After 25 years of trying, I’ve finally found it. The voice in my head, plus convenience and flexibility. My perfect guitar rig!
Guitar, amp, and effects. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But we’re all different, we all have different needs and tastes when it comes to guitar rigs, and there’s a minefield of options out there.
The Guitar
I’ve had many a guitar pass through my hands, Stats, Tele’s, Les Pauls, PRS’s, you name it. Honestly?, I’ve always preferred Fender playability, but the Gibson tone. For the last 3 years though, an underdog has not just stolen my heart, it’s outperformed all of them, offering the ultimate in versatility, from crisp coil-tapped cleans to massive overdriven semi-acoustic tones. I never go out of tune, I never have any issues. That guitar is the Epiphone ES-335 PRO (full review here).
The Amp
Fender, Marshall, Cornford, Orange, Vox. Again, I’ve been through a few, and none of them made me truly happy. I lumbered them about, I worried about them, always thinking about lightening the load, both physically and mentally. I’ve used single and multi-channel, with the Fender Blues Junior sounding great clean, but not so great pushed, and multi-channel, with all the complications of effect loops, additional cabling, you name it. In the end, I just wanted a simple, compact, light, loud clean platform that had the headroom to allow for a decent OD + a solo boost. When the £160 BOSS Katana 50 came along I was dubious but needed to give it a try, and after a steeper than usual learning curve, I had arrived at my end goal. A vastly simplified setup, with no valve maintenance/ anguish and legendary BOSS reliability. A full review of the BOSS Katana 50 here.
The Effects
And so to the final piece of the guitar rig Jigsaw. I’ve gone the whole OD pedal route (see my Overdrive Pedal Shootout), as well as a host of multi-FX, Including the BOSS ME-50, ME-70, TC Electronic Nova System, and best of all the Zoom G3. Mostly it was always spaghetti junction, noisy power supplies, patch cables, confusing tap dancing, lots of menus. Basically, an unintuitive environment clashing with the absolutely intuitive bond between player and instrument. All in all a distraction.
From almost under my nose, along came the BOSS ME-80. A marked improvement over the ME-70 in that it doubled the number of footswitches, whilst including the indispensable Manual/Preset + CTRL features at your feet. These two features allow you to set up the ME-80 however you wish, given you ultimate flexibility from a simple manual mode setup to a preset mode with an additional CTRL setting for each patch, and the option to switch between modes via your foot. No lags, no confusion, no fuss.
Sound wise, I went straight to the TS (Tubescreamer) OD, which, into the Katana, gives me my usual rhythm OD sound, which I used to get from my Cornford Roadhouse 30 (ish), and before that, my Marshall. Job done. Lead? A dedicated footswitch away, and always available with the Solo mode.
Then there’s the included Wah, tuner + BOSS build and FX quality, easy on the fly (non-menu-based) editing, and (should you ever need it) an amp section that you could hook up to a pa if your amp went down.
(Full Review coming soon by the way).
The end of the road?
I would love it to be. I still get a kick out of researching and buying gear, but most of the time it was always to improve things, or to solve a problem. With my current guitar rig, looking at it from a purely practical point of view, there’s nothing to improve and no issues to address. I’ve minimised the components, size, weight, maintenance, and niggles about reliability, but I can still get a pristine, full-bodied clean tone out of the Katana 50’s clean channel, a biting overdrive for rhythm, a singing lead tone and all the FX I’ll ever need, all with ultimate flexibility/ease of use in one box with the ME-80. Can I still hold a chord and hear the overtones blossom into glorious harmonic feedback? With the ME-80 Tubescreamer cranked and the Katana in 25W mode, Absolutely!
I’ve spent a LOT of money over the years experimenting with various gear. Was it to get to this point?
The biggest lesson I suppose is that the destination I’ve arrived at carried the lowest price tag out of all the setups I’ve used in the past.
- Guitar: £300 (New)
- Amp: £160 (New)
- FX: £140 (2nd hand).
- = £600
Some, of course, will swear by their Gibsons, Fenders and Marshalls. Me? I tried those and ended up with what works for me.
Let your ears be the judge!
… And then along came the Squier Telecaster Custom II. Here we go again!