Portal:Gear

Welcome to the Gear portal!

The chain of sound is a long one for electric guitarists - some of the things we use are effect pedals, amplifiers, cables, strings, picks. Some common guitar brands are Gibson, Fender and Ibanez. If you suffer from GAS - then this is your section!

Replacing Hardware

Building A Usa Strat On A Budget

An in-depth article by Mudbone
"I have recently purchased a 1993 USA Peavey Predator with the intention of upgrading all the hardware. For those of you who aren't familiar with the USA Peavey Predator, its essentially a Strat copy with a kinda funny looking headstock. The neck and body were made in the US, and the hardware were made in the Far East I believe."

"Brand new it was sold for less than $300, and on first inspection it is quite obvious where Peavey cut corners to bring down the price - the hardware is rubbish. Terrible tuners, cheap tremolo made from pot metal, and mediocre pickups."

Malekko Ekko 616 Video Demo

A great video demo by instructor Bear Rose. The Ekko 616 is an Analog Delay and it is really good at what it does! The Tech 21 Liverpool is like an overdrive but it is voiced to be like a Vox AC30 (think The Edge from U2 or Brian May from Queen).

Mixing!

Equipping The Home Studio

An article by Instructor Todd Simpson - "This article is about my experience with different recording gear. I've owned a few different audio interfaces and thought I'd share my experience and invite others to do the same."

Let's ROCK!!

Sensible Jones' Guide to Building your own Guitar

OK, ever felt like you want to 'build' your own Guitar, to your own Specs, but didn't think you had the skills?? Well, I'm here to tell you that ANYONE, with just a little bit of time and patience and a few basic Tools, is capable of producing their own 'Custom Creation'!! In this article I'll take you through the assembly of the Guitar pictured on the right.>>>>>>>

As you can see it's a Strat styled instrument and so we'll be using a Vintage style Tremolo Bridge and 3 pickups with 1 Volume and 2 Tone controls. The whole process is exactly the same, whether you are building a Tele, a V, a Les Paul etc! It doesn't matter what shape it is, it will still have the same basic geometry and parts!!!

So, what do you need to get started???
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Crazy Diamonds Guide to changing your Bridge Pick-up

Dimarzio installed!

A few weeks ago I decided to change the bridge pickup on my Fender Stratocaster. Like a lot people I found that I didn’t really like the sound of that pickup and that I wanted something that could handle a little more distortion. After shopping a bit online I have found a DiMarzio Chopper pickup that looked pretty cool. So I have ordered that pickup and I have installed it by myself. At first I wanted to take some pictures in case something went wrong, so I could look at the original settings. But once I had the camera out I thought that I could share my experience with you.(More....)

Staffycaster!!

Staffays rebuild of a cheap Strat: The Staffaycaster

The birth of the Staffaycaster

Clumsy as I am, Im stepping right into our masterbuilder Sensible Jones territory and sending some info on how to fix a bad axe.

Background:
Since Im totally upset over Fender's ridiculous prices on their NOS vintage masterbuilt signature custom guitar's pieces of crap, I will try to prove that You can get the same sound (or nearly) from a total piece'o'junk. Fender did not built quality instruments in the 50's/60's so who say's that they are now? So what I did was to pick up a "no name" guitar for 150€ at my local dealer and started to mess with it. (this is actually a good idea to get a good instrument at a very low price, they use to have "home-built" guitars laying around that they could not sell so easily and therefore is cheap) The headstock on the guitar said "Fender", but even Fender can't glue a name that bad on a headstock, so we had some theorys that it could have been a Squire or as I am bound to believe - a kit that someone built.
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Marc's amazing Guide to Ibanez RG and S Series Guitars!

Since Ibanez is one of the leading guitar companies used on this forum, I thought id dump my knowledge of the brand on to you, so you may buy yourself a real quality Ibanez guitar! This comes after I get countless PM’s on which to buy “is this any good” so on and so forth...

To learn about the history of Ibanez guitars check out the Ibanez GMC Wiki article here: CLICK In this guide I will teach you a little about Ibanez guitar quality, all the key terms you will need to know, and how to get the guitar of your dreams at good prices. Used or new. I will talk about mostly about RG series, and S series since those are the most popular, (and other models derived from these two) however, the same rules apply for all Ibanez models. (More....)

This Week's Reviews are:

Roland Cube 80x Review

Roland Cube 80

A versatile amp that can play pretty much everything. It has a nice sounding clean channel, on top of different kinds of amp emulations (JC Clean, Acoustic Simulator, Black Panel, DLX Combo, Brit Combo, Tweed, Classic Stack, Metal, R-Fier, Dyna Amp) and on board delay and reverb effects. As usual with these kind of amps the effects are not as good as sepparate stomps would be, but do their job. It also has a nice EQ (Bass, Middle, Treble and Presence) and a Chromatic Tuner.

Jackson Kelly JS32T

Jackson Kelly JS32T

Instructor Todd Simpson reviews his latest guitar.

After playing this guitar for a while I can comfortably say the following. Avoid this guitar like the plague!

I was drawn in by its flashy good looks and brand name and incredible price! $200 U.S. I first saw it in Guitar Center here in Atlanta and thought it was a pricing mistake, but no! It was really that cheap! I bought it without even touching it. I got it home and plugged it in and that's where things started to go wrong. I plugged it in to my rig expecting hot, searing, Jackson Monster Tone! Sadly, I got limp, weak, buzzy, outright lame tone. The pickups in this thing are just crap. Keep reading

Boss MT-2

Boss MT-2 Mini Review

Time to review a classic among distortion stomps, BOSS MT-2 has been around for decades providing a distinctive sound which is a standard for many heavy/thrash bands. GMC Mini Reviews are short articles about your favourite gear, easy to write, fast to read. Share your opinion on any piece of gear you own with us!

Twist's review of the Zoom G2.1u Multi FX!!!

Zoom G2.1u

When I was getting serious about playing guitar, I was on the lookout for a nice (and affordable) multieffect device. I came across a lot of different brands and a price range from 50 Euros to 1000 and more. Then the local guitar shop owner showed me the Zoom G2 family. And for about 200 Euro (it's much cheaper by now, in fact there is a successor, the Zoom G2.1Nu) I got a versatile multi effect with usb recording options and a decent delay of under 5ms when switching between effect presets. (More....)

Learn more about the Electric Guitar.

Learn what all the Parts of the Guitar are called!!!!

Thinking about starting to RECORD????

Want to know more about your Floyd Rose Tremolo System????

Ever wonder about the best way of Miking up your equipment for Recording???

Interested in learning more about Sound Modeling????

BC Rich

ESP Guitars

Jackson Guitars

Schecter Guitar Research

Ibanez

Gibson.

Fender.

Boss.

D'Addario.

Epiphone.

Korg.

Marshall.

Paul Reed Smith.

Parker.

Randall Amplification.

Floyd Rose.

* Add to an existing gear article!!!
* Just bought a new Guitar, Amp or FX Unit?? Write a review of it!!!
* Share your opinions of manufacturers Old and New!!!



If you need help then don't hesitate to ask me, Sensible Jones for any help/advice I can give you!!!