FAVOURITE GEAR
Below is my favourite gear:
Mesa Boogie V-Twin
The Mesa Boogie
V-Twin preamplifier really boogies and produces the long warm tube sustains and
muffy crunch I like. I've tried all kinds of distortion pedals including the
famous Boss Distortion, MXR Distortion, Fuzzy Cat and Tube Screamer. I even had
a Blue Fuzz wah-wah fuzz pedal that I regret trading, but the V-Twin is tops
until I try a Hendrix Fuzz-Face. This pedal is actually made out of chromed
truck bumper material!
Marshall JCM800 2X12 Combo
The Marshall
JCM-800 2x12" combo is a great amplifier that produces versatile sounds.
After playing through cheap transistors, pignoses, stereo amps and highly
modified "reel tape recorders", I always wanted to ring chops through
a tube Marshall. It would be interesting to play a really old Marshall plexi with the
small "Marshall" insignia like Jimi Hendrix's.
Custom 50 Hiwatt
My Custom 50 Hiwatt
with a 4x10 Garnet Bottom
borrowed from a Garnet (Winnipeg) Session Man is a really warm amplifier. I've
had this amplifier for years and purchased one of the last one's made in the
80s. My friend and I used to carry the amplifier on our shoulders all over
Edmonton. These are hard to come by and I gave up the original 4x12 Fane Bottom
for the Garnet a long time ago. Not sure if I should have now, but then, I
almost traded my tube amps away for the exquisitely small and light
transistors...glad I didn't!
Garnet Amplifiers
made in Winnipeg Manitoba
The Hiwatt is made famous by artists such as The Who,
Styx, Loverboy, Heart, The Ramones, Foghat, Nazareth, Queen, Pink Floyd, Iron
Maiden, Supertramp and Oasis to name a few. It is rock solid and is a tremendous
amplifier.
Line 6 Spyder Jam (20081014)
If you are looking for a good learning tool or best amp
for features and weight the Line 6 Spyder Jam is it. This amplifier is lightweight and provides enough
settings and volume for quick gigs. The solid-state chassis does not lose a
tremendous amount of tone for its size. The amplifier is reasonably priced and
is really quite nice with the backing drum tracks and MP3 (or other) music and
microphone inputs. Designers put considerable thought into this modern
amplifier. It has some nifty looping that can provide whole back-up sets with
drums, rhythm guitars, lead guitars, vocals or whatever comes to the
imagination. I have the short-board foot control pedal which can switch between
wah-wah and volume.
Previous Gear
MXR Distortion
This was my second guitar pedal after my Johnson
distortion pedal. It was really the "thing" back then. My brother copied it and
made one from visually looking at it. It still is a really nifty pedal.
Blue Foxx Wah-Pedal
I
once traded an old BF-1 Flanger pedal for this pedal in Vancouver. It was very
nifty in that it actually had blue-fuzz on the pedal. I sold it only because wah-pedals
weren't in fashion at the time--making way for high-tech phasers and flangers.
It also picked up a lot of noise. It was a neat pedal though, and I wish I still
had it.
Boss BF-1
This was my first flanger pedal and was quite neat, but
it's size was really archiac and not nifty compared to the newer Boss stuff at
the time.
Digitech GSP-21
This was a very advanced rack-mounted processor for its
time. It has an elaborate blue flourescent display pedal. I still use this pedal
at times because it's digital delays are really great and make a super sounding Octavia sound.
Pearl OD-5 Overdrive
This was a very nice pedal that I sold to someone in
Finland. I sold it to him as an "Overdrive" pedal but he thought it was a
"Distortion" pedal. I once had it hot-glued to a wooden board with my other
pedals.
Roland AG-5 Funny Cat
I bought this pedal at a flea market in East Vancouver.
It made very unique sounds and I still like it's stainless steel case and simple
design. It didn't have an AC adaptor input, so I mounted one. The schematics to
build one can be found on a website.
Boss BF-2 Flanger
This purple pedal was sought after by myself for a long
time after I saw a band using it for Van-Halen sounds. It still is a great
pedal, though a bit noisy compared to newer ones.
Boss TW-1 Touch-Wah
This
pedal was really neat and actually could be used to make some really nifty
sounds. At the time I found it's design was quite appealing with its toggle
switch. However, I didn't really know how to use the pedal to the kind of music
that I was playing, so I sold it to a bass player.
MXR Commande Series
I bought the flanger, chorus and sustain pedal from a
studio guitarist in Edmonton. I liked the design, but never really liked the
noise the pedals picked up. The buttons were also very hard to push compared to
the older metal box designs. As found on:
"The MXR Commande series was sold
1981-1983, they featured plastic housings and electronic switching (as opposed
to the stomp-switches used in the earlier pedals). The stereo flanger from this
series does not offer very extreme sounds, but is very useful for beautifully
flavouring the sound. The circuit is based on rare Reticon SAD chips. There are
quite big differences between different units of this series, as can be seen
from the circuit board image of the two different units."
