My Favorite Amplifiers
Barber Echelon
This is my all-time favorite amp. This amp sounds so good, it makes me want to practice all the time. Only 20 of them were made. It’s got a great sound. A full-bodied sound that is somewhere between tweed and blackface.
Blues Pearl Verbrasonic Amp
At Mars
A real working amp for those who need to be able to “stick it” on club gigs night after night but still want a small compact unit. Two 6L6 powered for the professional who might not have as much support from a PA system. Two C10Q Jensen speakers easily handle the power and still give the “tone on the edge” feel. Lots of room with this amp. You shouldn’t have to play this on 10, but if you did you’d still be right in there. Reminds me of the brown-face Fender Super of the early ’60s. 5AR4 rectifier, single-channel, two inputs.
This amp has the creamiest sounding overdrive I ever heard.
I have only been playing At Mars amps for a couple of years.
They are my new favorite amp. It’s astonishing to me that these amps have the rich boutique amp feel and sound for a fraction of the cost. Strongly recommended.
My Favorite Stomp Boxes
Here are some of my favorite guitar effects pedals.
- Pete Cornish “Tape Echo Simulator”
The TES is the result of a tireless, one-on-one collaboration between Pete and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.
The goal? To achieve the smooth, decaying ambiance for which Gilmour is renowned—in a bulletproof box that can withstand road rigors and the test of time.
The Pete Cornish Tape Echo Simulator is one of the very best sounding guitar delays ever made.
- Pitch Shifter
This single box provides pitch shifting, harmonies, detuning, and wild tremolo arm/flutter effects–all with simple, knob-based control.
It’s a ton of fun to play solos where every note is instantly harmonized.
- Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive
This has been my favorite overdrive pedal for over a decade now.
The pedal itself is a hand-wired 3 knob overdrive with a switch to select different clipping diode options and the circuit is all centered around the classic JRC4558 opamp chip from the venerable Tubescreamer. In fact, the whole circuit is very much TS-based but fully point-to-point wired.
John Landgraff shipped my pedal with a bag of chips, so I could swap chips inside the pedal to experiment with different sounds.
Suhr guitar with Surh pick-ups> Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive > TES > Barber Echelon amp = Heavenly Ear Porn.
- Mojo Vibe
The Mojo Vibe is simply the best vintage Uni-Vibe sounding pedal available.
I always felt there’s something magical about the “Univibe” sound, which can be heard on Jimi’s “Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)” and Robin Trower’s “Bridge Of Sighs”.
- Fox Rox “Paradox TZF”
Paradox TZF is the first and only flanger of its kind. Through-zero-flanging was done in the ’60s using a pair of analog tape decks. TZF recreates that over-the-top flanging sound in a stompbox. This is the only pedal out there that I know of that can create the sound of Jimi’s “House Burning Down”.
You can get a limitless number of really great sounds out of this pedal.
- Electro-Harmonix MEL9 Tape Replay Machine Pedal
As all my friends know: I have always been completely in love with the sound of mellotron.
I am of course absolutely dying to get this pedal.
The Electro-Harmonix peeps have been releasing unbelievable guitar pedals in the past couple of years.
This is one of them.
They completely nailed the sound of the mellotron, in this guitar stompbox. I will absolutely get this pedal later this year. This is a dream come true for me: being able to recreate my favorite sound (mellotron) using my favorite instrument (guitar).
This is the sound that made me fall in love with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, King Crimson’s “The Court Of The Crimson King” and “In The Wake Of Poseidon” or The Beatles’s “Strawberry Fields Forever”.
You can check out the sounds of the pedal here:
Conclusion
Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.
These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.
That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.
If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.
- 1 Lesson = 75
You’ll impress your friends and loved ones in no time with your guitar playing!
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