New toys

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bclaire
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New toys

Post by bclaire » Tue Nov 17, 2020 11:36 am

Anyone have anything new?

Just bought this MIJ Fender Strat, lefty strung righty, from Elderly Instrument's As-Is page. New tuners, pickguard and pickups, and electronics. Dressed the frets and it plays/sounds great! It's more of a cream white than the picture shows - hard to get that color right on my phone.

Also got a Terror Stamp pedal that I've been playing around with - very cool!

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Jondog
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Re: New toys

Post by Jondog » Tue Nov 17, 2020 7:50 pm

Nice looking strat! Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, or its the angle of the photo, but the body looks a little offset and I like it!

I’m waiting for this to arrive, it’s been a long time sInce I’ve owned a Fender amp and this looked like the type of Fender I want to own. Princeton Reverb re-issue Bordeuax Reserve with a 12” Jensen P12Q alnico. I was very close to going for a Tremlord, but I saw this and hit buy now.
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bclaire
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Re: New toys

Post by bclaire » Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:05 pm

Man, I've been thinking about a Princeton Reverb, too!

Jondog
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Re: New toys

Post by Jondog » Thu Nov 19, 2020 6:56 am

bclaire wrote:
Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:05 pm
Man, I've been thinking about a Princeton Reverb, too!
Arrived tonight! Wow is it ever a good looking and most importantly great sounding amp! The guy I bought it from really took care of it and packaged it up really well (it was basically sent coast to coast across Canada). I was a bit unsure what to expect as I never tried that speaker and last time I played some new Deluxe Reverbs I wasn’t blown away, I think they had greenbacks? But this thing is crystal clear, chimey, deep, and rich. My strat sounds like I’ve never heard it. Funny that it’s making me play different too, very bluesy and expressive. Haven’t been able to really push it yet, but I feel this is a keeper!
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Boy_Narf
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Re: New toys

Post by Boy_Narf » Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:37 pm

Princeton ohh! I was 100% set on buying one of those a few years back but something about it just didn't vibe with me. I decided to try out the Pro Jr that was sitting next to it and was blown away. Still shocked how good that amp sounds every time I plug in.

New stuff? hmm, sold my TT combo and am going to take the plunge on a Barefaced Upsetter 110 (if he ever gets back to me on ordering a 16ohm driver hah). Seemed weird to have my glorious Korean TT head in storage and a beat-up TT combo in the jam room. One had to go, and I will never part with that original lunchbox :)

My Canadian built SG got a good workover as well. Finish/dent repairs on the neck, new pickup, new pot, absolutely love this thing now. Oh and of course ditched the tone pot cause you know me :)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8qUfj6EizmghHR9x6

groundmeat
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Re: New toys

Post by groundmeat » Mon Nov 30, 2020 10:29 am

I think I've mentioned it before on here somewhere, but I used to be a rack amp player and had rack multi-effects for pretty much everything except wah. I sold the preamp and power amp portions of my rack rig (kept the FX unit) in favor of an amp+pedals setup. Built up quite a pile of pedals over this last year.

Some that I'd recommend or think are worth mentioning...

1. Digitech Ventura Vibe - Discontinued now, I believe. This thing is AWESOME. You need one. Check out the ProGuitarShops demo video of it on youtube. It does great a rotating speaker sim with a "Drive" control that mimics that Wurlitzer organ kinda thing really well. Also does a wacky vibrato... not a very attractive or usable effect in my opinion, but others like it. And the univibe sound it does is "decent". My old Fulltone DejaVibe is a little better, I think.

2. Catalinbread Talisman plate reverb - There isn't a better compact plate reverb pedal than this thing, period. It's expensive, cost me about 220 bucks new, but the sound quality is second to none. I'm a big fan of 70's rock, so a plate reverb is mandatory for me.

3. MXR Custom Shop Phase 90 script logo reissue - Sounds virtually identical to the old 70's boxes. I like a phaser with more options, but this thing is pretty good just with the 1 knob. I use it often along with a DejaVibe and Deluxe Electric Mistress to add another warpy layer. It's a bit busy for rhythm work, but it makes single note lead parts come alive and dance around. And by itself with single coils, it's basically THE Waylon Jennings sound, lol.

4. MXR Noise Gate & Line Driver - It's an old late 70's or early 80s 1-knob noise gate pedal, which is essential if you're playing through a high gain amp like a mk3 Rockerverb 100. I figured since I was stringing 9-zillion pedals together, I should probably get a line driver, so this handles BOTH jobs. Does the job pretty well, I'm happy with it. 100 bucks used for a vintage MXR pedal. What's not to like?

Finally got hip to this phenomenon known as the Rangemaster. Apparently it's how almost everyone worth mentioning back in the 70's got their sounds. Apparently it's how Iommi invented heavy metal, it's how Duane Allman made his Marshalls scream, etc etc. Looked online at a few pedals like the Catalinbread Naga Viper, the Analogman Beano boost, and the Daredevil Silver Solo. Ended up settling on a Greer Amps Moonshot. Ordered it about 2 weeks ago now from a Guitar Center near Los Angeles, should be here sometime this week. I live in Georgia, just a stones throw from Athens where Greer Amps is located. I've been somewhat of a doubter of boost pedals. My philosophy was kinda like, "If you need a boost, you need a better amp." Trying to open my mind and realize the possibilities. So hopefully this pedal isn't a let down. We shall see.

groundmeat
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Re: New toys

Post by groundmeat » Wed Dec 02, 2020 12:51 am

groundmeat wrote:
Mon Nov 30, 2020 10:29 am
Finally got hip to this phenomenon known as the Rangemaster. ... Ended up settling on a Greer Amps Moonshot. ... I've been somewhat of a doubter of boost pedals. My philosophy was kinda like, "If you need a boost, you need a better amp." Trying to open my mind and realize the possibilities. So hopefully this pedal isn't a let down. We shall see.
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Hmm, okay, okay, I think I'm on board with the boost religion now. Because I don't know how I'd ever go back to life without one now, hehe.

I will say one thing, it's lucky that I have a noise gate now. Without it, I would not like this Greer Moonshot pedal. I guess these Oranges in high gain tend to have a good bit of background hiss, and boosting or using a compressor (which almost does the same kinda signal boosting thing to an extent) just boosts the volume of that noise along with your tone. Without a noise gate, that background noise is un-ignorable and ruins your sound. I've read peoples reviews of different noise gates and some people claim that certain ones have pretty bad "tone suck". This old 70's/80's MXR Noise Gate Line Driver is completely transparent as far as I can tell. It was kinda surprising, I was expecting an old pedal like this to have that type of flaw to it, but nope, it's great.

Not sure if it's a defect in this particular pedal, but I notice a strange high pitched square-wave overtone when using this thing on the clean channel, which is what I've heard you're really not supposed to do with a Rangemaster anyway, but... I dunno, maybe I'll email Greer and ask if that's normal.

On the dirty channel, it's great. Max out the VOL knob and turn the TREBLE/MID knob all the way to the left for the treble end of the range, and that's pretty much the Rangemaster sound I guess. Was getting some spot on early Iron Maiden and Judas Priest sounds. And it seems like the peculiar "Orange sound" is a bit softer textured with less treble than a Marshall. And to my ear, this thing adds just the perfect amount of treble and brightness to the amp. Speaking of the Rockerverb 100 mk3 only. I've tried other smaller Oranges that had brasher treble to them, so I dunno that a Rangemaster style pedal would be a good idea with those.

The TREBLE/MID knob doesn't VASTLY effect the tone. The max end of the treble is not screeching, and neither is the max end of the mid side. Some people might complain about that with this pedal, and I'm kinda tempted to... but then again, it does seem to replicate that authentic Rangemaster sound good enough, and that's what I was looking for, so that's good enough for me.

And I dunno if I'm mistaken about this, but for some reason I was under the impression that Greer pedals were hand-wired. They might be hand built, and the connecting wires might be soldered by hand, but they feature a typical circuit board. Wasn't able to find a picture of the internals of one of these, so I tried to take a few shots. Sorry if they aren't so great, this camera is pretty old and tricky to get good clear closeup shots with. But as you can see, the wires are bent around the sides of the chasis in ways that lets you have access to the board, and probably uses more wire than is absolutely necessary in doing so, which maybe isn't penny pinching and cost effective. But it tells me that the person putting these things together is meticulous and takes pride in the appearance of their work and cares about what they are doing.

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"Bluto is a flyer". I dunno what that's about. I googled it and all I could find was a special edition Popeye PF Flyer shoe with Bluto printed into the sole.

Jondog
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Re: New toys

Post by Jondog » Wed Dec 02, 2020 11:50 pm

Boy_Narf wrote:
Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:37 pm
Princeton ohh! I was 100% set on buying one of those a few years back but something about it just didn't vibe with me. I decided to try out the Pro Jr that was sitting next to it and was blown away. Still shocked how good that amp sounds every time I plug in.

New stuff? hmm, sold my TT combo and am going to take the plunge on a Barefaced Upsetter 110 (if he ever gets back to me on ordering a 16ohm driver hah). Seemed weird to have my glorious Korean TT head in storage and a beat-up TT combo in the jam room. One had to go, and I will never part with that original lunchbox :)

My Canadian built SG got a good workover as well. Finish/dent repairs on the neck, new pickup, new pot, absolutely love this thing now. Oh and of course ditched the tone pot cause you know me :)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8qUfj6EizmghHR9x6
I was looking at the Pro Jr’s and thought they sounded great, was close to grabbing one. I was checking out the Princeton and was just a little unsure about the 10” speaker, but when this one popped up with the 12” Jensen I just went for it. It sounds amazing. As for the Treble boost, I recently bought a Small Bear Oh My Darlington rangemaster, but so far not impressed. I think theres something not right with it because it more just colors the tone rather than boost into overdrive like the demos I’ve watched. It was a diy kit and I’m fairly good at building circuits, this had a crap molex connector broke and I had to strip and solder 8 wires, so maybe an issue there. Put it on the shelf anyways, don’t know when I’ll get back to it.
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Boy_Narf
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Re: New toys

Post by Boy_Narf » Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:16 pm

I was quite surprised by the 10 in the Pro Jr as it sounds much bigger than it should. Guitar player used it last jam instead of his usual Blues Jr and was pretty surprised how it sounded with an OCD in front (Trying to convince him not to bring his amp every jam).

The Princeton to me seemed scooped and lacking presence. I was hoping to try out the Jensen model but they didn't have it in stock.

I did end up pulling the Trigger on a Barefaced Upsetter 110 with a G10 Vintage. Should be here in 2 weeks or so. Really hoping this does the trick with my TT as I'm sick of hunting for cabs. Pretty pumped for the AVD port and I'll be shooting a video comparing it to my larger cab to see how it does with volume and dispersion. Not to mention it's only 13lbs (with the driver).

I am still slowly freeing myself of gear. Ended up selling another few guitars off the wall and both the PPC212 and PPC412 are long gone as well as an old PA I've been dragging around since I was a teen.

Oh I also forgot, I picked up one of the new Traynor YBA100 heads. Absolutely fantastic! If you are Canadian definitely worth renting one to check it out. 100 watt all tube, 22lbs, parametric mid control, AFFORDABLE PRICE TAG...

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