Gear Update and micro reviews

Gear in use right now:

PRS McCarty, vintage yellow - this thing actually has a chambered body, a quite round and big neck (wide / fat), McCarty pickups and really smooth controls all around. It just feels quality. For more commitment to solid and punchy rock tones, go with a CST22. However, with the McCarty a strat sound is totally within reach (chambered!) since it also has the ability to do just a front pickup coil split unlike the CST22 5 way (I think you can get a 3 way / split for a CST22 though). Oh yeah, CST24 has the extended scale making the strings tighter... I dont have a ton of hand strength nowadays so thats not on my 'to get' list [like the CST22 is].

Mesa F50 - overall one of my favorite purchases ever in guitar equipment. It's at times almost too good, meaning it's precise bite and sensitivity really demands that you play very well, with no open strings. They say it's the hybrid of a Dual Rec and a Mark series. For me it's the perfect blend of 'purple' and punchiness. The clean channel is the best I have ever owned by far with it's gliss-like chime. I could go on but will instead record more and post it somewhere.

Marshall TSL60 - it's parallel effects loop mix control only mixes IN an effect, it never cuts out the dry signal! What?! I now must become an amp tech to do a mod to at least turn it into a serial FX loop. Oh yeah - it sounds pretty cool. Marshally. Rather compressed though, and I like the DSL series a lot better (I think, its been a while). The JCM800, JCM900 and TSL60 - as far as I can tell, that's it on high gain tube 1x12 combos.. one of those things you don't realize until you are in the market for something. The rest are Valvestates or all solid state of which they make 1000 different models. Well, sorry, I left out the 'DSL401' combo. I would have bought that but it has el-84s (which never sound right to me - I have always owned 'big boy' tube based amps) and it's tone is just nasally and buzzy beyond other amps I have played.

Ernie Ball Volume Pedal Junior - such an awesome design and implementation of a pedal that I am seriously thinking about converting my Dunlop 535q to a VP JR chassis. Just awesome, smooth and works cool. For a sample of a cool volume pedal effect listen to the bridge in Collective Soul's "December" where Ross fades in an A# -> G .... In the back of my head I always wondered how he did that...

Dunlop 535q Wah -
not much else needs to be said. You can adjust the Q and volume boost. Also how fast the wah tone kicks in is adjusted by the silver knob on the right. If you have ever used a Morley wah versus a Dunlop and wondered what that big difference is, you can emulate that with the knob.

Boss DS1 - it was once remembered that a 14 year old Jeremy K had said of the DS1 "who in the heck would use this thing?!". 18 years later, he is. This thing is almost completely controlled by the TONE knob! Distortion is actually pretty even and doesn't color the tone (like other pedals). Instead the tone knob seems to shift all sorts of stuff all over the place. The end result isn't a metal zone or dual rec thing (I have that 'focus' already with the F50 contour mode...).. instead set the Tone to 10 oclock, level on 12, distortion on 3, put it into the front of a clean marshall channel, put that neck pickup on and play 'Starry Night' by Satch. It has more of an overdrive transparency than grind making it a bad pedal for kids playing metallica but something that enables you to Satch out for about half of his songs.

Boss SD1 - super overdrive (old, rare Japanese made). Got this on a deal when I read that Zakk used it to punch up the usual Marshall gain. I have had it since I got my JCM 900 2100 lead head in 1994. I use it as a whole other layer on top of the clean, gain and contour channels on the F50 and TSL60. It changes tonal dynamics enough in the midrange that it feels like I just added a whole other set of channels to whatever amp Im playing. really.

TC Electronics G Major multi effects - I never owned TCE stuff but I think I always wanted to as everyone in rock seemed to use this stuff. It's effects are all very cool and its true - you CAN use this in an effects loop and retain almost 100% of your amps integrity! Praise be! I thought the features to be initially lacking until I discovered the settings knobs actually have 2 tiers - oops. This thing can adjust the reverb to have predelay and the noise gate to be soft / hard and the tuner to be coarse (live shows) or fine (tuning precisely).

Furman power conditioner - finally broke down and bought one of these for about the price of a decent dinner. Man, times have changed. I dunno if it does much.

Dunlop Power Brick - 18v / 9v wall adapter with 8 outputs and a dozen cables for different types of pedals. Sweet but overpriced at $90... still, I will save that much on batteries and forgetting to unplug my cables probably just this year. Also has a cool circuit breaker functionality for those pedals where the 9v adapter shorts out to the case of the pedal... other solutions probably blow an internal fuse.

That's it - had to get it all synced up. I dont use the POD XT, the Quadraverb 2, a handful of pedals (unfortunately the 95q wah from Collective Soul - it seemed to alter the tone cuz its active bypass) among other things. I dunno what I will sell but I should sell some....