So, I have been doing a lot to mess with my guitar tone and my guitar setup as of late. As you'll probably recall from an earlier post, I purchased a Fender '72 Telecaster Deluxe Reissue at the new Guitar Center in Fayetteville. This, as I had suspected at the time of purchase, was possibly one of the best decisions/best purchases I have ever made in my life.
Recently, I acquired a new pedal board. I got it from the same place I acquired my old pedal board (Ryan Ceola got rid of it). The plus to this board is that it has a storage compartment that houses all my power supply stuff, extra picks, and what not. So, it's less messy. To make things even less messier, I wired all of my pedals with George L cables (the red cable with gold plugs in the pictures below). So, every cable is the exact length it needs to be. That saves a lot of mess. One draw back was that I don't have room for my Line 6 MM4 on my new board, but I don't really like that pedal much. Adam had a good suggestion for that pedal anyway--we're going to use it for effects on the "speaker mic" (of which either I or Adam will post pics when it's finished).
I also lucked up into another great addition. The other day, I picked up my acoustic guitar from Blue Moon Music. New Heights Church had given me a gift certificate to Blue Moon in order to get my guitar setup to fully install the LR Baggs M1 pickup I got in December (and have had only half installed for 7 months). I thought this would cost about 50 bucks, but it only cost 10. Well, they had bought me a 75 dollar gift certificate. I used the extra 65 bones to buy a ProCo Vintage Rat distortion pedal. The Rat has replaced my old Electro-Harmonix Big Muff (Russian Version), which will now be a part of Adam's guitar setup.
Finally, the last (and probably biggest) change in my setup is in the electronics of my amp. I'm rocking a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, which is a decent amp. The problem is that Fender uses really crappy tubes and biases said tubes really cold. With the help of Andrew Bailey, I replaced my pre-amp tubes (Groove Tube 12AX7's) with a matched pair of Tung-Sol 12AX7's. I replaced the Groove Tube 12AX7 in my phase inverter first with a China 12AX7, but that had a little too much bite for my taste. I took out the China 12AX7 and replaced it with an Electro-Harmonix 12AX7 that sounds phenomenal. Changing these three tubes helped my sound a lot, but today I took the next step. I had ordered a new set of power tubes, and I got them in today. I replaced the GT 6L6B's with a matched pair of SED Svetlana "winged" 6L6C's. To correct the problem of the amp running too cold, I (by which I mean Bailey) re-biased the amp from the 58 mA a which it is factory-biased to 70 mA. This heats up the tubes a lot more, which gives a much better tone. One negative to this change is that my tubes won't last as long, however that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
There is one last addition that needs to be made to my setup. While I was still rocking all my old severance pay money from Sam's Club, I purchased a pair of 12" Celestion Greenback guitar speakers. Last March, I purchased two sheets of Baltic Birch wood and all the necessary parts (metal corners, handles, cable, connectors, etc. ) needed to build a cabinet. Basically, I just need to cut the wood and assemble the cabinet. That way I can provide a home for those speakers. I'll use the newly modified Fender Hot Rod Deluxe to power this cabinet. It should sound pretty "ballsy" (for lack of a better term).
Anyway, here's some pics:
Here's the new pedal board setup. It goes Boss TU-2 tuner to vintage Dunlop Crybaby to Keeley-modded Boss BD-2 Blues Driver to an Aramat-modded Ibanez Tube Screamer DX to a ProCo Vintage Rat to a Keeley-modded Boss TR-2 tremolo to a Line 6 DL4 delay modeler. The pedal at the top center is my Fender footswitch.
Here's the new distortion pedal, The Rat. Also, you can get a much better view of the George L cables. I made them all just long enough to get to the next pedal. That way, there's not a lot of excess cable floating around.
Here's the new tubes. They're powered down, so you don't get that pretty orange glow in the pic.
3 comments:
James, before a post like this you should post a disclaimer something to the effect of, "If you're not an electric guitar player that has a lot of experience tinkering with highly specific components you will waste your life and be confused by reading this post..." You can improvise as you feel led.
Oh, and was the blog title supposed to be, "Creating Great Tone in a World Gone Mad?" Just curious.
Cool. Unlike Stu, I was with you the whole time... this is right up my alley.
What is the rubber cap over some of the George L's plugs?
One suggestion. Most of the ProCo RAT's don't come with an LED to tell you when it is switched on or off. This is, in my opinion - dumb. It leads to lots of embarrasing times when you meant to play quietly and then WHAM - wall of distortion - because you forgot to turn your RAT off after the last song. However, you can have it modded and have an LED added - that's what I did.
Yeah, I'm going to send mine to Robert Keeley and have it fully modded. I love the sound of his modded Rats. Plus, he did so well with my tremolo and Blues Driver. Also, those rubber caps come with the George L kit. I don't really know the point of them. I was going to pull them all off, but they rubbed black ickiness all over the gold, so I just left them on those couple of cables.
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