My rig is a bit of a disaster right now. Not sure I could assemble it for a group photo without having to spend an hour or two moving stuff around. The gist of it is these guitars (sold the Rectoverb combo awhile ago) Into these amps Updated pedalboard This part is a work in progress (pending me making more money)
Back of room: Front of room: Made a couple of insignificant changes to the room since taking the pics. A 4th amp is coming this week. It’ll need a cab. “Where are the guitars, Les?” “The guitars don’t like being in the basement. Can’t say I blame ‘em.”
Currently in the process of drawing out a plan for a studio. Got to get some panels and some monitors too
Since the pic was taken, I added bass traps and diffusers to the rear wall behind the amps. I have some suggestions you may already know about... The most important acoustical treatment will be trapping bass in the corners and absorbing “first reflections” along the side wall so that imaging is solid, and phase cancellations are minimized at the monitoring position. My room is over 30 feet long, so the back wall was less problematic. However, treating the back wall resulted in measurable improvement. After 30 years in the ad music biz (I go back to tape machines and big consoles, now everything is “in the box”), I’ve tried lots of acoustical products. Foam is measurably hopeless. It can’t trap problematic low frequencies, so I wouldn’t use it for bass trapping. It’s ok for the side wall reflections, but there are better choices that are only a little more expensive. I’ve had great luck with ASC Tube traps, and had them in my old studio, but they’ve become extremely expensive, and you need a lot of them. In the pics you see RealTraps, that are certainly as effective, are very well built, and because they cover more area, you need to buy less stuff. I’ll be re-doing my room this summer - it’s always a work-in-progress!
Well... I know it’s been a day since I posted the above pics, but I think the Ground Control and GCX are out. As cool as it was to be able to control everything, once I started actually running through sets I found I kept treating it like a pedalboard. I’m not a big effects user, but I appreciated being able to switch to my lead channel, turn on my delay and my solo boost with one tap, then turn it all off with a second touch. Once I got past the “this GCX thing has eight loops and I can plug in every pedal I own” phase and cut out the unnecessary crap I found i only had a couple pedals left. Then I began thinking it was a bit dumb building a rack to mount a switcher that was controlling two pedals. The last nail in the coffin was an Echoplex delay I picked up today. It sounded great in the loop, but once I ran it into the front end of one amp it was game over. Man, is that ever a killer sound. I thought the delay interacting with a high gain lead channel would produce a lot of mud, but it actually tucks in underneath the dry tone and just thickens things without getting in the way, then pops out when I stop playing. Super dynamic. Anyway, updated pedalboard (haven’t mounted them yet... still finalizing the details) And for those who actually pay attention to the crap I write, I got my CE-22 back today. Converted to 3 way and had a JB and Jazz installed. Sounds killer.
Echoplexes are “front of amp” things for me, too. I use the Fulltone Tube Tape Echo, designed with input from Mike Battle, who designed the original machines. I do wish that Fulltone had updated the switch that initiates the tape transport, but I guess that the spring-loaded gizmo is part of the charm. I love tape echo; it’s definitely a special sound.
Gig rig for big shows(Currently an MT15 is in place of the Archon): If we play smaller places, I just have the head and 4x12.
I know where you’re coming from. Here’s a clip I did about ten years ago. The TTE is an awesome piece of kit. The thing I like about the MXR is that it does the thing where the first repeat hits hard, then the rest taper off in volume rather quickly. That was something I could never get the Strymon to do. Plus... it’s really small and I won’t cry if it gets broken. Edit: found this old pic from that era. Wah, vibe, dirt, delay. Funny how some things just never change.
