It's been a very very good year for my guitar journey. I was always having problems finding a good tone with outboard gear, so-so IRs, or free VSTs, but this thing has solved all that. It's been a complete godsend for recording too. Ultra-realistic amps that are practically indistinguishable from the original amps? Hell yeah. After reading what that thing did, I bought it immediately and I swear it's still the greatest purchase I've ever made. Around that time that I was looking for a good preamp, the Tonex pedal had just dropped. I ended up getting a pedalboard poweramp from HB. Ended up turning that old Spider into a cab with a DV-77 and V30 in it, each with separate inputs for stereo. At some point in my pedalboard journey, I decided I wanted to go ampless.I feel like it's helped my playing a lot, even when going back to my guitars tuned to D, C, and A. There's something completely different about playing in E to me. Wouldn't you know it, that cheap ass SG is the guitar I play 80-90% of the time. So one of the guitars was a $77 DiY SG kit and I decided that's the one I would keep it in E. Once I discovered drop-D, I only ever tuned down from there. I hadn't played in E since I first started learning how to play. I ended up buying 3 more guitars from Harley Benton so I could have different tunings and got a 5-string bass. I have 2 massive boards now and have sunk way too much money into it. I started doing a bit of research and learned about mid-boosting and got the Behringer TO800 and SF300 and it was fuckin over. Ended up spotting a $15 Behringer UM300, which I knew was a Metal Zone clone and decided, why not? I was immediately hooked. Went to Sweetwater to pick up a TCE Sentry from their second-hand area. The Vypyr was still a bit noisy on the high-gain channels so I figured I'd need a noise gate. Never used pedals except for a Line 6 Uber Metal I had when I was still in high school. Shortly after getting the Vypyr, I started building a pedalboard.I finally found out that I can play well AND sound good too. Absolute night and day difference between the Vypyr and the Spider. After a lot of market research, I ended up getting the Peavey Vypyr X2 as a replacement. The Line 6 Spider II 2x12 that I had been playing on exclusively for the last 16 years, mostly on the "Green Metal" channel, finally broke on me. I play mostly prog metal, deathcore, and classic rock, so high-gain tones are important to me.And the misses are probably mostly more about me just not connecting with the instructor than them doing something bad.)Ĥ very important things happened within this last year that have propelled my playing: (To be fair, I've also bought plenty of other courses which haven't had the same effect, but I've spend probably less than a quarter of what I've spent on pedals on lessons, and even with a fair number of misses, it's super clear that the lessons that hit have had a bigger impact on my playing BY FAR than gear. This effect has been so obvious and profound (and those courses, collectively, bought on sale, cost me less than the cheapest pedal on my board) that I often feel kind of foolish buying more gear. One of David Hamburger's fingerstyle blues course on Truefire. Jeff McErlain's Brittish Blues course on Truefire. Nir Mehlman's fingerstyle course on Udemy. Michael Palmisano's Jam Band secrets course on jamplay/truefire. The Functional Ear Trainer app made a huge difference, but it's free. Spending money on lessons has paid bigger dividends than any money spend on gear beyond the necessities. Honestly, unless we're talking about a guitar, tuner, and amp, the thing that have resulted in the biggest improvement simply aren't gear related. I could play those 3 pedals until my fingers bled. Plugged in An OTD-100 tube Distortion, Goat Octaver Fuzz and a Vox Ice 9 Overdrive. I had a neck from a Telecaster Thinline(neck is too forkin small, cramps my hands) so I saved up and bought a Replacement Fender C neck with Locking Tuners ($500 for Maple, come on!). Special Ordered from the Fender Custom Shop, Custom Shop Texas Specials(yes there is a difference) and Cleartone Strings. 047 Russian Oil In Paper Capacitors, NO Resistors allowed. Compensated saddles, Switchcraft Pots, Fender plate, the right knobs for them (which is a bigger pain in the butt than it should be), an Ibanez switch, 2. I ordered an American Special Telecaster body from the Evilbay Stratosphere guy. It really sucked for what it was supposed to be). I thanked the guy that got it down, I gave it back and left. I sat down with the guitar and plugged into a Fender Twin Reverb. I went to Guitar Center after researching what I wanted, how it sounded, settled on an American Special Telecaster.
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