distinct guitar sound that can be described as muddy and brutal as hell. Lower mids growl through extreme amounts of distortion. Bands like Entombed, Dismember or Grave abused the original BOSS HM2, a pedal that works best in front of an power amp and some added gain on top. This Wurm-pedal here is a basically a boutique rebuild of the HM2 but with added equalizer-features and broader frequency response. And it works just as the original but with more accurate tweaking capabilities. If your willing to emulate the old Death Metal sound you will sure find it with this one.

I use the MXR-EQ for pushing the signal in front of the preamp, like a tubescreamer but with more extreme settings. 10 bands are pretty much what’s needed if you don’t have a parametric device. The 2nd output lets me abuse it as a splitter. But be aware of its blue LEDs. So bright you need sunglasses to work with it. Otherwise good value.

If you’re absolutely in love with white noise ambience you should avoid this noise gate. For all fans of less minimalist noise should put this into every rig. This one does the job flawlessly especially in 4-cable-setting with an effects send/return-circuit. And as with all the other Boss-pedals, you can jump from a building with this one and best bet: this thing will survive. Anyway… don’t jump!

The BOSS GT-100 was a replacement for my GT-6 (that got lost and found again). While the GT-6 has its focus on the basic stomps the GT-100 expands to way more playful sound manipulation. More effects, more options, more controls. The amping section was improved a bit but couldn’t convince me but I used this one in 4-cable-method anyway. The only thing that is a step back from the GT-6 is the expression pedal that does not work as finely as before but feels a bit “steppy”. Otherwise as with all BOSS-equipment indestructible and the soundquality is very good. So when you’re looking for a compact way to replace a big collection of stompboxes, this is the way to go.

I use this one in a 4-cable-method-combination with my amp. It's a good alternative to working with multiple stompboxes. In this regard Boss is a champ anyway: good effects, easy controls and build like a tank - it's indestructable. The GT-6 has been way ahead of its time back then. Of course the GT-6 has aged a bit since the build-in amp-section is not on par with digial amping solutions nowadays.

For studio-work I use the unpowered "toaster"-version since 5 years (but not solely!). For live performances the rackmount version was an obvious choice. Regarding the sound of the Kemper and the accuracy of profiling an original tube-amp I have to admit that this thing is not the absolute 100%-solution in every case despite all the praise you are reading elsewhere. Still this thing is a good alternative to using a tubeamp on stage especially when you have no crew to carry your stuff around. It's well build and the handling of the controls are almost perfect and especially the powered version makes a lot sense on stage since you can route your signal to a cabinet and the DI-box at the same time plus feeding your inear-monitoring. To integrate and control other hardware the Kemper is not as versatile as a Helix. Also the effects-section feels limited in comparison to an AxeFX. But the focus of the Kemper is basically the amping itself and based on the use of it as an amp onstage, this is pure gold.

The Kemper controller is built like a tank and works without separate powering. Just connect it to the Kemper and it works. The guys at Kemper have been clever to go without an expression pedal, so this thing fits perfectly into a standard-rack. And you can add an expression pedal via cable connection if you really need one. The only bad thing about this one is the price. It’s a bit too expensive for what it really is: just a footswitch. On the other hand this is still the best solution for controlling the Kemper on stage.

So much has been talked and written about the Kemper-amp, everybody seems to know this thing or at least has an opinion. Yes, it emulates pretty closely the sound of an amp-box-mic-setup and delivers many on-board-tools to tweak further into the realms of guitarsound. But still this thing has its limitations. Yes, it reproduces the sound, but never 100%. The more complex the signal chain gets, the harder it gets for the Kemper to “catch” it. So if you’re working with multiple amps, multiple mics (including the mic phase) or distortion pedals it may not be the perfect blueprint you are heading for. Also I feel the effect section is pretty good but could be improved in some parts. The delay effect is limited to basic functions, the noise gate has a clicky attack and the distortion-pedals mostly deliver useless dirt. On the other hand you get one of best (maybe the best?) digital amps out there with one of the best emulation of tube amps, but it depends on what you are feeding in. As with all gear, it’s easy to work with it… but you still have to work with it.

AxeFX and Kemper have set new standards in digital amping, but with the Helix-series Line6 got back on the map with a complete renewal: pedalfunction and a big step up in DSP-power and sound. But some may argue the original Helix was huge… not only in functionality but also in size. The Helix LT was a step in shrinking the whole thing. But the HX Stomp goes even further and squeezes the whole Helix to the size of a stompbox. Of course in comparison to the original some features had to be reduced. Less routing options, less effect slots available and only 3 footswitches. So you have to really think about how to use it efficiently. But the controls are well thought out, you won’t miss a thing. And it works well in many situations, from DI to stompbox-use. The amps are way improved to the emulations on the POD. Especially for high gain this thing delivers the goods. Same for the effects. You can even import your own impulse responses which makes it even more flexible. Easily this thing became my flight rig. You get insanely big bang for the buck… and it still fits in your pocket (though this may look a bit like the “Sticky Fingers”-cover).

The X3 is (as most Line6-stuff) beautifully designed and valuable build. Fully packed with effects, amps, cab-emulation and fx-chain-options, so there is quantity and partly good quality. The feature of running 2 chains simultaneously is an interesting option, especially for bass. But the amp emulations were disappointing. I had a hard time to dail in something that delivers cutting mids as the distortion of the X3 delivered muddy and fizzy results in general. For clean sounds and bass the X3 had far more appropriate sounds. So this is a mixed bag as its core element (the digital amping) is also a weak point. 10 years after the inventive original POD has been released the X3 is far from having the same spark of revolution.

I'm a huge Pantera fan. I have seen them live 1994 and was flashed since. After years of playing guitar myself to the Pantera-classics I felt the need to get me a pair of the original Dimebag-pickup. Around 2004/2005 they weren't easy to find as some guy used the name for his own pickup company + Seymour Duncan released their Dimebucker. So I had to order the Bill Lawrence directly from the man himself. I have to admit: I had no idea how the sounded like and I couldn't even check them out as they didn't fit in any of my guitars. This pickup is huge and needs a deep guitar body to fit in. Finally after 10 years of resting in my cupboard of unused equipment it found its way to my RGIB (where it's screwed directly to the wood). The sound is really boomy with sharp high mids that add this pickup an interesting character. Really high output but less than the X2N for example. To my taste it could have tighter low-end. This pickup is not limited to brutal high gain distortion, it sound good in a crunch set if you use a treblebooster/tubescreamer.