MEMORY MAN VERSUS MEMORY BOY

I just got a chance yesterday morning to mess around in my local Guitar Center and compare side by side a Deluxe Memory Man and a Memory Boy. Man, this is the greatest delay pedals comparison that I've ever done. Sorry, there will be no audio clip available for this comparison since I don't have a chance to have the Memory Man in my home for recording.

Let's start with the Man

It has extra Level knob to adjust the output of the pedal which is great. It also has two options of output: one for direct output, one for FX out. This is great since you can use both output for stereo kind of effect to get the dry vs wet signal to whatever configuration you like.

The sound that I'm getting is actually pretty subtle, nothing too dramatic or surprising. The knobs aren't as sensitive as the Boy, but this one is fine tuned for perfection. I can see why the price range is pretty high, this pedal is meant to last forever and there is indeed some feeling that the pedal naturally adds warmness to your signal.

That's the best 10 minutes I've ever had while testing this pedal. I didn't use anything fantastic: just a cheap Ibanez Artcore guitar plugged straight here onto the amp. The delay sound is very very classic, you can easily nail anything with this pedal. Furthermore, the chorus effect offers a very subtle slightly out-of-tune repeats that don't get too far; that's good since you don't want people to think that you're out of tune. This pedal also has slightly longer delay time compared to the Memory Boy.

I don't really have anything to complain from this pedal except that it's BIG, almost the size of a Memory Boy combined with a Memory Toy. Price range around $320.00. From 0 to 10, I give this one a 10 ! It's worth every penny you spent

How does the Boy compare to the Man?

To be honest with you all, after I compared this baby to the Man, I have to say that this is actually VERY CLOSE to the Memory Man. Really, if you're looking for something more basic that has the same power as the Man, this is what you're looking for. What are lacking from this pedal:

- Output Level adjustment

- Multi output option

- Overly sensitive knobs(especially the chorus depth knob...compared to the Man)

- Not so natural added warmness(I'll explain more)

What I mean by not-so-natural warmness

The pedal doesn't have output level adjustment, so it adds the most amount of warmness that you can get without the ability to reduce it at all. This is good enough for me, but keep in mind that when you turn on the pedal, there's gonna be a slight increase of volume(that doesn't necessarily alter your tone besides added warmth). It's not artificial though, the internal construction of the pedal is based on full analog circuitry.

Therefore, I can surely says that the Memory Boy now gets a 10 out of 10 for it's ability to almost match the Memory Man. Well, actually if I may add, the price of the Memory Boy is a bit "steal" for something this good, but if you want something more between the Boy and the Man, there's a Deluxe Memory Boy with Tap Tempo adjustment, just in case you want more flexibility of setting the delay time.

Good job EHX for making this great pedal at a very cheap price. Surely this one beats everything on its price range!!

Cheers and God bless :)

MORLEY VOLUME PLUS

First of all, pardon me for the lack of update for these couple of days. Good news: I got my new pedalboard and everything is installed together and it's ready for audio recording. Just need to find some time to record A/B comparisons of using pedal and no pedal.

Transparent volume pedal

At this opportunity I'll review a Morley Volume Plus pedal. Before I even do that, let me first say that my volume pedal hunting doesn't go so well. As we all know, most volume pedal uses potentiometer that causes signal degradation due to increased resistance of the overall signal on your signal chain. That's TONE SUCKING basically. Well, this pedal isn't sucking any of your tone(or almost not sucking tone, I can't really hear the difference!).

Instead of using a potentiometer, this pedal uses optical sensor or something like that. This is great because a pot will eventually wear out and need to be replaced besides its nature of being a tone sucking factor. Thus, using the optical sensor makes this pedal a reasonably transparent volume pedal. I'm trying to A/B with and without pedal and see how much tone sucking is going on: I can't tell haha !

Swelling action

Although the volume pedal is transparent, it isn't really good for accurate volume swelling due to the fact that the rocker's angle isn't too wide. However, there's a switch on the bottom right of the pedal that actually turns on the "minimum volume" adjustment with the knob on the bottom left to adjust the minimum volume that you want as you put the rocker to its lowest position. This will help you get a more precised swelling or even do a rhythm/lead switch by moving the rocker.

Nonetheless, the mechanic moving part of the pedal is smooth enough so you can get that friction-free movement when you use this pedal. I'm still trying to figure out how to adjust the rocker's tension so that I can have it a little bit harder.

Built quality

The casing is very good, the battery compartment is easy to access, nothing really to complain except for two things:

- The size of this pedal will eat a lot of space on your pedal board. This thing is so huge, it has the same size of three small-sized MXR pedals combined together. Yikes !!

- You can't really "stand" on the rocker. What I mean is you can't literally put your foot on top of the rocker and kind of put your body weight above this pedal. It doesn't really have that strong feeling like when you stand on top of a wah pedal.

Is it worth?

Usual price is $90.00. It's totally worth! It's on the same price range of the other volume pedals.

From 0 to 10

I give this pedal an 8.9. It needs to have smaller footprint and stronger metal enclosure. But actually that's a bit too harsh, I can still give this pedal a 9.5 to be honest for its transparency.

Cheers and God bless :)

MORE GREAT PEDALS ON THE WAY

I just got some news that there are some good new pedals waiting to be tested, right now I'm currently still on the airport waiting to get back to my "hometown" haha!

Sorry for the lack of update yesterday, but I hope you can still enjoy some of my older posts.

Here's a quick list of what's gonna be uploaded into the post:

- Morley Volume Pedal

- Xotic RC Booster

- Some random digital delay

- Possibly a new chorus pedal

- Dyna Comp by MXR(the regular one)

- Some new pickups(gonna need some time to install them, so this won't be uploaded quickly)

Here's some possible discussion about tone that I'll post as well:

- Low output vs high output pickups

- True bypass mythbuster

- Cables

- Possibly a review of my gonna-be-modded 7 string

Thank you very much for keep checking my blog to all of you who made it here. I'll hope you find what you're looking for here, otherwise enjoy my posts :)

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 :)

DIMARZIO VIRTUAL VINTAGE HEAVY BLUES 2 VERSUS CRUISER BRIDGE

Tonight I want to share a little bit about my experience with DiMarzio products! Hopefully this will help you to decide whether you want to change your pickups to DiMarzio or not. I'm going to review the Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 and compare it with the Cruiser Bridge. Read on! :)

Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues

Let me start with the basic specification of the pickup

Output : 170mV(according to DiMarzio)

DC Resistance : 8.5 k ohm

Magnet : Alnico 2

4-conductor-based wiring

Tone : Treble 7.5, Mid 6.5, Bass 6.0(DiMarzio's website)

This single coil is very ideal to re-create that vintage hot-rodded Strat style tone. I prefer to use this one on the neck position and use a low to medium output humbucker to get a balanced volume level. It packs some mid punch; unlike a strat, this one is a bit hot and works well with distortion.

The high notes doesn't get too harsh, the low has some definition, and the mid kicks your notes nicely. I personally like this pickup for it's thickness(I'm using .008-.038 by the way, very THIN). You can easily nail hot-Strat tone from various artists using this pickup combined with slightly overdriven amp or clean amp with a little bit boost.

I don't find any flaw with this pickup except its strange wiring methods; the cable colors aren't the usual ones. It's not using a very strong magnet so it doesn't pull your string too much, you get more sustain for sure. I don't know what's your preference but trust me, weaker magnet is sometimes better :). BTW, you might think that more mid may increase muddiness: that's not happening here, this pickup is balanced properly EQ-wise.

Price starts from $70.00, you can get it from any famous music store(in U.S. of course). I got mine from a music store in Indonesia, though.

Cruiser Bridge Model

Output : 143mV(according to DiMarzio)

DC Resistance : 5.75 k ohm

Magnet : Ceramic

4-conductor-based wiring

Tone : Treble 8.0, Mid 4.5, Bass 5.5(DiMarzio's website)

Andy Timmons uses this pickup on his guitars and he uses it pretty often on the neck position. I put this one on my PGM and I can easily nail Timmons' tone using this pickup. The sound that I'm getting out of this pickup is a natural Strat sound that doesn't get too harsh with the treble but still retains its glassy tone. It doesn't emphasize your picking too much(is that good or bad?) but I personally like it because it doesn't get too bright on the scratch notes unlike traditional Strat pickups.

Works well with distortion, good for combination with other single coils or a full sized low-medium output humbucker. I combined mine with AT-1 humbucker which basically has similar qualities with Seymour Duncan JB. I set my humbucker high and the Cruiser very low and I can get volume reduction when switching to the Cruiser on the neck. Very versatile!

Nothing I dislike about this pickup. It does have a low output(although higher than strat) but it doesn't get thin. It doesn't boost your midrange; this one is a more of a traditional single coil that everyone will surely love.

Price: starts from around $70.00, you can get it anywhere in U.S. for sure.

Which one is better?

Cruiser is definitely more traditional with some enhancement on the chord definition and power. It pushes your amp harder compared to regular single coil pickup of a Strat. VVHB2 has more midrange and for sure it will give you fatter tone compared to Cruiser; it's easier to drive your amp with the VVHB2 too! People who prefer something with standard features will enjoy Cruiser; someone who wants to get more thickness and overdrive-friendly pup will like the VVHB2.

I personally prefer the Cruiser for its versatility and basic tone but I find that the VVHB2 allows me to cover more hot-Strat-based tone; the VVHB2 is also more aggressive and shred-friendly. So really, the choice is yours! Do you like something basic or do you want a little bit of an extra punch? Anyway, thank you to DiMarzio for making such great pickups, they really earned my respect :D

Cheers and God bless :)

p.s. 4 more days until I'm able to post audio clips :D...the final part of the "Guitar Artists with Great Tones" will be available shortly, I hope that you enjoy the previous parts of the post. Feel free to share any part of this blog with the rest of the world :D

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 :)

ELECTRO HARMONIX EHX HOLY GRAIL NANO REVERB

I decided to do a review today before continuing the Part II of the "Guitar Artists with Great Tone". Today we will be reviewing another great Electro Harmonix pedal called Holy Grail Nano.

Reverb pedal around the world

There are tons of good reverb pedal on the market, some come with a very expensive price tag and claimed to have some boutique qualities not found in other reverb pedals. But some reverb pedals actually come pretty cheap to the market and they sound just unbelievable! This one is one of those good cheap pedals. With a price tag of less than $130.00, this one blows the competition away!

What makes it so special?

First of all, EHX is known for its good quality pedals that ranges from overdrive unit to even fully functional power amp in a form of a stomp box. EHX makes the Deluxe Memory Man, the only worthy rival of the real tape echo. The Holy Grail reverb, not surprisingly, is also a very high quality pedal with exceptional sound.

It has three options to choose: Spring, Hall and Flerb. It also has one knob that basically controls dry vs wet. Furthermore, with the nano version of the Holy Grail, it takes only a very small space on your pedalboard. I tried all the three options of the Spring, Hall and Flerb.

The Spring option gives me that short slap type of reverb, very good for acoustic sounding tone and it doesn't over-boost the slap or pick frequencies thus making the overall sound not too harsh.

The Hall option gives me that classic concert hall reverb sound. I prefer the signal to be not too wet, maybe around 9ish, so that I can still get definition of my notes. But you can make it sound totally wet and roomy and try to experiment with it a little bit.

The only mode that I don't enjoy is the Flerb which is basically a flanger combined with reverb, sort of like chorus and delay of the Memory Man series. It doesn't quite attract me since I prefer a more traditional sound out of a reverb pedal. But you might find it useful for something that I haven't catch yet. Who knows :)..?

Inconsistencies?

Yes, I heard that the Holy Grail Nano pedal is famous for its frequent defect units. Some of them sound bad, some of them hiss when being used, even some of them won't turn on or even possess bad switching system. I am pretty lucky I didn't get any of those, but I've seen people in a guitar forum got pissed because they got the defect ones. So by any chance, test the pedal first if you can before you buy it.

How does this one compare to any other reverb pedal?

If we're talking best for its price, this one definitely wins the game totally. But yes, some other reverb pedals actually sound a bit nicer than this. They come with higher price tag of course as I mentioned before. The original Holy Grail and the Holy Grail Plus actually sound almost the same with this one, people confirmed this, and they're more expensive for sure; they offer more knobs for controlling various stuffs though, so maybe if you need to tweak your sound more, you should check them out. EHX also comes with the Cathedral stereo reverb if you want stereo reverb with tons of options and knobs, but of course it's even more pricey!

This thing is totally worth!

For around $120.00, it's totally worth every penny you spend. If you're looking for a basic reverb with decent sound and great price, look no further. For this price, I would call it a steal.

Anything you dislike?

Digital? No I'm just joking, the word digital doesn't really scare me because lots of reverb pedals are digital. If you want the sound of a true analog reverb, it will only come in the form of spring and it won't replicate the big Hall sound. I like this pedal so much, it gave me the reverb tone I'm looking for.

From 0 to 10

10, or maybe 11 if I may add. Haha !

Here's the sound clip: HOLY GRAIL

Cheers and God bless !

p.s. stay tuned for the next "Guitar Artists with Great Tone" post.

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 :)

LINE 6 POD X3 LIVE + SPECIAL CONTENT

Special post

If you're reading this, congratulation, you're in for a treat: this post will cover one of the most popular digital FX unit and we'll cover a little bit about digital vs analog topic that's been around for a while. Hopefully it's not biased and it'll be informative enough for you.

I bought this pedal from a good friend of mine. Back then, I don't really care about my tone and I'm using nothing more than a Metalzone MT-2 in front of a Korg Ampwork with a wah sometimes before the MT-2 if I need one. They sounded "nice" to me but not too nice until I got my enlightenment. This pedal is really a huge upgrade for me since I can get great tones with different types of sound and put them on patches and just press on the switches to change from one sound to another sound.

First impression

I can get a good thick fat lead tone using Mesa Boogie Rectifier high gain amp replication on that pedal. I can also get any other kind of tone that I want, even an Andy Timmons'(yes, him again) tone on different songs using a 6L6-based amp replication. The amps sounded great and thick to me.

The FX are also great, they sounded nice to me and very close to the real ones. The particular one that shines the most is the Screamer stomp that is the replication of (you guessed it) Ibanez Tube Screamer TS808. It sounded warm and clear, almost like the real one. The delays are also nice, particularly the digital delay. I also like the sine chorus FX, it's not too harsh and it keeps the integrity of the 'tune' pretty well.

All of the simulated units are fully adjustable and even more adjustable than the real ones. This is very useful for live performances because you can use the same tone for different situation just by tweaking the settings a little bit. This shows how serious are the Line 6 guys when they designed this thing.

On a live performance, this thing sounds as good as the real thing (some people claim it sounds better than the replicated goods!). Furthermore, you have the built-in EQ that can be tailored as flexible as you want. This totally beats tube amps and stomp boxes in terms of flexibility; you can even get a dual tone mode that simulates two signal chains together with different settings with stereo option available.

You can have around 30 user channels and you also have tons of original presets. I don't find the original presets to be very useful. But some of them can help you to inspire your own particular sound.

So far so good...

I kind of hate when it's time to make a new sound on a particular channel. It takes lots of time to tweak things around and get them all together to sound well. Other thing that I hate is sometimes I miss-pressed the switches because they're so hard to step on, not as smooth as a 4PDT switch or a regular Boss enclosure switch. The placement of the bank select switch is also not convenient in my opinion; it's located on the bottom left of the box and besides the channel select. I miss-pressed that switch lots of time as well because I thought it was my other channel switch; I ended up changing to a totally different sound and I was a little bit embarrassed.

Also I don't really like the expression pedal, the switch underneath it that changes between wah and volume mode is very easy to get pressed. I remember one time I was supposed to engage the volume back to normal loudness but I ended up pressing a little bit too hard and accidentally I activated the wah mode on a live performance. Oooppsss.

Do all of the above bother you significantly?

YES during live performances. But to be honest I'm more concerned about how I sound so all of those above don't really drive me crazy.

So does the pedal worth?

For a brand new one that costs around $400.00 or maybe less, I say it's worth. It has lots of amps and FX units replication inside of it and most of them sound great. It's flexible, it's powerful, it's not very easy to use at first but you'll get use to it very quickly, it sounds good as well(for now). This item worths every penny you spent !

From 0 to 10

10. But with some exception: some amp modelings and FX units do not have the same responsiveness of the real ones although they still sounded good. This will add some difficulties to your playing but not necessarily on your tone.

We're not done yet, "Mythbuster: Analog vs Digital " is coming next

Some people swear by the name of analog tube amps and real stomp boxes, some people think it's just superstitious. After I did tone chasing for some time, I must say that both are true. I think some of you already know what I'm going to say, but it wouldn't hurt to discuss this topic again.

To be very honest with you guys, after I checked out a real tube preamp and all of those analog pedals, I must say that they "sound" very nice to ME. They have that special "ingredient" that spices up my tone significantly IN MY OPINION. I can sort of hear more definition of what I'm trying to express on the guitar and that really help me a lot. They cost more too and they're being used by famous players with nice tones.

Is it true? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Talking about digital, it's worth mentioning that Axe FX by Fractal Audio is gaining popularity as well with higher price, better processing power, more options and "better sound+responsiveness" compared to the POD X3. Some artists already use POD X3 on live performances such as Lincoln Brewster. But more high profile guitarists like Greg Howe now choose to use the Axe FX for their live rig.

Well, what's good for me doesn't necessarily mean good for you or other people.

I've heard people with the real device said that the POD X3 sounded better during a comparison. I've also heard that with some serious EQ tweaking, the POD X3 can beat its digital rival Axe FX. But not too few audiences also said that the tone that's produced on the X3 or Axe won't match the real thing.

It seemed that all things really depend on the definition of a good tone. Once again, a wise once said, "A good player can make a cheap practice gears to sound beautiful". It all really depend on so many factors and all of those factors will be different from one player to other player. No one can really explain what is a good tone. For me, the best way to address this topic is by stepping back to the very basic understanding of tone:

"Someone will be able to judge whether a tone is good or bad by just listening to it on his ears. One doesn't need to see nor touch the device that's needed to generate that tone in order to make a conclusion of the tone. What matters the most is the ear." - Om Ganteng

I personally have this kind of mild addiction of checking out gears to see how they perform and hear how they sound. This "Gear Acquisition Syndrome" influenced my perception of tone a little bit, I have to admit my G.A.S because it's true. Because of the price, someone sometimes said that when it's more expensive, you get good sound. THAT'S NOT ALWAYS TRUE. It's just that person's justification because he's influenced by a very general miss-perception, expensive = better. You have to be careful with something pricey, don't let the high price tag fools you. And from there, the price vs quality debate that I posted days ago will expand.

So by now I hope you can think that digital effects such as POD X3 or Axe FX is worth as much as how you view it as a helping tool to get the tones that you want with maybe some lack of responsiveness that affects your playing; but not your tone. However, your audiences may be happy enough to hear the tone of your digital effects, or may be not; it depends on the "factors" mentioned above.

I think by now you should already get the idea. Sorry, this post is a little bit lengthy but I hope you can enjoy the discussion that I made here and think about it for a little bit so you can apply what I've wrote above to how you view the tone world. No insults or offend intended, if you feel offended please know that the examples I used were from multiple anonymous sources *peace*.

If the ears praise the tone of real tube amps and analog hardware, go for it.

If the ears praise the tone of digital modeling, go for it.

There's no right or wrong :)

Cheers and God bless :)

MY MODDED JEM-JR

Introduction
I just finished modding my Korean Ibanez JEM-JR WN today and I'm really glad with the result and I want to share it with all of you my dearest readers.

The original un-modded version of this guitar features an Ibanez ILT floating locking tremolo and Ibanez INF series pickups on all positions. It was my very first guitar that I own and not borrow from other people. It costs around $500 when it first came out and I pay almost the same price for that. I got lots of beautiful memories with this guitar, I learned a lot of materials using this guitar and it's been very friendly to me until today.

For some tone chasers, entry level Ibanez guitars probably won't please them as they sound crappy(sorry) and they feel crappy(sorry) as well. But not for me, this guitar is pretty versatile and reliable except that the ILT trem broke one day and I replaced it with Korean Floyd Rose. Now with the modifications, I even dare to compare my baby to some high-end good sounding Strat or Strat-like guitar, YEAH BABY !

Now onto the modifications

First of all, the modification that I did is to replace the trem of course as I mentioned above, the ILT proved to be a non reliable trem.

Then I replaced the pickups as usual with DiMarzios. On the neck and middle, I put Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2. They sounded SUPER AMAZING; the tone is very SRV 70-ish and works well with mild and heavy overdrive units. On the bridge I put PAF Pro and I got that Paul Gilbert tone instantly on my bridge position!

On a clean rig, the singles sounded very Strat-ish with all those glassy sparkly highs but with some extra mid punch while the PAF Pro sounds almost like a single coil but with more lows and mids and of course it's hotter than the others although not too much. All of the pickups are pretty low output and as I did with my PGM, I reduces the height of the neck pickup and increases the height of the bridge pickup to get instant less gain sound by just switching the pickup.

PAF Pro vs AT hum, VVHB2 vs Cruiser

The PAF Pro is not as hot as the AT humbucker and it lacks the mid punch that the AT humbucker has, but it has better high and clarity compared to the AT. The VVHB2 sounds much more like a hot strat compared to the Cruisers, but the Cruisers has more pronounced bottom and treble compared to the VVHB2. All of them are great but they're all different in terms of sound characteristics.

Nonetheless, they're all very impressive in terms of performance and tone. Easy to play with and sounds pretty well when combined together. No complaints, no flaw, it's like having a new guitar. I even dare to challenge someone with an American Deluxe strat on a tone match because it sounds almost like a vintage Strat with an LP humbucker now(or even better than that, I have 24 frets and floating trem, Strat comes with 22 mostly haha!).

Korean Floyd vs ILT vs Edge Pro

The new Floyd trem sounds okay to me. It's not as smooth as Edge Pro trem and it does not have extremely long sustain, but it's much better than the ILT tremolo. The tone that I'm getting from the trem is similar to the tone of a vintage style tremolo of a strat or something, twangy and rounded but not as twangy as a Telecaster. It does not stay in tune as good as the ILT and Edge Pro though because it has different string insertion mechanism.

More mods on the way

Next, I added capacitors on my volume knob as well as a resistor on parallel to make that treble bleed mod and reduce the output a little bit so the entire signal won't get too hot. But I also take out the tone knob and put the volume knob on the former tone knob routing. I get more volume by doing that. If I put Cruisers and AT humbucker, I'll probably get similar tone to my modded PGM ha ha !

Tone pot that blocks the tone

By the way, removing tone pot really helps the tone to get more volume and uncompressed feeling. That tone pot is actually a potentiometer or in an easier term: an adjustable resistor. Putting resistor in series with your signal will cause current reduction and thus you get lower output from your pickups. It also compressed the overall guitar sound a little bit. If you have the courage and heart to try something new, and if you rarely use your tone knob, try taking it/them out and hear the positive difference!

For this guitar, I won't be able to post audio clip or anything like that until probably next year when all my rigs will be transported back from Seattle to Indonesia. When that happens, we can probably hear some clips of me comparing the JEM and PGM using same FX units! How cool is that !!!

Visually unappealing

The overall modification sounds great but it DOESN'T look great. That's because now the single coil on the neck position does not cover the humbucker routing completely. I have to get a new pickguard to solve that aesthetic-related problem.

I don't really care though to be honest

As long as it sounds good, I don't complain. Right now, all I want to do is play that baby all day long and all night long. I plug it through a digital crappy(sorry) Korg Tonework AX1500 and now the overall tone that I'm getting is almost like using a POD X3 Live, very very lively thanks to those modifications.

I hope this post will be useful for everyone who reads this.

Cheers and God bless :)

p.s. One more week until I'm able to post audio clips to my posts!