soli'd

I saw several of those shows. I LOVED watching Jack play with them. The most memorable perhaps was July 4, 1997, they played outdoors at the equestrian center that was constructed for the Atlanta Olympics the year prior. It was at least 96 degress at 10pm, but the show was next level. That was also the first tour they had Oteil on Bass, both Warren and Woody had departed to pursue the Mule.

Have wanted to play a Vigier since discovering Shawn Lane 20 yrs ago. Never held one. Local Dibs! 😁

My other (main) amp is a custom Fargen 2-ch 4x6V6 monster. It happens to be a great pedal platform, but it stands on its own, really doesn't need pedals at all. He does great mods with fender-based circuits as well. Can't recommend highly enough.

No, in fact if that's what I implied I misspoke. I am VERY pleased with the amp, especially considering the price. The amount of work that goes into them far exceeds the cost, and they're built to order in 6-8 wks. Look at these guts! I've been using it as a pedal platform for a couple years now with no reason to switch. It works very well in that role, namely for the reasons i mentioned earlier. Just playing it on its own it may come across as a bit tight or kinda plain vanilla, but those attributes also make it a good pedal platform.

Things I have found useful in an amp used as a pedal platform: Good headroom, but not too much- it's good for the amp to be able to break up eventually, and it should be pleasing distortion however much there is. A lot of overdrive, distortion and fuzz pedals sound their best when they're able to push the amp into singing a bit on its own. For this reason, tube amps have given me the best results. Controllable mids. If you run a scooped sounding pedal into an amp that is scooped by nature, it's harder work to make either sound its best. Similarly, a mid-focused overdrive, such as many Dumble style drives running into fat sounding amp can get bloated pretty quickly. Being able to adjust the amp eq to best pair with the character of pedals helps a lot. This especially applies to fuzz. I like blackface base tones, but being able to control the scoop, and I like 25-40W as the sweet spot for headroom and achievable amp breakup at reasonable volumes. The pedal platform I've been using for a while now is this Frenzel deluxe plus 25 which are handwired to order, point to point, and less than $600. I've got it paired with a thiele style Hermida cab that I bought from Bubs, with a scumback M75. Does everything pretty well.

Kevin is good people. He sold me one of his "Green Zapper" mini pedals at cost of parts years ago when he first released it. He asked for guesses as to what song inspired the product and I got it right with Inca Roads. The GZ is a tiny (like 2"x2") DOD 440 variant. As for the Console project(s), I dig the idea, but wish there was a few patch points between sections, like a couple instances of normaled jacks that can be routed straight thru unless they're patched before or after a different section.

Some weeks the wait doesn't seem quite as desperate. This last week was not one of them. 😅

Yeah seeing that never gets old. 😍 Also makes me wonder if I've ever seen the back of the DC model... hadn't noticed the separate circular cavity for the selector switch just over the control cavity.

DEEP DISH! man what a beautiful top carve. The random figuring is going to look crazy under a finish, can't wait to see that.

YOU FIRST!

The Neil thing was likely in violation of their "no musician bashing" rule which I've never really understood; I'm guessing it's because they don't want to run pros off the site who happen to have found their way on there. The mods do seem to give an inordinate amount of weight to those complaints. Anyway, that premise is certainly flawed in my mind- not all music (or artists, or bands) is great, and there are going to be inevitable opinions expressed there. If I don't know what I hate, how can I know what I love?

The signal to noise ratio has certainly become more skewed over the years as the membership has grown. Most of the value I have perceived over there pertains to the contributions of builders, artists and industry folks who contribute a lot of insight I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. It does require more effort lately to separate wheat from chaff, but as far as inter-personal relations go, my experience has been that the mods' position is based in golden rule, don't-be-a-dick kinda stuff. Never had a problem with Mike, and he's somehow a Dawgs fan, which matters.

don't waste your rage. you may really need it one day.

it's a solid hunk of milled brass.