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AnalogMan: Mini Bi-Comp

A.Y.A. RossComp

Boss: Dimension C

Damage Control: Timeline

Demeter: Fuzzulator, Compulator

Dytone: Booster F

Ernie Ball: Volume Jr

Eventide: TimeFactor

Fulltone: OCD, Clyde Deluxe, OctaFuzz

Goodrich: L-120 Volume

Keeley Electronics: Compressor, Katana, TS-808, Boss DD-3, Boss DS-1, Boss BD-2, TR-2

Tech-21 NYC Sans Amp: Midi Mouse, Bass DI, Tri AC, Classic, CompTORTION

TC Electronic: G-Major, G-Force, SCF

Vox: Satchurator

Xotic FX: RC Boost, AC Boost, BB Pre, AC Plus, BB Plus, X-Blend

Xotic FX AC Booster

Manufacturer: Xotic FX www.xotic.us

Model: AC Booster

Version: 2007 (Led at the top of pedal)

MRSP: $210

Street Price: $186

Similar Products: Ibanez TS-808, TS-9; Cusack Screamer, and alike.

Ease of Use: 8

User Manual: N/A

Company Specs:

Dimensions : 4.39" x 2.38" x 1.98" (112mm X 60mm X 50mm)

Weight: 0.6 lbs. (280g)

True Bypass Switching
Power Consumption: 9VDC/6mA

Battery Type: 9VDC (006P) x 1

AC Adapter (Optional): 9VDC, Negative Tips (Regulated is Best)

Input Impedance: 500k ohm (min)

Output Impedance: 10k ohm

Control knobs: Volume, Gain, Bass, Treble

Routing (Chain Placement):Overdrive Distortion.

Bypass: True Hardwire

Famous users: Scott Henderson, Allen Hinds, Michael Thompson, among many.

Grades

Tone: 9 Dynamics: 9

Adaptability: 8 Bypass Tone: 9

Build: 9 Aesthetics: 9

User Friendliness: 9 Headroom: 9

Cache: 9 Noise Floor: 9

Total: 89/100

Sound Quality: This is one of the best overdrive boxes on the market if you have not checked it out yet, you owe it to yourself to do so. The sound of this OD is slightly compressed, with a mild midrange scoop and cuts through the mix with ease. Controls are very sensitive and will take your tone from light brake-up to saturated distortion. The response is very tube like. The sound is aggressive enough for hard rock but not enough for metal. Good for all things in between. This pedal is way more open than the TS-808, it is not as nasally, and has a greater gain range. If you get a good quality amp and good cables you will be surprised at all the shades available not only from the pedal but from your volume control as well. One of my go to pedals for solos. This is a must have for any serious guitar player.

Customer Service: N/A

Re-sale value: 80% or better.

Soundbytes: The solo on “Mi Escudo” consists of the AC Booster through a clean channel amp. (Egnater M4 TD; TC Electronic G-major Delay, Reverb, Tube Works Mosvalve MV-962; Bogner Cubes; Royer 121; API 512c; Apogee Rosetta 200; Protools.)

Is It for You? If you are a traditionalist, and think the vintage TS-808 is the only way to fly this pedal might not be exactly what you’re looking for. However, if you like more modern type tones, and you are not crazy about the very pronounced mid scoop of the TS-808 and are a little weary about Ibanez quality control, the AC Booster might be exactly what you need. Check out Xotic’s website and look for the demo videos for this particular pedal. Find a store near you and try it out! This pedal is well worth the money.

Epiphone Wildkat overhaul.

I found this Wildkat Epiphone at Guitar Center, a store that I usually only get strings at, for $300 used.  It is in mint condition and when I tested it the action was incredibly high and strung with 13 gauge strings.  Not a players guitar for sure.  What I did find was a guitar with great potential for big tone and stunning looks.  It has P-90 pickups, something that was missing from my guitar lineup.  On the controls it has a Master volume, individual volume control for each pickup a shared tone control and a three way switch.  Most of which were already noisy when I got it.  The Gigsby vibrato combined with the tune-o-matic bridge is a recepie for disaster on this guitar.  The bridge is obviously a low quality specimen and it has very deep string grooves so they get stuck and don't let the vibrato function properly.  The tuners are standard gotoh tuners. The nut is a cheep plastic version of the gibson bone.  So all in all the only good thing about this guitar is the wood and maybe the pickups and vibrato.

In the next couple of months I will start to transform this instrument into a players guitar, and get it ready for recording.  I already ordered a tusq nut and a roller bridge replacement.  In the next couple of weeks, I will also buy all new electronics and replace the crackling pots and faulty switch. Later in the summer I will buy schaller locking tuners.  Once all the electronics, nut, bridge and tuners are in place I will do several tests recording with the guitar and evaluate the Gigsby and the pickups.  At which point I'll decide if either need replacement or modification.  

I'm very picky about what guitars I use to record with.  Intonation has to be as near to perfect as possible, using a strobe tuner.  All switches and pots have to be efficient and completely silent.  If there is a vibrato on the guitar it has to return to tune, and the arm cannot be wobbly as this gets transmitted into the amp as noise when you use the bar, rendering that take unusable no matter how good the performance was.

I will be keeping very good logs of the progress, including videos and sound samples before and after so you can appreciate the difference in the upgrades.

Dimarzio Area T Bridge & Seymour Duncan Jazz Neck

I have a G&L Asat Blues Boy that I bought about 9 months ago.  I got it without plugging it into an amp, because of how great it played and the sweet tone it had.  This is a chambered guitar and it has a beautiful flame maple top with binding. (No F Hole!!!! Sorry I hate the f hole on tele's.) Maple neck and rosewood fingerboard.  My other Asat is an all maple neck on swamp ash solidbody and it is amazingly punchy and the pickups translate that very well.  On the Blues Boy however, the stock pickups didn't cut it for me.  On the neck it came with a Seymour Duncan (SD) Seth Lover, and it was really muddy.  The bridge pup was G&L stock but it was piercing and lacked the dynamic response from the other Asat.  So after some research I decided to change them for a SD Jazz Neck and a Lindy Fralin Blues Special Bridge.  The SD hit the spot right away. It was a lot brighter than the Seth Lover and it cuts through better. The Lindy Fralin lacked a lot of output and was not snappy enough.  

So the search was on to find a great tele bridge pickup that would be better than the Lindy.  Not an easy feat.  Lindy hand builds all of it's pickups and the tone and sound are very true to the vintage originals it mimics.  One choice was to send the Lindy to get it re-wound to get rid of some of the brightness and increase the output.  Another option I was considering was SD Jerry Donahue Tele  Lead APTL-3JD, which really caught my eye.  Also looked at Suhr, of which I'm a big fan of his build quality.  In the end after reading as many reviews as I could on each pickup, I went with the Dimarzio Area T.  I was a little afraid that it wouldn't match well with the humbucker because of the stated DC resistance at 7.5 which was 0.23 less than the SD Jazz. I'm also skeptical about matching different pickup brands on the same guitar.    

The Area T Brigde is now on my guitar and I still can't believe how dynamic, snappy and how much growl it has.  Did I mention it's a humbucker. A feature that originally pushed me away to make the Lindy my first choice as a replacement.  I wanted "the" tele sound out of that bridge pickup.  You know the snap, the punch, notes jumping out of your amp.  The Lindy sounded great, but didn't cut it for this guitar.  The wood on this guitar is not as bright sounding as my other Tele.  Add to that the chambered body and the rosewood neck and you get a very sweet, round, and somewhat mellow sounding guitar.  So the Lindy was missing the edge and output that I was looking for.  The tone was there, but the punch was not all there.  The SD Jazz completely out powered it.  If I was playing through a distorted amp and set the OD level with the SD Jazz Neck, the tone would be clean when I switched down to the Fralin.  The Area T hit the spot.  

The Area T is a medium output, humbucking bridge replacement for the telecaster type guitars.

It has the character and footprint of a single coil but there is no hum!  It has the brightness that is usually characteristic of these kinds of pickups, but it is not piercing.  It has all the snap and growl that you might be looking for from a Tele.  It is very responsive and reacts impressively well to your playing dynamics.  To my ears, it is just what this guitar needed, and now there won't be that much difference in response when I use the other Tele(ASAT).  I have a great tone control on this guitar, it is a std CTS audio taper pot and it has an RS Guitarworks Jensen paper in oil tone capacitor rated at .047uf.  So I get all the shades of tone that I want, and can really shape the sound of this pickup with it.  I highly recommend this pickup to anyone who is searching for a Tele replacement.  It is much louder than the Fralin which was rated at the same DC resistance.  

Great Amp vs. Great Guitar.

When you start out on the great venture that is the electric guitar.  There are so many erroneous beliefs about what gear one should buy.  The first thing people dream of is the perfect instrument, the guitar that will get you from just a beginner to a seasoned pro.  We somehow believe that the instrument will truly make us a better player over night.  Going from your $150 guitar to a $3499 will most likely only change the feel of the instrument and you might realize that in some cases you do get what you pay for.  As far as sound is concerned, there will not be much of a difference if you are still playing through that $40 solid state amp that you bought at Walmart.  So if you have a big budget for a new instrument and you have not yet bought yourself a good tube amp, you are essentially wasting your money, if you spend all your resources on just the guitar.  In the world today there are more types of tube amps available than ever before and they are as affordable as they have ever been.  So do your research and find yourself a good tube amp.  If your spending under $500 on your amp, you might have to look harder to find the right amp for your needs.  Look on craigs list and e-bay for great deals.  Some online stores have good prices on new and used tube amps.   Look for a future post with some great online stores.

One of the biggest misconceptions about amplifiers is: the bigger the better.  This is not true at all.  If you want to get good tone out of a tube amp you need to run your tubes hot, not necessarily full blast but at least 30% - 40% of the max output.  In most amps that translates to 9 to 10 o'clock.  That would get you started on a good clean sound, assuming we're talking about a single channel amp.  A 15 watt tube amp sounds much louder than a 15 watt solid state amp.  So don't be mislead by your budget amp's output classification.  Don't go out there and buy yourself a 100 watt all tube head w/ full stack cabs, and expect to get the monster tone you have been looking for, with out getting evicted or arrested for public disturbance. Do yourself a favor and buy a good 15 - 40 watt tube amp, and avoid homelessness and the slammer.  You will be a lot happier and your beginner guitar will sound many times better. The boutique axe you have been saving for with blood donations will shine as it should.  With the availability of PAs in most of the venues you will ever play, 15 - 20 watts is really all you need.  You will get a monster tone out of the amp and the sound man will also be very happy with your output level.  I have never had a sound engineer ask me to turn down my 20w amp. On the other hand I had an engineer ask me to turn down my 50 watt amp through a borrowed 4x12 because I was bleeding into his other mic's and mudding up his mix.  The last thing you want is to get the sound man angry... lest he smite you with his "you suck" knob on the mixing board.  So if you're in the market for a new instrument consider this: Your instrument doesn't only consist of the guitar alone.  It is the combination of your fingers, the pick or picking technique, the guitar, cable, fx, and amp. If your record a lot add a mic, mic pre, eq, compressor, converters, and DAW to the equation.  The biggest improvement to your sound could be as simple as getting guitar lessons.  There is no substitute for great musicianship.  So if you are about to shell out $1000 on an instrument and you are still playing through that crappy amp... spend $800 on the amp, $100 on a good 10 ft. cable and $100 on new tuners, nut and a setup.  Save up for the guitar that you really want.  You can find a decent guitar for $1000 but you will find a killer amp for $800 or less.  (Last week I found a 1967 bassman amp for $750, didn't buy it.) My Fender Deluxe Reverb RI cost me $6oo.  Used.  So be diligent and patient.

As always feel free to ask for pointers on what and where to by your next piece of gear.

Side note:

There are some upgrades you could do to your beginner instrument that would greatly improve it.  Like changing the plastic nut to a graphtech nut, or even a good corina nut.  Or changing the tuners, for better quality tuners or even locking tuners, this will help you stay in tune.  The more obvious upgrade would be to get your instrument professionally set up.  Most new instruments are not properly set up, so if you are getting a new instrument ask the store if they offer a free setup when you buy it. Pickup hight is important so play around with it until you find the sweet spot. Balance the pickup's output with each other. This will give you a better balance when going from your front (neck) pickup to your back (bridge) pickup.  To do this accurately find a console or a mixer with a meter and match the output on each pickup. Don't change your pickups until you have played your guitar through a good amp for a while.  With pickups, more output is not always better.  Low to medium output pickups have a greater dynamic range compared to higher output pickups.  You first need to determine what sound you are looking for and then research how people have achieved that sound.  Once you attain that knowledge, get creative and find your own sound. 

Glad I could make it...

Just wanted to say hi to everyone out there.  I will be posting reviews of guitars, guitar pedals, amplifiers, effect processors, pickups, picks, pro audio equipment... everything and anything that pertains to music, and guitar the performance and recording of it.  Let me know if you have any requests or questions on gear.  You can find me on myspace/DanielAndresAguilar or Facebook daguilar@hotmail.com 

Blessings 

Daniel Aguilar