Ever wondered what the Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl HiFI pedal sounds like in a professionally-produced track? Henning has you covered:
I love these kind of demos. It’s very useful to hear someone try a pedal out by itself – that mimics us Home Tone Chasers noodling at home. It’s also great to hear what a pedal can sound like in a recording, for those of us who like to try our hand at creating our own tracks.
The pedal itself? I’m looking forward to the full demo, to see just what it can do.
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Paul Davids (and … er … Paul Davids) is back with a video comparing his first rig to his current rig.
We don’t learn how old his Squier is, so please don’t refer to this when trying to decide whether or not to buy a brand new Squier today! These kinds of videos are meant to be a bit of fun 🙂
Hopefully Paul will post a follow up where we hear both guitars into the Tone King.
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I promise that I’ll stop posting about the PRS Silver Sky soon. Before I do, I have to share with you John Mayer’s own thoughts on his new guitar.
He’s not pulling any punches here. He tackles the guitar’s Fender heritage, why he went to PRS for this guitar, what makes it different from a Fender Strat, and where the time went on designing the Silver Sky. If you want to understand how he sees this guitar, it’s compulsory viewing.
The key thing I took away from this is that this all started with tone. He wanted something that looked like a Strat, and played like a Strat, but that addressed some of the things he didn’t like about the Fender Strat sound. Paul Reed Smith is all about tone in a way that few other guitar builders are. And things evolved from there to become the Silver Sky that we’ve all been talking about.
Whether you like John Mayer or not, he deserves credit for putting out a video like this. It’s not some slick PR video. It’s just John talking into his phone on a livestream. How many other mega-artists would do this?
Sadly, he doesn’t post directly to YouTube, and I don’t know where the original video was posted. I couldn’t find it on Instagram or on Facebook.
Yes, you read that right. JHS has taken the ubiquitous Boss DS-1 and made some crazy mods to it. And then they asked Mike Hermans – one of the top demo guys – to show what this thing can do.
It starts out with an upgraded drive circuit, complete with a three-way toggle switch for different clipping types. That alone would be a great mod in its own right.
Then, they added 3 different synth circuits that you can switch in and out independently … just in case you’re bored with overdrive sounds. Or you just want something that’s batshit 🙂
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Today, we have a different kind of demo from Peach Guitars. They’ve done a shootout between John Mayer’s current rig – PRS Silver Sky and JMOD amp – and his old, pre-PRS rig – Fender 63 Stratocaster and a Two-Rock amp.
The PRS Silver Sky continues to be the most talked about guitar of 2018. I still can’t figure why it’s generated the reaction that it has – including my own reaction.
The more I hear it though, the more I’m interested in trying one for myself. To my ears, it sounds like a lot has gone into tuning it to be a great guitar for completely clean tones. That’s where I used to live before moving onto Les Pauls. I’d love to find the right guitar to go back to that style one day.
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Sam Coulson has posted a short video, showing us the rig he’s using when he’s giving guitar clinics this year.
He’s running a modded Charvel into a Helix, out to the Yamaha THR-100HD. The Yamaha’s setup as a clean platform for the Helix. It’s a simple rig that looks very easy to load in and out without a lot of effort.
I’ve got the Yamaha THR-100HD myself, and for a couple of years it was my main practice amp. It takes pedals better than any other modelling amp did at the time. You can run two amps at once out into different cabs, and that gives you a taste of that two-amp blended tone thing.
My main complaint with the THR-100HD is that it felt like Yamaha abandoned it to a large extent. It’s been a couple of years since the last firmware update, and they haven’t added any new models – or improved the existing ones – since launch. It’s become a very much take-it-or-leave-it amp.
But – unlike some modelling amps – you can use it as an amp, without hooking it up to a computer. Which means that they’ll continue to be usable long into the future.
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Pete Thorn has posted his demo of Fender’s 2018 Pedal range. If you want to hear what they sound like together in a mix, this is the demo for you.
Rather than go through every single tone the pedals offer, he breaks down a complete song, showing what he used for each part – and letting us hear them soloed out.
I love the tones Pete gets from the Santa Ana Overdrive in this video. I’ve already got the Pugilist, and it sounds great with a Tele. The Santa Ana with humbuckers … that’s a sound that I do have a need for. Not too long until pay day 🙂
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Not to be outdone by Anderton’s PRS Silver Sky video today, Thomann have shot a shootout video comparing a real Fender Strat against two of its competitors – Suhr (who used to work for Fender) Classic Pro and the new PRS Silver Sky.
It’s wonderfully click-bait-y – but do we learn anything from this video? I’m not sure that we do.
I didn’t hear much difference between the three – and nowhere near the amount of difference that I was expecting. The extra low end we heard the PRS Silver Sky do on the Andertons video isn’t there, and neither is the high-end from the Suhr’s stainless steel frets. I played a Suhr Classic Pro about a month ago, and in person that extra high-end is far from subtle.
So yeah, I’m surprised, and I’m not sure what to make of it.
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The PRS Silver Sky has been the most-discussed guitar of 2018 … and now Andertons are weighing in with their thoughts. Oh, and they have one to demo for us too.
This is a great video, and not at all the kind of sales-y video you might be expecting. From a first unboxing to first impression playing to discussing many of the points raised online – including comparing it to Fender Strats – there’s a lot of useful ground covered.
One thing in particular – there’s plenty of string bends in this video, showing that the vintage radius isn’t going to cause string bends to choke out.
For me, it sounds fantastic in this video. It has that quintessential Strat tone in buckets. There’s both a top-end snap and a bottom end chime that I personally look for from Strats and the like. The pickups seem nicely balanced in output too, and across the full range of the neck.
When they’re more readily available, I’m definitely going to try one out.
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A-Strings have just gotten their hands on the new Gretch singlecut guitars, and Adam’s done a demo for their YouTube channel.
These are definitely something a little different from most singlecut-shaped guitars, thanks to the wood choices and the pickups. And I’m a big fan of the new natural look of the backs of these.
Once you’ve got the Holy Trinity of guitars – Les Paul, Strat and Tele – or maybe you just don’t feel any of them are for you, then something like this is well worth a look.
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