FENDER AMERICAN STANDARD STRATOCASTER HSS

I can't believe I'm actually owning this guitar! I have been dreaming of getting an MIM fat Strat before because of its relatively not too expensive price but now I am getting this baby instead with a very good price. It's a blessing from God actually that I can own this little piece of Fender's legacy.

Strat noob
I never really own a Stratocaster before. However, I have some previous experience with my friends' Stratocasters. I tried an American Standard HH 50th Anniversary Stratocaster, a Custom Shop Jimi Hendrix Black Beauty Stratocaster and a Stratocaster that I reviewed before in my old post.

All the Strats that I tried have two common problems: sustain and tremolo. I always prefer the sustain of my Ibanez PGM to the Stratocaster and the locking tuners in my PGM works pretty well. I tried vibrating a Strat for just one bar and it went out of tune quickly. That's how I view strat before I got my own Strat. I aimed for Superstrats such as Suhr, Xotic or James Tyler instead in hope for a better quality Strat-type guitar.

Surprise!
This Strat blew me away! When it first came, I notice that it sounded and set just right out of the box. The pickups were adjusted properly, the string height is not too high and not too low, the guitar is almost in tune. It is an alder body with maple neck, it is aimed toward a more traditional wood configuration.Acoustically speaking, when you ring the B-string, you can feel the guitar vibrates at some places; this is a good sign of sustain and overtone harmonics. I plugged it in right away and I get a pretty good sustain on B, G and D strings!

Other surprise: the Corona factory set my tremolo to be floating...?? It is totally floating and I just don't feel too good about it. I tried to do some subtle chord vibrations using the trem and not surprisingly it went out of tune. So the sustain problem is gone but the trem tune problem is still there.

Modification
I instantly order a set of Fender Locking Tuners online and installed them right away. It was proven to be one of the most important modification to my AmStadStrat! I can now do some crazy dive bombs and other crazy stuffs without the fear of getting out of tune. It is still not as stable as my double locking Edge Pro Ibanez trem, but this is already good enough. Combined with the floating setup on my Strat, I can go either up or down with my trem. My goodness!!

Sound
The guitar is loaded with a pair of Tex Mex singles and a Diamondback humbucker. The TexMex is very bright, combined with the maple/alder configuration it goes even brighter. I like the clean sound of the Tex Mex pups, they are very snappy and good for quick funk chops. However, they are not noiseless; turn on your distortion pedal and get that 60-cycle hum. Turn on a compressor and you can hear a radio broadcast on your amplifier!

On the other hand, the Diamondback humbucker is good. It's a bit too bright for overdrive sounds but you can easily cure that by rolling back the tone knob a bit. This HSS configuration makes me pretty happy since I can cover a lot of different sounds just by choosing from the 5 combinations of the pickups. However, this Strat performs better on clean sounds compared to my PGM. PGM performs better on overdriven sound due to its high-powered DiMarzio pickups.


Feel
Maple neck has a glossy finish and it is pretty sleek. It does not feel sticky or anything, it's very good on your hand. It's a standard C-shaped Stratocaster neck and it is a bit rounded on the frets. The body is contoured and it has a thin Urethane finish. Feels very good and the guitar is very resonant. I instantly removed the tremolo springs cover plate and it gets even more resonant after that!

The weight isn't too bad. Alder is a pretty lightweight wood but basswood is still lighter. I can play standing comfortably with this guitar for a relatively long period of time without being dragged down too much. This guitar is built on a very high quality standard and you can feel it right away when you touch and play it.

Overall
I like this particular guitar. This HSS Am Stad Strat really beats the other Strats that I had tried. The locking tuner upgrade is by far the most important upgrade that you probably want to have on your Strats too. The sound is very versatile and this guitar in particular shines very well on clean sounds. I will probably upgrade the pickups by putting Fender Noiseless singles and a DiMarzio, still not too sure about that but we'll see.

Definitely a guitar that defines the American sound, I will give this guitar a 10 out of 10.

GUITAR FINISH AND TONE

Hi everyone, in this post I'm going to discuss a little bit about guitar finish and how it will affect your tone. Hopefully you can apply this knowledge when you are choosing a new future guitar or working on a project with your guitar.

Neglected?
Yes, guitar finish is the most underrated aspect of tone. When it comes to guitar tone, people will automatically think about replacement pickup. The truth: yes, the pickup will contribute to the guitar's overall tone to a certain degree; however, there's something that makes two guitars sound different although they use same materials and pickups.

I'm not an expert in wood and anything related to it. Nonetheless, I am pretty sure about the fact that guitar finishing will contribute to the sound-dimension of the guitar.

Good finish.
A good guitar finish is usually applied very thinly to your guitar. I can never tell directly how good is my guitar's finish but there's a way to check it. Unscrew your strap screw and see inside the screw hole how thick is the finish layer until you can see the border between the finishing and the natural wood. If it is thin and almost not noticeable, then you have a good finishing guitar.

Here are some of the usual suspects for guitar's finishing:
Nitrocellulose lacquer finish
It sounds vintage, this is the hardest one to work with and it is extremely thin. This guitar finish does not really clog the wood pores on the guitar and this lets the wood breath and age over time(which is good because then you will have a more resonant guitar by the time your guitar is 30 years old). This will make the guitar looks old though, a white guitar will turn yellowish with this finish but who cares?? as long as it sounds good, no one cares!

Polyurethane finish
A bit thicker compared to the Nitrocellulose finish but doesn't really sound worse than it. There is a caveat though: you have to apply this finish thinly and not using filler or anything between the wood and the Poly to get a great resonant guitar. Some companies don't understand this, they just spray hard on the woods and make it look sharp but in the end the guitar is pretty dead when you try to play clean. Make sure this doesn't happen to your guitar. Otherwise, when applied properly, you'll get amazing tone, as good or maybe even better compared to the nitro finish.

Polyester finish
Avoid this at all cost. This is the thickest and the worst sounding finish you'll ever get. This will dampen your guitar completely and you'll never get a good tone out of it. Sustain will not be present, there will be no overtone harmonics and you can't get that rich bright sparkly headroom that you should have.

Good finish vs bad finish.
As we compared three of the finishes above, we should already know that a good guitar finish will usually give you a good headroom and sparkle when you dial the guitar on its very natural sound-state: clean channel amp. This will help you so much when you are trying to nail some good clean tone. This is where it gets tricky: there is a trade between look and sound. It's up to you how far you will go to chase your guitar tone and cares about the look and how well does the finish protect the original wood of the guitar.

I personally don't care about the look, as long as it gets a good tone, I'm all up for it. But that's totally personal, some of my friends prefer a thicker finish so that their guitars can stand some beating on the road without looking horrible.

But I'm stuck with my guitar and it has bad finishing. What should I do?
There is still some hope on increasing the tone of your guitar in terms of finishing: SCRAP THE FINISHING ON THE BACK OF YOUR GUITAR. Some people that had done it says that it sounds very good after they took the finishing off the unseen part of the guitar. Try it for yourselves! I'll try it with my guitar soon!

I hope you enjoy this post, I'll post some more similar posts soon!

Cheers and God bless :)

COMING SOON

Here's a tentative list of what's going to come in the future posts:
- An American Standard Fender Stratocaster HSS.
- Doctor Q Envelope Filter by Electro Harmonix
- MXR MC404 CAE Wah pedal
- DiMarzio Area pickups

I will also plan on getting my hands on some of the new TC Electronics pedals. They are pretty good. In fact Guthrie Govan is using the Flashback Delay and the Hall of Fame Reverb. Anyway, talking about Guthrie Govan, he's pretty phenomenal. Check some of his guitar work on Youtube!

BYOC TREMOLO

Hi everyone, in this post I want to share a little bit about a tremolo pedal from Build Your Own Clone (BYOC). As we know from previous post, BYOC is one of the best DIY FX kits source available. They don't just sell clone kits, their kits sound as good or even better than the real ones! What's not to like?

Tremolo? Not really using it
I am not really accustomed to using tremolo effect in my guitar playing. Using tremolo effect is something that I would like to explore more in the future. BYOC claims that their tremolo pedal is based on an Australian tremolo pedal that is actually based on an old Fender Blackface amplifier's tremolo setting. I haven't tried both the Australian pedal and Fender Blackface amp. I never used any tremolo pedal before in my life.

So I built this pedal when it arrives; populating PCB, solder, connect the potentiometers, jacks and enclosure, etc. It's not really difficult to get it done, but to get it done perfectly you have to have a good soldering skill. I managed to get it done except for the 9v DC power jack connection. So far, I used battery to get it running.

Sound
The sound that I'm getting from this pedal is awesome! The tremolo effect is actually a little bit between square and triangular if you know what I mean. It goes from silent to full volume not too all in a sudden but there's a slight sudden slow fall. You might be able to modify the tremolo mode by tweaking some internal component as far as I know.

It is worth the money but don't really know how good it is.
I can't yet give this pedal a score as I never tried any other tremolo in this planet. I know that Electro Harmonix makes a tremolo pedal called Pulsar and they also had a multi effect pedal called Worm and they are not priced too high for a tremolo pedal. This pedal is priced at $75.00, I don't know how much is the EA Tremolo but EHX pulsar is priced at around $84.00 and Worm is around $110.00; Boss TR-2 is at around $100.00 and it's not true bypass. By looking at these numbers, I think we all know that the BYOC Tremolo is actually worth the money.

Sound clip is coming soon.

Cheers and God bless :)

BYOC TRIBOOST

Hey everyone, I'm back with a new pedal called Triboost. It belonged to my friend Anthony Woen and I am very lucky to have this home-made clone pedal in my pedalboard for testing right now. It sounds awesome, it doesn't price too high and you can build it yourself and save some money.

BYOC
This company sells you ready-to-make clone pedals of well-known pedals such as Tube Screamer, Boss Chorus, etc. The company provides easy-to-follow instructions for assembling the pedals. Most of the pedals are not too hard to build even if you have a minimal experience in soldering. All of them feature true bypass switching and high quality components(ICs are usually good NOS chips!).

Three in one
This pedal is actually three boosters being made into just one pedal in a compact sized enclosure. It features three mode:
- Green: based on a generic MOSFET clean boost that is available around you. It adds a bit of dirt when you dial the boost a bit high.
- Blue: based on a linear booster. This is simply the cleanest among all three, doesn't add too much dirt and colors your tone minimally.
- Red: based on a Dallas Rangemaster boost. It uses NOS germanium transistor to achieve the Beano/Rangemaster sound. It has the most dirt compared to all and you can also adjust the boost frequency using the top rotary knob; you can choose from full, treble and mid boost on this mode.

This pedal intended to work strictly as a booster and not as an overdrive. If you expect this pedal to do an overdrive sound, you'll probably be disappointed. Use it as a booster on either clean or dirty channel and you'll immediately hear some classic boost sounds on each modes. Absolutely fantastic!

Worth the money?
I can't see why not! This pedal does work as what its advertised. A three in one booster is one of the rarest thing in the world. As long as you can solder neatly, you'll get a good quality pedals in your hand. There's a Canadian seller that sells BYOC pedals that are already assembled if you don't want to solder the pedals by yourself. This one is priced at $95.00 and you can buy it on BYOC website: www.buildyourownclone.com. An LPB will cost you around $40.00, MOSFET booster at around $100.00 and Rangemaster Booster clone at around $100.00; three of them separately cost $240.00 approximately and this Triboost only cost you $100.00.

From 0 to 10?
Depending on how good you build the pedal yourself. Nonetheless, it will be 10 if you do a great job. I recommend this pedal for a less expensive solution for finding a booster pedal.

Here's the sound clip of this pedal. Clean - MOSFET - Linear - Rangemaster Full - Rangemaster Treble - Rangemaster Mid. CLICK HERE for the sound clip.

Cheers and God bless :)

DELUXE MEMORY MAN, NOW WITH SOUND CLIP

The holy grail of analog delay pedal is now finally available for review. I won't talk about it for too long, I'm just going to mention some of the best features from the pedal that I think is very interesting to know. Read on!

Dimension?

I've mentioned earlier about this pedal's ability of adding a certain "dimension" to your guitar sound. It is true, the myth is confirmed and it also increases the warmth of your tone even without any delay being added. The chorus on this pedal is amazing, it really pleases your ears with the super lo-fi wabbling lush repeats.

Booster
This pedal also has an adjustable level knob that can be set to match your amp's output. You can also use the level knob to make this pedal as a booster if you want to. It will sound similar to an Echoplex preamp I suppose, since it does not add any gain but push your amp to a near break-up when you dial the knob at its max. Sweet, isn't it? You got a pedal that functions as a delay, boost, vibrato and chorus.

Blend and feedback
It's a little bit too loud sometimes, the mixing between the dry and the wet signal is a bit weird because you'll get repeats that are actually louder than your original signal if you dial the blend too much. I had to find a spot where it doesn't sound too loud to keep it as subtle as it should be. The feedback knob is also a bit too short in my opinion, you don't get lots of repeats in my opinion even if you dial above 12 o'clock. They're just small things and they're very personal, but they don't really bother since you can tweak a bit to get your desired sound.

Memory Boy? Digital Delay w/ Analog Emulation?
This thing really shines and for its price it's really worth the money. But now, people might still ask, why do you still buy this thing if a Memory Boy can also do the same job with less price? I tell you, try playing with your earphone plugged to your ears and hear carefully how this pedal enhance your tonal space, a Memory Boy did that too but there's something unspeakable that comes out through this pedal that really makes it what it is. Until today, I can be certain that there is no digital emulation of analog delay that can sound like a real Memory Man. We're still lucky I guess, because Electro Harmonix still makes this thing. I don't know how long will this pedal still be available, so if you can get one of this, get it ASAP.

Sound clip of just the Memory Man: CLICK HERE (Andy Timmons - The Prayer/The Answer)
A comparison of Memory Boy and Memory Man, Memory Boy being played first: CLICK HERE

Thank you for checking out this post, hope you find what you're looking for and hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoy writing it.

Cheers and God bless :)

OVERDRIVE PEDAL SHOOT OUT, REVIEW OF IBANEZ JEMINI, BOSS DISTORTION DS-1, SUPER OVERDRIVE SD-1

Hey everyone, today I just want to share a little bit of review about some Boss overdrive/distortion pedals that I currently have in my home right now as well as an Ibanez Jemini distortion pedal and see how they compare to the other pedals that I have reviewed before. These pedals belong to a friend of mine, Anthony Woen (thank you, Ko Awoen).

Ibanez Jemini
Everyone who knows Steve Vai must know that he has a signature distortion pedal called Jemini. It's actually two gain boxes being combined into a single form factor. Can be powered using a single 9V battery or 9V adapter (the battery compartment on the left side is not connected, it's just for spare battery). It has bright and save switch to reduce the LED brightness.

Basically the left side of the pedal is a modified Tube Screamer-ish pedal with some vintage feels but with lots of added low end and boost. It just feels so smooth and even and fat. It doesn't have too much mid hump compared to an original Tube Screamer. I heard that it was based on his modified TS808 by Keeley with some upgraded parts. I used it on a clean channel amp and it sounds wonderful, somewhere between my TS and BB preamp but with lots of low end. Steve probably used it as a boost on his crunch channel.

The right side of the pedal is actually a more straight forward distortion pedal with a lot of gain and presence. It has massive amount of gain, enough to turn your clean channel amp sound into a full stack distortion sound. It too also has huge amount of fatness and boost. It reminds me of an original DS-1 from the '80s which I don't have but heard many times. It has enough of drive to turn your guitar into a metal machine.

BTW, only one side can be turned on at a time, you can't turn both at the same time, I wish it can do that but it doesn't. Sad. But it's still one heck of a good pedal, though.

It's around $199.99, it sounds like two boutique pedals, it's true bypass, it's so colorful, and it's worth the money, like it or not. You got two good sounding boutique drive pedals in just one box, saves a lot of $$$ haha!

Boss Super Overdrive SD-1

A pretty good sounding overdrive pedal from a well-known maker: Boss. It's designed to rival Tube Screamers. It's not a Tube Screamer wanna-be FYI, it sounds different and it acts different. This one is similar like a Boss Blues Driver BD-2, just enough amount of gain without too much presence.

The knobs are pretty responsive and they all pretty straight forward. No nonsense here, just a simple, effective and good sounding overdrive pedal. It's not as fat as a Maxon OD or modified Tube Screamer, but you don't get too much low-end loss from this pedal.

Priced in just below $50.00 in U.S., this thing is a killer for sure. Please note however as with any Boss pedals, they're not true bypass. If you have a couple of them together they're gonna be just fine but if you had a lot of Boss pedals in your signal path, get a buffer pedal to strengthen your original signal, these pedals can cause tone sucking problem if you're not careful.

Boss Distortion DS-1

Similar to the pedal above but with more gain, less midrange and more presence. This is a very basic distortion pedal that already becomes standard for many other distortion pedals. It goes from a very low gain Tube Screamer-ish sound to a massive heavy metal sound with just a turn of a knob.

A very straight forward distortion pedal. Note however that this is not a boutique pedal, it does not have a lot of special things in it. Getting overtone harmonics and plenty of sustain requires more work with this pedal; but if you don't even care about that and just want a basic good sounding distortion pedal, this is a way to go.

It's important to know that lots of pedal makers are using DS-1 as a base to search their own unique sounds. So you can actually cover a lot of distortion sounds from using this pedal. It's priced just below $50 as well and it's not true bypass as I mentioned above. It's worth the price but requires you to be careful when combining this pedal with other non true bypass pedals.

Let the battle begins!
I made a sound clip of all of these distortion pedals being mixed together with my other drive pedals playing a same rock riff over and over but using different pedals.
Here's the order: BB Preamp - Maxon OD9/808 Silver Mod - Jemini Left - Jemini Right - SD1 - DS1 - RC Booster.

They're all being set with tone just before noon, drive between 2 and 3 o'clock and level varied a bit from one pedal to another to adjust the output from my preamp on clean channel. No other pedals are being used...

Here's the link : DISTORTION FIGHT

After you hear the sound clip, you'll see two sides of drive sound: one side is the normal distortion sound, the other side is the overdrive low gain Tube Screamer-ish sound. They're all good but note that some pedals are better for a certain situation while the others might be useful in other situation.

I hope you enjoy this post, thank's to all of you who keeps coming back to my posts! I really hope this post as well as the other posts will help you to find what you're looking for.

Cheers and God bless :)

BASIC TIPS FOR GETTING THE RIGHT TONE

I can't get that guy's tone!! What on earth is wrong with my expensive gears???

Frustrating isn't it? You have all the nice pedals and what you think the best guitar on this earth and you still can't get your desired tone. You keep asking what's wrong with your setup, you got all the most expensive gears and you wonder why they don't make any good sound. Lots of people have been there before and today I want to share my perspective of basic guitar tone guide.

First thing first

Let's analyze all the factors that count toward the creation of your tone. Before we even do that, this is what I basically will do: ask yourself, what kind of sound are you aiming for? The best way to determine what kind of sound do you want is basically by having some references. It could be your guitar hero, your friends' tone or some guitar sound that you had heard before in your life.

Your guitar

After you answer that question, lets's start with the very first thing that you have to observe: your guitar. You can't nail Slash's signature sound using a Fender Stratocaster with single coil pickups. You can't nail Stevie Ray Vaughan's tone using an ESP loaded with EMG pickups. You can't play Metallica songs using a Telecaster.

Getting the right type of guitar will cover 50 to 90% of your tone. This is generally true, as long as your tone does not require huge amount of effect processing. Here are some of the famous guitar tones that are usually being used by guitarists everywhere:

1. Stratocaster sound: bright and clear, can be achieved using any guitar with single coils and ash/alder/basswood body.

2. Telecaster sound: super bright and twangy, can be achieved using Telecaster guitars with Telecaster pickups.

3. Fat humbucking tone: fat, round and warm. Can be achieved using anything with humbucker or P90 pickups regardless of the body type. Generally people will use a Les Paul with mahogany body but anything can do.

4. Jazz tone: similar with no. 3 but you can also use a semi-hollow guitars to get this beautiful tone.

Your signal path: Amp and Gain Box

You must choose your gear carefully to nail a desired tone. Not every nice pedal and expensive amplifier on this planet will do the trick. If you want a straight forward rock sound from the '70s and '80s, use a tube amplifier that's capable of producing a medium amount of overdrive and if you need an extra push, use a Tube Screamer. Using a hi-gain amplifier won't produce your desired tone. Adding a high-gain distortion pedal on a clean amp will also not work best.

If you're trying to nail heavy metal sound, use a Hi-Gain amp with medium overdrive setting and push the amp a bit harder using a gain box with a small amount of gain. You can also use a cleaner amp that's being pushed with distortion pedal as long as you cut the mid a little bit.

For a more classic Hendrix tone, use germanium fuzz pedals, they can replicate a vintage cranked up Marshall with fuzz face pedal.

Experiment a little bit in your local guitar store with some amplifiers and/or gain boxes. I suggest to start by hearing from well known brands such as Marshall and Fender for amplifiers and Tube Screamer TS-9 or 808 by Ibanez/Maxon for the gain box. If you know what you want, you don't have to buy those stuffs, there are lots of cheaper alternatives that you can search on the internet or by asking to someone; they will recreate your desired tone and they sound almost as good as the big names.

Other stuffs in your signal path: time based and modulation

Delay, Reverb, Chorus, Wah, Flanger, you name it...not everyone use them in their rigs and you have to be careful about choosing them. Guitarists tend to buy expensive stuffs but they don't really utilize them to the fullest; I personally use two delay pedals(one for short and one for long), a reverb and a chorus.

I won't suggest to overly use these effects since it will kind of ruin your original tone. Keep them as subtle as you can. Most guitar heroes don't over use them as well they wan't to preserve their original tone.

The thing that matters the most

Ultimately, no matter how good your gear is, you need to practice hard too! If you are currently aiming someone's tone, it's good to learn some tricks that the person usually do because the techniques are sometimes influenced by the gears.

I once fell into the trap of thinking that hi-gain can be used anywhere. It's so easy to play in highly distorted amp and I thought it sounds good. Once I heard how terrible it sounds, I immediately change my tone to further fit the style that I play. It uncovers all the bad habit that I usually do when I used hi-gain settings, but with practice, slowly you can develop your skill while at the same time improving your tone. It worked pretty good on me and my friends, so it should work for you too!

I hope this post would help you! Feel free to share it with everyone.

Cheers and God bless :)

FUTURE POSTS

We already know what the picture below means...

I'm still doing some experimentation with this baby and see how it will compare with a Memory Boy and my Carbon Copy. Hopefully some time this week I'm gonna be able to post a review of this wonderful box. I'm having a great time tweaking around this lovely pedal and it really inspires me to play.

I'm also gonna do reviews of popular Boss distortion pedals as soon as I can get an access to them.

Stay tuned! And thank you for reading my blog. I hope you enjoy this blog as much as I enjoy writing it! God bless :)

TC ELECTRONIC HALL OF FAME REVERB

Tonight, I got a chance to review a relatively new reverb pedal from TC Electronic called Hall of Fame. It's a superb pedal with lots of knobs to tailor your reverb to your pleasing. One thing that I want to point out to you before we even start is that this thing marks the new chapter of digital guitar world that still carries the passion of analog sound; it has the new Toneprint technology that allows you to download an artist's reverb tone to the pedal via USB.

Overview

This thing looks nice and neat, it's just as big as your nano EHX pedal. It has four knobs; one to adjust the length of the reverb called decay, one to adjust the reverb treble called tone, one to adjust the level of reverb, and one to select the reverb mode. It has a selector for long and short pre-delay. It also has a true bypass switch(sweet!) that can be switched to buffer(even more sweet!) depending on how many pedals that you will have in series with this pedal. It has stereo output and input. What more can you ask from this pedal?

Sound

It's a digital reverb, same as the other reverb pedals out in the market, they are basically delay pedals. This one is more flexible and adjustable. I can get lots of settings out of this little box that can totally enhance the trails of my tone. It's just so good and so tweakable that it requires hours of some serious tweaking to get the ultimate reverb of your dream.

If you don't want to spend hours on getting your reverb tone, take the USB cable from the box, connect this pedal to your computer and download your favorite guitarist's setting. Voila, you'll get the exact setting of your guitar hero.

The different reverb modes, all sound very convincing. It even has the Mod option to add chorusing to your reverb just to make it sound like you're using a super short delay with lots of repeats from a tape echo.

What it lacks

NOTHING! I can't find anything wrong with this reverb pedal. It's so flexible, it sounds great, it's easy to use, it's true bypass/buffer, and it's small enough. I wish everyone on this planet would make pedals like this!

Worth the money?

Price range around $150.00, a bit pricey for a reverb pedal. But with those options available in this pedal, it's worth every penny you spend, trust me!

From 0 to 10

10 of course, you can already tell haha!

Here's a sound clip containing different modes of this pedal that I think are the best. It starts from dry to room mode, hall mode, spring mode, church mode and modulation mod: CLICK HERE

Cheers and God bless :) !

JEM 7VWH

This JEM does not belong to me, I'm actually quite honored to have what used to be one of my dream guitar sitting in my house. It belongs to a friend of mine, Anthony Woen.

The look

I got a chance to analyze this JEM both in terms of sound and look. It's just gorgeous; its gold hardware, Edge Pro locking trem, vine tree inlay, jumbo frets, gotoh tuner, DiMarzio Evolutions and its monkey grip are just awesome!

The feel

It's the ancestor of the current Ibanez RG model, so naturally it has that oversized horns on its body just like my PGM and every other RG based guitars. The neck is just awesome! It's thin, meaning that it will help you run across the neck easily. Doesn't feel to good when you try to play chords here, a bit more thickness should help. It's thinner than my already flat PGM Prestige neck. I don't need to speak about the locking trem, it's just totally awesome, the same exact trem as what I have on my PGM.

Weight isn't too bad. It's an alder body guitar, it's supposed to be a bit heavier compared to a basswood guitar, but it isn't; in fact it is lighter than my PGM!

The sound

DiMarzio Evolution on the neck, middle and bridge. They're fantastic for modern hi-gain sound! The alder body and rosewood combination adds more tonal color to the overall sound. The JEM supposed to sound pretty bright due to the alder body but in fact it isn't that bright. It sounded pretty good on distortion pedals and tube pre-amp! Overtone harmonics are appearing on some spots in the neck, it has a strong punch in the mid-high mid area. Definitely a shredder's guitar! Either the neck and the bridge delivers punch and clarity. Roll back the volume and I get that sweet spot break-up sound.

On the clean channel, the neck pickup sounded like an SG. Very good for jazz runs, lots of fat tone that's good for chording as well. Combine the neck and the middle and I got a pretty subtle sounding clean signal, good for funk and general strumming. I didn't really use the middle pickup but mid+bridge gives me another good funk-type sound with some added treble. I don't really use the bridge pickup on the clean channel.

Sustain is pretty good. It doesn't hold as long as my PGM, but it does hold longer than every Strats that I've touched.

What it lacks

Nothing! This guitar is in fact one of the most versatile guitar on this planet. It does everything. However, not everyone will enjoy this guitar. The pickups are a bit too hot for me and I always prefer a single coil in the neck. Nonetheless, it's my preference; this guitar will surely blow you away if you're a Steve Vai fans or just someone looking for a HSH super strat.

The verdict

I compared this gorgeous JEM side by side with my PGM, and I recorded some tunes with both guitar on same settings just so you can hear the difference between how the JEM and the PGM sound. All clips started with my PGM first, and then the JEM later.

Clean signal: CLICK HERE

Chorus added: CLICK HERE

Screamer and delay: CLICK HERE

Fat crunch rhythm: CLICK HERE

I hope you enjoy this post.

Cheers and God bless ! :)

SIGNAL PATH 101

Hi everyone, today I want to discuss about the so-called "GENERIC SIGNAL PATH" for guitar. Signal path is basically all the stuffs that are between your guitar and your amp or speaker or earphone or whatever device that will generate the sound. Let it be your preamp, your wah, your volume pedal, your FX pedals, your booster, your loop, your switching boxes, they're all part of the signal path.

There is no scientific rule about how to arrange your pedals

People had thousands of different configuration on their pedalboard. Some prefer certain pedals on a spot, others prefer same pedals on different spot. That really depends on a person's need and how they want their signal to sound.

What you need?

The first step on figuring out how to setup your signal path is by knowing what you need. These are what people usually need:

- at least one 'Gain Box' (Distortion, Overdrive, Boost or Fuzz)

- at least one 'Modulation' (Chorus, Flanger, Univibe or Phaser)

- Compressor

- Wah pedal

- at least one 'Time Based' (Delay or Reverb)

- Volume pedal

People go with rack-mounted effects for its superb control, but now stomp boxes are popular again. I'll go explain how I setup my stomp boxes, it's pretty general and you can apply my explanation to rack-mounted effects.

My signal path

On the input plug

Guitar -> Wah -> Overdrive -> Amp

On the FX loop

Send -> Boost -> Volume -> Chorus -> Delay -> Reverb

This is the most generic setup that you can find. You can replace the volume pedal out of the FX loop into the very beginning of the signal path to make it act like your guitar volume knob instead of making it acts like a master volume control. Some artists put wah pedal after distortion to get more extreme wah sound. Chorus or flanger can be put before or after distortion out from the loop to get more wobbly sound.

FX Loop

One thing that I should point out is the fact that I had a preamp pedal that acts as my amp and cabinet simulator. It has the send/return plugs for FX Loops which means you can put some boxes there that you don't want to get mixed with other pedals that you put before the amp. Usually you put delay/reverb pedal on the loop to avoid those pedals from getting affected by the increased gain signal from the overdrive or distortion pedal.

If you don't have FX loop, you can just put everything before the input of the amplifier or preamp. It will sound a bit different and some pedals might not be able to tolerate the amount of gain increase caused by gain boxes on the beginning part of your signal chain. If you do run into this problem, there are some loop boxes available to be placed right before your amp and it will have send/return option for your pedals.

Try to experiment as much as you can

You can start from the most generic signal path that I explained above, but ultimately there is no correct option of placing your FX units. Try to research different setup and see if you can find the best setup for the tone that you're looking for. Pay attention to your pedal requirements as well, sometimes a pedal doesn't want to be placed before of after a specific pedal because it might damage the unit.

That's all for now, I hope you enjoy my post!

Cheers and God bless ! :)

SATURATION

In this post, I want to explain a little bit about different kind of saturation on guitar tone. Familiar with the word distortion, fuzz or overdrive? If you had heard any of these words before, then you'll probably understand most of the content of this post. Let's get started!

Clipping

A saturated guitar signal is basically an amplified guitar signal that's boosted until it reaches clipping(above the range of signal tolerance). While some electrical engineers think that clipping is bad, some guitarists think that getting a clipped guitar signal on an amplifier is the best thing they ever heard. Most rock guitarist rely heavily on saturated tones. Whether it's a crunch rhythm, singing sustained lead, boosted clean-break up or fuzzy creamy tones, they're all basically clipped guitar signal.

Achieving clipped signal

There are multiple ways of reaching saturation. One is by driving an amp or running the amp volume as high as it can be. This works well especially on tube amps. Some amps don't have the capability to reach clipping without being driven prematurely, this leads to the invention of preamplifier that contains tubes or solid state components that will boost the signal before it enters the amplifier so that clipping can be achieved without pushing the amp volume too high. This kind of saturation is called amp-overdrive.

Other way is by using boost pedal on a clean sounding amplifier. The benefit of using pedal to achieve clipping is that it can emulate the sound of amp-overdrive at even lower volume level. People sometimes use pedals on an already driven-amp to achieve a higher level of distortion.

Types of saturation

There are three types of saturation that are common:

Overdrive

Overdrive signal will usually sound pretty open, the clipping isn't too much and it doesn't break too much from the clean signal. This is the type of sound that you can get from amp-overdrive. You can also achieve this sound by using common overdrive pedal such as Tube Screamer or similar stuffs. This sound can be found mostly on blues and some classic rock songs.

Distortion

This is the sound that defines rock and metal music. Distorted signal comes from stacked amps that are already on overdrive state. The sound that it generates is very compressed, heavy, crunchy and clips even more compared to overdriven signal. Modern amplifiers are sometimes high-gain, meaning that it can achieve distortion without having to be stacked. People can even achieve this using distortion pedal on clean channel or even using overdrive on dirty channel. You'll be surprised that sometimes people combine two overdrive pedals to create a smooth distortion sound. Metal player usually cut the midrange of their tone to get even crunchier and tighter distortion; lead rock guitarist will boost the midrange to get more body out of the distortion.

Fuzz

Fuzz is the most clipped signal compared to distortion and overdrive. It can be achieved using any fuzz pedal that contains germanium diode. This kind of sound was starting to emerge on the '60s and '70s thanks to Jimi Hendrix. People sometimes combine an already dirty amp with the fuzz pedal to achieve higher gain guitar tone that can sing and sustain the notes better.

MXR M234 ANALOG CHORUS

Finally, the pedal that I've been waiting for is here! It's the Analog Chorus by MXR! I can't believe I'm actually using a chorus pedal now, I've been living without one for years and I thought I won't need it until some days ago haha!

First Impression

Good pedal so far, not really true bypass but the buffer switching in this pedal isn't bad at all. In fact, it increases my signal volume instead of eating my tone, so I'm pretty grateful for that. Comes with EQ knobs that you can control to adjust the amount of bass/treble cut on the chorus; also it has a level, rate and depth knobs to adjust the basic chorus functions as in other pedals. It has a stereo option, the second output will carry the dry un-chorused signal.

The sound, the feel

This is not boutique pedal, doesn't have a sky-rocket price tag and it's not really something that people look around too much in the forums. I don't know how it compares to other chorus pedal yet except to a Boss Dimension C chorus. Boss chorus pedals are known for their wide open spacey lush layering effects that bring lots of air around the notes or chords that you play; that's exactly what I've heard from the Dimension C chorus.

But fear not, this pedal is not bad at all. In fact, it's pretty good and it's comparable to its rivals. Just hear the sound clip that I posted on the bottom of this post to get an idea of how it sounds. It's pretty flexible and you can adjust the kind of chorusing effect that you want from the knobs but it works best when you don't over-do the depth off the chorus.

What it lacks

It's a perfect chorus pedal if you want to layer your tone nicely just like in the '80s. It doesn't work well on a heavily distorted tone although it sounds perfect on a clean channel. It also doesn't bring out the dimension of the notes that you play as much as Boss DC-2. I'll try to compare this pedal with other well-known chorus pedals and see what will happen.

Worth the price

Yes! For a hundred bucks, this is the best chorus pedal for its price range!

From 0 to 10

10!

Here's a sound clip, beginning with dry signal, the pedal turned on and the pedal turned on with a touch of delay and reverb: CLICK HERE

Cheers and God Bless ! :)

NO OCTAFUZZ FOR ME, MXR ANALOG CHORUS ON THE WAY

Sorry for the very lack of update everyone.

Bad news and good news, here we go

I changed my mind, I don't really want the octave fuzz pedal anymore, I don't really see how it will fit on my playing style. So with the same amount of money that I already saved, I turned the budget to an analog chorus by MXR. It's on its way now, hopefully by tomorrow I'll get a chance to put it on my pedalboard.

What really draws me to this analog chorus pedal is the lush layering sound that it's capable of. I haven't personally tried this pedal on a local guitar shop, but from the videos on Youtube and from some reviews, I can be sure that this one will satisfy my needs for a clean, lush, wide, spacey chorus effect.

Those of you who doesn't really know what does a chorus pedal do, here's a short lecture about it.

Sometimes, a guitarist needs to add some layering to its guitar sound to recreate the effect of some number of guitars playing together. This can be done easily by stacking together multiple guitar tracks on the recording, but for live situation, this is where a chorus pedal will shine. It's a time based effect(mostly), it creates a slightly out of tune sound on a certain period of time and by doing this, it simulates multiple guitars being played together.

A chorus pedal will thickens a clean sound, will add some harmonics quality on dirty tone and it will help lead tone to layer up the notes even better.

Stay tuned!

Hopefully my MXR will arrive tomorrow, I'll have some time to post stuffs after that :).

Cheers and God Bless

UPDATES

Hey all, I got a few updates that I want to share in the blog. First, I would like to say, I underestimated my Ibanez WD-7 wah pedal; it actually sounded pretty okay after some serious tweaking. It is now able to be used on funk-style songs without the added gain that I've been complaining before. The sound that I'm getting is pretty clear although I can still feel the effect of the not-so-true bypass when it's turned off.

Second, my most beloved Dell Inspiron desktop died after 4 years of continuous service(I rarely turned it off except when I go out of town for some long period of time). It contains some of the recording project that I've recorded weeks ago with my friend. Now I need to find a way to be able to record again using another computer or whatever methods available.

Third, I recently play bass guitar more often. I got my beloved BTB-775PB on my hands almost everyday with new strings and a new preamp: VXL Bass Attack by Hartke. It sounded pretty good but I still need to learn more about Bass tone tweaking; this marks the beginning of my tone chasing journey of bass guitar.

Lastly, sorry I didn't update the blog as often as I used to, but it doesn't mean I will neglect the blog. I got busy finding job and working on some stuffs but my passion for tone chasing is still burning and every time I get a chance to write down something, I surely will visit this blog and pour it out for you all :)..

......as long as my nearby Guitar Center has something to offer, I will surely visit them and write down some review here, haha!

Ow, I might going to post new pictures of my cosmetically upgraded PGM30 :)..

Cheers and God bless :)

FULLTONE OCTAFUZZ OF-2 - coming soon

Hey everyone, been trying to save some money for a Fulltone Octafuzz OF-2 pedal. For you who don't know what it is, it's an octave up + fuzz pedal that emulates Hendrix signature fuzz sound.

I tried one on a nearby Guitar Center couple of days ago and still deciding about buying it or not. I tried it using some cheap Squier and a Fender 15 watt amp and it didn't really do the octave-up sound pretty well. I did some extensive research on Youtube to really get used to the sound. It's kinda tricky to control the sound especially with the octave switch engaged.

Stay tuned as I save some money to get that pedal or revisit a nearby Guitar Center for it. I hope it's gonna work well with the other pedals that I have.

Cheers and God Bless :)

DIMARZIO PAF 7

So sorry for the very lack of update last week, I went to so many places and didn't have much time to update the blog. Anyway, here I am with a review of DiMarzio PAF 7, the seven string DiMarzio low output PAF style pickup.

A little bit of background

It's supposed to sound like a regular PAF on Les Paul guitars. This one is formulated for seven string guitar and it has that low output sound of a weak magnet humbucker that makes it so sweet.

I installed mine on my RG7321 on the neck position. It doesn't sound good right away, but after I tweaked a little bit with the pickup height, I got my sweet spot right away.

Sound

The sound is very good, this is totally the best low output pickup for seven string guitar! This pickup doesn't boost the mid and bass like other high gain seven string guitar pickups, instead it adds a little bit more open-sound quality with more treble. On the neck position on a very dark sounding guitar, it will sound pretty much like the old PAF pickup on a '50s Les Paul guitar. Its low output doesn't mean it's not good for metal or shreddy stuffs, it's actually the best pickup on the neck for a fast legato runs! Doesn't get muddy is what it does best, so if you're frustrated with your seven string of getting too muddy and bassy, this pickup is the solution.

Keep in mind that it has what they call Virtual Vintage technology, you can do coil split and get a super sweet single coil-like sound that's pretty pleasing to hear. I don't make mine to sound like that but I guess you should be pleased if you have a coil tap function available on your guitar right now and you're thinking to get this pickup.

Price and worthiness

$70.00, It's worth every penny I spent for sure. This is one of the best replacement pickup for a seven string available. Probably the lowest output pickup replacement for seven strings.

From 0 to 10

10 ! Sounds totally awesome and not too expensive.

Stay tuned for audio clips.

Cheers and God bless :)

SEYMOUR DUNCAN JB

Hey all! Today I decided to review one of the most popular humbucker replacement pickup on the market. It's made by Seymour Duncan and it's called Seymour Duncan JB(Jeff Beck). This pickup is one of the earliest medium-high output pickup that's available in the market.

The sound

The sound that I'm getting out of this relatively high output pickup is very bright and happy, much like the original PAF of a Les Paul. It does not get bass-y, it does not punch you with too much mid, it stays clear on a highly driven channel and it somehow has some unique treble-ish sound, much like a single coil.

On the bridge

I installed mine on the bridge. I got the 7 string model by the way, because I currently don't have any 6 string guitar left for modification. I put this pup on an RG7321 that originally has AH pickups by Ibanez that's totally muddy and way too hot to control. I put a DiMarzio PAF 7 on the neck to balance this med-high output pup.

I really like this pickup, it shines very well and cut through the mix nicely even with high gain amp. Roll back the tone knob a little bit and you get a more defined mid frequencies and less harsh treble. Play some palm-muted riffs on my seven string, it sounds great! The chops are very clear, very pronounced and retains the original sound of the pickup. Drive this pickup as hard as you can, then roll back the volume pot and you'll get your sweet spot immediately, sparkle clear dirty-clean tone with some extra punch.

So far so good..

One thing that I hate from this pickup is the treble level that can be too dangerous especially when you crank up everything on your signal path. That's why you need a tone knob for this pickup. It'll be your best friend when you want to control the sound of this pickup. Other than that, I'm quite happy with this pickup!

Beware, this is not meant to be a high-gain friendly pickup. It's designed to give you more dynamics on your sound, not to compress and further drive your amp. I'm happy with it because it suits well with mid-gain type of guitar music. If you plan to play heavy metal music with this pup, you better be prepared. It doesn't mean it's a bad pickup for metal music, but you have to know how to control the pup properly. See my previous post about pickups for more explanation.

Worth the money?

Yessss!! For $80.00, this thing upgrades the sound of your guitar with some added clarity.

From 0 to 10?

What can I say? 10.

Hope you enjoy this review, sound clip coming soon!

Cheers and God bless :)

FENDER STRATOCASTER

Hi all! Sorry for the lack of update last week. I decided to review a Fender Stratocaster that belongs to my friend Anthony Woen.

To get started, I actually don't really know what kind of Fender Stratocaster is this. Might be Mexico, might be Japanese, might be American, might be something else. I couldn't find the serial number of the Strat :(

Well, it does look great, just like what a strat should look like. It does sound great too! This guitar really shines when I switched to the neck pickup. All the signature maple neck alder body sound came out nicely on this guitar. Bright, enough power to cut through the mix, excellent when paired with a clean amp or a mid-gain vintage style amp.

Plugged this guitar to my Tube Screamer on a clean channel and add some delays and reverb, roll back the volume knob a little bit and play some soft lead lick and it really shines pretty well. Get it dry with a touch of a compressor on the clean channel and play some funk rhythm, you'll get that strat-y sound we all want!

The single coils are pretty standard, nothing special. They are not noiseless so you'll get that 60-cycle hum when you add some gain. The pickup is pretty low output but when you get it pretty close to the strings, it'll start to get hotter. Not too close though, you'll distort your signal badly on a clean channel.

The only thing that bugs me is the fact that the previous owner re-wire the pups so that the mid tone pot becomes the volume pot for the mid pick up. Maybe he/she wanted to emulate a kill-switch by modifying the guitar that way.

I don't really know what kind of Strat is this. It sounds good though although there are some major things going on with the wiring and some other stuffs. The trem is definitely not the regular Strat trem. The decal is also a bit too large for a Strat's head stock. But really, those facts don't bother me too much because it sounds just nice!

Here are some sound clips:

Dry Tube Screamer: CLICK HERE

Clean delay: CLICK HERE

Crunch rhythm: CLICK HERE

Lead Tube Screamer with double delays and reverb: CLICK HERE

Here are some more pictures !

Hope you guys enjoy this post!

Cheers and God bless :)

DUNLOP JAZZ III 1.68mm STIFFO VS DUNLOP TORTEX .88mm

It's time to discuss about some picks that I used and compare them. Pick/plectrum is the most underrated tool in tone chasing and they can alter your tone significantly when you use the right pick. I'm going to review two of my longest serving picks: Dunlop Jazz III Stiffo and Dunlop Tortex .88mm.

Jazz III

This is by far the most shred-friendly pick that I ever used. So easy to play fast with, so stiff that it transfers your picking energy to the string with lots of dynamics. When used on alternate picking licks, it will create short picking noise so this is very great to get the notes to ring clearly.

This one is used by many professionals especially shredders and jazz players. John Petrucci and Eric Johnson even had their own signature Jazz III picks. I personally used this pick most of the time because it's the most versatile one; you can play anything with this pick. It's thick so don't expect to get easy rhythm playing from this pick. It's also small and a bit slippery so do your best to grip it carefully.

Tortex .88mm

For you who don't really need a shred-based pick, this is a good choice. It's good for rhythm playing because it isn't too thick and too small, it has good grip, it's comfortable on your fingers and it has unique tone.

I watched Paul Gilbert used the orange Tortex which is not too different from this one and he can get a very good tone out of it. It's kind of mushy un-traditional pick sound. It's very good for strat because you can get more top end using this pick.

Beware, you can't really shred with this pick. I gave up on this pick because it's hard to alternate picking using this pick. It's also big so it requires harder string pluck to get a pinch harmonic using thumb; that's why I invented the method of getting a pinch harmonic using my middle finger haha! However, I get back to this pick frequently just to get something different out of my playing and this pick delivers a fresh unique tone very well.

Now let the fight begins!

Here's a sound clip of Jazz III vs Tortex on clean rhythm playing: click HERE --> Jazz III first followed by Tortex.

Here's a sound clip of Jazz III vs Tortex on crunch lead playing: click HERE --> Jazz III first followed by Tortex.

I must say that I love the sound of the Tortex when I scratch it on my muted strings! It really has a very defined attack that I am looking for. It's also good for rhythm. However, it's not easy to tame that green monster especially when I need to play fast lead solos. That's the time when I need to switch back to the Jazz III.

In conclusion, both are great but they really depend on what you want and how you play. The choice is yours!

Cheers and God bless :)

MXR CARBON COPY DELAY M169

I tested this guy on a real gig just this evening on my church and I have tons of things to say but I'll keep it as short as possible. Enjoy my review :)

Another delay pedal?

Yes. To be more exact: another true analog delay pedal with true bypass. Remember my Electro Harmonix Memory Boy review last month? Well, this is actually kind of similar like that.

This thing packs lots of features in a relatively small foot print. It's very easy to use and it has the same size as your nano-sized EHX pedals. The regen knob is for the feedback time, mix is for dry vs wet and of course delay knob is for the delay time. It has a modulation switch that turns on chorus-like effect on the repeats to emulate the famous tape echo effect. This thing is not 100% true bypass by the way, it has what they call a hard-wired bypass. I don't know what it is, but this doesn't seem to suck a very significant amount of tone so it's still better compared to a Boss or Ibanez pedal.

So what sets this thing apart from other analog delay pedals?

The delay time can reach a maximum time of around 600ms, that's long enough for me. The warmth of the repeats also has some unique characteristics that doesn't appear in any other pedal. It's hard to describe what I heard from this pedal, but trust me, this thing is good.

So far so good...

Please note, however, that this pedal is a very straight forward delay pedal. It will do basic analog delay functions, it doesn't do fancy stuffs, it doesn't have expression pedal output, it doesn't have stereo capability, no multi output, no fancy switching.

I personally use this pedal together for long-delay sound around 500ms. It works well combined with other delay pedals and it's quiet enough so that it doesn't create noises or anything. I switch to this pedal mostly during lead guitar parts and it does a great job on getting the repeats to blend together with the notes as long as you set the knobs carefully.

The obvious: is it worth?

Absolutely! Well, it's a bit pricier than a Memory Boy frankly speaking, but still, for this kind of price you get something very good. It sounds just nice, works very well as an analog delay pedal. You can get this pedal for around $140.00 more or less.

From 0 to 10?

I'll give this pedal a 9.5! Could be better if it's cheaper of course, and also I haven't really tweak the internal trim pots for modulation range and depth. I'll get back with more info once I tweak those pots!

Sound clip: click HERE --> dry, wet no modulation, wet with modulation, combined with Memory Boy and Holy Grail Reverb. I used a tube screamer on all sounds to add a bit of top end chunk.

Update: The internal trim pots for the width and speed of the modulation doesn't really change the sound that much since as you can hear on my sound clip that the modulation is too narrow and hard to hear. Nonetheless, without the modulation it already sounds great. Still 9.5....

Cheers and God bless :)

p.s: I will post a discussion about Memory Boy vs Carbon Copy soon

MORE POSTS ON THE WAY, STAY TUNED

I apologize for the lack of update :( been busy with many things.

Anyway, here's a quick preview of future posts. Remember about the future posts list that I made days ago? Here's the addition to that:

- MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay

- Memory Boy vs Carbon Copy

- Carbon Copy vs Boss DD-7

- Picks

- TC Electronics Nova Delay

I'll add more soon !

Stay tuned, keep checking out my recent and old posts and hopefully you'll gain something from them. Thank you :)

Cheers and God bless :)

ALL ABOUT PICKUPS

Today I decided to talk about pickup. Yes, everything about pickup, especially on how they function overall. Keep in mind, this is mostly my personal opinion, don't consider my post to be the most correct one, but I'll try my best to provide the best information for you as far as I can.

Introduction to PICKUP101

Here's a short lecture about how pickup works. A pickup is an electronic device that captures the sound of the string of a guitar. It's generally an inductor: a certain length of wire being wrapped into a coil with a magnet on the center of the wrap(imagine a roll-type sushi :p). It has electro-magnetic properties that enables it to capture the string vibration(that also has electro-magnetic properties). When a string vibrates, it disturbs the electro-magnetic field property on the area and this disturbance is being carried by the pickup as a current to the entire signal chain until it ends on the amplifier or PA or whatever is the last destination of the signal path and turns that current into sound.

Pickup comes in different flavors

Just like an ice cream! In terms of coil size: single coil and dual coil(humbucker). In terms of output level: vintage or low, medium, high. In terms of form: the usual coil pickup and the not-so-usual acoustic piezo. In terms of external power requirement: passive and active. And so on, there goes the list.

In depth discussion of coil size

Let's start with the coil size explanation. Single coil pickup usually has a lower output compared to a humbucking pickup. It can create a more acoustic-like tone with some high end clarity that doesn't come out when you're using a humbucker pickup. However, you'll usually get a 60-cycle hum when you use a single coil pickup: that's why people created humbucker pickup. A humbucker pickup doesn't usually have that sparkly high end clarity and acoustic-like tone, but it has a very warm response and will generate a fatter tone compared to single coil.

A humbucker pickup will easily drive the amp faster compared to a single coil pickup because of its relatively high output. A single coil will clean up saturated amp better compared to a humbucker due to low output. A humbucker pickup will easily get muddy because of it's extra warmness, a single coil pickup will easily get harsh on the highs due to its high treble power.

Output level mythbuster: High Output vs Low Output

Now let's talk about how different pickup output levels function on different situations. A vintage(low) output pickup has less wiring turns, weaker magnet and of course weaker sound. A high output pickup has more wiring, stronger magnet and of course higher output that will drive an amp easier toward its saturation level.

Lots of people think that high output pickup is the best. That's not always the case by the way. A high output pickup is very prone of string pull that causes less sustain; it has more wire turns so it has more resistance thus creates muddiness; it has a very high output so you can never get a clean tone out of it without roll-backing the volume knob.

It seemed that high-gain pickup replacement is very popular nowadays with the increasing interest in metal and hard rock music. People with that interest will usually fall into the trick that higher output means better. Well, low output pickup can also do a good job or even sometimes better job at driving an amp into saturation with more definition and clarity although probably less gain compared to a high output pickup. This will help the lower output pickup to easily cut through the mix and sound better during a live performance or a gig.

However, low output pickup doesn't always mean the best. When a single coil pickup is plugged straight into a super clean amp, it definitely has more dynamics which means it follows how hard or how soft you pick the string. Although this is good for some type of music, this can cause some problem especially during recording because you get different output response for different string picking power. But that's easily solvable with a compressor unit; nonetheless, this only happens only when you play on a clean setting.

Active vs Passive pickups

Active pickup: requires battery or external power to operate....Arghh, this one is pretty tough to explain! There's no right or wrong here, an active pickup can bring lots of possibilities to achieve certain tonal range that's not reachable with a passive pickup. Some artists swear that they can get a better clean sound using an active pickup, some even swear that an active pickup help them get better and consistent high-gain sound.

But really, it all depends on how good is the pickup. A low quality active pickup will result in super muddy tone with very low sustain and too much gain. I don't have too much experience with an active pickup but basically even a good active pickup doesn't have the same dynamic that can be achieved through a passive pickup.

So if you need more consistencies rather than dynamics, I think active pickup is the only way to go. Get a good one and you'll deal less with muddiness and all the bad stuffs there. I personally still prefer a passive pickup because the type of music that I play requires wide range of dynamics.

Pickup positions

Let's say I have one pickup and I'm now deciding to put it either on the neck, middle or bridge position. If I put it on the neck, it'll have the highest output level, but with the highest amount of muddiness. Put it on the middle, it'll be bright and glassy; put it on the bridge, it'll be very bright but it'll lose a lot of output level.

That's why people recommend higher output pickup on the bridge and lower output pickup on the neck and middle. This theory is not always true, I mean you can always put pickups of different output level to whatever position you like, but with this kind of setup, you'll get a leveled output level from all position which is good for sound volume consistencies.

I personally like a single coil on the neck, you'll get the best tone ever with a little bit sacrifice on playability. I also like a full size humbucker on the bridge to level out the power of the neck pickup. I don't really care about the middle pickup but as long as I have a single coil in the middle pickup, I'll survive.

Go check out some good pickup manufacturers

Seymour Duncan, DiMarzio, Fender, EMG, Fishman, etc...I personally use lots of DiMarzio pickups, I'm also about to put a Seymour Duncan into one of my existing guitar. I'll post more stuffs once I got that Duncan into its place haha!

Cheers and God bless :)

RC BOOSTER

Yes, it's finally here in the blog! The ultimate clean boost machine is now available for reviewing. After spending some time with this pedal, I'm finally able to share some cool stuffs that this pedal has to offer.

Xotic Tremendous Trio

First, let me explain the concept of Tremendous Trio by Xotic. The Tremendous Trio are actually three booster/overdrive pedals that Xotic has to offer: BB Preamp, AC Booster and RC Booster. You may wonder, what's the difference between the tree? They are all almost identical, they have similar control knobs and they're all booster pedals.

Well, they are in fact very different...

... in terms of gain level, sound characteristic and function. A cranked up RC booster will sound like a near-breakup vintage tube amp on a clean channel while an AC booster will deliver Tube Screamer like quality with more warmness; as we already know, BB preamp has the highest gain and can really drive an amp into a high saturation level. In terms of sound characteristic: RC booster is clean and smooth, AC booster is somewhat more mid-scooped compared to a TS and BB preamp have the most amount of warmness compared to the others.

RC Booster in more detail

I said above that RC Booster is clean and smooth: it's not just clean, it's TRANSPARENT. That means, you can use it as a clean boost to increase your volume level without adding gain or altering your tone. You can add some bass or treble depending on what you want but you can really keep your original tone as it is. This is very useful for a clean lead tone where you need extra volume boost.

Personally, I use the RC Booster only on the clean channel. When I tried to use it on an already overdriven amp, I can't really get a volume boost and I don't really need to get extra gain out of it. I once tried to use this as a tone modifier to make my single coil sounds warmer and it did a great job on doing that. Well, there's actually many ways that you can use this pedal to suit your needs. Leave it on all the time with minimum amount of gain and added level increase, it will help to bring out your long-cable-degraded tone back to life while boosting your tone.

Please remember

This won't give you a massive amount of distortion as I mentioned before, so don't really expect this pedal to work on a high-gain situation although it will still surely provide something useful in that case. This also doesn't work as a compressor although it can boost your output and add some sustain. Don't get disappointed when it doesn't provide you with enough gain and massive amount of compression, it's not really what it's designed for. Remember that there are AC Booster and BB Preamp that provide more compression and more gain compared to this baby.

Is it worth?

Current retail price of around $170.00, it's an expensive pedal for sure. But for its true bypass capability, boutique quality, tone enhancement features and unique functions, I would say that this thing worth every penny. Clean boost and tone enhancer is not really something that you may want, but give this pedal a try and you'll surely know why Xotic made this pedal.

From 0 to 10?

9.5. Cheaper price can bring it to 10 for sure. Xotic is a very expensive boutique pedal maker, but for a price this high you'll get something with a very high quality.

Sound clip: CLICK HERE, first original signal then RC booster with minimum gain maximum volume, and then RC booster maximum gain and volume, I backed off the treble a little bit by the way.

Cheers and God bless :)