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[BotoxAgent]

Got myself a James Tyler burning water a few years back which is one of my prize possessions. Cba taking my own picture but here's what it looks like:

Unfortunately a few months after I bought it I pretty much stopped playing in favour of learning piano, so it was kind of a waste of money

Oh man been lusting for this guitar for a long time. I want it.

 

[Fusebox]

It sure has a gorgeous finish, but I'm not sure if I can get past that headstock shape.

 

[CrudeDiatribe]

I have a new piece of gear and its called fingers that have been torn to shreds. I just started string bending in my blues workshop. 1/2 step, whole step, pre-bending and reverse bends. I had nice callouses before, but I guess they aren't going to be happy until every inch of my fingers have pads that are strong enough to impale something.

http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p294/bill0527/IMG_0593.jpg

Play till you bleed!

In my adult-and-guitar-is-definintely-just-a-hobby life I play in spurts. Got a nasty blister under the callouses on my right (picking) hand from playing claw-hammer for a few hours last weekend.

Fretting callouses are still nice and tough.

It sure has a gorgeous finish, but I'm not sure if I can get past that headstock shape.

I find it hard to get over non-Fender shapes for six-on-a-side headstocks. So many three-and-three headstocks look good.

 

[Mistle]

got myself a "fender tele classic player thinline deluxe" back in may this year:

plays and sounds amazing.

 

[Blue Submarine No. 6]

I've had a good month on the gear front.

First thing that happened was "my" Taylor Solidbody Classic returned to me: I was doing sound for a international Celtic Harp conference my wife organizes locally, and I wandered into a nearby consignment shop where I found the guitar hanging on the wall. I'd actually used this very guitar on loan for a gig about a year ago when one of mine went temporaryily MIA, and I really liked its playability and the way the mini-hums sit in a live mix, so I jumped at the chance to own it.

Then, out of the blue, my wife buys me a Mesa Recto 25 and the matching 1x12" slant cab! This kit looks great beside my TA-15, and the tones on offer are amazing; I never would have believed that EL84s could produce genuine Rectifier metal tones with all that thumping tight bass if I hadn't heard it myself. Mic up this rig and leave the full stacks at home!

A couple pics (don't mind the Mark V in the background there):

The Guitar: A PRS Custom 24. The thing pretty much plays itself, it's definitely the nicest guitar I've every laid my hands on. I used to be a big Tele guy but they just don't have the range that I need. I was looking at getting an SG or Les Paul for low end, heavily distorted stuff, but then I came across this beauty. I'm glad I didn't have to go the Gibson route, I really hate playing them (though I know they're great guitars).

hehehe, you have great taste in gear Simon... That's a sweet guitar! I use the 25th Anniversary Custom myself (and owned two other CU24s before it) - I found the 57/08 pups in the 25th to be a huge upgrade from the HFS Treble and Vintage Bass pups for what I do, but there's just nothing out there that can beat the playability and build quality of these guitars afaic...

The Amp: A Mesa Boogie Mark V Combo. This is hands down the most versatile amp you could possibly spend money on. Want to sound like you're playing a Matchless? Cool. How 'bout a Bogner? Done. The sheer volume of switches, knobs, and sliders on this thing is intimidating. It's not all roses though, the reverb transformer shit the bed, and I've had to resort to a duct-tape solution:

This guy runs through the effect loop channels. It's not perfect, but I play with a whole lotta 'verb, so I can't really afford to be without it for too long.

Ya, same thing happened with mine; the reverb issue is really common for these amps. It's just a blown j-fet that needs to be replaced, and Boogie fixed mine right up when it happened (remember, five year warranty is transferable on Boogies, in case you grabbed yours used), but if you read the GrailTone message boards, it seems to be a fairly common issue with the early runs of these amps. Here's mine on the custom Saxon 1x12" wide-body, EV-loaded slant cab I had made for it.

 

[Dilly]

Sold me Ibanez to the store because of problems with the pickups which neither the store or Ibanez were keen to fix. Bought a Schecter PT and I love it to bits already.

Great guitar for the price I'd say.

 

[-x.Red.x-]

Hey guitar-gaf

can anyone tell me what type of guitar is this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L64c5vT3NBw

what is the cheapest i can find it at?

 

[Simon Belmont]

hehehe, you have great taste in gear Simon... That's a sweet guitar! I use the 25th Anniversary Custom myself (and owned two other CU24s before it) - I found the 57/08 pups in the 25th to be a huge upgrade from the HFS Treble and Vintage Bass pups for what I do, but there's just nothing out there that can beat the playability and build quality of these guitars afaic...

Thanks man! The second I picked it up I knew I never had to buy another electric guitar in my life ever again. It just feels so damned good to play.

How does the neck of the TA-15 compare to a PRS? I've always thought the PRS neck reminds me of a Taylor accoustic.

Ya, same thing happened with mine; the reverb issue is really common for these amps. It's just a blown j-fet that needs to be replaced, and Boogie fixed mine right up when it happened (remember, five year warranty is transferable on Boogies, in case you grabbed yours used), but if you read the GrailTone message boards, it seems to be a fairly common issue with the early runs of these amps. Here's mine on the custom Saxon 1x12" wide-body, EV-loaded slant cab I had made for it.

I did buy it used, unfortunately the dude I bought it from can't find his receipt, and even if he could I can't imagine what it would cost me to ship this heavy fucker from Canada to California.

 

[Blue Submarine No. 6]

How does the neck of the TA-15 Taylor compare to a PRS? I've always thought the PRS neck reminds me of a Taylor accoustic.

The Taylor's neck is wider and flatter than the WT PRS carve... Frets are a little bigger too. It's a comfortable neck for me, but I prefer the PRS. The Taylor's so light and spanky though - the mini-hums and the ash body really make it seem almost a PRS/Tele hybrid in the way it plays and sounds... Its a great clean guitar or for cutting through a messy mix...
(btw, the TA-15 I'm refering to in my post above is my Mesa TransAtlantic 15 amp, which is sitting beside my Mini Recto in my music room)

I did buy it used, unfortunately the dude I bought it from can't find his receipt, and even if he could I can't imagine what it would cost me to ship this heavy fucker from Canada to California.

If you don't have a receipt, Mesa honour the warranty from BUILD DATE, so all Mark Vs are under warranty still. And you don't have to send it in to Mesa, you just have to get it to their nearest authorized service center... Well worth it if you're within an hour's drive from one... Like I said, it's probably the J-FET, an easy fix...

 

[XenoRaven]

Are bass players allowed in here?

G&L L-2500. I bought it a couple months ago. Upgraded from an Ibanez SR505. I love it soooo much!

EDIT: Fff don't know why it's upside down.

 

[Simon Belmont]

The Taylor's neck is wider and flatter than the WT PRS carve... Frets are a little bigger too. It's a comfortable neck for me, but I prefer the PRS. The Taylor's so light and spanky though - the mini-hums and the ash body really make it seem almost a PRS/Tele hybrid in the way it plays and sounds... Its a great clean guitar or for cutting through a messy mix...
(btw, the TA-15 I'm refering to in my post above is my Mesa TransAtlantic 15 amp, which is sitting beside my Mini Recto in my music room)


If you don't have a receipt, Mesa honour the warranty from BUILD DATE, so all Mark Vs are under warranty still. And you don't have to send it in to Mesa, you just have to get it to their nearest authorized service center... Well worth it if you're within an hour's drive from one... Like I said, it's probably the J-FET, an easy fix...

Shit, the electric Taylor's have a model number that starts with 'T' right? I'd love to get my hands on one some day. I have yet to spot one in my usual music store.

I'll have to look into that. There is an authorized repair center in my city - which is where I took it first but the dude there wasn't very helpful. Basically refused to fix it. I'm only an hour away from Toronto though, I'm sure I can find someone to fix er up there.

 

[Blue Submarine No. 6]

Are bass players allowed in here?

G&L L-2500. I bought it a couple months ago. Upgraded from an Ibanez SR505. I love it soooo much!

EDIT: Fff don't know why it's upside down.

Bass players are most welcome! (Then I don't have to play bass!!

I've been thinking of picking up an Ibanez SR 4 string to replace my Squier Jazz that my son seems to have adopted... Maybe a SR370... Were you happy with your SR?

Shit, the electric Taylor's have a model number that starts with 'T' right? I'd love to get my hands on one some day. I have yet to spot one in my usual music store.

I'll have to look into that. There is an authorized repair center in my city - which is where I took it first but the dude there wasn't very helpful. Basically refused to fix it. I'm only an hour away from Toronto though, I'm sure I can find someone to fix er up there.

Ya, Taylor do have the T-3 and T-5 semihollow/psuedo-accoustic sorta things, but the Solidbodies are just named, I think...

With Mesa, if you contact the customer service in the states, they'll tell you who you can take it to, and then their authorized service guy can call them to the okay (basically, they just end up billing Mesa instead of you).

 

[whitehawk]

Question to people who record: Is firewire really any better than USB? About to buy a device that only has USB, is it worth upgrading to the higher end version that has firewire?

 

[Fusebox]

Nope FireWire isnt any better, and you can run audio interfaces perfectly fine off USB2, FireWire 400 or 800. I run a mix of them. Which interface are you lookin at?

 

[whitehawk]

This, it seems like a great deal. And stuff that I've heard that used it, sounded great.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0041OSWVK/?tag=neogaf0e-20

It comes with Pro Tools LE which should get me started too. $430, equivalent in Canadian stores is around $800 =/

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

Nope FireWire isnt any better, and you can run audio interfaces perfectly fine off USB2, FireWire 400 or 800. I run a mix of them. Which interface are you lookin at?

I'm sorry but this statement is incorrect.

Firewire is better for recording audio and here's why.


USB devices are asynchronous, which means that any device has the power to send any amount of data at any time. If two devices decide to talk at once, their data can collide with each other. If the traffic's not highly time-sensitive, this isn't a big deal. There are routines in place to manage it, and you'll never notice if your mouse click happens a couple microseconds later. BUT. There are a few applications where it matters, and one of them is audio. An audio interface is sending a constant stream of sound data back to the computer. It rarely uses up the whole pipe, and so it's still possible for other devices to talk but the odds of collisions are higher, and if you get too much other traffic the errors can pile up beyond the computers ability to stay caught up and you lose some sound data.

Firewire is a peer-to-peer protocol, meaning that every device on a Firewire network is equally capable of talking to every other device. Two video cameras on a Firewire network can share data with each other. A Firewire audio interface could save sound data directly to a Firewire hard drive. 3 Your computer is just another peer on this network, and has no inherent special status.

But the real reason Firewire is more reliable than USB is more fundamental than that. It's because Firewire allows two operating modes. One is asynchronous, as we described above with USB. The other is isochronous mode, and it lets a device carve out a certain dedicated amount of bandwidth that other devices can't touch. It gets a certain number of time slices each second all its own. The advantages for audio should be obvious: that stream of data can just keep on flowing, and as long as there isn't more bandwidth demand than the wire can handle (not very likely) nothing will interfere with it. No collisions, no glitches.


USB = chain, Firewire = dedicated bandwidth.

Firewire for Audio = a good thing.
USB for audio = not so good.

 

[whitehawk]

See I've seen this reasoning while googling this question. But I don't get it. My computer won't need to send data to the MBox. The MBox will just be sending data to my computer... I don't see how USB is really inferior in real life situations.

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

See I've seen this reasoning while googling this question. But I don't get it. My computer won't need to send data to the MBox. The MBox will just be sending data to my computer... I don't see how USB is really inferior in real life situations.

Firewire is better for recording as it doesn't use the CPU to determine the outcome of bus conflicts. It is just has a better design for this application (you can do more with it). With USB every new command you send to the CPU while recording will slow the process down and increase latency.

 

[CrudeDiatribe]

I have a USB audio interface. Usually it's great, but sometimes there's latency and it's annoying.

 

[Fusebox]

Yeah, but then everyone realised that in the real world it's just not an issue. That's why a lot of my favourite hardware manufacturers are moving from firewire to USB.

Focusrites latest model is USB: http://www.focusrite.com/products/audio_interfaces/scarlett_2i2/

NI's latest model is USB: http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/producer/komplete-audio-6/

Even Motu have moved over to USB: http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/ultralite-mk3

Not to mention the Pro Tools M-Box you're currently considering.

So yeah, looks like an issue on paper but it just isn't, go with USB with confidence.

 

[Stormbringer]

Here is my latest, an Aria Pro II TA-60 Pink Pearl, straight from the '80s . Real nice guitar. It has a kind of metallic pink finish which I find beautiful (these pics don't do it justice).

She goes really well with her big sister too :

 

[Dice]

http://i32.tinypic.com/sp9gz9.jpg Gibson J-45

I notice you have a lot of guitars.

Please give this one to me. ^_^

 

[T-Matt]

That Aria is super nice.

 

[whitehawk]

I think I need some help with guitar recording. I have an iMac, Pro Tools 10, and access to an Amp + 2 foot pedals. I am able to record guitar, but it doesn't sound all that great. What am I missing? Hardware, or software effects?

 

[Fusebox]

A microphone and a decent mic-preamp is all I can think of.

How are you currently recording?

 

[whitehawk]

Are you suggesting I mic my amp instead of going directly into my computer?

 

[Fusebox]

Oh yeah, especially if is a decent amp.

VSTs like Guitar Rig and amp modeling hardware like the Zoom range will only get you so far (Fractal FX excluded) but if you're trying to capture a sweet tone youve got going with your amp, pop an SM57 in front of it.

 

[whitehawk]

It's a Marshall. 15DFX it says on it.

 

[Fusebox]

Oh. Hmm... That might not be worth mic'ing. What sort of tone are you trying to get?

 

[whitehawk]

A good sounding heavy tone. Leaning towards a metal sound actually.

 

[Fusebox]

Give Rammfire a shot, it's a Native Instruments VST that sounds great for chugging and metal leads. Or if you've got a good distortion pedal, try this chain...

Guitar - distortion pedal - Guitar Rig 5 control room with a quad-box and a microphone.

Or for a free alternative, check out the Canadian Metal set on Le Pou's page:

http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com/

Edit: seems the Canadian Metal is a bit outdated now, try this instead:

http://www.acmebargig.com/product/razor/

 

[whitehawk]

Hmm, if I can get this kind of sound with Rammfire, I would be quite happy with that.

This whole recording process is going to be a big learning curve for me. Hopefully I can get used to it eventually so that it's second nature.

 

[CrudeDiatribe]

Here is my latest, an Aria Pro II TA-60 Pink Pearl, straight from the '80s . Real nice guitar. It has a kind of metallic pink finish which I find beautiful (these pics don't do it justice).

Love the inlay work on the second one, but the solid pink on the TA-60 just doesn't do it for me. Pink is probably my least favourite colour, though.

Love 335-style guitars, though.

 

[adamsappel]

I love pink guitars! I even want one of those Hello Kitty Strats.

 

[CrudeDiatribe]

Guitar-related holiday presents & purchases weigh-in!

Got an iRig for my iPhone, and a Diamond Bottleneck Co. Ultimate bottleneck. Purchased an Apogee One with Christmas-money in a Boxing Day'Week' sale to replace my dead interface.

Recorded with it for the first time tonight, using my cheapie-deluxe condenser mic (haven't tried the built-in one, it's purportedly quite good). Really happy with the results and I think I came up with some award winning titles for the tracks:

Eastman Apogee Test.m4a - a simple acoustic blues on the Eastman.

Then I grabbed my Johnson* to noodle with the Ultimate: Johnson Apogee Test.m4a (this is a bit meandering).

*best/worst guitar brand name.



Anyone else score some nice stuff?

 

[NGAMER9]

Maybe this isn't the best place to ask but I figure I'll try anyway. I'm looking for a nice distortion pedal. I'm avoiding the thinner sounding distortions, or any metal-type distortions. Kinda searching for a thicker tone to kick in during solos in a live setting (I normally just used the tones of my orange/marshall amps or various modeling pedals/hubs). Ideally leaning more towards a fusion tone than a metal/rock tone if possible, but I'm willing to try anything.

Any suggestions? I was thinking maybe the MXR Custom Badass, because I hear good things about it, or maybe a MXR Distortion III, but anything's really a possibility.

Any recommendations or ideas?

 

[Sobriquet]

Maybe this isn't the best place to ask but I figure I'll try anyway. I'm looking for a nice distortion pedal. I'm avoiding the thinner sounding distortions, or any metal-type distortions. Kinda searching for a thicker tone to kick in during solos in a live setting (I normally just used the tones of my orange/marshall amps or various modeling pedals/hubs). Ideally leaning more towards a fusion tone than a metal/rock tone if possible, but I'm willing to try anything.

Any suggestions? I was thinking maybe the MXR Custom Badass, because I hear good things about it, or maybe a MXR Distortion III, but anything's really a possibility.

Any recommendations or ideas?

Sounds like you're looking more for an overdrive or boost.

 

[NGAMER9]

Sounds like you're looking more for an overdrive or boost.

Yeah, I dunno, I want a pretty good amount of solid distortion in there, so I figured I'd just go for the whole thing. Maybe I'll look into some good stronger overdrives too, but I figure I'll definitely use a distortion pedal for rhythm guitar for other stuff, might as well try with one first. I'll definitely look into some overdrives though, thanks.

 

[Sobriquet]

If that's the case, then you can never go wrong with the ProCo Rat. Does low-gain pretty well too.

 

[Gr1mLock]

Left to right, ovation balladeer, les paul custom, les paul studio, dean martin 12 string.

 

[NGAMER9]

If that's the case, then you can never go wrong with the ProCo Rat. Does low-gain pretty well too.

Wow, I like the range on there from what I'm hearing on Youtube. I'll definitely put it in the running. A lower level distortion on there might be just what I'm looking for, I'll try one out sometime this weekend. Thanks for the rec.

 

[Pilgor]

I took these shots with my fancy shmancy camera (iPhone) a year ago or so, but they are probably the best photos I have of my stuff. I have a few others, but no new pictures unfortunately!

 

[Nappuccino]

You should add a Jazz bass to those guitars.

 

[Puddles]

I'm envious of the people who have enough money to get the same guitar in two different colors.

 

[Nappuccino]

I'm envious of the people who have enough money to get the same guitar in two different colors.

hahaha, i didn't want to say anything, but i did find that odd.

 

[Bloodbeard]

The greatest pedal Boss has ever put out.

 

[Pilgor]

You should add a Jazz bass to those guitars.

I want a Music Man bass next, I already have a 5-string Fender J-Bass.

I'm envious of the people who have enough money to get the same guitar in two different colors.

They aren't exactly the same. The blue burst is made of Alder and Maple, with a Rosewood board, whereas the tobacco burst is Mahogany and Koa, with an Ebony board. Different pickups too.

 

[Nappuccino]

I want a Music Man bass next, I already have another 5-string Fender.

You don't need a 5 string bass... its more about the pickups and the tonal variety they give you.

 

[BotoxAgent]

hahaha, i didn't want to say anything, but i did find that odd.

every petrucci fan I know has at least 3 of his sigs, so good XD

 

[Mineshaft_Gap]

Since all my links got broken.