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Create your EquipboardGear 13
It's a thinline tele, giving the notes a lot of space to play with. Telecasters sometimes need a bit of 'umph' to drive them when fitted with single coils, however this is fitted with Tex-Mex pickups which are slightly hotter than your American Standard's. Still having the lovely clean tones but gives you more space to drive up.
One of the advantages of being a thinline is that it's light. When you've been standing in a gig for an hour, the weight really does make it easy to stand, it's the same with travelling between gigs, and that's great.
A mexican tele, it still sounds incredible and adds something different to the tele range fender offer. Would defintely recommend buying this guitar.
I bought this because my last acoustic got fret ware and this had been reduced from £517 to £317. Great Fishman pickups with built in tuner (which I sometimes use).
It's not your typically acoustic looking, with its strat like head stock, and mine being in red-brown sunburst (which looks amazing by the way).
Great guitar, and great for percussive songs, takes my beatings.
Cons:
Struggles with heavier gauge strings (could just take 13's) and so can limit some creative exploration but other than that, it's lovely.
Great for both acoustic and electric guitars. Precise tunings too with true bypass.
Really lovely light overdrive, it's great as a first drive in your chain. Incredibly diverse from crunch to medium drive, it's perfect for country, blues, indie, and rock.
Ironically, I prefer this to my tubescreamer mini as it has a bit more sustain and warmth.
Pros:
Good value
true bypass
Lovely tone - can add dirt to single coils, but also control gainy humbuckers.
Cons:
Depending on what you play, it doesn't always provide the drive you need with single coils. But that's not its purpose.
I was apprehensive buying this as I was wondering what the catch was, but there wasn't any, it's just brilliant.
Great tubescreamer tone comes through on this, hardy and doesn't take up lots of pedal space (which can then be filled with delays).
I wouldn't even bother getting the TS9, you might as well get this. There is not catch, it's better value and takes up less board space.
Many delay types to cover all your delaying needs! 3 pre-sets and built in tap tempo. Easier to recreate the delays of some of my favourite songs because it's used to widely.
Second hand is the way to go, they are coming down in price, and so definitely worth the buy.
Cons:
Delay and Looper cannot be used at the same time.
Footswitches CAN (hasn't happened with me) break
My personal wish:
I would like to get it modded with new footswitches and LED's, double the memory presets to 6 and separating the loop function. All these mods can be done to it and they can all work together, it's just finding a modder in the UK & Ireland.
I bought this new for about £60, this came out to commemorate Thomann's 60th Anniversary as a music sales shop. 4 reverbs that you can change between at your feet which isn't an option for many reverbs below £200.
Room, Hall, Spring and LFO with four knobs for diverse delay sounds and clear LED screen to know which reverb you're on. Mono input and Stereo Out and 9v DC power.
Just great for different styles of playing like the spring for your country and the hall which I use mostly for that BIG sound to your tone.
Cons:
Can't quite get the swelling like whale noise reverbs, but if you're not looking for that then this might be the pedal for you, settings can sometimes make me feel like not much has changed, when i've twisted the knobs but it's nothing too noticeable.
Conclusion:
If you need a reverb and you're not willing to pay £80+, I would consider this. 4 reverbs you can change on the fly and that you can rely on, however if I could get more reverb I would.
It may have a 8" speaker and be 5 watts, but don't let that fool you. It made my friends 15 watt fender XD have a run for its money.
Full valve tone, it just sounds amazing. When playing live in my setup, we mostly mic up our amps behind the stage, and my friends with their 15-30 watt monsters can never use all their volume, so their tubes don't get used and as we know, good tone is found at the higher volume levels. To hear the sound engineer go "Please could you turn your amp up?" Is like sweetness to the ears. I get to use the higher echelons of my amp.
For small gigs or medium ones mic'ed up, it's amazing. If you don't have a mic, you can plug in an XLR directly into the system instead with the red box DI technology.
Light as a feather:
H&K make some of the lightest valve amps I've ever lifted. When you're having to lug it around to gigs, having a light amp is extremely helpful.
Diverse:
I've had my single coil tele in this, my friends strat and then both my friends gainy ibanez's. Handles them all really well and can push out lovely tones.
Cons:
- It would be nice for a 10" speaker
- The drive channel on the amp is quite hard to control and sounds horrible, I don't use it at all.
Conclusion:
I love this amp, and I will have it for a while until I really need to move onto something bigger (Tubemeister/Grandmeister 36). It hasn't got the trappings of the bigger amps, but if you want a good sounding amp, this is the way to go.