Guitarchitecture.org

For those of you who are interested – I’m happy to let you know what I’m using. If you’re interested in my laptop looping set up, there is a lot of tech information here, here and here.

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The short of it is,  I use D’Addarrio strings, Line 6 POD FARM
(and POD HD500), SooperLooper, Scuffham Amps S-Gear, Apple computers and FnH guitars.

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Guitars – Electric

Custom Double Neck (fretted & fretless w. Sustainer)

Miroslav Tadic designed Custom Fretless Baritone

FNH UltraSonic – This is a SWEET guitar.  See the review here.

Schecter Omen 8 string – 2 part review here and here.

Fender Jazz Bass

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Guitars-Acoustic

My main acoustic guitar was built by Jeff Chapple, my high school shop teacher.  I play it every day.

My Tam Hiep guitar I picked up in Vietnam.  This guitar is AWESOME!  One of the loudest acoustics I’ve ever played and really even in response all over the neck.  You can see a full post on guitar street in Vietnam here.

Rogue 10 String.  Actually a 12 string, but the bottom 2 strings are single.  This is dropped in a B-F#-B-F#-B-F# tuing and used for various maqam/dastgah type things.

Goya G-10 (Pre-Martin) fretless acoustic nylon string.

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Other instruments

Turkish long neck baglama saz

Turkish Oud (Currently tuned in Arabic Tuning)

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Miscellaneous

Strings

It seems like I’ve tried them all.  I use the D’Addario .011 guage set in standard tuning for the 6 string.  I have a D’addario 7 string pack with an added .007 for the high A string for the 8 string.  For acoustic I use either D’Addario 12′s or Elixir depending on how much sliding I’m doing.

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Cables

Either Spectraflex,  George L or Planet Waves.  All excellent products.

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Pickups

On the electrics: FNH has a Seymour Duncan in the bridge and something really good sounding in the neck.  I’m unsure what it is.  I left it up to John Harper at FNH and he sussed it out.  The Schecter 8 string now has a Bare Knuckle Cold Sweat installed in the neck position that sounds great.  I’ve also been a fan of the DiMarzio HS3 in the neck position and the X2N in the bridge for full frontal throttle.

I like K&K westerns for acoustics.  I’ve been into what Fishman’s been doing with pickups and amps for a while as well…

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Amp

I’m using an amp by a company called Atomic.  They’ve currently partnered with Fractal Audio, but this amp was designed to be used with Pods. Tom King has some of the best customer service policies anywhere, and a lot of companies would do well to follow his example.  The 50 Watt amp has a Webber Beam blocker which cuts down a lot on the directionality of the amp and gives it a more uniform tone.  Oddly enough – I prefer the 18 Watt lately.  I may try to trade a 50 Watt for an 18 Watt and then just go stereo Atomic….

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FX

Right before I left Boston I had a bunch of gear stolen.  My rig at the time included a tuner, Ernie Ball Volume Pedal, 80′s Big Muff Pi, Digitech Space Station, T.C. Electronics Chorus, Memory Man Delay (original), Guyatone MD-2 delay, Akai Headrush looper, Vox Wah and another Ernie Ball volume pedal that went into the front end of a Fender Hot Rod Deville (4×10 amp).  When I didn’t want to use the full rig – I’d bring a POD 2.0 and a short board.   Only the space station and the looper went home with me that night, and everything else was stolen.  All  of this has been replaced by my Atomic and my new POD.  The looper has essentially been phased out with superlooper and the space station is too fragile/tempermental to gig anymore (I would LOVE it if this would get converted into an AU someday – if anyone has any info on someone who could transfer the code from the chip into an AU shell – please let me know!)

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Line 6

I’ve been on board since POD 2.0.  Currently I’m using the HD500 with my Atomic 18 watt.  Now I’m also using the i-lok version of POD FARM 2.0 with the DUET and the FBV short board MK II.  I’m still working on tweaking things – but this is an incredibly flexible rig.

I’ve heard the fractal Audio stuff and have been really impressed with them as well.

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S-Gear

I’m a big fan of the Scuffham Amps S-Gear AU.  Currently, I’m using it with a 1st generation duet and a separate reverb AU in AU lab. But Mike Scuffham has indicated that some other integrated fx are coming down the pike which is kind of exciting.  You can read more about this plug and my interview with Mike on guitar-muse.com.

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Midi

I’m sold on the Sonuus i2M for monophonic midi guitar conversion.  I like the korg nano series for basic soft synth control.  Typically what I use for Midi functionality will depend on whether I’m using Logic or AU lab, but I use  the Line 6 MkII shortboard for midi control in AU Lab.

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Looping

For years I used a Akai headrush to do all of my looping.  The HD has onboard looping, but still needs some parameter control for me to rely solely on it live.   I use SooperLooper on for my laptop rig. Typically  I use Pod Farm and a laptop for film gigs and the amp for rock shows.

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Computer

Macbook Pro.  I’ve been using Macs since a G3 Ibook if that tells you anything.  Just a really good machine.  Memory and drive upgrades from OWC.  I got a USB hub from them as well that is quite cool.  Installed a 7200 rmp 500 GB Seagate internal drive that increased performance probably 30% or more.

LaCie Drives.  I have 2 of the rugged drives now.  Love ‘em

Apogee Duet. I held off on this for a while because of the price – but if I had any idea how much of a difference it would make, I would have gotten it when I got my laptop.  This has become an essential part of my rig.  I also like the Apogee Breakout box.

I use Logic Pro and the related software.

Finally got into using Impulse Responses (IR’s) in conjunction with the POD instead of the Pod’s speaker simulations.  The recabinet site has something like 2000 IR’s for $15 and I like the 4×12 cabs a lot.

If you’re running logic, you can use Space designer to load the IR’s.  I tried LA Convolver which is a free plug AU plug in for Mac that works well.

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Repairs:

I still haven’t dealt with Andy Brauer directly – but he does really good work and he’s a straight shooter – and for that alone I’d recommend him.

Seth Mayer Guitar Repair – 818-427-1543 – smayer@yahoo.com.  There’s a post about him here.

Just got an amp repaired by Blackie Pagano. A nice guy who does really good work (and some really cool custom jobs).  Like any good amp guy he’s fairly backed up usually so plan on either paying a rush fee or waiting a while (8 weeks in my case).  The rush fee is really the way to go if it’s remotely time sensitive.

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