Post Musical Equipment Here....

[|iR|Focalor]

A little bit ago I had gone on an anti-Joel Osteen rant somewhere around here.



https://www.westminstereffects.com/product/osteen-distortion/

What... the fuck? I don't get why they named it that. What does Joel Osteen have to do with distortion? Distortion of religious teachings maybe? Beats me. I dunno why most of these boutique pedal makers name their shit the ridiculous things they call it. (ex: Walrus Audio "Julia" chorus, etc)

But how are they not getting sued by Osteen ministries?

I also see they have a "Chick del a" delay pedal at the bottom of the page. And the C design makes it a blatant ripoff of the Chick-Fil-A logo. How do they get away with this shit? Something tells me these pedals aren't gonna be sold for long. Possibly semi-collectors item if they ever do get pinched for copyright.

[|iR|Focalor]

Pretty cool item somehow found its way into the Guitar Center in Fayetteville GA a couple dozen miles SW of Atlanta. A Fender Custom Shop stratocaster, custom built for Jay Yeunger of White Zombie. The one pic is not terrific, but from the Fender logo design and placement and headstock shape, it almost looks like a late 1970's neck. Nothing particularly fancy about it other than the fact that it's probably had more intensive hands-on work done with it than a regular American strat being that it's a custom shop guitar. 6 screw vintage style tremolo bridge, maybe some unique custom wound pickups, but it probably doesn't even have the micro-tilt adjustment for the neck pocket like many of the vintage american models and american signatures. Still... would be pretty cool to own a guitar that used to belong someone like Jay Yeunger.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Fender/Custom-Shop-One-Off-Stratocaster-Solid-Body-Electric-Guitar.gc



I'd ask Santa Claus to bring me this one, but I have my eye on something a little fancier.

[|iR|Focalor]

I'd ask Santa Claus to bring me this one, but I have my eye on something a little fancier.

Santa came a week early this year.

https://shop.fender.com/en-US/electric-guitars/stratocaster/american-elite-stratocaster/0114000736.html

(Mine looks like the "aged cherry burst" color but with a rosewood fingerboard rather than plain maple.)

Picked me up a sweet as tits, top of the line, it don't get no better than this, 2015 Fender American Elite Stratocaster with an ash body in cherry sunburst. IT SOUNDS ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY AMAZING!!! I'm not even CLOSE to kidding, you might've played other Fender strats or heard other Fender strats that you thought sounded pretty good, but it doesn't compare to the American Elites they've been coming out with lately. These 4th Generation Noiseless pickups basically play Sultans of Swing all by themselves. Ash body, offset steel block saddles, 2 point deluxe tremolo with pop-in arm (none of that screw-in bullshit), fast access rounded neck heel, locking tuners, compound radius neck. It's got EVERYTHING. I love this bitch!

Will post pics soon.

[|iR|Focalor]

Finally took a few pics of the newest hoes in my stable.

At one time, I did have a hardtail Ibanez RG421 quilt top, but I gave it away to a friend a couple of months after buying it. He needed a backup guitar for touring with his band, and I only paid 100 bucks for it anyway.

I've also sold off some other stuff. Got rid of my old rackmount Rocktron Gainiac2 preamp as well as my old rackmount Aphex Easyrider compressor. I also had an old gutted Crate combo with nothing but a speaker in it , but I blew the 60watt speaker in it juicing it with a 240watt amp, hehe. My other broke-down Crate GT80 combo didn't blow though, but it's got an 80 or 100watt speaker in it.

Anyways, geetars...

2016 Gibson Les Paul Studio Faded.
Mahogany body, carved maple top, mahogany neck - rounded 1959 Les Paul neck profile, rosewood fingerboard, Gibson Deluxe vintage style green key tuners, alnico5 BurstbuckerPro pickups, "worn brown satin" finish.

My old man bought me this one for Xmas 2016. I've named her BB for Brunette Bitch, or ThreeBee for Big Brown Bitch. The '59 neck shape is great, a good bit chunkier feeling than the normal 60's slim taper profiles they typically use on most Les Paul's. With the razor thin satin finish topcoat, it feels nice and old and worn in and rings LOUD AND PROUD. Does not sound like your usual Les Paul, almost has semi-hollow body tone qualities about it. The pickups are the most remarkable thing though. They're a nice classic style pickup with weaker alnico magnets, but they don't really sound like any other Gibson pickups you've ever heard, they have an odd Peter Greene-ish somewhat out-of-phase tone to them.



Now that it's a year old, I think the warranty is done on it, so I might start modding it. Haven't decided entirely. I've played some of the Gibson SG Faded's lately which have the old Gibson 490 pickups on them like they used to use on the Les Paul Studio models back in the 90's, and they are FANTASTIC sounding pickups. I've been debating on whether or not to just buy one of the SG Faded's with the 490 pickups already on it, or... basically completely re-tool my Les Paul Studio Faded with new pots, switch, tone capacitor, a set of 490 pickups, and probably go ahead and do the entire inside with that magnetic shielding paint to get rid of the excess noise it has from not being shielded. I can't seem to find the Gibson 490's for sale anywhere with black or black/white zebra plastic tops, just chrome or gold covered ones. And besides that, it seems very excessive to have paid 900 bucks for this guitar only to rip out ALL the guts and replace them.

Next.

2015 Fender American Elite Stratocaster.
Ash body, maple neck - compound radius modern C to classic D shape, rosewood fingerboard, deluxe short-post locking tuners, 2-point deluxe tremolo bridge with pop-in trem arm, fast-access rounded neck heel joint, Fender 4th Generation Noiseless pickups, S-1 switch on volume pot for extra parallel and series wired pickup configs.

I had originally bought a used cheap-as-fuck Squier Strat and was going upgrade it until it was "decent", but the neck joint was slightly cracked (not good), and it need major neck pocket shimming and neck adjusting to get it playing right, which was just too much shit to deal with for my tastes, so I returned it and swapped it out for a pedal instead. So then I began looking at several varieties of Mexican-made Fenders and American Fenders and realized just how much better the American Elites sound and play compared to all the others. It was no contest. I HAD to have one. Brand new, they go for $1,950 to $1,750 depending on how nice the retailer wants to be to you... But I found an all-but-brand-new used one and paid 1,200 for it. I've named her Red Headed Slut. I have no plans to upgrade her. There's really nothing to upgrade, it already has everything you'd ever want on it,... except some titties maybe.



I had no idea how nifty locking tuners were. This son of bitch REFUSES to go out of tune no matter how nutty I get with the tremolo bar. These things make life SO much easier.

So yeah, that's my Brunette Bitch and my Red Headed Slut.

[|iR|Focalor]

ATTENTION S-MART SHOPPERS!

Stupid deal of the decade:

I think someone at Guitar Center done went and fucked up.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Vox/AC30BM-Brian-May-Signature-2x12-30W-Tube-Guitar-Combo-Amp.gc

They've got this Vox limited edition Brian May signature amp (basically a modified AC30) listed for 80 bucks. If I even wanted a Vox, I'd get on there right now and put in an order for it hoping they'd realize the mistake too late or be forced to sell it to me at that price. But whilst I love my old US-made Vox v847 wah, I can't say that I like Vox amps. I'm a Marshall and Peavey guy.

Anyway, in case someone else wants to hop on it before they realize what they did... go for it. It's probably worth 1600. At 80 bucks, that's basically FREE.

[|iR|Focalor]

ATTENTION S-MART SHOPPERS!

Another stupid deal alert:

Dunno if the price is a misprint or maybe the product description is a misprint. But according to the description, this is a brand new 4x12 cab loaded with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR 60watt 16ohm Celestion Vintage 30 speakers, and they're asking $200 for it. Celestion Vintage 30's usually run about $150 each. Sooooo... the math don't add up, so it could be a misprint or something. This is an almost brand new listing for this item, as I haven't seen it until just this week.

I ain't too enthused about having a douchebag butt-rock brand logo like "Schecter" being emblazoned on the front of a cab I own, but shit, to get 600 bucks worth of industry gold standard V30 loudspeakers for 200 bucks... maybe I can learn to live with it.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Schecter-Guitar-Research/Hellraiser-Stage-240W-4X12-Slant-Guitar-Speaker-Cabinet.gc

I've actually been watching the VHT Special 6 2x12 cab, and they keep posting that it'll be in stock soon, but every time the re-stock date gets close, they put up another date another month away. So if the Feb 13th date on this Schecter cab comes and they actually have it in stock for that price, I'm probably gonna jump on it. At that price, you're losing money NOT buying it. If you have a 1x12 combo running 60w or less at 16ohms, you can buy this cab, rip out one speaker for your combo, and sell the other 3 on Reverb, ebay, or craigslist.

[quadz]

this is a brand new 4x12 cab loaded with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR 60watt 16ohm Celestion Vintage 30 speakers, and they're asking $200 for it.

Dang. That does seem like a steal.

Speaking of Vintage 30's:

Dunno if that would be wise. Seventy80s are rated at 80 watts, and Vintage30's are 60 watts (not 30). If the amp is a 60 watt amp, that might be fine. But you might wanna get some expert advice from an amp tech familiar with Blackstar amps before trying that. I think as loose single speakers, those Vintage30's usually sell for $150 each. Would suck to flatten a pair of 300 dollar speakers.

I ended up doing it. The V30's are wired in parallel, so I presume each is handling half the 60 watt amp's power.

I'm liking the sound. (Smoother / less harsh than the Seventy80's I replaced.)

[|iR|Focalor]

GOD DAMN. Yeah. I guess it was a fuck-up. I check that link and now it says "We're sorry—we no longer carry this item." I was all excited.

However, I'm still seeing this OTHER cab posted up on their site, although the price is a little higher at $249.99, which is 50 more than the other listing. It still claims to have four 60watt Celestion Vintage30's. The description says "16ohms, 8ohms per side", so I assume that means it's switchable for mono/stereo... I don't think I've ever seen a 4x12 V30 loaded cab that wasn't stereo capable.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Schecter-Guitar-Research/Synyster-Gates-Signature-Hellwin-Stage-240W-4x12-Slant-Guitar-Speaker-Cabinet.gc

Upon a quick googling, apparently this cab is linked with a guitarist for the band Avenged Sevenfold. So it's probably a little gay. In fact look at the H in Hellwin. Doesn't the middle of it kinda look like a cock and balls pointing to the floor? If I buy one, I'm ripping that logo off ASAP. Ew.

I ended up doing it. The V30's are wired in parallel, so I presume each is handling half the 60 watt amp's power.

I'm liking the sound. (Smoother / less harsh than the Seventy80's I replaced.)

Some speakers sound better for certain styles than others. V30's have a mojo and inherent magic that works with pretty much anything and always sounds sexy. But those Greenback 25's are the only thing better. But being that they're 25watts, it's not easy to use them in just "anything". I'd LOVE to use them, but I'd need probably three 4x12 cabs loaded with them in order to run my current rig through them. That's NOT a viable option. I could buy a small combo. I think the VOX AC15's and AC30's use Greenbacks... but Vox AC30's are shitty very-dated amps in my opinion, so it's kind of a waste of a perfectly good speaker if you ask me. I like vintage/classic rock sounds out of an amp, but I think ANY amp these days should also be able to go "metal as fuck" without a distortion pedal being necessary. If it won't... why use it?

People love these fucking Fender Deluxe Reverb reissues. I don't understand why. Yeah, they get insanely loud and stay crystal clear, but that's ALL they do. I don't understand why Fender hasn't come up with a line of high-gain amps (that ISN'T solid state) to compete with the likes of the Marshall DSL's. Because a Marshall will do everything a Fender does, and then it'll do everything a Marshall does too.

[|iR|Focalor]

However, I'm still seeing this OTHER cab posted up on their site, although the price is a little higher at $249.99, which is 50 more than the other listing. It still claims to have four 60watt Celestion Vintage30's. The description says "16ohms, 8ohms per side", so I assume that means it's switchable for mono/stereo... I don't think I've ever seen a 4x12 V30 loaded cab that wasn't stereo capable.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Schecter-Guitar-Research/Synyster-Gates-Signature-Hellwin-Stage-240W-4x12-Slant-Guitar-Speaker-Cabinet.gc

Nope. Gone. Another fuck up no doubt. Guitar Center is starting to piss me off. They keep posting wrong shit like that, and the rest of the time they're posting all these cabs that they have for sale THAT AREN'T EVEN IN STOCK! I swear to christ, every fucking thing I click on says "out of stock, available mm/dd/yyyy". I'm gonna open a car dealership that sells Ferarri's, but we're never gonna actually have any Ferarri's in our current stock, and we'll tell everyone we're a Ferarri dealership.

[|iR|Focalor]

Picked me up one of these today.



Obviously, I've been a Big Muff fan for a long time, but I also recently became a Tube Screamer fan as well. They produce a nice realistic natural tube overdrive sound by using op-amp chips rather than transistors like most distortion pedals. Seemed like it couldn't be a mistake to marry those two things... so I tried one out with a bass and a guitar. I liked what I heard, and the guy quoted me 75 bucks (usually sells for 80), so I took it. Got it home and hooked it side by side with my Black Russian Big Muff... jury's still out on which one I like better. Both have slightly different "throats" with the midrange, and it seems like the Black Russian has more raspy buzz to it than the op-amp reissue Muff. But that clears up and/or enhances depending on which direction you twist the tone knob. And it's not like most distortion pedals where there's just one setting for the tone knob and anything else sounds like shit. It's usable and pleasing within a pretty wide sweep on the knob.

The video demo's I've seen of the Green Russian Muff reissues so far have all been unimpressive and have only shown me why NOT to buy one. As far as I can tell, they sound nothing like the originals. And I thought the op-amp reissue Muff's might be the same story. I'm not sure how they compare to the old 78-81 Muff's, but these op-amp Muff reissues sound good regardless of comparison.

[|iR|Focalor]

What I said in the last post... mostly only applies to using this damn thing with a bass. With a guitar, it's really only got two settings: "I can barely hear the fucking thing", and "MEGA CRANIUM CRUSHING FACE MELTING BUZZSAW FUZZZZZZZZZ". Anything in between doesn't really occur when tweaking the Sustain (distotion) knob. In order to dial it back a bit and get something lighter flavored, you gotta match up the Sustain knob with a suitable setting with your guitars volume knobs.

The on/off toggle switch engages the tone filter on and off, so when it's off, the tone knob is removed from the sound. With it off, you get some decent midrange, and the overall EQ of it seems pretty flat. With it on, that same amount of midrange is not present ANYWHERE else through the range of the tone knob, it's always a scooped EQ sound. Before the 12 o'clock position, it enhances the bass and flattens the highs, and after 12 o'clock, it turns up the highs and flattens the bass.

Definitely doesn't sound like my black russian Sovtek Big Muff. After getting it home and playing it on my setup, it doesn't sound like it did in the shop. In the store, I was playing it through a little Marshall DSL15 head running into an old Marshall Bluesbreaker 2x12 reissue cab. That could have something to do with why I liked it in the store.

I've never played a '78-'81 op amp Big Muff, but I gotta imagine they probably sound a little better than this thing. Looks like they just did a cheap economy knockoff. From what I've heard, the new green russian remakes that EHX just came out with are the same way. They sound more exactly like the green-face Bass Big Muffs than the original green Sovtek Muffs, in which case you'd be better off buying something from someone who ISN'T Electro-Harmonix.

[|iR|Focalor]

I've been looking around for quite some time trying to find a decently priced 2x12 cabinet either with suitable speakers already in it, or cheap-as-fuck/blown ones that would make just the cabinet cheap enough to make buying brand new speakers an affordable option. Well, my poweramp is a Peavey dual mono 120watt beast for running stereo effects, which would mean each of the 12" speakers would HAVE to be able to handle 120watts each... which isn't very common in guitar speakers. Eminence is about the only company that makes replacement guitar speakers that go over 80watts each. And the more I looked... the more I found that pretty much EVERY FUCKING THING OUT THERE in a 2x12 was usually made of that shitty corrugated MDF garbage rather than real honest to god pine or birch. So obviously I was gonna HAVE to get a 4x12 cab if I wanted anything decent. I found a couple of old 280watt Marshall 1960AV ("AV" vintage series) cabs, but they were kinda beat up, and they wanted upwards of 600 for them, one was missing the marshall grille logo, the other had rips all over the skin covering. I also found an old 300watt Marshall 1960A cab that went with an old JCM900 stack. They wanted 330 for it, which is dirt cheap, but again, it looked pretty rough cosmetically. BIG tears in the skin covering on the right side.

Ended up finding an old Carvin Steve Vai Legacy series 4x12. Solid birch plywood, metal handles, 4 Celestion Vintage 30's. Paid 300 for it.


https://carvinaudio.com/pages/archive-c412t-4x12-legacy-top-cabinet

However... it's mono only. I'm gonna have to take the rear cup out and rewire it to make both the "input" and "thru" jacks feed 2 speakers each as inputs. I love it. 600 bucks worth of speakers for half that, plus a good quality cab. The rear is solid, it doesn't come off. The speakers load from the front of the baffle, and the grill is a nice sturdy "oh shit"-proof metal grille rather than fabric.

Can't play it yet though. My dumb ass remembered to buy caster wheels for it so I could move it around, but then my dumb ass forgot to buy speaker cables to hook the motherfucker up. So... the dogs get to keep their hearing for at least one more day.

[|iR|Focalor]

So very very very nice to be able to finally use my entire rig as God (Lemmy Kilmister) intended. This Peavey Classic Series 120/120 dual mono tube poweramp sounds fucking HORRIBLE going out of the line-out/direct out outputs into headphones or a PC soundcard or whatever else. But from the powered outs to a nice cab like the one I finally just got... holy mother fuck balls. This beast is throaty and ballsy as FUUUUUUUCK. Honestly, the Marshall JMP1 preamp I'm using isn't good enough for this poweramp. I'm getting some decent sounds out of the OD1 channel with the bass shift switched on and running an Ibanez Tubro Tubescreamer on "Turbo" mode to boost the input a bit. OD2 is just kinda lackluster though and just sounds like OD1 with extra fuzzy messy shit going on. Maybe I've just got levels set up wrong in the wrong places, because I had the powerarmp volume turned up to 5 and it wasn't hitting "too loud for the neighbors/ windows rattling and buzzing" quite yet. I'd think a poweramp this big should be blowing my head off past 4.

While shopping for speaker cables today, I did run across an old 90's chromeface Laney tube head. A Laney GH100S. These were virtually the same head as the GH100TI they made at the time, which was the Tony Iommi signature head. From what I've heard, the only difference between the two was cosmetic shit like plastic vs metal corner casters.



I remember playing through these Laney tube heads at the music store I always shopped at as a teen. They were INCREDIBLE sounding, better than a Marshall JCM900 (this was the 1990's afterall) and gave those Mesa Boogie rectifier heads so popular at the time a run for their money as well. I would trade my entire rack for a working Laney GH100 head. But alas, she had issues. Probably not a hugely expensive fix, but I'm not willing to hock my rack rig on an "unknown" issue like that. Was a total bummer to find out it wasn't working properly. God DAMN, I wanted that thing!

[|iR|Focalor]

Also had a brief opportunity to test out one of these Fender Bassbreaker combos that I keep seeing advertised and sold in all the music stores. From looking at them, you can kinda tell it's Fender's attempt at making a vintage Marshall style amp. I had seen the "official" demo video Fender made where Dave Navarro was playing through one. I liked what I heard in the video. I was thinking, "Finally Fender has pulled their head out of their own ass and tried to venture outside of the clean tone only Fender-zone." It sounded like a nice brash and beefy heavily overdriven tube amp.

But when I fired one up at Guitar Center yesterday... COMPLETELY different story.

It was AWFUL! I think it was the Fender Bassbreaker 15w 1x12 combo. Clean OR overdriven to it's max, it sounded razor thin and tinny, like the speaker cones were made of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil. No balls to it AT ALL. I tweaked the bass to 10 and the treble to 4, and it still sounded like a fat guys butthole farting on snaredrum. There was a cheaper solid state Fender Champion 100 sitting right next to it that I switched to instead. It sounded FAR better than the Bassbreaker.

When Fender makes a tube amp that sounds terrible even when set to clean... there's a big problem. The schmucks buying these things need to get their fucking hearing checked.

[|iR|Focalor]

Long story hopefully made as short as possible... I'm seriously considering hocking both my Marshall JMP1 preamp and Peavey Classic Series 120/120 tube poweramp. There's just no possible way to get the same sound out of it that you get from an all tube head amplifier. I'll only do it if I can get Guitar Center to agree to give me 600 in trade for it, or 500 at the very very least. So with 600 (maybe 500) in credit plus 200 or 300 cash, I could maybe get something priced around 800 bucks.

There's a few used late-1990's Marshall JCM900 100w heads for 700 to about 900 bucks I think. I've always wanted a JCM900 since I was a teenager and would play through them all the time at music stores back then.

There's also plenty of used Peavey 6505+ 120w heads out there. You can't really go wrong with one of those.

Marshall also just updated the DSL100 heads to include an emulated output on the back, kinda like the JCM900's had. I've played plenty of different Marshall DSL amps lately from the DSL 100 heads to the DSL40 combo and the DSL 15 mini head. All of them sound "acceptable" in my opinion.

And then there's option 2... Keep all my rack rig shit and just go buy one of these little 15w or 20w mini heads. I'm wondering if I were to use an all tube mini head like a Marshall DSL15 or Peavey 6505mh in place of the Marshall JMP1 in the rack... maybe that would yield the all tube sound I'm looking for. On the other hand, it's an all tube head already, might as well just run the head by itself... at which point the rack is still sitting unused and useless.

Option 1 sounds like the best and easiest option.

And there are other amp brands I've yet to test for myself. From what I've seen and heard of the Bugera amps in person, they're not worth messing with. Cheap, but you get what you pay for. They sound like cheap poor imitations of the amps they are intending to copy too.  Jet City is another cheap brand, but they seem to have a few decent sounding options. I've yet to hear one in person, just in videos. Never tried a Blackstar either.

Which brings me to the question at hand. Quadz, I know you said you had some sort of all tube 212 Blackstar combo.  What's your assessment of it and Blackstar amps in general?