Guitars, Pedals, Amps: Ism!

Thursday 7 May 2009

And the winner is...


So after much deliberation I have finally settled on and purchased a new distortion/overdrive pedal! As you may already know I have been searching for a great sounding dual overdrive pedal for some time and every indicator was pointing towards the ever popular fulltone full drive 2. Despite this the sudden boom in this pedals popularity over here in the UK got me thinking outside the box... "Do I still really want to sound like everyone else?" I said out loud to myself. I mean I was getting rid of a boss overdrive and a Rat so that I could focus on getting MY tone!

The winner was the fantastic T Rex Dr. Swamp... Two independently switchable identical overdrive channels with a great gain range and a fantastic small and rather attractive casing if I do say so myself... What made me settle on this pedal is that you can get a great range of overdrive tones from it. At low settings you can get a really nice treble booster kind of sound but by winding it up to half way you are already in thick overdrive territory. Once you get past the half way mark the signal really starts to break up and you get a really thick and creamy distortion that borders on the edge of a big muff fuzz sound but still retains enough clarity to cut through the mix. The level control is very sensible and stays within usable parameters rather than being far too quiet or too loud, what I really liked it when you wind the volume up all the way instead of being deafeningly loud it pushes the amp harder giving you a natural compression and really thick sustain! The EQ too is very usable and instead of operating in the extremes it works in a very musical frequency range and allows to you easily sweep from dark rhythm sounds through to cut like a knife lead!

I'm using it by setting the first channel with the gain at around 11 o'clock for chord work and the second channel with the volume and tone a little higher and the gain at around 4 o'clock for a boosted lead sound.

Now that its nestled happily on my pedal board it's worth saying that honorable mentions to the new Radial Bones Texas Drive which lost our due to not having separate gain control for each channel, the Visual Sound Jekyll and Hyde which lost out to frankly looking ATROCIOUS (I'm not having tat on my pedal board)... sadly as good as the full drive was it just didn't have the gain range I was looking for!

Anyway next I think I might plump for an Ernie Ball wah as I've been looking for THAT wah sound for ages now and its the sweetest I've ever heard and I need a new tuner pedal cos mines on the blink and I keep hearing good things about the Korg pitchblack... Don't forget it's my birthday soon people!

Oh, and finally via the magic of Youtube here is a video of the Dr. Swamp in action by the lovely people at proguitarshop.com:

Monday 4 May 2009

Tanglewood Love


Now those that know me well know that I'm not often lost for words. In fact I'm not going to deny that the words SHUT UP are often used in my vicinity but I've been away this weekend and haven't put much thought into what to write.

However this weekend I took my relatively new Tanglewood TW60 with me on my journey to my Wife's' parents place partly because I get at a loose end if I don't have a guitar nearby to pick up and play when the mood takes me (as if often does) and partly because I have a solo gig this Saturday that I really should rehearse for...

When it comes down to it I am primarily an electric guitar player. There are things you can do with electrics that you just cannot muster from an acoustic because the acoustic is a different animal, it just needs to be played differently to get the best results from it. As I learnt the hard way you can't just apply electric guitar techniques to an acoustic because it will most probably sound shit.

The good think about my acoustic is that it looks nice, it has a lovely solid spruce top (the flecking in the grain leads me to believe it might be Nepalese spruce...) in a sunburst finish with lovely natural mahogany back and sides. It even has a discrete B-Band AT3 pickup with built in tuner (handy for tone deaf idiots like myself) and I chose to get one without a cutaway as I preferred the sound from a full body. Anyway something about these factors gave me the ability to sway my Wife into letting me keep it on a STAND in our LIVING ROOM so I can pick it up and play it WHENEVER I WANT, except if there is something she wants to watch on the telly.

I pretty much bought this guitar on a whim 6 months ago but with its sound improving the more I play it and it completely opening up my playing style so I can thoroughly enjoy this instrument mean that it has pretty much paid for itself. My heart goes out to you my lovely TW60!