Owen Vickers

My New Gear Month

I’ve had one of those months where new stuff seems to keep turning up.  Don’t you love those months?  [superemotions file=”icon_lol.gif” title=”Laughing Out Loud”]

It started with the purchase of a new (to me) Ibanez JS1200

I bought this guitar off a friend of mine who was selling a few things from his collection.  I played this guitar back in 2006, and instantly fell in love with it!  It’s still as good as I remember it being.  Sounds and plays amazingly well.

I also got a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power ISO-5 power supply for my pedals.  The ISO-5 has five outputs, with three being 9V, one being 18V and the other being a choice between a 9V or a 12V.  I needed the 12V for my T.C. Electronic Nova Drive, as I was running a separate power adaptor for that, and it was just getting messy!  The 9V outputs are each 100mA, so you can safely chain a few pedals off that (as long as they don’t get too noisy).

Next up was a Pedaltrain JR-SC and Lava Solder-Free Pedal Board Kit, both of which I got from Custom Audio Boutique.

Sorry about the photo, I’m technologically behind the times with cellphone cameras (and no, I won’t get an iPhone [superemotions file=”icon_razz.gif” title=”Razzberry”]).

The Pedaltrain JR is a great piece of kit.  Small enough to be manageable and big enough to hold all the pedals I need.  That’s pedals I need, not pedals I want…  That would require a much bigger board, but sometimes you have to think more rationally; 6 overdrives, a delay, a phase, a vibe, a booster, a chorus and a tuner are much more than I really needed (yes, I was running all that on my board in the past [superemotions file=”icon_redface.gif” title=”Redfaced / Embarassed”]).

The Lava cabling kit is a fantastic thing as well.  You can make patch cables of any length (you get 10′ of cable to cut up as required), and the kit I got had 10 right angle connectors.  The connectors are very small, so getting pedals in nice and close to each other is a breeze.

Out of interest, my current effects setup is (top left to bottom right): Love Pedal Pickle Vibe, MXR EVH Phase 90, Korg DT-10 tuner, G2D Custom Overdrive, Vox Time Machine, Cusack Screamer and T.C. Electronic Nova Drive (the signal chain goes: tuner > Nova Drive > Cusack > G2D > phase > vibe > delay, all into the front of the amp).  I’m pretty happy with this setup, but I really would like a T.C. Electronic Polytune, if I could find one in this country.  Not sure I need the vibe and the phaser, as they are similar, but it can’t hurt to have options.

My other recent acquisition is a Mesa Boogie Recto 2×12 cabinet with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers.

What a cabinet this is!  I’ve heard a lot of people rave about these cabs over the years, and now I can understand why they do.  It’s a great match for the JSX, I think.

The other thing that I tried recently (on a visit to Custom Audio Boutique) that has me seriously looking under the sofa for money is a Splawn Quick Rod amp.  It took about 2 seconds of  playing through it to realise that it has everything in it that is the sound in my head, so imagine how great it was after playing it for 15 minutes [superemotions file=”icon_wink.gif” title=”Wink”]  But that’s one to be saved up for methinks!