Guitars, Amps, etc.

After being in a band for awhile, it's hard to not get increasingly interested in the wide variety of musical equipment out there; both new and vintage. We've had an ever changing variety of gear - partly due to things being broken, and partly due to finding crazy deals on the used market. Probably if we just stuck with the same "general" stuff from day one, we would have been just that much better at playing the instruments we have, but where's the fun in that.
Erik and I especially over the years have swapped and accumulated guitar gear, and it's really the only thing besides other people and the band (and beer for me) that we spend moneys on.
It's also nice being out of school and working, so we can actually afford something from time to time. I can't think of the amount of things we've sold to finance gear purchases.

I have a bunch of Gibson rip off guitars, all of them great for a variety of reasons, but call me a brand whore - I always wanted a "real" gibson, if not just to know for sure what sets them apart.
I have a Gibson marauder, and love it to death, but it's not the same thing as a Les Paul at all. I liked the Marauder because it's weird, not everyone has one, and that's why I have all the ripoff guitars as well. It's always nice to be original, try and have something of your own, something that makes your sound (or look) unique. For a long time that was my Sovtek Mig50H..

a lunch box of an amp, I would get comments all the time on the diminutive size, but the massive sound. I still don't know for sure if it's just my amp, or the design itself, but the thing has always been pretty fuzzy/muddy. Clean sounds are fantastic but the distortion is just 'weird'... However, if you put a distortion or overdrive pedal in front of it, it gives it enough edge to sound great. I love this amp, and like all things I love I absolutely destroyed the input section of it by hauling it off the top of my 4x12 during a gig. I fixed the low input, but never the high (the wiring is so confined and hard to do anything with), and almost immediately afterwards picked up my Marshall JMP 50. The Marshall is a pretty standard sound, but it's also such a fantastic sound, it's really hard to give up. So in the search for originality, maybe I'll go some different directions.

Since I always wanted a gibson, I scoured craigslist.kijiji and eventually found a good deal on a rare model called the Gibson Les Paul "Gem Series" Amethethyst.

(not my apartment)

I thought it would be purple (cool with me) but it's more of a burgandy/brown. After picking it up, I started to realize there was all kinds of problems with it. Wouldn't stay in tune, some fret issues .. things I should have noticed immediately. I figured I would get frustrated myself trying to fix all of it, so I took it to local guitar masters Folkway Music and a few weeks after getting it back, it looks like they fixed/improved everything (although they set it up standard and not to Eb as was asked. I've never had anyone remember to set it up a half step down.. is this impossible?). I take any guitar I buy to have pro. set up once, just in case, and then I maintain them myself from that point on. Suffice to say, I love this guitar. It's exactly how you would expect a les paul with p90s to sound, and it plays fantastic. I read online that it's one of Gibson's "best kept secrets", and with never having owned real classic les pauls, I will agree anyway.

Right now my equipment is
Gibson LP Gem > Boss-Nu2-Holy Grail Reverb-Maxon OD808 - Trem > Marshall JMP 50 > Marshall 1960BX

Although here I'm playing my Greco. Ben's playing my new bass, and Erik's playing his Squier JV Telecaster which is a story unto itself.


(photo credit Mike "All Hands" 4thWave)