Tag: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

Guitar/Retail Therapy

I am sitting here thinking about retail therapy and guitar gear and all of that and I am trying so very hard not to do it. I want to, but I don’t want to, but I want to.

For the pedal board, I want an MXR Brick and an MXR Phase 95 and one of those cheap little Mooer E-Lady flangers.

I want to trade in my Strat and do… something. Trade it for a Les Paul Jr? Trade it for a ’68 Deluxe Reverb? The money won’t work out for either of those, but what about trade it in for money and then…

Take the ES-335 to a repair shop and redo the frets and the wiring.

Or take the Les Paul Custom to a repair shop and redo the frets and change the pickups to something nice and boutique and redo the wiring.

Or take my gorgeous new Les Paul Standard to a repair shop and change the pickups to something nice and boutique and see if there is anything else that a professional would recommend doing.

Or take my SG Standard to a repair shop and change the pickups to something either nice and boutique, or something high output and mean sounding and see if there is anything else that a professional would recommend doing, specifically to the height of the action.

AAAHHHH!!!!!

Tubes

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.

Gear Acquisition Syndrome Twist

I am not giving in to the Gear Acquisition Syndrome that I suffer from. I did take a tiny step toward the dark side though.

I want to get my grubby mitts on a Gibson Les Paul Junior. The plan is to try and trade my 2000 Fender Stratocaster for one. I figure I will do it at a store or something. Earlier today though I heard a podcast where a drummer said he set up craigslist alerts to let him know when a certain piece of gear was available for sale.

That sounds like an interesting move, right? I looked into how to set that up and it is easy as can be. So now I have a craigslist account that is looking for Gibson Les Paul Juniors for sale in the Merrimack Valley. I only saw a single listing while I was there setting it up, but it was a Custom Shop model and the asking price was over three grand. Nope, that’s not the one for me.

Let’s see if this finds any decent deals. Curiosity and all that.

Chasing the Green Sound

Prior to the 50th birthday super gift, a new Les Paul Standard 50s, I was thinking about the future, post Covid and post college bills, where I was going to modify the shit out of my ’78 Les Paul Custom. I was going to go full blown boutique, cork sniffing snob on it. I was going to find the best sounding clones of original Gibson PAFs possible and put them in, and replace the wiring with a 50’s style harness and basically try and make my Custom as 1950’s-ish as possible.

Now that I have the shiny, wonderful new Standard, I’ve changed my plans to updating the holy hell out of the Standard and leave the Custom alone (except for the frets… and maybe the wiring harness). The question then is, do I try to turn my guitar into a modern knock off of a Les Paul from the late 50’s, or do I go for a modern knock off of Peter Green’s Les Paul?

I don’t know. What if I go for Peter Green and decided I don’t like the out of phase stuff? boutique, cork sniffing pick ups are expensive. I don’t want to have to play this game twice.

So we’re being goofy on the youtubes today, checking out some pick ups. I am going to say without a doubt that I will not be buying a set of Monty’s Guitars Bethnal Green PAFs. Partly because they don’t seem to be available yet, and also partly because the website makes me think they won’t be available in the US. That’s okay though. Let’s file this under research and Gear Acquisition Syndrome and just being a totally unabashed guitar nerd.

ADDENDUM: So I wrote the post while watching the video for the first time. After I published the video mentioned that you can buy them from Andertons if you’re in the US, and it’s not that they aren’t available yet, it’s that they are making them in small quantities and running out.

Firebird or Junior

I’m having a guitar shopping fantasy YouTube night tonight. Assuming I can get my two 40+ year old guitars worked on and cleaned up, what would my next Gibson be?

I waffle between a Les Paul Junior and a Firebird. When I bought my SG in 2018, I almost bought a Firebird instead. I think right now if I had to pick one it would be a Junior, for the P90, but it would be a close call.

Videos like this don’t make it easy on me…

Wah Pedals

I search for boutique wah pedals and get link after link telling me I have to get my hands on the wah pedal I dumped into my closet when that frat boy fucker in California went on his idiotic racist rant following the George Floyd protests and implied that people who put more value on a human being’s life than on their neighbor’s windows are both unworthy of his products and incapable of pissing while standing up. Fuck that guy. I’m never using his pedals again, I don’t care how amazing his fucking deluxe wah pedal is.

End rant.

So where do I go? There is Xotic and Jam Pedals. They are both supposed to have excellent wahs. One company that I know nothing about keeps popping up too. Real McCoy Custom, or RMC. they seem to have a ton of models, all with stellar reviews, but only a few are in production. Is that info correct? They are pretty expensive and there aren’t a whole lot of dealers (just one in Massachusetts).

I’m thinking when the time comes, this is probably where I want to go. The RMC10 reviews are all stellar, but I’m only seeing RMC11’s for sale around here.

One of these days.

Sleepy Red Head

Another less than great night of sleep last night. The data my Apple Watch collected actually looked okay, but coming on the heels of the previous night’s bad sleep it has left me feeling pretty sleepy and crummy today. I’m hoping to get to bed early tonight but I am pretty sure it ain’t happening. We’ll see.

I’m in a weird state right now where I have a few projects to work on and I keep letting them get in the way of each other. I start working on project A but my mind wanders to project B so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project C so I switch to that but my mind wanders to project A and so on. The end result is I don’t make progress on any of them. Blah.

Referencing back to the previous post, if you’re wondering about our neighborhood trash pick up, they still haven’t arrived… though I do hear the sound of trucks in the distance. Maybe soon?

Finally, as my lunch break comes to an end, I return to the topic of guitar gear, what with guitar and cats being the two most common topics of this particular page (are they? I should do some research into that… but I won’t), I am starting to think it might be time to start searching the youtubes for a new wah pedal. I’m starting to want to upgrade up from my Crybaby. Hello, rabbit hole. Allow me to fall down you for a while.

Okay, back to work, red head!

How Many Guitars Do You Need

Interesting guitar question. How many do you actually need?

The video doesn’t really answer the question realistically. You need one, yes. But there are other answers too.

I only need one, but I need to keep looking and trying different guitars until I find THE ONE. Specifically, the one that makes me not want any others.

x = n + 1 where x is the number you need and n is the number you have.

For me, I need two. Two of everything. I play bars in a cover band. I don’t have a tech sitting off stage who can fix things if my equipment should fail. I need to get to the set break. If a guitar (or amp, or cable, or mic, or pedal) should fail I need to swap it for something that’s working immediately. I can tinker with stuff all I want in between sets, but while the band is on stage I need to be up and playing right now.

In the video he talks about needing different types of instruments for different situations. This song needs a strat sound, that song needs a Les Paul. I am guilty of that all the time. In fact, when I think about trading in my strat I think about picking up another guitar with single coil pick ups. The strat is the only single coil guitar I own, so I should get another instrument that fills that role even though that logic is bullshit. No one is ever going to call me up for a gig that requires single coils. That’s absurd. If they want me, then they’ll be perfectly fine with double coils, all day long.

So maybe the answer is just that your needs aren’t as important as your wants. Who knows.

G.A.S.

I told myself I wasn’t going to buy more guitar gear until at least my birthday, and then it was going to be fixing problems with one of my two 40+ year old guitars.

And then tonight I bought a Rat pedal.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Junior

I’ve been playing a Gibson Les Paul Custom since 1990.

Before that I played a Gibson Les Paul Deluxe (before it was stolen and my heart was crushed).

I’ve never said this before…
I’ve never thought this before…
I never dreamed this before but…
but…

I think I want a Gibson Les Paul Junior.

Partly because a vintage Junior is cheaper than a vintage Standard and my chances of actually owning something from the 1950’s is a lot higher.. but even just in terms of the current models…

I think I want a Gibson Les Paul Junior.