My Guitar Gear
Category: Music

Over the years I have owned many different guitars, lots of different amps and way more effects pedals than I really want to think about.  While I have probably spent way too much of my hard earned money buying and selling gear, I do believe that I have finally landed with a set up that reproduces the sounds that I hear in my head.  Once you get to that point, it is very rewarding as a musician.

Somewhat recent Amp/Pedalboard pic:


PRS 2007 Singlecut Trem 10 top



Warmoth Strat:



Details:

My main guitar is a 2007 Paul Reed Smith Singlecut Trem (10 top with birds).  Everything is completely stock.  This guitar blows my mind.  The humbuckers can be split into single coils by pulling up on the tone knob.  With this option you can achieve 6 very distinct different tones.  Anything from Les Paul type grind to strat-like chime is possible.  It is very lightweight and resonant for a guitar its size. 

I also use a custom made (with Warmoth parts by me) Gold sparkle Strat style guitar with DiMarzio Virtual Vintage noiseless pickups (Area 58 in neck and middle, Area 61 in bridge) and a floating Wilkinson bridge. 

The guitar goes straight into my pedalboard which consists of several pedals which are all true bypass (except the Nova Delay) and are all powered via a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 (except for the wah because wah's just sound better powered by battery!).  Everything is wired with George L. solderless cable. 

The pedal order is:

(differs slightly from the picture)
Fulltone Clyde Wah
FoxRox Octron
FoxRox Aqua Vibe (coming soon!)
Boss FV500h Volume Pedal
Peterson Strobostomp Tuner (via Tuner out on Boss volume pedal)
FoxRox ZIM (with Boost/Buffer and Clean Smile card)
FoxRox ZIM (with Vintage Tube and H9 card)
Fulltone Fat Boost v1
TC Electronics Nova Delay
Fulltone Supa Trem tremolo (not pictured)
Barber Launch Pad buffer/splitter

This goes into my Dr. Z Z28 head which I run into a 2x12 Avatar cab (not pictured) with a Weber 12a125 and a Celestion Vintage 30 running at 4 Ohms.

I have been using Dr. Z amps almost exclusively for years now.  I have owned two different Carmen Ghia's, a MAZ 18 NR head and a Route 66 head.  While they are all amazing amps, and because of the fact that I limit myself to owning only one amp (because Lord knows I could get way out of control in that area of my life!), I finally ended up with the Z28.  It is an "American" voiced, 6V6 powered 22 watt head with no effects loop, reverb or even a real tone stack to speak of.  It does have a treble and bass knob that add gain in their different spectrums and dramatically altar the sound of the amp in a very cool, non traditional sort of way.  It also has an EF86 pre amp tube (commonly used in vintage Vox amplifiers) that makes for a very pedal friendly amplifier.  You simply cannot hit the front end too hard! 

There is really nothing to compare this amp to soundwise.  Simply put, it sounds like a Dr. Z Z28.  It has the perfect balance and chime, mid-range howl and tight bottom end that really works well with the voices of my guitars and my style of playing.  There is something haunting about the mid-range of this amp that gives me chills at times.  It is a very beautiful and organic sounding amp.  It sounds especially good with my 2x12 Avatar cabinet.  Just crank it and go!

While I have owned and really like some other amp brands (Marshall, Mesa Boogie, Fender, Carr, Bad Cat, Top Hat) I always end up drawn to the Dr. Z line.  I think a lot of it has to do with the simplicity of his amps.  That simplicity comes through not only in operation but in tone as well.  There is little in the circuit of a Dr. Z amp other than tubes and, well, tone.  Plus, if an amp has more than three knobs I start getting all caught up in "tweaking" and not "playing".  In a way, Dr. Z amps are a bit liberating for me. Plus, that's what all those pedals are for, aren't they?

You also might have noticed that I am little partial to FoxRox Electronics.  Dave Fox is a pure genius and he makes some of the best sounding and most road worthy effects pedals on the planet.  In addition to the Octron (octave up fuzz, clean octave down) and two ZIMs (dual channel overdrives with exchangeable cards) I am on the waiting list for his Univibe clone (Aqua Vibe) which is supposed to be absolutely amazing.  If you are looking for some seriously good sounding gear that can be ran over by a tank and survive, check him out at www.foxroxelectroincs.com.

I also really enjoy the Nova Delay made by T.C. Electronics.  I have owned many delays (Line 6 DL4, Boss DD20, Ibanez AD9) and for what I do, I don't think I could live without the Nova.  Not only does it sound amazing, but it also offers 9 storable presets.  This is a feature that is priceless when playing live.  More often than not when I play we are using a click track, therefor I know exactly what the tempo is.  During rehearsal I simply dial in my delay sounds and save them as presets (song 1, preset 1, etc.).  This allows me to go from a slap back on one song to an Edge/U2 style rhythmic delay on the next song, then to a trippy ambient volume swell thing on the next, all with the click of a toe!

As I stated earlier, the Nova Delay is not "true bypass".  While this is normally a huge deal to me, I don't mind running through one non-true bypass pedal as long as it sounds good.  The Nova does convert your signal to digital and then back to analog (which is normally not a good thing - it can seriously alter your tone and introduce latency into your signal path) but with the conversion process on the Nova I can hear zero tone loss at all (compared to the DL4 which has some pretty crappy converters in it).  It actually works pretty well as a buffer too.  Every true bypass pedal board should have at least one buffer on it anyway, right?

In addition to what you see here, I also have a Taylor 614 in Sunburst and a Breedlove Quartz mandolin in Sunburst as well.

Thanks for looking.  If you have any questions or simply want to talk gear, don't hesitate to contact me!

9:55 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Movie Review - Elizabethtown
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for language and some sexual references.
Runtime: 123 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color

Medium: DVD
Viewing Location: Home
Other Viewers in Attendance: Julie (my wife)
Reason for Viewing: Friend Recommendation

Review:
Wandering, pointless, snooty, incomplete and pretentious were all words that ran through my mind and occasionally came out of my mouth during this 2 hour long fiasco called "Elizabethtown".  Any momentum that Cameron Crowe had built up in his career took about ten steps backward from the earliest moments of this one.

I don't know exactly what is was about this movie that was so bad.  It could have been Orlando Bloom's extremely unconvincing accent, or possibly the "stalker" like character of Kirsten Dunst, or the fact that Cameron Crowe was trying to cram 5 different movies into one, but whatever it was, this film left me angry.

Why angry?  Because it could have been so good.  Some of the most heart touching moments came during the cross country road trip that Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) made at the request of Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst).  Claire, who was falling quickly in love with Drew, was desperately seeking some way for Drew to properly mourn the death of his father and to somehow awaken from a depression that he had found himself in after a failed shoe design that he created had left the company he worked for in serious finacial peril.  There was the potential for so much "meat" in those scenes.  Instead it was rushed and shallow because there just wasn't any time left.

1 out of 4 stars.  Boo.

3:20 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment