PRS Santana SE review

Why did I buy it?

I was doing quite a bit of gigging and needed a back-up guitar. I had my American strat with single coils as my main guitar so figured it would make a nice change to get something with humbucker pickups. I was saving for a Gibson Les Paul studio however on the day I went to the guitar shop they had (for the first time in a year!) sold out. I was really disappointed because I had been looking forward to my new guitar so decided to just try out everything else they had in the shop with humbuckers in my price range. I picked up the PRS Santana SE and wow! I probably played it for well over an hour before deciding I liked it much better than the Les Paul. Looking back I have always prefered thinner necks and lighter guitars and this does feel a bit like a strat so maybe that’s why I liked it so much. Mind you the sound was awesome and this was a real shredders guitar (I think I always strung it with 9s but replaced high E with 10s when I broke them). This guitar was from the first batch of the second wave of PRS SE’s about the same time they had to pull the Tremonti after Gibson tried to sue them, so probably around 2002.

 

How does it sound?

As mentioned above this became my shredding guitar that I used for everything that was straight ahead high tempo rock. I used to quite enjoy rocking Bach’s Toccata and Fugue and also taking on our violinist on speed contest’s with the sailors hornpipe so you sort of get the picture! My only complaint was with the neck pickup which I found really muddy so replaced it with a DiMarzio PAF pro which made quite a difference. I think I only ever played the guitar through the Mesa V-Twin on either the blues or the solo setting.

Sell or Keep?

Well I sold it in the end however only because I had pretty much given up gigging and didn’t have room for my six or seven guitars at the time so was cutting back to one of each type. I figured it was cheap enough that I could buy a new one if I really missed it, or more likely get a (proper) PRS if I started playing more often.

Little monkey!

So there I was happily lost in the world of electric blues when all of a sudden crackle buzz… seems I need to educate my son in his music appreciation and especially not to pull interesting looking cables coming out of daddy’s guitar (or then again perhaps he is trying to educate me in babysitting?).

Mesa Boogie review, V-Twin

Why did I buy it?

I wasn’t happy with the amount or quality of drive I could get from my Laney VC30. I jammed with a guy who had a Mesa amp and liked the sound so much I got a V-twin from ebay. I would love to buy a proper Mesa such as the Lonestar, however with limited finances and certainly limited levels (ie in the bedroom) the V-twin is just as good.

How does it sound?

It has three channels – clean, blues and drive – however only two are accessible via the foot switch. Also it only has one set of controls (including gain) for all the channels so you are sort of stuck to compromising with the settings. I have it configured so that one footswitch turns the pedal on and off whilst the second switches between the blues and drive channel. I essentially set up a great crunchy rhythm tone on the blues channel and then use the drive channel as my solo boost because it is much louder and dirtyier despite all the settings remaining the same. This has worked really well for me, so much so that I tend not to use the drive channel on any of my amps in favour of this going into the amps clean channel. The mesa overdrive sound powered by the 2x12AX7 valves really needs to be heard to be believed. The only negative on the sound front is that some say this can be used a a recording pre-amp however every time I try to record I get so much noise (especially on the solo setting) that I have never kept a track recorded through this pedal.

Sell or keep?

Definately a keep because this IS the drive sound for me. Of course if I could get myself a Mesa amp this pedal would probably become extra to requirements, however at the moment it forms the heart of my sound.

The perfect guitar tone

I have to admit to really quite enjoying the technical side of electric guitar – browsing around music shops and websites, trying out new amps, playing around on a computer or with the lastest amp modeller. However I have long since given up looking for that perfect tone for a number of reasons:

1. Tone is in the fingers. I was once in a band with one of the best lead guitarists I have ever had the fortune of playing with. What was most remarkable about him was that he didn’t really care about what kit he used so long as he could hear himself and had middle to lots of drive. He always sounded great no matter what he played through. Even going through a crappy boss SD-1 straight into a mixing desk he sounded better than I did through my valve amp. The only thing he was fussy about was his guitar that had to “feel right” which normally ment a US Fender, Tele or an Ibanez. After touring with him for a year or so I realised that there is quite a gulf between the great musicians and those of us who play for a hobby.

2. Tastes change. Although I have a long-term preference towards bluesy overdrive rather than straight distortion, I have noticed my tastes changing over time. What sounded great a couple years back doesn’t quite cut it for me anymore. I am also suspicious that I quite often blame my sound rather than my ability, and sometimes when things don’t seem to be rocking I’d rather change my amp than practice more!

3. Every room is different. Can’t add too much more apart from carpets really help!

4. Volume matters. A bit of a difficult one for those of us who are now bedroom guitarists, but there is something called “psycho-acoustics” which is to do with how our ear hears sound and transmits it to the brain. Since we have evolved to hear voices and communicate we are naturally sensitive to middle frequencies at low volumes, however as volume increases our auditory system starts to flatten out so that we hear all frequencies at similar levels. This is why people often scoop out the mids on their stereo systems but why anyone involved in PA looks scornful when the same is suggested. Basically our EQ on our ears flattens out around 60dB which is actually quite loud. So it is perfectly true that my guitar “sounds better when I turn myself up”.

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In conclusion, if you can’t get a great tone out of middle of the range guitar (eg US Fender strat) and a middle of the range valve amp (eg Fender blues junior) you probably need to practice more. Yes of course effects are cool, but great players don’t need to hide behind them.

Fender blues junior review

Why did I buy it?

I got a bit fed up with my Laney VC30-210 because of how sparkly the sound was so decided to get a fairly small single channel amp that would give me a great bluesy tone.

How does it sound?

Using an A-B box I ran my pedal board set up through the Laney and then with a single stamp could switch the guitar straight into this with everything (except master volume) on ten and the fat switch on. It worked perfectly for a beautiful bluesy lead tone with both a strat (after I changed the pickups to the higher output texas specials) and also with a PRS Santana SE (this one with hotter DiMarzio’s installed). After I got rid of my Laney I found the pedal board worked fine going into a reduced gain set-up on this amp (and no fat switch) although needed to mic the amp and come through the foldback to get guitar levels appropriate in louder gigs without the natural overdrive kicking in(which worked quite well for getting an impression of how I sounded embedded in the mix).

Sell or keep?

So far it is keep. As a nice small amp it sits in my study and works great for noodling after a couple whisky’s, again everything turned to ten except master volume which is as low as it can go (for the wife). One day I will probably replace it with something of better quality (currently my eye is on a Mesa Lonestar) however for the bedroom guitarist with a blues bias who only gigs occasionally this amp is pretty perfect.

Marshall review DBS7400

Why did I buy it?

I didn’t have a bass amp and a friend was selling this rather battered amp and cab for a bargain!

How does it sound?

All the pots were really crackly however by using the EQ, the impressively good built-in compressor and balancing between the solid-state and valve (emulation) settings I got a pretty good bass tone, helped of course by the rather large enclosure. I use a music-man fretless bass and occasionally a “big muff” fuzz pedal which is quite a lot of fun (really good for benfold five type sounds). I also used it quite a lot with a Roland TD6k electronic drum kit which worked perfectly (and since it was old I didn’t worry too much about speaker damage!). A couple times I used the cab as an extension speaker for my Laney (reviewed below) to try and beef up the Laney’s sound, however this didn’t work ever so well.

Keep or sell?

I sold this in the end only because I wasn’t doing a lot of gigging and it was a huge amp. Mind you I know the guy I sold it to so do borrow it back occasionally but only to use with the electronic drum kit as I have since bought a couple of other much smaller bass amps. You can’t get them any more which is a shame because I found this a really tough and reliable work horse that you didn’t need to be too precious about and which sounded pretty good as well.

Laney review VC30-210

Why did I buy it?

I was after my first class A tube amp and had read some great reviews about this one in Guitarist magazine. I tried out a couple in the shop and really liked the sound of the VC over the LC. I couldn’t quite afford the more expensive Marshall TSL60 that I quite liked at the time, so went for this one. Cost definitely factored in my choice and this was at the top of my budget (around 400 GBP in C1999).

How does it sound?

Wonderful clean and great driven rhythm tone but not much else (although arguably this is all you need from a tube amp)! I very much found this to be a two trick pony in that once I found these two sounds I didn’t really find anything else in there for the rest of the time I owned it. I used it mostly with a strat and a tele and with a number of effects units. For a while I used just the power amp section (coming in through the effects return) with my Line6 POD but was never really happy with the live sound.

Keep or sell?

I sold the amp after about six years for a couple reasons. Firstly I found it extremely directional – when I stood in front of it tilted towards me it sounded great but I only had to step a foot to the side and the sound was quite different. This caused problems when jamming with small to no PA’s as I couldn’t move around at all and the others seldom heard the nuances that I was trying to create. It also tended to kill one or two people in the audience whilst everyone else said they couldn’t hear it properly! Secondly after a couple years I started wanting a slightly fuller driven tone, and found this amp to be a bit too sparkly. The EQ didn’t help much as the amp seemed to do sparkle or mud bud not a lot in between. Finally I kept breaking the spring reverb and after the third or so time I had it fixed I thought this was just one more excuse to trade it in for something that might be a bit more robust.

Guitar rig around 2005

Very sad actually having the time to put together a picture like this however I did it a couple years back again whilst revising for an exam!

My bedroom a few years back

My bedroom as a student a few years back. I’ve got rid of various things in this picture since then (I think around 2003ish). I’ll try and post some reviews of everything in due course. The obvious missing thing is my Marshall 4×12 and Laney 2×10 amps which I didn’t use in my student house. Instead I plugged the pedal board into the mixing desk and mostly used headphones or very occassionally my stereo if I wanted to show someone my latest lick!

Revision boredom

So I’m sitting at home revising and after doing all the cleaning, washing, shopping and playing my fingers to shreds on the guitar I decided to start watching youtube videos of people’s guitar rigs. I then realised that in the lase twenty or so years I have owned a lot of kit myself, so decided to start a blog to review it all.