Guitarism WILL RETURN.

Hey folks!

I've been very lazy with my gear blogging recently after getting very busy at work over christmas and spending a lot of time sorting out my new band! Now that the dust is beginning to settle I'm feeling the inspiration to spout endless nonsense about gear again!

All being well I'll be writing about once a week and if there is anything you want to see me write about then why not drop an email at typwrtr@hotmail.co.uk and I'll add it to my list!

Now then, down to business... Over the last few weeks I've been aquiring a few pedals in an effort to get my new rig ready for my bands impending debut performance on the 4th of April, yesterday I aquired a T-Rex Tone Trunk 55 Pedal Board which is a handy slatted metal rack which sits in a well padded gig bag. The board itself is angled and as well as having lots of room for your pedals has plenty of space to route your patch and power cabling thus creating a much easier board to chop, change and maintain!
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If any of you have seen the Pedal Train boards it's essentially exactly the same thing, perhaps exactly the same thing but beige. I don't have a problem with beige, honest.

Clicking on the picture at the top of this post should expand my pedalboard for all of you to see its gloriusness. In signal order we are running into an Ernie Ball Wah followed by an Artec Pedal Tuner (it's awful, I have a korg pitchblack on order...) into the Morpheus Droptune for pitch dropping octave fun and then to the T-Rex Dr. Swamp 2 channel distortion which I now leave on 90% of the time and use the volume knob on my guitar for different levels of gain.

After this we hit the swirlyness of my trusty, battle worn Electro Harmonix Small Stone Phaser (I've tried more expensive phasers, much more expensive and this is still my favourite) which then runs into the MXR Carbon Copy before arriving at the newest pedal in my collection and despite it's tiny size possibly the one I paid the most for the FANTABULOUS Malekko Chicklet Reverb MORE OF WHICH can be found out in my next blog.

Until then blog fans, questions, comments, heresies all welcome.

Matt

Review: Ernie Ball Wah

Just before my birthday this year I decided to treat myself, I also decided that I couldn’t possibly call my serious guitar player unless I owned a wah pedal. Now as you may have read before choosing pedals isn’t an easy business for me because I am, in short, a complete snob. This means that I have to wade through heaps and heaps of boutique models before I finally settle on the pedal I think I want, right?

Well not this time, choosing the Ernie Ball was easy because it’s far and away the best wah pedal I have ever heard. The other models I looked at were things such as the EVH wah, the Buddy Guy Crybaby, the Crybaby 535Q and the Fulltone Clyde Wah but these all had funny controls and extra knobs that meant I had more chance of ruining my sound through over tweaking. The Ernie Ball Wah is simple, it works using the same mechanism as their great volume pedals which of course means that it also has the same great sweep and glide action as the volume pedals. It also has two great big green LED’s on the side so you know when it’s on, this is handy for the player who like me enjoys to knock back a beer or three before hitting the stage and sometimes turns the wrong pedal on altogether.

Sonically the EBW (as it shall henceforth be known) instantly hits the sweet spot that you could send years searching for tweaking your deluxe Clyde wah only to loose when you sneeze whilst turning a knob. Through a clean amp it adds character and definition to your sound whilst retaining the intrinsic qualities that made your tone sound great to begin with. Give it a little overdrive and it sings without ever becoming too harsh on the top end or muddy in the mid to low range.

There’s little more I can say about this pedal other than get out there and try one, even better compare it to a standard crybaby (come in my shop I’ll happily set it up for you to try!) and hear the massive difference in the quality of sound. Yes they might be pricy but you only need one wah and it needs to be this one.