Showing posts with label Metal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Metal. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2016

Ugly Truth: Evolution Guitars; Modular Guitars



There have been a lot of people that seek to improve the guitar. Many attempts have been embraced by small groups of people. Some like the 'silent' guitars that are composed of just the bare essentials to qualify as a guitar. Then you have headless guitars like the Steinberg. These designs have their fans, but they don't have the following that traditional guitar have. So Where does Evolution guitar fall? Will they be embraced by the masses, or will they find the niche and nothing more. Let's look at what we know.




The video shows us several examples of their guitar. The guitars appear to be your regular fair. Most if not all of these guitars look to be chambered, and for the most part, equipped with humbuckers. So their biggest innovating feature is the faceplate system. The neck and the body stay put and the faceplate can be swapped out. This allows you to change pickups, wiring, finish just as fast as you can unscrew and rescrew the 15 or so exposed pieces hardware. The face plates are made from laminate, so you can fuss about how "solid wood is better", but lets be honest, when your guitar is held together by a bunch of screws it's not going to make much of a difference.

I think these guitar look cool. I actually like the idea. But the final nail in the coffin is the pricing. Small guitar builder usually have larger prices. Unless they take manufacturing over seas, then you looking around a grand to get set up and a few hundred to swap faceplates. I'm a firm believer that your pickups are the largest contribution to the way your guitar sounds. I also think how your guitar is put together has a lot to do with it as well. While I think what these guys are doing is neat, I also think it's rather novel. Cool Idea guys.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

My Newest Piece Of Gear




...is The Visual Sound V2 Series V2RT66 Route 66 Overdrive and Compression Guitar Multi Effects Pedal.
I Live by a set of rules and one of those rules is: No Multi Effects Pedals. This is not your normal Multi Effects. It is really 2 pedals in one casing. The two effect work totally independent of one another.



Compression is an easily over looked effect. Some may shy away because they may think that it squashes the tone and yes it definitely can BUT if used properly (and if the effect unit is worth its weight) then one can enhance there sonic achievement by judicious use of a compressor.


Overdrive is a commonly use effect that gets called everything but overdrive. I like to think of it as dirt. A little bit can really be cool, too much and its just a huge mess. I'm not a fan of Distortion, but that does mean that I don't like to get heavy. I think that your sound should come from where its supposed to com from, Your Amp. Overdrive (and really all distortions) come from your line (unamplified) signal being too strong to be processed properly by the amp. Many things can effect the handling of this signal; such as the wiring, capacitors, and routing of the signal. That's a bunch of technical talk for, "Good sound comes from good amps." No Pedal is going to make your amp sound better. They will defiantly make it sound different, but that's not exactly better.


So how does this pedal stack up? Very Well. Both sides of this pedal do what they should do. The overdrive is tuneful. Not fissy. It can go from Tame to Saturated very well... It also responds to your volume control and playing weight very nicely. Compression is something I use very lightly. In most cases I use it to brighten, boost and cut. But I've also been able to enhance me technical playing by using the compression to extenuate

the note that would have gotten lost otherwise. This Pedal has quickly become one of my most used and favorite pedals and has found a full-time spot on my pedal board. Although its not a metal-head's choice, but for just about everything short of metal it can be useful.


Visual Sound V2 Series V2RT66 Route 66 Overdrive and Compression Guitar Multi Effects Pedal, Highly recommended.