Came across a too-good-to-pass-up deal on a minty Beta Lead. The gent's father bought it new and it just sat in their basement for a couple of decades. It sounds exactly as a Beta should: next to no headroom and brutal, brutal, brutal distortion. At this point in time it might not be my main amp, but the distortion on it blows away any pedal.http://imgur.com/yNwYRDp

Antero wrote:WeStartToDrift wrote:Came across a too-good-to-pass-up deal on a minty Beta Lead. The gent's father bought it new and it just sat in their basement for a couple of decades. It sounds exactly as a Beta should: next to no headroom and brutal, brutal, brutal distortion. At this point in time it might not be my main amp, but the distortion on it blows away any pedal.http://imgur.com/yNwYRDpNice Silvertone while we're at it.Thanks! I've had it since I was 12 and it is realistically the only piece of gear I own that I could never replace. It was modded to be closer to a bandmaster but it really is its own thing.

Bootstrap Pickups, original recipe for TelecasterThis review comes with a huge caveat: I'm not a well-versed tele guy. I needed a single coil guitar around the studio to compliment the tones of my humbucker guitars. So I did what any cheapskate would do and bought a Squire that felt good in my hands and souped it up a little bit.The Bootstraps added a nice tone upgrade from the stock squire pickups. The bridge pickup has all of the clangy cut I bought a tele for and the neck pickup is quite round and jazzy. If you haven't looked at Bootstrap before, they're the best deal going in boutique, hand wound pickups. I could tell you more about them if I had one of their humbuckers or P-90s to stack against guitars I know better, but this was still a good move at $50.As a side note the gain difference between the neck and bridge pickup is pretty stark. I usually look for some of that, but the neck might be a little too far below the bridge pickup for someone performing on this guitar who switches often between the two pickups. This could be a typical tele attribute that I'm just naive about.

Korg Pitchblack MiniWhat a piece of shit.If you daisy chain it, it makes constant digital noise when tuning. You either need an isolated power supply or use batteries. Oh, and if you need to change batteries, you need some watch/camera batteries, not a normal ass 9 volt.The input jack is not super snug. But, instead of just completely cutting out, it still makes sound just completely kills your high end and cuts the volume. So then you spend an entire set thinking your amp/cables/cab is fucking up instead of pushing the input into the tuner back in.I guess this is fine for using at home, sitting in a chair, not doing anything, but fuck this tuner otherwise.

Vox Pathfinder 15R https://www.electricalaudio.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=2032035#p2032035

Quilter Micro Block 45. Immediate impressions - doesn't really sound very good. Dull, bland tone.Put Boxidizer in front of it - it's fantastic. Boxidizer doesn't play well with my Traynor Guitar Mate (maybe Traynor style preamp into Traynor preamp is just too much Traynor?) but sounds great into this. Think this will be my new practice set up.

Smallsound/Bigsound Mini OverdriveI've been eyeing these for a few years and happy to get one. I'm replacing an OCD copy (which replaced an OCD). My main target was an edge of breakup, light overdrive sound that the OCD got 90% of. I liked that the OCD kept my amp sounding mostly like itself but with some crunch at low volumes. I didn't like how single notes seemed to lose sustain and how sound flattened. The Mini pretty much fixes this as it has both a bass and treble control to dial things in more precisely. The Mini also gets a half dozen other sounds that are great.It has a nice, grainy, clipping jfet sound compared to an opamp with clipping diodes. I built a ROG Peppermill once that had great sounds, but could get a bit harsh. This reminds me of that without the harshness. So really nice. It has a bias knob that is really handy. You can get broken down amp sounds when way underbiased, but there are plenty of useful setting to get smooth or gritty overdrive. I got some nice spiky sounds along the lines of The Who Sells Out. It's super cool. I recommend it. It can take a while to get the setting right as they are sensitive and interactive. Wish it were more common so you could try before you buy. I'm glad I just gave it a shot. (Buying direct had a few weeks wait time and was painless otherwise).

Agreed. Love my Mini.

After Low blowing my head off with their avalanching walls of sound a few months back, I wanted to try play around with reverbs and delays. I had a Hall of fame but sold all my delays yonks ago. I also just got a minilogue and wanted something that might help get odd sounds. So I ended up with this secondhand.Zoom MS ‘70 CDR   Reviews said it was surprisingly good and it was only 60 quid delivered, so I grabbed it. This thing is unreal and solidly built. It has a bunch of presets loaded in and they all sounded impressive and full and just not what I expected. Then I started going through the individual pedal models and was blown away. Loads of great sounding choruses, trems, vibes, delays, reverse delays, reverbs, reverse reverbs, filters, gates, bitcrusher, eqs and even a fucking tuner. Most models seem to be clones of existing popular (ehx, strymon, boss, eventide, tc electronic) and boutique (red panda particle!) pedals. You can stack up to six of them together and save it as one of the presets. Seems like there's space to save over 50.I had an old zoom multithing before and it sounded terrible. This is nothing like that. They do an od and distortion pedal too, with tubescreamers and rat clones etc. Going to look out for it cheap.Here's a comparison with one of the pedal clones vs a strymon off the YouTube. https://youtu.be/66Dgsz-1t30Hall of fame is now sold. As is my small clone. Might get rid of my trem and eq too after I a/b them with this. Great pedal and seem to be cheap secondhand.

Hadn't had an opportunity to turn up in a bit, so I got to try out a bunch of new shit at once!- Recently acquired Silvertone 1483 head, running into a Thiele cab with a 1x15 EV. Fucking fantastic. Same general feel as my 1484. Made me feel bad for not getting my 1484 serviced since, uh, 2007 - I should do something there maybe. I'm not entirely sure why I get along so well with Silvertones but I find it easy to get a lot of sounds out.- JHS Alpine reverb. Hey, this is a lot of fun! The switch function is neat. I wound up choosing a reasonable setting and leaving it on most of the time, with the Switch knob up high for additional ambiance when needed. A keeper.- Balls KWB: This is even cooler than I expected, honestly. I need to spend more time going through the various settings but it's got a huge range and covers a lot of the low and mid gain stuff. Sounded incredibly cool with my baritone.