On Buying Cheap [Guitar Content Only]

Another segment (ok, the first segment) from the 'experience speaks' guy.

When we start out, we're generally kids, without a ton of disposable income. This requires finding used equipment or good deals or trades. There's little choice and we learn from it. I certainly went through it.


I built most of my own computers until fairly recently. The last time I did it, my wife kept telling me to buy really good/fast hardware. I asked why and she said because I spent an awful lot of time at them, so I needed good hardware, and I tended to keep them for a while, so I needed fast hardware. I was going to cheap out, but she made incredible sense. And she's not even a musician!


As I collected more and my ear got better, I realized I needed better sound and quality. This is essential if you're playing out in any form, even for no money. You need to show up professionally, with all your reliable gear and some backups in case of failure. You'll show your professionalism with your playing and your equipment. You'll also get a reputation for both. I stopped buying cheap, and saved for better equipment. I'm now a wonderfully-equipped player who never leaves his couch. To put a finer point on it, I stopped buying guitars just because I could afford them, and saved for nicer guitars and equipment. Now there's very little junk in my stable, and I could go into the studio well-equipped to sound like whatever's needed. This also meant, as I was growing up, that I watched others with nice cars, but my money went to equipment.


Having said that, to use my Corporate-speak, buying equipment is a whole new paradigm since the Web became popular. If you want a pedal, you can check out the reviews, talk to a few experts, visit some social media groups, then listen to it on YouTube.

Historic Note: when I started playing, there was no net. We heard about things through Guitar Player magazine or our local mom+pop guitar store, then we tried them out.

So if you've been playing for a while and you intend to play out, it's time to go pro - don't cheap out. With Ebay, Reverb and all the commercial music sites, guitar shopping is 24/7. This can be a real problem for some, but it's ok, I can quit whenever I want. I started to see pedals with weird names... really weird names. I started checking them out on YouTube. So I have Reverb in one browser tab and YouTube in the other. Granted, you're not always getting an exact idea of how a pedal will sound, but you'll at least get in the ballpark.

I started to see the tiny effects, like Mooer, Donner, and others. They're all made in the same factory, so there's no difference. I was naturally suspicious because of their overseas manufacturing, but after listening, had to admit they sometimes do a hell of a job (ripping off other successful designs and selling them for peanuts). Rest assured the parts are substandard, at very least the hardware, so at some point the jacks will become intermittent, the controls will get dirty, or the switch will fail. If you're at a gig or audition, this won't go well. This is one reason to buy the more expensive pedals (or guitar).

As your disposable income increases (or shows up), you can also go on a Mission, becoming crazy about testing a bunch of pedals to find the right one for you. You do some research, then buy 5 or 10 of the top overdrives or distortions. Or do it 1 at a time. Pass on your observations socially, and make a YouTube video with a sample of the units and your conclusion. Swap a pedal for another, and so on.

After a ton of research, I bought a Hughes&Kettner Tube Rotosphere (Leslie pedal). It sounded the best in the reviews and shootouts. Plus Jeff Beck used one, and he never let me down before. Then a 'The Dude', Dumble-style pedal, which you should listen to if you don't have one. I'm building a few, and the next purchase will probably be an MI Audio Crunchbox. It's a great-sounding, balls to the wall, high gain Marshall pedal.

So keep the quality and tone in your mind when shopping (once you pass beginner phase).



YouTube Demo Rant

I've found the demos from big retailers, like Sweetwater, very accurate but not too deep. The real tone monsters put up YouTube videos, going into depth (sometimes sickeningly in-depth, to where you want to suggest they take medicine). Or better yet, the shootouts, where they compare 2 or more pedals in the same group. The overdrives are a great example, because there are so many of them, making so many claims. The worst of the overdrives are the 'transparent' ones, that don't mess with your tone too much.

The problem is with reviewers not using something vaguely normal to demo the pedals. One guy demos everything with a late 50s Strat. Because all of us have a late 50s Strat. Or a custom builder's Strat - Suhr is popular, but at least these are Strats. Some expensive guitar with a P90 pickup in front and a Tele pickup in the rear isn't likely to be common in anyone's house except the guy making the video. Another popular trick is drop-D tuning. Your ear might pick it up, but it's not indicative of what your average guitar player uses.

Then there's amps.
This guy's demo features a Dr Z amp. I think Dr Z amps start around $2,000. This will make it less likely people watching it will get a good idea of the sound.

If I were going to make a video, i'd probably use a Strat and a Les Paul, through a Deluxe Reverb. The Deluxe Reverb is a standard, clean, well-known amp, so you're getting a good representation of the pedal. It's also not a dirty amp until you get it painfully loud, so it's a good indication of what the pedal will sound like into a clean amp. Some pedals sound better into a slightly dirty amp, in which case I'd try something with a bit more hair on it.  The Strat and Les Paul are for obvious reasons. Maybe a Tele.


The YouTube demo field is seriously in need of some self-parody and sense of humor. It would go something like this:

Hi, I'm lefty, and today I'm doing a pedal shootout between the Klon Cantuar ripoff from Mooer and a secret pedal. The signal chain starts at my stock 1978 Strat, with all pickups replaced with all hand-wound units from the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop. Then I custom wired it for different combinations. I use a Live Wire ROCK cable into the Klon, then a JAZZ cable into my 1959 tweed Fender Champ, with the tweed redone, a ceramic instead of alnico speaker, and the output 6V6 substituted with a custom-made adaptor to use an EL84. From there I mic with a Telefunken U67 (with leather) and a regular old SM57 into my Focusnot 8 channel USB converter, into my computer, running my 47 track linux digital audio workstation software (cuz this guitar player don't do Windows or Mac). Video was edited with a lot of screaming and help from the dog.

Here's muh clean tone. Here's the effect.
I have adjusted the settings for flat gain in the local humidity, taking the dew point into consideration, on a Tuesday, which is always the best day to do demos. Let me set it so the gain knob is at zero, because we all use our overdrives for zero gain, then I'll play with the tone control, because you always wanted to know what it sounds like at zero. As we turn the gain up, the signal becomes more gainy. As we turn the volume up, it gets louder.  Note that after every phrase I wank on the whammy bar. This won't help you hear the pedal any better unless you wank on the bar too, but I like doing it. It ups my Douche Credibility. Then I spaz out a bit, moving the neck to and fro. It doesn't have any effect on the tone, but it makes me feel it does, plus I look super into it.

Now let me introduce the special secret pedal we'll compare the Klon with.
It's a 1972 Maestro phaser, one of the earliest phasers ever. If you saw Led Zeppelin's Song Remains the Same, you saw one on top of John Paul Jones' Fender Rhodes on 'No Quarter.' Why would I compare a transparent overdrive to a ancient 3 button phaser? Because I can.

Since we might want to hear this with a little more grit, I'll plug in the 1969 plexi-Marshall that Jim Marshall gave me from his personal collection, when I visited, the week before he died. It has the Eddie Van Halen mod, on board computer tube biasing, and I'm using it with Eddie's personal variac, at 88.7 volts.

So that's my video.
Subscribe and like this, and I'll be back next week with a comparison of the original Klon ($3,600 used) and a small twig I found outside.