Gear slut

Sorry for the title, but that's what this page is about. This is my current and some old equipment, and I'll try to keep this up to date (Updated 9th of February 2012)

Guitars:

Acoustic

Musima MW 24
The one acoustic that gets most playing at the moment is German made Musima MW 24
This guitar was an one in a million find. Dreadnought Solid cedar top. Mahogany neck, back and sides. Rosewood fingerboard and bridge. I have done quite lot of work on this guitar. I put a new Tusq nut, saddle and string pegs and planet wave tuners. I have shaved the braces inside a bit. And it has a Takamine tri-ax sound hole pick up, basically same as L.R. Baggs M1. This guitar resonates like nothing I have ever played. You can feel it against your body. The neck is thick, but narrow, the bass string is close to the edge, all little details that just makes it fit my hand like a clove.

Taylor 110
My current back up acoustic is Taylor 110. I got it as a part of a trade. It is nice, i would even go as far as say great back up. But my Musima is hard to beat and unfortunately I do compare all other acoustics to it. These Taylors have quite bright sound, so if you want very shimmering guitar this could be it. It is also a great finger picker. But I look for more bottom end in my acoustic sound, so this will stay as a backup, or I'll swap it to something more suitable to me. Only time will tell.

Meinel & Herold
I also was given a very old acoustic parlor guitar as a gift. This guitar is a Meinel&Herold. It has lovely sound with good quality classical strings. I tune it down to C just not to put too much pressure on the neck and body. It has few cracks that has been brutally fixed with small blocks of wood. This obviously distracts from the value of the guitar hugely, but to me It is priceless. I will do some work on restoring it some day, but I need to fix few bangers first for some more experience.






Electric

So here I have few extremes.


Gibson Les Paul
My pride and joy is Gibson Les Paul, its like the standard, but with mat
finish and zebra burst buckers. I had it for several years now, but since last summer I got my Laney amp, and this baby gets on with it like house on fire. For a while it was my number one guitar, but at the moment I seem to be swapping alot between this and my Fender Telecaster.  I changed all the pots form 300ohm to 500ohms and got rid of that piece of metal they have in new Gibsons, and I changed the wiring to the classic 50s style. It is a beauty. I think it has the new chambered body.



Fender highway One

This is my second number one guitar. It is a Fender highway One made in USA. I got it second hand, in pretty good nick. It was built in 2008. These guitars have a Satin Nitrocellulose Lacquer Finish. What this means with sweat and hard playing it will wear off, and it has a bit on mine. But who ever had it before me decided to spray it with a light coat of clear varnish. They actually did pretty good job on it, but still... bit funny. The neck is great, fits even my long fingers. Takes the heavy 13 strings great. Tuners seem to be good so far anyway, standard Fender job. The pickups are hot Fender Texas special single coils. The thing with these pickups is that they are nice and twangy clean, and with bit of overdrive they kick like mule! Part form gigging with me this one is the guitar I have lying around the house and I do write and demo lot of stuff with this one. I would love to get a second one of these and if I did, this one would get a bigsby ;-)




Squier Affinity telecaster
I also have the cheapest Squier Affinity telecaster that I pimped completely, Texas special pick ups, rewired, planetwave tuners, paint job... There is more spent on the parts, than the guitar it self. Many people asked me over the years "Why? Why not just buy a new one?" But I love it, and I love little projects. And If you play it, you know why;-)




Squier stratocaster
Another gift guitar given to me is an 1994 Squier strat. It was in bits, but I brought it back to life, again Graph tech saddles and nut, proper sealing. And I wired it all different. Basically the tone pots are not tone pots any more, its like series and parallel switches. So I can connect the neck pick up with the bridge to get telecaster mid position kind of sound, and then I can have the neck and middle or bridge and middle wired as humbuckers, this is a wild sound! It is a proper piece of wood, neck 60s style strat, little bit on the thin side for my liking. I do prefer maple fret boards, and this is rosewood, but still it rocks! When I feel like doing a bit of a Jimi thing, this baby comes out;-) But lately I've been thinking to get some new pickups and set it back to standard wiring...Also if I do come across a chunky maple neck with a reasonable price tag, I'd had to jump at it;-)


Amps

Laney GH50L + Laney GS412LS

This is my main amp set up. The GH50L is powerful and versatile 50watt head. It has 4x12AX7 Preamp valves and 2xEL34B-ST Power valves and a cool biasing switch that allows to swap to 6L6s. This was the decider for me as I like the option of changing my sound:-) The built quality is superb on this. And it has loads of handy features. It's like angry JCM800 at the moment, aggressive and cuts through. I don't like dull amps and this one is quite bright. I think that is one of the reasons I get on with it well. I got a great deal on the head and the cab for second hand, both in a shop condition from Jimi's music shop here in Dublin. The cab is a Tony Iommi signature cab, and has celestion 70 Eighty speakers in it. The construction of the cab is little different to your usual Marshall cab. The Back board does not come off. I did have a quick peak inside from the socket box. The construction is sturdy plywood.  The front has a very strong metal grill, so I am sure it will take the abuse I'm sure it will get with me. The cab has loads of punch! But I would like it to have just tiny bit more bottom end.



Also I played with the idea of someday getting a valve amp kit and building my own... Well hey, man can dream;-)

Pedals

Boss Tu-2 tuner, I am addicted to this. Built like tank.
Boss graphic, pretty solid pedal that I mostly used for boost to drive the Blues Junior bit harder.
Boss Blues Drive. I tried loads of different ODs, this does the business! It is much darker than most boss boss ODs. Now days it only gets used when I am gigging on a hose amps or some other strange amp.
Electro Harmonics Big Muff PI Legendary pedal. It is hard to describe this one as it reacts differently with every amp. But lets just say, it is a wild ride ;-)
Boss V-Wah. I can see why loads of people don't like this pedal. But for me it is really versatile and I use it with electric but mostly with acoustic in the Sliotar set.
Marshall Echohead EH1 This is my delay when I play with Sliotar. I built a tap tempo for it and always use that to mach the tempo of the music. It is very strong pedal and very good value for the money.
Marshall ED1 This is a great little compression pedal that I use with acoustic guitar when I play with Sliotar. It basically stays on all the time. I have the compression set up quite subtle, but it adds sustain and boosts the signal a small bit. Love it! If you are looking in to Compression pedals, I'd take this any day over the Boss CS3. I have heard great things about the CS2, but they have been out of production for years.
Riot DD-2. Cheap, built like a tank. Can suck a bit of tone, but if you have some extra gain to spare, it sounds actually pretty quirky. I think I bought this one in Denmark for about €25.
When it comes to pedals, things change constantly, but I have few things on the long term shopping list. I have my eyes on a nice Phaser, MXR phase 90 or Electro Harmonics small stone. And I'd love a nice and smooth analogue delay, maybe an MXR carbon copy. I am definitely getting a Bad Monkey as well, I could see that one replacing the Blues Drive. Oh yeah and a Digitech Whammy pedal... But that'll be a can of worms of it's own;-)
To transport and power my current pedals I have the Boss BCB 60. I was looking for a flight case, but I got a great deal on this, so had to grab it. Anyway the flight case might look the part, but now I'd hate to lug it around Dublin.

Old eguipment

Here is some stuff I had and I sold or swapped for something else. This is not a list of all the guitars I ever owned, but mainly guitars I had during the life of this blog:


Taylor 314ce
Taylor 314ce. Solid spruce top, Solid sapele back and sides according to the current factory info,but looks lot like mahogany to me. And a mahogany neck. It has a built in fishman system, but I was always thinking about changing it to L.R Baggs or B-band. It was very nice guitar. The reason I bought it was for the third Sliotar album. I wanted a guitar that performed great of the shelf of a music shop, and thats what it did. It was my main guitar for years, it was great in a band situation, stood out in the mix. For years I was obsessed about what the name was in the head stock, a bad habit I know. But I took an years break from playing acoustic, and coming back with fresh ears, the Musima just felt better. As much as I loved it, some one offered a trade that I could not refuse, so it had to go. In my mind there is no point having a €1500 guitar locked up in the closet.


Squier telecaster custom II
This used to be my main gigging ax. Squier telecaster custom II.  I had my eye on one of these for a while, then came across a second hand one for a price I could not say no to. Absolutely loved it. But even new these guitars are just a bargain. It has two Duncan designed P-90s that I just love. I changed the saddles to Graph tech ones, and I sealed it properly, Oh yeah and a new nut. Part from that it is a stock. And it is the coolest color in the universe, TV yellow! I'm sure you know the story, but here it is again. In the days of black and white TV, white guitars did not look good on tv, so Gibson started manufacturing this color as it actually looked more white through the TV:-). Then after aquiring my American Tele, this guitar spent too much time just sitting in the corner, so I got a good offer on it and decided to let it go. But just as a note, if you are looking for a good budget guitar, these are some of the best value out there.


Fender Blues Junior (sold)
Fender Blues Junior, this little baby was my main amp for few years and I just loved this amp at the time! 15wats of full valve. Take my word, it is loud! I have never gone past four on the master knob, and this one goes up to 12! I have played it in front of 3000 people, and the sound engineer asked me to turn it down. I almost always mice it up through the front of the house. And in studio it is just so sweeeeeeet! Love it. It is great Blues amp, as the name says, but it's great at rock as well. If I would have any complaints, it would be tiny bit boxy sounding and lacking on presence, but hey, if you want that big bottom end you do need to get bigger speaker cab.
Update: After about six months playing the Laney, this little baby was collecting dust... So I decided to pass it on to new good home. I'm sure I'll miss this one...



Blackstar HT5 (Sold)
I also have a Blackstar HT5 combo. It is a 5watt amp with a 10 inch Celestion speaker. This one records extremely well! And the OD channel is sweet, even though bit on a heavy side for my use. But I think this will be sold to finance more toys;-)
Update: This was good for home and recording, but just tad too quiet for rehearsals. So I sold this one to finance my Laney, and have never looked back;-)






To hear my set up in action, come check us out live or download our EP for free at www.jpkallio.com