Bald Move Guitar & Gear Nerds!
CretanBull
Toronto
in General
There's been a few discussions in the music thread, and more recently in the youtube recommendation thread plus a lot of talk on the Discord server among Bald Move's guitar players. If figured there'd probably be interest in a thread where we can all nerd out over guitars and gear 
Share your rigs, pedals, guitars etc! The more pics the better!
Share your rigs, pedals, guitars etc! The more pics the better!
Comments
The signal goes from my wah to my tuner to the MXR Compressor. From there it jumps down to the Sentry noise gate. All of the pedals to the left of the noise gate - the Fuzz Bender, Big Muff, Hot Cake (over drive) and Tumnus (Klon clone) are in a gated loop. The Sentry is set up just to keep the volume levels consistent and to eliminate hum, which is especially important when I'm playing a guitar with single-coils (I mostly play Jazzmasters and Strats, but one of my JM's has humbuckers in it). From the Sentry, the signal goes back up to the Boss Chorus and Delay pedals and then finally ends with the Strymon Reverb.
I've got a few other pedals that I sometimes swap in and out. Sometimes I replace the Big Muff with a JHS Muffuletta, which gives me every Big Muff sound other than the OP Amp sound that I have on my board now. I also occasionally will swap the Tumnus out for a JHS Bonzai, which clones all of the different models of Tube Screamers. I've got a Rat too, and my amp (Vox AC15) loves it, but I always struggle with finding a place for it...when I use it, I usually put it in place of the Fuzz Bender...even though I really miss the Fuzz Bender when it's gone. I've got a Small Clone chorus too, but as much as I love it the Waza Craft Chorus is the absolute best chorus that I've ever heard, so the Small Clone has been relegated to shelf-only status for the last few months.
I've been looking to make some space by getting a multi-effects unit for various types of modulation. I came close to getting the Boss MD-500 but I didn't really like the setup of it. I found it a bit of a pain to set up more than one effect at a time and switching between effects wasn't really intuitive (for me). I also looked at the Keeley Super Mod Workstation Modulation. I liked the layout and set up of that one and found it a little easier to use, but didn't like some of the sounds. I like modulation effects to sound really warm...I found these ones sounded a little tinny.
Now I've got my eyes set on this:
It's not exactly a modulation multi-effects pedal, but I can load in all of the TC Electronics modulation pedals and then mess around with them with their Toneprint editor and make them sound exactly the way I want them to. Also, if I ever want to grab some light gear to play a buddy's house I could take it and use it as a make-shift pedalboard.
My main amp is a Vox AC15. I also recently won a Positive Grid Spark practice amp from a NAMM contest. I haven't gotten it yet, but it's gotten some good reviews (and a lot of hate from people who pre-ordered it and have had the release date pushed back a few times!).
My guitars...
2011 MiM Strat...added locking tuners and changed the pickups for Pure Vintage '65 ones. It sounds great, lots of tonal range but has an awesome strat 'quack' sound and does surf tones amazingly well.
2015 MiM Jazzmaster Classic. Lots of mods...installed a Mastery bridge, changed the pickups to Seymour Duncan Antiquity II's, added locking tuners, upgraded the wiring and pots to Fender USA ones (cloth wiring and CTS pots).
2018 J Mascis Squier Jazzmaster - other than locking tuners, it's stock.
2018 MiM Player Series Jazzmaster - I've modded the hell out of this one, it's not recognizable from when I first bought it! It came with a pau ferro neck, I ditched it and put an American Professional rosewood neck on it. I got rid of the stock Fender humbuckers (which were actually pretty decent to be honest) and replaced them with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rodded Set (JB in the bridge, Jazz in the neck), changed the knobs to tele-style barrel knobs (but unlike tele knobs, these ones have a numbered dial around the bottom!), changed the bridge to Mastery bridge, changed the tremolo to a Mastery tremolo, changed the pick-up guard to a custom made one to accommodate the covered pickups, changed all of the wiring, pots and switches to Fender USA ones. So basically, all that remains from the original guitar is the body
2019 ESP M-200 It's a cheapy shredder type of guitar with a Floyd Rose system and a reverse headstock...pretty much everything that I've always hated, but this one kept calling my name until I finally gave in and bought it. It's fun to play. All stock.
2018 American Special Telecaster. Great guitar, I haven't bonded with it..it's up for sale ATM
My most recent project...I came close to finishing it tonight, but got burned out working on it so I put it aside until tomorrow. It's a parts-caster Stratocaster...
2019 Eric Clapton Artist Series body, American Professional (rosewood) neck, Ratio locking tuners, Floy Rose Rail Tail trem (Fender drop-in replacement, not the Floyd Rose locking system that people usually think of when they think of Floyd Rose), CTS pots, switchcraft input jack, Fender USA wiring harness, Custom Shop '69 pickups, fully shielded.
I will add pics tomorrow...it's too late/dark to get good pics now.
Early stages of my partscaster build:
(You can read about ‘em in the YouTube Recommendations thread)
‘72 Fender Bronco Vibro Champ is my go to. I love how that thing has aged into a really nice tone.
Mesa Boogie Subway Blues. (The ol’ gigging amp)
PA: Fender Passport P-250. All kinds of mics. Digital 8 track.
Mastery is so tight. Solid choice. And I see those Strymon blue sky pedals a lot recently. It’s intriguing for sure. I’m feeling woefully under reverbed and under delayed. Looking at some options. Maybe Keeley. I see the flashback a lot. Also looking at the Afterneath. Also the hall of fame 2 with the shimmer mash is kinda cool.
I'm not big on delay, I only really use it for a little slap-back...the Boss pedal that's on my board does me just fine. Before that one, I had a MXR Carbon Copy - I liked that too but it got stolen
Paul Reed Smith S2 Custom 24 in Whale Blue (USA made with SE electronics)
Paul Reed Smith SE Custom 24 in Sweetwater Music exclusive (supposedly?) Tobacco Sunburst
Epiphone Les Paul Special II in Dark Gray
Fender Player Series Telecaster in Surf Pearl
Yamaha Pawn Shop Shit humbucker and 2 single Strat style clone (maybe a Pacifica?)
Yamaha RBX170 4 String Bass Guitar (amazing instrument for about $120)
Fender Bassbreaker 15 watt 12" All Tube Combo
Blackstar HT5 5 watt 12" All Tube Combo
Vox MV50 "Nu-Tube" mini 50 watt head (sounds amazing and legit has a modern day anode-cathode shrunk flat tube)
Peavy Vyper 20 watt solid state digital modeling practice amp.
Fender Mustang Half Stack 4 x 12" Celestion Vintage 30's
(Just ordered) Yamaha THR30 Desktop Modeling Amp
FX - I'll just take a pic, have too many with 99% being junk shit with a couple of diamonds like Wampler Tumnus and an amazingly inexpensive Joyo JF02 Ultimate Distortion Pedal with true bypass for $30 which I have been told is an almost exact clone of the $130 FullTone OCD.
I really want to put together a kit guitar. I've put together a couple of parts casters (a jazzmaster and a strat) but I'd love to try starting from scratch. The strat that I'm putting together now is the first that I've ever tried soldering, and it turned out really well so that's given me some confidence.
Re: Positive Grid Spark...I won one in a contest. I'd never heard about it before but when I went to look it up and see what it was all about all I saw was tons of people complaining about the delays. Literally 2 days after being told that I'd won and was sent an invoice with a shipping date, they sent me a follow-up e-mail saying that my shipping date had been pushed back more than a month. It's free to me so I'm not too bent out of shape about it, but some people paid for theirs months ago and they were supposed to ship last fall and they still haven't gotten them. I find it a little curious that (so far) only the smaller youtube channels seem to be getting Sparks sent to them for preview. It really seems like they're intentionally holding them back from the bigger channels as if they're worried that a bad review from a real influencer will sink them. We'll see how it goes.
As far as Kempers and other digital modellers, they're the way of the future - no doubt about it. I think one of the biggest knocks against them is that most people who use them don't use them well and it's giving that whole world a bad name. I've seen some really high profile youtubers get absolutely horrible sounds out of Kempers, Axe FX etc. Most viewers assume that these online 'experts' know what they're doing and they get turned off by the technology.
Reconfigured the whole board today. Extremely cathartic for me.
Every year my oldest daughter was in high school, I attended fundraisers in support of the music program. Like most jurisdictions in North America, the arts are underfunded and it falls on families to supplement the budget with fundraising. Each year they do a silent auction night with students preparing and serving hors d'oeuvres and performing. She went to an performing arts magnet school, so these nights are very fun and good entertainment.
We usually decide how much we're going to donate ahead of time and use that as our budget to bid on items. About four years ago we'd decided to donate $100 but didn't see a lot that we wanted and were quickly outbid on the items we were placed bids on. Near the end of the night, I bid $90 on an Epiphone DR-100 - a truly basic acoustic - on a whim and ended up winning. My only experience playing a stringed instrument at that point was a couple years in my twenties messing around with bass and never getting more than "barely competent". I'd never played a six-string guitar before. So this is the guitar that I learned to play on watching videos from JustinGuitar.com
This guitar was great for me to learn on and I still like having an inexpensive guitar that I don't have to worry about if I take it camping. I did get a Yamaha Pacifica about a year later, but it didn't feel the same drive to play it. It didn't help that I had an infant that was a realliy bad sleeper either. I ended up selling it and putting the money toward my next purchase. Sorry, but this means I don't have a lot of effects and amps to share.
The Ska/Punk kid buried inside me couldn't resist the Tim Armstrong Hellcat Acoustic Electric when I saw it. The design is based on the beat-up 60's era Fender that Armstrong wrote songs for Rancid on back in the day.
I love the look of this guitar and the details are perfectly and hilariously east bay. I particularly love the hellcat and skull pearl inlays.
So, that's it. My meager contribution to the guitar gear thread. <span>
Actually thanks to you I dug deep in my gmail and found the guy that sold them to me 7 years ago in a craigslist meet up. I thought I had attempted this a few times before years ago without ever finding a way to contact him again but this time I found one email where he gave me his cell. I'm gonna text him to see if he has any other cool projects and if he is still making pedals.