The Hermit’s Cave – HomeToneBlog.com

2nd October 20192nd October 2019

New Arrivals For September 2019

August was another really slow month on the second hand market, and things didn’t pick up for September. Instead, I’ve ended up concentrating on the first guitar of my #PlayAlternative series.

Vintage V100 Lemon Drop Guitar

Vintage are a UK brand, who specialise in making their take on big-brand guitars for the budget end of the market. The V100 Lemon Drop is based on Peter Green and Gary Moore’s famous 59 Les Paul – the one that Kirk Hammett owns and gigs atm.

It’s the exact guitar Adam played in this video:

It’s the first guitar I’ve bought for my #PlayAlternative challenge, and fingers crossed it will become the benchmark to measure all the other alternatives against.

Boss GE-7 Graphic Equaliser Pedal

In person, through my rig, the Vintage Lemon Drop doesn’t quite sound like a Les Paul. It has a bit more of a modern, mid-scooped tone, with deeper lows and brighter highs. Through modern-voiced amps, it’s probably a good voicing for its target audience.

I was curious. How can I make it sound close enough to a Les Paul that no-one will know or care? A pickup swap is the obvious thing to try (see below), but that’s expensive, and possibly beyond the budget of someone who would be looking at the Vintage Lemon Drop in the first place.

But a Boss pedal would be firmly in-budget. Can the venerable GE-7 alter the tone enough? I decided to buy one to find out 🙂

Sigil Pickups Bluesman Snakebite PAF Humbuckers

Once I decided that the Vintage Lemon Drop was a keeper, I really wanted to hear how it would sound with a great set of PAF-like pickups. What happens if you take a set of pickups intended to be an upgrade over Gibson’s Custom Shop pickups, and drop them into (possibly) the most shafordable Les Paul knock-off available in retail stores?

There’s plenty of great UK-based pickup makers out there, including Monty’s Guitars and OX4 Pickups to name two I’ve been delighted with in the past. If I was playing regular gigs with Les Pauls, they’d all have OX4 pickups in them.

For this project, I wanted to go back to Canada’s Sigil Pickups.

David made the Bluesman 57 Ltds that went into Ghost (my 2015 Gibson Les Paul Custom). He was a delight to deal with, and the pickups were simply fantastic. They completely transformed that guitar. I always told him that I’d buy the pickups for my next Les Paul from him … and haven’t bought a humbucker Les Paul since.

He’s greatly expanded the range since 2015, and these Snakebite pickups caught my eye. If you haven’t come across it before, Snakebite is Joe Bonamassa’s #1 vintage Les Paul. It’s a phenomenal-sounding instrument, even amongst original Bursts. A set of pickups that can chase that tone should be perfect for this project.

More details – and actual sound clips of these! – will follow. For now, all I’ll say is that these pickups sound so good, the guy who installed them for me kept the Sigil Pickups business card, because he wants a set for himself.

8th September 20199th September 2019

#CoffeeAndKlon 16: Boosting With A Graphic Equaliser Pedal

This conversation was originally posted to my Twitter feed.

Good morning! I hope you’re having a great weekend. Got another #CoffeeAndKlon for you this week. I hope you enjoy it.

Today’s Coffee

Coffee this morning is an Ethiopian wild coffee from the Yayu Forest Reserve. It’s the kind of mild coffee that’s perfect if you’ve got guests who are occasional coffee drinkers.

I was hoping to be drinking Sumatra coffee this morning – my absolute favourite – but the Yayu Forest didn’t run out yesterday as I’d hoped.

I could have just had a 2nd cup, I know. I’m finding that one cup of coffee a day is the best way for me to enjoy it. The Sumatran will still be there tomorrow 🙂

So pedals. What do I have for you this week?

#DesertIslandRig

The #DesertIslandRig is still on hold. I will return to it. It’s just that those two Wampler pedals have really got me rethinking it. So far, in the room, everything sounds better when one of those pedals is last in the chain.

It’s important to change your mind when you learn something new.

My final opinion is on hold until I’ve recorded with this signal chain. I’ve got some work to do to get my home recording setup wired up again. I unwired it all last September when I bought some new furniture for the room … and I haven’t wired it back up yet.

(That’s also what’s holding up the Marshall Origin 1 Year Review. At this rate, it’ll be the 2 Year Review!)

Anyway, I’ve got another boost pedal to talk about today.

I Picked Up A New Boost Pedal

When it comes to boosts, I’ve talked about Klon, klones, treble boosters, and clean boosts. There’s another type of boost that deserves a mention: the equaliser pedal. Like the venerable Boss GE-7:

I picked one up last week, for my #PlayAlternative guitar challenge. I’m using it to help the Vintage Lemon Drop sound closer to my Les Paul.

By cutting the lows in the right place, and boosting the mids in the right place, I can crudely* make the Lemon Drop sound a little more vintage-voiced.

*I say crudely because there’s only 7 bands to adjust. By necessity, they’re quite broad, and it makes for a bit of a blunt tool.

To my ears, “vintage-voiced” means prominent mids, with the energy firmly in the upper-mid range of the tone. Does the GE-7 achieve that for the Lemon Drop? I’ll let you know when I do my write up for the guitar 😉

Btw, That Pedal Show has done several shows on using EQ pedals to shape the tone. Find them on YouTube 🙂

The GE-7 is on the board for another reason.

The Eighth Slider

I’m also using it as an overall boost pedal too. Because there’s an eighth slider on the Boss GE-7. It controls the overall signal volume:

In this case, I’m using that eighth slider to turn DOWN the guitar volume, just a little bit. An anti-boost, if you like. There are two good reasons why.

I’m using the GE-7 to boost the mids of the guitar signal. That gives the tone a little more of a vintage character. It also has the effect of making the guitar sound louder, and that needs to be balanced out.

My rig is voiced for vintage-output pickups. Turning the Lemon Drop down just a little bit makes it sound much sweeter through my rig. The effect is to present a cleaner signal to the first drive pedal.

Compared to other boosts, a graphic equaliser gives you more control – if you want to shape your guitar signal.

Other boosts are a better choice IMHO if you want to affect how your dirt pedals or amp react to your guitar tone. They’re more musical than a GE pedal in that role.

What Do You Use?

So that’s my thoughts on using a graphic equaliser pedal as a boost pedal. What are your experiences with one? Good? Bad? Do you use a different EQ pedal? Share your experiences, so we can all learn 🙂

Hope you have a great rest of your weekend! Catch you next weekend for another #CoffeeAndKlon, and checkout the hometoneblog.com for more home guitar playing talk 🙂

1st September 2019

#CoffeeAndKlon 15: First Impressions Can Be Wrong

This conversation was originally posted to my Twitter feed.

Good morning! I hope you’re having a great weekend so far. What’s on my mind for this week’s #CoffeeAndKlon? I want to talk about how a first impression doesn’t always stand up to scrutiny.

Today’s Coffee

I’m already most of the way through my coffee. It’s the last of the Jamaican Blue Mountain. If you normally drink darker roasts, esp ones with that delicious burnt after taste, give Blue Mountain a go. It’s a complete contrast, in a good way IMHO.

We’ve been shopping for coffee during the week. Found a couple of roasts we haven’t tried before. And then, when we were putting the coffee away in the cupboard, we found a bag of beans hidden away at the back that we’d forgotten about 🙂

On The Board Atm

Here’s my practice / test board atm. I’m still using the Tweed 57 and Black 65 as tone shapers. One or the other has been on the board ever since they arrived in August. I’m currently trying them with other drive pedals, and I’m still loving the results.

It’s not pedals that I want to talk about this week though. There’s a story behind my decision to buy a Vintage guitar, and I think it’s worth sharing.

Are You Sitting Comfortably? Then I’ll Begin …

Yesterday, I bought a new guitar for my #PlayAlternative challenge: a Vintage Lemon Drop. It’s a (very) budget / shafordable Les Paul knock-off. Over here, it’s probably the cheapest singlecut guitar you’ll find in the stores.

I first played a selection of these guitars what – about two months ago? – when they first came into stock. I really didn’t like them.

Then, just over a week ago, we were listening to the @astringsuk podcast in the car. They did a blind tone challenge, between Adam’s Blues Master Les Paul and one of these Vintage guitars.

And I got it wrong.

In a blind tone comparison, I couldn’t identify the (lush!) Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul from the shafordable Vintage Lemon Drop. That convinced me that my first impression of these guitars was wrong, plain and simple.

It also reminded me of a piece of advice that Brian Wampler had shared up on his YouTube channel.

Brian Wampler put out a video recently where he tried to make a great point: get the gear in your own hands and find out for yourself. Because recordings aren’t the same as your guitar through your rig, played by you.

The interesting thing here is that it was the recording that convinced me to get this guitar – NOT trying one in person.

Isn’t that the exact opposite of what Brian said?

I don’t think Brian’s advice is wrong. It’s just that sometimes there’s a gap between what you can get out of a piece of gear in a shop, and what that gear can actually do. Sometimes, you need a recorded demo to show you the potential.

So that’s the backstory to how I came to buy a Vintage Lemon Drop for my #PlayAlternative challenge. And why it’s going to be a few months before I talk about how I’m getting on with it.

I hope you enjoyed it.

25th August 20191st September 2019

#CoffeeAndKlon 14: Sans Klon

This conversation was originally posted to my Twitter feed.

Good morning! I hope you’re having a great weekend. And, if you’re here in the UK, enjoying the unseasonable bank holiday weather. Got another #CoffeeAndKlon for you this morning. Only there’s no Klon today …

Today’s Coffee

Before I get into pedals: coffee. We’re just drinking the last of this Vietnam coffee this morning. It’s pretty mild, easy to drink, with a nice burnt aftertaste. The kind of thing it’s nice to have as a break from more distinct coffees, I feel.

We’ve got to go shopping for coffee again soon. Local supermarkets, for whatever reason, have almost stopped stocking whole-bean coffee these days. We’re lucky to have Cortile Coffee here in the market.

Anyways – pedals.

Why No Klon?

And this week, I have a confession to make: my Klon’s sat on the shelf gathering dust atm. Because I’m *still* exploring these two Wampler pedals I got at the start of the month. And because I stuck the Amber Drive in front of them.

This is my second Amber Drive.

The Pedal That Inspired #SecondBite

Years ago, I was looking for a pedal that would help me get a great lead tone. The demo Mike Herman did of this is still one of the best tones I’ve ever heard in a pedal demo.

In person, I couldn’t get *close* to that tone. Probably could have done with Brian Wampler’s advice on pedal demos back then:

Disappointed, I moved it on … but that failure nagged at me.

When the chance came to get another one at a great price, I decided to try again. It became my very first #SecondBite pedal. But the results were no better second time around … until a week ago.

Using The Wamplers To Shape The Tone

In Mike Herman’s demo, the Amber Drive has this thick, raspy mid range thing going on. Into any of my amps, the mid range is thin and disappointing. And it has a nasty top-end that I don’t want to listen to – ever.

Messing about with the Tumnus in front of the two Wampler pedals, I noticed how the EQ was being shaped. More mids, and a loss of high end. Sounds like just what the tone doctor ordered for the Amber Drive 🙂

And there it is. If I run the Amber Drive into the Tweed 57, I get pretty close to the tone from Mike Herman’s demo. As close as a hack like me can hope for, anyways 🙂

And it’s dead quiet too. Two pedals stacked into each other, and practically no noise to speak of. Even with single coils.

Given how noisy and crappy our domestic electricity is here in the valleys, that’s a big win for me.

Pairing With Guitars

It’s a bit clichéd perhaps, but right now I’m preferring Amber Drive into Tweed 57 for a Telecaster, and Amber Drive into Black 65 for a Stratocaster. And the Black 65 on its own for great clean tones.

But what about a Les Paul? The La Grange sound – the classic ZZ Top guitar sound – is Strat into a cranked plexi, right?

Les Paul > Amber Drive > Black 65 > Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 gets you right there.

With the caveat that I haven’t tried this yet, I think I’d use this rig w/ the Black 65 for recording rhythm, and swap to the Tweed 57 for lead tones. To my ears, that’s what would work best if you went with a Les Paul.

One of the things I love about both these tone stacks is how percussive it is. Palm-mute the low strings, and there’s none of that hard rock/metal attack. It’s pretty blunt, in a good way.

And that gives me a bit of a dilemma.

What Happened To The #DesertIslandRig?

I thought I had my desert island rig nailed down. And I still do, for guitar and amp. But the pedals in between? I’m going to have to spend some serious time comparing the Amber Drive stack w/ my original choice now. Never thought I’d be saying that a month ago!

So there you have it. That’s why there’s currently no Klon on my little practice board. Have you had an experience where a pedal you’d given up on suddenly came to life, all because you plugged it into something different? I’d love to hear your experiences.

Have a great rest of your weekend!

3rd August 20191st September 2019

New Arrivals For August 2019

The plan this month was to finally buy a nice rack for my home studio, so that I can get the Synergy amp wired up once again. That didn’t go so well. Silver linings and all that though …

I found a rack that I liked on DV247’s website, paid for it … and later that day received an email from them asking for almost 30% extra money before they’d ship it. Now, the regulations on selling online are clear: you’re not supposed to do that. So yeah, that purchase fell through.

Before I could find and order an alternative from somewhere else, some of the remaining pedals from my bucket list turned up for sale. Interesting (to me) pedals have been hard to find at prices I’m willing to pay all summer long. Having three come along at once was an opportunity I’m glad I didn’t have to pass up.

Wampler Plextortion Drive Pedal

Earlier in the year, I picked up a JHS Angry Charlie to go with my JHS Charlie Brown. It got me thinking: are there any other pedals out there that chase the JCM 800 sound? And this is the only other pedal I could think of.

Brian doesn’t make these any more, and second hand examples are currently pretty rare. (Not the rarest, as we’ll see shortly!) During a summer of slim pickings, it was great to see this turn up for sale.

The pedal arrived just after the second heatwave we’ve had this summer, and it’s been too hot to do anything that a quick dead-on-arrival check so far. It sounded good. I’ll update this when I’ve been able to give it a decent amount of time.

Wampler Black 65 Drive Pedal

The second of my three bucket list pedals is another Wampler, and one I’ve owned before: the Black 65. I had one of these as a Christmas present from my wife, in 2012 I think? I can’t remember why I sold it. Maybe I will once this one has arrived 🙂

Since Brian stopped making them, these have become quite sought after. On Reverb, second hand examples often go for more than they originally cost (!!) I’m glad to say that I didn’t pay anything like that for this one.

I don’t need it to give me Fender blackface cleans; I’ve got that covered with the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 amp. I’m hoping that this’ll give me a nice dirt tone for that amp. I’ll update this once I’ve found out.

Wampler Tweed 57 Drive Pedal

Aaaaand the third of my bucket list pedals this month is another Wampler, and perhaps the rarest of the bunch. Weirdly, though, it doesn’t command the same high prices that the Black 65 does according to Reverb. Reading around, it looks like it’s quite the marmite pedal.

This is a very recent addition to my bucket list. It only got added because of my bitter disappointment with the Mad Professor Little Tweedy Drive. My mate Matt saw my tweets about the Little Tweedy Drive, and told me that the Tweed 57 is perhaps the most accurate pedal for that small Fender amp sound.

I’ll update this once I’ve had a play with it.

Danelectro Billion Dollar Boost Pedal

I was seriously impressed with the Pride of Texas pedal that I got last month. I’ve been keeping an eye out for more pedals from the Billionaire range. Second hand examples are pretty rare, so I was delighted to snag a boost pedal from the lineup for a good price.

First impressions? I like it a lot.

I ran it into the Wampler Tweed 57, and tried it out with my beloved 80’s Charvel super-strat. It took seconds to find a setting that gave me a fatter clean sound that also added back in some top-end. Neck pickup heaven.

I haven’t tried it as a traditional boost into a cranked amp. I’ll make sure I do that test, and then post an update about it.

3rd August 2019

New Arrivals For July 2019

This month has been a month of two very different stories: guitars and pedals.

On the guitar front, I’ve been very fortunate to find a couple of guitars that blew my socks right off. Proper love-at-the-first-note through an amp fairytale stuff. Fairytales don’t always have a happy ending, mind, so do check back in the months ahead to learn whether these do (or don’t)!

Pedals have been much more of a mixed bag. Good deals have been hard to come by this month, with a lot of people chasing a smaller pool of 2nd hand gear. Maybe it’s the summer months, or maybe it’s the renewed uncertainty here in Britain atm? Either way, I hope things pick up.

I’m doing something a bit different this month. Rather than try and squeeze my first impressions into 3 or 4 paragraphs (to keep these ‘New Arrivals’ posts short), I’ve started breaking them out into separate posts that I’m linking to from here. It gives me a bit more space to talk about each piece of gear. Do you like it? Or do you prefer the ‘all-in-one’ format I’ve been using up to now? Let me know in the comments below.

Auden Artist Bowman 45 OM Acoustic Guitar

We did another small gig at the end of May – a 20 minute slot at a new open-mic night up in Malvern. I took the Fender Acoustasonic Telecaster, and ran it straight into the PA. I did not enjoy the sound at all, and on the drive home I made up my mind to see if I’d be happier with a traditional acoustic guitar.

To be honest, I’d already started looking around for an acoustic guitar back in April, just after the first two gigs we did. I think there’s a difference between a recorded guitar tone and live guitar, and I think it matters for the kind of gigs we’re doing. The problem is that I don’t get on with acoustic guitars. They commonly have low, flat frets (which I find difficult to intonate well on), and normally when you plug them in, the magic goes away.

I’ve got a lot more to tell you about the Auden … but I haven’t been able to gig it yet. Once I have, I’ll feel a lot more confident about my opinions.

Fender Vintera 60s Modified Telecaster

This is what happens when I pop round to AStrings to take a look at new arrivals!

Earlier in the year, when I got my Fender American Performer Strat in Lake Placid Blue to celebrate a personal anniversary, I also took a look at the American Original Tele (also in Lake Placid Blue) that they had in stock … and I kinda warmed to it. I thought they’d make a nice pair together, but I took too long to make up my mind about it, and the guitar sold in the meantime.

The new Vintera (‘VINTage ERA’) guitars are Mexican-made homages to what Fender guitars were like in the 50s, 60s and 70s. I don’t want to say they’re a poor-man’s Fender Original, because I think that does them a big disservice.

Are they period-correct in appointments and sound? I’ve no idea, sorry. Do they sound good, and are they enjoyable to play? Very much so. The one I’ve bought had more magic than some USA Teles I’ve played. That’ll do me nicely.

Here’s my first impression of this excellent new Telecaster.

Mad Professor Big Tweedy Drive Pedal

I’ve made no secret of just how much I love the drive pedals that BJFe designed for Mad Professor. They are consistently some of the best sounding – and best stackable – pedals that I’ve ever had the pleasure to use. And I think that I have all of them in my pedal collection here at The Hermit’s Cave.

That partnership came to an end some time ago, and since then, Mad Professor has been launching new pedals that (presumably) are entirely their own design. I’m curious to discover … did the magic leave the building with the BJFe deal, or will these post-BJFe pedals stand up well against their older siblings?

The real problem with answering that question is getting hold of them. Twimble-family pedals have been turning up on the second hand market for a few years now, but the other drive pedals are still extremely rare, making good value deals even harder to find.

Follow this link to read my first impressions of the Big Tweedy.

Mad Professor Little Tweedy Drive

Like the Big Tweedy Drive, Mad Professor’s Little Tweedy Drive doesn’t often turn up to buy second hand. And I’m kinda settling on the sound of small tweed-like amps as part of ‘my’ sound, the more I think about what would go into my desert island rig.

It turned up on the same day as Danelectro’s Pride of Texas, and by popular demand, I compared them both together.

Long and short of it, though, is that the Little Tweedy Drive has a characteristic that almost ruins it for me. Follow that link for the full details.

Wampler Sovereign Distortion Pedal v2

Before I discovered and fell in love with the pedals that BJFe designed for Mad Professor, I used to have a few Wampler pedals. My wife and I both loved the demo tones we found on YouTube. In person, though, I really struggled to get tones I liked out of them, and eventually I gave up on Wampler and moved all the pedals on.

A lot has changed (for me, and my rig) in the years since, and when the right deal comes along, I’m picking up the pedals from back then to try them again. I’ll turn the results into a series of posts called ‘Second Bite’.

IIRC, the Sovereign was the very last Wampler pedal I tried back then. I was looking for a pedal to help me craft a good lead tone. I failed. Will I fail a second time?

Here’s my thoughts on my #SecondBite at this pedal.

Lovepedal JTM Drive Pedal

A lot of the non-BJFe pedals that I love (like the Tchula, and the Speaker Cranker), are all descended from the Electra Distortion circuit. I’ve had such fun with them that I’m always on the lookout for other pedals from the same family tree. It’s a bit like collecting TubeScreamers 😀

If I’ve got this right, the Electra Distortion was a module that could be fitted into an Electra guitar in the late 70s. It seems to be a really simple circuit that pedal makers have found to be very flexible and versatile. Lovepedal in particular are said to have based many of their designs on this circuit over the years.

I’m expecting the JTM to be a bit like the Big Tweedy Drive: more of a foundation pedal than a traditional overdrive pedal. Something to act as a base layer to shape the tone, if you like. Sounds like the perfect pedal for me to feature in #CoffeeAndKlon once it’s here 🙂

Here’s my first impression of the Lovepedal JTM. There’s a lot to like, when it’s boosted by the right pedal.

2nd August 20193rd August 2019

New Arrival: Wampler Plextortion

A new arrival this morning. I think this is the last pedal I need to cover all the different Marshall tones using Wampler pedals. #homeToneBlog

30th July 20193rd August 2019

First Impression: Lovepedal JTM

Backstory :- we’ve been experiencing a bit of a heatwave, and it’s been a little too warm to play much guitar.

It’s much cooler today, and I’ve got half an hour to kill while I’m processing audio for a talk video. Let’s have a play with the Lovepedal JTM.

I’m using my Tele this morning. Just got it back from a much-needed setup.

The JTM is aiming for that pre-plexi Marshall sound. There’s a lot of other pedals in that space. As far as I know, the JTM is the only one that’s a one-knob wonder.

It seems to be what I call a foundation pedal. It changes the tone a lot. Very pushed mids, not a lot of low end. Didn’t like it at all into the blackface-style clean amp.

I like it a lot more into the Origin.

I suspect it would work best into a dirty amp as a combined tone shape & boost. I’ll have to get my Synergy rig setup to test that.

I’ve got the pedal almost gunned. Classic on the edge of breakup sound. Clean when lightly picked, a bit of crunch when I dig in. It’s quite a volume boost and, sadly, quite a noise boost too.

It really suits the Telecaster’s bridge pickup. Definitely got that vintage 60s birth-of-rock tone and vibe about it.

It’s quite a cold sound, and with humbuckers it can be very waspish and brittle when gunned. This setting seems to be a good sweet spot if you’re using a Les Paul.

Speaker choice seems important with this pedal, more important than most pedals that I’ve tried. If I run it through a G12M Creamback, that sorts out all the harshness I was hearing through the Celestion Blue.

That’s really nice now.

That coldness to the tone seems to suit the neck pickup in a Les Paul really well too. That’s a big bonus. I often struggle to get a nice clear sound with the neck pickup. With this pedal, it’s right there.

In summary: – it seems very locked-in on a single sound from the days of early rock – it seems voiced for classic rock speakers If you’re after that specific era, you’ll probably love this pedal.

Later That Same Day …

I’m messing about with the Lovepedal JTM again this evening. And I’m starting to think that the Xotic EP Boost might just be the perfect boost for the JTM.

A Few Days Later …

I’ve been having a lot of fun running this pair of pedals – Xotic EP Booster into Lovepedal JTM – into the Marshall Origin. This might be my favourite crunch rock tone to date.

24th July 20193rd August 2019

New Arrival: Lovepedal JTM

Look what’s sheltering from the #heatwaveuk with me today: the Lovepedal JTM drive pedal.

I’ve plugged it in to check it works. It’s 26C in here, which is too hot for me. Don’t want a valve amp making the room even warmer today.

It’ll have to wait for cooler weather before I spend quality time with it.

14th July 201915th July 2019

#CoffeeAndKlon 9: Would You Take A Klon To A Desert Island?

This conversation was originally published on my Twitter feed.

Good morning! I hope you’re having a great weekend so far. This week, I’ve been thinking about my Desert Island rig … and whether or not a Klon / klone would be part of it. #CoffeeAndKlon

Coffee this morning is my absolute favourite: Sumatran. It has a stronger flavour, and tastes quite bitter, compared to most coffees that I have tried.

It would be my Desert Island coffee choice 🙂

The whole Desert Island rig concept always amuses me. It’s such a contradictory premise. You’re stranded alone on an uninhabited island, presumably with only your wits to sustain you. And yet somehow there’s electricity to run your guitar rig of choice *shrugs*

Even ignoring the logical fallacy for a moment … who, in their right mind, would bring the gear they love the most to an environment that it won’t survive in?

Oh, the joys of hypotheticals 😀

That brings up an important point. For many many people, the gear they use is simply a tool. It’s a commodity, and ultimately a consumable for them. They use it, and when it’s worn out, they replace it.

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked there …

Why have I been thinking about my Desert Island rig this week?

Normally, I’ve got a new (to me) pedal on my little pedal board, and I’m trying it with different stuff to work out what I think of it. No new pedals this week, so instead I’m using the guitar, pedals, and amp that together give me “my” sound.

I’ll break down all the different parts of my Desert Island rig – the what, and the why – over the next few #CoffeeAndKlon threads / posts. There’s a lot to discuss, and discussing it will help me understand it for myself. I wonder if I’ll change my mind as a result?

Will a Klon / klone be part of it? Let’s deal with the klone question first.

I’ve tried a number of klones – not all, by any means – and I always come back to my Klon KTR. I’m not even sure I can say why, or that I could pick it out in a blind test. (That could be fun to try!)

I know there’s a lot of folks out there who don’t rate the KTR. If there’s a klone that you prefer, I think “good on you.” If we all liked the same thing, and all sounded the same, the world would be a very dull place.

The whole Klon thing isn’t so much about making my guitar sound better, it’s about making my guitar standout in a band / mix setting. If it’s just me, on my own, on a Desert Island, is the Klon thing going to matter?

And I think that’s one reason why so many #HomeTone players either don’t get the Klon thing, or are disappointed with it. If it’s just you noodling alone, you don’t get to hear what (IMHO) the Klon does like no other.

The Klon isn’t the only kind of boost pedal in town. Regular readers will have seen me use the Brit Blue, the OverZoid od1, and the Forest Green Compressor as boost pedals too. They all have their sweet spot.

Will the KTR make it into my Desert Island rig? I’ll tell you soon, as I work through the signal chain of my choice of Desert Island rig. Follow me here, or come and read the http://hometoneblog.com if you prefer 🙂

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Would you take a Klon or klone with you to a desert island? Tell me why – or why not. And have a great weekend!