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 :)

MXR M103 BLUE BOX

Double octave down

I checked out this pedal right after I realized that Paul Gilbert used this pedal on his signal chain to produce that crazy massive monstrous tone that he used before he starts crazy tapping(see his live videos on youtube, he always uses this pedal right before Eudaimonia Overture song starts). It sounds crazy and I figured that I should try one and imitate that craziness on my signal chain. I also figured out that Jimmy Page used this pedal long time ago on one of Led Zeppelin's song.

It's basically an octave fuzz pedal. Different from Octavia or any regular vintage octave fuzz pedal. This one generates two octaves down; it has blend knob so you can control the amount of dry/wet signal that's coming out.

How does it sound?

Just like Paul Gilbert on the video that I watched haha! I got that crazy monster tone, but I didn't get the Eudaimonia Overture tapping lick *sad*. To be honest, this pedal is only good for that monster tone, but you can't really use it for regular playing because once you start doing that, it'll sound so muddy, overly-compressed and lifeless.

The fuzz is not really that sweet, this is intended for someone with experimental attitude that has the courage to explore this wild tone and make it into something useful. Maybe you can use this to get a synth-like sound out of your signal chain, but to be honest this won't do the job perfectly as other synth based pedal on the market(micro POG, POG, whammy pedal).

Strange pedal I must say

It has some sort of analog tracking circuitry, sometimes it can generates up to 2 octaves down when you play high enough but if you play on the lower notes then sometimes you'll get only 1 octave down. Even sometimes what comes out from this thing is only random note-less fuzziness. It's quite unpredictable !!

Anyway, this pedal is a true bypass(almost......but the tone sucking doesn't really bother pups with output of 140mV and above) and it's simple enough to understand the features that this thing has. Place it in the front of your signal chain, preferably after the compressor so you can use the output knob to adjust the amount of bad fuzz coming out of this thing.

Beware

Some people complained about the low output level of this pedal even if the output knob is cranked all the way. That doesn't happen to me but if it happens, just follow my suggestion to put it in the very front of your signal chain.

Also beware that this pedal contains it's own version of some noise gate circuitry inside. Try to play a sustained note from your guitar and you will hear how "digital" the sound is when the note starts to fade. YIKES!

Does it worth?

Retail price below $80.00. I say it really depends on your purpose of putting this pedal to your signal path. If you have the courage to make this strange pedal works on your guitar playing, then it's not really too bad. If you look for something that's easy to tame and frequently used, this guy won't match your taste. If you just want to imitate that Paul Gilbert lick or Jimmy Page guitar solo, it's worth a try, but maybe this pedal won't last long on your pedal board.

From 0 to 10

This also depends a lot. I would pull a middle line and say it's around 7.3. To be honest, I'm a little bit disappointed with how it overall sounds. It's too compressed and has some artificial tone quality that I really try to avoid. I'm not saying this is a bad or useless pedal; it all really depends on our skill to tame this weird pedal to work our way. As I said on my previous post, a good player can even make a thin metal box sounds good to your ears.

Cheers and God bless :) !

p.s. Starting mid August, I will edit most of the posts and we can have links to audio clip containing dry guitar sound vs guitar sound with related pedal engaged. Stay tuned !

MY MODDED PGM30

I own a 2004 Japanese PGM30WH with Edge Pro tremolo and Prestige neck that was given to me from my Dad sometime in 2006. It's been my main guitar for 5 years now and it's sort of becoming one with me, I can't imagine living with another guitar but this.

For those who doesn't know PGM: it's Paul Gilbert's signature Ibanez series. Paul Gilbert has been using Ibanez PGMs for a long time although recently he uses Ibanez Fireman more frequently. All PGMs have painted fake f-holes on the body and most of them are basswood body with maple or maple+rosewood neck. The body shape is very similar to Ibanez RG and most of them don't have tone knobs.

Originally, my PGM comes with Infinity INF pickups that have pretty high output, I don't know exactly but the bridge one I guess is in the range of 450mV judging from the sound. That is okay for quite some time when I'm still into heavy stuffs but once I started to play something with more dynamic, the pups don't do any good anymore.

I replaced the pickups with DiMarzio Cruiser Bridge on the neck and middle, I put DiMarzio AT-1 humbucker on the bridge and I accidentally removed the Ibanez logo on the headstock. I put humbucker pickup cover on the neck single coil just so that I don't miss having humbucker on the neck haha !

The DiMarzios are working very great, I got the exact Andy Timmons'(YES, him again) pups set and that helps me to get closer to his tone. I set the neck pup to be slightly lower from the strings and I raised the bridge humbucker a little bit so I get unbalanced volume level. This is kind of weird and people tend to set all pups to be at the same volume level, but I like it since I can get lower volume just by switching to the neck pup without having to press on any pedal or roll the volume knob.

By the way, I put a 300k ohms resistor in parallel with the cap on my volume pots and it helps the tone a little bit. One thing that I love mostly about this modded guitar is the fact that it doesn't have a tone knob which makes the guitar sounds much better (Paul Gilbert is a genius !). I compared this with a fellow RG with the same Wizard II neck and equipped with the same INF pups before I modded mine with DiMarzios and this thing sounds much better, more fat, more clear tops, more dynamics, more volume as well.

The bridge is actually an original Edge Pro tremolo by Ibanez(I can't find a picture of a pgm with that trem on the internet, sorry) and that bridge totally rocks ! Well, I actually hate the fact that it's a locking trem since I can't do crazy tunings, but it stays in tune forever and the little metal where the string hits on the trem is actually very good for the sustain. I used extra light gauge (.008 extra slinky) for this guitar and it still sounds great.

The neck is a little bit thicker than your usual RG necks. Anyway, if you're a tone chaser, you'll already know that thicker neck means thicker tone. It's still very playable although you don't really have a good comfort when playing chord since the thickness of the neck isn't balanced with a rounder neck shape.

This thing has been abused many times; I broke my trem arm once, I almost lost the neck pickup, I carried it on my car trunk without hard case, I bring it out to a gig during rainy day without gig bag or anything; yet this guitar's doesn't get any issue besides few minor very-hard-to-see scratches from my jazz III pick during strumming sessions. Oh, I replaced the switch once BTW, it broke due to too much pickup switching that I did haha !

I won't sell this guitar for sure, this thing is already my part of the body. This guitar also hinders me from buying new guitar since this one sets the standard of tone and playability pretty high. This is not a relic Strat '68 with special neck joint plate, this is not a '57 Les Paul with gold top finish and original PAF pickups and this doesn't worth as much as them. If this guitar is available in the market, it would cost probably less than $1000.00 for a new one with the exact same specs.

I didn't find any flaw on this guitar except that the white paint slowly turns to yellow-ish white. I don't really care though, it still looks neat and it still sounds great, those are what matter the most. If this guitar died, I would probably get an RG with Edge Pro trem and put the same mods that I've done to that RG. I would even probably throw away the tone knob for better tone.

I'll post some sound clip of this guitar soon :)

Hope you enjoy, cheers and God bless !

IBANEZ AIRPLANE FLANGER AF2

Pablo Gilberto

I am a big fan of Paul Gilbert's work and been checking out his guitar setup and try to incorporate his ideas into my setup. This pedal just came out by the time I checked his youtube video explaining what it does, and of course it was still pricey back then so I just kind of let it slipped away from me. But I got blessed with so many caring friends around me and they bought me this pedal for me as a birthday present(thank you guys :) ).

Two buttons?

Yes, two buttons, one for on/off true bypass switch and one for mode selection. This cool pedal has two modes: taxi and take off. Taxiing, you can get normal flanger sound that I will explain below; take off-ing, you will get a super crazy self oscillation mode with just speed knob to control the speed.

Organic flanger pedal

On the Taxi mode, let me say that this thing is not your average flanger pedal. This thing packs a lot of organic quality; the flanger timing is a little bit random to a certain degree and while it colors your tone, it still let the majority of your signal to be noticed transparently. The knobs have broad range of controls so you can make the pedal acts as transparent as possible with almost chorus-like quality to the most heavy tone-coloration you can possibly get.

My personal setup is to have all the knobs at the very minimum to aim for that chorus-like sound that I really like. Personally, I am not really a flanger guy like Paul Gilbert, I don't really have the skill to tame the non-precise timed flanger sound but this pedal really makes things become interesting without making me struggle.

4 knobs with strange names

Manual is for controlling the delay time, Speed is for controlling the speed of course, Range is for controlling the frequency range of the flanger and Enhance is for controlling the amount of coloration.

Cabin crew take off position

The Take Off mode really sets your pedal to generate crazy auto whammy sound that will never stop. It will just go up and down like a police siren with some degree of original signal replication. I can hardly hear my original tone AND note when I'm in Take Off mode. You can get down and play with the speed knob to get even crazier slow-fast-up-down self-oscillating skull-cracking auto whammy.

It's a flanger, how often do you use it?

If it's normal flanger, I don't even want to have one, I tried one many times before but it's not my type of FX. But this one? I can turn it on on every channel: clean, dirty, lead, whatever channel and I can have that shimmery effect that enhance the 3D-ness of my signal and add some organic quality to my tone. I don't turn it on all the time though because some songs requires simpler more straight forward type of sound, but when I want something cool, this pedal is always on.

Value for its price

A true bypass pedal with a unique sound and organic quality, this pedal is worth the money. I think now the price is not as expensive as before and you can get it for less than $150.00 for sure. This is not too pricey for something this good, and considering that this is a signature pedal, this thing is probably a steal for that price :p.

Like it so far

I find this pedal is almost flawless.....except that it's BIG. May or may not cause any space related problem to your pedalboard. Powered with 9V standard adapter, does not accept battery power.

From 0 to 10

10. Period.

Normal sound clip: HERE, it contains three different settings: first no effect, second with chorus-ey flanger, third with more straight forward flanger.

Takeoff sound clip: HERE, it contains original overdriven sound with the takeoff mode in the middle, you'll know it from how it sounds!

Cheers and God bless :D

p.s. check out Silence Followed by A Deafening Roar album by Paul Gilbert to hear this pedal in action during Take Off mode. Paul also used the Take Off mode during live gig when performing an older Mr. Big song called Alive and Kickin'.

The Beginning of Guitar Tone Chasing

Please enjoy my review of gears on this blog. Hopefully I can bring unbiased review so that we can share knowledge and spread the good stuffs around.

I am mostly going to review guitar FX pedals. However, I will also review other stuffs such as pups, strings, picks or even some guitars that I have tried.

Thanks for checking this page guys