2015 Gear Update

Hey Nation!

Its been awhile since I have done a full gear update. Some things have changed over the past two years. I’m going to run through all of my gear starting from the start of my signal to the end of my signal.

Amp:

For Amps I have a Voxac15C. Its a ac15 but with white tolex and a ceramic instead of a greenback. It sounds amazing and works for my church and most venues. We mic up my amps and 15 watts is just enough of clean tone.

Guitar:

I have a fender 60’s reissue Olympic White telecaster. This was my introduction to single coil guitars because I previously have only played humbuckers. At first it has a struggle to get a usable tone only because the guitar just sounded thin and trebly. After playing around with my amp and I finally found a setting where my telecaster sounds like a tele but also has enough bass and fatness. All around I love this guitar and I’m planning to add a bigsby just because I think they look super sexy with them on.

Cables:

For my Guitar cable and the amp cable I use Monster Gold instrument cable. They sound organic and do not color my tone. A lot of people have their own opinions on monster cables but for me they do everything I want cables to do.

Most of my pedalboard cable are George L’s. I only chose these over lavas because in my personal opinion I wanted the little cover sleeves for the cables lol. I have had only one cable die on me but I recut it and put the ends back and it worked perfectly fine. I do want to try lava cables to just test out any tonal difference and or durability test.

PedalBoard:

EM Drive(Emerson Custom):

This is my first pedal in my chain. It is 99 percent of the time on. It does not add any grit/overdrive to my signal but adds a good amount of volume. It brings my amp to live volume, because I have the Master on my amp all the way up and I manipulate the Channel volume depending on how clean or dirty I want my “Clean” tone to be.

JHS Morning Glory:

My First main overdrive comes from this stompbox. It has rightfully gained a permanent place on my pedalboard. The dynamics on this pedal are amp like, it responds to your picking attack nicely and gives me all the gain I need for most of the songs we play.

PS:I stack the EM Drive and the Morning glory together.

JHS Moonshine:

This replaced my Emerson Custom Paramount, the Paramount is a great pedal it just did not work in my rig. When I use the moonshine I do not stack any other overdrive pedal with it. I primarily use the moonshine as my highest gain setting. Most of the songs we play I can get away with only using the EM drive and the Morning Glory stacked together but for the songs that are heavier, depending on the song I have the drive set up anywhere from 3oclock to all the way up. The tone coming out of this pedal is so rad and natural sounding. It gets pretty saturated but does not lose the clarity of my tele.

Ernie Ball VPJR:

It’s a volume pedal that was modded by blackeye effects. The mod for what I understand does not suck the tone of your signal when you are using the tuner out. Other than that it brings me up in volume and down in volume.

TC Polytune Mini Noir:

Tunes my guitar.

TC Nova Delay:

One of my first “big boy” delays as I like to call it. I purchased it without knowing much about delays and presets. Over the years I’ve learned to appreciate the nova. I use it for a secondary delay(swells and ambient tones) but it is also my main quarter note delay. It does has its quirks such as not having a bank down switch but overall it is a delay that has not left my board for years. It is packed with features but honestly for the money it sounds amazing and is one of my favorite delays.

Eventide Timefactor:

I bought this delay second hand, I wanted something with a lot of banks where I could just program a whole set and not worry about tap dancing and just focus on actually playing guitar. The timefactor blew my expectations out of the water. It can do anything I throw at it. It gets compared to the Timeline all the time, to me I see it as two racecars, they are both powerful, capable, and full of features but at the same time have their own personality. I could get away on using just this delay in my setup.

Strymon Big Sky:

This is the King of all reverbs. Using the BigSky for the first time was welcoming but a little overwhelming. There is countless of tweaking and programming available. Depending on the song I usually have 4-5 presets that I always go to. I know how these presets sound and I know when to apply them. There are times when these generic presets do not fit a specific song so I just tweak them accordingly. My favorite sounds include the hall, room, and cloud settings.

Everything is on a Pedaltrain 3 and is being powered by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2.

Review: Gear Supply Co

Hey Nation!

It has been awhile since I have posted on this site. I am back and better than ever. So today I have a review of the Gear Supply Co strings and picks. I am going to be breaking up this interview into 4 sections and a section just for their picks. Lets get to it!

Presentation:

The first package that arrived at my house was gorgeous. The box is filled with confetti that adds a sense of celebration! The box is filled with not only strings and picks but also an assortment of cards and goodies. Gear Supply Co knows how to make a good first impression.

Durability:

Just a disclaimer, I sweat a lot. I put .10 strings on my telecaster and decided to leave them on for a whole month! This way I could test the real durability of the strings. Just as a reference I use my guitar roughly around 5 times a week for around 2 hours each day. I sweat a lot, I noticed that the strings began to oxidize after around 3 weeks. I like to change my strings once every week only because I like the feeling of fresh strings. Other string companies would last me around the same time (cough… rhymes with turny tall hehe)

Tone:

The tone of these string are very natural sounding. I run through a Vox AC15 custom creamback(the white vox), I use my Telecaster as my main guitar and it doesn’t have a bass and roundness of a Les Paul but these strings are just right and have bass and treble in them.

Service:

When you make a purchase at Gear Supply Co you are not just buying a pair of strings and some picks but rather you are buying their service, you are paying for having strings shipped to your house every month (reminds me a lot of Dollar Shave Club). If you are busy with life’s challenges and obstacles I recommend you trying out Gear Supply Co, even if you just want great quality strings try them out!

Picks:

I usually use Dunlop Tortex picks. In reference to picks I don’t really care what kind of picks  I use as long as they are medium to heavy pick. I used cheap Guitar Center picks for years… why? because they are free! Gear Supply Co picks are a big step up. They have enough grip that they won’t slip out of your hands while you are playing, even if you sweat in abundance like I do. I tend to go over to Gear Supply Co picks as my go to picks now. They are everything I am looking for in a pick.

All in all Gear Supply Co is an awesome company with not only great strings but also great morals. The people running it are genuine and authentic. They have a variety of choices in terms of monthly bundles that will suit your specific needs. Go check them out!

PS: I only recommend products and services I actually use

Overdrive Pedal Shootout: Paramount(Emerson Custom)

Overview:
Lately I’ve been asked many questions about which pedal is better? The Paramount(Emerson Custom) or the Moonshine(JHS Pedals). I’ve owned both pedals and Im going to try to give the least biased opinion of both of these pedals. Each pedal will be judged by the following categories Construction, Controls, Sound, and Usability. Each will be given a score that will add up to 10 for a total score. Each review was a little longer than I expected so I’m breaking it down into two parts.

Paramount(Emerson Custom) $179.99

Construction-
The paramount is a solid USA built guitar pedal. It uses the finest compartments(check their website for a list of components). The paramount is less a pedal and more of an art piece. It is beautiful to look at and it contains a bright LED that is more than bright enough. The construction is top notch.
2/2
Controls:
Unlike anything I’ve seen this pedal has interesting controls that no other overdrive has. The level and gain work dependently. Most level and gain knobs on your standard overdrives work independently. To get the most gain on the paramount you will need to crank up both the level and gain. In my opinion this is not very live friendly because in order to obtain a “medium” stage overdrive the level and gain have to be both turned more than 10 o’clock. If you want to use this pedal solely by its self which means no stacking overdrives than the pedal will need to be cranked. This pedal at least for me was too loud for the setting I wanted it as. It took my overall signal level and boosted it unnecessarily loud. That could just have been my specific pedal, I do not know.(THIS WAS JUST MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, EMERSON CUSTOM MAKES GREAT PRODUCTS)
1.5/2
Sound:
In terms of sound, it was killer at high volumes. It pushed my Vox into sweet natural overdriven sound. It was not saturated at all, the tones coming out of the paramount were organic. The problem was when the level and gain were turned down the pedal started to get a little fuzzy.(THIS WAS JUST MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, EMERSON CUSTOM MAKES GREAT PRODUCTS). At times I would crank this pedal both level and gain at around 3oclock and used my volume pedal to control the volume. This gave me a heavenly tone.
1.5/2
Usability:
This is based on my usability. The paramount is a great pedal and sounds amazing. In my personal opinion the paramount was not really usable in my environment. It was a great boost pedal, but having it cranked more than half way just was unusable(unless you turn your amp down to compensate for the volume boost).
3.5/4

Final Score:
8.5/10

My PedalBoard (February 2014)

 

 

Hey Nation 🙂 This post is for everyone that wants to know about my PedalBoard SetUp. I have changed my setup twice in the past 2 weeks only because I learned that my previous 2 set ups have not been live friendly. Below Ill list out each pedal and why it is on my PedalBoard. 

 

Emerson Custom EM Drive- This is my first pedal in my chain. It is my always on pedal. This pedal is set a little louder than my dry signal not too much louder. I can make my amp break up with this pedal if I pick/strum pretty hard. 

Emerson Custom Paramount(Handwired Overdrive)- This is technically my second stage overdrive. I was skeptical about purchasing this pedal because I honesty thought it was just hype. I was way wrong. This is my favorite overdrive ever. I usually turn on this pedal on a songs chorus. For my main rhythm tone I stack the EM drive and the Paramount together. 

Fulltone OCD- This is my third stage drive. I have named this pedal my “Marshall in a box”. This sounds like a a cranked up vintage Marshall. At the moment I’m using it as a volume/gain boost for solos and lead lines so I can cut through the mix a little more.

Blackeye Effects modded Ernie Ball VP- Its a simple volume pedal. I would not recommend getting this pedal modded by Blackeye effects. It took me almost 8 months to get my pedal. I recommend JHS and This1smyne. 

TC Electronics Poly tune Noir- Keeps me in tune:) I plug this using the tuner out jack in my volume pedal. 

Eventide TimeFactor- An amazing delay pedal. Its a digital delay but can do tape echo and analog. I use this for nice tape echo delay and quarter notes. It can do pretty much everything. I have a This1smyne controller that controls my Tap Tempo/Bank Down/Mode Setting. This rivals the Strymon Timeline. 

TC Electronics Nova Delay- This is also a delay pedal. I have this pedal on here just so I can have more presets available to me when I am playing live. I use this pedal for quarter/Dotted Eighths/Dotted Eighth Triplets/Really long delay for swells. 

Boss DD7- Its not boutique, it does not cost $500 but it sounds killer. I had this off my board for almost a year. It recently came back. This is my main dotted eighth sound. Its so easy to use, its user friendly and has a built in tap tempo so I do not need an external tap(It does have a jack for an external tap).

TC Electronic Arena- This is my reverb pedal. This usually stays on the Mod Setting. It sounds big and washy. Has more settings but I do not use them. Im saving up for a Strymon Bigsky but for now this is doing the job well. 

Hope this helps guys! Feel free to ask questions! Have a blessed day!

Welcome Agape Tone!

Hey Nation! Welcome to our new blogsite! We are going to be posting anything and everything about tone. Keep in mind these posts are going to be what I do not necessarily what is right. Hope this is a resource for all you guys! As always have a blessed day!