New Guitar/Amp

Ok here goes

The first thing I tried was the Deluxe Strat plugged into the Blues Junior Tweed, first impression were....meh to be perfectly honest, it had a gorgeous neck but seemed to lack a bit of that punch Strat twang if you know what I mean, it felt lovely to play but didn't blow me away soundwise so I decided to try a few different standard Strats, after about three of those that sounded beautiful but didn't feel as nice as the Deluxe I hit on one that was this colour:

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/21432

Ok pretentious muso bit coming up:

I was feeling a little deflated at this point and was convinced I'd have to go travelling from shop to shop, having tried a few that felt crap I didn't hold out much hope, BUT I have to say this guitar spoke to me, It's colour was inoffensive but by this point it could have been pink and I wouldn't have cared :D It played better than the deluxe, It sounded better than the best of all the other strats and for a moment I forgot that I was in a shop surrounded by people who could probably play a lot better than me, I just played and played it and fell in love It had to be mine :D It already felt like a guitar I had lost years ago and found again, it fitted me.

The guy in the shop (nice dude btw and very knowledgable) nipped of to the internet after he agreed to do his best to price match, I pointed him towards £629 (on the rack at £699) at GAK, we agreed on £649 I don't mind because if anything were to go wrong I could drive back there (just as well but I'll get to that in a minute).

Next an amp. No denying the beauty of both the Fender Deluxe and the Blues junior, the junior however left me with the sense of a very expensive one trick pony and the Deluxe, whilst being an awesome amp and very very impressive just seemed damn expensive but not altogether out of the question. Then I saw an amp that looked a little like a Peavey Valveking made by a company called Ashdown apparently a company formed by ex Trace Elliot engineers, thing was it was 40 Watts admittedly it looked like it would fit right in in a tacky american diner:

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/14396/a/r/e/base

It was up at £299 and I had to give it a try (after nearly falling in love with a Voc AC30 and actually being tempted by it at over £500.) Plugged into the Ashdown and within seconds was getting such a warm clean sound I couldn't stop messing with it, it did warm blues, Broke up Nicely when cranked (way to loud for my house though) and gave a little more in the way of almost Marshall territory distortion on the Dirty channel, not something I was really looking for but I grabbed an Epi G400 custom from the wall and gave it a go I then remembered something vital.

I don't just like blues :D

I had so much fun with this amp that it seemed rude not to buy it, I got it at £275 it is a little too Bassy on the drive channel unless you roll back the bass to 3-4 but who cares. I then looked around the back of the amp and it had a few things that the pricier amps didn't...outputs, it has speaker outs a dedicated speaker emulated line out and the best for me is the fact that you can unplug the speaker itself, thus muting the amp (obviously) and go straight into a Tascam and give the amp some welly, nicely controlled and listen with headphones. I know it's not the best way to record but it's sometimes the only way in my house. Bargain. I tried a blues driver and got an order placed cause it was very handy. Oh yeah the amp also has built in DSP effects...they are utterly terrible though, not a problem.

Now comes the bad news, I got my guitar home and tried to screw the trem arm in..no go, the thread inside the trem was off and there was no way it would go, so totally gutted but fortunately I could drive it back (thank ****)
They gave me several options, order a relacement, swap for a different guitar or have it Fender fixed and if I didn't like it when it came back swap replace or refund. I'm getting it fixed because it's mine (no charge obviously) Then came the good news that perked me up, "The Blues Driver that was on order will be here in a week sir" and can be yours free of charge alternatively by way of an apology you can purchase this at the Blues driver price which we have in stock (I'd been messing with it earlier):

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/12709/a/r/e/base

:cool:

erm..OK.

I also ordered a red Squier mini for my 5 year old son so I guess they had a pretty good day of it too.

Wow, my longest post ever.

thanks again guys.
 
dmpoole said:
I'm a bit lost here -

Which guitar did you have? http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/21432

Which amp did you have? http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/page/shop/flypage/product_id/14396/a/r/e/base

What as a Boss ME50 got to do with it?
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Yes on Guitar, Yes on amp,

I was playing around with the Blues Driver and also the Boss pedal board thing which has the Blues Driver on there along with all sorts of other stuff, they offered that to me at 59.99 due to the guitar issues, which I had payed for a Blues Driver that they didn't have in stock but placed on order. (I played through one on a wall mounted pedal board).
 
Bit of an update, simply because I'm so chuffed with this amp, first of all, the bad point:

The reverb is digital and although that in itself isn't a problem there is good digital and bad digital, this falls into the later category, however I have various ways around this, there are some lovely reverbs on my Zom G2.1U and a few nicely usable ones on the Boss ME-50 although the G2 wins on this front, the Boss is certainly very nice if you don't over do it, too much reverb makes my head go a bit west anyway.

The DSP effects, lets just say that they don't exist, let's just forget them ok?

The drive channel is bassy but can be controlled, by turning the bass very low funnily enough :D

This morning (now my wife is at work) I've cranked it a bit and it's awesome, the clean channel alone is worth the price, turning the gain up brings it into almost Vox like territory and it has a really nice twang, back it off a bit and it sounds so buttery, go listen to The Wind Cries Mary by Hendrix and it has that kind of indescribable wooooishness , no idea how to describe it but I love that sound, The drive channel when cranked gets very Angus Young and with a bit of twiddling I've coaxed some nice Tony Iommi out of it too.

The Boss multi effects is a great little box and is something that will save me a lot of cash in the long run, I bought the Zoom G2 as a kind of effects training ground to see which effects I made use of, with the idea of then selling the G2 and buying individual stomp boxes to do the job without flicking through displays etc. I tended to only use OD, Chorus from time to time and a bit of either delay or echo, The Boss does this more intuitively than the G2, only problem is a one second delay when patch switching, I've set it to the sounds I like however and may never touch those dials again.

The amp has a four button footswitch , both amp channels have seperate EQ and there are two master volumes (footswitchable) a gain boost (footswitchable). One problem I encountered at about 12:30 last night is the footswitching between both master volumes, one was set way to high for that time of night and I switched by mistake, the result was a really loud fog horn effect which woke wife my wife and eldest son....I got told off :(

All this was done with my SG which has 3 Bumhookers on it, can't wait to get the Strat back :)
 
alexthecheese said:
Is that a proper valve amp for £270 new? And as good as you say? That is a bargain.
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yep, it also has a valve standby switch and strangely a fan at the back which is switch on/offable to cool down the tubes, it can cause a bit of hiss which rather bizarrely seems to depend on whether the washing machine is on or not :confused:. Don't get me wrong, the Blues Junior Tweed (Ltd edition) with Jensen speaker, The Hot Rod and the Vox all sounded nicer, no point denying it but the Cheapest of those was £400, £470 and £550 and without the outputs all but the Junior would be wasted in my house and even then that was too loud loud for regular cranking at only 30watts.

at £275 I really can't complain.....so I won't :cool:
 
I'd love to try one of those ashdowns out, they look like a really good buy, and you can always get a cab at a later date should you wish.

mind you I can't help thinking that a dsl would suit me better, I only really play the hendrix side of blues lol.

damn I'm going job hunting....

bet you cant wait for that strat - whats the eta? and are we gonna get to hear/see it in action?
 
m3csl2004 said:
bet you cant wait for that strat - whats the eta? and are we gonna get to hear/see it in action?
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About a week.

and erm...who knows? depends if I can find someone who can play it properly, If so I'll be sure to film them :D
 
This is absolutely off topic but I didn't really want to start a new thread.
Basically I bought an acoustic then took back as I don't really need it, now i'm stuck with £130 in sound control store credit.

Thing is, I really don't know what I want. I currently have a fender strat and orange crush 30r practise amp. It's not a lot of money, but does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can buy? Are stomp boxes worth it? I have a boss ds-1 at the moment but don't use it at all. What other useful gadgets or accessories would people advice buying?

Bit of a stupid post but any suggestions would be great.
 
converse_uprise said:
Bit of a stupid post but any suggestions would be great.
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Not at all stupid :)

What kind of stuff do you play? Only get effects if you really think you are going to use them, The multi effects are really good (at least some are) for simply finding effects that you like and helping to shape the direction that your playing is heading.

Do you just play or record as well?

http://www.soundcontrol.co.uk/mod_1...d_1.12.1.1/pages/index.php?sku=1.1.5.1.1-59-5

Depending on what you do, do you have a capable PC?

I have one of these:

http://www.soundcontrol.co.uk/mod_1/pages/mod_1.12/pages/mod_1.12.1/pages/index.php

Some brilliant stuff on there and it has a USB interface and comes with Cubase LE. I used it with my Crush 30r (nice amp isn't it?)
 
for £130, try out the 535Q for just about that price. It's about the best crybaby out there are the tones are brilliant. You'd never need another wah pedal again. :)
 
To be fair, a lot of the guitar I play is pretty boring bog standard indie like libertines and arctic monkeys. Not that complicated and doesn't use a lot of effects so i'm not too keen on buying a wah pedal. However, I was considering buying a Vox AD30VT a while ago to replace my orange because of the built in effects, so maybe a multi-fx wouldn't be a bad idea.

I just get the impression it's not ideal to gig with multi-fx pedal boards?
 
some models are more leaning towards live use (pd xt live for example) so its model dependant, but generally it gets fiddly to change patch and there can be delays that you dont want live.
 
I'd keep the crush, I doubt you'd find a better sounding amp for the price to be honest.

Go for some cheap recording gear IMO.

Even a tape 4 track.
 
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