LP-295

I've never owned a piece of art before. The Gibson LP-295...one of the guitar of the month series last year (April 08). Modeled after the famous ES-295 it shares the same florentine cutaway, trapezoid inlays, and floral pickguard, but the rest is pure les paul. Mahogany body with maple top, mahogany neck with rosewood board, 50's rounded neck profile, chambered body with Gibson 57s in the neck and bridge, and a bigsby (never thought I would...).

I sold my Suhr Classic to cover this, so I'm still a one guitar guy (just can't bring myself to keep 2 guitars). Nothing wrong with the Classic (or the Classic before) but I just wanted something more, something thicker in the midrange, something more aggressive. And truthfully I'm done trying to capture the John Mayer tone realizing that its WAY more then the gear. That's a harsh lesson when you get pretty close to that tone and then get all puffed up and think you can play the intro to Gravity..."come on, Gravity...I can play that, its an easy, slow sappy song"...uh, I dare you to try it...just the 1st measure alone and put the same feel into that bend that he does. It will force you to question everything you thought you ever were...destroyed by a single note bend.

The only change I will make to this is the pickups. The 57s have a great crunch to them but I've heard this guitar with Suhr SSVs and the lower output humbuckers make all the difference. Plus the SSVs are 4 conductor so I can wire the middle position on the 3 way to split the coils and run the two inside coils in parallel. Should have that completed this week, more to come...

M13 v1.07 update

Ahh, the beauty of digital effects...free updates! I updated to firmware v1.07 about a month ago. Details from the L6 forum...

The 1.07 update fixes the following in the M13:

A new Tempo BPM setting has been added to the Setup menus. This setting is saved per Scene. (this is huge, its so nice to dial in or have the BPM as reference. Now if they would only make the text bigger...)

The Distortion/Comp model Defaults have been releveled for a more consistent volume experience when auditioning models.

FX OFF has been added as an FX Loop parameter in the Setup menus. This setting is saved per Scene. (I don't have a use for this but its a cool option)

Also in the Setup menus, all of the following settings are Scene-specific: Gate/FX Loop/True-DSP Bypass/Tempo/Expression Pedals. (also huge. before the noise gate was a global menu setting which sucked so it forced you to use the noise gate patch instead. waste of a bank. now its in the menu as a scene specific effect. with the muff and boost engaged you will need a noise gate..)

The Octo 'crackles' issue has been fixed. (never had this issue)

Tap Tempo has been tweaked to average three taps as per DL4 (when more than 2 taps are tapped). (ahh thank you, much easier to use now)

FX are no longer bypassed after entering/exiting Tuner mode.

True Bypass feedback issue has been fixed: switching FX off in True Bypass mode clears any regenerating Delays or Reverbs. (not running true bypass so doesn't matter to me)
Looper feature: hitting Reverse from Record/Overdub immediately stops recording and begins reverse playback of the loop.

The update takes about a minute. Then another 30 sec to restore your scenes if you decided to backup before the update. Most of these updates I could have lived without, you don't really notice them...well except the tap tempo. And now I can replace the noise gate patch on my big muff scene with a volume pedal since the noise gate can be set in the menu now. Big muff volume swell into the tape echo into the 63' spring reverb, its a beautiful thing.

My new pedalboard! Just kidding, but I could imagine having 2 M13's. One into the front of the amp and the 2nd one in the loop. It really would be that easy. The drive tones are good enough to stand on their own. Add the exp pedal for some real-time gain and eq control...yeah, its totally possible. Honestly if I sold my pedals I would have enough to buy 3 more M13's :) makes you realize how much $ you've invested in a single pedal. ehh, no I'm not going to do it...but it could work...

twelve stones

For starters, it's scary to Google something and have your own blog come up as a result. I guess I better get back to work, but before I go into the long rambling posts about gear I need to make my little pile of stones here by the river before I forget (see Joshua 3-4). Thanks Alex!

Now onto the gear...

watch this video...

Go here and download http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=45834057

John Mayer's recording session of "In Repair".

Reasons why this video is the best:

1) It features John Mayer :) duh.
2) John uses the word "extemporaneous".
3) Shows how many pedals he owns. There are stacks of them.
4) Makes you wonder how big the apartment was that held all those pedals.
5) Will make you want a P.O.G.
6) Makes the "cow getting its throat slit" guitar face about 14:20 in.
7) Truly amazed at what can be created out of nothing in 12 short hours.

Have fun!

the Law is in there for a reason...

A good excerpt from Ray’s blog on Sunday…

“One of the people witnessing with us mentioned later the issue of the holy spirit convicting people, and Romans 2:14 which speaks about the law written on the hearts of men as their conscience, and therefore we do not need to take them through the law because they already know they are sinning and doing wrong."

Romans 7:7:"What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.'"All you have to do to see the reality of what Scripture is saying is ask an unsaved person if they think that they are a good person. They will almost always say, "I'm a very good person" (see Proverbs 20:6). This is because they are ignorant to God's perfect standard of righteousness. They measure themselves by their own very low moral standard, and come up clean in their own eyes. This is why they need the Law. It's like a mirror that simply reflects the truth.The Holy Spirit convicts of sin (which is transgression of the Law--see 1 John 3:4), righteousness (which is of the Law), and judgment (which is by the Law--see Romans 2:12, James 2:12). So, if you make the mistake of leaving out the Law, you rob the gospel of its power. You remove the bow from the pointed arrow. It leaves the gospel with no point. The sinner concludes, "Why do I need a Savior if I'm not a desperately wicked sinner?"

Excellent…just like Psalm 19:7 says “the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul”. Rarely will you ever hear of someone coming to Christ because they lost some intellectual battle with a Christian. Romans 2:14-15, the Law is written on the Gentile’s heart. Convict the conscious with the Law, the “mirror” as Ray said above. That is the only way that someone will see their need for a Savior.

Psalm 51

Biblegateway.com always has the "verse of the day" on their homepage. A few days ago it was Psalm 51:12.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Here is the verse in context.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=23&chapter=51&version=31

Psalm 51 needs to be like a daily prayer or something. Puts it into perspective for me anyway...

the early years...(part 1)

After reading one of Karl's posts where he mentions owning a BC Rich Warlock at that time I thought "hey, my 1st guitar was a BC Rich!". Ahhh, the metal years. So young, so drunk, so stupid :) great hair though. Yes I did have hair at one time. So as I was reminiscing about the "glory" years I had to laugh about the gear. What was considered great tone at the time was a shred guitar into a processor, marshall stack, or if you really had some cash you had a Mesa Boogie (Mesa was "boutique" back then, for a short time anyway). I never had cash so lots of used gear, trades, pawn shops, whatever. Let's see how far back I can remember. Finding pictures of some of this stuff wont be easy...




My 1st guitar was a BC Rich Ironbird. It was an NJ series similar to this one but with gold hardware instead of the black. I was probably 13 or 14 at the time. Armed with this guitar I purchased the tablature books for Metallica Kill em All and Master of Puppets. Then shortly after receiving all this great metal gear I was suspended from school (I got suspended A LOT), but it all worked out because within a week I was hacking thought The Four Horsemen and on my way to metal stardom.



My first guitar amp was a Fender M80 2x12 stereo chorus. Lets just say my parents were very generous at the time and floated the bill. Drive side was, eh, not bad. Chorus of course was standard equipment at the time and always on for every song. It even had the grey carpet like this one. They don't make em like this anymore.

but gain is king, and any true metalhead needs more gain then a Fender 2x12 can produce. So my very 1st pedal was the famous DOD American Metal pedal :) Still not metal enough but closer. You have to understand this was before the internet, so whatever my small town music store sold was my only option.

My 2nd pedal wasn't planned, I just happened upon it at a guitar show (yes, a guitar show came through my small little town) and yadda yadda yadda it was mine. The DOD Supra Distortion. This was pretty close to Megadeth tone in a box. Peace Sells, here I come. FYI - Megadeth was WAY harder to play then Metallica, so I didn't learn much.





My 2nd guitar was my dream guitar. Remember this advertisement??? Too funny...


Alex Skolnick was very high on my guitar idol list. After hearing "The New Order" I went out, bough the tab book, and spent about 20 minutes before I realized this is never going to happen. Maybe there was some magic mojo in that dyed white skunk stripe he had in his bangs. Well, if I can't play like him at least I can have the same guitar. So yadda yadda yadda (again) and I got one. The Ibanez 540s LTD.




Things are a bit fuzzy after that. My family moved to Arizona just before I turned 16. I remember coming to AZ without a guitar, just the Fender M80. After getting settled in AZ I remember working out a deal with my Mom on 2 new pieces of gear that I saw at a local guitar shop.



Ibanez Universe 7, on consignment by one of the instructors at the shop. I got a really good deal on this along with a Digitech RP-1



I wish I remembered these things enough to give them a honest review but I dont. The RP-1 had some killer distortions and I do remember spending more time programming then playing. Then things get a bit fuzzy again after that....(insert 3rd yadda yadda here) and the M80, Universe 7, and RP-1 were all sold and I basically stopped playing for a few years.

Hmm...well that was fun. I have to, uh, sort though that last yadda yadda to figure out where I picked up again....

the return to the darkside...

Another great example of not writting something off until you try it. I learned my lesson with the new Suhr...or at least I though I did. I was almost doomed to repeat it. I could have missed out on something great. Behold the new pedalboard and my new Line6 M13



Based on the larger format Line6 modeling pedals (MM4, DL4, etc.) the M13 is all those pedals in on plus more. Drive, delay, reverb, modulation, filters...all in there (plus a looper). I'm not sure I can describe all that it does but let me go over some of the reasons why you should buy one. The M13 is setup with 4 banks of 3 effects each. Each of the effects slots can be any one of the effects models included, with the ability to run 4 effects at once (one from each bank. The M13 has pedalboard "scenes". Up to 12 scenes can be saved. Basically each scene is a different pedalboard setup. So instead of tearing pedals out and re-patching in new ones each sunday I can just program what I want, in the order that I want. Reverb sounds good last in the chain but the Octo reverb sounds better feeding into delays instead of being last in the chain. So hey, either make a new scene or just program the banks accordingly. Pedalboard freedom :) And the best part. You can program where the effects loop comes in for each scene. If I have a scene with more drive and filter options plus a wah I can make the loop come in between bank 3 and 4, sending the 1st 3 to the front of the amp and the last bank to the amp's effects loop. Or if I want to patch in my analog drive pedals but want a bank on the M13 to have fuzz, compressor, wah, whatever...I can make the loop come in where it needs to be. So my chain right now is Wah -> M13 input -> M13 bank 1 -> M13 loop send (post bank 1) -> Death of a Vox -> Openhaus -> Amp input -> Amp loop send -> M13 loop return -> M13 banks 2 thru 4 -> M13 output -> Amp loop return.

So besides versatility, the real question...how does it sound? It sounds good enough to go buy one from GC for 30 days and try it out. You may be pleasantly surprised. At the bare minimum, its worth it for all the delay models and routing ability. Try it, like it, buy it, and send in your rebate form for the free expression pedal!