What Happens When I Combined Guitar with Electronic Music

Hello everyone, I just made a new song. Basically I experimented with mixing and blending traditional rock instrumental guitar music with electronic music. This is the result:

I was trying to explore new genres of music such as electronica, trance, dance and dubstep. While they are all definitely cool sounding music, I always felt that a little bit of rock guitar melody could enhance those music a little bit. Hence, my latest project was born.

In case you are wondering about the equipment that I used, I utilized my MIM Standard Stratocaster with a combination of BB Preamp and Radial Tonebone Hot British straight to the Mesa TA-30 to the Radial JDX to my USB Interface. Then I added essential plugins such as reverb, delay, compressor and EQ in the Reaper DAW.

For drum, I still use Hydrogen and I find it quite difficult for me to switch to other drum machine because it just feels very natural to me to create beat patterns. I also experimented with some plugins such as Valhalla Shimmer as the ambient reverb for some tracks, Up Stereo to enhance stereo and loudness, TAL Noise Maker to generate some weird synth sounds, and Aquestone to create that weird sounding vocal emulation.

There you go, my little experiment in the electronic music side of the world :) I hope you enjoy my music. Don't forget to subscribe at my Youtube. Cheers and God bless :)

It's That Time of the Year! Merry Christmas :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sorry for the lack of update, here's a little classic "I'll Be Home For Christmas" that I re-arranged. Hopefuly you all have a wonderful Christmas either alone or with your loved ones. God bless you all and keep on checking this blog for more updates.

Stay tuned for more reviews :) Thank you for checking this blog out :)

MESA BOOGIE TRANSATLANTIC TA 30

Hello everyone, today I want to talk about Mesa Boogie Transatlantic TA-30. A little background, Mesa Boogie is very known for its very high quality high end guitar and bass amplifiers and cabinets. Some of its successful amplifiers are now being used by high profile artists such as John Petrucci, Mark Tremonti, Andy Timmons and many others. 

The history of Mesa Boogie starts way back from around early '70s when Randall Smith started his job as a repairing technician for guitar amplifiers. He modified amps that was available during that time by "hot-roding" the amp with an extra tube on the preamp section of the amp to achieve a high gain sound that was not easily available during that time. Since then, he started building his very own guitar and bass amps that come in different tones, output power and size.

Transatlantic TA-30

Mesa Boogie is very well known for its reputation on making high gain amp, but those people working there want to show the world that they can also make amps that can do some great stuffs on lower gain settings; this is the main purpose of TA-30. This amp does so many great clean and break up tones, but you can always crank it up to get that mid gain tone out of this amp. This amp is also on the portable side of amplifiers, means that the head version of this amp is pretty small and light enough for you to easily carry it on any gig.

Technical Detail

I have the head version, it features 4xEL84 tubes, 6x12AX7 tubes, a special output transformer, Effects Loop, Reverb circuits for both channels, independent EQ for different channels, independent Reverb and FX Loop setting on different channels, independent output power level on different channels and some push-pull knobs. The EQ settings are consisted of Bass and Treble without any option to adjust the Mid.

You have two channels:

Channel Green, you can choose between "Normal" clean tone and a British sort of like Vox AC "Top Boost". When cranked up, the Clean tone will deliver an almost break up tone but still on the clean side while the Top Boost tone will start to get saturated. This channel EQ includes a Cut knob to remove some high end sizzle; the knob can be pulled and it starts to act as a Master Volume with pre-fixed amount of "cut".

Channel Red, you can choose between "Tweed" for American Fender clean tone, "Hi 1" for British mid gain tone, and "Hi 2" for Mesa's signature mid gain tone. When cranked up, Tweed will give you an almost break up tone with just a hint of dirt. Hi 1 will deliver Marshall-like mid gain tone when cranked up with enough sustain but not very saturated. Hi 2 will sizzle when cranked up and it will sound pretty good when you do lead stuffs.

All the channels have individual tone control as well as power selection of 15, 30 and 40 Watt. The 15 and 30 Watt power level will give you class A tube tone at different volume and headroom level. The 40 Watt power level will deliver class AB "Dyna-watt" tube tone with extra juice that can enhance your playability and tone.

My opinion

It's a super great amp!!! I personally like the clean channel on Normal mode with some added treble. With the help of its built-in Reverb, you can get so many great classic clean tone that can cover many ground of music styles. I also like the Hi 2 mode on the Red Channel and I usually roll down the treble to get that fat warm tone; I add my BB Preamp in front of the already cranked amp to push it harder and make it sound like a mid/high gain amp that doesn't fuzz too much and still retain the integrity of the original tone. 

You can add any pedal in front of it or on the Effects Loop if you need to use the FX Loop. It works well with all of my overdrive pedal and it projects the delays from my delay pedal nicely. I use a Mesa Mini Recto Cab as my cabinet and it works well especially on Hi 1 mode. 

Is it worth the price?

Nothing bad to say except its sky-rocket-high price. But I say it's worth it, the overall quality of the amp is very good and it's very well built. My personal experience with this amp has been very great, it delivers what it says on the brochure and on the internet.

From 0 to 10

10. Maybe even higher than 10, this is really one of the best amp I've ever tried.

Here's some sound clips. I used my PGM30 with DiMarzio AT-1 and Cruiser Bridge. I record the sound from the amp using Radial JDX Amp DI.

DIRTY

CLEAN

I hope you enjoy this post. Cheers and God Bless :)

Stay tuned for more reviews :)

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 :)

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 :)

GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.III

Finally, the last part of "Guitar Artists with Great Tone" post! Hopefully you already made some guesses on the artist that I will mention on this post.

I won't mention his name, but I'll mention some interesting facts about him.

He uses mainly Stratocasters.

He's from Austin, Texas.

He's 56 years old.

He had his own Signature Strat.

He uses Fender and Marshall amps mostly.

Any guesses? I'll give you some more hints:

He played an old ES-335 and Les Paul as well.

He suffered from a tone OCD.

He sometimes sings.

Is it clear now?

Anyway, our latest guitar artist with the greatest tone(in my opinion, of course) is

....(drum roll)....

Eric Johnson (applause)

In my opinion, he's the man with the tone and feel. He adapt his playing closely to his tone. He's surely not a shredder but his melody lines are pretty good and difficult to play.

He uses mainly his signature Fender Stratocaster which is based on early Stratocaster during the '50s and '60s. The newer signature Eric Johnson has rosewood fingerboard with modified pickups. His amps are Marshall Plexi 50/100W and Fender Twin Reverb. He's a very big fan of '70s Echoplex tape echo. He uses Tube Screamer and Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face as well as Deluxe Memory Man.

He has three main sounds: clean rhythm, a bit dirty rhythm and a full lead tone. His clean sound is sometimes boosted with a Dyna Comp. It's the cleanest clean sound ever with a very rich harmonics with little bit of delay and chorus; it's based on Fender amp. His rhythm tone is a classic Stevie Ray Vaughan type of sound with the help of Fender amp combined with additional gain box such as TS, very glassy and bluesy and very good for chord works. His lead tone is based on Eric Clapton's Cream-era lead tone that comes mainly from an overdriven Marshall Plexi amp and sometimes together with the Fuzz Face.

This guy really shapes his playing to suit his tone. He has a very good chording technique with some hybrid picking involved. Also he is very good with arpeggiated lead notes. Most of the time he involves some jazz licks together with blues based scale. Very non-traditional playing with influences ranging from Hendrix to SRV.

He's famous for his "tone OCD". He tweaks his gears frequently just to get the right tone. His perception of tone is very high above the standard and that results in amazing smooth fat warm tone that is really the best in my opinion compared to any other guitar artists.

Definitely check out his classic "Ah Via Musicom" album and his newest recording "Up Close" and listen to some of his songs to experience the best guitar tone ever recorded. Not just the tone, the fingers are also great on those albums, some songs are hard to nail!!

I hope you enjoy this post as much as I do and I hope that you can gain some knowledge from these series of discussion post. I will come up with more discussion post along with more review of some cool vintage-y guitar gears :)

Cheers and God bless :)

GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.II

This is the second part of the "Guitar Artists with Great Tone" post. Feel free to check out the first post at anytime. Read on...

Eddie Van Halen - Van Halen

Eddie is a good example to show that great tone mainly comes from fingers, not from expensive gear. In the early days of his success, he used nothing more than just a Frankenstrat: a home-made $300 strat with humbucker pickup on the bridge.

His early Van Halen era tone is called "the Brown sound" which basically comes from a humbucker-equiped strat plugged into a variac-ed Marshall Plexi Super Lead Amp. For those of you who don't know about variac: it's basically voltage transformer that can drop or raise the amount of voltage going into an amp. Thus, the name variac came from "vary AC". It's not really clear whether Eddie lower or raise the voltage using the variac device, he blew lots of amp and cabinet(theoretically can only be caused by raising the voltage using the variac). Nonetheless, many people agree that he lowered the voltage judging from the sound.

Another important thing to mention here: Eddie don't really use gain boxes or preamp before the Marshall Plexi Super Lead. It's just straight Frankenstrat into the Marshall. He did have EQ-ing between the Marshall and the cabinet.

There's no doubt that this guy is another important figure in the world of guitar tone. Definitely check out his early days Van Halen work and you'll be pleased with his classic early-shred era tone.

David Gilmour - Pink Floyd

Another guy with classic rock tone that everyone praised. His great improvisation skill was the main factor of his great tone. His main guitars are mostly Stratocasters and the most famous one that he uses is the black on black '69 Strat with maple neck and DiMarzio FS-1 pickup on the bridge position. Apart from Strat, he also used Les Paul, Telecaster and Esquire.

Talking about amps, he did use Hiwatt 100W heads and Mesa Boogie Mark I during "The Wall" era. For the FX units, he used lots of different units but mostly they were delays, compressors, wahs, choruses and gain boxes.

If you never heard of him before, check out "Comfortably Numb" from "The Wall" album. The solo part is arguably the best solo guitar on the planet!

Lincoln Brewster

Not many people know him, but he's actually a pretty great guitarist with great tone. He is a Christian musician/composer and has recorded many great Christian albums with cool guitar parts. His tone is very fat and warm and received so many praises from his audiences.

He uses Stratocaster mostly, preferably the '57 and '62 reissue Strats equiped with DiMarzio Area series pickups. He also uses Les Paul '59 reissue on some of his works.

This is where the fun starts: He doesn't not use vintage amp with boutique pedals. He only uses a Line 6 POD X3. That's it. You can even download his patch on his website and load it to your X3 to get his tone. Well, actually you will also need his fingers and maybe part of his brain? Haha, just joking...because I tried his patch on my X3 and when I started to play, it doesn't sound like him at all *sigh*... :'(

So once again, it's been proven that the tone lies mostly on the fingers, not on the gear. Check out the song "Today is the Day" and listen to his solo guitar. That solo is just amazing, plus the tone is very pleasing to the ears!

Gary Moore (R.I.P.)

A classic Les Paul guy, his live performance tone has been praised very much for its crazy-fat-warm-sustain quality. He's one of those guy who redefined the term "tone" in the guitar world.

Mostly a Les Paul '59 guy throughout his life(it's Peter Green's LP), but has been seen using other guitars. He used Marshall Guv'nor pedal and Marshall JTM45-reissue amp. That crazy overdrive was mostly from his already overdriven amp combined with the Guv'nor overdrive pedal.

I remember saw him once on a live performance DVD where he got that crazily fat and overdriven tone with just a crazy amount of sustain. That's just fantastic !!! He will always be remembered for his work on the music world, Gary Moore is a legend !

Stay tuned for the final part of the Guitar Artist with Great Tone! The last post will contain the man with the greatest tone in my opinion!

Cheers and God bless :)

GUITAR ARTISTS WITH GREAT TONE PT.I

No review today, but something different.
Today I want to share a little bit of my opinions about guitarists with great tone and great skills. They're all highly respected musicians and most of them are enjoying their careers either solo or with their bands. Most of them most people will already know because of their popularity but some of them are not really famous in the public but possess great tone and exceptional guitar skills. Some of them are my biggest influences but some of them I don't really check them out yet.

John Petrucci from Dream Theater

John Petrucci is famous for his work with Dream Theater, a progressive rock metal band that's currently growing rapidly in terms of popularity and exposure in the public.

His tone is coming mainly from his Ernie Ball Music Man John Petrucci signature guitar combined with Mesa Boogie Mark series amp. His EBMM JP guitar is usually loaded with DiMarzio LiquiFire and Crunch Lab humbuckers.

What sets him apart from the other guys in terms of tone is his ability to get a well defined fat warm super-driven notes during high speed picking with not too much muddiness when using highly saturated amp. The settings on his amp is not really surprising in the world of metal heads: scooped mids. Although he used scooped mids, his humbuckers are designed to work well on mid frequencies so he's kind of trying to balance between the amp and the pickups to get a well defined tone.

He definitely uses many FX pedals especially during live performances to create layering effects. He uses chorus, phaser, flanger, delay pedals and also overdrive pedals ranging from stock market models to hard-to-find vintage modded ones. However, his tone does not mainly come from his gear but it's mostly from his fingers.

Recommended album with great tone: Black Clouds and Silver Linings, Scenes From a Memory, Octavarium.

Stevie Ray Vaughan(R.I.P)

Almost every blues guitar fans know him and try to get his tone. He's a very famous Stratocaster user that really knows how to get a good tone out of it. The secret of his tone is nothing more than his Strat on a 6L6 based amp with mild drive and some boost with the Tube Screamer. In fact, if you have a Strat, a Fender Twin Reverb Amp and a Tube Screamer, you'll nail some of his famous tones instantly.

He used various gears and guitars but his main ones are the Fender Stratocaster '62 "Number One", a TS808 Tube Screamer and Fender Twin Reverb/Tweed Bassman Amps. Secret ingredient to his tone is super heavy gauge strings, probably around .013 and tuned it down half step to lesser the tension of the strings.

A lot of modern guitar players mentioned SRV as their tone inspiration because of his massive bluesy tone. Even gear manufacturers are trying to capture the sound generated from his gear and make it into a box or something. Thus, SRV is undeniably a very important figure in the world of guitar tone development.

Paul Gilbert from Racer X/Mr. Big/Solo

Every shredder must have heard Paul Gilbert's name at least once in their life. He's the shredder of the nineties, very famous with his work with Mr. Big and some people even know him while he's still in Racer X.

Starting from his solo album era around Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, his tone is suddenly transformed and becomes very enjoyable.

His tone is not really the fat-warm type of tone, but it's very rich with articulation and definition. It's good for fast stuffs, chords and blues licks.

The secret of his tone during the nineties is definitely an Ibanez PGM with no tone knob loaded with PAF style pickups, particularly DiMarzios ranging from PAF Pro to the Tone Zone to even the Super Distortion high output pickups. The Ibanez is then plugged into a Marshall high gain amp. He get a very decent tone coming out from this combination.

Another secret to his tone is the picks that he used: he prefers a .60mm Dunlop Tortex to the standard small pointy Jazz picks that almost everyone uses. He angled his thin pick to get more treble and attack from the strings and it really is the biggest secret to almost nail his tone.

FYI, he didn't really care about tone until he started touring on G3 with Joe Satriani and John Petrucci. He now uses Marshall Vintage Modern, Ibanez Fireman loaded with DiMarzio Area series pickups, Majikbox Fuzz Universe overdrive pedal and some flanger, phaser delay and other boxes. He also used some Xotic pedals and he constantly changes his pedals depending on what he wants. Now he sounds much better than he was!

Definitely check out Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar, Fuzz Universe and his works with Mr. Big and Racer X. All of them contain Paul's mighty shred-ready tone.

Andy Timmons

He's relatively new to most guitar players but he's actually been around for quite some time in the guitar world. He played with metal band called Danger Danger around nineties. He's now currently a solo artist and has his own band called Andy Timmons band.

The secret of his tone comes mainly from his signature Ibanez AT series loaded with DiMarzio Cruisers and AT Humbuckers/Seymour Duncan JB plugged into Mesa Boogie Lonestar/Stiletto Deuce/Transatlantic 30. Other important part of his tone is the delay FX units that he uses and also his gain box. He loves the Echoplex tape echo very much, but he prefers to use a box to replicate the effects during live performance by using an EXH Memory Man or sometimes using rack type delay units. For his gain box, he relies mostly on his signature Xotic BB Preamp. He used Ibanez Tube Screamer sometime in early 2000 to get that bluesy tone much like SRV's with more gain. He's also known as a Telecaster guy and he also played an SG although we haven't see him playing live with his SG.

He's been respected very much as a guitarist and also as a tone chaser. He tried various pieces of gear and experimented with all of them to achieve a good sound. Unlike any other Ibanez endorser artists, Andy prefers the sound of a guitar with lower output pickups and cool vintage-style hardware and look.

Definitely check out his new album Resolution and his compilation That Was Then, This Was Now. Don't expect anything too shreddy from his songs but he has couple of tricks under his sleeves just in case someone needs shreddy stuff!

Stay tuned for PART II !!

Cheers and God bless :)

A TILTED VOX AMP AND AN ARMOR ALL SPRAY

One thing about tone chasing: it's endless, just like trying to chase your own tail and it will drive you crazy, both physically and financially. You will surely get better tone and you will learn so much about your guitar by doing that, but what matters the most is your final result.

It's good to make significant changes sometimes, for example upgrading from a cheap solid state amp into a fully loaded tube amp, or maybe replacing a tone-coloring pedal with something more decent. But trying to exhaust yourself trying to find a perfect tone is not going to happen quickly and in exhaustive way.

If you are concerned about the way your signal chain sounds, you should first worry about how you play your guitar. Observe basic simple techniques that will beautify your guitar playing. A player who makes great vibrato with a $85.00 Walmart Strat plugged into a cheap practice amp will still sound so much better compared to a player who tries to mask his bad technique using a $3000.00 guitar using exotic woods plugged into an echoplex that's connected to a Vintage Modern Marshall.

I want people not to get obsessed with gears but to get obsessed trying to make their playing to sound great. Guitar playing is not all about live action coolness or bragging expensive rig, it's more about how you put beautiful compositions into someone's ear.

Even the King of Tone himself said the same thing haha !

Cheers and God bless :D !

XOTIC BB PREAMP

Let me start by saying that I am recently digging a lot of Andy Timmons' stuffs. I think he is one of only few guitarists that has great tone. Surely he plays great too (check out his new CD called Resolution)

What is it?

Okay, let's start. BB Preamp is actually a gain box that has unique characteristics. It's made by the Xotic. I use this pedal for sometime now as my primary gain box on my signal chain.

Let me talk about the sound that it can produce. This thing is capable of producing a super warm fat overdriven guitar tone that is similar to a vintage cranked EL34 based tube amps, let's just say an old Marshall. Not too much gain, but quite flexible gain control that can beef up your guitar tone while you're still running clean channel of your amp.

Another gain box? Something unique?

Let's just say almost everyone that chases tone knows Tube Screamer and what it does. Well, this is not a Tube Screamer wannabe; it's far from being called a TS clone. This thing maintains the transparency of your original tone and adds warmth and impressive amount of room to your signal. I tested this pedal using a basswood Ibanez equiped with Dimarzio Cruisers(bridge) at the neck and mid, and an AT humbucker at the bridge and it works very well on all position. The single coils get compressed tone with fair amount of treble, the humbucker gets a very sweet mid based overdriven sound with no muddiness at all.

What can I do with this pedal? What's the limit?

This thing is quite flexible, when you set the gain to a very low level, it will act almost like a clean boost, something that you can step to play clean leads without saturating your signal. If you put the gain at maximum, it will sound like a pushed crunch channel of a Marshall. It's NOT enough for metal music(I used to play metal years ago, so I know what kind of metal tone that people usually want), but if you put it in front of an already saturated amp, this thing will help your guitar to cut through the mix much easier.

Word of caution?

Beware, if you are NOT looking for extra mid on your signal or even try to cut the mid, this box will not do that job quite right. The nature of this box is to add extra mid to make warmness to your tone.

Anything else you need to know

This pedal is an IC based pedal. I believe it uses op-amp much like any other gain box in its range. It's not the one that has 12AX7 or germanium diode or whatever fancy stuffs, this is just plain IC based. It's meant not just to recreate vintage tone, but it's also going to help you get more fat warm non muddy tone that every lead guitarists want. However, if you're more interested in getting a vintage creamy fuzz sound from the sixties, I suggest check out pedals that has tubes or germanium diode in them. They'll have different feel than this box.

I personally disagree with the name "preamp". It should be BB Boost or something similar. Preamp doesn't usually come with true bypass :D...(I'm talking about TRUE true bypass, not just some true bypass, that should make you happy)

Power comes from 9V battery or the usual adapters such as BOSS and MXR.

Was it worth?

Talking about price, I got mine for $170.00. Pricey !!! But hey, it's worth every penny I spent. I personally use it side by side with an original TS808 so I can switch back and forth between two overdrive tones that I want. My personal favorite configuration: Bass 1 o'clock, treble 10 o'clock, gain around 3pm and the output will depend on your signal path but mine is set at around 9am and it already balances with the rest of my signal chain.

From 0 to 10

I give this pedal: 9.5....It will be 10 if it's bit cheaper, say in the price range of the usual TS or little bit more but not too much.

check out http://www.xotic.us

for sound clip MP3: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12709731/sound%20demo/bb%20preamp.mp3

Hopefully you find this post to be informative, I will update if necessary. Otherwise, stay tuned for more reviews. CHEERS and God bless :)

p.s: if you are a truly Andy Timmons fan, go get the AT BB preamp limited edition, it's sold out already but if you check Mike Analogman's site, you'll find it there. Just google analogman :p....Oh, you can also get BB Preamp plus too, check it out, it's a twin BB preamp in one box.

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