Delgado Guitars Website: http://www.delgadoguitars.com
It may sound strange, but one of my favorite parts of the Amp Expo was meeting Manuel Delgado, a 3rd generation, old world luthier. The title? That basically means that guitar building has been in his family for a long time, and he doesn’t take shortcuts.
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I took over 200 pictures at the show and ‘narrowed’ it down to just over 150 of the best. I got shots of at least 95% of amps and guitars at the show and have labeled them by builder/company.
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You’ve seen the ads, you’ve read the reviews, you’ve probably even wondered “are they really that good?”. Regardless of how you answer that question in your own mind, the fact is that you can never really know what’s so special about a boutique amp until you play it.
If you live in the south-eastern US, you can do exactly that on Saturday August 22nd and Sunday August 23rd in Nashville, TN. For the past several years, tone-seekers on the East and West coast have flocked to the Amp Shows in LA and NY. And now this one-of-a-kind event will happen again in Nashville.
If you’ve never been to an amp show, it is quite an experience. Unlike NAMM (from what I’m told), there are no decibel police telling you to turn your volume down. Quite the contrary. You may wish that guy who just learned that Van Halen song, playing through an amp louder than God’s would turn down, but you’ll be out of luck. Fortunately all you have to do is crank up whatever amp you’re playing through until you can’t hear him.
Here’s how it works. Creation Audio Labs (the hosts of the Nashville expo), has rented out an entire hotel for the event. Each amp or guitar or pedal company is assigned a room where they set up their goods and wait for you and everyone else to try it out and ask questions.
If you go, be prepared to spend some time watching and listening. There’s far too many people to spend your whole afternoon playing because everyone wants a chance to play the amp they’ve always wondered about, so you’ll have to wait your turn. However, if you just focus on relaxing, having a good time, and soaking it all in, it’s an experience like no other.
Two short clips showing off two new pedals from aNaLoG.MaN. One is a new delay pedal, the other is an ‘amp in a pedal’ that plugs right into a speaker. The sound quality in the video is not an accurate representation of the pedal because it was shot with a DSLR, not a camcorder.
I took my camera along to the NY Amp Show this weekend, and shot a few pictures. Wish I had taken more interesting shots, but I’ve never claimed to be a photographer 
There are some video clips too, but I’ve got some editing to do before posting them.
The Holy Fire is a different kind of overdrive/distortion pedal. As someone who spent a lot of time modifying and studying traditional clipping circuits in college, I was instantly intrigued by the Holy Fire when I met up with Sarge from Creation Audio Labs at the Great American Guitar Show back in November.
I’ll talk about it more in the video, but here’s the things I like about the Holy Fire:
I’m on the close to the end of a steep path leading from a huge Christmas dinner to my bed right now, but I wanted to post a quick message here and wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy hanukkah, and in general Happy Holidays to you wherever you are around the world.
Thanks for the great feedback on the pedal shooout and comparinator which are really the only big things I’ve done on this site this year. In the next year, I hope to be expanding the amount of pedals in the Comparinator, but I’ve got some life changes coming soon that I’ll be focusing on in the near future. I’ve detailed that over at StevieSnacks here: http://www.steviesnacks.com/blog/2008/12/further-on-up-the-road/
Probably the next thing you’ll see on here is a review/demo of two pedals I’ve been playing with for a few days. Both made by the wizards at Creation Audio Labs (www.creationaudiolabs.com). Aside from being a tone junkie like many of you, I’ve also got a barely used degree in Electrical Engineering, which was earned while learning more about tube amps and effects pedals online than about fourier transforms in my classes.
Anywho, I say that to say that I’m a engineer at heart and I love to see people doing new stuff. I like old pedals as much as anyone, but I am a big fan of seeing people do things in a new way, and that’s what I’ll be talking about with these pedals. I ran into Sarge from Creation Audio Labs at the guitar show in Valley Forge a few weeks back and managed to steal about 20 minutes of his time having him explain what makes his pedals different and it left this engineer very impressed. I’m liking these pedals more and more as I use them and I’ll be explaining why in my demos.
That’s all for now, and if anyone gets any new gear as a gift that you like, post it in the comments below.
Rock on
As promised, there are now 3 new pedals added to the Comparinator, compliments of Analog Man. The 3 pedals he sent to me are:
For those of you not familiar with Analog Man, first of all, where have you been for the past 10 years? It’s hard for me to pinpoint when I first heard about him, but I’m pretty sure it was back in my days at Penn State, browsing the effects and amp forums instead of studying for class.
Analog Man is kind of like the old BASF commercial with a twist. They do make their own pedals, but they also makes a lot of the pedals you buy, better. I can say with 100% honesty that I noticed a difference immediately between the BD-2 and the SD-1 that were sent to me, compared to the original pedals.
A stock SD-1 sounded so bad to me that I didn’t even include it in the shootout. The bass was way too thin and the resultant sound was very nasal. The AnalogMan modded SD-1 restored that low end giving it a much fuller sound. It’s still not my favorite pedal but a vast improvement over the stock SD-1.
Likewise a stock Boss Blues Driver was too brittle on the high-end for my tastes, and the AnalogMan modded BD-2 tamed that brittleness quite nicely. When you get the distortion at it’s highest, the midrange tends to get lost a bit, but on the Partial Gain settings in my tests, it was downright pleasant.
I had never played a TS9DX before, and I don’t know what the stock version sounds like but the modded version sounds great. The Mode switch seems to add in levels of low-end making the pedal fatter and fatter. Of course you lose a little bit of articulation when you’ve got a really thick tone, but having 4 different modes allows you to pick the setting that suits your fancy. I like this pedal a lot.
Check out all 3 of them in the Comparinator.
Just got 3 pedals in the mail today straight from AnalogMan, a modded Boss Blues Driver, Boss SD-1 and Ibanez TS9DX. All of these pedals sound great and I’ll be adding them to the comparinator after I get the samples recorded this week. Make sure you add your email address to the subscription list to find out when the new recordings are ready.
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