BEST & WORST Guitars & Gear of 2021 - My Annual Recap!

welcome back to in the blues my name's shane in today's video we're doing an end-of-year annual wrap-up this is the fifth one in a row that i released on the 15th of december every year i always look forward to going over the best and the worst and the most random gear of the year so that's what this video will pertain to now just to let you know some of the stuff in this video might not have been released in 2021 but it's stuff i had a chance to test and review or at least demonstrate in the context of live mix so that's what this video will cover before we get going a massive thank you to all the subscribers channel members patreon crew everybody so thank you so much for all the support in 2021 or if you just like viewing the channel and you're not subscribed please subscribe no it doesn't matter if you watch the videos and you enjoy them thank you so much i always appreciate everybody's feedback so what i'm going to do is timestamp each of the sections of this video in the description below so if you want to skip ahead to a particular section back and forth whatever you can do that before we get into the guitars i want to start with the three most random things of the year that surprised me starting off with the joyo mo mix this is an audio interface designed for a mobile phone so you can plug it into your phone get multiple input sources like a mixer basically and then use that as a live streaming device out to the web so you can get multi-channel audio going out to your live stream audience or you can use it to record guitar bass whatever it is keyboards whatever you want to throw into this directly into your phone via garageband or any other number of digital audio workstations so it's up to you how you want to use it this thing really surprised me when i took it out of the box i was like i even said in the review i was like man this feels really light and then i was like oh so this is what it does it solves a very particular problem there's not a whole lot of really portable audio interfaces for phones that are very functional and being that this is completely passive and you don't need to get an external power supply for it it just plugs into the phone and it lights up i think it's a really great thing if you're looking for a really great little audio interface for your phone where you can do some mobile recording or live streaming with multiple input sources this makes a whole lot of sense the second thing that really surprised me was this random thing this is the road e3 motorized tuner now i already know this isn't an essential guitar product by any stretch of the imagination a clip-on tuner will do the job but if you're looking for a cool gift for someone or you're looking for something different this works really well and i'll explain why you can store different presets within the road e3 tuner on any stringed instrument which means if you play multiple instruments or if you play in a particular type of tuning you can store it in here you put it on the tuning peg and it will wind either flat or sharp depending on which way the tuning needs to go now as a lefty i did notice that it always wants to shoot assume the guitars are right-handed guitar there's no left-handed orientation option in this at the time of filming this but i haven't updated the firmware for a long time so maybe that's coming but basically with this tuner it's just a more of a novelty thing but the fact that it actually works was pretty cool i would say it works about 95 of the time there's a couple times where you're like come on detect the note and but generally speaking it's been great so i'm putting this in the list the third most random thing and something that i'm glad i purchased this year was a couple of these deardario cables i'm not sponsored by them at all actually paid retail price for these at a shop and they've been awesome and what set me off onto the journey to get some good guitar cables this year was buying really crap guitar cables thinking that they were going to do the job i'm actually going to list a set of those in the worst of the year because they were completely unusable with a strat or telecaster i'll explain more about that later but just know these dario cables have been fantastic they don't coil up easy there's no excessive noise they have a really great connection to the guitar and while a less expensive set of cables won't necessarily sound any different to these so i'm going to put these in the list of the best most random things of the year for me as boring as it is they work great if you want to check these out links to everything's in the description below up next we're covering the best guitars of 2021 starting with a tribute to the master which basically means a gibson les paul tribute that's their tagline for this guitar which is kind of hilarious now while this might be a tribute there's a lot of people who prefer a non-high-gloss guitar over a far more expensive high-gloss gibson les paul and that makes sense when i did this video i called this video the affordable gibson les paul and i put that in quotations meeting it's still quite expensive but it's far more affordable than the rest of the ones in their range that kind of sarcastic humor kind of went over some people's heads but one of the things that makes these great is the neck feel it doesn't have that high gloss sometimes sticky feel that some gibson guitars can have and has a real nice satin finish to it a real fast kind of feel and if you're playing it for a long period of time it's never going to get sticky or feel you know complicated to play i really like that while the fretboard can look a little bit unfinished and a little bit imperfect compared to their higher end guitars doesn't matter you're not really playing on the wood of the fretboard you're playing on the frets and the frets are great one of the things that makes this guitar sound great are the humbucker pickups we get a 490 r and a 490 t in the neck and bridge they're al nico 2 pickups there's just one of the best lesser expensive gibson les paul tones you can get while not really sacrificing in other areas other than the cosmetic thing but i actually don't mind these lower gloss finished guitars i actually kind of think i prefer it now rather than being you know precious and delicate about an expensive guitar this will do the job it's kind of the equivalent in some ways of a player series stratocaster they just pick them up you play them you don't think twice about it and it plays great i'm sure many people have had different experiences with these over the years but this one that i played this year was fantastic i'll link it up in the cards the second guitar the best guitars of 2021 has to be the squire classic vibe 70 stratocaster now this particular guitar had been out for a while but i'd never seen one in a lefty until sky music my local music shop got one so i borrowed it for a review and it was awesome i love the humbucker tone in the bridge pickup and i like how balanced that bridge pickup is with the rest of the pickups in this guitar not only that you get the squire classic vibe quality which means the neck feels great the just the playabilities there the tone of the pickups don't need replacing i know everybody thinks i buy squire maybe i'll change the pickups you don't have to do that in the classic vibe whether that's the 50s tally the 60s strat or the 70s straight you're good to go i think the only cosmetic downside to this for some people is the fact that it's got a 70s headstock i actually don't mind that i like something a little bit different as a lefty having a chance to play one of these guitars was pretty cool it's definitely on my radar of a guitar that i would get if i want to travel somewhere i want to pick up a guitar that i know is playable and very functional the next guitar on this list is gibson's baby brother epiphone they've been kicking home runs when it comes to making really great guitars i actually put a video together about the best current epiphone production model guitars if you missed that i'll link it up here somewhere down in the description they've been making great stuff one of the guitars that i fell in love with as soon as i played it was the epiphone les paul 50s gold top big fat 50s neck great sounding pickups just overall beautiful to look at as well at the same time i had that epiphone at the house i also had a gibson les paul gold top and they were almost indistinguishable from each other the gibson has more of a traditional gold top whereas the epiphone has a little bit more of a green look to the gold top it's a little bit hard to explain but visually and tone wise both were fantastic and i think what even made that more appealing is the price point they're far less expensive than a gibson but getting you most of the way there in terms of the feel and the tone so i would have no hesitations recommending the 50s les paul to someone who loves that particular look and sound just make sure you're happy with a fat neck and if you're not go for the 60s one which could have been on this list or is side by side with the 50s both of them are fantastic but my personal favorite was the 50s les paul the next guitar on this list is the harley benton fusion tee hh roasted fnt it's taken me three ghosts to get that name it's really complicated but anyway it's a really great guitar it's a telestyle electric guitar load with two humbuckers it also has coil tapping that kind of sounds musical a lot of the times i'm not a huge fan of that in guitars there's only been a few guitars where that actually really works well and this is one of them the star of the show with this guitar is how the neck feels in the hand and we also get stainless steel frets as an upgrade which is killer having stainless steel frets in a guitar is a great long-term decision it means you'll never have to replace them they just don't wear out in the same way that the old frets do so i much prefer having them in my guitar anytime i get a guitar rethreaded stainless steel frets go in so it's great that harley benton are putting them in this guitar the thing i love most about this is the roasted maple neck it is beautiful it's got a nice satin finish and it looks stunning out of all of my guitars this ranks in the top three of next it's beautiful and it's 322 euros which is far less than a lot of the guitars i have in my cupboard over here so it's a beautiful sounding guitar but more than that it feels great to play i've played this a number of times live already and there'll be some clips coming up about that if they're not already out at the time of this video but just a great sounding great playing guitar i've heard some criticisms of people saying the pickups didn't sound that great i was like tested this live through my fender amp and it cooked i think it's a really great option if you're on a budget you want a really quality instrument up next is a little bit of a two-in-one if you don't know the channel i'm a big fan of fender guitars mostly strats and telecast as well mostly telly's but i still love playing a strap from time to time it's good to have both that's the way i look at it so i'm going to do a two-in-one with this one defender american pro 2 strats and telecasters these are ideal long-term guitars i've said this a number of times on the channel on live streams anytime i'm asked about it i think these might be the best production model guitars that fender have made in a long time now i'm a big fan of the american original series strats and telecasters but they're far harder to find and fender and kaido like getting rid of those now and they're focusing more on these so these are far easier to find so if you're thinking about either going for an american original or the professional two the professional two guitars are just as good but different right they got some more modern appointments now you might not be a fan of those push push pots giving you extra tonal combinations and so forth but you don't have to use it right you're still getting a very great guitar straight out of the box comes in an awesome hard case so there's not a whole lot to dislike about them and i love the new colors the dark knight color especially and the miami blue see the grand theft auto vice city back here i'm a big fan of miami blue so yeah it's super cool these guitars would be a great long-term investment if you're on the fence about buying a player series or an american pro 2 as a long-term guitar the american pro 2 very very good i'd love to see if fender can top that on the next iteration recently i reviewed the gibson les paul slash guitar in november burst man i was so close to buying this and it's still going around my head but i don't need another guitar right that's what everyone says but i just sold a gibson les paul recently so i was kind of like oh do i go back and test this one out it might be on the cards for next year we'll see how we go one of the big reasons why this sounds as great as it is is the skull signature on the back of the headstock that's that's a joke by the way no it's got the gibson burst buckets the el nico 2 ones which are my favorite pickups from gibson i've got them in my flying v and that just sounds beautiful and this just sounded just as good as my flying v but it's slightly different but the great thing about this guitar is it feels awesome in the hand it was set up beautifully as well the neck is nice and chunky as well so if you like a 50s neck you're going to love this the finish looks spectacular as well and earlier i mentioned that the tribute looks good being that it's a satin finish it does but this also looks really really good this is more of lucky a tobacco burst i don't know if november burst and tobacco burst is the same i'm not that into specs but if you like burst bucket pickups and a quality guitar this would be high on the list of the best les paul's i've ever played especially at this price point the last guitar on this list has to be the vola vasti in surf green and this isn't just because vola were nice enough to send one out this guitar is awesome i had a chance to play it live which completely transformed my opinion on it from how i thought it was going to perform compared to the older guitars to how it performed in the context of the mix the neck pickup on this guitar is beautiful i say this guitar because it's right behind me here the neck pickup is a typical telecast to pick up their vowels in-house brand pickups and it has the stratiness to it which a lot of neck pickups don't have you might be saying hey why do you want a strategy sounding neck pickup in a tally because that's the sound to go for you want that top end there you don't want a warm woolly sound i was a huge fan of the bridge pickup in this guitar but and while that sounded great live the neck pickup was one of the nicest out there it's right alongside my fender american original 50s telecaster in terms of tone it's got all the spanx it sounds beautiful bridge pickup has a passive boost that allows you to get more output and kind of gives you a mini humbucker tone so it takes a single coil sound and then it can kind of fatten it out into a mini humbucker it's pretty wild not only that the guitar is a bit more modern i know that's not for everyone shape wise but it feels great on it's super lightweight the neck on this guitar feels beautiful it's got a nice satin finish it's never sticky and it's extremely playable although it does have quite a thin neck which might not be for everybody and quite a flat fretboard being that they've gone for more of a modern vibe so just keep all those things in mind i'll link to this below as well check it out it's definitely worth it it completely surprised me and i've been using it a lot in the context of live mix it's time to cover the best amplifiers of 2021 i had a chance to test out some great stuff but the first amp that i just thought of as soon as i put this list together was the fender 62 princeton chris stapleton edition amp one of its downsides is that it's only 12 watts which means it's not the loudest amp out there but for 12 watts with a 12-inch custom speaker it has quite a lot of volume and i think one of the best things about a princeton is once you can get them up past about one o'clock or 12 o'clock on the volume it starts hitting the amps sweet spot and with pedals you can push this even louder if you keep the clean headroom available before distortion just by turning up the volume now this only has four controls we get a volume tone speed and intensity control so it comes with vibrato but no reverb so that might also be a deal breaker for you and i thought maybe i'd be missing the reverb not having it but there's something about the sustain and the feel and the girth of the sound of this amplifier that doesn't make me miss it whatsoever and you can always add a delay pedal into the mix or whatever it's a very very simple amp in terms of its design but one of the best nicest sounding fender amps i've ever played so if you're keen to check this out i'll link it down below and you can have a look this amplifier completely surprised me it's the exact opposite of what i would normally go for just as a guitarist i usually like an amp with reverb that's usually a bit louder in terms of its wattage but this thing is beautiful if you can get your hands on one of these definitely give it a go the next amplifier on this list is the fender 68 custom pro reverb this is loaded with a single 12 inch speaker and it's rated at 40 watts which is great for gigging musicians it does distort once you start pushing it up past about one o'clock again on the dial or about six or seven on the dial but with that in mind though this thing is awesome and it's not that heavy either which is a really great thing considering that it's a full tube amp this also has a really great and musical reverb circuit as well as a tremolo circuit you can blend both of them together they ditched the second channel which would normally be on a lot of these styles of amps so there's no normal channel than the vibrato channel it's a one channel amp which is something that i really like it comes with a foot switch as well but just overall the tone and the output of these is exactly my kind of sound this is the sort of amp i would go for i actually borrowed this from fender they sent it out just on loan i didn't get to keep it they didn't pay me to make the video or anything like that i have to tell you it was just a great amp to play i own a similar amp to this in some ways i have a fender blues deluxe with an eminent swamp thing and they weren't too dissimilar in some ways so it was kind of like a little bit redundant buying one but for me in my particular situation i would probably sell my blue deluxe if i was to buy one of these because i wouldn't need 240 watt vendor amps but man this thing sounds great just a reverb feel is beautiful the vibrato circuit sounds great it's got a low noise floor which was a huge problem with the earlier models of the 68 custom deluxe reverbs which i owned one of them as well and that had a bit of a noise floor to it but this i would have no hesitations recommending this to someone who likes that beautiful sort of black face kind of sound that fender are known for so if you like the 65 deluxe reverbs but you wish it had a little bit more and you don't want to get a twin this is much nicer in my opinion tone wise than both of those amps the next amplifier on this list might be the best home practice amp i've ever played and there's one big reason why don't need your phone you can just use it and play with it and use all the controls on the top this is the joyo dc 15s practice amplifier and one of the reasons why i give this the nod it has lots of great sounds built directly into a control pot that you can turn on the top it's also battery powered has an internal battery so you can charge it up and take it with you you don't have to rely on having a power supply plugged into it all the time which is awesome but it has a looper function that i love another benefit of this amp is it has really great reverb and delay tones as an effect on the amp and you can store two of your favorite presets it comes with its own foot switch so you can do looping and then switch channels and all that kind of stuff and jam along with it this might be one of the best practice amps i've ever played now this is completely aimed at a home practice situation it has a really great line out so you can record into an audio interface or whatever the case may be it's not loud enough to gig with and it is a digital amp but all those things aside it's definitely one of the most practical and usable little jam amps i've ever used and it's sitting right on my floor over there it's a killer amp definitely worth checking out i'll link it below i'm next i'm going to talk about some marshall amplifiers that completely surprised me and i made some videos about them here at the house and also doing the keys to the guitar shop series one of which was the marshall mg 30fx this solid-state amplifier with some digital effects totally kicks ass if you're looking for an amp that sounds great with pedals it's far louder than it should be and sounds far better on the clean channel than it should this is a really great choice now it does have drive like a drive channel built into it and all that kind of stuff and all these effects but you turn all that off use it as a clean pedal platform and it totally cooks i've actually made a dedicated video about why this is a great pedal platform amplifier it's so loud once you crank it up and it handles pedals beautifully and i i just can't believe the mg 30 effects coming in at the price that it does sounds as good as it is so if you're looking for a conventional looking amplifier as a pedal platform that you can rock out at home with and it also sounds great recorded this would be a no-brainer the mg 30 effects far better than it should be and it completely surprised me the second martial amp i have to put on this list is the marshall dsl5 cr this is the 5 watt version of my marshall dsl 40 cr back there it's a great sounding little combo now this is a 5 watt all tube amp with a really small speaker but don't let that fool you it's far louder than it should be i always say to people if you're thinking about buying a tube amp for home use you should get one that's 5 watts or less ideally 5 watts is probably a little too much you should go for something a little bit less but the beauty of this amp is there's a switch on the back and you can drop it down to i think one watt or something like that it's a much lower volume so if playing at low volumes is important and you want a tube amp this would probably be up there as one of my favorites of all time along with the buguero v5 infinium which i own for a long time this actually sounds far better and it's far more flexible so this amp the marshall dsl5cr is loud enough to jam with in control conditions but it just it'll shock you how great you can get it to sound with pedals or you can get really great musical drive tones or clean tones out of the amp directly so these are fantastic again if you want to check these out i'll link them below the next amplifier on the list is one that my friend actually purchased not long after he had a chance to test one and i got to test it out in the context of live mix is the prs sonzera 20. now i've never been the biggest fan of the drive channel on the prs amps i think there's like a weird sort of fuzz over tone to it but the clean channel is spectacular and one of the things that makes this very different to say a deluxe reverb at 20 watts is the fact that this is a bit smaller it also has a 12 inch speaker and you get the 6l6 style output tubes giving it a really big and full sound kind of reminiscent of like a smaller version of a twin or if you've ever played a hot rod deluxe versus a deluxe reverb there's a big difference in the amount of oomph so these sanzera 20 amplifiers from prs sound great in the mix they hold their own being that those 6l6 tubes give it a little bit more headroom on the clean they're a great pedal platform my only small criticism of them is is that drive channel isn't fantastic you could probably get away with it in a pinch and maybe if you're playing fusion or something like that you could get some use out of it but for a blues player chuck a blues driver or whatever you want to put in front of it and you'll be in business these amps sound far better than they should and they're fairly affordable considering they're prs branded so if you're looking for something different give the prs on zero 20 a look they're just something different and tonally they're very different to say a standard fender amplifier but very reminiscent in some ways just based on that beautiful clean channel let's cover the best pedals of 2021 starting with something that i tried a long long time ago back probably around 2008 but it was a modified version of this pedal and i didn't like it that much but i've come to know just how wrong i was and i'm more than man enough to admit that the boss blues driver bd2 a few of my friends have this pedal and i've never really loved their tone but hearing it through my own rig with the way that i would dial it in with the gear that i've got i was really really impressed by it so the boss blues driver bd2 great value for money great blues pedal it gives me more gain than i thought it was going to give me as well a lot of people think of this it's more of a boost pedal but that can be your rhythm guitar tone you could work it as a lead pedal you can of course boost it into another pedal there's nothing to stop you from doing that and running the gain down lower this pedal is basically bulletproof it's been around forever and it will be around forever i've said it a million times i think ibanez and boss got a lot of these effects right many years ago so if you're looking for a great dirt pedal i don't think there's really any sacrifice to this one except that it doesn't give you a mids boost it's a little bit different gives you a little bit more low end a little bit more high-end than what you would find in something like a tube screamer which gives you more mids but rolls out the lows and rolls out the high so it's kind of like the opposite of that and for that reason i just think it's a great pedal it was something that i'm glad i've revisited and that video really took off and if you missed it i'll link it up in the cards second on this list of the best pedals of 2021 is a little bit of a twin one and this is from a company out of russia called g-town custom amps firstly i've never picked up pedals that are heavier than these in conventional enclosures so they're bulletproof these things man they're just built like an absolute tank but they make two of the best dumbbell sounding pedals i've ever used personally now i do have a gladio on the floor over here which i haven't actually plugged in yet that's actually dr rex it's on loan i'm just going to borrow it and do a video but the gtown custom amp stuff sounds the best to my ear so far the two in one sounds great the holy grail dual drive and their 335 pedal also sounds great so if you're looking for a killer dumbbell pedal and you've got some money to spend these are two of the best sounding ones i've ever played so check them out again they're made in russia they're built like tanks and i'll link them down below so you can check out their website one of the standout pedals of the year for me personally was the nord van gravity now i've tested out a number of pedals that are trying to do this exact thing and this particular pedal combination was something that i used live for many many years a tube screamer on one side in this case it's a ts10 not a ts9 and a clon ktr or centaur on the other side they got this right now there's a couple of things that could be considered deal breakers with this it's built extremely well but it's also handmade so it's very very expensive but it's just a great representation of those two pedals individually on a board so you do save some space and it's very easy to change the signal chain from stacking the clone into the tube screamer you can reverse and put the tube screamer into the clone if you want to reverse that without having to do any cable management stuff so that's cool it also has some bass and toggle switches on there to give you different eq settings i just think this is the best of its type so if you want the best tube screamer and clon in a box i haven't played one i like more than nord van gravity up next is a pedal out of pendergrass in georgia or pendergrass georgia this is from missing link audio it's called the peacock overdrive pedal if you're a huge fan of the allman brothers tone the dwayne almond kind of thing you're gonna get a kick out of what this can do it sounds fantastic when i released this video bought a pedal video on my channel it did quite well because people were digging it they were commenting on the video that's like this the best tone you've had this new one also has a germanium transistor built into it as well so it gives you a sort of a tougher sound than the original so there's two available i think i actually may have had last year's version of this in last year's video of this but the new one sounds great as well so if you're deciding between them both watch both of the videos and find which one works best for you but the new one's great it's got a bit more muscle to the sound i would have no hesitations recommending this it's built in the us it looks really cool again if you're a fan of that allman brothers kind of sound and get it out of this pedal let's talk about something other than an overdrive or distortion pedal this is the crazy tube circuits time delay wow what a great delay pedal super musical i've been using it on my amplifier in this room for the last six months or so and you've heard it in a in countless videos now if any time i've got delay that's what you were listening to and it's also made it onto my main pedalboard this thing is fantastic it's got tap tempo on one side you can turn it on and off on the other at first glance this pedal could look quite complicated but it isn't one of the controls is pretty much made redundant thanks to the tap tempo control so you don't have to worry about setting the time additionally it has a three-way toggle switch in the center and all that does is change the time signatures i usually leave it on quarter notes for the kind of stuff that i play and it works really well it is a digital delay but what it isn't is very sterile it sounds beautifully musical it has more of a dark repeat and an imperfect repeat coming back so it kind of is reminiscent of an analog delay but it's dead clean man the greeks make the best pedals in the world and this is no exception man crazy tube circuits time delay give it a look it'll be the last digital analog sounding delay pedal you'll ever need up next is maybe the coolest looking noir pedal i've ever seen i had a chance to test the early model of this out about 10 years ago i borrowed it from deluxe guitars here in melbourne australia and it was awesome about 10 years later jan peddle said hey do you want to try some of our stuff and i said yeah i'd love to because they make great stuff so jam pedals are out of grease they're one of the premier pedal builders over there which is a bit of a redundant statement now because just about everything coming out of greece is really good the white pedal is the best that i've ever used it was far out of my price range so this is very expensive and i don't think everyone can justify that but if you're looking for a top-end bar pedal it sounds great and looks cool and gives you very different sweep and q modes thanks to a toggle switch on the side this would be a no-brainer again you're buying something that's not mass produced this is handmade and the the finish on it just looks spectacular so this is still my favorite wah pedal of all time i probably should have bought one in the last 10 years but my gcp 95f was doing the job if you're really happy with your wah pedal then stick with it there's no reason to upgrade but if you're looking for the best that i've had a chance to try give these ones a look i'll link it down in the description to wrap the pedal section up i'm going to throw in some honorable mentions at the end here but i'm also just going to throw in this as a really affordable great sounding rat style pedal this is the sonic cake rude mouse i had a chance to test this out a few months back and i was really impressed with the tone and the build quality of it not only did the pots feel really good and all that kind of stuff it sounded unreal i've never been the biggest fan of like the rat style distortion but you can get lots out of this and i thought it sounded really musical in the video so i'm gonna throw this one in here i think their retail is around 39 so it's far cheaper than the rest of the stuff on here it's definitely worth checking out if you're into the rat sound and i'm starting to appreciate these other tones i wouldn't have used a long time ago for my own sound but when you record something with that sound that suits that particular type of tone that's what they're made for so i've tried to angle my videos in a way that suits the tone of whatever it is the best at least that's what i'm always trying to do but yeah this really surprised me and if you're looking for a budget rat style effect sonic cake make a really great version i'm gonna throw in a few extras just as honorable mentions and i'll link these below or in the cards or something like that the vs audio blackbird overdrive it's a fender in a box type of pedal it sounds beautiful made in grease as well the boss sd1 man another bog standard overdrive that sounds fantastic the hot tone ampero i did a full deep dive walkthrough video on that man what a great multi-effects pedal for someone who's at home who wants to do some recording and the jux overtube overdrive pedal which was based on the stevie ray vaughan sound of two tube screamers in one so you can either set it to stacked mode which gives you that higher gain two tube screamer type sound or single tube screen remote i could have put that on the list as well i've used it live and it sounds fantastic all right here we go this is my list of the worst things i had a chance to try in 2021 now if you watch my reviews and you don't stay till the end i always give you my thoughts about it and i always try to keep in context what it's supposed to be doing and how well it stacks up against other things i've had experience with over i guess the last 12 years or however long i've been doing this right so one of the things that really underwhelmed me to no extent was the squire classic vibe 60s jazz master and the only there's there's two main reasons why i don't like this guitar one it's over complicated in terms of its switching and those recessed sort of pots on the top of the guitar it just doesn't sound very good those pickups are the brightest most unusable pickups for what i would consider the target audience for these now you can of course scoop out more top end or shape your top end more using your amplifier and also your pedal chain if you're using pedals i had the treble on the amp almost all the way down and it was far too bright i've never had that experience with any other guitar in this room doing what i do everything else is consistent so the only thing that changed was the guitar and it was just a little bit on the shrilly side so i would have a hard time recommending the squire classic vibe 60s jazz master overall unless you're really looking for that particular sound i'm going to preface this by saying if you already own one you play heavier music you might get a kick out of that and i said that in the video but this was maybe the most underwhelming guitar from squire's classic vibe range that i've tried personally and it doesn't feel great to bend strings on either and it could be a scale length thing i haven't really looked into that but it just didn't feel quite as good as other guitars in the range i would much prefer getting something like the squire 70s classic vibe or the 60s or whatever they're all far better guitars with much better pickups i think had this have had better pickups i wouldn't have critiqued it as much but the switching and the toggles the um the recessed parts definitely aren't a point of interest for me i just think it's a little over complicated but it's a beautiful guitar in the hand so if you love it you could always upgrade the pickups the next guitar i have to put into this list of the worst of 2021 is the left-handed epiphone casino this is one of the worst guitars i've ever played for a number of different reasons one the toggle switch was right up next to the scratch plate which made that really frustrating to use now that's a small critique in the grand scheme of things but this is one of the most unusable guitars i've ever played at volume people who are just jamming around at home can still enjoy these and you'll get a kick out of them mostly for rhythm guitar stuff but as soon as you start to turn up your amp at all the pickups just can't handle it and it squeals we tried this in the context of a live mix on our keys to the guitar shop series and rick kind of dug the tone but he goes man it's feeding back like crazy and it did it was just unusable even at a distance away from your amplifier it still creates problems because it's just a hollow body guitar unfortunately i feel like this is the only guitar in epiphone's range where the quality control just isn't as good as the other guitars in the series whether that be the 50s gold type or the 60s that i spoke of earlier or the epiphone prophecies they're all far far better guitars than this i'm not sure what happened between 15 years ago and now but if i had to not recommend one guitar on this list it would be the epiphone casino for someone who who's playing live it's just an unusable guitar up next i'm going to talk about the orange trimlord 30. this was hilarious i did an a b video between the orange tremblord 30 and the marshall dsl 20 cr and the marshall sounded so much better interestingly enough people were like oh this isn't a fair test this is a clean amplifier and the marshall's not i had both of the amplifiers dead clean in the room and the marshall wiped the floor in the mix with the orange it wasn't even close i've been doing this long enough to know what i'm doing i've been doing festivals and gigs long enough to know what i'm doing with amps and gear and only once i compared them i realized oh where's where's the orange in the mix it just got buried it has a really scoop sound and i don't know if it was just that amplifier that didn't sound as good as it potentially could have but up against the marshall dsl 20 which isn't even the same power rating as that amplifier it just wasn't even close the marshall was far better with pedals on the clean channel over the orange amp with pedals on the clean channel which is the only thing that it's got so it just was very underwhelming and i think for the price point and for being a tube amp it's it's not a good sell i would say buy any other number of clean channel amplifiers over the orange but again if you love it and it works for your particular situation it could have just been a one-off issue with that amp but i don't think so so anyway let me know what you think of these amps i only give you my experience with these products so i always urge you to go test it yourself but that's my experience with the orange trim lord 30. earlier in the video i was talking about how i got some deardario cables and i'm a big fan so what tipped me over the edge with that were these crappy cables from samson i saved a few bucks and i went for these and i thought they'll be okay and they really reminded me of cables that i got back in guitar center in 2010 that you still see on my channel i just wanted ones that were a little bit longer so i figured i'd go for these samson ones these were the biggest mistake i could have made when i got cables which forced me to end up buying another set and this is a great example of why you should buy something good to begin with so you don't step from something not very good into something that's better i should have just bought the deardario once to begin with and save myself cables that do nothing and the biggest problem i have with these cables is anytime you insert the jack into the guitar and move slightly it's very crackly and this isn't a flaw with my guitars i actually had them checked because i thought hey mike what's up with my guitars it's these cables i plugged in any other cables and it works great so samsung cables although they're affordable if you're playing with a strat or a telecaster i don't recommend these they might be better if they're sitting directly into the front of a jack on a guitar but for a strat and tally completely unusable they've just caused nothing but problems but i can still use one of these at a time going from my pedal to the amp because that doesn't move much so anytime there's movement these samsung cables are crap and i don't recommend them again if you're looking for some good affordable cables stand the test of time you can either look for ones that have nitric connectors generally speaking they're really good or the ones i mentioned earlier the deodario's have been awesome so go check them out i'm actually going to talk about something that completely underwhelms me and this is the hughes and ketna tubemeister 40. not necessarily the head but the combination of that 40 watt head on a very substandard speaker cabinet the speaker cabinet had a vintage 30 in there but i really felt like the speaker box was what was causing the biggest tonal problems in the room it's just not very good now a great example of this was eggnader they released their rebel 20 and 30s or whatever their heads were with these substandard speaker boxes which completely changed the vibe of the amp had they have released quality speaker cabinets with those com with those amplifier heads the combination would have sounded so much better than just having a shitty little box with a closed back on it and i really feel like hughes and ken are shooting themselves in the foot by producing what i would consider a very flexible amp having three different channels is it three yeah three different channels and all these different eq options right di out and all that kind of stuff with a speaker box that sounds like that ideally if you're gonna buy one of these amplifier heads try it through a quality 2x12 from marshall or fender or anybody else and i bet you you'll get a far better tone than you will out of the hues and ketna cavs so this critique is more aimed at those speaker cabinets than it is the amp but that whole combination sounded a bit lackluster to wrap this video up i've got a brand new section called the most overpriced i've only put one item in this list and i think it's justified and i'll explain why so a little while back in september i did a video called small expensive and 5 watts this was for the fender 57 custom champ great little amplifier but super expensive considering what you get you get five watts of power you get this really nice cabinet these are handmade i think in the usa which kind of jacks their price up but value for money these are pretty low on the list at least in my opinion these can sound really musical and guys like eric clapton have played old versions of these on recordings like layla and so forth so there's a sort of like a nostalgic factor when it comes to these amps but are these the best recording amps ever no not even close i didn't like the clean tone recorded on this whatsoever but once you start kind of driving them or pushing pedals into them i can get the kind of tones that i like recorded but they have a slight brittleness to them and that may sort of evaporate over time or go away once you kind of break these small jensen speakers in but overall i'm not a big fan of these amplifiers based on what i was getting out of it i don't normally have that much of a problem getting a great sound but i think what it is the biggest problem i have with them is their price for what you get there's far better options out there i would much rather buy a fender deluxe reverb for not much more money than that in australia over one of these you're just getting a much better amplifier that has far more options it's more usable live but again if you're looking for a 5 watt amp that has a tiny speaker and a unique kind of tone you can check these guys out links below thanks for watching folks my name's shane thank you for all the support in 2021 i really appreciate it i hope you've enjoyed the best and the worst gear of 2021 at least in my opinion if you did enjoy it please leave a thumbs up subscribe click the bell all that kind of stuff now i know i've been doing a lot of gear review videos more than anything else over the last few months that's because i haven't had a chance to really go anywhere next year as of march i'll be traveling again if fingers crossed it all goes to plan and i'm going to bring you a whole bunch of different content mixed in with other guitar reviews and amps and all that kind of stuff so the stuff i have planned i'll announce when the time is right i think you're gonna get a kick out of it i'll have probably eight months of great content ready to go once that trip goes ahead so stay tuned for that thank you again for all the support if you have any comments or questions or if you agree or disagree with any of my remarks on this gear please let me know in the comments this video is never meant to upset anybody doing this list but these are the things that just really stuck in my mind as either the best or the most lackluster of the year and i kind of like doing this it's fun for me and if you disagree or agree with any of this in comment in the comments section now i know not everybody has a chance to test all of this gear but after doing this for so many years now i think people value my honest feedback on products and if you don't ever watch to the end of my videos you should because i give you my opinion on it at the end as well so thanks again for watching my name's shane i'll catch you soon happy new year

Channel: intheblues

Views: 122,578

Keywords: intheblues

Id: ojFCOjS8xc0

Length: 41min 2sec (2462 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021