Reviews

Valco Pickups

2012-04-21T02:06:03Z

The vintage Valco humbucker sized single coil pickups are awesome.

They posess and earthy organic crunchieness that produces a smooth and pleasant roughness of tone that is clear and jangly,non fatigueing, and compelling to listen too. Here's a link to the patent documentation if you want to try to make one. Just beautiful.

ZT Amplifiers Lunchbox 2

2009-07-10T07:34:23Z

Just the facts:

This amp is small... but big. By that I mean it is freakin loud like you wouldn't believe. The little 5 inch speaker is tough and you can crank this baby up loud enough to play with a drummer. That said, I wouldn't recommend that unless you use an extension speaker, which the Lunchbox accommodates easily with an extension speaker jack. It is a solid state amp but the designers were mindful of what guitarist want and need in an amp and you can adjust the gain staging to suit almost any situation. I myself won't go anywhere without a good clean boost pedal and an over the top distortion pedal and this is true even when using my Mesa Boogie MKIV (which has three channels of glorious tube overdrive available). I'm just saying, if your a tone freak don't write this off just because its a solid state amp.

The benefits of portability and power far out weigh the negatives. Sometimes I want to evaluate what the pickups of a certain guitar sound like un adulterated. For that I've been relying on the Lunchbox straight up with no pedals. It's so convenient and simple to use with only four knobs I can easily set up baseline settings for doing comparisons with great tone and no fuss. I can move this amp around with ease and you might be surprised what having that kind of mobility does for you. Just pick it up and go. Plug it in where and when you want to play. It's actually very liberating.

Like I said earlier, it has an extension speaker out which I use with a single vintage alnico 12 inch speaker in an open back cab if I want to move some air. That combined with the closed back sound of the lunchbox and you have a really potent and loud tone generating machine. If you want to hear just the extension speaker by itself the Lunchbox has a switch to disable its internal speaker.

The lunch box has a reverb control that is not quite what you would expect. It's purpose is to adjust between a closed back cabinet sound and an open back cabinet sound. It takes a little getting use to but it is a usable control if a little subtle. Just don't go expecting lush reverb from it and you'll be alright. The tone control is also remarkably usable which is rare for a single tone control circuit. the tone control on the lunchbox seems operate interactively with the gain staging setting which is basically how you have the volume and gain settings adjusted relative to each other. If you have the gain staging set up fairly clean you can still get clear highs out of it even with the tone control set low. This is something to keep in mind when setting up the amp.

Skunk Werks SR-71

2009-05-15T07:44:39Z

This is the first commercial offering from Skunk Werks which is piloted by my friend Ron Legowik. He's been building guitar effects for years along with a host of other creative activities that qualify him as a true Renaissance Man. For now, it falls on me to unveil Rons take on Craig Anderton's Super Tone Control and Tube Sound Fuzz. Ron has built these in to a combined pedal that surpasses the sum of its parts. This was a custom order from me trying to recreate the sound of one of Rons earlier creations which was a violin shaped F-hole semi hollow Hoffner guitar. That guitar was stuffed to the brim with a number of Craig Anderton effects that had been modularized and fitted inside by Ron. It was a beast of a guitar with an amazing array of controls and knobs. I think it even had a contact mic on the bridge with its own volume knob. We managed to make a recording of the guitar with me playing it and Ron playing bass. Later I over-dubbed drums and vocals to make a song called Secret Lover Blues. You can get a listen to that song Here to give you an idea of what the Super Tone control is capable of. The Super Tone Control is especially dangerous when combined with fuzz and overdrive distortion so this will be something to keep an eye out for. This housing is some kind of hardened welded steel. When Ron realized it was too hard to stamp the lableing he just scraped it into the metal. What balls! Ron will build you a custom pedal like this or to your specifications. I know he has some really cool designs on his bench right now waiting to be put in a housing like this. If your interested just drop me a line and I'll pass your info on to him. I know his prices are better than most boutique builders.