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T-Rex Replicator Junior

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Any amount of time spent searching forums or YouTube for tips and gear to give you the “ultimate guitar tone” will undoubtedly lead you at some point to consider a real tape echo unit. They are lauded for their liveliness, their clarity and the charm. But they are impossible expensive, unbearably noisy and require constant maintenance to keep running right, not to mention they are big and have to run off wall power, making their portability just a joke. A fair warning, this review is going to have lots of subjectivity to it. A real tape echo, even a well thought out and compact one like the T-Rex Replicator Jr, is not for everyone so lets dig in because, I adore them.

First of all, let me say that I am lucky. I have a large enough house with a finished basement and a funky split-like layout that means the bedrooms are far enough away that I can play loud without waking anyone. I can have a 30 watt PRS HXDA cranked without much problem, or run it wed/dry with a Bloomfield Drive combo and still be good. For those who have to play quiet, I’ve been there and I feel for you. I’ve had the 100 watt Mesa Boogie Mk III where you only just get the master turned on and even then you have to put a volume pedal in the loop to turn it down even farther to not disturb people at night. It’s not fun, and I hate to tell you, it pretty much disqualifies you from the real tape club. Even the modern quieter ones are noisy, and unless you’re able to turn up to the point where you drown out the noise, it takes away a lot of the charm. A quick test, turn your amp to your normal playing volume and strum some chords. If you can hear the clack of your guitar pick on your strings, then you likely don’t play loud enough to enjoy a tape echo.

Now that we’ve deterred half of your, lets talk about maintenance. It’s not rocket science, it won’t explode in a fiery ball or any other such things if you don’t take care of it, but it will wear out tapes quicker and sound “worse”. The good news is the T-Rex Replicator is pretty easy to take care of. Tape swaps are a breeze thanks to the cartridge system they use, just unscrew, push the slider down, pop out the old, put in the new, let go and replace screw. Takes one minute or less. There’s a dead simple adjuster on the record heads, simply back it off until there’s no signal, then move it in a quarter of a turn at a time until you have a clean echo. Done. Last is cleaning, a little isopropyl alcohol on a swab, clean the heads and reels and you’re good to go. All of this together takes less than 10 minutes and only needs to be done every month or two (or when it starts sounding “off”).

Still here? Great! Now we get to the good stuff, let’s talk price. Most vintage or new tape echo units are in the one to two thousand dollar range (USD), which puts them out of the range of most hobby players. T-Rex has made the Jr more simple, and therefore less expensive. A new one will still set you back a good chunk, but they can be found on the second hand market for around $400 making them about the same as a boutique digital recreation. The simplification also has another benefit, it will “fit” on a pedalboard. It is fairly heavy for a pedal, but it will fit on all but the smallest of pedalboards making portability less of a concern. One more quick not about portability, it also runs at 12v 300ma, which means most modern power supplies can get it going with at most a special cable.

So how does it sound? Well to be honest, at first I was a little underwhelmed by it. Now I’m not a huge delay user, having gotten rid of all of my delay pedals except for my Analogman ARDX20 with Amaze0 add-on. It’s not quite the night and day difference that some people would have you believe it is (granted this is a much less expensive unit than most, and it doesn’t have a monster pre-amp like some do) but as I use it more (on day 3 as of this writing) it’s really starting to grow on me. It definitely has a character to it that other digital pedals get close, but so far don’t seem to quite replicate.

So while my Analogman delay isn’t going anywhere, I’ll keep this noisy, heavy, difficult, fantastically glorious beast around. It may be converting me to it’s ways sooner than later.

Buy one now on Reverb

Hands On: ’61 Reserve by SVL

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I’ve had this guitar in my hands now for a couple weeks and feel comfortable enough to give an overview of the pros and cons (spoiler, not many) of ordering a custom guitar from over seas, and specifically for this guitar. So lets get right into the first impression.

This shipping was quick and painless once it was on it’s way and Fedex handled the import extremely quickly (especially compared to how long my Sabaddius Funky Vibe was stuck in USPS import) and I received me guitar in less than 2 weeks from when it was shipped. It was packed very well in a rigid gig bag which looks like it protects the guitar well in shipping. Unfortunately it must have gotten bumped pretty good at some point as the neck arrived crooked a bit, causing the low-E to slip off the edge of the fretboard on the higher frets. Luckily loosening the screws and shifting the neck back into proper alignment got everything straightened out.

The initial impression of the relic job was that it looks fairly good, if a bit obvious or repetitive in how it was done. You can pretty easily see how a drill with a rough sanding wheel or buffing wheel was used on the edge of the guitar to take off the paint all around. I am a bit disappointed, but it’s pretty well known that Simon doesn’t really like relicing guitars and prefers NOS. That being said, a lot of attention has gone into the rest of the guitar with all the hardware have a nice patina.

Lastly it is undeniably a beautiful guitar with it’s ‘just right’ flame on the neck and dark katalox fingerboard. The neck was ‘deshined’ which feels like it’s bare, and the fingerboard feels as nice as any vintage or modern Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard I’ve played. The edge is beautifully rolled which gives it a very comfortable played-in feel.

Speaking of feel, this guitar feels great in the hands. This is the lightest Strat style guitar I’ve played (vintage included) to the point of almost feeling ‘off’ at first (I’ve been playing my ’08 American Standard which is loaded with poly clear coat). The neck is a bit thicker front to back, but thin vintage spec side to side making it super comfortable to play thumb over low E Hendrix style licks. The custom ordered 7.25″ fingerboard and 6105 frets make for my favorite combination, allowing comfortable chords and smooth bends throughout the neck. Lastly the electronics are smooth but tight, with the selector switch being especially tighter than I’m used to, but which makes for easy position selection. Only change I made to the feel was to tighten the spring claw so the bridge is decked, giving a stiffer string feel.

Now what you really want to know, how does it sound? Well those smooth working pots and the caps tied to them are a thing of beauty. The taper on the volume pot which somehow retains almost all of the top end makes it a joy to ride for cleans or over-driven tones. In this respect it’s even better than my ’59 Strat was, which is the same when it comes to the tone pots. They don’t neuter the tone once you get to 8 or 9 like a modern Strat, instead taking just a tip off the top until you get down to 3 or so on the dial. This really lets you dial in the sweet spot for any volume and gain setup you want to use. And the tone pots are tied to the neck and bridge pickup, leaving the mid pickup wide open.

Talking pickups, the Mark Foley ’59 Reserve v.2s are so far the closest to the vintage ones I’ve heard yet. I’d say the neck and mid are 90% there in tone, and the bridge being better than the one that was on my vintage ’59. The vintage bridge pickup didn’t have a tone pot on it, and had no lows in it at all, and unlike some fine examples it did have some of the harsh brittleness in the top. The bridge in the SVL has a steel bar on the bottom which takes away a bit of the top spike and in general the pickup has more bass and sounds fantastic. In short all of the pickups are a step closer to the vintage tone than the PRS Silver Sky which was my previous closest sounding guitar.

The one thing I still want to try out tone wise is replacing the middle pickup. The SVL came with a reverse wound reverse polarity pickup to give hum cancelling in the 2 and 4 positions. Which this supposedly has negligible effect on the tone, there are many respectable players who say it does make a difference in the frequency response of the pickups. It may be small, but I’m only looking to get the last 5-10% closer so it’s worth a shot. I will post a before and after once I get the new pickup in.

So what do I think over all? Well it’s pretty much exactly what I hoped for! Tone wise it’s very close to the vintage Strat I got rid of, but with a much more usable bridge pickup for my setup and style. I don’t have to feel bad about replacing the pickup or making other changes as it’s not a respected vintage piece, nor do I have to worry about accidentally banging it around thanks to the finish and again lack of vintage providence. To sum it up, it is my new number 1 and I am already planning on selling some of my other guitars which won’t get used much anymore.

‘61 Reserve from Simon Law

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Today I received the first look at my soon to be here ’61 Reserve from SVL Guitars, and what a beauty it is. But let’s step back; who is Simon Law and what makes his ’61 Reserve special?

Simon Law is a UK guitar builder and guitar tech that works with many big names. His guitars are used by some of the blues greats (Robbin Ford and Matt Schofield to name a few) and are revered for feeling, sounding and playing like old guitars but with new guitar reliability. He also works as a guitar tech for a number of other artists, and in fact part of the reason my guitar took so long to complete (more on that later) is the fact that he was on tour with the WHO for some time.

So he definitely has the knowledge and ear to build a fantastic instrument, but there are lots of great builders, why go with him? Lots of reasons. His guitars are hand built, to spec, with old wood and experience of what makes a vintage guitar sound and feel the way it does, and how to get as close to that as possible. As good as the best at Fender, at a price that is remarkably doable, and with a much more reasonable wait. When some of the best blues players go to him for instruments that respond to their touch and feel, you know he’s doing things right.

So now let’s talk MY guitar. Vintage radius fretboard, Katalox fingerboard (like Brazilian Rosewood but more consistent) 6105 sized frets; this vintage with taller frets combo is what I’ve found to be the perfect mix of comfort and playability and was what I had on my vintage ’59 and Silver Sky.

Pickups are ’59 Reserve set from Mark Foley with some custom tone cap values, everything high quality and vintage spec. Vintage style hardware rounds out the build, and a medium relic to the black body with tortoise pickguard gives it a story.

All in all it costs only around the same price as a standard custom shop Strat from Fender, but with master built options and quality. The only downside? This is a one man operation and his main gig is with the stars, so from order to delivery your looking at around 9 months. Roughly the same amount of time an expecting father would have to wait, and certainly worth the wait.

Fire Custom Shop Overdrive and Kronos Delay

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When Fire Custom shop is widely known for their Carpe Diem overdrive pedal, but there is a lot more to this company than just that one pedal. A number of excellent pedals have come out from this shop and aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Today I am going to quickly go over 2 of these pedals that I find particularly good.

First up is the simply named Overdrive pedal. Even when running at 9v (many FCS pedals can take 18v) there is tons of volume on tap ready to drive you amp into sweet distortion. The Gain control also has a huge range, from clean and clear to near distortion levels of gain. The gain is sweet sounding with lots of harmonic content and just enough grit to cut without making it harsh.

The Kronos Delay is a simple delay unit with just the right amount of options and features. It’s Vintage/Modern knob lets you dial in a darker delay that falls off quicker, or a clean digital like delay that gives you bright repeats. The Tails switch is a welcome feature that lets the repeats finish after tuning the pedal off so you don’t get an abrupt cut (though you can turn it off if you need the echos to stop right away) and the Mod switch lets you add in some of the chorus and movement that gives you a tape echo vibe. With repeat length that go from super fast slap back to beyond analog vintage units on the long end, you will be set for anything less some crazy effect.

All in all these pedals are impressive in their character and feature sets, and can be had at a decent price. Right now I have a couple new units and some used ones up for sale on Reverb, so go check them out.

My Reverb Store

The Great Gear Sell-Off!

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After many years of buying and collecting gear, and especially the last couple years of intense gear flipping to fund my acquisition addiction, I have decided to downsize. Many separate paths have culminated in this decision, call it maturity, or perhaps insanity. I’ll take either.

Like many guitarists, I started out by collecting as many pedals as I could afford. In the last couple years, I had taken to flipping pedals (buy low sell high) to make a small margin on them in order to fund more purchases. As I built up a larger fund I figured it was better to flip a few expensive pedals instead of many cheap ones, hitting a peak where I had two Klon Centaurs in my possession, each worth almost 2 grand. While I am by no means a profession, I have played long enough to be able to appreciate the quality and tone that allows these legendary pedals to command equally legendary prices.

Also around this time my incredibly awesome wife allowed me to make two purchases within the same year (birthday and Christmas gifts), a Two Rock Studio Pro 35 and a John Mayer Signature Stratocaster. These were both a big step up in quality as well as good investments. The Studio Pro was found locally through EBay at an amazing price, and the John Mayer Strat was picked up just a few weeks after he announced that he was no longer going to work with Fender which would mean the end of his signature series and the prices starting to rise.

So not only did I get the bug for getting better gear instead of just more gear, but also at this point of my life I decided to start simplifying my life and getting rid of clutter that I don’t need anymore. This comes about because I two young daughters who I want to spend my time with and so I don’t have time to spend as much on hobbies anymore. Also I have started getting more serious about my financial future and a design to move across county, likely to a small house, so downsizing is going to happen at some point.

That’s pretty much the roads leading to where I am now, selling off a majority of my gear. Starting with pedals, but eventually many of my amps and guitars as well. The goal is to keep a choice selection of pedals, maybe an amp or two and a guitar or two, but mostly to sell them off to fund two major purchases. The first major purchase is going to be a new amplifier, specifically Two Rock’s flagship, the new Classic Reverb Signature. The other piece of gear I plan to acquire is a vintage Stratocaster. Specifically I will be looking for an early 60’s Pre-CBS strat, preferably refinished with maybe a 5-way switch and refretted to make it more affordable. At this price range (quite possibly into 5-digit land), I am looking for a guitar that speaks to me, must be all original wood, mostly original hardware and all original pickups. A guitar that replaces all my other strats and that I will keep and play for the rest of my life.

Let me know if there is anything you want, otherwise it will mostly all be for sale on Reverb.

The Perfect “Bedroom” Amp

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Due to a change in living conditions (primarily some family members living above my studio area for a while) I have been searching for a quiet way to play and practice at night since I can no longer use my array of tube amplifiers. After some research I decided the most cost efficient thing to try was to go with a stand alone digital modeling amplifier, specifically the Yamaha THR10C. So far it has exceeded my expectations.

I had been intrigued by the THR10 series since it’s first introduction years ago, but never committed to buying one due to two simple facts; first I have some very nice tube amps with no need to turn down to un-toneful levels, and second I have been unsatisfied by digital amp simulators in the past. While I’ve had some that sounded great, like the Digitech GSP1101, they were not really inspiring to play and were not complete packages requiring external amplifiers to play out loud.

There was also the issue of option paralysis where I spent more time creating tones or sounds and not actually playing, an issue solved by the THR10C’s simplicity in controls. Amp, Gain, Master, EQ, 2 Effects and Volume controls are all that are here and are just the right amount of customization without ever spending too much time hunting for a tone. Speaking of tone, as much as I was skeptical from all the hype and buzz wording, this thing sounds fantastic and really does react and feel like a tube amp. Turning up the Master control gives a very satisfying compression as it would on a small tube combo and allows for some great variation in setting headroom or a more punchy tone.

Effects selection is simple and split between two knobs, one for modulation (Chorus, Flanger, Phaser and Tremolo) and one for time (Delay and Reverb). All of the effects are nice and simple to use with tap tempo for the delay (a Tape Delay simulation to match the vintage feel of the amp models) and sound as you’d expect. A tuner is also built in for ease of use as well as five favorite settings that are easy to assign and recall. There is also a suite of software that lets you customize more settings via usb, but I have yet to play with those so will report back later on that front.

The last feature I’d like to highlight has actually turned out to be one of my favorites and has redefined the use of this amp, and that is the aux in. While it sounds like a very simple thing, and indeed it is very simple to use with a stereo in port and a separate volume control, it makes the amp a much more world and practice friendly device. It allows me to play along to backing tracks with a dead simple ability to balance my guitar volume to the track volume (which by the way is always played through a flat eq in case you were worried) as well as use the amp as a loud speaker for parties (which it does very well).

Overall the Yamaha THR10C is an outstanding value that does everything it sets out to do very well. It is an outstanding practice amp that sounds great even at low volumes and a great loudspeaker for parties. I look forward to trying out the software side of it for tweaking and recording, as well as trying out my pedal board with it as I hear it takes to pedals very naturally. One day I may switch to a Fryette Power Station or a Kemper for my low volume playing, but for now the instant startup and quality tone for a price tag of $200 blemish unit, you just can’t go wrong. The one modern feature that I would say is missed which I would suspect would come in a future update is Bluetooth pairing for the aux input. That little quibble aside, there is nothing else I would want to see improved and am more than satisfied.

 

Can you Dumble?

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The Dumble Overdrive Special is an amp of legends. Smooth and creamy with nicely pushed mids, yet so tightly defined that individual notes ring through even with massive amounts of gain dialed in. Of course, this is what I’ve been told, or read on the internet so it must be true. There is no denying however that the sound you hear from various artists that use these holy grail amplifiers is alluring and inspiring for guitar players to listen to.

Now I can’t afford an ODS (yet! one day… ) but I do have a Two Rock Studio Pro 35 which is, through some levels of relation, based on the clean sound of a Dumble, and does do a very nice job indeed. A great “pedal platform” amp, it takes anything you can throw at it and makes it sound very good, but one thing I hadn’t tried until just now was mimicking the gain structure of an ODS. You see one of the things that sets apart the ODS is the fact that the overdrive happens after the tone stack of the clean channel, basically putting it where the effects loop of most other amps is. This got me thinking, why not put a gain pedal in the loop and see how it goes.

Now of course conventional guitar tone wisdom says that this would never work, but conventions are always being rewritten anyway so I might as well be the one to give it a show. My first try was a Paul Cochrane Tim, thinking the transparent nature of the pedal would help blend it into the sound of the amp and let me add just some hair to it as I do with the pedal going into the front. Strike 1, this did not work very well at all, it somehow wasn’t compressing in a way that felt right, now was it leaving the clean and clear overheat of the amp in tact. Maybe convention was there for a reason.

Attempt number two was much better. Much, much better. A tanabe.tv Dumkudo in the loop set to Dumble (green) mode and we are off and running. The Dumkudo offers a lot of volume and gain on tap with a mid boost that can be dialed in just right to get the amp singing. Turning the volume knob down on the guitar cleans up nicely, but loses a bit too much volume at the same time. Add a Keeley Compressor Pro before the amp input and the volume level stays more in the sweet spot while letting me adjust the gain with my guitars volume. The results speak for themselves, with high dynamic range (actually too much before the compressor was added), touch sensitivity, excellent sustain and works very well with additional pedal going into the front of the amp, it really is an all around win.

So some things to test in the future; I need to A/B the Dumkudo in front vs the loop as this pedal does just sound incredible all around so it may be that there isn’t that big of a difference wherever the pedal is, but I do need to try it out so I can see differences in sensitivity or dynamics. Also my testing was all done at semi-home levels, not bedroom but not live either. Turning up the amp and having the power section work harder may eliminate the need for the compressor and may yield different results. Lastly, I have only tried those 2 pedals so far, but I have many gain pedals so I should run through all of them and see which ones seem to work best to try and draw some conclusions as to guessing which other pedals may work well (I am looking at you Kingsley).

For now, how a listen and give it a try on your own amp if you have an effects loop. Worse you can do is learn what not to do.

Fire Custom Shop – Carpe Diem

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The Marshall Plexi is a thing of legend. It is synonymous with everything from Hendrix and Clapton to Eddie Van Halen and AC/DC. Literally referring to the control panel being made of plexiglass at the end of the 50’s, the term covers both lower gain Bluesbreakers as well as the Super Leads of the 60’s. The Carpe Diem from Fire Custom Shop captures the vast range of magical tones in a single small pedal, and even includes a boost.

img_0060-1In Classic mode the Carpe Diem goes from cleanish edge of breakup Jimi tones, through to classic rock cranked amp gain. In Hot Rod mode the pedal has more gain on tap an recreates the high energy rock tones of the late 70’s and beyond. The Presence knob is a post gain treble adjustment allowing you to match the pedal to a variety of amps without having to change the main settings. Bass Gain and Treble Gain knobs recreate the setup of a “jumped” plexi head where you would jump the two different pre-amp sections allowing you to blend both into the signal. This allows you to dial in more or less gain separately for bass and treble allowing for combinations such as a creamy thick top end with a cleaner, clearer bass response. The Master volume control sets the overall output of the pedal and the last control is a Lead switch that gives you a pre-gain boost that doesn’t make the pedal much louder, but does give more gain and thickness to the sound.

One thing I have found true about many of the Fire Custom Shop pedals, and which is certainly true about the Carpe Diem is that there is a lot of harmonic and overtones present. Pick squeals, tap harmonics and general second order harmonics show up naturally in your sound and give their pedals a real life that isn’t found in many other pedals. The pedal is very quick and has a great representation of your attack transient which is key to a pedal that is invoking the Plexi character as palm muted chunky playing feels great.

If I am going to try and find any faults in this incredible pedal (full disclosure, I am selling them which could bias my opinion, though honestly I am selling them because they are insanely good), I’d have to say that the Lead switch is awfully close to the knobs which worries me a bit about using it in a live situation. Normally I’d be using a switching system of some sort so the bypass switch isn’t an issue for me, but a remote jack to activate the Lead would have been a greatly appreciated feature. Other than that the foam that is in the cool metal tin they ship their pedals in tends to be stuck to the pedal when you first get it (not really their fault but more of a shipping thing), it’s a little annoying but comes off easy.

All in all the Carpe Diem by Fire Custom Shop is on my list of pedals that will stay on my board full time (with another list of rotating pedals to keep it interesting) and hasn’t disappointed me when plugged into any of my amplifiers.

INCOMING SHAMELESS PLUG!!

You can buy them now (or pre-order if they are sold out) at our Reverb store.