I mentioned last time that I traded my Sig:X amp for a bunch of other stuff, right? I got the ZT Lunchbox early last week, and it’s pretty cool. On Thursday, I got the big stuff: the VOX AC30H2 and the Fulltone OCD (v.4).

The VOX is nice. While it’s true that it was manufactured in China, which is not ideal, the craftsmanship is pretty excellent. It is a handwired amp, but it’s not point-to-point or turret board. It is a PCB type of construction, but all of the components are wired by hand, rather than installed by some giant machine. This doesn’t necessarily affect the tone, but it makes the amp less failure-prone and easier to repair if it does break down.

I read a lot of dudes on the internet who bash modern VOX amps because they’re inferior to the UK-built amps from the late 60′s. Well, you know what? The modern ones don’t catch on fire like the old ones did.

This AC30 is quite different from the Custom Classic series that Vox came out with a few years ago. The Heritage series doesn’t have tremolo, reverb, or an effects loop like the CC series did. That’s perfectly fine with me. I’m not a big fan of built-in effects like that. I’d much rather use outboard effects that I can access on a pedalboard. An effects loop would be nice, but it’s not really necessary since I’ll be running this amp clean.

Anyway, I took it to practice on Thursday, and I was having some issues getting it to stay clean. Even though the volume was pretty low (relatively speaking – this is a loud, loud 30 watts), I couldn’t get it to keep from breaking up. I played with it some more on Friday at the house, and I managed to figure it out. The amp has two channels: the top boost channel and the EF86 channel. At practice I was using the Top Boost channel, but I discovered that the EF86 channel is capable of delivering some massive-sounding clean tones that will not break up regardless of how hard you hit the strings. I had the volume at 12:00 (which is really loud), and full chords stayed perfectly clean when I hit them full on.

My pedalboard is currently undergoing some revisions. I picked up a Strymon blueSky Reverberator a couple of weeks ago, and it’s already gone. It’s a really great pedal with some amazing sounds in it, but it’s just too much money tied up in an effect that I’m really not going to use all that much. I’m keeping the Brigadier delay, but I’m picking up a Line 6 M9 to replace the BSR.

I already had the M13, and sold it because it was overkill. However, I really miss some of the weird loopy things that it can do. Things like pattern tremolo, pitch shifting, particle verb, step filter, sweep echo, etc are all really cool glitchy effects that I can use. The reverb sounds won’t be as good as the blueSky, but it’ll be close enough for spacey live stuff.

I also picked up a Musket Fuzz from Blackout Effectors to replace my diy Mayo clone. This thing is awesome. It’s kind of a modern take on the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi. It has 6 knobs for tone shaping, so it’s really versatile for a fuzz pedal. It can go from mild overdrive tones to wall of sound fuzz. It’s pretty sweet.

I’m liking the OCD more than I thought I would. It’s really open-sounding, even at high gain levels. It’s not overly compressed and you can still hear your basic guitar-amp sound underneath the extra gain.

::

In less happy news, I have run into a snag with my Jazzmaster purchase. I found the one that I wanted, checked the seller’s references and sent him payment. Unfortunately, he is now claiming that his paypal account is frozen and he is refusing to ship the guitar until his funds are released. I filed a claim with paypal, told him that I wasn’t okay with waiting and that he needs to ship the guitar as per our agreement. I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days. I know I’ll get my guitar or my money back eventually, but it could be weeks before that happens. Part of me wants to fly out to wherever this guy lives and punch him in the face.

A couple of months ago, I posted about my office/studio in our new house.

Back then, it looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

It’s a little messy, I still need some art hanging on the walls, and I still need curtains/shades, but I’m getting pretty comfortable in here. I kinda forgot how horrible the old color was.

Off topic – that little box on the left side of my desk is new. It’s a ZT Lunchbox, and it’s pretty amazing. It’s a 200W solid state amp with a single 8″ speaker, and it sounds huge. I got it as part of a trade for my old amp. I originally planned on selling it, but it’s so cool that I think I’ll probably keep it. The AC30 is supposed to get here on Wednesday, and I’m still trying to decide what I should do with it. I suppose that I should probably play it before I decide to sell it.

I will soon be the owner of this. It’s a VOX AC30 50th Anniversary Heritage Handwired combo with a pair of Celestion AlNiCo Blue speakers.

I wasn’t really planning to get one of these, but somebody made me an offer I couldn’t refuse (no severed horse heads were involved).

I decided a while back that my Fryette Sig:X is not really the amp that I want right now. It’s a really, really great amp, but it’s not really the flavor that I want right now, and it’s kinda complicated. If I were in a touring rock band playing a lot of big rooms, I would probably keep this setup. However, I’m not touring, so I don’t really need it.

Anyway, the musical direction that I currently see myself going in calls for an amp with a great clean channel first and foremost. The Sig:X has a really good clean channel, but it doesn’t have enough clean headroom to balance well with the distorted channels. I just want a simpler amp, and I want a combo. I don’t really want to mess with the head/cab thing anymore. At least not right now.

The amp that I decided to get was a Mesa Lonestar Classic. It’s a 6L6-based amp, but it’s not a Dual Rectifier. Channel one is a great blackface Fender-style sound (along the lines of a Twin Reverb) and Channel two is a heavier blues-rock kind of tone.

Anyway, that’s the amp that I decided to get once I sold my Sig:X. However, this dude on The Gear Page offered me an even trade for his AC30. His AC30 is worth $2-300 more than my Sig:X. I told him that I was possibly interested, but that I would have to think about it. He emails me back and throws a couple more items into the mix. He offered me his AC30, plus a ZT Lunchbox practice amp (worth about $200 on eBay) and a Fulltone OCD distortion pedal (over $100 used). This deal is really balanced in my favor. I was skeptical, but this guy is legit. He has a lot of references and a perfect track record on eBay, so it doesn’t appear that he’s scamming me.

I’m gonna do it, even though the AC30 isn’t my first choice. I’ll probably just sell all of this stuff and buy a Lonestar and a good roadcase. You never know, I may end up loving it. If it’s good enough for Thom Yorke and Jeff Tweedy, it might be good enough for me.

In other news, I found a white AVRI Jazzmaster with a Mastery bridge that I’m gonna buy, so both of those things should be here next week. It’s gonna be a busy week for gear.

I did a quick video demo of the new strymon pedals and thought I’d share. I’m using my G&L ASAT Bluesboy into my Fryette Sig:X clean channel. I’m using the RAILhead Effects PURE to boost the amp into some light breakup. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with lots of different settings – it just kinda gives you an idea of the character of these pedals.

Anyway, if there’s anything that you want to hear in particular, let me know.

I have been told by a few people on the interwebs that I don’t blog enough, so here goes.

I am getting kind of embarrassed about my inability to commit to my musical equipment. I have been through so many guitars, amps, and pedals that it’s not even funny. Part of that is because I can’t afford to just buy stuff when I want it. If a new delay pedal (or whatever) catches my eye, I usually have to sell something else to make room.

I am currently in the middle of flipping a bunch of gear. I have come to the conclusion that I prefer my G&L ASAT (telecaster-style guitar) to my other guitars. I like it so much that it literally makes my other guitars weep. Okay, not really. [For the record, the misuse of the word literally is one of my pet peeves.]

Anyway, what I like so much about my tele is that it just sounds like rock and roll. Even when I’m playing softly, it’s just kinda rude. My PRS is not rude. It is polite. It doesn’t put it’s elbows on the table during suppertime. It uses a napkin. It knows the difference between a salad fork and a main course fork and a dessert fork. It doesn’t sound like rock and roll. Sure, I can plug it into a big, loud amp and play Smoke on the Water and it’ll sound pretty convincing, but it doesn’t feel right. Not to me, anyway. Maybe it’s just too pretty for me to take it seriously.

Anyway, I decided to sell it. I put it up on The Gear Page this afternoon, and it sold about 5 hours later. Right now, the plan is to buy a ’62 AVRI (American Vintage Reissue) Fender Jazzmaster. I’ll probably have to look for a while, since I don’t really want to pay a premium for a new one. Unfortunately, I haven’t really seen any used ones on ebay/craigslist/etc. Do me a favor and keep your eyes open for an AVRI Jazzmaster. I’d prefer one in Olympic White like this one, but black would also be fine.

I also decided to sell my delay. I pretty much decided to sell it as soon as it broke down, but I had to get it fixed first, since no one is going to want to buy a broken delay. It turns out that it was just a fried diode, which means that I (or the guy that I bought it from) plugged it into the wrong power supply. Anyway, I’m getting a couple of strymon pedals to take care of my delay needs: the Brigadier dBucket Delay and the blueSky Reverberator. Both of these pedals sound amazing and should enable me to make some truly spacey, echo-ey sounds. I really considered waiting for the soon-to-be-released El Capistan dTape Echo, but I think I’m more interested in analog delay sounds rather than tape echo sounds. Oh well, I could always flip something if I change my mind.

Oh yeah – I almost forgot. I won a little Twitter contest that Dan over at This1smyne Effects put on a few weeks ago. I’ll be getting his T1M Booster, which is a clone of the ZVex SHO boost with a tone control. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but I’m looking forward to checking it out.

I showed up for soundcheck this morning, plugged in my guitar/pedalboard, strummed a chord and – nothing. I spent a few frantic minutes troubleshooting and determined that my new delay (Tech21 Boost DLA) was the culprit.

The LED turns on, but it won’t pass a signal. At first it kinda worked, but I could hear it sputter out and die completely. I’m afraid it’s probably an IC chip or something, but it’s impossible to get to any of the components without completely desoldering the input jacks as well as the DC jack since they’re all soldered directly to the board. It’s a really stupid design, IMO.

I guess I’ll contact Tech21 customer support  tomorrow to see what they can do for me as far as repairing it. My experience with them will affect whether or not I purchase any more of their products.

I made it through the service okay this morning. I still had another delay on the board (Ibanez DE-7), so I wasn’t completely delay-less. I had to do the dotted eighth thing on one song, so I manually dialed in the delay time to be pretty close and just turned up the delay mix for that one song. It wasn’t perfect, and I had to tweak it a little at the beginning of the song, but it worked out okay.

I think that once I get this delay fixed, I will probably just get an Eventide Timefactor or something like that since there are no more Timelines to be had. Why did I sell that freaking thing? Oh yeah, to buy that Line 6 M13 that I already got rid of. Facepalm.

We closed on our new house a week ago, and we have been scrambling to get everything moved out of the old house and into the new place. We’re settling in for the most part, but this place is so much bigger than the old house. We went from around 1300 sq ft to over 2000 sq ft. We have 2 living areas, and one of them is pretty much completely empty right now.

My office is attached to the currently empty “formal” living room. The actual room is about 11′ deep and 9′ wide. I have two enormous closets for guitars, amps, pedals, wires, books, and anything else I want to keep in there.

It’s pretty empty right now, but I don’t want to get too set up until we’ve had a chance to paint. The room is a pretty awful shade of peach. It’s kind of nauseating.

I really want to get a little practice amp to keep in this room. It needs to be something that I can play quietly, so tubes are out, unfortunately. I know that I could get one of those little Vox AC4 combos, but even that thing would be too loud to play after the boys are in bed. I don’t want to get a modeler, since I don’t want to mess with connecting it to external speakers or whatever. I think I’m probably going to get a Tech21 Trademark 30. You can pick these up for dirt cheap on ebay/craigslist. I’ve heard a lot of great things about the Trademark series of amps, and the demo recordings are actually pretty good. It’s not going to replace my real amp for playing live, but it should be more than adequate for practicing at home (either through the speaker or through headphones) or for recording (either mic’ed or through the direct out).

I’m also planning on getting a new computer before too long. The plan is to get a 15″ MacBook Pro sometime this summer so that I can hand my current MacBook down to our oldest son. He’s using our old iMac G5 and it’s kind of on it’s last legs.

I got rid of my DD-20 delay after a couple of months of frustration. I got it because it has presets, external tap, LED display, etc. I had one before and I thought that it could be my swiss army knife, all-purpose delay. It has a lot of sounds in it, but they all seem too harsh and brittle to me. On top of that, it’s not very easy to tweak on the fly. Short of going back to a huge MIDI setup (like I used to have with the Damage Control Timeline) I think I’m just going to have to have a couple of different delays on the board if I want access to multiple delay sounds.

I replaced the DD-20 with the Tech21 Boost DLA. I just wanted to go with a relatively basic delay with tap tempo that doesn’t mess with your dry signal. It has a buffered bypass, but that’s not such a bad thing if it’s at the end of the effects chain.

I would like to be able to tell you how it sounds, but I haven’t even plugged it in yet. We’re closing on a new house in a week, so we’re in the middle of packing right now. All the demos that I watched/listened to sounded really nice, and it’ll probably work out pretty well. I like that it has knobs rather than buttons and menus. I’m not sure if I’ll use the boost feature very much at all, but it’ll be nice to have it just in case.

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I installed my Tremol-no last night. I’m tired of all my strings going out of tune whenever I change one string. I haven’t messed with it a lot yet, but it seems to be a lot more stable now. I’ll post an update once I’ve had a chance to give it a go.

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I emailed Mike at ANALOG.MAN Effects and he said that I don’t have to order the King of Tone pedal right away. That’s a good thing, since I don’t really want to wait another 18 months. I’ll probably buy it once we’ve had a chance to buy some furniture and stuff for the house.

About 18 months ago, I put my name on the waiting list for a pedal called the King of Tone, made by ANALOG.MAN Effects. I got an email last night letting me know that my name has come up. I don’t have to order right away, which is a good thing considering that we’re buying a new house and pretty much all of our extra money is going to go towards the down payment, new furniture, appliances, etc.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about this pedal. Who out there has one? How does it compare to something like a Tim/Timmy? Is it pretty transparent?

I’ve mentioned it before, but I finally ordered a Tremol-no™ for my PRS. I never use a trem, but the fact that it’s even present causes all kinds of tuning instability. If I detune one string, the rest of the strings go out of tune due to the change in tension on the springs in the trem cavity. Anyway, bla bla bla – the tremol-no corrects this issue.

The tremol-no is a little gadget that replaces the tremolo claw in your trem-equipped guitar and allows you to lock/unlock the trem whenever you’re not using it. You tighten a screw to lock it down and unscrew it if you want to use it.

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I think I’m figuring out how to dial in my amp (a Fryette Sig:X). I was trying to use each channel to do the function that it’s named for (clean/rhythm/lead). However, I haven’t really been able to dial in a really great hard rock rhythm tone on the rhythm channel. The rhythm channel is kinda vintage-sounding and doesn’t get as saturated as the lead channel.

At our last show, I used the lead channel pretty much all the time since we played kind of a hard rock-ish setlist. Whenever I took a solo, I just hit the FX loop button on the footswitch. The FX loop has a volume control, so you can dial it in to give you a volume boost without adding any gain. It’s a pretty cool little feature. Drop a delay pedal (and maybe an EQ pedal with a slight mid-bump) in the loop and it’s perfect for a solo setting on any channel. Even without those things it sounded fine. I’ll probably set the rhythm channel for a Hendrix-style Marshall overdrive tone and hit it with a fuzz for solos.

Just like everything related to guitar gear, this whole thing is going to be subject to change. I might have a different amp in 6 months. I hope not. Shipping amps is a pain. Thinking aloud: I wonder if I could live with a single channel amp? Do I really need a clean channel? The Fryette Deliverance amps look/sound awesome, but they only have one channel and no effects loop. Hmm. I need to just stick with the Sig:X. It’s super versatile and it sounds awesome. I don’t want or need a different amp. The very notion is ridiculous.