Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I've been threatening this a long time!!!

Ok here we go,  I'm jumping into this.  GEAR GEAR GEAR!!!!!!  I'm gonna take a few minutes to walk you through my current guitar set up,  from beginning to end.  I'll talk a little about each piece,  and show them.  If you're not obsessed with guitar gear, or at least a little interested,  I'm sorry.  I hope to take some time in the future to talk about the gear the other guys in the band are using,  and hopefully share some of the key ingredients to their tasty sounds...

I guess it would be logical to start at the beginning,  the guitars:


My Tele.  I name my guitars,  this one's called "Rosalie".  This is my main guitar,  I always reach for her first.  I'd be in trouble if I didn't mention by amazing girlfriend gave this one to me for my birthday a couple years ago.  It has two "wide range" humbuckers,  and I guess the best way to describe the sound of them is loud,  but not compressed.  Almost an anti-EMG type sound.  She sings.  She looks great.  It's a '72 reissue, so the neck is more like a strat neck,  and has the oversized headstock.  I've had her for about a year and a half,  and I'm very used to everything about this guitar, and I love it.  I hope one day I'll be able to get my hands on an original early 70's tele like this one.  A lot of people ask me how this guitar behaves compared to a standard tele,  and they are really different animals all together.  There's no comparing.

This was the first guitar I ever bought.  Her name is "Porcelina".  She's a Squire Strat that I have replaced basically everything except for the wood.  Several upgrades on this guitar.  GraphTech saddles and nut were put on it to mellow the tone,  and eliminate breaking strings.  I broke strings constantly,  and when I got the GraphTech upgrades, I haven't broken one since....it's been 12 years since that upgrade.  The pickups were replaced by Fender Lace Sensor pickups.  A Lace Sensor is a single coil pickup, but the way it's constructed reduces noise,  and increases output.   They make different flavors of them,  I have a red in the bridge, silver in the middle,  and a blue at the neck position.  The tones are wide ranging between them.  The red pickup in the bridge is the same pickup Johnny Greenwood uses in his famous Tele.   It basically makes a single coil sound like a hot humbucker.  Very warm.  Not a typical bright strat sound.  Other things with this guitar:  The tremolo springs were replaced by very heavy stiff springs to make the bridge act like it's blocked out,  that also helps with tuning.  The pickups were wired different too.  the middle and bridge pickup are wired out of phase,  so when playing in between those pickups,  it gives a shiny smooth sound.  That's an Eric Clapton trick, you want that sound it's right there.  I have to confess I don't use it much if at all, but it's fun to play with.  I did put a sticker on this guitar, it says "I never want to say my best days are behind me." which is a quote from a New End Original song.  This guitar feels like home every time I play it.  Having an instrument for 15 years will make you bond with it, it's so familiar.  Now I usually play this guitar for a mellower sound,  it's less aggressive than the Tele.  Also, I use it if i need to play with volume swells.  Reaching the volume knob is real easy with this guitar, and easy to play expressively with it.

For strings,  I play D'addario Pure Nickel 10-45 strings.  The pure nickel strings are super mellow,  compared to a normal set of D'addario, or Ernie Balls.  It gives the guitars a more vintage vibe to the sound.  I don't notice a difference in feel between the types of strings,  but the mellow tone is exactly what I'm looking for.  Brothers McClurg is endorsed by D'addario/Planet Waves,  and I'm very thankful I get to try their products to find what works best.  These strings might have made the biggest impact on my playing from our relationship with them.


PEDALS! I love pedals.  I can't get enough.  This set up has been somewhat consistent for about 2 years.

This is a Planet Waves Chromatic Tuner.  It has two "needle" modes like the standard Boss tuner.  The big difference is this pedal is a true bypass pedal, as opposed to a buffered output pedal.  The body is metal,  and the weight of it is substantial.  The lights are bright enough, it's easy to use,  and i can't complain about it at all.  I think it's well worth the money.





Next is a Fulltone FullDrive 2.  I really like the Fulltone product line,  their drives are really eye opening for what you can get for a drive out of a pedal.  I did have a OCD drive for about a year,  and switched to the FullDrive because I felt the tone was a little less "scooped" in the mid-range,  which was better for our sound.  There's a few switches and controls to change the sound of the pedal,  and the "boost" side of the pedal adds versatility for when you need to take your drive over the top.  The character of this pedal is fantastic,  and responds like an amp with your playing dynamics.  It cleans up great when you back off,  and digs in as much as you do when playing.  This pedal is on 95% of the time when I play.  It pushes my amp in such a perfect way.  I'd call it a cornerstone of my sound.

This is a really fun pedal.  The Vox Time Machine Digital delay.  It's the delay that Steve Vai endorses.  I'm not a huge fan of his music,  but this pedal is awesome to use.  For starters,  it has a tap tempo function,  so you don't have to dial in you delay times,  you just tap it in.  You can set the time signature of your delay to be 1/4 notes, dotted 1/8 notes, 1/8 notes, or triplets.  There's a tone switch for "hi fi" or "lo fi".  The hi fi sound is really clean, sounds like it's cloning what you are playing.  The lo fi setting rolls off the high end of the delays a little bit to try to sound like an analog delay.  There's also a modern/vintage function which tries to emulate the pitch effects of tape delay.  Typically I use this pedal in 1/4 note or dotted 1/8 note mode,  when I want that pronounced echo of a digital delay.  Think the Edge playing the stuff on the Joshua Tree,  that's the sound I get from this pedal.  I think everyone needs a tap delay,  I'm very happy with this one.

This pedal is my soul.  MXR Carbon Copy analog delay.  I think it goes up to 640ms of delay.  I keep the time set to around 1 or 2 o'clock, which is in the 450ms range.  Compared to the Vox pedal,  this one is dark,  and warm.  The repeats are not very clean,  and just adds atmosphere and space to the sound....in almost a reverberant way.  Being an analog pedal,  playing with the delay time will effect the pitch of the repeats which is fun to play with.  I use this to play spacier parts.  Think Radiohead's OK Computer, or any Pink Floyd record for that soaring floating ambience.  I can't get enough of this pedal.


The Holy Grail.  I wanted a pedal that i could absolutely drown my guitar in reverb with.  This pedal is a simple way to do it.  There's 3 reverb type settings,  and typically i have it on the "hall" setting.  I usually only use this when I want a lot of ambience in my sound,  and i'll turn the reverb amount up almost all the way to try to mimic that awesome Sigur Ros violin bow on the guitar sound.  When Chris tells me he wants me to make a "wind" sound,  this is what he means.  The "spring" setting on this pedal is also very nice,  and realistic of nice amp spring reverbs.  One downer on this guy is that it needs it's own power supply,  but it's not a huge gripe.


 This pedal is a never ending box of surprises.  This is the Cusak Tap-A-Whirl,  my newest addition.  It's an analog tap tempo tremolo.  Tremolo is one of my favorite effects,  whether it's mild shallow trem,  or a hard wave pulsing trem,  I think it's a power rhythmic effect.  I have only just started to realize all this pedal can do.  There are several different waveforms and patterns,  including patterns that mimic dotted 1/8, and different time signatures.   The waves are really smooth,  and the tap function is a life saver.  I have tremolo on my amp,  but hated to always dial in the speed after the song started,  this eliminates that,  and sounds way better, with more options.  It's a very creative and expressive pedal,  I'm looking forward to doing more with this one.

MXR Micro Amp.  This is a volume boost.  I use it as a solo boost (which is rarely),  and sometimes I use it with the Strat to make up the volume difference between Tele.  It's really clean,  and has a lot of gain.  I put it last in the chain,  because I don't want to boost my signal before any of my pedals,  they would react differently.   I want that signal to be consistent going into the pedals,  and just make it louder going to the amp when I need.




All of the cables on the pedal board,  and going to the amp and guitars are Planet Waves cables.  They make a custom series of cables that have solderless connectors,  you cut the cable to length,  put the connector on,  and you're good to go.  I can't tell you how many times I would re-solder my connectors when I added a pedal, or changed my board,  and what a huge pain that is.  I was skeptical of the Planet Waves system,  but it really is bulletproof.  You can reuse the connectors as much as you need, and they are solid metal, I never worry about them breaking.  The cost of a pedal board kit is a little pricey,  but when you think about how long it will last for you,  it's well worth the money compared to buying those little crappy patch cables.  After all this cable,  it all ends at the amp:

This is a Gibson GA-42RVT reissue.  It's a Class A 2 channel amp.  It's rated at 30 watts,  can be switched down to 15 watts,  and has 2 12" speakers.  Reverb and Tremolo are built in.  There's inputs for Ch 1 and 2,  and a "combine" jack which combines the channels,  like how they used to tie the inputs together on the old Marshalls. You can use that jack,  and then mix the two channels via their volume controls.  I bought this amp after playing it for 5 minutes,  it immediately brought everything I needed in an amp.  Since I got it,  I did replace the speakers with Celestion Vintage 30's,  it came stock with Eminence.  The amp is plenty loud,  and having the half power switch is really useful when we play smaller rooms.  This is another piece of gear I'm not sure I want to replace or part with.  I've tried other amps since then,  and I  keep coming back to this one.  It's a really good compliment to Justin's AC-30 sound,  and it just sounds like what I imagine my guitar should sound like.

HA, so this might be the longest blog in the history of...well....blogs, but I hope you enjoyed it.  Maybe if there's some interest,  I could make a couple videos showing how I use the pedals and such.  Ask questions,  make suggestions,  let's talk gear!! Thanks for stopping by.

PS:  Here's a link to some of the D'Addario products I mentioned along the way....

D'Addario Pure Nickel Strings

Planet Waves Cable Kits

Planet Waves Stage Tuner

2 comments:

  1. Stopped by after reading your guest post at The Mister's new blog. Although I love all types of music, I've only ever dabbled in acoustic guitars. Regardless, I found the post very interesting - even if I didn't understand everything. Giving references to other guitarists who use similar techniques (Edge, Gilmour) is very helpful in getting a sense of what some of the gadgets will do. I'll be looking for some links to your band's music. Keep up the good work.

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  2. Thanks Jim, you can go to brothersmcclurg.com, and can find us on itunes. We have new music coming out in August, so stay tuned for that.

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