DIMARZIO VIRTUAL VINTAGE HEAVY BLUES 2, AIR ZONE AND TEXMEX

Hello everyone, I am going to share some sound clips of my newly installed pickups on my Strat. I hope you will enjoy these clips and make good use of them. Some notes first: the Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 does scream in high gain pretty well but I didn't have time to capture it. I'll try to get the recording next time.

On the other hand, Air Zone definitely sounds fantastic! It doesn't sound similar to any other DiMarzio humbuckers I've tried, this is very unique. It's not a total screamer, it doesn't make your sound muddy, it has definition and good pick attack. I really like it, it's very versatile.

The combination of the VVHB2 and the standard TexMex is very amazing! I can get a very funky clean tone out of the combination and it really works very well!

Here are the clips:
VVHB2: Clean wet, Jazz comping, Dirty
VVHB2+TexMex: Funk
TexMex+AirZone: Funk
AirZone: Clean, Dirty

Hope you enjoy!
Cheers and God Bless :)

IDEALISTIC APPROACH OF BEING A "GOOD" GUITAR PLAYER

This post isn't going to be a review. Instead, I'm going to share with you something that I had in mind for some time that can hopefully expand the horizon of your guitar playing and tone chasing. It's about becoming a better guitarist. What's been driving me to write this post is actually the fact that in the last few days, I've been searching for a way to keep me motivated as a guitar player.

First of all, let's look at some of the top guitarists in the planet. They all have some things in common regardless of their genre. One of them is the willingness to learn; to be humble. They are willing to learn from other guitarists that inspires them and apply that knowledge into their playing. Take Paul Gilbert for example: he's considered a monster in the world of fast guitar playing, but to acknowledge the work of Johnny Cash in the realm of country guitar playing and applying it to his song writing techniques is just very humble and heart-warming; the result shows best during his live performances when he's able to balance between hard and soft songs.

John Petrucci also improved his technique by simply learning from other guitarists that had been playing with him together during G3 concerts. He's so used to alternate picking, he doesn't even consider putting bits of legatos in his playing; but by learning from other guitarists and acknowledging their great work really put Petrucci on the extra mile of his already amazing techniques.

Secondly, most of them are willing to learn many genres although they are known only for particular genres. Take Eric Johnson for example, he's known for his instrumental Rock and Blues but he can go far with some cool Jazz comping, Latin, Swings and Bossa Nova. Guthrie Govan perhaps is one of a few guitarists that can master many different extreme techniques ranging from shredding speed guitar to groovy funk rhythm playing. That kind of multi-genre thing really helps many guitarists to enhance their tone palette too! They will not just stuck with one boring overdrive sound; instead, they will investigate how to achieve many different and interesting sound for different types of moods.


Other thing is their view about their gears. This is a bit hard to apply for us because some of us are limited both financially and/or availability of gears. Andy Timmons really knows the details of his gear, he knows exactly every pedal, every tube in his amps, every cable, every speakers, everything! This really helps him to shape his unique tone that influence him to play in certain way that goes into his liking. On the other hand, some guitarists such as Mike Stern don't really go crazy with expensive gears but they rely on simple setups that are handy, don't require massive maintenance and produce consistent tones during concert.

More importantly, the main point that I want to say ultimately is try to rotate your concentration on different stuffs. Don't just concentrate on tone alone, don't just concentrate on techniques forever, don't just concentrate on gear all the time; try to circle between different stuffs. That way, you will avoid getting bored and you will also develop a bigger picture of being an overall good guitarists. Many young players concentrate only on playing as fast as you can as precise as you can; that's good but that's boring, if players start to develop ear for good tone, they will start tweaking and probably learning different techniques that suit different tones and that is exactly what many young guitar starters need!

I've just recently started to explore good Jazz tone. It requires me to get out of my good overdrive tone and start exploring ways to replicate a semi hollow guitar tone. It's not just about the tone, I'm also trying to learn how to comp in a modern Jazz music and it's really hard for me considering how comfortable I am in the world of Rock music. But the result is starting to show slowly and it's very rewarding to see yourselves develop some new and inspiring tone and techniques.

I hope you all enjoy this post. Reviews aren't going to be as much as before, but I promise to keep the blog interesting! Come back often and enjoy your time here.

Cheers and God bless :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR

Sorry I haven't updated the blog for a while. I was busy packing and sorting things out before I'm going back to my country of origin. Here's some new updates:

I sold my 7 string Ibanez RG7321 with the DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan. It's a bit sad knowing that it's now being played by someone else. Nonetheless, the 7 string served very well in the last three years.

I put a DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 on the neck of my Strat. It sounded great on Strat! I had it on my JEM JR(check out my older post about it) and the same pickup sounds different on different guitar. I guess I'm about to discover something interesting. Also I tried a DiMarzio Air Zone on the bridge of my Strat to replace the Diamondback humbucker that came standard with my fat Strat. It does the job very well, sounded very warm and balanced. It doesn't overpower the guitar too much but it gives enough punch to drive my tubes to my liking.

I'm also packing some of the pedals that I acquired and now my pedalboard looks empty haha!

Anyway, I'm wishing everybody good blessings in 2012! Keep in mind, in whatever you do, both musically and not musically, do it with heart and passion. 

Last but not least, keep checking out this blog! More materials are coming while the old ones are also good food for thought!

Cheers and God bless :)

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 :)