Guitar Playing and gear thread
 

Let's talk about playing and buying guitars/pedals/amps etc. in this thread...

I've been playing for a few years on just whatever I could afford which has generally been Made in China Fenders. The Squire lol
I need to buy something that doesn't sound like shit, but I'm still pretty poor any recommendations?

Also, what kind of practice regimen do you keep? Like an hour on Scales then an hour on Songs or.... ?

There are some pretty good squires. The vintage 65 series comes to mind. Easy to upgrade pickups too.

Ibanez makes some very nice guitars that don't cost too much.

I play an Epiphone Les Paul 100, it sounds pretty good for a $250 guitar, it's not amazing.
My amp is a Marshall 1960 Lead 4X12 Cab with a Tube DSL 100H Head...it's pretty awesome. I put down some serious cash for it though... I've got a bunch of Boss pedals too, and one of those DigiTech whammy pedals. Most of this was bought when I still had a job...

Yay! A gear thread!

My current setup is a Mexi Strat through a Vox AC15

My effects board currently looks like this:

Digitech Whammy ->
EHX MicroPog ->
EHX Double Muff ->
Boss DS-1 ->
EHX Lil Big Muff ->
Death By Audio Total Sonic Annihilation -> effects send ->
EHX Small Clone ->
MXR Phase 90 ->
Boss BF-3 ->
EHX Memory Boy ->
Boss DD-7 -> effects return to Total Sonic Annihilation -> amp

I just got the Death By Audio Flaming Lips' Space Ring Time Destroyer, which should be here on Wednesday (if UPS is right). The thing looks insane so I'm super excited for it!

I don't GAS anymore (gear acquisition syndrome), so don't get me started. For practice I prefer Line 6 stuff cuz its easier. But if the need arises to actually care about tone and effects, I need someone around to say, "That sounds plenty good enough sir. Please step away from the gear and no one will get hurt."

This sounds pretty awesome even though I don't know anything about half that stuff.I didn't know there was a DOUBLE muff.

I have a amp with a bunch of effect built in and also a chorus effect pedal and flanger effect pedal because I use those the most.

I have a blue Washburn X which is a Seymour Duncan humbucker and buzz feiten tuning, it's great for those chunky and grungy riffs and stays in tune no matter what I throw at it. It was a bit noisy so I had someone wrap the pickups in foil or something, I can't remember exactly but it helped a LOT.


Picked up a Fender Deluxe Players Strat on Ebay. It sounds heavenly on clean or through a big muff. I have trouble keeping this one in tune, though. Removed the whammy bar.

I used to play through and amp but it's way overpowered for apartment playing. Recently got a Line 6 Pod.

Most cherished pedals would be my Carbon Copy Analog Delay and the Devi Ever (yeah I know) Silver Rose. I can do a lot with those two.

I almost always play acoustic all that being said, I have the same black Takamine that Springsteen plays.

The Double Muff is actually not at all what it sounds like it is! It's actually an overdrive pedal. But more specifically, it's meant to replicate the 60s OD sound, in which they'd just use a razor and slash the speaker cone in their amp to get the rough, dirty sound but not completely fuzzy sound. I love it, it has lots of tonal character to it... especially when combined with other things.

For the other stuff, the Whammy and the MicroPOG are both types of pitchshifters; DS-1 is a really basic garagey distortion pedal; Lil Big Muff is a newer model and more compact Big Muff that in my opinion sounds much like the green Slovitek Big muff, which was my favorite; the Total Sonic Annihilation is hard to explain, but it randomly fucks with your signal to yield insane and unpredictable results, but it won't work alone, it needs other pedals to do it; The Small clone is a chorus pedal, what Cobain used on "Come As You Are"; MXR 90 is phaser; BF-3 is a flanger; the Memory Boy is an analog delay, and the DD-7 is a digital delay, both have their own subtle differences; finally the Space Ring Time Destroyer which is en route is like three ring modulators in one, with tremolo and bitcrusher properties.

I recently built a mini-board to house a new project I'm working on:

any instrument >

POD 2.0 >

Boss BD-2 Blues Driver>
Boss TR-2 Tremelo>
Boss RV-3 Reverb/Delay >
Jamman Solo >

any amp

Sonic what do you think about the mini-pog? What do you use it for?

I kind of want one but I've always figured the larger POG would be the way to go but it takes up too much real estate. Haven't gotten an opportunity to actually play with either.

I love the MicroPOG, I use it a lot. 98% of the time, I use it to get an "organ" sound. I then match it up with the Small Clone to get a faux spinning Leslie sound as well. You are right, the MicroPOG is less versatile than the actual POG, but it's more compact, and I sorta just use it for that "organ" sound, so it suits me fine.

I also use it to begin an effects chain when I play bass in a completely new band I'm in. It's meant to jump the bass signal up and octave, and the wet signal goes through it's effects and to a guitar amp, and the dry bass just goes to a bass amp. That way, I can play both bass and "guitar" simultaneously.

I guess yea I was curious if it did more than just up and down a couple/few octaves. i was wondering if the micro would still let me get organ or piano or keyboard or uke/banjo or flute sounds from it. keyboard sounding stuff.

i still use a digitech synth wah for an envelope lol

like i can dial up a few different organ/synth sounds with what i've already got (also utilizing phasing and chorus and delay) but was wondering how versatile the small POG actually is. My research has told me that it's fairly limited and wouldn't be much of an improvement with what I have. There's just no way I would ever buy A POG or a HOG they're so huge.

Yeah the MicroPOG isn't so good to get the flute sounds, that's more for the larger POG. As I sai,d I was just looking for a specific sound, and just utilize it for that.

It can do an alright 12-string sort of sound.

I really want to start accumulating more pedals and stuff and get a unique set-up going but I don't know where to start.

I really like clean 80's style tones rather than anything Metal-ish. Like distortion and feedback is great but I don't usually like the "heavy" sound.

Usually I just acoustic and I legit know how to play but I really want to move to a mixture of electronic and traditional sounds.

jaguar baritone custom aka jaguar bass VI custom

yamaha magicstomp
kaoss pad 4
total sonic annihilation
eh small clone 4600
alesis nanoverb
ni guitar rig 5
ebow

Buy a used solid-state amp (i'm thinking 80s/90s fender or even peavey) and a cheap chorus pedal to mate with the flanger.

I think you might be looking for a Small Clone.

YES!!!!!

it's a special pedal for me because my friend julia gave me two when she agreed she would produce a few record projects for me, and i built her two noise machines, a jacked up atari punk machine and a 16 step sequencer noise machine i hacked together. she was foh engineer for suicide, wire, yeah yeah yeahs, slint, mogwai, caribou, the knife, m83, etc.. just tons of people. when she died this year i met up with stuart from mogwai and gave him and the rest of the band some gifts, including the other pedal and some other things. so he has one now. i wonder if they'll end up using it on any future recording.

What size strings you got on that monster? I always wanted to play one through a Zvex Fuzz Factory and a full stack. I figure it could reach steroid level of a creamy Siamese Dream tone.

25-35-45-55-75-95, but i've also used 14-18-26-44-68 as well as 24-34-44-56-72-84 - just depends on what sets i can find since for a long time (i haven't checked recently) it was hard to find sets of strings like the original. the larger gauges, especially 25-95 is quite floppy on the low end. the action on it is kind of hard to deal with all the time so i like to go with the smaller gauges. it sounds amazeballs most of the time. it's hard to play.

Re-stringed all my guitars today

Dat new string sound tho

Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive - that's my main distortion, I'd like to get a Big Muff soon
Boss CH-1 Super Chorus - my main effect
Boss BF-3 Flanger - my main effect before I got the chorus
Boss MT-2 Metal Zone - I use this mainly for finger tapping stuff
Boss PH-3 Phaser
DigiTech Whammy V - A whammy pedal if you don't have a tremolo arm, I like bending harmonics it's really fun.

Turn em all on at once and let the noisefest begin

Got my Space Ring Time Destroyer the other day. It's fucking AWESOME.

It was also signed by The Flaming Lips on the bottom, which is dumb because I usually velcro my pedals, so now I have to choose if the pedal should be secured to my board or if I should keep a semblance of resale value...

Can someone tell what kind of effects are being used on the guitar here:

Just sounds like a fuzz pedal.

It sounds so clean like just a solid block of guitar rather than the distortion I hear with most "fuzzy" sounding stuff idk

I mean the riff is super simple but pointless on my acoustic lol

Well you can dial in certain aspects of the fuzz on different pedals, and then different fuzz pedals will have different qualities anyways.

Also depends a lot on what color your guitar is

25-95's??? 68's, 84... good lorrrd. Dude, why don't you just start doing heroin. It's probably safer.

25-95 is standard bass vi gauge. the smaller gauges take care of action problems and floppy buzzing. i don't get your heroin joke.

lizard people.

I just like to think of it as a guitar, not a bass. In that context, those heavy strings are off the hook and its built to handle it. Strats do well with Zvex stuff btw...if you care to go to insane tone land. I had a nice Strat for awhile and the single coils on it with a Fuzz Factory was in the metal God tone realm and just a few tweaks away from an overpowering Creamy Dreamer like set-up.


Coming out of a full stack in a small room and it feels like your getting closer to the tone of creation. I think i had 13 -52's once and did it. Always wanted to use that set-up with the Baritone Strat, never have. It was like chasing the dragon in some ways...hence the heroin reference.

These are some of my guitars

Gretsch Nashville '67

http://s25.postimg.org/5a4aaij8v/nas1n.jpg

Fernandes Vertigo

http://s25.postimg.org/8wf5k9vxr/vertigo.jpg

The others are a black and white Squier Strat and a black and white Aria Pro II FS (strat copy). so cheap shit really. I also have a Seagull acoustic and a Gibson Chet Atkins SST which is a semi acoustic but i play neither of those really as i don't like acoustic guitar pretty much at all. I inherited them though that's why i have them. I'd sell the Gibson if the finish wasn't so fucked up it's not even worth 400$ anymore (when technically it should be worth around 1300$)

Really while i should be playing the gretsch the most, i like the cheap Squier strat best i'm afraid.... I used to wonder why, then realised all the bands i like used cheap instruments in their beginnings (robert smith plays a sears guitar on Three imaginary boys for one). So i figure cheap guitar is the sound i've grown to like.

These are my basses.

http://s25.postimg.org/b7jbb0oa7/basses2.jpg

As much as i can sorta play guitar i still prefer playing bass by far. I only decided to get passable on guitar all these years back so i didn't have to deal with guitar players who always want to throw some shit in like some jazz chords they've been learning. Like i'm supposed to give a fuck, nevermind like it.

I don't really play the Epi though, its the least comfortable bass i've ever tried and also it sounds very early 70's (obviously meant to) which is a sound i don't like. As soon as you turn the mudbucker on it's like the worst muffled distorted definition-less sound ever. I've been trying to sell it. It weighs a ton and the neck will hit the floor if you don't hold it. Still not sure why they make any instruments out of mahogany.

The Douglas is the prettiest thing i've ever owned. I've always wanted a black semi hollow like that and it took me years to find an affordable and yet good sounding one. This is as good as it gets unless i'd be willing to get a custom made. Ideally i'd like a bridge pickup too but what can you do... with a lot of fiddling i can get almsot any tone i like out of it

The Ibanez was bottom of the line, it's the first instrument i ever bought in 1996. It's also probably still to this day the best sounding bass i've played. for my money anyway. It is pretty much a fender in sound though, obviously with the J and P. It doesnt look like much but it looks worse seen vertically really.

As for gear, well i kinda hate gear really. I hate turning knobs and plugging stuff and spending ridiculous amount of cash on it. I know i'm supposed to be into this shit but i could never be. Nowadays I tend to just plug into a DAW and use Amplitude or Guitar Rig for effects. I have four Boss pedals (chorus, flange, distortion and delay) and i pretty much never use them as i can get better results through these software.

my first guitar was a blue one. still have it but it needs the jack rewired. it's beat to hell. played it for ten years in numerous bands before i upgraded.

as far as sears guitars go im still on the lookout for the "perfect" 70s department store guitar. love those weirdo japanese models like airline, silvertone, harmony, kay, teisco, etc. played a bunch and owned a bunch but never kept one.

This was my first too. Well it was my grandad's and he gave it to my brother cause he had picked up guitar then i started messing around with it and later on when my brother stopped playing it became mine. It's still an alright guitar. Its not like i could sell it for more than like 50$ anyway so why bother. I did use it on a recording just this year.