Expensive VS Cheap Gear

there is a question that haunts us all as we search for a new guitar gear is expensive gear better than cheap gear and can cheap gear actually be good on today's episode I'm gonna walk you through three different tiers of guitar rigs that are all priced quite differently we're gonna learn something we're gonna hang out it's gonna be a lot like Sesame Street I promise [Music] the way we're gonna lay this out is that every rig I've built has the same components we have a 335 style hollow-body guitar we have an amplifier head a delay pedal and an overdrive pedal and so every tear is gonna share that and I'm gonna pull similar sounds out of each one as best I can let's start with the most expensive rig first first component of the most expensive guitar e is gonna be a Collings I 35 this is a handcrafted work of art these are made in Austin Texas and every element of this guitar inside and out is completely manufactured in-house this is a luthier craftsman just incredibly well made instrument from the headstock to the finishes the hardware the pickups it's beautiful everything in it is top tier it runs a little over six thousand dollars and it does play amazing the guitar case it comes in looks like the coffin that an emperor would be buried in every element of it is spectacular so it's expensive but that's what we need in this tier the amplifier is a two rock silver sterling signature and it runs 6,000 and it weighs 6,000 pounds so this is a dumbbell style amplifier it is covered in blue velvet it really does weigh a lot because it has a lot of transformer weight has a lot of tubes it's amazing then we have the Strymon valance a tape echo this runs about 400 bucks it does some really cool stuff I'm going to keep it simple though and we have a gold horsey centaur this is about three thousand dollars so this Guitar Rig it's pretty extravagant let's listen to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] next here is really good and it's something that most everyone can find their way into so a lot of these pieces of gear you can find them on the used market you can find them at Guitar Center in places a lot of these things have been made they're not like boutique e and completely handmade so first part is gonna be a 2000s es-335 by Gibson and it's a beautiful well-made guitar it's made in the Memphis plant and I got this for like nine hundred or thousand dollars I can't remember and if you look on reverb they're like fifteen hundred it says I think you can still find them for like eight or nine hundred bucks just looking Craigslist but this is a well-made instrument and Gibson you know they have this thing where they're inconsistent over the years and it's really hard to know what you're getting into and companies like Gibson who created the 335 you know as they make things differently that's the reason a company like Collings can come along and make this incredibly immaculate instrument and charge so much money and sell them because they're always amazing like the calling stuff is always brilliant and with these it's hit or miss so my advice is play a Gibson before you buy it so next up will be the amplifier and electro harmonix and make 50 so this is a reissue of the saab tech head you guys have seen those obviously and I promise you one day I'll do that episode when I'm ready I have to be ready I have to feel it don't feel it yet but anyway we're gonna play this and it's a 50 watt head it's about five hundred and seventy five dollars new but I've seen them for like four hundred bucks so fantastic amp I love it and then here are two pedals you can find anywhere literally and they're both one hundred and fifty dollars the sd1 was a craft overdrive and the carbon copy by mxr analog delay fantastic let's see what a let's see what medium rigs Emily [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the third tier the lowest or the most affordable bracket of Guitar Rig and it starts with a guitar that I bought on Amazon for 139 dollars I saw my friend Ryan Burke of 60 cycle hum why do you guys probably watch that podcast he reviewed this and I was like I gotta buy one of these this is crazy $139 for a hollow body semi hollow body guitar it's made in China and then I mentioned it's 139 dollars it's a hundred and thirty nine dollars and I took it out of the box tuned it and it plays like a guitar should it sounds good I would play it I am gonna play it for you I'm just shocked at its 139 dollars like obviously the quality is interesting I mean the neck if you compare this to the Collings it's like two different universes the machine heads could be a little better the pickups are not potted that well because when I talk or yell into them they're microphonic you might think that's cool I don't know all that said this is a very very cool instrument for 139 bucks really amazed then the guitar amp is about a hundred and fifty dollars it's the electro harmonix 44 magnum power M so I'm gonna go into this just like I will an aunt because it is and out is into a speaker cabinet it's not a pedal it's just in a pedal case and this sounds really good it stays clean if you want it to it has a bright and a normal sound kind of like input one and two on a fender style and then we have a $60.00 gauss tape echo by TC electronic I like this echo I think I've talked about it on the show before and we have the $25.00 behringer tube screamer clone the vintage tube overdrive if you watched what's the deal with behringer you see me shoot this out against a real vintage 808 that's like $1000 and it's completely inaudible it is in a plastic enclosure but yeah it's a cheap guitar rig but I think it sounds really good let's check it out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] let's start with tier 3 so the lowest most affordable tier and I'm gonna talk through how I felt about it as I played it so first off the pedals I like that type echo and I like the behringer overdrive now I think you could say are these higher quality of some things no they're probably not they sound good they turn off and on when they should they have some plastic parts if you don't beat the crap out of those pedals they're gonna last a long time I know people that have had the behringer pedals on touring boards for a while and they're so cheap you can replace them so there's no issue of sound here they sound really good and they're made good enough next is the amplifier so the electro harmonix 44 Magnum and they have some different versions and then there's also brands like quilter that makes some really nice and low budget a petal shaped amplifier heads now this pedal that I used here the 44 it's not a pedal it's an amp but I've actually used that device in live shows one two or three times I'm just thinking about it I've definitely used it live within years and no one in the audience and honestly I don't think I did either I said it kind of clean it doesn't have a lot of controls but I'm a player who puts my eq's all at noon anyway and I used the bright are the normal depending on the guitar and it works perfectly fine so it's a great device to have a speaker cabinet or two and play a gig with play at home it's really fascinating really well-made and then the guitar 139 dollar chinese-made Firefly hollow body is this guitar comparable to the colleagues absolutely in no way it's like another universe is it comparable to the Gibson 335 no it's another country but is it a good guitar I have to say it's a good guitar I picked it up out of the box I put new strings on it into native it set it up and it's totally fine if I was gonna get this guitar I would change the pickups the tuners are probably okay I'd have to play it a little more but it's 139 dollar guitar that's way better than my first guitar it's better than Hendrix's first guitar I could keep going it's a good instrument and if you want to get something a little nicer if you feel like your guitar is not that nice go grab this guitar and if you want to get into modding guitarists buy that one and mod it so for this third tier the cheap tier I could confidently say I'd go play a gig pretty much anywhere I might miss a few pedals but I can make music tier two so this is the tier that a lot of you guys might live in I think it's a pretty normal tier for guitarists who are serious about guitar are in bands things like that so this is some gear that a lot of you guys may have similar things to so this Gibson it's a real-deal Gibson american-made and it's a really nice guitar you know when it's held up against the Collings once again it's two very different vehicles so to speak I mean Lamborghini and like a really nice very nice Honda or something you know the 335 is gonna do the job and do it well enough that you may never need another guitar you can hand this guitar down it's really well-made it's american-made and I think the price on that guitar is really nice about a thousand bucks 1,500 worst case I think it's a really great instrument at a perfect price now the amplifier the Saab Technic 50 now I'm a huge soft tech amplifier guy and this electro harmonix reissue of the Saab tech is spot-on it sounds exactly like my vintage make 50s I have several so I already love this and it just so happens that this reissues accurate and I felt right at home it's clean it loves every pedal you'll put through it and it can do no wrong I actually like input - better than one if you get one of these try that it's brighter or darker nothing else to say about the amp because I've said it for like a year now 50 and then the pedals the boss sd-1 Laza it's hard to beat a boss style pedal for quality sound durability and the Wazza has the custom mode now so this is a nice tube screamer style sounding pedal it does like gain boost all the way to heavy almost distortion sounds and then you have the carbon copy the carbon copies on like a million pedal boards it tours around the world it's a great delay I know a lot of people that'll only use that delay I've seen people sell my Panther cub that cost way more and like the carbon copy more so just trying to be honest this middle rig is really nice I think from the way the guitar plays the way the amp feels it feels natural to me because I think I lived in this realm as a player kind of middle-of-the-road stuff so I love it so tier number one this is the most expensive rig this is the creme de la creme of guitar let's walk through it from the guitar first this Collings i-35 it is a work of art bill callings who put out these guitars and it's been a luthier for years and years he's gone now but his company's still going stronger than ever and they just make amazing instruments Nick and I actually tour the facilities a few years ago and every single element of this guitar is manufactured by their hands like they're built totally and fully by colleagues so there's no outsource things from here are there their attention to detail and their hand is on every piece of it now this guitar plays so good I mean it the threading on it the way that it feels the next shape the finishes are so beautiful the pickups the hardware the tuners like this is the best the style guitar can get period so do I love it absolutely yeah it's a great guitar so moving on from that to the amplifier so to rock to rock makes these amps by hand in California and he specializes in replicating these dumbbell circuits now original Dumble amplifiers you see these on the stage with John Mayer or you know whoever just tons of people Robin Ford all these guys use them but they're like $100,000 or more so he replicates these and he does it so perfectly and he adds his little spices and his flavors the attention to detail the way they look the way they're constructed every part that's in it the attention that they give it the customer service they have just like callings this is another tier of product this amp sounds great it has a ton of controls which is a little out of my wheelhouse but I love it and the reverb sound is beautiful one of the best reverbs I have in the whole building hands down it's just a great sounding amplifier tons of power and it looks awesome now you go to the pedals so you have the gold claun professional overdrive the Centaur it's three thousand dollars and it's made by a guy in Boston Massachusetts and making each one custom-made enclosure everything's hand-built here I mean the board is gooped it is it's a circuit that's super unique it's a special device and he has to charge that much money you can get replicas sure but he makes these I mean I love the clock I've used it on my board for years in here it's almost a decade now so I do love that pedal no complaints then you have the Strymon tape echo of all the DSP companies doing a tape echo pedal this is the most precise feature-rich one out there I have no complaints it's it's phenomenal and it's worth every bit of money that it cost I don't know what else to say this rigs excellent and I have zero complaints I mean it's Tier one it's good I know what you're thinking you just watched me play through three rigs that are separated by vast amounts of money and I just told you I like them all and that is the truth I like them all that's kind of the point of this video I think that we get really hung on the money symbol next to gear for some of you you can afford the best tier here monetarily and for some of you you really can't and what I just want to make known through this video is that if you're watching this today and you can't afford a better guitar and it's keeping you from creating music that's a really bad excuse you need to pick up what you have and make music I enjoyed every one of these rigs I could make a cheaper rig than I found here today and really enjoy it so that's the point here if you can afford the Collings just go by the colleagues that's great if you can only afford the Firefly go buy it I think you just need to see that I had fun with every one of these and I absolutely did enjoy myself and you can do that too so go make music and speaking of making music let's go to record time today's record time is brought to you by des waves the days we had sowed a wave is one person and he's really really talented I connected with him through Pete Yorn Pete hooked us up and he sent me some records he is like the band director bandleader for Pete's new tours and if you like his music or if you like not a surf even Death Cab a little bit certain air as a Death Cab you're really gonna enjoy this what I like most is some of the subtle synth arrangement like the textures that are behind all the guitar parts and stuff really clever really well mixed really well produced so he has other records as well but in the comments let me know what you think about this and if he heard any of the other music he's made talk about that as well and then also if you know of other bands like this toss me a line I want to know about more stuff like this because I really really enjoy it that's all I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope that you see the true point of it is to just let you know that you have what you already need to make really great music and if you can't afford the good stuff go for it but don't feel like that's gonna make or break your musical creativity or your ability it's just not true so if you did like this episode that like subscribe to the channel and there's a bell icon click that for notifications of future episodes there's also a link in the description below or you can become a patron of the JH s show I dropped some really exclusive content on there once a month you get sneak peeks of every episode just click that link and go watch the teaser video for that and also there's the ghs show calm until next time just make music and have fun and I'll see you later

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 503,850

Rating: 4.9365988 out of 5

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, Guitar, Guitar Pedals, Electric Guitar, Guitar Effects, Guitar Player, Guitar Playing, Pedal Demo, Guitar Demo, New Pedals, New Guitar Pedals, Josh Scott, Guitar Gear, Music Gear, Guitar Tones, Pedal Tones, Good Guitar Tone, Best Guitar Tone, Best Electric Guitar Tone, Analog Guitar Tone, Guitar Sounds, JHS Guitar Pedals, JHS VLOG, JHS Videos, The JHS Show, Music History, Music, Education, Effects

Id: UHsfwniewV0

Length: 23min 6sec (1386 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020