Dig it! My LA Amp and Custom Guitar Show report!

[Mark Wein]

Yesterday was a long day

I had a very late gig Saturday night so I got up later than I planned on and headed up to Van Nuys for the show. I was hoping to see the panel that @James Franciscus was running but I got there kinda late and only caught the last 20-30 minutes of it:

L-R Marc Bonilla, Dug Pinnick, Grant Geissman, Pete Thorn, Josh Smith and Oscar Jordan (James Franciscus)

They discussion was on career shaping in the current environment when I got there...how each guy developed or found the niche that allows them to make a living playing music and it was really good. Not sure what else they discussed before I got there. Took a pic with Oscar, spoke with guitarist Joe Jewell a bit and met Josh Smith.

I took a quick peek into the big room where a guy was demonstrating how awful the current generation of Marshall amps sound:

From there I went to the exhibitors....first up was Scumback speakers where I met big mike the TGP running the booth and learned a bunch about greenbacks. Probably get one of their speakers for my Holland...

Mike had a fantastic if dressed down Thorn guitar:

Then I took a look at HOvercraft - the guy was nice and they seem to make great stuff but the amps aren't really my thing:

 

[Mark Wein]

Their new bass amp:

This is the amp to end all amps if you need a loud rock amp that gets a lot of different sounds very well. So many amps with this many options sound like hammered dogshit but if I had $#k or whatever it cost I would have bought one. Fanfuckingtastic amp, like all of the Redplate stuff that I've tried.

An amp I was prepared not to dig but sounded pretty good...they also will make them in tolex for you:

This guy kept asking if they used orange drop caps in their amps and then brought out his homemade guitar to jam..played dome decent fingerstyle:

BCAudio ammo can amp:

 

[Mark Wein]

Neunaubers' stuff was really cool if not something I would personally use. Essentially any of their stereo pedals can be programmed to be any other pedal with your PC or tablet. The EXP pedal will also store presets for you:

The booth was "manned" by some fairly attractive ladies who demo'd and explained every aspect of the pedals....the exact opposite of a typical NAMM booth where the ladies are just eye candy.

My first time trying a Kemper profiling amp. Killer if its the kind of thing that you need.

I attempted to try all of the WAZA modded pedals at BOSS but the delay died The SD was a mild improvement over stock and the mod on the Blues Driver actually makes it sound how I've always thought it should. Much less high end and more useful lows. Better than any of the Keely or other mods I've used.

I'll be ordering one of these this week from Bogner:

I went with cash to buy a second RC Booster from Xotic but they weren't there and this combination boost and compressor is fucking awesome. Absolutely fucking awesome. Partially designed by Rupert Neve.Their other pedals in this line were cool but this is the shit:

I forget what model Bogner head this is but it sounded killer too (and I'm not normally a Bogner guy at all):

 

[Mark Wein]

I got to hear some PRS amps for the first time and was surprised at how good they sounded...the Archon apparently is a new model and its a KILLER metal amp. I tried the Derek Trucks modded amp below:

The little guy to the left has a neat "boost" idea where both the clean and dirty channels don't have a bost as much as a second foot switchable master volume....works really well.. The first time I've seen something like that that sounded good:

Miller amps was pretty cool. I spent a lot of time hanging out with the builder and playing some guitars including this killer Asher:

I dug the trem in this one:

Miller shared their room with G&L and I have to say that the G&L's were perhaps the worst playing and feeling instruments at the show. I was pretty disappointed. They pretty much dropped some guitars and didn't even show up on Sunday though...they didn't seem to care very much about the goings on.


More Ashers:

Asher shared a room with Demeter amps...Demeter makes a KILLER tube preamp/solid state guitar amp that is designed to either be in a head box or sit on your pedalboard. At 160 watts it can either be hugely loud or sound good at a lower volume. Priced along the lines of the Quilter stuff I would buy one of these first.

 

[Mark Wein]

Goodsell had only this amp in his room. Apparently UPS never delivered his stuff and he was desperate to sell at least this one amp to recoup some costs on the weekend. It sounded great:

I've tried the new Magnatone amps before and they sound killer as ever. I could never justify the expense of one but I think that they one of the few amps worth the huge pricetag.

I had to make a stop at Sattelite because of all the great things that @dougk has said about them this year. The Barracuda was awesome. Beautifully organic feeling...this amp was my "Satellite Girlfriend" for about 10 minutes

And of course the day ending loaf of mexican food with El Borrachito on the way home:

 

[Mark Wein]

To sum it up, this was a much cooler experience than the NAMM show...I got to bring my own instrument to try gear out with, you could crank the shit out of an amp to hear what it really sounded like and all of the builders were there to talk to you, demo stuff and answer in depth questions. I even got to have a great jam at LSL and Oddfellow effects with a few guys I had never met before that were just in the room to try stuff...someone put it on instagram but I haven't found it yet...

 

[Chad]

That Asher Tele is the hottest tele I think I have ever seen.

 

[Mark Wein]

That Asher Tele is the hottest tele I think I have ever seen.

It's pretty fucking cool and kinda unique sounding with the blade pickups and the varitone.

 

[Mark Wein]

For some reason I don't have any pictures from Wampler. I'll be selling my Mojohand Crosstown fuzz and replacing it with the Wampler Velvet fuzz pretty soon The Paisley drive was way cooler than I expected but the new Clarksdale drive did nothing for me. Also worth mention was the Oddfellow Effects Caveman drive which I almost bought too but I really don't have a use for. Really good.

 

[Guitar Heel]

Those Magnatones make me happy...down there.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Nice report! "Second best thing to being there!" I really want to try those Bogner pedals - the local guitar center got all of those pedals in and a guy bought them ALL unheard within 5 minutes of them hitting the showroom floor.

 

[Kerouac]

A buddy of mine has an Archon and it's an AWESOME metal amp, but he's had two issues with his that he had to send back to PRS for them to fix. Really noisy FX loop and a grounding problem. He also had one of their SE heads and another combo, but ended up getting rid of both of those, which I thought was a good move... not as impressed by them.

Those Magnatones are hot, but like you said, ridiculous cash outlay. No Morgan amps? I was hoping to get your thoughts on the AC20.

 

[Mark Wein]

A buddy of mine has an Archon and it's an AWESOME metal amp, but he's had two issues with his that he had to send back to PRS for them to fix. Really noisy FX loop and a grounding problem. He also had one of their SE heads and another combo, but ended up getting rid of both of those, which I thought was a good move... not as impressed by them.

Those Magnatones are hot, but like you said, ridiculous cash outlay. No Morgan amps? I was hoping to get your thoughts on the AC20.

Yeah...I didn't see Morgan there.

I was prepared to hate the PRS amps but most of them sounded pretty good if not my cup of tea.

 

[Verne Andru]

Great review - thanks so much for sharing.

I do want to tell a story about these ammo can amps...

BCAudio ammo can amp:

Back in '03-ish when I was packaging up Pigtronix for their launch, I built a bunch of pedal circuits into ammo cans:

Koltai was living in the same building as I and we spent a lot of time putting together various pedal circuits to try things out while working on their flagship EP-1. He insisted I pony up for "real" aluminum boxes for the pedals but, feeling cheap, I came up with a better idea.

I took him down to a local army surplus store and got a couple ammo cans that I proceeded to drill out and turned into those pedals. He was aghast at such a sacrilege, but I didn't care - I thought they looked cool and worked just as well as his pricey alternatives. A few years later BCaudio came out with their amps in cans and all was forgiven! I think.

 

[Mark Wein]

Great review - thanks so much for sharing.

I do want to tell a story about these ammo can amps...



Back in '03-ish when I was packaging up Pigtronix for their launch, I built a bunch of pedal circuits into ammo cans:

Koltai was living in the same building as I and we spent a lot of time putting together various pedal circuits to try things out while working on their flagship EP-1. He insisted I pony up for "real" aluminum boxes for the pedals but, feeling cheap, I came up with a better idea.

I took him down to a local army surplus store and got a couple ammo cans that I proceeded to drill out and turned into those pedals. He was aghast at such a sacrilege, but I didn't care - I thought they looked cool and worked just as well as his pricey alternatives. A few years later BCaudio came out with their amps in cans and all was forgiven! I think.

Please forgive my ignorance but I didn't know that you were in the industry...what is it that you do?

 

[Kerouac]

Yeah...I didn't see Morgan there.

I was prepared to hate the PRS amps but most of them sounded pretty good if not my cup of tea.

I really don't care for the SE one and compared to his Budda cab I thought the Stealth cab was pretty weak, BUT for a non-Mesa or Bogner metal amp, the Archon is pretty versatile, but \m/.

 

[Verne Andru]

Please forgive my ignorance but I didn't know that you were in the industry...what is it that you do?

And here I thought you knew everything LOL!

Well, it started in high school in electronics class. My teacher was Gar Garnet - the guy who did Garnet amps for people like the Guess Who. I went on to become a radio and TV bench tech in the early '70's when most of the stuff was still tube based. I've done a ton of design work including the industrial design and packaging for Pigtronix - the original space pig is an example of my work as is the design, etc. of their EP-1 envelope phaser. I'm also a guitar, bass and mandolin player with one of my tunes getting a rave review in Guitar Player magazine a few years back. Check out www.verneandru.com for samples and stuff. I'm really a nobody, just been around the block a couple dozen times.

 

[Mark Wein]

And here I thought you knew everything LOL!

Well, it started in high school in electronics class. My teacher was Gar Garnet - the guy who did Garnet amps for people like the Guess Who. I went on to become a radio and TV bench tech in the early '70's when most of the stuff was still tube based. I've done a ton of design work including the industrial design and packaging for Pigtronix - the original space pig is an example of my work as is the design, etc. of their EP-1 envelope phaser. I'm also a guitar, bass and mandolin player with one of my tunes getting a rave review in Guitar Player magazine a few years back. Check out www.verneandru.com for samples and stuff. I'm really a nobody, just been around the block a couple dozen times.

 

[Stratguy]

When I was in California, in June and killing some time in a local music store, I was given the rare opportunity to spend some time in a back room with some very high end PRS guitars. They plugged me into a PRS amp, and I spent an easy hour back there. At the time, I wasn't even aware that PRS made amps. Although I don't remember the model of the amp (just the big script PRS), I thought the guitars and the amp sounded perfect. I knew going into the room that I could never afford any of the guitars that I got a chance to play, and I think that's the same reason that I don't remember the model of the amp. I guess there's no sense driving myself crazy over something I couldn't afford. That day certainly made me a respect the PRS name.

 

[dougk]

Good review of the show Mark. I always had fun doing them but eventually decided:

1. They'd be amazing if Loni didn't run them
2. It's too damn close to NAMM to do both.

But for the public, it's the best format event out there honestly.

Oh and it's where I've made lots of friends (Adam at Satellite especially!!)