What Rig are you enjoying lately?

[GAD]

I had a Peavey Bandit back in the '80s. Great little amp! I loaned it to the keyboard player in the band and never saw it again.

About 30 years ago I gave up guitar and sold off all my stuff. 10 Years later I got back into it and bought this because I saw the guitar hanging on the wall at a local music store:



Ibanez Artcore AFS75TD, Peavey Valveking VK112, and a Zoom GFX-8.

I had not had a tube amp since... Actually I'm not sure I'd ever owned a tube amp (though I'd borrowed and rented many). My main amp for years was a solid-state 100W Westbury that I used with Digitech programmable distortion and delay for all my '80s hair band needs:

That little Peavey amp was jaw-dropping for me because it had been SO long since I'd been in the room with real tube distortion. That little Peavey is responsible for an expensive tone quest that went on for years!

A while later I ditched the Zoom and the Valveking and got this. A Joe Satriani signature Peavey JSX:



That was 2008 or so and it was the first thing I ever bought from Sweetwater (via Ebay). I had no idea about Sweetwaters throwing candy in boxes at the time and when my daughter was there as I unboxed it she got very sad that I wouldn't let her eat the candy that some (perceived) random Ebay person had thrown in the box. She's 23 now and still reminds me about that.

That JSX was glorious, but in short order I also had a 1964 Fender Bassman in my quest for Brian Setzer tone, and I started building my own amps (Champ clone and Deluxe tone). Around this time I remembered why I hated 2x12 combos because that JSX weighed about 638 pounds. I ended up selling all the big amps and got an Axe-FX and never looked back. I've had the Ultra, the II, and now a III and really have no need for a big amp any more, which nothing to explain the collection of Guild amps I seem to have accumulated.

 

[GGJaguar]

I'm pretty much stuck on using my Quilter Superblock UK and Superblock US amps. They are so convenient that they've made me too lazy even to dig out a Princeton.

 

[Neal]

2004 Gretsch Country Gentleman through a 1973 Princeton Reverb. A mountain of twang.

 

[Walter Broes]

My rigs for the last 20-25 years have been pretty boring - or pretty consistent depending on how you look at it.
I have a bunch of guitars, but in practice my '62 X175 has been my main guitar since I got it somewhere around 1999. I used to plug it into a '68 (or 69?) Super Reverb until that got stolen. Never found a Super I liked as much as that one, though I still have one that hardly gets played anymore.

I did stay with twin 6L6 amps with 10" speakers, the last ten years or more clones of Fenders, because I can't afford 50's tweeds - and you'd have to be crazy to lug those around at the prices they go for.

My main "bigger" amp is a late 50's tweed bandmaster clone by Headstrong amps - modded with an old Super Reverb output transformer for a little more "oomph". It has one Celestion Gold 10" and two Eminence 1028K alnico 10's. Beautiful amp - best non-vintage amp I ever owned.
I also have a really nice 5F4 tweed Super clone, and a couple other Fender-type amps with 10's.

Main effects I've used forever are what I jokingly refer to as "the holy trinity of guitar effects" : spring reverb, tremolo, and echo.
I'm a big Bo Diddley and Lonnie Mack fan, so I usually have some kind of faux-magnatone pitch vibrato pedal on my board too.
I have a couple of nice tube/spring outboard reverbs, but lately I've been using a "Surfybear compact" mosfet-driven spring tank because it's handy and sounds almost as good as the tube tanks. And I usually have some kind of boost pedal on my board or an overdrive set for a slightly dirty boost for the couple of tunes that need it.

My most recent acquisitions have been slightly atypical for me - a Filtertron Gretsch and a clone of a 6G3 brown Fender Deluxe. I've been playing with my old buddy Jason Ringenberg again the last couple of years, and while it's still very rootsy by most standards, compared to what I usually do it's more "rock" and a good deal more distorted.

I tried a tele through a distortion pedal for a while, and that certainly works, I,ve been playing hollowbodies for so long doing a whole gig on a plank feels weird now, and I kind of hate having a distortion pedal on all the time. So...enter the brown Deluxe - Fender's "Baby Marshall" - it's supposedly what Billy Gibbons used for the first three ZZ top albums, and I believe it!

And while I've played Rockabilly-related music all my life, I've never liked Filtertron Gretsches too much for that, even though a lot of people think of them as the archetypal Rockabilly guitar. But...I've always thought a Filtertron/trestle braced Gretsch is a KILLER rock guitar - and my new acquisition certainly works great for my "rock" needs - with the Deluxe, I get all the crunch, overdrive and controlled feedback I need - without overdrive/distortion pedals! and the smaller/heavily braced body and bright humbuckers work great - my bigger, fully hollow and slightly microphonic Guilds are a bit of a headache for crunchier sounds.

If you made it this far - sorry for the long-winded post!

 

[James Hart]

These have been getting most my time lately... stepping out of my comfort zone and trying to actually get a handle on more guitar hero type guitar playing. I've always been a bassist that was able to hang on rhythm guitar in most settings.

 

[krysh]

For guitar here my 1971 M-75C with my custom lender amp Mr. KRYSH 30 (4x 12AX7 + 4x6V6) on top of my Kammler Mono-Kai Custom cab with a 12“ Alnico Cream:

 

[krysh]

And for bass my Lefay Rob RHT custom or my heavily modded 1984 Pilot with my MESA D-180 on my custom Kammler „The Base“ with a reconed EV 15-L pro:

 

[tonepoet]

KRYSH 30 (4x 12AX7 + 4x6V6)

Interesting. You don't hear of many 4x6V6 amps out there. Off the top of my head I can only think of the Crate Stealth GT-50 designed by Lee Jackson from the 1990s, I think. I have one in storage that I'll get out and troubleshoot one of these days. There's a connection in there (probably a cold solder joint) that opens after the amp has warmed up for 20 minutes or so and the amp goes silent. Let it cool off and it will do the same thing again. I've experienced this with like three different models of Crate amps.

I also see a Sennheiser e906 microphone in your photo. Great mics for recording guitar!


(Photos from internet. Mine is in storage.)

 

[krysh]

Interesting. You don't hear of many 4x6V6 amps out there. Off the top of my head I can only think of the Crate Stealth GT-50 designed by Lee Jackson from the 1990s, I think. I have one in storage that I'll get out and troubleshoot one of these days. There's a connection in there (probably a cold solder joint) that opens after the amp has warmed up for 20 minutes or so and the amp goes silent. Let it cool off and it will do the same thing again. I've experienced this with like three different models of Crate amps.

I also see a Sennheiser e906 microphone in your photo. Great mics for recording guitar!


(Photos from internet. Mine is in storage.)

Yep, my Lender Mr. krysh 30 is something like a tweed Dumble thing. Love it.

 

[Rocky]

Interesting. You don't hear of many 4x6V6 amps out there. Off the top of my head I can only think of the Crate Stealth GT-50 designed by Lee Jackson from the 1990s, I think.

It's simpler to do 2x6L6GC for the same output. Even the filament requirements are identical. I think there was a Vox/Tony Bruno collaboration that had 4x6V6 as well, and of course the infamous Jim Kelley amps. Mark Baier I think makes (made?) a "Double Deluxe" which was a 5E3 with twice the output tubes, and there are kit versions from other folks. Unlike a real 5E3, they use fixed bias. I believe there were some prototype Marshalls that used that configuration as well.

 

[Maguchi]

I like some of the Peavey guitars from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s.

^^^Ditto. Lately I been playing a late '90s early 2000s Peavey Firenza P90 through a 2003 Peavey Delta Blues tube amp with a 15" speaker and built in tremelo and reverb.

 

[krysh]

The Carr Slant is also a 4x 6V6 amp as well as some Fuchs ODS that are no longer in production.

 

[James Hart]

all the Peavey love... here is an old rig of mine. Classic 400 with 8x KT88 power section

used it with an Accugroove El Whappo briefly before it blew the 15", then picked up a pair of 1820 cabs (1x 18" + 2x10" in each). It sounded best with my beloved Bag End D12-B (still use that cab with a second one and a 4x KT88 Ashdown tube head)

 

[tonepoet]

Lately I been playing a late '90s early 2000s Peavey Firenza P90

Maguchi, I've got your cousin here. They are really well made USA guitars. I like the headstock design that gave straight string pull at the nut. Also the necks are a touch wider than a Strat to make pull-offs on the high E better (IMHO) and the truss rod adjustment at the base of the neck makes for quick neck relief adjustments.

 

[tonepoet]

here is an old rig of mine. Classic 400 with 8x KT88 power section

Whoa... 8xKT88 !!! That's a Powerhouse !!

 

[tonepoet]

It's simpler to do 2x6L6GC for the same output.

Rocky, I had gotten into doing mods on my first Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue back in the late 1990s (alas, lost in a fire) and one of the mods was to sort of make it into a mini-Twin by replacing the 12" speaker with two 10" speakers. Then replacing the tube voltage rectifier with a solid state plug-in, doing an adjustment to the negative bias voltage (to -47v if I recall correctly) and putting in a pair of 6L6gc tubes. I liked the results.

There used to be a guy on eBay that made different baffle boards for amps, complete with grill cloth. You just needed to take your Fender badge off the old baffle board and put it on the new 2x10.

 

[Rocky]

Rocky, I had gotten into doing mods on my first Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue back in the late 1990s (alas, lost in a fire) and one of the mods was to sort of make it into a mini-Twin by replacing the 12" speaker with two 10" speakers. Then replacing the tube voltage rectifier with a solid state plug-in, doing an adjustment to the negative bias voltage (to -47v if I recall correctly) and putting in a pair of 6L6gc tubes. I liked the results.

There used to be a guy on eBay that made different baffle boards for amps, complete with grill cloth. You just needed to take your Fender badge off the old baffle board and put it on the new 2x10.

People have done that before, but there is the risk of overtaxing the 6.3V filament winding with the 6L6GC. It's worse if you do something like a KT66 or 6550, which draw even more current. The real biggest difference (other than the speakers) is that the preamp starts to break up earlier in relation to the power tubes, compared to stock, because the 6L6 is a less sensitive tube. You could change the value of the tail resistor so that it scales more appropriately.

Weber and Mojo will make replacement baffleboards as well.

 

[Maguchi]

Maguchi, I've got your cousin here. They are really well made USA guitars. I like the headstock design that gave straight string pull at the nut. Also the necks are a touch wider than a Strat to make pull-offs on the high E better (IMHO) and the truss rod adjustment at the base of the neck makes for quick neck relief adjustments.

Nice! Yeah Peavey Firenzas are well made, great sounding guitars. Basic, but in a good way. A slab a mahogany, a maple neck with rosewood fretboard, 2 knobs, 2 pickups and a switch. Who could ask for more?

 

[tonepoet]

More Peavey love... Here's the two humbucker version of the Firenza called the Firenza AX. The stock pickups were a little too hot for me. I tried a few combinations and ended up with a DiMarzio DP156 "Humbucker From Hell" in the neck and a DiMarzio DP223 PAF in the bridge. On this AX model Schaller locking tuners were stock.

They also had a 5-way switch that gave coil-cut options. I wired mine back to a 3-way switch and put in a push-pull pot to coil cut.

The first photo is after the pickup change when it was a gorgeous transparent red. The second photo is after a fire in the building where I was rehearsing. I had 3 guitars in a stand and after the firefighters chain-sawed through the walls, they took my 3 guitars outside and leaned them up against a tree, saving them. Very cool. All 3 still function. The last photo shows it as cleaned up as I could get it. It wears its roof tar or whatever it is proudly.



Peavey Patriot, Peavey Firenza AX and Guild S-280 saved by the firefighters

 

[tonepoet]

Peavey love for the bass players.

This is a 1991 Peavey Unity bass. Neck-through construction. Passive pickups. Inexpensive eBay find a few years back.