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Gear

Picks

Tubes

Strings

String Ties

More Reviews at Rusty Rabbit (click here)

Welcome to Metaldude's GEAR room.

I will present my choices for items I use as a guitar player and instructor. There is no method to the madness of what gets presented, or when, or even who to get it from!

I am assuming all musicians have local and internet connections, use Google a lot, and have personal favorites.

I also know we are limited to what we would like compared to what we can afford, so the choices you will examine are real. I am not interested in reviewing products unless they are or were my own.

I believe the test of time is necessary for real evaluations, so welcome. Google details you need. You might want to start with "How many millimeters in an inch?"

Guitar Picks
-Metaldude

Guitar picks are very personal to the player ( and fans! ), myself included. Big or small thumb and fingers, sweat a lot, easy to flick or kick to the audience, how fast they wear-out, how the string reacts to the plectrum attack or pianissimo sweep.

My early 10,000 hours were performed with the Fender Medium Guitar Pick, .73 mm thick made of celluloid plastic. Tried jazz (too fat) teardrops, metals, (yuck) and a variety of plastics like Herco nylon which actually became more flexible the more you played, not good!

The Fender medium sometimes broke during an emotional pentatonic bend, but usually just piled sawdust on the banks of pickdust already heaped against my guitar pickup mounts. They had to be replenished like guitar strings from overuse. The Dunlop Herco nylons of similar thickness never wore out, but changed flexibility from heat sources, which I don't like.

And then someone asked Yngwie Malmsteem what pick he used: 1.5 mm Dunlop (with a tortoise on it nowadays. Google picks and find out why the tortoise and picks are related). I tried one, and although it didn't make me play like Y.M., its need for speed and pinch harmonics was devastating! So grateful I tried something new (for me) that stuck!

And the Fender Medium is still my favorite strumming sound on a Martin D-18 Acoustic Guitar. You can hear it in the song "Union" written by me ( Yamaha nylon string) and Cindy Garay (Martin steel string).

The Dunlop 1.5 mm purple pick is used on all electric guitar songs by me playing electric guitar leads. Songs will be in my MUSIC room. Bon Reve!

Tubes
-Metaldude

Power tubes are matched by biasing, (variable resistor you can use a screwdriver to adjust in the amp circuit) which creates equal currents so the resulting sine wave curves are fairly uniform in amplitude to each other. This creates a more even push and pull on your amps speakers. Everything is more efficient for wear and tear.

But the truth for guitar playing is that efficiency is measured simply by one event: How the guitar player perceives the tone.

I have played exclusively 90% of the time on amps with preamp and power tubes using Celestion, Sheffield, and Altec Lansing speakers. I have a Gauss speaker and Peavy 4-10" for bass. I won't discuss the long winded discussion of hybrids and solid state modelling, etc. Whatever floats your boat! Experimented with a zillion of them.

There are three power tubes that always rise to the top with three distinct tones. I know the entire amp matters in a world full of great and expensive tube amps, but I am talking about reality for guitarists with less than modest incomes; who want the bulk of their tone to come from their amp, and not a footswitch. You will never takeaway my MXR Custom Badass Modified Overdrive however! Yes that is its actual name!

My Marshall SL-X and DSL el34s, Mitchell Pro-100 6L6s, Marshall 6v6s 20watt and honorable el34s in a Fender Blues Junior are the present ensemble. In the past kl88s in a Marshall 50w Plexi and 6550 in Ampegs and 6L6s in Fender Bassman and Bandmaster were the beginning of the tube quest. And Halen 5150 el34s just to let you know various preamp arrangements. Oh Mesa Boogie 6L6s as well.

My favorite is to split a 4-12" Marshall 16Ω 1960A cab in half (8ohm load each side) into 2-12" 75Watt speakers, one a gt75 Celestion, and the other a Sheffield 75watt from a Van Halen type cab for each pair.

Why you ask? The Sheffield frequency response is higher than the Celestion.

One side is amplified by the Marshall SL-X, el34s, and the other by the Mitchell, 6L6s, both 100watts. Use an MXR splitter to plug in. Use pedals on one side only except wah-wah. The Mitchell was made when Mesa Boogie just started and was modelled after their 100watt hand soldered amps. So a Mesa 6L6 100watt is your best bet. The tone will blow you away as you design your own settings. Each amp by itself lacks what the other provides!

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EL34	6L6	6550	KT88

Strings
-Metaldude

Modern guitar strings are incredibly diverse and personal, like guitar picks. Once you have a fit, experimentation subsides. The tone for each guitar gets matched. We stick to what works, branching out occasionally by a colleague's suggestion, including reps with free strings to try! But once the tone relieves the ear in most hand positions, we are okay with the status quo. (Unless the tone boat gets wrecked.) The uninitiated must pay their dues, literally, and listen and callous fingers and reset string heights, polish frets and gather info from players and luthiers. And then magic happens: a recurrence to a previous string maker and gauge because of tone and feel. Until you get another guitar haha!

Electric, acoustic and classical guitars are all very different. Yes, I have 'cross dressed' bronze on electric, nylon on acoustic, and only recently titanium and carbon filament on classical. Only the latter have worked for me.

My journey into classical guitar strings was with Augustines, created in the 1940s for Andres Segovia. At that time strings were made from animal guts!! I played a Torres guitar with animal gut strings and frets (the frets were movable!) at a Luthier convention in Seattle. They actually worked better than I expected! Please explore this incredible story of Dupont plastics meeting classical guitar in New York et al!

The classical guitar can get pricey in the string department. The volume, tone, and playability on mostly non-radiused fretboards of ebony and mahogany, demand attention to detail and non-affordable experimentation. These guitars with spruce or cedar tops and rosewood body and sides are what I play: an affordable lattice braced cedar-top 2015 Cordoba 12 (about $2k new now. Not eco friendly after the desecration of hardwood forests): an Amalio Burget 2016 spruce-top Maestro #7 hand made in Spain, and a 2011 Alhambra 7P also from Spain. Each with a totally different tone and playability. Except for the Alhambra, which uses hard/normal tension Savarez strings as a complete set of 6 strings, I buy classical strings in sets of 3 trebles and 3 basses. The Burget Maestro uses hard tension Savarez basses and medium/hard Hannabach Titanyl trebles. The Cordoba C-12 uses Savarez Cantiga normal basses and medium/normal Hannabach Carbon trebles. Get Googlin'!! Get Chooglin'!!

My electric guitars, of modest demeanor with soft tails, mostly Floyd Rose (from Seattle, Washington), except for the 1970 Les Paul Custom with a Bowen Handle, and Warmouth strat (from Puyallup Washington) that is ironically a hardtail, all use GHS Boomers in the following gauges: .009,.010 or .011, .015 or .016, .024, .032, and .042. If you need a good Google, look up Toni Iommi's string gauges, Judas Priest and Zappa. And Stevie Ray Vaughn's- not for the feint of fingers! Acoustic steel string? I don't play acoustic steel strings much, especially fingerstyle because of classical guitar preference. But a Fender Medium pick on Phosphor Bronze Dean Markley gets the news goin'. I use superlights so I don't beat-up my fingers for electric and classical. But my ears want to hear medium or light gauges on a Martin, like Cindy Garay from Sitka Alaska used to use on our albums recorded by Bruce Whitcomb at Arcade Recordings

Hey kidz. My idea of recent is a decade. Look it up! I tried a string tie not because of any artist. Young classical newbies of immense talent convinced me to try carbon and titanium laced strings because Ana and friends use them and thank you because the treble changes!

Click below to purchase at Amazon
Savrez Cantiga Premium	Savarez Corum	Hannabach Titanyl	Hannabach Carbon	GHS Boomers	Dean Markley Yngwie Malmsteen