[Guitar Content Only] What do You Want for the Holidays?

 I'm going only semi-ridiculous this year.

I spend way too much time on Ceriatone's site. I built a custom DC-30ish kit from there and really like it - both the experience and the amp. Don't let my enthusiasm fool you - you can get a kit or a built. If you get it built, you will not be disappointed: I've seen Nik's work and it's like art. This is not only striking, it's great wiring, which helps the amp against noise and oscillation.

The closest to the unit I built is the Muchle$$ DZ 30. It's a clone of the Matchless DZ 30, which itself is close to the Vox AC30. It has a half power switch, so you're playing at 15 or 30 watts. Make no mistake - it's loud in either position. It uses the EF86 tube in the high gain channel, which you have to make sure you have spares for. The spares tend to go or be microphonic, so test everything. 

The British Style 2525 is a copy of the Marshall 2525, itself a reissue of the famous JCM800, but at lower wattage and size. I heard a demo of the Marshall at a guitar show and would have bought it on the spot, if I needed another Marshall - it's that good. It was also expensive, as Marshalls tend to be. ($1600?). The barebones kit is $425 and it's $725 totally assembled. It's tempting....

If I were playing out and beating up my old Marshall, I'd buy the Hot Rodded Plexi Yeti. Give it a listen and tell me you wouldn't want a high gain Marshall that sounds like this. $640 barebones kit, $1085 or less assembled.

This is where I'm heading. The Trainwrecks have always been items of curiosity. There were a handful (100?) built by hand by Ken Fischer in New Jersey, before he died. Every amp was individually tuned. No frills, no master volume. The tone is hair-raising. Full out clean distortion, but cleans up very well with you guitar's volume control.  There are 4 models: LiverPull, Expression, Rock It, and C-Wreck. I believe the first 3 are from actual Trainwreck models, and the last is a clone of the Dr. Z Wreck. The LiverPull uses EL84 outputs. The Expression uses EL34s, like a Marshall. The Rock IT! seems to be AC30-related, using EL84s and a tube rectifier. They all hover around $1,000 built, close to $600 kit. I'm having a lot of trouble deciding. At this point, it's either the Expression or C-Wreck. Listen to the videos...tone and sustain for days.

Note to kit builders: when I say barebones, I mean everything except box and tubes. Do yourself a favor and buy the box, unless you can build one better. They can be twice the price elsewhere.

Project time: I love my Fender Pro Jr amp. 15 watts, 2 knobs, great tone. I did a few mods, but I really want to rehouse it in a cab made out of real wood, that will handle a 12" speaker. The stock speaker is 10". Not sure which speaker, but Celestions never hurt. I did a show with the Pro Jr through half of my Marshall 4x12 and it was heavenly. Too loud in spots. Amazing what 15 watts through great speakers will do (original Greenbacks). I couldn't have heard it through the stock speaker. I say this like I've played a gig in the last few years...

I'm still farting around with my Nash ST-57, his Strat-style beat up vintage. It's not for me -probably the 10" radius puts me off. I haven't seen a lot that excites me lately. Time for a 1 day trip to Southpaw in Houston. Like I have that kind of money. Santa's going to have to put some hard time into guitars this year. On the advice of Seymour Duncan's person, I got an SSL5L to try out in my main guitar, to see if it overcomes some of the inherent bassiness. It's a very heavy guitar, with a very heavy bottom end. The Nash's front pickup has more top end than the rear of the Fender. At one show I put down the Strat and picked up my G&L, and spent the whole next song trying to figure out where the bottom end went. It was eerie.

Pedals are starting to line up, requiring some comparisons and more to compare. Instead of a $50,000 to $100,000 Dumble, buy a The Dude pedal and spend more time adjusting it and your amp. Pretty good deal around $150. If you're looking for a balls to the wall modified Marshall, get a Super Crunch Box v2. I'm putting together a full review, but this thing screams. More gain than you can ever use.  Definitely better for a Les Paul, but you can do Stratty things with it too. There are a lot of controls, and I'm working on less gainy tones too. I'm using a clean modeling amp, so I have no idea how it sounds pushing an already dirty tube amp. Sitting next to it is the Lovepedal Superlead, which is a Marshall Superlead (really?) but with more gain. Good sounding pedal, less pure gain than the Crunch Box, really sounds like a Superlead. Lovepedal makes great-sounding pedals, including a JCM800 pedal that sounds exact. Obviously I need to pick 1 category and spend a long time and a lot of money comparing the pedals. 

I have pedals in most of the categories except reverb. So naturally I'm looking at reverb pedals. Nobody knows why. It's not like I'm playing out anywhere. It's not like I even have a band. Dammit, I'm the best equipped player in my neighborhood, perhaps for a few blocks around it. As with most categories of pedals, there is a ridiculous amount of choice, at incredible to gut-wrenching prices. Spend a lot of time looking and listening, folks. Traditionally we plinkers have used spring reverb, called so because (get ready for it) - it uses springs. I can get an external Fender reverb unit for $Lots and a vintage one for $LotsMore. I can even get a kit to build one, all tube. It's original, it's tubes, it's cool, but it's another large-ish piece to carry (on my many many gigs) and it does exactly one thing. You can get one of those many Asian knockoffs that do just spring or a variety of reverbs for incredibly cheap.. some even sound good! You can get the Gold Standard Strymons for $OhMyGod. Considering we really only use(d) spring, I can go cheap, provided it sounds good. But there's a part of me that wants to experiment and do Neat Shit. Some of the other pedals have functions that will turn 1 guy playing into a sort of atmospheric etheric mono-tri-theric concert - it's sometimes called shimmer. Be careful, it sounds like crap on cheaper pedals. They have different reverb settings: spring, hall, church, room, bat cave. There are quite a few pedals. My current favorite is the Digitech Polara. It's kinda expensive, but has really great sounds, which came from Lexicon, a Big Player in reverb. It has the added advantage of being very ugly and hiding the control names so you can't see them from more than 1' away. If I use a little more sense and a little less $$, the Electro Harmonix Oceans 11 is a great little box - it has a lot of versatility. Also the Hall of Fame (you load patches by pointing your phone at your pickups). If I come to my senses (sense), a basic, good-sounding unit will suffice. It's unlikely I'll need to perform a 1 man concert. Leave me any recommendations you have in the comments.

UPDATE: got a really great deal on an Oceans 11

If/when  I do some YouTube pedal reviews, I promise these things:

• no downtuning
• no 50s tweed amps or anything no one can afford. 
• Just basic clean tone, with no bloody reverb or distortion.
• no designer guitars - a basic Strat, LP, maybe Tele
• no Eric Johnson riffs - it takes away from the pedal and I can't do them anyway
• no shaking the guitar or wanking the bar to get the last possible vibration out of it
• no right handed guitars, at all, ever
• I swear to you, no bare feet, raw chicken, and more or less no boobies
• no curly cords, lava lamps, or clean areas to film
• content and attitude that will piss off even non-guitarists
• the most sarcasm of any pedal reviewer

Happy Whatever to Y'all!

Tell me what you want for the holidays in the comments.

Noise Eliminators [Guitar Content Only]

These noise killers are misnamed at best.
They should be called 'Signal Killers Between Songs'.

They do absolutely nothing while you're playing.
You set the threshold when you're not playing, to shut the noisy signal down when you're not playing. This is almost essential when you're using really high gain tones and/or single coil pickups. You don't need one if you're really fast with the volume knob or just don't care.

When you stop the song, the noise eliminator stops the signal. The only problem is setting it so it doesn't mute softer passages you play, or riffs that have repeated, fast bits of silence in them.

I don't have one, but I don't have a ton of noise. Paul Barrere (RIP - Little Feat) said he got rid of his single coil Strat noise with noiseless pickups, and he was happy with their tone. It's pretty damn cool discussing guitars with a hero of yours.  Cool dude, friendly person, good player, will be missed.  


Just wanted to clear up the misnomer. They're great for what they do.






In other news, the barrage of emails from Guitar Center continues.
The sale on 'Platinum' guitars features 642 guitars, 10 of which are left handed. They're all between $3,000 and $4,000.  That's platinum alright...  

Meanwhile, in the price drops section, you can find myriad $10,000 Les Pauls, Les Pauls with hideous finishes, and many pointy guitars with EMG pickups. Also a pair of Teyes, for $4,000 and $9,800. Damn.

There's a Peavey Rage.
Rage is what you'll do when you hear it.
I pick on Peavey only because of what they sounded like when I started playing.



The Dallas International Guitar Festival has been rescheduled to September 25-27.  God, I miss guitar shows. I just can't play a guitar with a mask on. It gets in the way of playing with my teeth.



Trainwreck amps don't come up for sale often, but one just did on Reverb.
For the bargain price of $45,000, you get sonic nirvana. As a bonus, it was also Joe Bonamassa's recording and touring amp around 2012. I mention this because it appears I won't be purchasing the amp.

For those of you who haven't, Trainwreck amps were made by Ken Fischer in New Jersey, by hand, each tuned separately for the buyer. There are a minimum of controls on it because it needs no more. It is exquisitely sensitive to touch; you can play lightly and cleanly, then dig in and distort it to hell, without touching the amp. This is the amp I'd have if I could have any amp.. many others say Dumble.
Check YouTube for videos. Notice how the player has his rear pickup set very low, then switches to his front pickup, balls to the wall. There is an Express, a Rocket, and a Liverpool. At very least, the output tubes are different.

Ken Fischer died, so there are a limited number of Trainwrecks available (about 100 made). Trainwreck's successors are Komet and Dr Z. I like the Komets better. They're all pretty expensive. Oddly enough, you can buy kits or assembled versions from Ceriatone for considerably less. I might be going with a kit soon.

It's Fender Mustang Time!

My laptops are out to get me.
I am not making this up.

Last night I did an update on my laptop and something bad happened.  With linux, you sometimes have to wait before bad things become apparent.  I booted up today after work and POOF - it refused to fully boot.  I knew immediately that this was going to be beyond my already pitiful patience level so I left it alone.  Later on I tried again.  I managed to get to a terminal but could not make the wireless work so that was done for the time being.  Strike one.

No problem, I thought.... I'd just get the backup laptop.  The backup laptop is a PITA that never really got much use because the touchpad doesn't play nicely with linux and the processor is a bit anemic.  So the backup laptop booted just fine, thank you, and flatly refused to connect to wireless.  Since I absolutely refuse to get up off the couch for anything short of guitar shopping, sex, or ice cream, I was not going to be able to connect the laptop to an ethernet cable.  Strike two.

It was obviously time to bring out Old Faithful.   Old Faithful is my old original Dell laptop that Marshall the Wonder Cocker tore a few keys from in a mad dash to get onto my lap.  It just kept chugging along, never letting me down.  The only small issue in booting it was that I could not find it.  How does one lose a laptop?  I certainly don't know.  But I will certainly curse my very being for an hour or three at some point down the road.  Strike three.

Good thing I'm the Anti-Sports.

Strike four may soon be provided by my wife's laptop, upon which I'm laying out this semi-rant.  These laptops are doing their level best to stop me from getting online.  Wife's laptop has thus far required about forty minutes of updates, as she hasn't touched it in a while.  But I want you, dear readers, to know that my wife uses a linux laptop with absolutely no direction at all.  This replaced her Windows laptop when it exploded (not a pretty story).  In any case, she gets all her email and surfing done on this laptop and rarely if ever has a question.  Yes, linux can work for you.


Now, speaking of guitar amps, some of my online friends have been going on and on about the new Fender Mustang modeling amplifiers.  Why yes, I do have friends; thanks for asking.

The Mustangs come in about four or five varieties, mostly differing in wattage and size.  They are modeling amps, which means they use chips and software to emulate popular real-world amplifiers.  Unfortunately, it also means no tubes.  We here at ThermionicEmissions have a very strict NO TUBES, NO TONE policy.  Yes, all of my amplifiers use tubes, from the tiny tweed Champ to the mighty Marshall.

My tube snob friends are starting to buy Mustangs and are really impressed by them.  This is most disconcerting.  You may not believe this but guitarists are extremely conservative types.  We like what we like and new things are treated with suspicion (for good reason).  Ever since solid state amplifiers appeared and were roundly dismissed as sterile and having crappy tone, manufacturers have been putting out amps and boxes claiming to have that `tube tone'.  We're kinda sick of the marketing (for good reason).  You might ask yourself how a two hundred dollar amplifier is going to emulate a vintage tube amp worth what you paid for your last car.

Strangely enough, I have been thinking about getting a tiny amp for the living room, where I do a fair amount of playing.  The Fender Mustang I is about ninety-nine dollars at Guitar Center so I went to check one out.  I figured at that price, if it turned on it was almost worth it.  Two months back I was ready to buy one but Guitar Center had none.  Working really quickly, two months later, they had a stack of them so I went and picked one up.

In addition to emulating amplifiers, the Mustang series will connect to your computer and you can play with the settings via software.  The amp comes with Windows software but there is a third party linux program available.  The amp can also record via USB.

It unpacked quickly and came with the power cord, USB cord, quick start manual (in many languages), and CDROM with software.  You also get other software, which I have not yet examined but is probably Windows-only.

The amp is, as my female friends say, cute.  It does twenty watts through an eight inch speaker, which is more than enough for the living room.   As I attend band practice with a fifteen watt Pro Junior tube amp, the wattage is roughly the same.

There is one input, a jack for a footswitch, and five knobs (GAIN, VOLUME, TREBLE, BASS, MASTER).  Fender goofed here, by printing the knob labels above the knobs, where you can't see them unless you're standing over them.

Following the `normal' knobs is a preset knob, a mod knob, and a dly/rev knob.  They're fairly self-explanatory.  There is a headphone out as well as an aux in, a mini usb port and a rocker power switch.

I cannot stress highly enough the amp's first and most important feature: the tuner.  Before doing anything else, tune your damn guitar please.  There are LEDs that indicate which note as well as RED-GREEN-RED LEDs to indicate tuning.  This is a tremendous extra that should almost be mandatory.

Without software, you use the amp like any other amp.  Use the preset knob to get one of eight basic amps, with two extra presets per-model, for a total of twenty four presets.  Tri-color LEDs indicate which set you're using (RED-GREEN-YELLOW).  If you don't know this, you're likely to miss it (I did).

Using the GAIN knob for crunchiness provides an interesting range of clean to dirty tones.  It's best not to judge anything on presets.  Presets are like blinky lights: there entirely for show and have no real world use.  Presets are the PowerPoint of the audio world.

The MOD knob covers a range of modulation-related effects, like chorus, flanger, tremolo, and phaser, among others.  The DLY/REV knob adds delays and a ton of different reverbs.

This amp line could not have been made ten years ago.  Think about the processing involved....

Software control brings more to the table.  I downloaded PLUG for linux and hooked right in.  There is a MIDDLE knob missing on the real amp, which is accessible through the software.  NOTE: if you're using Ubuntu, make sure to pay attention to the README file regarding the UDEV rule or the software won't connect.

There are some additional presets available in PLUG, as well as Major Tweakage.  You can tweeze to your heart's content, then save to the amp or the computer.

I would assume it's much more fancy in the Windows version (FUSE) but I haven't gotten around to firing it up yet, as the Windows computer is nowhere near the amp (and I hate Windows).

TIP: from my friend who is already deep into his higher-wattage Mustang.  Crank the SAG and BIAS controls (only available via software with the Mustang I) on all patches.

The amp seems to play well with different guitars: I used a G&L Legacy and an Historic Reissue Les Paul.  No idea if it prefers left-handed guitars (but I do).

I will add something to this review or post a new one after I get some time to put it through its paces.  It is an impressive little toy and for $99, I can definitely recommend it.  I will sit it next to some of the amps it emulates soon to see how accurate it is.  Make no mistake: I'm a tube snob and have a few really sweet vintage amps.  I don't expect this to duplicate a tweed Deluxe but we'll see how close it can get.