Your guitar rig

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been playing my electric guitar a lot more lately (I’m an acoustic kinda guy, for the most part), and I’m thinking about adding to my really sparse rig.

I have:

–A Fender Strat. Kentucky Blue and white. Made in Japan sometime between 84-86. About as stock and standard as an electric guitar can get, but she looks nice, plays nice, and sounds nice.

–A Crate GS-150 amp. Truth be told, I hate this amp. It’s the kind of amp built for people who are overly impressed by volume. Like most amps, it doesn’t even start to sound good until you turn it up considerably, and at that point you have to be in another room if you want to hear yourself think. I’m trying to figure out what I should be able to sell it for.

The only effects pedal that I have is an old, cheap flanger that I bought off a guy back in high school. I had a DOD distortion pedal, but I don’t know what happened to it.

What I want to add, in decreasing order of likelihood:

–A good tuner. I like the pedal tuner Fender makes; unlike most I’ve seen, it appears to be solidly built.

–Some effects. I had a Crybaby for a few months last year, and I loved it. Aside from that, I’m probably going to go with a digital effects processor; I’m willing to trade the sound quality for versatility at this point. (I like making a lot of different noises.)

–A new amp. Maybe once I have some effects I won’t quite dislike my amp the way I do, but I’d love to trade it up.

–A new guitar. Paul Reed Smith guitars make me drool. I’d settle for a Les Paul or a Rickenbacker, though. :slight_smile:

What’s in your setup? What do you want in it?

Dr. J

2

I’ve done just fine with a well set-up $175 Yamaha Strat copy (Pacifica) straight into a Fender Princeton Reverb. Dome me well through all kinds of professional situations. That’s it. Essentially unchanged rig for 15 years. (Ok, I used to play a $150 Guild M-40 before I got the Yamaha.)

If I needed it louder, I just stuck a mic in front of it and let the sound guy mix it.

Now, I never played with a distorted sound. I was a reggae, jazz/blues, and later country player. I just developed a clean, fingerpicking style that worked well through my gear.

In my humble opinion, most guitar players should be seen and not heard, anyway. I hardly ever hear a guy with an expensive rack of stuff that wouldn’t have done better investing that money in lessons.

Unless you’re doing sessions for a living where you have to deal with the possibility of some producer telling you “I want THIS sound,” a good guitar player just needs his guitar and a simple, clean amplifier.

Chorus sucks, IMO.
Delay MAYBE, for special occasions and chickin pickin’ country music.

Other than that, worry more about your own musicianship than your rig.
Another thing that drives me crazy…guitar players who buy a cheapo guitar, with cheapo electronics, and a cheapo amp, and then try to process the sound with a thousand bucks worth of effects, and wonder why it still sounds like crap?

The effect box ain’t beeen made yet that can turn a crap sound into a good one, or make a bad player sound good.

3

I’ve got a Fender Strat with the woodburst finish and a cheap little practice amp right now. I have a larger Crate at my parents from back in the days when I had a lousy band, but I need to get rid of it. It’s crap anyway.

One of these days I would like to get a small, quality amp. Probably an acoustic amp since I could still plug the electric into it when I felt like it. I don’t really need much volume or anything since I really don’t think I’ll ever be performing in any capacity again.

Effects-wise, I have a Boss distortion pedal and a DOD delay pedal, both probably in the back of the Crate. The DOD sucks pretty bad, but Boss makes good pedals.

I miss my acoustic, an Alvarez-Yairi. Also at the parents. When I move in October I’ll get pick it up. Nothing like a good acoustic guitar.

4

Mmmmm…PRS…
I love PRS and Gibson guitars. When I get famous I’ll have one of each or a pink sparkly GMP guitar :smiley:
Right now I have a red Fender Strat and a black Ibanez RG-7. My Ibanez is my baby :slight_smile: My amp sucks. God, I’d kill for a Marshall
~Kittie

5

Heh. My “rig”, when I actually have access to it, consists of:

Fender Stratocaster. Red & white.

Fender amp. Came with the Strat. Very small.
And I have a nice acoustic.

6

Peavy amp. Bleah. Good for practice. Juice up the reverb, and I almost sound competent.

Same for my DOD chorus pedal. Enough of this thing, and the reverb, and I just sound stoned instead of lousy.

Lil’ Smoky amp, if I want to play on headphones, use distortion, or scare the dogs.

And a '63 Fender Music Man II. Just a student guitar with one pickup, but I love the sound.

An okay acoustic, and an okay classical as well. Now all I need is lessons. And, more importantly, practice.

7

My primary guitar rig is a little tiny Gibson acoustic 3/4 size, my little sister bought it when she took guitar lessons when she was about 8. The 3/4 size fits me perfectly because I have an unnaturally short pinky. I never have been able to identify this model, but it appears to be an early 1960s model.
But my REAL guitar rig is my 1974 Gibson Deluxe, purchased new by me in 74, stolen, repurchased from the pawn shop where it was hocked by the thief, and returned to my posession. Now it’s all scratched up, at least the asshole thief could have stolen it WITH the case!
My practice amp is a Rockman and headphones, but when I can get some place to get loud, I’ll pull out my vintage Fender Champ and wail at a sum total of 5 watts. I used to have a Marshall 50, but due to overwhelming complaints from everybody near it, I sold it.
For effects, I use nothing but my Crybaby pedal, and that only rarely. When I’m in the mood for experimentation (which is rarely) I’ll jigger with the phase shifter and overdrive on my Rockman.

8

Guitar: 1967 Harmony-made Silvertone solid-body, two pickups, whammy bar; all stock except for the tuners, which were replaced with Klusons before I bought it in the eighties. Doesn’t play in tune very far up the neck (one-piece floating rosewood bridge saddle) but then I rarely play very far up the neck – strictly rhythm, and mostly power chords.

As a guitarist, I’m a mediocre bassist. When I started playing again six months or so ago (after seven or eight years without taking my guitar out of the case), I realized that I missed playing bass, so I decided to buy one. I ended up buying one of the Danelectro Rumor basses after picking one up in a music store and being surprised at how well it played; I’d been expecting to try to find a short-scale Fender Mustang or MusicMaster, since I have small hands and limited dexterity. The Dano is a full-scale bass, but I found it quite easy to get around on. The Rumor model has a built-in chorus effect, but I never use it.

Having decided to buy a bass, I couldn’t very well expect to play it through the Danelectro Honeytone mini-amp I’d picked up. I decided that my best bet was to find a decent bass amp and play the guitar through it as well – with a clean amp I figured I could always muddy up the sound with effects later. After a lot of looking around, I settled on the Fender Bassman 25; most of my playing is late at night, when the kids and wife are asleep, playing along with CDs. The Bassman 25 has stereo aux in jacks with volume control for CD input, as well as a headphone jack, effects loop, mute switch with a tuner out jack that’s live with the amp muted, etc. It’s quite loud for a 25 watt amp – I don’t think I’ve had the volume above 3 since I bought it – but not at all harsh. Good tone, etc. I also like the wedge cabinet shape – the back of the amp is shaped like a monitor cabinet, so you can place it tilted up so that when you’re sitting right on top of it as I usually am, the speaker’s aimed at your ears instead of your kneecaps. I couldn’t be happier with it – the Silvertone sounds good through it, the Dano bass sounds great, and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever need any more volume. If it had reverb it’d be a perfect dual-purpose amp for me, but you don’t typically get reverb in a bass amp.

I’ve been thinking of taking the plunge on a Johnson J Station amp modeling processor; even if it’s not perfect, at $149 it’s not much more than buying reverb and distortion boxes.

9

Right now I just have a $20 garage sale acoustic. I think the brand name is Sound-O-Tronic. It sounds fine but the neck is warped so I can’t use any of higher frets. Fine by me. :slight_smile:

10

Fender A.S. Tele and a '74 Martin D28. I run the Tele through a Boss compression/distortion pedal, mostly for added sustain. My amp is a late '70’s Music Man HD212.
I generally like a very clean sound, so not much in the way of effects, except some reverb. That said, I recently played through a Line 6 POD during a studio session, and as digital effects processors go, found it to be a lot of fun to doink around with. I am considering adding it to my gear.
The Martin has a peizo under-bridge pickup so I run it through an L.R. Baggs Para Acoustic DI.
I couldn’t agree more with Panzerman that a lot of money is wasted on gear, and would be better spent on improving one’s
musicianship.

11

Studio guy checking in.

I currently play a late 70’s Carvin DC-200 stereo guitar (koa body, ebony fretboard, gold hardware). I bought it new from the factory and it arrived IN PERFECT TUNE (shipped UPS ground). My baby. I also keep a stock blond Strat (don’t know the year) hanging around. For acoustics, I play a Taylor 6-string, and and Ibanez 12-string (don’t know the model numbers).

I usually play through a Rocktron Chameleon straight into the console. Otherwise I have a small assortment of vintage amps and cabinets to choose from. My favorite is this old no-name 20 watt tube amp that’s about 50 years old hooked up to an antique 1930’s british Celestion 10" speaker.

I also have a small Vox 10" combo amp, a few assorted no-name antique speaker cabinets, and a Digitec RP-5 pedalboard.

12

1995 Gibson Les Paul Custom, Dark Wine Burst finish with gold accessories, no pickguard. In my eyes, it is a piece of American art. I am deathly afraid of playing it for fear of scratching it.

Nigel Tufnel: Don’t touch it!
Marty DiBergi:Well I wasn’t going to touch it, I was just pointing at it.
Nigel: Well… don’t point!
Marty: Don’t point, okay. Can I look at it?
Nigel: No

My Les is so sweet, it makes my POS Marshall Lead 12 amp (yes, that’s 12 watts) sound decent. Of course the damned thing only works when the gain is set to 10, so I get that heavy sound, “the brown sound” as Eddie used to call it.

A DOD multi effect rack helps out, add a little reverb here, dash of flanger there, BAM! Rock and Roll ladies and gentlemen.

Mostly, I noodle around on my very first guitar, an Alvarez Regent acoustic. It gets the job done, and keeps the wear and tear off of my beautiful Les.

13

I didn’t even describe my preferred weapon–my Alvarez acoustic that I’ve had since sixth grade. It only sounds and plays better with age. I love it. I want to be buried with it. I can’t even bring myself to put a pickup in it.

I agree about musicianship being far more important than gear. Still, I love being able to coax new sounds out of my instruments–it inspires me. (I play mostly for my own amusement these days–I’ve played one paid gig in the last five years. I used to play out more.)

I am going to pick up a Crybaby soon–probably the standard one, since it’s on sale at music123.com. I really like that Fender tuner, but it doesn’t have a mic in, so I couldn’t tune my acoustic with it. Still, I like the idea of an inline pedal tuner.

Dr. J

14

I’ve got a transparent red Strat clone with white pickguard, run through a Zoom GFX-707 multi-effects pedal, into a 50W Crate.

I find that the Zoom is versatile to do whatever I want to do, and provides me a drum machine as well. All for $115.

Aw yeah.