Everyone should have this pedal. This is one of the swiss-army-knife boxes that does its job really well. It’s my favorite direct to tape box, and I’ve used it to give me a live high gain sound with the Blue Angel as well. Simple settings, good sounds, reasonable price. What more could you want?
You could go for the original direct box (GT1?), but I didn’t like the fact that it used dip switches, and there were too many choices for me. It had sounds I like, and it certainly has more than the GT2, but I wanted simpler operation and fewer choices. It cuts down on fiddling time, and allows me to get to playing.
After a number of gigs with both the Keeley Seeing Eye DS-1 and the GT2, the GT2 is winning for me. To my ear the Keeley has a very narrow spot that works well with the Blue Angle, and the rest doesn’t sound all that great. The GT2 has a much wider, more useful range. Live, I’m really only looking for something in the Ritchie Sambora/Eddie Van Halen/whoever else high-gain neighborhood, and this guy does that well. High gain, lots of harmonics, easy feedback if needed and it sounds good. Perfect for the 3 or 4 songs I use it for in a night.
I got this guy ages ago in my ongoing search for a decent direct to tape sound. It helped with that, but wasn’t ideal, but I’ve used it a good number of times as a preamp for playing live. I built a small two button footswitch with leds so I can turn it on and click on the boost when playing live. I liked using this unit live with the Fender HRD amp.
This box is a little temperamental for me. I’ve had a handful of nights where the thing sounds incredible, but the majority of the time it sounds just ok. I haven’t been very good about monitoring the conditions, so I don’t know what it is that makes it great sometimes. I keep playing with it, although since the Fulldrive I don’t use it for the lighter overdrive sounds, and I no longer bring it with me on jobs.
At higher gain settings it can get quite buzzy if you’re not careful with the bias control.
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.