Ah, someone had told me they had gotten better.

I tried that. My fret board is quite worn, so maybe that will help. I've had others tell me that g string is not an uncommon problem for this guitar.

Thanks for the warning. I bought a nice broad strap and it helped greatly.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board!

With a 'modern' trem (they have been around since the 80s)
You can bomb the strings till the are almost flapping loose and when you bring it back up they stay dead on tuning (assuming they aren't new and still stretching.

I forget it's name but there is an 'active' bridge that has dynamic tuning and keeps the strings dead on with little servo motors, you can pre program different tunings into it as well. It's about £1000, Jimmy Page uses one.

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Just got my amp, a Roland Cube 15w . It was really cheap, so theres quite a bit left to get my guitar, which I have now 100% decided will be an Epiphone. The 310 seems a little better than the Special, so Ill look into it.
To bad I have to wait until Christmas to get my hands on it all

Thanks for the help everyone

Visit guitar shops and play loads of guitars in your price range and also higher up the range, get a feel for them. Different models ahave different playing styles, Narrow 'triangular' necks are 'faster' than wider round section necks (but you can do more 'bending' on a wider neck. You need to decide what style suits you best. For example a Strat and a Telecaster have a very different feel as do a LesPaul and an SG. Try them all.

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Fun thread, I love hearing about others' gear!

Guitar I play Ibanez RG440 Roadstar II through a Fender Deluxe 85 combo (red knobs, special edition 12"). These were the Japanese guitars dubbed "superstrats" and let me tell you, I'd not trade it for strat. The neck is butter! Microdot inlays, Floyd Rose trem (locked down), HBs in neck and bridge, single OBL between ...vintage.

Bass I play Peavey Millennium 5 string through Peavey TNT100.

Keyboard is Yamaha PSR175 through the TNT (mostly though, I use the drum sims).

I record on a Fostex MR8 digital with built in mic (though I recommend other micrphones for good recording) and battery powered option (excellent for sitting in the woods ...).

Boss RV4 reverb, Original Crybabay Wah, a cool VestaFire flanger/chorus, maraccas, blues harp, triangle, whistles etc....


Anyway, to the OP, and as others have said, the best approach is to play firsthand the equipment you're considering. I'd never have thought I was about to hit the jackpot upon checking out a friend's unused Ibanez.

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I'll tell you; when I play my bro's acoustic (Takamine, however that's spelled) it's like a whole different instrument. It's a slightly shorter scale than my acoustic, but that slight difference makes it hard for me to play since I never get to practice on it. He seems to have no problem pick'n up mine though.

My fat-necked Stagg is short-scale (like a Jag) but it feels more natural to me since it's also electric.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

I replaced all my pedals with a Processor years ago, it cuts out all those patch leads which means less noise and less to break. Plus it can do moer. When I am playing into a desk or PA it still sounds like an amp sometimes I use a Marshall 'Tube' pedal into a desk as well.

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If you really want to crank, buy a high-quality (low-noise / distortion) stereo amp and feed it into a voltage follower (current amplifier), feeding the output of that into a parallel speaker array.

Cheap, yet absolutely stellar (and very loud) sound.

I did this a lot in college, so I'm speaking from experience.

If you want to improve the sound of a low cost or small amp buy one of these Marshall Pedals

I like the Guv'nor or the Bluesbreaker. They give you the sound of a genuile big Marshall.

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Not the same thing.

The problem I encountered while working as a sound "engineer" (technician) was that people were working towards a particularly distorted sound, but doing so by means of the distortion inherent in common guitar amps. When they got into higher quality gear, that sound was gone, and they wanted it back.

Cue in various distortion foot pedals.

Once they electronically introduced the various and desired distortions, however, people wanted the ability to ramp that to an arena-rocking level at minimum cost.

At the time, such options were prohibitively expensive, costing more than a thousand dollars. Meanwhile, my DJ-ing brother had amassed a number of speakers that he was finding difficult to drive with his supposedly high end gear and his (then) employer's house system.

They were to be hosting The Bangels in a couple of months, and after listening to their setup, I thought, "This Sucks."

I coordinated with a EE prof with whom I was friends who helped me design a simple, but highly effective current amplifier (now called voltage followers) that would be able to drive a serious parallell array of just about any impedance. A couple of weeks and a few trips to the major city electronics store later, I'd built a very capable stereo current amplifier.

Since it's distortion and noise were all but non-existence, the key was to feed it a high-quality voltage-amplified signal from a common household amp and feed the result into a parallel array (very low at 0.25 ohm impedance).

The result was an incredibly clean, amp-pumping sonic experience.

I built similar systems for a year, until I moved on to other things.

That's nice but to get a good guitar distortion you need a valve in there somewhere that can be overdriven. Common Guitar Amps are the best way of producing an overdriven guitar amp sound. Equipment like Marshall and Vox are very high quality built for overdriving. If you are in a situation where you can't overdrive a valve amp the next best thing is a good quality processor that will give the effect of an overdriven amp. Marshall make good ones as they are tailored to the sound of their amps, I can think of a few others a couple of which have an actual valve stage in them to give an actual valve overdrive sound.
Brian May uses 3 Vox AC30s, not to et extra volume as the increase over one would be marginal in a stadium but to give a more solid and rounded sound. I used to use Two Marshall heads and 4x cabs back in my loud band days but most of the volume at a gig any bigger than a pub would come from the PA.

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