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.
