Guitars

[Focalor]

Found it. See? Looks like shit. Once I used gentler chemicals to strip it down bare, I'd probably have to sand the entire back with a belt sander to make that look less awful.



See? Wine red my ass! Dunno what kinda koolaid based toilet wine he'd been drinking, but that don't look like no red wine I've ever seen.

[Focalor]

Haha! I remember seeing those things years ago. Those and the a bit larger but still small little portable battery powered Pignose amps. Supposedly Randy Rhodes recorded a few things on one of the 2 Ozzy records using it. Never had a chance to try one myself although I would've liked to have had something small and portable like one of those 2 things. I used to have a little automotive cigarette lighter plug DC to AC converter that I'd use on camping trips in the mountains. I'd run my guitar into my rackmount Digitech preamp/FX unit then run a cable and an adapter into the aux jack on my aftermarket Aiwa stereo in the trucks dash and scare all the wildlife away. A ridiculous setup and it meant I had to stand by the truck with the door open, but it worked.

I've got a Boss MT2 metal zone as well. All the Boss boxes are virtually indestructible, love em. I rarely use it though. Not a distortion box user anymore, I stick with distortion from my rack amp preamps for all that 100% of the time now. Had a DOD Death Metal for a while too, but it was garbage. Hated it. Cheapish housing, didn't sound tight and focused like you'd expect a solid state metal distortion pedal to sound. Had WAAAAAY TOO MUCH signal boost and gain to it to where it would feedback and squeal before you'd even dial it up to 7 or 8.

BUT... if I was gonna get another distortion type of pedal, I'd kinda like one of those big ugly military green Big Muff Pi reissue fuzz pedals that made a comeback back in the 90's. Dunno if they still make them, haven't seen them anywhere for a long time. I think they were originally made the early 70s and then rereleased in a nearly 100% authentic version and then a cheaper plastic non-germanium transistor version, but both were AWESOME! It got some really nice buzzy classic Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper tones.

Never had the same experience with BC Rich myself. My first electric was a used 1984 Mockingbird. One piece poplar body, bolt on poplar or maple neck, classic big R pearl logo on an angled headstock with 6-on-1-side chrome Grover tuners, Fender style 1way trem bridge, 2 hum pu's with 2 vol 1 tone and 3way toggle. HOT FUCKIN PINK. Oh yeah, gotta love those CC Deville looking 80's guitars. On the phone, the guy told me it was a wine red finish, but then I got there and was like "WHAT THE FUCK MAN, are you blind!?!" But I had been looking all over the entire state for a Mockingbird, and it was only one I could find. I figured I'd repaint it one day but never did. Anyway... HORRIBLE sounding guitar! No sustain at all, probably because of the horrible bridge and shitty polyplastic looking nut. Also has your typical overseas thick-as-fuck polyurethane finish which always completely DECIMATES the natural tone of any guitar. I ended up putting huge fat jazz flatwound .12 or .13 strings on it just because it's the only way it sounds even remotely musical. One day I want to completely strip the finish of the neck and body and leave it bare naked to hopefully add some life to the tone of it. I tried using sandpaper and my bare hands to take the finish off several years ago, but it was a major mistake. It took me 12 hours or more over 2 or 3 days just to do a small portion of the body back and it ended up rubbing spots into the wood.

Thought I had some pics of it uploaded somewhere but I can't find them at the moment. Maybe I'll dig out a digicam and snap some more later. Ooooo she's ugly enough to stop a clock though.

[MadGypsy]

I had a mini Marshall half stack that was about 6 inches tall and ran on batteries . It was pretty good for what it was.

this thing


I prefer Ampeg w/ boss metal zone pedal.

I had a B.C.Rich Warlock once that weighed like 1006 lbs and would sustain forever. It was a really sweet guitar but, way too heavy.

[Focalor]

Things I don't own, probably never will, but a boy can still dream...



Probably my favorite amp of all time. The Marshall JCM900 100watt head. I've tested lots of amps, and this one is my favorite. I'd even personally rate this one above the Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier simply because it's a simpler amp. They made these back in the 90's, and as far as I could tell, they were just hotrodded versions of the previous decades legendary JCM800 series, which in my opinion, didn't have quite enough growl and scream to them when played through the dirty channel. This one's perfect though. Not too little, not too much like Mesa Triple Rectifier, juuuuuuust right. Currently I'm using a Marshall JMP-1 rackmount preamp, which can really only achieve a sound "close" to the JCM900 head, and it gets even closer when I use the JMP-1 preamp into a massive Peavey classic series poweramp loaded with buttloads of 6L6's and 12AX7's, but it's still not exactly the same. Apparently a lot of the pros who use the JMP-1 as their preamp have the unit modded and hotrodded for more gain and more flexible EQ, but... I'm not about to spend the kinda money it takes to have that done to it.

When I was a wee little fucker-plucker, I had a copy of the yearly Guitar Buyers Guide that one of those guitar mags put out every year. Among the pages, I saw one picture of a guitar that gave me an insta-boner and still does to this day.

From what I've read recently, it's a one of a kind guitar built by some Russian luthier back in 1994 who now works in the Fender Custom Shop doing nothing but the most obscenely expensive custom work they ever have orders for.

1994 Yuiry Angel.



I mean... MY GAWD! It's not a guitar, it's a fucking work of art! You don't play it, you look at it and talk sweet to it and make blood offerings of spotless lambs to it every equinox. I mean... holy shit.









And this beautiful piece of musical art can be yours for the low low price of about six thousand dollars once you factor in tax and shipping and whatever else (according to this webpage where the owner has it for sale). Which... that's actually not too terrible in my opinion. I've seen some of the brand new Gibson Les Paul 59 reissues that are selling for 10 grand. The Gibson BB King signature Lucille models are going for upwards of 6 grand now. And those are not one-of-a-kind.

[Focalor]

Apologies for the image quality, these are pretty old pictures taken with a shitty webcam on my old Win98 machine back in probably 2008 I think.



Probably the coolest pedal I own. An old circa 1970's Morley phaser pedal. My dad bought me this pedal for about 65 bucks for my 16th birthday. For a kinda rare vintage pedal like this, that was a total steal. I had played it on 2 or 3 prior occasions at a local music shop and fell in love with it. Nobody else had taken a 2nd look at it because it was huge, ugly, and has a 2prong AC cord - whereas most folks want a 9v powered simple stompbox I guess. Their loss.

By the time I got to be college aged, I did a REALLY stupid thing and hocked it along with a Boss Super Chorus stompbox pedal for 25 bucks each, 50 bucks total. What did I need the money for? Beer and strippers. FUCKING STUPID! I hated myself for years afterwards. But by chance, about 5 or 6 years later I was in the same music store buying some rackmount gear and I asked the guy if he had the foot controller that went with it. He began looking through some drawers behind the counter filled with assorted pedals he didn't have room to display in the case... and there sat my old phaser pedal. I was amazed they still had it. Apparently some guy from the band Collective Soul had rolled through and tested it out a few weeks before and was getting ready to buy it before he found something else he liked better. Could've been a bullshit story to sell me on it, but it wasn't needed, I wasn't leaving without it. I ended up buying it back for 75 bucks. So it was kinda like a 6 year 200% interest loan with the pedal as collateral.

This pedal is not as clean sounding as straight stompbox phasers, but it's an authentic 70's vintage phaser pedal, so the sometimes staticy hiss is actually a good thing in my opinion. This thing can do things no other phaser pedal can though. When it's bypassed, the expression pedal acts as a volume pedal. When it's engaged, it has switchable auto and manual modes. In auto mode, the pedal controls the speed of the phaser effect, but in manual, you can rock the pedal to control the sweep like a wah pedal, which gives a lot of options. It has 3 knobs on the side to tweak the sound. Phase Travel (aka intensity), Center (where the center peak of the effect appears in the overall sweep), and Harmonic Emphasis (aka feedback). If you dial the feedback and intensity way up and use it in auto mode, you can create some really wacky spaceship sounds. If you tweak the intensity and feedback just right and set the center towards the top end of the sweep, then put it in manual mode and use your foot to control the sweep, you can get some really weird broken wah pedal sounds with it. I've even used it in tandem with an old Vox wah while I sat in a chair and alternated the sweeps with both feet to create some crazy and unique sounds. You can also set the feedback pretty high, then rock the pedal into one position and leave it to use the pedal as a EQ filter, which can get some interesting Dire Straits tones or make it sound like your guitar is some kinda weird bastard child of a guitar and a glockenspiel.

But alas, a few years back I left the thing plugged in for a few days with the power switch on and I guess something in it burned out. Hopefully one of these days I can get around to taking it somewhere to get it back in working order again.

[Focalor]

Anybody else play? Show off your shit! Guitars, amps, whatever. Or just talk about some shit you USED to own, don't anymore, and would kill a whole busload of nuns with a hatchet to be able to have it back in your hands again.

My very first amp was a little Peavey Bravo 112 1x12" combo. I think it was about 25 or 35watts, loaded with two EL84 and three 12AX7 tubes, probably originally built sometime between 1985 and 1989, not sure. I think I paid around 300 or 350 for it back in 1995. From what I've seen online, if you can find one in a used music shop these days, they typically go for about 250 to 300. It's ALL TUBE! WTF! It was a terrific sounding little amp. Came loaded with a Eminence made 12inch speaker, I forget the exact model number/name though. Drawback to it was that it didn't have a headphone or line out jack. It had two outputs on the back, one to plug the speaker into, and one for an extra 4ohm extension speaker out. I ended up taking the thing back about a week or two after buying it though because the spring reverb tank on it was apparently bad. When I played it in the store, it was leaned back against a wall the whole time. When I got it home and set it flat on the floor, it began squealing like crazy any time I'd turn the reverb up. So I ended up taking it back and trading it in for a Crate GT80 DSP Tube/MosFET hybrid amp. It was a "decent" sounding amp I guess, but it wasn't pure tube (kinda close though). Without a doubt, THE MOST UNRELIABLE COMBO AMP EVER MADE! I had to take the damn thing in TWICE for service while it was still under warranty. And then about a month or two after the warranty was up, it broke down AGAIN. I never got it fixed.

Had I known then what I know now, I would've KEPT that damned Peavey amp. A bad reverb tank? Pfft, so fucking what!!! An easy fix anyone can do themselves. There's probably no way I'll ever come across another one of those amps in a used store anywhere in Georgia ever again.

If by some chance I ever did find another one in a local store, I'd wanna do some research first and see how hard it would be to mod the thing to add a line out jack to use it for direct out recording. I don't do live mic recording with guitars, it's just too expensive and complicated. I use mostly old rackmount gear which is perfect for stereo direct recording with something like Acid Pro.