past gear reviews

my friend stew asked me the other day, “ben, how long have you been playing music?” i’ve been playing music for about 11 years. it’s strange to think that for almost half of my life, i’ve either been in a band or otherwise plugged into an amplifier. i’ve owned a small music shop’s worth of gear over the years and would like to reflect on some of my favorite pieces of equipment that i have either owned or had the privilege of playing for an extended period of time.

peavey raptor ii

this was my first axe. i bought one at a pawn shop for $100 even, with a case. it was terrible. the neck was warped, it barely stayed in tune, and it sounded like complete ass. i didn’t even have an amp. i took apart an old boom-box and managed to build a Frankenstein amp that almost sounded like a kazoo. but never the less, i loved this guitar. i played it for about 3 years before it literally fell apart in my hands, just about an hour before my first show. what happened after is a pretty funny story, but i’ll save that for another post.

marshall valvestate 8100

i purchased my first amp about a year after i started playing. a friend from my taekwondo class who played guitar mentioned they were getting rid of a half-stack. i asked him “wtf is a half-stack?” after practice we stopped by his house. standing before me was the biggest amp i had ever seen (i was 13, lol). he had a mesa boogie triple rectifier full stack (which is 8 – 12 inch speakers, a veritable wall of sound). i giggled to myself thinking that this was the amp he was going to sell me for $100. then he pointed to the dusty, plain looking, half-stack sitting in the corner. 100 watts for 100 bucks. can’t go wrong. it had 2 distortion channels and one clean. i played this for about 3 years before trading it in towards a Peavey 5150.

ampeg 80′s 4×12

ampeg is primarily a bass company, however they make some kick ass guitar cabs. naturally they are very bass driven and can attain the low end growl needed for most heavy, mid-scooped distortions. this was paired with my aforementioned 8100. the sound was great! no processing needed beyond a good cable and my trusty jackson arsenal. i was playing alot of metal at the time so it was a perfect fit. picked this up from a friend for 50 dollars.

jackson sl-1

there comes a time in almost every guitar players life where they discover shredding. they might hear a song, see a band, or just get really pissed off and start ripping the frets off their neck. the moment i heard slayer perform ‘war ensemble’ i was hooked on playing as fast as humanly possible. enter: jackson guitars. these guitars are built for 1 thing, speed. i swapped out the pickups for emg-81/85 combo about a year after adding a few hundred dollars in value and +20db in vol/tone. equipped with my peavey 5150, this thing had a pure Swedish metal sound.

mesa boogie buster 200

somewhere along the way i became obsessed with playing the bass. i stopped playing guitar altogether and started trading my gear in for a new rig. while browsing my local guitar shop, i noticed an amp that was buried under a bunch of old, crappy amps. i immediately started digging, pulling away the other amps to find the best deal in the store. it was a mesa boogie buster 200, 1×15 bass combo. this baby was 200 watts of pure mesa boogie tube action. it 11 tubes to be exact, and you could feel every one of them when you played it. i remember not being able to turn it up past about 3.5 because it would drown out the drums, guitar, and vocals at once. this is one of the ballsiest amps i have ever played. i still own it. it’s sitting in storage back at my parents house. i’ll bust it out for the next thatwasthen album, for sure.

stay tuned for part 2!