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I understand this is the (or one of the) ultimate TS-808 type pedal. It’s very good, that’s for sure. I’ve finally come around to grasp the subtlty of some of the effects pedals out there, and the Tube Screamer is one of them. That’s still not entirely my thing when it comes to effects, which is a little ironic since I don’t use very much in the way of effects. When I use ‘em I don’t usually want subtle. Truth is almost all of the effects I use these days are strictly to mimic what’s happening on some cover tune the band is doing. Other than that I tend to stick to either nothing or a little delay and maybe chorus. I’ve been getting into compression more too – there are some nice sounds in there.
The Fulldrive is a funny thing. I could almost not use it at all, and I could almost keep it on all the time. I can get crunch without it – although not as easily, and I can play clean with it by backing off on the volume knob of the guitar and playing lighter. Between the Fulldrive and the Amp there is a lot of wiggle room for getting clean to overdriven sounds.
The Boost function could go away on the Fulldrive and I wouldn’t miss it. I always set it, and on rare occasions I’ll kick it in, but not very often. Only those times when volume creep has set in with the band and I don’t have as much reserve volume for a lead as I expected, so I’ll kick it in. Even with the way our band increases volume over the course of the night, I find I rarely need it.
Right now I use this pedal most often for overdrive duties. I swap it with an HBE PowerScreamer from time to time. The HBE sounds similar, but not the same. Just a slightly different flavor. Sometimes I’ll set the pedal board up with both the Fulltone and the HBE, and both together provide quite a bit of boos and gain.
This guitar was total extravagence. I found it used for a real good price. I’d always wanted to replace my Univox Les Paul with a “real” one and I’ve missed my Univox since I lost it (long story). While drooling over Les Paul pics in the catelogs I decided that I liked the idea of a Gary Moore model or the Studio Desert Burst model best. Good combination of appearance and reasonable price. Well, more reasonable than a classic. Let me be clear – no Gibson branded Les Paul is reasonable, at least not a new one. As with Fenders, used Gibsons can be absolutely insanely priced. Anyway, I came across this one and got it for about the same price as my used Strat. Heck, a nice used PRS would’ve cost me what the two of them together cost, right?
This guitar was a beauty in appearance. Desert Burst finish with a nice flame maple top and gold hardware. Sounds great too – like a Les Paul. Pickups are pretty hot, and do the Allman Brothers/Gary moore things quite well. Not as hot as the Carvin though, which is actually probably a good thing.
I ended up selling this guitar. I didn’t have it all that long. I had it set up and everything, but it never got really comfortable for me. Too bad, it was a gorgeous guitar. I did end up getting another, even cheaper Les Paul Studio that I find more comfortable to play.
Another used purchase. I believe highly in used equipment, but you’ve gotta be careful. Turned out this amp had been modded, but I didn’t find out until it crapped out about a year and a half after I bought it. Some poorly placed part shifted and shorted something else out. Luckily Dave from Dave’s Sound in Whippany (awesome guy) was able to restore order and put everything back to stock. Turns out the mod had almost no affect on the sound anyway.
That done, this amp has stayed my main gigging amp for quite a while now. The Blue Angel represents a change from my usual swiss-army approach to musical equipment. It’s a one trick pony. No channel switching here. It does have a unique poweramp switching section that switches it from running 2-6V6 at 18 watts to 4-EL84 tubes at 30 watts, or it will combine them running the complete set at 38 watts. It’s not a footswitchable thing though, not that you’d want to do that.
This is a very un-Mesa sounding amp. A lot of people like to lump brands of amps in a specific box, especially Fender, Marshall and Mesa. There’s good reason for that, but only to a degree. This amp is part of the Rectifier series, but it doesn’t at all sound like what people think of as the Rectifier sound. This is a very (very) Vox AC-30 type of sound. With some variation available.
Strats love this amp. They sound great together. The Les Paul loves this amp too. The Carvin did’t sound as good through this amp. This amp is wonderful at that clean to slightly overdriven sound – it really “sings”. One of the real awakenings for me is that I’ve discovered that passages that I used to play distorted or overdriven often sound so much better with no outboard distortion. Just using the guitar and a heavier attack usually produces the right amount of bite for a crunchy rhythm part, or cutting lead.
I think that’s part of why the Strat works so well with this amp. I find that the Strat’s volume is much more sensitive in the 8-10 range than my other guitars. With the Carvin or Les Paul there is an increase in saturation and crunch, but not a lot of volume difference. With the Strat there’s a definite jump going from 8 to 10, and that is more than enough for a lead boost. You can keep it on 7 or 8 and dig in more to add more bite to chords or notes – very nice.
I still use a Fulltone Fulldrive II additional overdrive, and I add either a second over drive or a Fulltone distortion pedal for more grind.
With this amp I was able to get (for the first time) a lot of the lead sounds of Ritchie Blackmore. I’ve seen him live a number of times and his loud, clean, sustaining sound is one of my favorite live lead tones. He’s always had at least a couple of Marshall stacks (purportedly 200 watt Marshall Majors) behind him, so replicating that with a 1×12 seemed near impossible. I’ve since heard stories of him using a JTM45 and a Vox AC30, so who knows. All I know is that with some settings the Blue Angel and the Strat on the neck pup get really close and sounds real nice.
Two things I don’t like so much about the Blue Angel 1) like many Mesa’s the “Mid” control acts as a gain control in addition to a mid EQ. I’m used to mid being mid. I’ve gotten used to it, but I’d still prefer it to be a more typical mid control. 2) the amp is complicated by the whole multi-power amp section thing. I use it primarily in the combined 38 watt mode because I get the most clean headroom that way for playing out. Sometimes in the basement I use the 6V6 mode because it overdrives at a lower volume and sounds so sweet. I would prefer a simpler arrangement since my theory is the more features and things there are, the more things there are that can (and will) break.
My first shot at getting a replacement for my Peavey Triumph. I found an HRD (40 watt 1×12) for a great price locally and jumped on it. I gigged with it (alternating with the Peavey) for about a year before finally selling it to the singer in my band. I still see and hear the amp regularly.
My take on the Hot Rod Deluxe: It’s a nice amp, with a pretty good clean sound. I liked the clean sound better than the Peavey at low to mid volumes. Reverb sounded good to me, but I’m not a big user. The drive and more drive channels were all but useless to me. It was nearly impossible for me to get a good sound out of them. That was ok. I tried the amp with a number of preamps and overdrives. Fulldrive Fulltone II, Chandler Tube Driver, Tech 21 GT2…Those guys did a fine job of dirtying up the HRD.
The two problems I found were 1) when you need a “little more” clean volume, it’s just not there. At outdoor gigs and louder indoor jobs where things get cranking a little more than they probably should – the clean sound went out the window. The dirtier sound wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t the strong point of the amp either. Not like an old cranked deluxe reverb or anything. The second problem 2) was that overall the amp does not seem very well built. It may just be me, but my peavey (only about 10 more watts) outweights the Fender by a *lot*. Part of it is the big honking speaker magnet, but it’s also a much more solid cabinet, and what appears to be more solid components. I can’t tell you how many times the tubes in the HRD loosened up on the way to the job. I never had that happen with any other amp. To this day the singer will fire the HRD up at a gig and every so often it wacks out. It’s almost always a loose tube. Quick shut it down re-seat them all and fire it back up. There hasn’t been anthing seriously wrong, just my feeling that something could go wrong at any moment. I’m way too paranoid for that!
Update! – While loading out from a gig, this amp took a hellacious tumble down a flight of concrete stairs. It was a terrible sight. The remarkable thing is that other than some minor bumps and bruises, the amp performed perfectly. No problems whatsoever. Unbelievable. I was sure a fall like that would destroy this amp, but it did no serious damage at all. High marks for that. To this day the tubes still seem to loosen up on their own though.
I finally bought one of my dream guitars – and a very reasonable one at that. I had always wanted a Strat strictly from an appearance standpoint – either Candy Apple Red with a Maple finger board, or Natural Ash with a Maple fingerboard. Maybe it’s just me, but the newer Candy Apple Strats don’t seem to have the same vibrant color I remember. And the older ones are insanely priced. Strat prices definitely suffered (and continue to suffer to a degree) from the vintage craze of a few years back. Anyway, I found a great used natural ash strat.
I love Strats for much the same reason I liked the old VW Beetle – they’re basic and parts are readily available and easy to replace. And they’re nearly indestructable! What a deal. The problem for me is that they are way overpriced for what you get – especially if you buy the name brand: “Fender”. Of course, I wanted a Fender American Strat. I wanted to have the “real” thing, after all.
Strats are very comfortable to play – the 25.5″ scale and neck shape work well together. The particular model I got had the two-point trem, but it was blocked with a rosewood block ala Eric Clapton (from what I read at least). I removed the block at one point and set up the trem, but I ended up blocking it again. I’ve really gotten away from using the trem.
There are a few weaknesses in Strats in my mind: Pickups are a biggie. Stock strats just aren’t that flexible. I know, I know, they’ve been used for all sorts of music, but I wasn’t able to get my sound out of it. And the original pickups are noisy. Yes, that’s to be expected, but I had been completely spoiled by humbuckers over the years – they’re dead quiet. First thing I did was get a set of Kinman pickups, which were purported to be among the best. They are outstanding. Huge difference from the originals. I opted for the AvN Blues set, which is a bit hotter than stock. Sound great, completely noiseless.
Still…something was missing…It’s that darned bridge pickup. I just couldn’t get it to really “dig in” like I needed to on a solo. I could plug in my Les Paul or my Carvin and, wow, there it was! But not on the strat. And I really was hoping to make the strat my one-size-fits-all guitar. Soo…First I popped in a tele pickup in the bridge. Not so great by itself (not as good as a real tele), but wait…if I re-wire the switch to get that neck-bridge combination..yes! That’s nice! But still not it. Sooo…swap the bridge for a Seymour Duncan Little ’59. Crap. Sounded awful. Something wrong with the pickup? Maybe. I didn’t care to try that type again. Swapped for a Hot Rails…not bad. Not as rich and full sounding as I’d like, but it certainly is hot. And it drives the amp pretty well. Still not like the Carvin or Les Paul, but much better than before. So, that’s what I stuck with.
My favorite mod that I did on the strat (and have done on every strat I’ve owned since) is to swap the standard 5-way switch for a “mega switch” from Stew-Mac. I wire is so the following pickup combinations are available: Neck, Neck-Middle, Neck-Bridge, Middle-Bridge, Bridge. That has become my favorite Strat switching scheme, and the neck-bridge combo is probably my most used position. Sorta tele-ish, sorta Gretsch-ish, some jangle with some fullness. Real nice even with the Hot Rails in there. And the Hot Rails lets me get into that Richie Sambora/EVH territory a little when needed too. Bonus.
Probably what I love most about Strat-type guitars is that everything is removable. Shim the neck? No problem! Adjust the bridge? Ok! Adjust the truss rod? No problem! New pickups? Easy. New pots and a switch? Sure! I have no fear! Set necks…well…I’ll swap electronics and tuners, but I’m not so certain about adjusting the neck and all properly. My own paranoia.
Eventually I decided that I liked my home assembled strat better than the “real deal” Fender American. I returned the American to it’s original state – original pickups and switching and I sold it. The nice thing about the name brands is that they hold their value – and sometimes even increase over time. I know my home made won’t, but I had to do in favor of the guitar I thought played and sounded better.
Another “didn’t expect to use it as much as I did” story. I bought this in a down-sizing spree when I sold the 100 watt Carvin and looked for something smaller. I was hesitant to buy Peavey, even though I hadn’t had a bad experience with them. I can’t say how many dozens of amps I tried. The nice thing was that I wasn’t in a hurry. I took months. I first heard about this model from a local gigging musician who said he liked it in contrast to his Marshall and that he liked the high gain sound. I was hoping for the usual – a one-size-fits-all-swiss-army-knife type of do it all amp. Funny how that approach almost never works. Still, it’s what I wanted. I wasn’t planning on using it to play out, I just wanted something with a pretty good clean and a nice drive that I could record at home with.
The PAG 60 is a three channel amp with 2 6L6 tubes and a number of 12AX7s in the preamp. The reverb sounds good for my purposes – which is to say I keep it on all the time, but quite low. No Dick Dale sounds here. While it is set up as a three channel amp (normal, crunch, and lead), the crunch and lead channels share EQ, which can be problematic at times.
I’ve heard complaints about the sound quality of the Triumph series of amps, but for me this one worked out well. Maybe I was lucky with the tubes? When I got it serviced at one point, the tech said the two power tubes were probably about half the value of the amp! Either way, the amp was flexible and very usable. This amp and the Carvin guitar can do Santana all day long, as well as get close to bunches of other sounds. I liked the Carvin best with this amp. My Strat didn’tdrive this amp as hard as it likes to be driven. My Les Paul sounded good with it too. The PAG 60 is very much in the Mesa-Boogie Mark vein.
The biggest down side of the amp is that it can be awfully hard balancing the volume levels of the three channels when playing out. The normal channel has a gain control which increases volume, but also increase “dirt” somewhat, although it never gets’ really dirty. It works quite well I think. Both crunch and lead channels have a “pre” and “post” control. In both channels setting the “pre” high and the “post” lower results in increased noise and distortion. I assume this is all 12AX7 preamp distortion, and it can get quite irritating at certain levels. The amp has one master volume and that’s where the trouble lies. In theory you should be able to set your three channels the way you like and then use the master to set the overall volume – perfect to go from bedroom, to practice, to gig, right? Nope. Adjusting the master completely changes everything else. All the other levels need to be reset when the master is changed. I assume this has to do with the interaction of the preamp and poweramp sections, and how the tubes react at different volumes.
Still, with a little effort the sound can be quite good I think. While it is a fairly loud amp, it’s actual volume seems to stop increasing with the master at about 12 o’clock (half way). After that the sound becomes more saturated, which can sound really good on the clean channel, but can get quite hissy and noisy, especially on the lead channel.
Overall, this amp is a solid choice for a gigging cover band or other situation where you need multiple sounds in a compact (but heavy!) package. For my purposes it proved very reliable, and the great thing is that they go for absolute bargain prices. They have none of the pseudo-vintage cache of the Peavey Classic 30 or 50 (which are both also great bang-for-the-buck amps), and they were never used by anyone famous as far as I know.
Peavey stopped making these a while back, and they came out with the Peavey “Ultra” series, which seemed to be nearly identical in operation to the Triumph PAG 60. The sound of the newer amps was definitely darker – perhaps bowing to the folks that want more of a “rectifier” sound, or maybe just newer amps with different tubes? The “Ultra” series was dropped fairly quickly, so I guess they never sold that well.
I sold the Peavey and replaced it with a used Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, which I only used for a short time, replacing that with a Mesa Blue Angel.
I originally bought this guitar as a knock-around beach guitar, but ended up getting much more use out of it than I ever expected. I really wanted a Guild acoustic. I had an old mahogany bodied student sized Guild that I loved, that got completely ruined in a drive out west. Shortly later I fell in love with a Guild that a friend from Denver had – a wonderful big bodied guitar with an arched maple back…that guitar projected, but had a great balance and was beautiful too. Anyway…
I went to 48th Street in New York City to check out guitars, and while there I found two Guilds that I loved. Again, one was an arched maple-back guitar with a cutaway and electronics, and the other was almost identical, but was an all mahogany body. I liked the classy look of the maple guitar, but I liked the mellowed sound of the mahogany. Unfortuntely, they were both way more than I wanted to spend (story of my life), and neither was a “knock-around” guitar. They commanded respect and needed to be treated well, not dragged around on the beach. Soooo…hello Takamine!
While on 48th Steet I took the opportunity to try out lots of guitars (including a few wonderful Les Pauls). In the end the Takamine I picked out spoke to me the best of the acoustics that I could afford. As usual, I knew very little other than what I’d read about acoustic guitars. I went by my hands and by my ears. It turned out what I liked was a laminated top guitar with a maple sides and back and maple neck with a rosewood fretboard. I still love playing that guitar. I’m not afraid to hurt it, but it still looks great. It’s held up very well considering the abuse it has taken.
The great thing is that I had expected to use it around the house mostly, but after not playing in a band for a while I hooked up with a co-worker who also sang and played guitar. After a short while of doing Jimmy Buffet and Eagles tunes we decided to give the Coffee House circuit a go, and ended up playing twice or three times weekly for nearly three years! Just by dumb luck my guitar ended up being the perfect compliment to my partner’s guitar. He had a Solid top Takamine with solid rosewood back and sides. Really a much smoother and better balanced guitar. His primarily rythm sound filled in perfectly against the fills that I did on this guitar. The maple provided a brighter sound with more cut and the two guitars worked very well together.
The Tak is still the only real flat top acoustic I own, and I use it often.
I was so happy with my DC150 that I considered, and eventually bought, a Carvin X100B 100 watt head to replace my poor old Peavey. For me this was a monster. 4 – 6L6 power tubes, and a host of 12AX7 preamp tubes. The clean sound was outstanding, and a huge jump up from the Peavey. The sound leaped out of the speakers. The Carvin had a footswitch for getting crunchy sounds, and it always did well for me. The one drawback with this amp was that it was too damn big! Too powerful, that is. In all the time I owned it I don’t recall ever turning the volume up past “3″ other than to just blow it out once in a while. That just doesn’t get to where the meaty good tube amp sounds are usually. The amp had a switch that cut the power to half and quarter, but that made the clean sound suffer significantly. In retrospect I probably should have bought the 50 watt version of the amp, but, well, you know, how would I have been able to play Madison Square Garden?!?
I used the amp through a variety of speaker cabs over the years, including a 2×12, a 4×12 and a pair of 4×12′s. I sold it when I thought my band days were pretty much over, and replaced it with a small Peavey Triumph 1×12 combo.
Good Luck Struck! I won this guitar from Guitar Player Magazine a year or so after buying the Carvin DC150. That was so cool. It was billed as being worth $1200, and arrived with a beautiful fusia/pinkish-red metallic finish with a white binding (painted I think). The carved arch-top body and through-neck were mahogany as far as I could tell, and it had an ebony fretboard with sharkfin inlays. It had a Kahler Pro trem installed, and who knows what kind of pickups.
The disappointment was that when it arrived it was in awful shape. It was unplayable due to buzzing etc, and one of the pickups was dead. I talked to the folks at Robin, but they didn’t seem concerned and were not at all helpful. I suppose they were thinking “Whadda ya want for free, kid?” So…I took it to Doctor Bob, who did a wonderful job maintaining my Carvin, and he set it right. He also added some switching options. The guitar came with a S-S-H configuration and he added push-pull switches to the volume and tone controls so I could split the humbucker and run it out of phase. As with the Carvin, I never really found a use for this. It just sounded good at the time to have more options.
The Robin was a very comfortable guitar to play, although I never got used to the pointy reverse headstock. It also had a graphite nut and Bob suggested I didn’t need the locking nut, so eventually I removed it. He was right. A properly setup trem and guitar with a graphite nut and good tuners doesn’t really need the locking nut. Even heavy trem use didn’t throw that guitar out of tune.
The Robin did a nice job pulling off strat sounds in the neck position and the neck-middle position. I was never happy with the bridge pickup. I swapped it out for a Carvin, but still no good. This guitar was also a bitch to set up properly. I lost contact with Doctor Bob after he moved at one point and took the Robin to several different people at various times, but never with very satisfactory results.
I always expected the Robin would eventually become my main guitar because it was so nice to play, but that never happened. Sound-wise it never compared to the Carvin, so I carried it as a backup for years and eventually sold it. In my research prior to selling it I talked to the folks at Robin again (who were very helpful this time) and discovered that the guitar was not actually made by Robin in Texas as I had assumed. It was one of a series of guitars that were built for Robin in Japan. Still, it was a gorgeous guitar that was fun to play.
I decided to semi-retire my Univox, and in 1985 or 86, after much reading and searching and trying out, went with a Carvin DC150. It had all the features I was looking for (plus), and was pretty reasonable. Maple set neck, ebony fretboard, Kahler Pro locking trem, dual humbuckers, and that cool Les Paul Jr. double-cutaway shape that I’ve always liked.
This guitar was a real surprise when I received it. I had high expectations (it was the most I’d ever spent on a guitar after all), but out of the box it was setup incredibly well. Not like most of the partially or poorly setup guitars in area shops. It was in tune with great intonation and incredibly low action with no buzz at all – perfect, really. The Carvin is a machine. It is precise, very heavy for it’s small size, very punchy and bright for a guitar with humbuckers (probably due to the hard maple body?), and it cuts through the mix extremely well. It prefers high gain amps. This guy and a reasonably good high gain amp nail the Santana sound. To this day the guitar does not go out of tune unless I de-tune it. As long as it gets played reasonably regularly and the strings are in halfway decent shape it stays in tune. This guitar has been incredibly stable.
The Carvin was semi-retired a few years ago. I decided the Strat was more suited to the music we were doing and the smokey bars we were playing. The nice thing about a strat is that if something breaks, you unbolt it and put a new one on. Not so with a set neck guitar.
The downsides…As I said, the guitar is an absolute machine, but it’s sound can be characterized as somewhat “soul-less”. It’s very articulate and not at all muddy, and because of that it sometimes lacks character and a voice of it’s own. Carvin guitars of this era were advertised as being able to cover a wide range of sounds, and it certainly can. How many are really good sounds is another story. The humbucking sounds are all excellent in my opinion. I never swapped the pickups because they’ve always done what I’ve wanted them to do: The bridge is hot and can drive an amp well; the neck is much rounder and fuller and the two pickups balance well. The guitar has switches for splitting the pickups and running them out of phase as well. I use those once in a while, but not for long. I have never used anything other than the standard three pickup positions when playing live. The split positions sound weak and nasally in comparison to the standard full humbucker. This is comparable to just about every guitar I’ve played with split humbuckers. It’s not that they sound bad, just that they don’t sound as good. And they don’t really pull off the Strat sound as some would have you believe.
There were a couple of construction issues that turned up over time. First the truss rod was set very close to one end which meant that after a number of years and many setups and adjustments, the truss rod reached its end. It cannot be adjusted any further. Fortunately, the neck has been rock-solid and it hasn’t been a problem, but really the truss rod should have more room to adjust.
The second is more of a finishing issue. My guitar is plain white, and after a few years the neck joint and body joint started to become more visible, just slightly under the paint. If you look at older set neck guitars with solid finishes you’ll see it’s very common. The uncommon thing is that at the bottom of the body near the strap button a dark “crack” appeared. I had Doctor Bob (guitar tech who had done all the setups) check it out and it was only a finish crack with whatever was underneath starting to show through. In the years since the crack has not gotten any bigger, and it never had any affect that I could tell, but it’s a cosmetic flaw that really shouldn’t be there.
The Carvin is a very ’80′s sounding guitar and takes well to effects. It’s relatively high output compared to most other guitars and that is a large part of it’s signature. Very easy to get squeals and harmonics, and even with the Kahler trem it has outstanding sustain.
I read that Carvin started producing the DC150 again…that model seems to have disappeared from their catalogue now. That was a much different guitar, and is most likely not at all like the older model I have. Carvin guitars have changed significantly since then. I have had good experiences with them though and wouldn’t hesitate to at least try one of their models out.