Let's Talk Guitar Gear
If you've ever played a gig with me, or even talked music with me for very long, you know that I'm a huge gearhead. I love researching, playing with, and talking about the tools that I use to create my music. I've gone through a pretty massive gear purge in the past six months or so, which has given me an even greater focus on making sure I have the right stuff to accomplish what I need to and no more. I get quite a few questions about the stuff I use, and have drawn an unimagineable amount of inspiration from other people's setups and approaches, so I thought I'd start a new series here on the blog talking about the stuff I'm using, and hopefully get some good discussion going in the comments as well.
Even though guitar is my "last" instrument, it's something that I've been spending a lot of time with lately. I play guitar at church on an almost weekly basis, and have spent a good portion of the last year working on my rig. I also had it all set up last week in preparation for Good Friday & Easter services, so it was a logical place to start.Guitars - Ok, so let's start with the guitars themselves. My acoustic is an Ibanez Artwood series with a solid cedar top. It's easy to play and sounds great acoustically, but one of the biggest selling points for me is the Fishman electronics installed. The preamp has a built in tuner and an XLR output, which makes it a simple and great sounding all-in-one solution when I need an acoustic. I don't play a ton of acoustic, so that simplicity is fantastic. It's strung with Martin extra light strings.My electric is a Fender Classic Series '72 Thinline Telecaster. I love the semi-hollow design & the neck just feels incredible. I've always preferred humbuckers to single coils, and this guitar has proved to be very versatile in worship settings, which is almost exclusively where I use it. It's just a great guitar, and one that I expect I'll be playing for a very long time. I'm using Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings on the electric (can you tell I like light strings?)Amp & Pedalboard - Because I play primarily at church, volume is always a concern. I like the sound of a good tube amp as much as anybody, but we have found that small solid state combos work better in our environment. To that end, I'm using a Vox Pathfinder 15r as my amp, and it really sounds great. Great tone, and easy to achieve at "sanctuary" levels. I keep a little bit of reverb on all the time, and will occaisionally use a footswitch to toggle the built in tremelo. I find that the boost function the amp provides is too aggressive for my needs, so I run the amp clean and get all of my overdrive from the pedalboard. Speaking of which...My pedalboard is pretty simple by most standards, but it gives me everything & need and keeps my focus on leading worship. I love the sound of my guitar straight through the amp, so I primarily use pedals to add subtle colors to that basic sound. Both my guitar and bass rigs use Pedaltrain Nano pedalboards and Korg Pitchblack tuners. In addition to being a fantastic tuner, the Pitchblack also functionals as a 200ma, daisy chain style power supply, which is more than enough for the few pedals I use. Keeps things very simple and clean - just plug an adapter into the Korg & the whole board powers up. From the tuner, I head into a stock MXR DynaComp. I'm using a pretty subtle setting - primarily I just use it to boost & even out my lead lines a little bit, and occaisionally to drive my overdrive pedal a little harder. For my overdrive, I'm using a Blackstone Appliances Mosfet overdrive. What a killer pedal! I mostly use the "brown" channel for rhythm, and kick in the "red" channel for lead. To get two great overdrive sounds in such a small footprint meets my needs perfectly. On top of that, it's specifically designed to be run into a clean amp, which is exactly what I need. The last piece of the puzzle on the pedalboard is the TC Electronic Flashback Delay. It's a very versatile delay (I primarily use the analog & modulated settings) with a very unique audio tapping feature. You just hold down the switch and then tap the tempo in by strumming your guitar. It's very precise and let's me set eighth and sixteenth note delays quickly and easily - much easier than tapping a physical switch, in my mind.Well, I think that covers it... I'll be talking about bass, drum & keyboard gear in the future, but that should be the extent of the guitar rig. I'd love to hear what you're using in the comments, and feel free to ask any questions, as well!