New guitar - PRS SC 250

Ever since I saw the Collective Soul Home DVD, I've had a strange desire to pick up a PRS Tremonti in platinum metallic like Dean Roland's. Only downside of the original Tremonti model, though, was the eye-sore "Mark Tremonti" inlay on the 12th fret. So when I managed to find a deal on a Paul Reed Smith SC 250 in platinum metallic, I jumped on it.

The SC 250 is similar in construction to the original Singlecut model with a few updates, including a weight-relieved body, hotter (uncovered) pickups, adjustable stoptail bridge, and locking tuners; technically, this makes it closer in specs to the original Tremonti model than the original Singlecut model. Compared to the newer vintage-inspired SC 245 model, the SC 250 is geared towards modern rock players. This particular SC 250 has the wide fat neck profile, bird inlays, and the platinum metallic finish with "scraped" natural binding around the maple top.

As always, here are a few pics of the new acquisition...





All in all, it's a sweet addition to the collection... it's definitely one of the most "modern" sounding guitars I own. There's something about it that makes me want to tune down to drop-D and chug away.

--B

New guitar - Hamer Eclipse

For a while I've been talking about learning how to play slide guitar (perhaps even lap steel), though slide guitar has always been a challenge since all of the guitars I've got are set up with obnoxiously low action. I decided, therefore, that it may be a good idea to pick up a relatively inexpensive guitar and set it up for 24x7 slide. While doing my daily poking around on e-bay, I found a relatively clean Hamer Eclipse on deal. The Eclipse is about as straightforward as it gets... solid mahogany body, fat mahogany neck, wraparound bridge, (2) Seymour Duncan minibuckers with volume + tone + 3-way switch... not a lot of sizzle, but an extremely solid American-made guitar for the money.

In addition to the standard "guitar readification" that all incoming guitars go through (e.g., setup, polishing, fretboard conditioning), the Hamer received a few special treatments: First, I installed a Golden Gate resonator guitar extension nut, which raised the action on the fretboard to ~1/4" (gasp!). Next, I restrung the guitar with a set of GHS acoustic slide strings, which are specially polished (ground wound?) to reduce slide noise and provide ridiculously high tension (16-56 gauge) across all strings. Finally, I picked up a real steel slide, a Shubb-Pearse SP3. The difference all these treatments make is considerable... the Eclipse is now officially a slide machine (and unofficially not good for much else!).

As always, here are a few pictures of the Eclipse:





Inspired so far by how much difference a small investment has made in my electric slide playing capability, I'm now thinking about buying a second Golden Gate extension nut and pack of GHS acoustic slide strings to install on my old Gibson Country Western acoustic so I can get my acoustic slide on without investing several hundred $$$ in a true resonator guitar.

--B

Traditional pre-holiday gear purge

In an effort to move a few things I've been tripping over before the holidays (and capitalize on e-bay's half-price listing sale), I posted the following gear on e-bay last night. Check it out:

• Boss PS-5 Super Shifter pedal SOLD
• B.Y.O.C. 5-knob compressor kit SOLD
• B.Y.O.C. Triboost kit SOLD
• Digitech GSP-1101 FX (NIB) SOLD
• Focusrite OctoPre LE w/ ADAT card SOLD
• G&L Legacy Deluxe SOLD
• Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20th Anniversary 1x12" combo SOLD
  
• Hughes & Kettner Switchblade head SOLD
  
• Hughes & Kettner zenTera 2x12" combo SOLD
  
• Presonus DigiMax LT preamp/AD converter SOLD

--B

Today's recording project - Rock of Gibraltar

Here's the latest track to emerge from the studio after adding a few final touches and doing a bit of mixdown this weekend... The tune is called Rock of Gibraltar, and it's a song we've been jamming around with Necessary Distraction on for just over a year. It's probably one of the more uptempo, straight-ahead rock songs we've got. Oddly enough, while the majority of the tracks were recorded during the past couple weeks, the guitar solo was flown in from a scratch track recorded in January 2008 to showcase my long-gone Egnater M4 preamp... I always liked the tone and feel of that solo take and figured it was easier to steal it from myself than try to nail it again.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the MP3: Rock of Gibraltar

Also, here's the rundown of the gear used:

- Left rhythm guitar (distorted) - PRS McCarty Korina into Egnater JTM45 head

- Right rhythm guitar (distorted) - G&L ASAT Classic into Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20 combo

- Left/right rhythm guitars (clean) - G&L ASAT Classic into Carl Martin compressor + Hughes & Keggner Edition Tube 20 combo

- All of the above - through V30-loaded Randall R212C cabinet mic'd with Cascade Fat Head ribbon and Blue "The Ball" dynamic into Presonus DigiMax FS

- Lead guitar (recorded during a previous session) - Voodoo Guitar Works custom archtop into Egnater M4 preamp (EG3/4 module) + VHT 2/50/2 power amp + V30-loaded Randall RA412XLT cabinet mic'd with Cascade Fat Head ribbon and Blue "The Ball" dynamic into Presonus DigiMax FS
- Bass guitar - G&L Tribute L-2500 direct into Line 6 GearBox

- Vocals - Studio Projects C1 condenser into DigiMax FS

- Drums - Drums on Demand

This week I've been working on revamping Last Forgiveness and putting down scratch tracks for a couple new concepts... more to come soon.

--B

This week's recording project(s) - Empty Walls / Perspective

Here are this week's tracks from the depths of the basement studio, hot off the press, er, mixer: First up is Empty Walls, which is a tune we wrote earlier this year with Necessary Distraction that was pretty much forgotten about until the past few weeks. We've been jamming around on Perspective for just about as long; however, the chord progression is about 10 years old... turns out it was one of the first songs I wrote and attempted to record in my apartment back in 1998.

Empty Walls:
- Left rhythm guitar - G&L ASAT Classic into Egnater JTM45 head
- Right rhythm guitar (clean) - Gretsch G6120 into Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20 combo
- Right rhythm guitar (distorted) - PRS Singlecut into Mesa Recto preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp
- Lead guitar - PRS McCarty Korina into Fulltone Clyde Deluxe wah + Mesa Studio preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp

Perspective:
- Left rhythm guitar - PRS McCarty Korina into Egnater JTM45 head
- Right rhythm guitar - G&L ASAT Classic into Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20 combo
- Lead guitar - PRS McCarty Korina into Mesa Studio preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp
- Harmony guitar - PRS McCarty Korina into Egnater JTM45 head

Common gear:
- All of the above - through V30-loaded Randall R212C cabinet mic'd with Cascade Fat Head ribbon and Blue "The Ball" dynamic into Presonus DigiMax FS
- Acoustic guitars - Guild DC5E-NT, Guild F47M-CE, and Takamine EF-385 12-string mic'd with Kel Audio HM-1 and Audio Technica AT2020 condensers into Presonus DigiMax FS
- Bass guitar - G&L Tribute L-2500 direct into Line 6 GearBox
- Vocals - Studio Projects C1 condenser into DigiMax FS
- Drums - Drums on Demand

Next up... I'm taking the week off work and am planning on spending a good chunk of time in the studio. There are three more tracks that need to be finished up (Last Forgiveness, I'll Find You Hiding, Rock of Gibraltar) and several new song ideas to be explored.

--B

Today's G.A.S. field trip - auditioned a Bogner Alchemist

While killing some time in the Raleigh-Durham area today, I made a trip to the local Guitar Center to scope out used guitar deals. Didn't really find anything worthy of note, though I did spot one of the new Bogner Alchemist combos and decided to put it through its paces as a potential living room amp. The Alchemist is Bogner's first "mass produced" amp... rumor is that it is built in a Line 6 factory in China. Unlike the Line 6/Bogner Spider Valve, however, which is more of a digital modeler connected to a tube power section, the Alchemist is all-tube preamp/power amp with a digital effects section thrown in for good measure. So having been less than impressed with the Spider Valve (too much gain, not enough tone!) and Egnater Tourmaster (versatile, but just couldn't find tones that worked for me), I didn't get my hopes up for the Alchemist.

That said, having spent half an hour with an Alchemist 2x12" combo today, I'm pretty sure it will be the next amp I add to my arsenal. :) First off, the amp has some great features... half power (40/20 watt) switch, selectable delay (ducking/analog/tape) and reverb (spring/hall/plate) voicings, footswitchable boost, parallel effects loop, even mixed Celestion speakers (G12M Greenback + G12H 70th Anniversary). Each channel has independent 3-band EQ plus a variety of tone-shaping switches... the gold (clean) channel has bright/deep/crunch switches, while the mercury (lead) channel has bright/punch/mid-shift switches. The plethora of switches is reminiscent of a Mesa Mark IV, but (good news) the Alchemist was much easier to dial in than most Mesas.

Tonally, all these options givethe Alchemist considerable versatility: Starting with the gold channel, I dialed in a fat, warm, jazzy tone. Tweaking the EQ a bit and engaging the bright switch yielded a thinner, funkier tone. Engaging the crunch switch added additional gain, bringing a plexi-like bite to rhythm tones. Similar versatility was found on the mercury channel... while the to-be-expected Bogner high-gain tones were present, disengaging the bright and punch switches delivered an amazing fusion lead tone. All-in-all, the tone exceeded my expectations: it was warm, fat, and dynamic with plenty of edge available for cutting through in a band situation. It's one of the few amps that could go from a rock gig to a blues gig to a jazz gig and (tonally) deliver. (And, I might point out, I auditioned it with a so-so guitar... a PRS SE Custom. So I'd expect even better tone & response from a guitar with higher quality electronics.)

So it probably is only a matter of time before I sell a couple of amps around here and pick up a used Alchemist... for the money, there are few amps on the market that deliver comparable versatility and tone.

--B

This week's recording project(s) - Turn and Run / Undone / This Way for Good

During the course of the past week, Jennifer and I spent a good chunk of time in the studio recording & mixing tracks down. This week we polished off three tracks (below) and made good headway on three more. The tracks below actually sample a couple of years of songwriting efforts... Turn and Run is close to two years old from when we were trying to form a blues band; Undone is just over a year old from the second batch of songs we wrote in Necessary Distraction (though the concept for the outro dates back to the Naughty Butterspoon song Too Far from 2002); and This Way for Good is relatively new (a few months old).

Here are links to download the tracks with a run-down of the gear used...

Turn and Run:
- Left rhythm guitar - PRS McCarty Korina into Egnater JTM45 head
- Right rhythm guitar - G&L Legacy Standard into Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20
- Lead guitar - PRS McCarty Korina into Mesa Studio preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp

Undone:
- Left rhythm guitar - PRS Singlecut into Soldano SP-77 preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp
- Right rhythm guitar (clean) - Ernie Ball JP7 into Carl Martin compressor + Mesa Studio preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp
- Right rhythm guitar (distorted) - PRS McCarty Korina into Mesa Recto preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp
- Lead guitar - PRS McCarty Korina, Ernie Ball JP7 into Mesa Studio preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp

This Way for Good:
- Left rhythm guitar - G&L ASAT Classic into Egnater JTM45 head
- Right rhythm guitar (clean) - G&L Legacy Standard into Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20 combo
- Right rhythm guitar (distorted) - PRS Singlecut into Hughes & Kettner Edition Tube 20 combo
- Lead guitar - PRS McCarty Korina into Mesa Studio preamp + Randall RT2/50 power amp

Common gear:
- All of the above - through V30-loaded Randall R212C cabinet mic'd with Cascade Fat Head ribbon and Blue "The Ball" dynamic into Presonus DigiMax FS
- Acoustic guitars - Guild F47M-CE and Takamine EF-385 12-string mic'd with Kel Audio HM-1 and Audio Technica AT2020 condensers into Presonus DigiMax FS
- Bass guitar - G&L Tribute L-2500 direct into Line 6 GearBox
- Keys - Fatar Studiologic SL990-XP into Korg Triton rackmount
- Vocals - Studio Projects C1 condenser into DigiMax FS
- Drums - Drums on Demand

The goal for next week is to polish off the next three originals, including Perspective, Empty Walls, and Rock of Gibraltar.

--B