Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

[milkbone]

I know I've fell into this before. You sit home, scour the internet for information, details, secrets and tweaks to make your tone and sound your signature only to find you don't need more than half of the stuff you have.

I love buying guitar stuff and playing around with it, but I gotta be honest, I know I could play a whole gig without one effect and no one would know the difference(except me off course!).

Line up all of your distortion, OD and driver pedals but yet play with basically one sound all night(mabey two if you include clean).

I've spent alot of time and money on my basic rig and I love it. It seems all of the effects are icing that I can mostly do without. Yeah, you need that flange to do "Baracuda" or something that has a signature sound, but I think the truth is, you could play all of that stuff without it and still sound great.

Just something I've been thining about.

PS: don't get me wrong, I'll NEVER stop looking for effects.

 

[big_black]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

I have a DS-1, that's it. Effects are really the last thing I ever think about when I'm shopping. I will admit I've had more than I need guitar-wise.

 

[aleclee]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Like most anything else, it's a matter of diminishing returns.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

It reminds me of seeing a guy lugging a 24 space Shockmounted Rack up the stairs of a club, just to play 3 songs at a jam night. He HAD to have HIS tone! hahahahaha
He didn't sound any different than another guy plugged into a little Carvin 15W amp!

 

[gordon_39422]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

When I gigged with my Duoverb, I had several FX I used to get some good tones... Once I bought my tube amp, I slowly got away from all the FX... Now, I have a chorus pedal that I hardly even use... Sometimes, I will use the chorus and delay to widen the depth and dimension of my tone in a small club... In larger clubs, I dont even bother... there is usually some hint of natural resonance that widesn the tones...

It is peculiar though... If I see something on the clearance table I'll get it whether I need it or not!

Later,
Allen

 

[shreder75]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

at one point, I had a mesa triaxis, a simul class 2 90 and two 4x12 recto cabs and all I did was play in my room...lol....so yeah, been there with the expensive rig that would never see the light of day

 

[Lava Man]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

For me that's the whole reason for buying a killer rig - sound you have great tone when you play out. That has been the motivation for me to buy expensive gear...

 

[DeadSkinSlayer3]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

For gigging, all I need is two good guitars, a nice head, a nice cabinet, and some reverb/delay for leads.

That said, I'm getting a tubescreamer after I get some recording software. I don't know if I'll use it live, but I know it'll stay on most of the time at home.

 

[Woodcutter]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

I'm really just started to look at effects at the moment the only effexts I have are a over drive and wah. Have the time though I'm playing jazz and just go strat into my fender blues deville. If I had a lot of effects I'd probable only use half of them giging, but they'd be nice for recording and there just fun to play with.

 

[joelap]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

yes I do. I'm debating what to do about it.

 

[Jeff Seal]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

...I can't really say I personally fall into this category.... My gear is, although 100% functional, pretty "beat" from the road. Way too many "late-night, semi-drunk loads" into the trailer! :blackeye: ..not to mention "pouring down rain" rush loads and way too many stairs!!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I do my best to take care of my gear.. but I can guarantee all my stuff has substantial "wear and tear"...

such is the life of the "working musician"....!

Jeff Seal

 

[drew_half_empty]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

i've found many great tones

the hard part is making them at higher than bedroom volumes

first one i found was the modded bluesdriver into a hotrod deluxe. Sounded great...with the volume at just over 1

so i got a 50 watt bassman head, and a 2x12 with the same speakers as the hot rod, sounded great, until i attempted to play with a drummer

3rd one is a pod xt live into the bassman 170, it friggin rules, and i can easily keep up with a full band. But, being such a volume whore, a couple cabs are probably in my future

i guess when you like your tone, you want all of 4 city blocks to know

 

[Quencho092]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

i take my 63 bandmaster everywhere, when it's raining i put it in a trash bag and carry it. But i really would prefer playing though a new combo with warranty so i could simply take my guitar, 2 cables and my combo instead of head, guitar, cabinet, bag w/ cables and pedals.

Like i said in my previous post on the myths thread, I want to get rid of (*Watching Ringo on Leno...*)gear obsession and get more into guitar playing. All this equipment crap only distracts me from becoming a better player and doing something more constructive than tweaking my rig, modding my amps, and wasting cash.

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

most of my collection is used.

The vibrolux gets gigged, along with usually 2 out my tele, strat and PRS. My wah, delay and classic od go to every gig, along with an envelope filter.

out of the rest:

The Blue Angel gets studio time, and is my practice amp.

The EKO is not yet in a playable state, but will definitely get recorded and maybe even gigged on special occasions when it's up and running.

The HM strat is currently my around the house guitar.

The paisley strat will definitely get gigged when it's all together. Why else would one own such a patently awful looking guitar, haha...

I'm missing two food groups: semihollow or hollowbody, and gibson LP. When I get either of those, they'll definitely get gigged.

 

[FretFire]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

I don't have any gear that I don't take to jam sessions or gigs. I buy things to use them, so if I find I flat out don't use an item I sell it and put that money where it is better suited (even if that just means sticking it in the bank).

 

[Kac]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play ou

I've went through several periods where i would just buy a lot of pedals and I did recently have my pedal board completely filled up with some stuff that didn't really need to be there...

So I decided, to downsize and not replace something unless it needed to me, "if it's ain't broke, don't fix it"....

So I replaced 3 dist. pedals with 1, I only use the amp on clean and got rid of things like my envelope filter...

I'm very happy, and I would like to let other young guitarists know that it's fun to buy a lot of different stuff and try everything out, but in the end a lot of that stuff might get in the way of "real" tone.

So, to whom it may concern, don't let a bunch of fancy guitar equipment get in the way of playing guitar... :13: ROck On - kac!

 

[shreder75]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play ou

i take my 63 bandmaster everywhere, when it's raining i put it in a trash bag and carry it. But i really would prefer playing though a new combo with warranty so i could simply take my guitar, 2 cables and my combo instead of head, guitar, cabinet, bag w/ cables and pedals.

Like i said in my previous post on the myths thread, I want to get rid of (*Watching Ringo on Leno...*)gear obsession and get more into guitar playing. All this equipment crap only distracts me from becoming a better player and doing something more constructive than tweaking my rig, modding my amps, and wasting cash.

you said it right there, man..that's one reason why I only use my vetta at my practice space (which really isn't our practice space anymore, so it's more or less a $1600 paper weight at this point)..I was spending more time trying to program a good tone into the thing than I was playing...

I got my tube amp, turn a few knobs and bam..I'm playing...i'm no longer an inceasant tweaker because I got a good tone that I'm happy with and can play through..

 

[Bludave]

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

Re: Have you spent so much time and money on your rig and not use it when you play out?

I have 3 Amps that I use. Sometimes I use 2 at a time. The amps I have are a 68 Super Reverb, A Marshall 900 Combo, and a 67 Deluxe Reverb. The ONLY effects I really use are Reverb, Volume, Chorus, Delay some OD and a Wah. On my board I have a Boss CE2 or CH1, a DD3 and a Tubescreamer. Then my Wah and Tuner. I only use the Chorus on maybe 3 songs, the Delay on maybe 3 and the Tubescreamer just to boos the sustain and a slight volume boost.

A good quality tube amp require a lot less colouring than some of the other stuff out ther. I basically adjust the EQ to the guitar and play.