Roland Cubes are awesome. It's refreshing to hear gearheads remind us there are good sounds to be had if you learn to use what you can afford. Less expensive gear has gotten a lot better the last several years.
The cubes are great amps. There is a European jazz website whose #1 recommendation fo jazz amp is a Roland cube 60. Personally, I am still choked that my micro cube gave up this year after 20 years of use. Great amp when you live in an apartment.
When I started out, I jury-rigged an old valve radio as my guitar amp after removing the mouse nest from the speaker. Fifty years and many guitar amps later I'm still using it for recording
Dude, I’m rocking a Mustang Micro V1 as my practice amp at home. It’s good. Of course, I use an ‘82 JCM800 when we play out. All my guitars are cheap, and they really work for me. I do like coming into your shop and playing the expensive stuff, too😎
Haha that’s wild, I just completed putting together a solid state “oh-sh*t” amp rig. Running two solid state mini heads, a Quilter 101 mini reverb and a Bogner mini ecstasy head. Sounds great as a backup rig. I too saw this as a good exercise, as I keep coming back to my solid state practice amps I’ve had over the years…slowly deconstructing my tube-snob mentality. Solid state tech has come a long way and I agree with you, they feel closer to the real thing than a digital modeler. I can still feel the amps under my fingers.
Making the most out of what you have has always been a good idea, definitely time tested advice! I love those old Danelectro pedals, they were so great and I still use mine all the time.
I love the video of John Mayer playing "Gravity" with a bunch of kids using a cheap LP Jr. copy and a Fender practice amp. He sounds exactly like John Mayer. Shocking!
The Def Leppard clean tones were achieved with a Walkman looking amp called the Rockman 100 which was around $80 at that time. Samantha Fish spent $150 each for her cigar box and can guitars.
Las Vegas Guitar Trade Show this weekend all!!! If any of you Casino's are near the Vegas.. It's the first time we're having the event and we'd LOVE to see you all there. Wild Cat Guitars and some other really cool people will be there. Trying to beg you guys to show up Casino Guitars!!! Happy Music Playing.
My at home setup is a solid state Fender Frontman 15, a Boss TU2, an EHX MicroPOG, a modded an EHX LPB1, a Marshall RG1 Regenerator, and a Boss DD2 (in that order). With the right, small amount of grit on the overdrive channel and a very specific EQ setting, it sounds amazing with every guitar I own, but not the same with every guitar.
I've been using a Boss ME80 into a Roland 15X Cube with a 8" speaker. I made a little stand to tilt the amp up at me, like a monitor. I get pretty good tones, and I hear myself fine. Put a mic on the speaker, and I'm in the monitors and mains, and everyone else hears me. A lot to be said about traveling light.👍😎
I love the Cure and Robert Smith especially so much. When I was about 20 someone told me my rhythm guitar playing was like a cross between Robert Smith and Jaymz Hetfield and I leaned hard into that for a long time! Lol
The keyboard player in our band back in the '80s got a superb sound using an old amp that had failing valves/tubes. They added extra "texture" to his standard synth tones and sounded incredible. Unfortunately, all that disappeared when we fitted new ones! 😕
G'day Baxter & Jonathon, Thanks for another fun video, but don't knock the Boss pedal cases. I got my brother to buy a BSB-60 for me, from a national op-shop, a couple of months ago. It had been in the shop for so long, they knocked 25% off it just because he asked about it! LOL I've been building up my Boss collection to finish it off. Keep up the good work Andrew
I agree 100% back in the day when bands had limited funds and you had one guitar and one amp you worked it and worked it and knew it backwards and forward and for your sound using that ! I always said it’s not what a band can play that defines their sound it’s what they can’t play that defines their sound !!
I think I still have one of the Boss boards. I had the 3 and the 6th at one time. When my mom bought me my first new electric guitar, a Univox Strat style, I was in hog heaven. I didn’t know it was a cheap guitar, I was overjoyed I had a new guitar. Then she finally bought me an Earth amp. 6, 10” speakers in the cabinet and the head had multiple channels and built in distortion. I thought I had the greatest rig ever!
My slightly upgraded Bugera amp is "too dark/warm". My cheap Donner delay pedal makes great dying R2D2 noises on the lofi setting, while doing generic delays pretty well. I've Kiesels, Jacksons, US Strat, etc, but it's my slightly less expensive Double Jet & Tele getting all the love lately, just because I'm enjoying their retro-ish voice pups. Most of my gear is "nice", but those are keepers too.
The great thing about using nothing but Boss pedals is if they are lost, stolen, or fail (😂) you can find a replacement that sounds exactly the same at any guitar store!
I always buy the wrong gear. I don’t have enough money to keep up with the whims of the guitar community. Yes amp, no amp, yes amp, no amp; lots of effects, no wait, modeling! I should have just bought a nice acoustic years ago! I think a guitarist has two choices: to be the guitarist who can play anything, in which case you need all the gear, or, blaze a new trail, find your sound, and ignore trends. I’ve discovered in the past couple of years that I’m not talented enough to be that first type, which is discouraging, but now I’m trying to be that second type and just enjoy myself. Seems to have cured my GAS
I'm still making dad rock, jamband & stoner noises, but I'm glad I've gotten a looper & my Walrus amp in a box to do it with. I can't afford a bunch of nice classic combo amps - but I can afford a nice amp sim pedal. @#$%, the Joyo amp sim pedals are gold - for 29.00. GL.
@ I’m blessed to have a nice tube amp, a basement to enjoy it in, and a tolerant family! I’d be much more interested in modeling if I lived in an apartment again, but I don’t like using headphones
There are no good or bad tones, just tones. You the listener are what decides, is this pleasurable or repulsive ? Also our music preferences play a huge role in what we prefer . If your a Metallica fan a boogie might be your sonic choice. If your a Chet Atkins fan a Gretch might be your tone Narvana. Thats one of the reasons boomers dig vintage gear, its what so much of the music they love was recorded with.
Uh, well, I say if you hate your tone, try out some different gear! I suffered for decades with an intolerable facsimile of sound. There was a period when I found that a couple Lehle splitters allowed a blend of god-awful amp-like devices to blend together and almost fill in the blanks or cover up the weakness. Then I tried an amp with four big output tubes- it turns out that all the professionals were wrong about that fifteen Watt malarkey, not only was it NOT all that I would need, it sort of needed not to be in there weakening my tone. It turns out that the switching and blending and dancing devices work pretty well when they are connected up to some actual irl simulations of mighty rock and roll machines, it totally sounds above my pay grade. But do what suits you, nobody's lining up for tickets to my show.
I have a few cheap guitars, and most of my amps are cheap - knock offs, used, low end etc. Even my Marshalls are 1W and 5W My most "expensive" amp is a Fender Bassbeaker 007 Tweed.
Robert Smith is actually a good guitarist but downplays it big time. He was in siouxsie & the banshees after John McGeoch left and he had to play that stuff, he replicated it very well. Not easy
You guys danced around it, but I'm not sure it was ever said outright... I think intention and inspiration have everything to do with the sound... if you're making the best of what you got and making music because you need to get something out from inside of you that bad... it almost doesn't matter what you play, when you're willing to put yourself out there and be that vulnerable, people will respond... but if you're trying gear to get sounds that will sell and pander to what you think people want, it doesn't matter how good your stuff is, the music will sound dull and uninspired. I think gear is a lens through which an artist might focus themselves, but the lens is not the art.... people want substance and meaning!
You can't see the art without a lense. I have been around a bunch of artists and poets, guys who can make art with anything, or nothing. I got to be there because I was a good hang, (and I could lift an Ampeg 8x10 on one shoulder and walk through a crowd) but I have equipment that does all of that art for me, because I am not like them. It works that way, as well.
Nice gear sounds great on its own, but in a band or recording situation a good guitar sound or whatever is one that fits in the space around a vocal and drum sound. I think of all those pedals that make your guitar sound like a collapsing star that are absolutely useless for using in a song, so you go back to using a Boss SD-1.
Tonny Iommi created an entire genre by compensating for an injury. I guarantee, nobody buys an album because the band has flashy gear. Outside of Angus, I couldn't even tell you what any of the bands I like play.
Said by someone who sadly never got an exciting guitar to play with. My parents were mean to me, but at least I'm TRYING to move on. If you get the right guitar, and a loud enough amp, it will absolutely start writing its own music, you just gotta keep up.
I've decided to go the other way, I have excellent gear and a crappy sound. Lack of talent, YEA BABY!!!
🤝 (not so) great minds think alike
Baxter praising Robert Smiths hair is like Hersheys praising chocolate. Sorry-been a while since a Baxter hair joke.
I predict how my day will go based on how big Baxter’s hair is when I watch the video in the morning. ❤
"There was a joy in not knowing what you had sucked." Truth.
Roland Cubes are awesome. It's refreshing to hear gearheads remind us there are good sounds to be had if you learn to use what you can afford. Less expensive gear has gotten a lot better the last several years.
Haha “the Cure is a fairly successful band”. Master of understatement.
The cubes are great amps. There is a European jazz website whose #1 recommendation fo jazz amp is a Roland cube 60. Personally, I am still choked that my micro cube gave up this year after 20 years of use. Great amp when you live in an apartment.
It's like we say in the low-budget indie film world - "the best camera for the job is the one you HAVE."
love when you talk about creating stuff you like apart from how much it costs!
When I started out, I jury-rigged an old valve radio as my guitar amp after removing the mouse nest from the speaker. Fifty years and many guitar amps later I'm still using it for recording
Mama raised a litter of racoon babies in one of my open-backed speaker cabinets, I kinda had to clean that up. 🦝
Very cool. Good reminder that gear is what you make of it! I need to check out the Cure’s new album!
Dude, I’m rocking a Mustang Micro V1 as my practice amp at home. It’s good. Of course, I use an ‘82 JCM800 when we play out. All my guitars are cheap, and they really work for me. I do like coming into your shop and playing the expensive stuff, too😎
Robert Smith is an underrated guitarist.
Haha that’s wild, I just completed putting together a solid state “oh-sh*t” amp rig. Running two solid state mini heads, a Quilter 101 mini reverb and a Bogner mini ecstasy head. Sounds great as a backup rig. I too saw this as a good exercise, as I keep coming back to my solid state practice amps I’ve had over the years…slowly deconstructing my tube-snob mentality. Solid state tech has come a long way and I agree with you, they feel closer to the real thing than a digital modeler. I can still feel the amps under my fingers.
Great video - it's all about the "journey".
Making the most out of what you have has always been a good idea, definitely time tested advice! I love those old Danelectro pedals, they were so great and I still use mine all the time.
I love the video of John Mayer playing "Gravity" with a bunch of kids using a cheap LP Jr. copy and a Fender practice amp. He sounds exactly like John Mayer. Shocking!
I wish I didnt change the squier bullet loaded pickguard those ceramic pick ups sound so good to be honest
The Def Leppard clean tones were achieved with a Walkman looking amp called the Rockman 100 which was around $80 at that time. Samantha Fish spent $150 each for her cigar box and can guitars.
Las Vegas Guitar Trade Show this weekend all!!! If any of you Casino's are near the Vegas.. It's the first time we're having the event and we'd LOVE to see you all there. Wild Cat Guitars and some other really cool people will be there.
Trying to beg you guys to show up Casino Guitars!!! Happy Music Playing.
Just picked up an 80's yamaha G100MKIII head for $150, 35 lbs of solid state goodness. Its the sound I've been looking for.
I really want my 80’s Squire and Peavey Audition 20 back again.
I still have a Johnson J-station! It kicks butt still, and I love the tones from it!!!
My at home setup is a solid state Fender Frontman 15, a Boss TU2, an EHX MicroPOG, a modded an EHX LPB1, a Marshall RG1 Regenerator, and a Boss DD2 (in that order). With the right, small amount of grit on the overdrive channel and a very specific EQ setting, it sounds amazing with every guitar I own, but not the same with every guitar.
Most of the iconic tones we chase were created on primitive, lo-fi gear.
Maybe your mom did.
I've been using a Boss ME80 into a Roland 15X Cube with a 8" speaker.
I made a little stand to tilt the amp up at me, like a monitor. I get pretty good tones, and I hear myself fine. Put a mic on the speaker, and I'm in the monitors and mains, and everyone else hears me. A lot to be said about traveling light.👍😎
I love the Cure and Robert Smith especially so much. When I was about 20 someone told me my rhythm guitar playing was like a cross between Robert Smith and Jaymz Hetfield and I leaned hard into that for a long time! Lol
The keyboard player in our band back in the '80s got a superb sound using an old amp that had failing valves/tubes. They added extra "texture" to his standard synth tones and sounded incredible. Unfortunately, all that disappeared when we fitted new ones! 😕
Love the one your with.
G'day Baxter & Jonathon,
Thanks for another fun video, but don't knock the Boss pedal cases. I got my brother to buy a BSB-60 for me, from a national op-shop, a couple of months ago. It had been in the shop for so long, they knocked 25% off it just because he asked about it! LOL I've been building up my Boss collection to finish it off.
Keep up the good work
Andrew
I agree 100% back in the day when bands had limited funds and you had one guitar and one amp you worked it and worked it and knew it backwards and forward and for your sound using that ! I always said it’s not what a band can play that defines their sound it’s what they can’t play that defines their sound !!
Jack Pearson and his squier affinity
I think I still have one of the Boss boards. I had the 3 and the 6th at one time. When my mom bought me my first new electric guitar, a Univox Strat style, I was in hog heaven. I didn’t know it was a cheap guitar, I was overjoyed I had a new guitar. Then she finally bought me an Earth amp. 6, 10” speakers in the cabinet and the head had multiple channels and built in distortion. I thought I had the greatest rig ever!
You find feeling first then tone plays from your feeling of the tone 🎉
My slightly upgraded Bugera amp is "too dark/warm". My cheap Donner delay pedal makes great dying R2D2 noises on the lofi setting, while doing generic delays pretty well. I've Kiesels, Jacksons, US Strat, etc, but it's my slightly less expensive Double Jet & Tele getting all the love lately, just because I'm enjoying their retro-ish voice pups. Most of my gear is "nice", but those are keepers too.
Hell yeah, shouting out Mk.gee! Love that dudes guitar tone!
The great thing about using nothing but Boss pedals is if they are lost, stolen, or fail (😂) you can find a replacement that sounds exactly the same at any guitar store!
Unless you have the rare MIJ models like the vb2,CE2, feedbacker, dc2, tremolo pan etc. some of those can cost $500
My expensive gear is a Gibson studio and Peavey 2/10 delta blues. My boutique pedal is a Boss SD1.
Many classic records have a bit of Peavey 80w Bandit on them
I always buy the wrong gear. I don’t have enough money to keep up with the whims of the guitar community.
Yes amp, no amp, yes amp, no amp; lots of effects, no wait, modeling! I should have just bought a nice acoustic years ago!
I think a guitarist has two choices: to be the guitarist who can play anything, in which case you need all the gear, or, blaze a new trail, find your sound, and ignore trends. I’ve discovered in the past couple of years that I’m not talented enough to be that first type, which is discouraging, but now I’m trying to be that second type and just enjoy myself. Seems to have cured my GAS
I'm still making dad rock, jamband & stoner noises, but I'm glad I've gotten a looper & my Walrus amp in a box to do it with. I can't afford a bunch of nice classic combo amps - but I can afford a nice amp sim pedal. @#$%, the Joyo amp sim pedals are gold - for 29.00. GL.
@ I’m blessed to have a nice tube amp, a basement to enjoy it in, and a tolerant family! I’d be much more interested in modeling if I lived in an apartment again, but I don’t like using headphones
@@honkytonkinson9787 Sounds good to me. I just like having a half dozen sims to mess with. HF.
Pretty good discussion today, boys.
I like my old Peavey solid state amps.
I've always lived the "less is better" musical life.
Who is McGee he’s talking about at 9:16?
Mk.gee
...so maybe the Pignose could be the most iconic amp of all time 🤔
Pignose actually made decent combos.
I have a Crossmix 150.
2 channel, you can run both at once, 2 FX loops, 150 watts.
The Peavey Rage 108 is the sound of ramen noodles being cooked in a coffee maker!
OMG - I literally just got rid of all my crappy gear. I wish I knew this years ago 😂❤🎸 OH wait, my gear is still crappy? 😢😂
There are no good or bad tones, just tones. You the listener are what decides, is this pleasurable or repulsive ? Also our music preferences play a huge role in what we prefer . If your a Metallica fan a boogie might be your sonic choice. If your a Chet Atkins fan a Gretch might be your tone Narvana. Thats one of the reasons boomers dig vintage gear, its what so much of the music they love was recorded with.
i love everything Robert Smith does thats NOT the Cure bah. his work with Siouxsie rules.
Hope Baxter has good insurance. A scooter around town….. 😆
Crappy gear make you appreciate your good gear from experience
Uh, well, I say if you hate your tone, try out some different gear!
I suffered for decades with an intolerable facsimile of sound. There was a period when I found that a couple Lehle splitters allowed a blend of god-awful amp-like devices to blend together and almost fill in the blanks or cover up the weakness. Then I tried an amp with four big output tubes- it turns out that all the professionals were wrong about that fifteen Watt malarkey, not only was it NOT all that I would need, it sort of needed not to be in there weakening my tone. It turns out that the switching and blending and dancing devices work pretty well when they are connected up to some actual irl simulations of mighty rock and roll machines, it totally sounds above my pay grade. But do what suits you, nobody's lining up for tickets to my show.
I have a few cheap guitars, and most of my amps are cheap - knock offs, used, low end etc. Even my Marshalls are 1W and 5W
My most "expensive" amp is a Fender Bassbeaker 007 Tweed.
I seemed to miss the part about the actual crappy gear?
I wish I had never sold my old Boss power board.
pedals were expensive in the day. why i didn't have any
bought a marshall lead 12 this week. it sounds like crap. im very happy
Will someone please by that thinline Tele in the background so I can stop looking at it and wanting it so bad?
It’s all in the hands, buying expensive guitar is just marketing to keep companies going…
Bad Gear can make you play better because it challenges you, almost forces you to grow as a player
Robert Smith is actually a good guitarist but downplays it big time. He was in siouxsie & the banshees after John McGeoch left and he had to play that stuff, he replicated it very well. Not easy
You guys danced around it, but I'm not sure it was ever said outright... I think intention and inspiration have everything to do with the sound... if you're making the best of what you got and making music because you need to get something out from inside of you that bad... it almost doesn't matter what you play, when you're willing to put yourself out there and be that vulnerable, people will respond... but if you're trying gear to get sounds that will sell and pander to what you think people want, it doesn't matter how good your stuff is, the music will sound dull and uninspired. I think gear is a lens through which an artist might focus themselves, but the lens is not the art.... people want substance and meaning!
You can't see the art without a lense. I have been around a bunch of artists and poets, guys who can make art with anything, or nothing. I got to be there because I was a good hang, (and I could lift an Ampeg 8x10 on one shoulder and walk through a crowd) but I have equipment that does all of that art for me, because I am not like them. It works that way, as well.
Nice gear sounds great on its own, but in a band or recording situation a good guitar sound or whatever is one that fits in the space around a vocal and drum sound. I think of all those pedals that make your guitar sound like a collapsing star that are absolutely useless for using in a song, so you go back to using a Boss SD-1.
Seems like creativity and skill might be more important than having the same hand crafted amps and overpriced guitars everyone says we need.
I was hoping there would be some jamming on cheap gear with lots of attitude thrown in for free.
Tonny Iommi created an entire genre by compensating for an injury. I guarantee, nobody buys an album because the band has flashy gear. Outside of Angus, I couldn't even tell you what any of the bands I like play.
I always tell even non musicians of his story. It's just amazing how everything came together. His book is great
If a piece of gear can make an iconic sound, by definition it is not crappy. Unreliable maybe.
...I don't think Baxter realizes that Robert Smith plays a 1300 dollar guitar , that's not cheap.
A new Cure album is cool but the two minute intro to each song was just a bit too much.
I love going in shops like yours playing all the expensive "crap" then not buying anything and walking out
Too bad all these custom shops won’t help you write a better song.
Said by someone who sadly never got an exciting guitar to play with. My parents were mean to me, but at least I'm TRYING to move on. If you get the right guitar, and a loud enough amp, it will absolutely start writing its own music, you just gotta keep up.