Decisions, decisions.

Well, I'm sat here surrounded by kit.

I've just dug most of my kit out, played it, and now can't decide what to use tomorrow.

First I tried the Bluesbuster, swapping valves around until I came back to my favourite for dirty tones - a 6CA7 output valve. 6V6GTs work best for clean, but this gives a warmer, fatter but very direct sounding drive, run at slightly lower gain and lower cathode voltage.

Adding my old Guyatone overdrive pedal pushed the sounds over into hard rock territory, but was a bit too gritty for some things. It worked well with the Heritage, but made me want to play the rythm parts too fast. The strat didn't really have the power to push it hard enough, and the tele didn't hit that tonal spot quite right either. Out with the Dean V, neck PU and it's singing, but with more control and less 'mad rocker' than the Heritage.

A quick swap round (having driven Chris from the room with the noise - she hates me fiddling about with overdriven guitars) and I've got the AXL amp + Korg processor running. The tones are much less direct here, but warmer, fatter and softer-edged. A little boxy, due to the 8" speaker, but without the really bright highs of the greenback in the bluesbuster. Again the Dean sounds great - sweet and fat. The heritage is a little too soft and fat on bridge and too bright with both. The Strat does better, but then I remember another old friend. Out comes the Washburn - the PUs on this are the Gibson 496/500T pairing, and the output is HUGE. This thing is an overdrive monster, pushing the normally gritty Korg patch into serious distortion.

Hmm, tempting.

I'm just not sure.

2 very black guitars could be too much, even for Nigel Tufnel.

It will probably be the Dean V, the Heritage Les Paul and the Strat as backup. May well put both amps in too, using the AXL/Korg for the jazz band and the BluesBuster + overdrive for the other slot.

Now to go clean some fingerboards and strings.


p.s. need to go finding some tunes on the net. Thanks, Meg, for the heads-up on the jazz band.