My Guitar Rig

Minimal Rig Tone

2010-09-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

I finally got a chance to try out my minimal rig setup at practice the other night. The Pedaltrain Mini that I use has the Egnater footswitch, an MXR 10-band EQ pedal, and a TC Electronic Polytune tuner. Leaving the EQ on all the time, I just used the Egnater Renegade combo footswitch to go between channels 1 and 2 for clean and distortion, respectively. The EQ is set so that the mids are

Updated Rig Setup

2010-07-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

I've had a Shure PSM200 personal in-ear monitor system for a while and it works well for protecting my hearing and hearing myself better. The only downside was trying to find a way to have a feel for the room sound as well. I've experimented with using one earphone or an ambient mic hooked up to my guitar strap, but when you start sweating the earphone tends to slip out, and it becomes

"Minimal" Rig Update

2010-05-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

After experimenting with the Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster in my recently purchased Pedalboard Mini, I've found that it does a good job of beefing up the tone of the single coil pickups in my standard Fender Telecaster straight into my Egnater Renegade 2x12 combo, but it tends to muddy things up when playing either of my PRS guitars with humbucking pickups. So I swapped the Pickup Booster out

"Minimal" Rig Setup

2010-05-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

My main rig currently consists of an Egnater Renegade 2x12 combo, an SKB 4U shallow rack case containing a Furman power supply, TC Electronic G-System, Shure in-ear monitor transmitter, and analog pedals that go into the G-System loops. Thankfully, it's a fairly compact setup and it doesn't take very long to set up or tear down, but there are times when I would like a more bare bones setup for

Live Show Gutiar Tone

2010-05-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

The 80's rock band that I play in, Motorboat Charlie, has had a couple gigs recently and they were a lot of fun. In both cases, the stage volumes were fairly loud and the wedge monitors offered by both venues were chock full of vocals but not much else that I could tell. I didn't gripe to the sound guys about it since I wanted to see if I could hear myself well enough without any in-ear monitor

Study in Monitors, Part 3

2010-02-17T16:27:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I talked about setting up an ambient mic in the room would be good for picking up the drums and any other non-mic'ed instruments to feed into my Shure PSM 200 wireless in-ear monitoring system. It worked well, but when we play out, I can't assume I'll have a line feed from the PA and an ambient mic available for my own monitoring purposes. So instead, I found out that Shure

G-System and Channel Volumes

2009-12-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

framuscobra on YouTube asks: "I'm having a hard time avoiding clipping, i guess the channel volumes affect the loop send levels right? I like the channel vol at max, it gets a nicer tight tone, but it clips the g system inputs like crazy, how do you have your levels set up within the G and the channel volumes? I'm wondering if using a 2 cable method versus a 4 would be better, i know i'd lose the

Compressor Experiments

2009-12-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

I've been enjoying the new Egnater Renegade 2x12 combo for a couple of months now (see my review). I run most of the dirty sounds with an equalizer pedal in front and the TC Electronic G-System equalizer in the effects loop with the mids boosted on both ends. The eq in front drives the amp for a little extra saturated distortion while the eq in the effects loop allows me to cut through the mix

Review: Egnater Renegade 65W 212 Combo

2009-10-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

Despite all the effort I put into getting good guitar tone, I hardly ever buy amps. I've owned my 100-Watt Framus Cobra for almost seven years now after hearing it on Killswitch Engage's End of Heartache album, and it's worked well and sounded good. As inevitably happens, though, your tastes and requirements change over time and I felt like I needed to try other amps in music stores to see if

Rhythm vs. Lead Levels and Tone

2009-08-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

I play in a band with some friends doing 80's rock covers for fun. The other guitarist and I share leads between different songs, so we need to have our rhythm and lead volume levels and tone situation sorted out so that we can hear ourselves and our audience of friends can distinguish between our two sounds and not sound like a wall of mush. I've learned that levels and tone frequency equally

Framus Cobra + Cabinet Matching

2009-06-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

P0Psyckle on YouTube asks: How does the Cobra sound on the Mesa cab? How is it compared to the original Framus cab or others if you have tried? The Mesa 2x12 cabinet I use is closed-back and has Celestion Vintage 30's. It's very crunchy with a lot of bass due to the closed back. So much bass that I have to turn the bass knob down to 10 o'clock on the Lead channel of the Cobra. The other downside

Sound Clips, Finally

2009-06-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Many people have asked me over the last few months to post some sound clips after I posted a couple of impromptu videos walking through my rig setup. But for the longest time I didn't want to just record the sound clips with just the tiny pinhole mic that is on my point-and-shoot digital camera that I used to make those videos. The audio quality just isn't there and I've had numerous negative

G-System, Framus Cobra and MIDI

2009-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

OtiumSlash on YouTube asks: Your videos "My Guitar Rig #1 & #2" made me excited over buying a G-System since that is the way I want to control my Bogner XTC 101B. Although it hasn't got MIDI implemented in the amp head, it can be operated via MIDI switching. Here is the question: Are your amp's clean, crunch, and lead channels on your G-System MIDI operated? Or are you switching between three

Single Coil Tele + Metal Amp = Rock Crunching Goodness

2009-06-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

I've noticed lately that playing 80's rock tunes with my current band using my PRS Custom 24 or Mira into my Framus Cobra amp, I was having a hard time distinguishing my sound from the other guitarist's sound consisting of a Les Paul through a Marshal VintageModern. The main conclusion I came to was that our sounds were too similar. We both were playing mahogany-bodied guitars through high-gain

Study in Monitors, Part 2

2009-05-27T11:14:00.001-07:00

In my last post about hearing myself and the band better when I jam with friends, I said that I would try setting up a mic in the room to pick up ambient sound and mix it with my mic'ed guitar speaker cabinet for in-ear monitoring. It worked pretty well. Here is how it was set up. Cab mic 1 (Sennheiser e609) = off-center of speaker cone in my Mesa/Boogie 2x12 with Celestion Vintage 30's PA vocal

Study in Monitors, Part 1

2009-05-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

When I jam with friends, we typically run around 105 dB of sound pressure level. Our singer has a PA which is used to power the vocal mics and he runs them through a pair of Fender main speakers. The rest of the instruments fill the room acoustically or by their respective speaker cabinets. I own an in-ear monitor system from Shure (PSM 200), but I only use it about half the time. It's really

G-System: Switching the Switches

2009-05-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

As I've been jamming with friends more often lately, I've noticed that there are certain switches on the G-System that I rarely or never use: the compressor, the pitch shifter, and the reverb. So in thinking about what other functions I could use to replace them with, I came up with the following: Comp switch = tuner Pitch switch = noise gate Reverb switch = 00-1 patch Why set the Comp switch to

Volume Levels

2009-04-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

I've been jamming with some friends nearly every weekend lately and I've had some interesting experiences with levels. There's usually another guitarist playing a Gibson Les Paul through a Marshall DSL-50 or Marshall Vintage Modern. We usually share my brother-in-law's stereo Mesa/Boogie 4x12 straight cabinet with Celestion Vintage 30's in it or I'll bring my Mesa/Boogie 2x12 cab with V30's as

EQ Experimentation

2009-03-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I had removed the BBE Sonic Stomp for bad crackling noise that I couldn't resolve and a BBE Sonic Maximizer that scooped my tone too much such that I couldn't dial my way out of it. This is not to say the products are bad. They work, but I just didn't like how it affected my sound. It's completely subjective. This whole process led me to revisit my G-System's built-in equalizer.

Rig Changes, Part 2 of 2

2009-03-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I talked about adding an MXR Phase-90 and BBE Sonic Maximizer to my rig. After spending some time both at home and while jamming with friends I've come to the conclusion that the Sonic Maximizer "scoops" my sound too much. It's good at getting low and high frequencies to be in sync coming out of the speakers, but then I lost too much midrange and I had trouble hearing myself

Rig Changes, Part 1 of 2

2009-03-05T17:16:00.000-08:00

Guitar Center must be loving me because I have recently expanded my rig. Here's what's new: MXR M-101 Phase 90 BBE Sonic Maximizer TASCAM DR-07 Portable Digital Recorder I've been experimenting with more of the effects on the G-System since I don't normally use them all, and I found that the phaser sounded decent but was a little too digital for my taste. Plus it is programmed to run after the

Dream Tone

2009-02-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

Dionizzy on youtube writes: this is my dream tone, give me it lolThanks. I can actually say I'm pretty happy with my tone overall after many years of searching and experimenting. I've come to the conclusion that I can have fun from here on out by just tweaking small variables in the setup I currently have, and that good combinations of gear can be had by any number of devices and amps along the

Framus Cobra vs. Dragon

2009-01-26T18:36:00.001-08:00

DigitalVirus on youtube writes: how does [the framus cobra] compare to the framus dragon?I'd say the cobra is better for metal sounds and the dragon more for hard rock sounds. That may not sound like a huge difference but it's noticeable. I have to use an MXR Distortion III pedal in front of the clean channel to get a hard rock sound because the crunch and lead channels are much higher gain and

G-System + Noise Gate

2009-01-26T18:08:00.000-08:00

Mic081980 on youtube writes: Hey there. Very nice Rig!!! Are you using a Noisegate? Your Sound on the Lead Channel is very nice. Sounds like very High Gain and there is no feedback! How you doing that? I have a Engl E670 SE 6L6 and I have Problems with Feedback! Also I want to buy a G-System. What do you think about that Board? Is it good? (Maybe u using the Gate of the G-System?) Sorry for my

G-System + Hughes Kettner Trilogy

2009-01-26T17:14:00.000-08:00

MrReneRamos on youtube writes: Hi my name is Rene Ramos from Texas. I have a question about TC Electronics "G-System". I want to hook up two Hughes and Kettner "Trilogy" amps it comes with four channels Clean, Crunch, Lead, and Ultra Lead. Can the G-System switch the channels on the amp from Clean to Crunch to Lead to Ultra Lead and then I can add an effect on the G-System to each channel? The