65amps introduces its new Red Line of amplifiers with the first model in the series, the London Pro. Like its brother, the original 65amps London, the low-powered but extremely toneful London Pro tube amp is hand made in the USA, and takes advantage of 65amps’ renowned expertise in small amps with big feel and tone. With the Red Line, 65amps now offers its high quality construction and tone to working guitar players at a more accessible price than the current 65amps Blue Line models.

Powered by 2xEL84s, the 18-Watt tube rectified London Pro offers two distinct channels, the EF86 Colour Channel and the 12AX7 Channel. New on the London Pro, these two channels can be combined for a third, high-gain option. When the channels are combined, the volume and tone knobs on each distinct channel now control the gain and tone for just the tubes on the channel they are assigned, allowing extreme tonal versatility. All channels can be controlled by the included footswitch.

65amps also has included its unique Master Voltage feature, which reduces the voltage and output of the amp in a unique way that enables the amp to be played at extremely low volumes without losing its rich tone and feel. The London Pro is housed in a streamlined head and cabinet design constructed from void free Baltic birch, is equipped with handmade American transformers, and sports a new red badge logo.

So basically this:

• Two channels, one AC-ish EF86 and one Marshall 18W-ish, with the option to combine
• Master voltage (a form of power scaling)

Hey… um, that’s it. A very brief spec rundown of an amp that while skimping on knobs and EQs and etc, is rich in the most important ingredient - TONE. 

I spent the next hour putting it through its paces, and I thought I’d write down some thoughts for you guys, though at this point I don’t have any of my own soundclips (but hopefully that may change soon!).

Teletron 1

I had the pleasure of using the shop guitar – a Radian Guitars variation on the Telecaster, with TV Jones pickups and a lovely Korina body.

Red Channel

This is the Marshall 18W-style channel, powered by the good ol’ 12AX7 preamp tube. You get two controls: Tone, and Volume. Because of the Master Voltage control, you can basically wind up the Volume (as you would a gain knob), and cinch back the MV to taste. However, I soon found out that the MV control is pretty effective down to about 4, but once you go below that it does start to choke the tone back a little.

So, running loud and proud through the matching 1×12″ cab, I juiced the Volume and set Tone for about 1 o’clock.

Thick, juicy Marshall tones were instantly achieved. Very nice stuff. Not sure what else I can say about it, except it’s very much what you’d expect from a Marshall 18W – you can get goodly amounts of drive, but it does have that ever so slightly boxy tone compared to the Marshalls with the big iron in them.

Blue Channel

This is where the amazing tone lives, for me. In the past few years I’ve become somewhat partial to Vox tones, both cleanish and driven, but the uncontrollable sonic beast that is an AC30 means I will probably never end up owning one.

The EF86 channel on the London Pro is everything you could want from an AC15/30, but with just a little less ringing ears. That’s not to say that it doesn’t get loud – it is indeed a RATHER loud amp for its size (and the 1×12″ cab does well to fill the room with sound, and isn’t particularly directional), but it’s a fair bit easier to rein in than an AC30.

You’ve got Tone and Volume again, but this time you’re equipped with “pull” knobs for additional Bright and Boost controls.

The base tone is chimey chimey bliss, and notching up the volume takes you into break-up territory very gracefully. Playing dynamically is an amazing experience – pull back a little to get clean tones, and then wind your guitar’s volume up to 11 and dig right in to get big, driven tones with that distinctive Vox high end.

The Pull Bright seemed to have a fairly subtle effect to my ears (the channel already has plenty of the chiming highs you’d want from a Vox-inspired amp), but the Pull Boost was great fun for adding gobs of gain to get into Brian May territory.

Red + Blue

Of course, one of the other key features of the London Pro is being able to combine the tone of both channels. With the click of a footswitch, you can combine that Marshall grind with the chimier high end of the EF86 – a really interesting proposition, with a multitude of possibilities. You can do a LOT with this depending on how you set each individual channel – you can pretend it’s a Marshally Vox, or a Voxy Marshall, or just plain balls to the wall ROCK. No, I’m not joking – with both channels’ volumes set pretty high, you can actually get a very respectable, and very ballsy palm muted chunk out of the London Pro!! Not something that most players who buy 65 Amps would be looking for, but I guess I’m a bit weird.

IwantitIwantitIwantitIwantit

^ I think that says it all. A super cool amp, perhaps a bit limited in terms of switching compared to many modern amps, but what it lacks in controls it more than makes up for in TONE.

Okay I have to go now, need to scheme about what I can sell to buy this. Oh, and did I mention that it’s VERY affordable compared to its big brother the London? That’s part of the allure – a 65 Amps line for the working man.

… still, it’s a coupla thousand bucks. Anyone want to gift me some cash?

Hope you enjoyed the mini-review. Here’s a vid of the London Pro with 65 Amps founder Dave Boul.

Guitar hero and all-round show-off Steve Vai returns to New Zealand for two shows in July.

The virtuoso axeman, last here as part of the G3 guitar extravaganza with Joe Satriani and Steve Lukather in March last year, plays Wellington Town Hall on July 18 and Auckland’s ASB Theatre on July 20.

With a career spanning three decades, eight albums – including last year’s The Story of Light - and more than 15 million record sales, Vai is one of the masters of virtuoso guitar, playing alongside blokes like Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen.

On this current tour he will be joined by his four-piece band and play for more than two hours.

The Live Nation pre-sale starts at noon on Wednesday, May 22. Pre-sales through Ticketmaster and buytickets.co.nz start on May 24 with general tickets on sale May 28.

I saw Steve at G3 last year and it was EPIC. I’ll definitely be going again. The man is just an amazing musician and most of all, showman when you see his live show.

So a few weeks ago we got a video of the first track off the record, Elevate, which we talked about here.

Hardworking guys as they are, there’s a new video out now!

It’s called “Desire” and you can check it out here:

It’s another solid number, but I think personally, I enjoyed Elevate just a little bit more because of the catchy, Mr. Big-esque pop chorus.

Desire features yet another quasi-fusion solo from Mr Kotzen, which is always a treat, but what I’m worried about is that the coordinated tapping pyrotechnics, which are a signature move from Billy Sheehan, may put off some casual listeners who don’t want to hear as much “shred” in their rock songs.

In any case, I’ll still be buying the album – I’ve got it on pre-order from Japan, hopefully I’ll be able to talk about the entire album pretty soon!

As the name implies, the Golden Cello is meant to give you sweet, smooth, violin/cello style lead tones, packed with singing harmonics, and with a lush tape echo/delay sound behind it.

The rumour is that the 100lb cello tone this pedal alludes to is that of one Eric Johnson, otherwise known as the most pedantic gearhound in the world. This is the dude who swears that he can hear the difference in tone between brands of batteries, or types of screws in his guitar cabinets.

Well… as usual, I’m a bit weird, and I’m going to get this right out in the open… I’m not really a fan of Eric Johnson. The usual caveat that he can play the pants off me applies (though I’d prefer if he kept my pants on, but that’s personal preference), but his tones and style have never particularly resonated with me. So I guess I’d like to think that I’m going into this with a fairly open mind, without a lot of expectations.

What’s in the box, Prof?

The controls are straight forward:

• Delay
• Drive
• Volume
• Tone

I don’t think any of those require explanation. Come on, you’re smarter than that I know it. I have faith in you.

But let’s talk about these controls a little anyway.

Delay is a sort of combination control that seems to affect both the level, and number of repeats. Barring that, you are NOT able to fudge with the delay time – it’s set for a very classic, huge sounding arena rock solo timing. I think I might have read something about an internal control for the delay time, but I’m not one to screw with stuff like that.

Drive controls the amount of gain and fuzz you get. It can be turned completely off, so in theory you could use this as a tape delay pedal alone. Oh, I forgot to mention that the same goes for the Delay control – you can turn it right off, so you get fuzz only. To be honest, neither one by itself is particularly astonishing – but put them together, and it’s freaking magic.

Volume obviously is the overall level that gets sent to your amp. I found that the gain isn’t very high on this – with the Volume maxed out, it’s only really hovering around unity gain. This is a slight disadvantage, in the case that you want your soaring lead to be accompanied by a huge kick in the pants volume-wise.

Tone is really like a treble control. It doesn’t do drastic things, but I liked having it at 12 o’clock and above to ensure a bit more “cut” to your tone. After all, who cares about kick-ass tone if doesn’t go through the mix?

Instru-mental \m/

I liked this pedal so much that I decided to do something a little different this time. I noticed that most of the demos on the internet showcase lead playing with the Golden Cello, which is of course completely justified, as that’s the main focus of the pedal. But I found myself wondering… other than widdly widdly, what ELSE might this be able to do?

So  I decided that I would write an instrumental track, with all the guitar parts played through the Golden Cello, on various different settings.

Before you take a listen, let’s step through what tones I used on this track (which I’m undecided about naming – anyone want to suggest some after listening to it??):

• Delay only.  What you’ll hear straight up, is the GC with Drive on zero, and the delay control fairly maxed, to get a chiming, spacey, ambient tone. 
  
• Little bit o’ drive, little bit o’ delay. When the “verse” melody kicks in, the Drive control is set just before noon, and about the same for Delay.
• Epic solo tone. Most of the “lead” bits have the Drive almost maxed out, and the Delay around noon or just after.
• Just drive. I used this for the rhythm guitars in the bridge – nothing to shout about, but in a pinch, a usable rhythm fuzz tone. As expected from a fuzz, you can’t really get a lot of “chunk” out of it, so best stay away from palm muting and just try to create big wall of fuzz sounds.

I played my Peavey Wolfgang, into the Line 6 DT25 set on JTM45 mode, as clean as I could get it – so all the drive you’re hearing is coming from the pedal itself.

Okay… check it out!! I’d love to hear what you think, it’s the first time I’ve sat down to write an instrumental, and I’m reasonably happy with the way it turned out! Let me know what you think I should call it…

Well that’s all.. but that’s AWESOME.

That’s all I have to say about it. I love this pedal. It’s instant epic solo tone in a box. Only downside is that the volume control doesn’t really go much past unity, so you can’t really use it as a huge solo boost.

It’s a Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend exclusive, so you can’t buy it from any other retailers at the moment. You can find it second hand on eBay and such though obviously.

I’m gonna go ahead and give this mofo an awesome 4.0 Fuck Yeahs - only slight points off for the volume thing, and the fact that (well, like most fuzzes) it can get a little lost in the mix if you’re not careful.

Slayer guitarist and founding member Jeff Hanneman died earlier today of liver failure. He was 49.

The band’s longtime publicist issued the following statement today:

“Slayer is devastated to inform that their bandmate and brother, Jeff Hanneman, passed away at about 11AM this morning near his Southern California home.  He was 49.  Hanneman was in an area hospital when he suffered liver failure.  He is survived by his wife Kathy, his sister Kathy and his brothers Michael and Larry, and will be sorely missed.”

Hanneman co-founded the thrash metal greats with Kerry King in 1981; their breakthrough came in 1986 with the landmark album “Reign in Blood.” Hanneman wrote or co-wrote the set’s standout tracks, “Angel of Death” and “Raining Blood.”

Setting Fire To Stacey is an emerging hard rock band, arisen from the rubble of Christchurch City through sheer force of will and stubborn determination. Their brand of driving hard rock recalls diverse influences such as Tool, System of a Down, Chevelle, Cancer Bats and Seether, with the end product emerging as something altogether unique and instantly memorable.

Their first song, Something Out of Nothing, and its accompanying video quickly spread like wildfire through social media, amassing a thousand plus views in the space of a few days. They have recently spent time at the acclaimed Roundhead Studios recording their debut singles with producer Sam Browne (Black River Drive) and engineer extraordinaire Zorran Mendonsa (Blacklistt, New Way Home, In Dread Response, Cobra Kahn, Subtract and many more) at the helm. With these recordings in hand, they’re out to conquer the local airwaves as well as continuing to pull support at the grassroots level, playing to increasingly packed audiences eager to lap up every second of sonic mayhem.

The band consists of members Arend Hoek (vocals), Mark Hunter (lead guitar), Zakk Rickard (rhythm guitar), Hamish Collison (bass) and Ross Greig (drums).

Special thanks also to NCS Photography for the photos.

Something Out of Nothing

A prophetic song title, especially for a band coming out of earthquake-torn Christchurch. Determined to get their sound onto the local airwaves, they made the trek up the country to the acclaimed Roundhead Studio in Auckland.

Step 1: Perfect grooves in pre-production.

When it’s time to hit record, you know shit’s about to get real with this setup…

Time to set up the main room.

Recording de bass, mon.

Guitars were tracked later on at Zorran Mendonsa’s home studio:

End Result? \m/

You can hear the end result right here:

And as of a little while ago, SFTS have received some kick-ass news – Radio Hauraki have accepted Something Out of Nothing for airplay!! It’s actually going live for the FIRST time ever tomorrow morning around 11.30am – so make sure you tune in to support them. It will also be on the Rock FM shortly.

I think we’ll be hearing a lot more about these guys very soon. Cos, you know, they rock.

Pssst – if you haven’t seen the rest of the 6SS birthday celebrations, check out our interview with The Heavy Metal Ninjas, as well as a review of the Blackstar ID260TVP combo – and more to come throughout the week!

Hey you know what?! I got an email reminder saying that I had to renew my ownership of the Six-String Samurai domain… because it’s officially been ONE YEAR that we’ve been going!! I’m just totally psyched with the way the site’s been growing, and the massive support we’ve had from the online community, and I’m hoping that we can all grow the 6SS community even further in the next year!! I’m actually planning to start a forum for all our Samurai friends… but that’s an idea for another day. This week we have a Mega Upload of articles for you – a review of the Blackstar ID series, an overview of life on the road in the States with BC Rich endorsee Ross McDougall of In Dread Response and Saving Grace, and also…

Heavy Metal. Also, Ninjas.

After seeing them live for the first time a week or two ago (a killer show at Auckland’s Powerstation with Devilskin, opening for Coheed and Cambria – if you haven’t seen the pics check them out right here) I’m a 100% fanatic about these amazing local talents.

If you STILL haven’t heard of them yet, they’re NZ’s most insane rock/metal/shred instrumental band, led by Richie Allan, long-time Ibanez and Dimarzio endorsee. Our awesome monthly columnist Brandon Reihana has recently joined HMN, so what was the right thing to do? Arrange a kick-ass Q&A session with these two amazing axe-slingers just for you!

Let us begin. Obviously “R A” is for Richie’s replies, and “B R” is for Brandon’s.

B R: Get into a band and tour lots. If your band is really tight and has good songs look for opening slots. Go and support local shows

because its who you know and you never know who will be at a show that can help you out in the music industry. Thats my 2 cents. 

The ID: Series represents the culmination of more than seven years technical research and development by the same team that designed Series One, Artisan and HT Venue. The unique controls allow you to custom design your own sound, store it and then have the confidence that the amp will perform in a live environment. By using the unique Voice control, patented ISF and patent-applied-for True Valve Power, these amplifiers allow unparalleled flexibility and ease of use, enabling you to in effect, design the sound in your head and deliver it live as LOUD as valve™. Individuality is power!

Welcome to Six-String Samurai birthday week!! We’ve got a whole lot lined up for you this week including an interview with the Heavy Metal Ninjas, the awesome shenanigans of life on the road on tour in the USA from BC Rich endorsee Ross McDougall… and of course, a review! We were talking to our good friends at the Rockshop, and the conversation came to focus on a particular new amp from Blackstar. Something solid state, but a little bit unconventional. It sounded intriguing – so we figured, why the hell not?! Oh, and sorry for the slightly crappy pictures this time around – we were too busy getting messed up for our birthday celebration, and also it was rainy outside.

The ID: Series of amps from Blackstar comprises the ID:15TVP, ID:30TVP, ID:60TVP (available as combo and head), ID:100TVP (head only), and the big daddy, the ID:260TVP, which is what I’ve got here today. The key to the cryptic name designation is the acronym “TVP”. It stands for True Valve Power, which is immediately a misnomer since this is a 100% solid state amp. So, um, what the hell is going on then?

True Valve Power

True Valve Power, or TVP, is what Blackstar are touting as the key feature of the ID: Series. Instead of your most common form of modelling – “Treadplate”, “British Non-Master” and other generic names – which model specific amps, Blackstar have gone a different way for these amps and decided to offer something quite unique for this end of the price spectrum - poweramp tube modelling. So how does this work? This is where it gets a little convoluted. On the preamp side, you’re offered a number of basic voicing options, with the stock descriptions from Blackstar:

• Clean Warm - Very clean, dynamic
• Clean Bright - ‘Boutique’, will break up when pushed hard
• Crunch - Classic medium gain overdrive
• Super Crunch - More gain and punch than Crunch
• OD1 - Hot-rodded Master Volume overdrive with medium power amp damping
• OD2 - Mid boosted hot-rod overdrive

So these options give you a base voicing to start off with, as well as gain/EQ roughly associated with the name – Clean Warm for example has more mids than Clean Bright, and Crunch is less gainy than Super Crunch, and so on. Once you’ve selected one of these, you then have the option to engage the TVP or poweramp tube modelling. And even though there is a button to turn TVP on and off, you should really NEVER have it off – it sounds terribly thin and buzzy without it engaged. TVP gives you the choice to emulate a power section with any one of these tubes:

• EL84 – Bell-like full bodied Class A with lots of compression
• 6V6  -Crisp Class A with high compression and tight mids
• EL34 – Classic British Class A/B crunch with full bodied soft break-up
• KT66 – Rich and warm vintage British hot biased Class A/B
• 6L6 – Tight dynamic Class A/B with extended high and lows
• KT88 – Tight, bold and dynamic Class A/B with strong low end

That’s what they say, anyway. As with any gear, you can use the description as a guide, but the first and last authority should be your own ears.

So, how does TVP sound?

Actually – pretty cool! Now, if you’re still harbouring any illusions that these will supplant and surpass your rich buddy’s Marshall Plexi, Bogner Uberschall, or a Mesa Dual Rec, let me stop you right there. It sure as hell won’t. And that’s not what these amps are designed for. For competition in the high end of the market, Blackstar have the Artisan and Series 1 ranges. So what’s the use of these amps then? For me, personally, I think this could be for two particular types of players:

• Someone who’s relatively new to amps, and wants to get a bit more of a feel for how amps with certain poweramp tubes are voiced before committing to a bigger buy.
• Someone with lots of experience with amps and wants a decent coverage of different poweramp voicings for volume controllable home use or to leave in the band room.

Everything in modulation.

Ah yes, I almost forgot! One of the best things about the ID: Series is that they include on-board digital FX in the form of modulation, delays and reverb. Most of the time, on-board FX in amps like these are pretty nasty, but I think that the ones included in here are actually pretty good! You get Flanger, Phaser, Chorus and Tremolo, as well as a gamut of delay and reverb types. Each one has two adjustable parameters (usually a depth and mix sort of control), and additionally the time-based effects have tap tempo! You can turn on any combination of modulation, delay and reverb that you want. Combine them all for all the atmospheric spaceyness that you could ever need.

No, not that kind of Spacey.

Pick a tube, any tube

Okay… so with a setup like this, the possibilities are somewhat limitless. Unfortunately, our time, and my attention span, are rather limited. So here’s the strategy for today’s review – I’m going to go through 4 (count ‘em, 4) of the tones that I liked the best from the amp, with some effects where applicable. That will be your baseline. THEN, I’ll hit the TVP knob, and roll through all the different tube options using constant preamp settings, so that you can get an idea of how the TVP control changes the sound. How about it? Confused? Yes, I am also slightly confused, but then again I always am. Let’s just dive right in.

Clean tones

With uber clean tones, I usually gravitate towards brighter, crisper sounds, and this time was no different. Setting the preamp mode to Clean Bright and 6L6 tube emulation, I quickly found some tones that I loved. Adding in some tasteful modulation was just the icing on the cake – I ended up going with a lovely stereo trem, and then a lush chorus tone for the next one. Check ‘em out!

Crunch it up

Everyone likes a good Marshally crunch. Aiming to get into that ballpark, I set the amp into Crunch mode (duh) and EL34 tube emulation. Crunchy, a little chewy, with a good amount of bark. Nice.

Hotroddin’

The next step in amp evolution was, of course, the hotrodded Marshall sound. Super Crunch is where that lives, for me. A little bit more sizzle and thump than plain ol’ Crunch. Add some delay and ‘verb, and you’re in 80s widdly town:

Time to turbocharge!

There are hotrodded Marshalls, and then there are the ones where they’re so juiced that they burn through tubes like a hot knife through some form of semi solid butter. You know what I’m talking about. I decided to go with 6L6 tube emulation for this one, to give it a bit more oomph in the low mids, and to try and get into that Van Halen/Soldano-esque ballpark with the OD2 preamp. Little bit o’ tape echo to add that vintage feel, and then of course, you gotta phase! The phaser sounds like it’s a a stereo affair that’s placed AFTER the preamp (rather than before the preamp as I prefer it) so it didn’t really get the effect I intended – but it’s still pretty cool.

Squealy time.

Just for fun, I thought I’d do some Zakk Wylde-style squealy riffing, first with EL34 tube emulation running, then switching to 6L6. Both on the OD1 preamp. See what you think:

Let’s TVP this shiz

Okay – so those were my picks from the tones that I got through experimenting and tweaking. Now, let’s hear some basic playing while cycling through the tube emulation controls. Dirty first, then clean – both start with KT88 and then go down the list (scroll up the page to see the full list, ya lazy bum!).

Truth be told… for clean sounds I could hardly tell the difference, but for drive tones you could definitely hear/feel differences in EQ and response between the different types of tubes being emulated.

But wait, there’s more!

I forgot to mention – well, it was on purpose, but whatever.

Every single clip on here today was recorded DIRECT into my audio interface via the Blackstar’s emulated outs. I used both the USB and 1/4″ outs just to test them out, and was pleasantly surprised, so much so that I thought that they were good enough to do the whole review with! The cab emulated out on the amp was a little thumpy and over-emphasized in the lower mids compared to what I was hearing in the room, but all it really needed was a high-pass filter to cut some of them out, and voila! All the tones in this review.

I find that pretty impressive.

Blackstar’s Insider software also offers you a nice GUI to control it all from your computer, as well as to install updates to the amp. It’s well laid out, and very intuitive to use.

One complaint though – there is obviously no roll-back system in case your internet connection dies halfway through downloading an update to the amp. This happened to me when it went to auto-update, and when I tried to power up the amp again, it started flashing the Tap button, indicating that NO FUCKING VALID SOFTWARE WAS AVAILABLE IN THE AMP!!!! I almost had a freaking heart attack. If that happens, even the factory reset protocols DO NOT WORK. So if this happens to you, just try and be very careful about your connection, and if it doesn’t work try it on another computer (which is what I ended up doing).

Also, apparently you can do reamping with the USB connection, but it didn’t seem to want to work for me.

To sum up, your honour

A really interesting effort from Blackstar – something a little different from the beaten path. I have mixed feelings about whether the execution was deftly handled, so let’s try and sum it up with a +/- sort of list.

Be interested if:

• You are relatively inexperienced with the different types of amps and the poweramp tubes they use, and want a bit of a baseline to figure out what tones you may like.
• You’re an experienced player well-versed in what you like in an amp/tubes, and are search of a practice amp that can give you a wide variety of customization options to create your own tones, not necessarily restricted by classic amp designs.
• Are one of these people, and want something that’s easy to record from. Easy as pie. Tasty pie.

Be not as interested if:

• You don’t want a huge degree of tweakability. The preamp voicings, ISF control, TVP are all a bit much if tweaking is not your bag.
• You want straightforward industry standard modelling – a Dual Rec model, or a Plexi model, and so forth.

Birthday Samurai gives this guy 3 Fuck Yeahs! Ambitious concept, sounds quite good – but I think it needs a little refining in some areas.

We’ve been extremely fortunate to have support from some great companies and brands, so I thought first off it would be fun to go through the back line and gear we picked up when we arrived in L.A.

My main touring guitar has been a gold top B.C Rich Mockingbird. Its neck thru, 24 frets, ebony fretboard and loaded with chrome EMGpickups. The guys at  BC Rich sent one to our label for me to pick up upon arrival. It looks and sounds amazing! And extremely comfortable to play. The neck profile is exactly the same as my warlock. Not too fat and really comfortable. Its a dream to play.

My 2nd guitar is a custom Moniker telecaster. Now these guys are really interesting! Their website has a guitar builder website that is really fun to use. You can customize pretty much everything you want and they have an incredible 4 week turnaround on all builds! I opted for a tele style body, with a maple fretboard and Seymour Duncan pickups (Hot Rails in the neck and SH6 in the neck) and a red stain with a black burst.

The guys have been really lovely to deal with and the order was processed extremely quickly and smoothly. They were even able to offer a custom artwork design on the pick guard. Very cool!

The Moniker is really nice to play. It looks like a Tele and plays and feels like a Les Paul. It’s nicely weighted and the neck profile is nice and round. I’d say its a really nice middle ground between a LP and a Tele. It sounds huge with the high gain pickups we put in it. They were also able to install a coil split switch for me which I am really excited to experiment with when I get home and start recording. It gives me the versatility of a high gain metal guitar and a single coil tele!

Now back home I use an HD500 and an L3M powered monitor. Obviously I couldn’t fit that on my carry on luggage so I had a look around at some options and went with a small, easy to travel with option.

My touring rig for this tour is a Randall RG13 preamp, a Line 6 M5 effects pedal and a Line 6 G50 wireless.

The RG13 is really cool. Its a solid state preamp which nods its head slightly to the earlier RG100 heads, but with some more modern twists. It also has a lot of cool functionality; it has a 1w power amp for a low volume output into a speaker, an effects loop and a D.I output with a 4×12 cab and mic emulation. Gives me plenty of options each night!

The M5 gives me the M series effects I’m used to on the HD500 and a global noise gate and tuner. I’m using it for a basic tube screamer boost before the preamp. Nice and compact and a smaller floor area than separate gate/tuner/screamer.

And the G50 is a G50. Completely reliable and dependable digital wireless. Since it’s digital I haven’t had to worry about different frequencies.

I also picked up a Nady PEM1000 in ear system while I am here. I have Ultimate Ears UE18pros and I wanted to have an IEM option if the venues could accommodate it. I’ve become really used to using IEMs now and I didn’t want to go a whole month without them!

Fortunately our back line on this tour has been great. I can choose from a Riveria Knucklehead, a bias nodded 5150 and a basson 4×12 each night. This ensures I have plenty of tone options each night!

Our home away from home on this tour is Ford Econline 15 passenger E350 and a trailer. We are on tour with two other bands; Arc Of The Covenant and Those Who Fear. Both bands have similar vans and we have been splitting up between the two.

I’ve got a new found respect for ANY band who tours america fulltime. Touring is hard. Very hard. Our first drive after the LA shows was California to Kansas. 31 hours. Non stop. Oh and before we even got out of California we hit a dust storm in the californian desert and had to stop for an hour because of zero visibility. It was pretty insane. The guy in those whose fear have their home away from home sorted though. Blacked out windows, everyone has their own bench, each row has power outlets and they even have a TV and a PlayStation in the front bench! They have done everything they can to make it more comfy, which is very cool. But its gruelling, for the first week all we did was drive through the night, go straight to venues, load in, play, load out and drive through the night again. We traveled over half of america in just a handful of days.

The two highlights of my guitar nerdery I wanted to highlight with this post is three visits we were lucky to make, one to the schecter head office/custom shop, one to the fender AR office and one to BC rich HQ!

Schecter HQ

Our other guitarist is a Schecter endorsee, so we made a visit as soon as we landed in LA. Their setup is seriously very impressive. They have two huge buildings, one for the offices and one for the custom shop. They even have their own professional recording studio for any of the employees to use and their own photo studio! We got to meet the president of schecter and were given a sneak preview of their new amp range. The cabinets are all built and good to go and were were shown three current prototypes of their amp range.

The custom shop was incredible. I tried to take as many photos as possible but it was a huge honour to be where they cut, assemble and paint their customs. I got to see a sneak preview of the new Gary Holt signature models which look very very metal! It was also very cool to see the that every single guitar that passes through this warehouse (including all factory builds) receives a final inspection from a very large and skilled inspection team. To be honest it looked like a dream job haha. They play brand new guitars all day!

Jackson Guitars Arizona

Our bassist signed an endorsement deal with Jackson guitars so we went and visited their artist relations office to pick up his new JC3 concert bass. The artist relations office is situated in a building that holds AR offices for premier, PRS, Boss, Fender and many more. While we were there we passed Tony Royster Jr, who currently drums for Jay-Z!

This office was small but had some beautiful guitars and gear on the walls! We weren’t there for long but I tried to get as many photos as possible.

BC Rich HQ

Last but not least my favorite visit was to BC Rich. The company that owns BC Rich also own a large number of other products, such as Kustom amps and Spector basses. Straight off the bat we got to see and touch Johnny Cash’s personal PA system. It was very cool and oozing with mojo!

Being able to visit this HQ was a childhood dream come true for me! I was shown some beautiful hand made BC rich models and also was able to hold a hand made Kerry king signature that was waiting to be shipped out to him. They have their wood work done out in Hypseria California and then final assembly is done at the HQ.

We were also shown were all the Kustom amps are hand wired and assembled. It was a very cool setup!

This post is now probably very picture heavy and long so I’ll leave it at that for now. I’ll post more about our american culture experience and review some fast food joints with my next post haha. Hope you enjoy the photos!

(more pics in here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/92030427@N04/page10/)