Heritage guitars. Not cheap but made in the old Gibson custom works in Kalamazoo.

I had a 535 and when my nephew got old enough I got him an H-150 Les Paul. Both wonderful instruments. I admit I was never worthy of the 535 but my nephew is an alarmingly good guitarist. It was funny picking out his second guitar (Ibanez). The first was a hondo piece of crap that he literally played to death. I wanted to see if he was really serious about it. He was. We'd walk into a shop and the salesman would go to hand me a guitar and I'd shake my head and point to Ben. The salesman would look at Ben and ask, "Would you like me to plug in an amp?" Being a rather shy kid Ben would just nod. After a minute or two of noodling Ben would launch into a bunch of Fripp licks. He was into King Crimson when he was about 10. THe salesman would look at me and smile and walk away. It was also fun to watch customers in the store peek around the corner to see where the complex riffs were coming from only to see a little kid on a stool, head down over a guitar and playing some serious stuff.

Man that seems so long ago. He just got married a few months ago.

Dan

ORIGINAL: Rev. Jem

ORIGINAL: pgw

A very good reason to stay away from almost all asian-made music-gear...

If, by my buying a guitar, someone keeps their job, that's cool. I have no preference as to the country in which they're working.

Neither do I, if you´ve read this entire topic, you know I just bought a couple of cheapo´s....

if there was any genuinely US/EU-made computers I´d only use those

... and pay twice the price ? I couldn't justify the expense !

IMO there´s no good reason for doubling the price just because a product is made here or there, labour-cost is a relatively small part of production-expenses - at least in the metal-industry, which isn´t unique in any way.

Anyway, we don´t have the choice today do we ?

About the early `80´s low-budget guitars - ... a japanese Les Paul-copy ... the body was made of ... layered masonite

Twenty years ago that was the case but these days ? Seriously doubt it. And further to the subject of cheap modern guitars, ask anyone with even a smidgeon of experience what they thought of almost all guitars (including the big names) made back in the 60's & 70's. Today, we've never had it so good with guitar manufacturing quality.

Now, pass me

That was just my point, except the copies of older masonite-guitars ( some Dano´s ? ), this kind of guitar-construction is relatively scarce today...
If you want a nice, cheap guitar - check out the Squier `51.

I've got a Pod XT Pro as well as a great amp and cab... and a couple of combos too.



I like them all for different reasons. And BTW... that JSX is a killer tube amp that happens to sound just as incredible on the clean setting as it does on the overdrive 2 setting.

Lately I've been using a Palmer PGA 04 ADIG-LB.



I can't believe there isn't more chatter about this thing amongst you guys.

It's used in recording sessions by Satriani, Van Halen, Kieth Richards, and others. Don't think they use Pods...

It's not an amp simulator... but a cab simulator with an 8 ohm load. It can handle 200 watts of warmed up / cranked up / just-the-way-you-like-it up... tube sound from the speaker output jacks of any guitar amp and pass that rich sound to the DAW in a very controlled way. Just the right amount of signal for the DAW, but with all the attitude and warmth of a great sounding amp half way through the night of a sizzling performance at your favorite concert hall. Plenty of gain to make those tubes sing, without the police at the front door.

If you still wanna feel your pant legs flap or manage some natural feedback... you can still pass the signal to your cab.

And the most important feature... it still sounds like YOU playing through YOUR amp without the room/mic/reflection/woofing/piercing/phasing/mic bleeding/ear bleeding issues you need to be careful of when mic'ing a cab.

Try to keep your guitar sound pure going to track . By pure I mean, just the sound of the guitar amp speaker thru the microphone ( no flange no chorus no delay.ect ) Add all those goodies to your guitar trax later after you hear how it is sitting in the mix.There are many variations to mike placement and you will need to experiment until you are satisfied with the sound.
You can also , if you have enough inputs , record a multi effx track from your pedal on seperate track(s) at the same time !

ORIGINAL: SteveD


Lately I've been using a Palmer PGA 04 ADIG-LB.



I can't believe there isn't more chatter about this thing amongst you guys.

It's used in recording sessions by Satriani, Van Halen, Kieth Richards, and others. Don't think they use Pods...

It's not an amp simulator... but a cab simulator with an 8 ohm load. It can handle 200 watts of warmed up / cranked up / just-the-way-you-like-it up... tube sound from the speaker output jacks of any guitar amp and pass that rich sound to the DAW in a very controlled way. Just the right amount of signal for the DAW, but with all the attitude and warmth of a great sounding amp half way through the night of a sizzling performance at your favorite concert hall. Plenty of gain to make those tubes sing, without the police at the front door.

I've been using sort of a 'poor man's palmer' with a Weber MiniMASS attenuator which has a line out and a Behringer Ultra-G DI which has the 4x12 speaker simulator. It's very effective live and recorded. Live I use a '65 Super Reverb. I can send the signal to the board, turn my amp down all the way at the speakers and get a good mix with amp-cranked tone and keep the stage volume controlled.

Recording, I've got this great amp, it's an 80's Super Champ designed by Paul Rivera of Rivera amps when he was with fender. I use the attenuator/speaker sim combo here to record direct. So far, I'm happy with the tones, much happier than I've been with the POD. There's still a place for tube amps, and as good as digital modeling has gotten, I think for those of us who have been privileged enough to have played the good ones, there's still no substitute.