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HI Zorro,
The blue and green beasties behind my boy are garden variety ukuleles, available at nearly any music shop. Ukes can be strung left or right handed.🙂
I was tempted to get him a left handed electric mandolin. But those things, despite their size, are pretty expensive. The guitar he’s got in his lap was less than 100 euros, and it’s 3/4 size. Still too big for him, but he’ll grow into it.
Daniel
Thanks Rich!
I think the Vox amps of the same variety have the tube preamp stage. And this is really what you want for tone.
Or you could buy one of the Mesa/Boogie V twin pre-amp foot pedals (12AX7’s I think) and put it between the guitar and the amp.
My SlideRig is solid state, but it’s designed to to emulate the UA Audio 1176 compressor/preamps that Lowell George used for his slide playing. So tone for days.
I’m going with solid state for weight. Can’t fathom hauling around a tube amp (head & cab or combo). I need a quick set-up and take down with two trips to the car, no more.
🙂
D
OK so I grabbed a Marshall MG30CFX off Reverb for a reasonable amount of euros. I based my decision largely on my experience with the older, more analog, GR15CD. I’ve spent about 6 hours with the new amp and put several different instruments through it. Here are my thoughts.
2.5 out of 5 stars/picks
Instruments:
– Squier Telecaster (stacked humbucker in the neck pocket)
– JBovier EMC-5 solid body 5 string emando
-Arrow G5 5 string hollow body emando made by Paul Lestock with a Kent Armstrong pickupEffects:
– Origin Effects Slide Rig (dual preamp/compressor)Desc.:
The amp has 4 channels. Each channel has a gain stage and a volume stage separate from the Master volume
There’s on board reverb plus 5 other effects chorus, phase, flange, delay, and octave.
Two 3.5mm jacks: one for audio in, one for headphone out (emulated amp signal).
One footswitch jack
One input jack
Button: channel switch between clean and crunch
Button: channel switch between OD1 and OD2
Button: tap tempo for delay/switch between preset mode and live settings mode
Button: Store (save setting to preset mode)
Knobs: Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Reverb, Volume (relative to gain), effects, Master volumeOn the surface this looks brilliant. But as it happens, unless you’re a fairly simple minded metal head you’ve got work to do to get decent tone, and you’ll need to add some signal enhancement to get good tone.
The clean channel is very good. It’s certainly very clean. You can almost get a bit of overdrive if you crank both the gain and the channel volume ALL THE WAY UP. I suspect we’re overdriving the power amp here rather than the pre-amp because turning down the Master volume kills the growl.
Upside: Loads of headroom for signal path effects.
Downside: no subtle dirt ala Ry CooderThe Crunch channel is crunchy. Hard to clean it up, looking for that ‘just ever so slightly overdriven’ sound if pushed. Gain all the way down to one little tiny notch this side of too low, Channel volume all the way up. Serviceable in a pinch.
Do the same for OD1 and you get good overdrive without being stupid.
Forget OD2 entirely. Not worth your time unless you’re in Sepultura.
There are actually two types of reverb to choose from. And here Marshall did something well. You can use spring reverb or plate reverb. My current favourite is just a touch of plate.
The effects are meh. If you’re a beginner, they’ll give you a good idea of what they are and how they sound. But the quality lacks a bit. For example, the octave has a bit of latency and the chorus is not subtle enough. Pedals are better. But I did not buy this amp for the effects.
Being able to store your channel settings is really handy. It makes the amp useful to me. I can set the gain controls where they need to be in clean and crunch, and then switch back and forth as I wish. No need to fiddle the knobs to find that one spot on the gain knob where it engages, but not too much.
My beef is that this amp’s channels are too predefined. There’s little room for finding your own tone. The GR15CD is a superior amp in this respect. You can dial in as much or as little overdrive as you like, though you’ll never get into the metal zone.
Fortunately for me, I have a Slide Rig. (It cost more than the amp!) So I can use the Clean channel to get a bit dirty and the Crunch channel for proper distortion.
The 3.5mm jacks are a bit touchy. You gotta wiggle them to get them to connect properly. So using the headphone out as a line out is not really an option.
To make it more useful as a gigging amp, I’ll have to have a line out installed. (To hell with the headphone jack. Vox make an AC30 headphone specific amplifier that destroys this Marshall. I own one, and I’ll keep using it.)
Daniel (still looking really)
Ahh! Good ol’ Water Displacement 40!
Has anyone else ever read Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut? WD40 always reminds me of Ice-Nine, and freaks me out a bit. 🙂
Daniel
I love my Elliott capo. I’ve had it for umm… 15 years.
Things is, I don’t store it behind the nut. I could do it on my mahogany dread, but I really don’t like to hang anything on the guitar. (I take the tuner off after tuning too!)
Sorry if that doesn’t help. 🙂
Daniel
Matt Hayden is more than welcome to take along all the amps he’s currently storing for me. 🙂
They’re small but make nice sounds.
🙂
Daniel
Just back from the UK.
Got hung up in Calais in the middle of a petrol price protest (say that 3 times fast), which delayed my arrival by 90 mins. Got home after 3am. And now I have a heavy cold too.
But! But! Buut! I got 2 songs in the can and a 3rd mostly finished. The aforementioned White Flower Waltz, and a cool version of and Irish traditional called The Parting Glass. A third song, another trad -this one American- called The Vacant Chair, got started on Sunday evening.
Instrumentation for the WFW is Arrow G5, JBovier EMC5, Telecaster, SCGC Dreadnought, harmonium, and Dulcetone.
Instrumentation for The Parting Glass is Harmonium, Telecaster with tremolo, and Marxophone along with the vocal by me.
Instrumentation for The Vacant Chair: Big ol’ strummy SCGC dread rhythm track, with bass, harmonium , and a vocal track. There’ll be a mandolin track and 1 or 2 more vocal tracks.
Hugs,
Daniel
zorro,
Premier Guitar does a video series posted on YouTube of gig rigs. Every touring guitar and bass player they can find from Alex Lifeson to Ben Fogerty (John’s son on tour with him). The info is endless and the variety of solutions to sound and logistical issues is endless. Cool guitars too like Eric Johnson’s signature Fender Thinline Strat!
I am not a gear head, but I like looking at how gear heads manage their sound. It gives me ideas for managing mine with as little fuss and as little gear as possible.
🙂
Daniel
