Gear Thread - Pics
- Thread starter Angel
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My low budget guitar collection has grown again!
I bought a Westfield E1000 Strat on the bay for £65 delivered just so I could have a little project to do. It had pretty nasty pick-ups that had 'super 500' printed on the covers and sounded quite lifeless. The scratchplate was also a bit nasty and rough around the edges. The neck which is a maple fretboard is not lacquered at all and is super smooth and feels nice, to me. The neck needed the truss rod loosened ever so slightly and then I could bring the string action down to a nice height. The spring retainer under the rear back cover was screwed right in!!! so the trem did not work (guitar came without a tremolo arm anyway) so I loosened that off to bring the tremolo to a nice floating position. I gave the frets a light rub down with some wire wool to make them smooth. I fitted a set of Wilkinson vintage single coil pick-ups as they are only £23 a set and sound so much better then the rubbish it had from the factory. I bought a black pearl scratchplate and tremolo plate. and ended up with a nice sounding strat that plays nicely and looks quite good too.
Next to my A.ria Pro II Super Grade PE Inspire (stunning guitar I got for £140)
I bought a Westfield E1000 Strat on the bay for £65 delivered just so I could have a little project to do. It had pretty nasty pick-ups that had 'super 500' printed on the covers and sounded quite lifeless. The scratchplate was also a bit nasty and rough around the edges. The neck which is a maple fretboard is not lacquered at all and is super smooth and feels nice, to me. The neck needed the truss rod loosened ever so slightly and then I could bring the string action down to a nice height. The spring retainer under the rear back cover was screwed right in!!! so the trem did not work (guitar came without a tremolo arm anyway) so I loosened that off to bring the tremolo to a nice floating position. I gave the frets a light rub down with some wire wool to make them smooth. I fitted a set of Wilkinson vintage single coil pick-ups as they are only £23 a set and sound so much better then the rubbish it had from the factory. I bought a black pearl scratchplate and tremolo plate. and ended up with a nice sounding strat that plays nicely and looks quite good too.
Next to my A.ria Pro II Super Grade PE Inspire (stunning guitar I got for £140)
Because we love music...
Pioneer by Mark_Jennings, on Flickr
Absolutely loving it, so much fun to play about with!
Pioneer by Mark_Jennings, on Flickr
Absolutely loving it, so much fun to play about with!
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This is my weapon of choice. ESP Ltd M-1000FM. Have it a good few year no tbh and don't play it as much as I should anymore.
Caporegime
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Buy 1 tube amp and the end! 
Spec -
* foot switchable 3 channel all tube amplifier with effects loop
* EL84 class-A cathode biased power amp with EZ81 tube rectifier delivers 18 watts
* built in power attenuator lets you scale down the power and headroom from 18, 5 to 1 watt.
* vintage and Modern modes
* clean channel with volume and tone controls plus a bright switch
* overdrive channels share the usual bass, mid, treble controls as well as a 3 position voicing/gain switch covering 60's, 70's and 80's gain and tonal characteristics. A single gain control sets the overall gain for the crunch and solo channel while the crunch preset gain control on the back panel lets you dial in the gain difference between the two overdrives.
* 16, 8 and 4 ohm speaker outputs
Running through a front ported Bogner cube with a Celestion Vintage 30 at 16ohms
Spec -
* foot switchable 3 channel all tube amplifier with effects loop
* EL84 class-A cathode biased power amp with EZ81 tube rectifier delivers 18 watts
* built in power attenuator lets you scale down the power and headroom from 18, 5 to 1 watt.
* vintage and Modern modes
* clean channel with volume and tone controls plus a bright switch
* overdrive channels share the usual bass, mid, treble controls as well as a 3 position voicing/gain switch covering 60's, 70's and 80's gain and tonal characteristics. A single gain control sets the overall gain for the crunch and solo channel while the crunch preset gain control on the back panel lets you dial in the gain difference between the two overdrives.
* 16, 8 and 4 ohm speaker outputs
Running through a front ported Bogner cube with a Celestion Vintage 30 at 16ohms
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Soldato
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Very nice mate, can you play yet though...
Caporegime
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Very nice mate, can you play yet though...
I can noodle and play sections...not an entire song though, I get too impatient
BigSky through that sounds utterly ridiculous though.
Soldato
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I can noodle and play sections...not an entire song though, I get too impatient
BigSky through that sounds utterly ridiculous though.
Cool, but crazy money.... Its a balance as you could buy a fender blues jr, Marshall jcm and vox ac30 for the same money but then you have to find the space.
I really must post an update with some of my gear as I have finished another one of my latest guitars but my camera phone won't do it justice. Got 4 more in build too.
About to embark on converting one of my amps from a combo to head and cab as well.
Caporegime
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Yeah, it's not cheap, but I thought long and hard between size, power (scaling), portability, versatility and features. There are lots of nice amps for less but I don't have a space for most of them. This is relatively small and it's a Bogner to boot!
Plus, you only live once and all that and how many people played through a Bogner with a PRS? Seriously though, I looked and tried and demoed quite a few, even dropped by Andertons one time as well (their stock of the nicer stuff is a bit limited, didn’t even have any Single Cut PRS in stock). I waited a long time for this and whilst I was waiting I was offered a Shiva ! Bogner was having trouble with the aluminium chassis in manufacturing and their lead soldering guy died in a car accident, and they also launched the Helios a few months back which is hand wired so they literally stopped production for the Atma for a few months.
Anyway, during the wait GutiarGuitar had a sale on the old Mesa end of line stuff that looked good, or could've picked up a TA15 for under £500 secondhand (which is silly money still for a Mesa compared to the US), or a 3W Carr amp, or many of the Marshall 1W reissues, basically 95% amps on the market for less than the Atma/Cube combo. Hell, I even saw a secondhand Tone King Imperial combo or a Two Rock for less! I don't regret it though, in fact, I am loving it, this amp can really do it all, can get Marshall tones to even shades of Fender cleans (there is a bright and dark switch for the clean channel). The dark horse was the Victory V30…on paper that has very similar spec to this and made by the guy who was at Cornford but the user reviews of the V30 has been terrible and apparently Peach Guitar has a 90% return rate !!! (or even 100% depending who you believe). I thought about getting a Zilla cab too to keep the cost down but wanted a matching cab so that side is extravagant, no question there.
I guess there is only 1 thing left, a pedal board !
Where do you live? I'd come and take some piccies!
Plus, you only live once and all that and how many people played through a Bogner with a PRS?
Seriously though, I looked and tried and demoed quite a few, even dropped by Andertons one time as well (their stock of the nicer stuff is a bit limited, didn’t even have any Single Cut PRS in stock). I waited a long time for this and whilst I was waiting I was offered a Shiva ! Bogner was having trouble with the aluminium chassis in manufacturing and their lead soldering guy died in a car accident, and they also launched the Helios a few months back which is hand wired so they literally stopped production for the Atma for a few months.Anyway, during the wait GutiarGuitar had a sale on the old Mesa end of line stuff that looked good, or could've picked up a TA15 for under £500 secondhand (which is silly money still for a Mesa compared to the US), or a 3W Carr amp, or many of the Marshall 1W reissues, basically 95% amps on the market for less than the Atma/Cube combo. Hell, I even saw a secondhand Tone King Imperial combo or a Two Rock for less! I don't regret it though, in fact, I am loving it, this amp can really do it all, can get Marshall tones to even shades of Fender cleans (there is a bright and dark switch for the clean channel). The dark horse was the Victory V30…on paper that has very similar spec to this and made by the guy who was at Cornford but the user reviews of the V30 has been terrible and apparently Peach Guitar has a 90% return rate !!! (or even 100% depending who you believe). I thought about getting a Zilla cab too to keep the cost down but wanted a matching cab so that side is extravagant, no question there.
I guess there is only 1 thing left, a pedal board !
Where do you live? I'd come and take some piccies!
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Soldato
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I have an old Epiphone Les Paul with a Seymour Duncan pup in the bridge, but I rarely ever plug the thing in. I figure I'll get into the business of proper amps (though I have a Laney class A valve amp) once I can play properly.
Anybody into gypsy jazz?
How long you been playing Raymond? I think I saw your 'spec me' threads not long ago? Nice kit. After seeing your post in here though, I'm slightly disappointed you didn't go for a Mesa Boogie. They are absolutely awesome, and they look FAT.
Anybody into gypsy jazz?
How long you been playing Raymond? I think I saw your 'spec me' threads not long ago? Nice kit. After seeing your post in here though, I'm slightly disappointed you didn't go for a Mesa Boogie. They are absolutely awesome, and they look FAT.
Caporegime
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I thought about a Mesa Boogie, I looked into the TA15 (No FX loop), I looked in the Express 5:50+ and 5:25+ (both are too loud, 5W is way loud at home use), I looked into the TA30, it's £300 more than the Atma…although I could've gotten it I guess if I wanted to, I looked into the Mini Rec, or the Dual Rec, even the Lonestar. They are awesome amps but the voicing of the Atma, with the combination of the small size, the features – 1/5/18w, that ultimately drew me to it.
The one thing I really dislike about Mesa Boogie though, their UK pricing is extortionate compare to the US, it is more so than most other brands, I feel like I am being ripped off even buying second hand. Bogner don't seem to have the same percentage price disparity.
Although I looked at Mesa, I never really seriously considered buying them since I wanted a low wattage amp first, something that also comes with a head/cab as opposed to combo. So 1w with a higher watt scaling option, small lunchbox size, FX loop. There are very few of these around. The Marshall 50th Anniversary for the 90/2000's version tick these boxes but they are rare and actually expensive for what they are. The new Victory V30 ticks the boxes but user feedback of that is awful! There are also the Orange amps like Tiny Terror, the Egnator tweaker, Blackstar HT-1R and HT-5 as well. Blues Jnr. Lots and lots.
I don't claim to be an expert on amps, far from it but I do love mine and how it sounds, that's the most important thing really.
I could say I have been playing for 6 months but truth been told, not much this summer since the wedding season kicked off. Will pick it up again soon, have the winter to practice !
The one thing I really dislike about Mesa Boogie though, their UK pricing is extortionate compare to the US, it is more so than most other brands, I feel like I am being ripped off even buying second hand. Bogner don't seem to have the same percentage price disparity.
Although I looked at Mesa, I never really seriously considered buying them since I wanted a low wattage amp first, something that also comes with a head/cab as opposed to combo. So 1w with a higher watt scaling option, small lunchbox size, FX loop. There are very few of these around. The Marshall 50th Anniversary for the 90/2000's version tick these boxes but they are rare and actually expensive for what they are. The new Victory V30 ticks the boxes but user feedback of that is awful! There are also the Orange amps like Tiny Terror, the Egnator tweaker, Blackstar HT-1R and HT-5 as well. Blues Jnr. Lots and lots.
I don't claim to be an expert on amps, far from it but I do love mine and how it sounds, that's the most important thing really.
I could say I have been playing for 6 months but truth been told, not much this summer since the wedding season kicked off. Will pick it up again soon, have the winter to practice !
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Just a rubbish phone picture, but...
Always wanted a Jag, but they tended to be out of my price range. This thing is lovely, though, and sounds really good too. Bridge is going to be swapped out for the Mustang one ASAP, however.
Always wanted a Jag, but they tended to be out of my price range. This thing is lovely, though, and sounds really good too. Bridge is going to be swapped out for the Mustang one ASAP, however.
Soldato
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Soldato
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Hey guys, got a new drum kit a weeks ago! It's already been on tour but not really had the chance to take any decent photos; these were taken by my Galaxy PotatNote 3 at rehearsal (terrible lighting)- I will endeavour to get some good shots soon. Here are all the juicy details:
Tama Starclassic Performer Birch/Bubinga in Crystal Blue Burst (hyperdrive config)
10"x6.5", 12"x7", 14"x12", 16"x14", 22"x20" and 13"x6" matching snare.
All the cymbals (most of them repaired!), hardware, pedals and other accessories were already owned. I got a really great deal from a lad in Cumbria; he was advertising them on Facebook and I managed to strike a deal with him. I drove up to Cumbria early on a Sunday morning and came back the same day. Even got a cup of tea and some lunch It really is a beautiful drum kit (these pictures do not do it justice in the slightest) and sounds absolutely stunning.
This one was taken by our guitarists uncle during soundcheck at a Bristol gig last Friday. It's got far more clarity but still doesn't show off the finish to its fullest IMO.
Hope you like!
Tama Starclassic Performer Birch/Bubinga in Crystal Blue Burst (hyperdrive config)
10"x6.5", 12"x7", 14"x12", 16"x14", 22"x20" and 13"x6" matching snare.
All the cymbals (most of them repaired!), hardware, pedals and other accessories were already owned. I got a really great deal from a lad in Cumbria; he was advertising them on Facebook and I managed to strike a deal with him. I drove up to Cumbria early on a Sunday morning and came back the same day. Even got a cup of tea and some lunch
It really is a beautiful drum kit (these pictures do not do it justice in the slightest) and sounds absolutely stunning.
This one was taken by our guitarists uncle during soundcheck at a Bristol gig last Friday. It's got far more clarity but still doesn't show off the finish to its fullest IMO.
Hope you like!