Looks like Alex Lifeson and Mojotone are bringing out new versions of Lifeson’s signature Lerxst amps.
That sound you are hearing right now (not the youtube clip) is me drooling. They are too expensive to really consider, but that doesn’t matter. I’m still drooling. Literally.
Hopefully we’ll have some good review videos soon. I want to hear more.
It’s all about me. World events? The Russian invasion of Ukraine? It’s all about me.
No it isn’t, but this is partly about me but also about guitar gear in general.
Vacuum tubes, right? The best guitar amps are powered by tubes (valves if you’re one of our British friends). The technology dates back to 1904, according to Wikipedia, and the guitar amps many of us like date back to the 50’s and 60’s. Suffice to say it’s not exactly cutting edge stuff.
The only industries that still use tubes are guitar amps and effects and hi-fi stereo systems. That’s it. Tubes used to run everything but now it’s down to those two hold outs. As a result there are only three factories on Earth that still manufacture vacuum tubes. Three.
One factory is in Slovakia (I think… or is it Slovenia? No, pretty sure it’s Slovakia). Another factory is in China. From what I hear, that factory recently had a bad fire and they have been offline for a while. The result of that is that tubes, already in short supply, are in a full blown shortage. Thank goodness for that third factory, huh? Hey, where is that third factory anyway?
Russia.
Shit.
I haven’t heard anything specific but with the sanctions the entire world is leveling at Russia to convince them to stop being evil and get their military out of Ukraine it’s safe to say that we won’t be seeing any tubes out of that Russian factory any time soon. That means that we’re effectively down to one factory. One. Let’s all send as many happy and safe vibes we can to JJ Electronic in the hopes that they keep rolling at peak efficiency with all of their staff being exceptionally happy and healthy and satisfied in their professions.
I own four tube amps. Three Fenders and a Vox. I haven’t been a tube amp guy for long, but in my very teeny tiny experience I have never had to change a tube. Please, guitar gods, let the tubes in my amps last forever. Pretty please.
One other guitar gear thing I want to mention is petty and pointless and exactly the sort of thing that the trump ass cult ranks on people like me ceaselessly for. I can’t help it though.
I really like using fuzz pedals. Of the three classic types of fuzz pedals, Fuzz Face, Tone Bender, and Big Muff Pi, my absolute favorites are Muffs. They are just ferocious and I really love them. In the last two years or so I have used a clone of a Big Muff pedal for probably 80% of the lead guitar parts I have recorded. Most of those tracks were recorded using a pedal by a company called Wren and Cuff that is called the Super Russian. Big Muffs were originally made by the Electro Harmonics company back in 1970 or so. That company fell apart in the late 80’s or early 90’s (not sure exactly when) and a new company was formed from the ashes that was called Sovtek. That company was based in the newly post-Soviet Union Russia. Many of the EHX pedals were redesigned to use Russian components and manufactured and sold by the new company. The Super Russian pedal on my board is based on a Sovtek period Big Muff.
The pedal sounds amazing and I love playing through it. It’s pretty much perfect. Still… when I was posting my RPM stuff to alonetone.com I was adding notes about what gear I used (so that I can know what I used when I listen back years from now). I kept having to type the word Russian into those notes. Even though the pedal and I have nothing to do with the evil spewing out of Moscow right now, I felt kinda dirty every time I wrote one of those notes. It is totally irrational and makes zero sense, but that’s how I felt. Feelings don’t need to be rational, after all. I mean we aren’t Vulcans, right?
So I guess what I am saying is… I might be in the market for a fuzz pedal that isn’t based on a Sovtek circuit. It is entirely possible that this might just be my Gear Acquisition Syndrome trying to trick me into buying a new pedal, but let’s not think about that.
Whatever. I should just send $200 to a Ukrainian charity instead and just get over my irrational self. I should also start hoarding vacuum tubes.
The pedals are for the stay-at-home/back up rig. The amp is more fluid. My 26 year old Fender Stage amp is dying a slow and painful death. That is one of the reasons I haven’t been recording much lately. It’s just not working all that well, and when it does work it is not very reliable. So I was definitely in the market for a new amplifier. I’ve been dying for a Fender Twin Reverb forever. Back in high school, the music department had a silver face Twin and that has always been my standard for clean tones. It was beat to hell and probably died a fiery death, but it was great. The problem is, the Fender reissue Twin Reverb is amazingly expensive. I could never justify throwing out that much money.
This week I started looking at the smallest of the reissue tube amps, the Princeton Reverb. It seemed like a smart way to go for a leave-at-home amp, but even that was seriously expensive. I started thinking about worst case scenarios though. If my Marshall should die, the Princeton would not really be a powerful enough replacement. The Twin would definitely work, but that damn price.
So I compromised I went with the Deluxe Reverb. It’s big enough to handle most of the places the band could possibly play, and it’s still small enough that it wouldn’t blow out the windows in the cellar if I wind it up while playing at home recording.
Now I just need to find some time to actually plug the bad boy in and play with it!
Happy New Pedal/New Tube Amp Day!
So I’m trying to get back into a band. If they’ll have me, the band that I tried to start a few years ago that carried on quite nicely without me after I bowed out might be willing to take me back. Still just talking, but I’ve got a list of covers to learn and we are trying to schedule a meeting.
It’s got me doing something I shouldn’t be doing. It’s got one of the medical conditions I suffer from flaring up.
G.A.S… Better known as Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
The last time I played in a band for reals, I had a bunch of stomp boxes. The obligatory Dunlop Wah, a Morley volume pedal, a DoD flanger, a Boss digital delay, a DoD octave divider, and a Boss chromatic tuner, along with my Marshall combo’s channel/reverb switch. I would string them together, all with 9 volt batteries, on the floor at my feet whenever we played. I was always kicking them around to get them in and out of my way, depending on the song.
The other day I started looking at pedal boards to sit all of these things on so that I would have less to set up and break down. It’d be nice to have a power supply too, in place of all those batteries.
That lead to thinking of what additional pedals I could acquire. I use things in GarageBand that would be nice to have in real life. An MXR phaser. A univibe. A pitch shifter. Those are realistic, but thinking of them lead to unrealistic things like harmonizers and tape echoes (drool).
Next thing I know I’m bouncing between eBay and musiciansfriend and guitar center looking at amplifiers. The last time I was in a band for reals with Mike the Bass player I played through a Fender Combo. After that I used a sweet Marshall combo in Break Even. Today I was thinking that an old Fender Twin Reverb would be awesome. I’d need to get a Fuzz Face too. Then I thought, I’ve never owned a stack before, what does Fender have for stacks? How much does a decent Marshall stack with two 4×12 cabinets cost?
Oh goodness gracious, please stop me now.
G.A.S. There is no cure.
Inside the Red Head's Head 