This is the current state of my pedalboard

But it will change soon! First new pedal is the Greer Amplification Southland Harmonic Overdrive. I’ve been wanting one of these for a while but I couldn’t find a UK dealer. But Joe’s Pedals stepped in, to help me spend my money!!

The Southland will be my main overdrive pedal but I need to see which of the Wampler drives I have, will be the best pedal to stack into it.

Second new pedal is the Keeley Electronics Aurora Reverb.

My Morgan amp doesn’t have any reverb built in so I had been looking at pedals to add some. However, I’ve been happy to use delay only up until now and this pedal ended up being a bit of an impulse purchase. Don’t get me wrong, it sounds very good, but I’m not sure if it will make it onto my board permanently. It would be a case of fitting 7 pedals, into the 6 loop Quartermaster.

Any finally (phew) to hopefully improve the sound of the board further, I’ve invested in an Evidence Audio pedalboard cable kit, courtesy of the lovely people at thegigrig.

These are solderless like the George L’s cables I’ve used for years, but the end of the cable screws into the jack, making the connection very secure. I’ll have some more updates on these as the new pedalboard is built.

Greetings!

There is alot happening in the world of guitar geek at the moment.

Firstly, I will be moving to a new studio shortly. All my gear has been packed up in readiness, hence why I’ve been a bit quiet. Normal service will be resumed soon, including some riveting new videos!

As you may know, I have recorded guitars on two songs for the new Straight to Video album, the brainchild of my good friend Bob Lane. I’m super happy with the results, and its definitely worth checking out. I’ll hopefully have the songs up on my site shortly. In the meantime, click on the link above, or head over to their facebook page.

The Nightwires have also started recording a new album. This will be alot different to the last album but I’m not going to give too much away at the moment, with it being such early days. Drum tracking has commenced, but I’ll keep you updated as we progress. Every band says the current release they are working on, is the best thing they have done, but in this case, I really think it might be true.

However, the BIG news is that I will soon be able to offer guitar lessons on a full time basis. This will probably start in early March, so stay tuned to the Lessons page of the website for more information.

These are exciting times for me and I approach the year with a new found positivity!

#livingthedream

Yes, I shall have exciting news in the New Year. Honestly!!

In the meantime, have a merry whatsit and a happy new thingy

Another Wampler pedal has arrived today. The Clarksdale Delta Overdrive is a tubescreamer type pedal, but with lots of flexibility. I’ve not had this type of drive pedal for some time, so I’m excited to see how I get on with it. Tone report to follow…..

Here is Riff of the Day Part 2, a sample of my new song “Octave Boogie”

I know I’ve already done a few videos featuring my TC Electronic Ditto Looper, but I enjoy doing them so much, I thought I’d start a regular series.

So here is “Going Loopy – Part 1” There is so much you can do with the Ditto, I’ve only scratched the surface so far. I picked up the idea of playing a drum beat on the strings over the pickups, from Guthrie Govan. If only I could pick up the rest of his technique….

Enjoy!

This is the first of an occasional series of videos, highlighting one of my riffs. This first one also shows that you CAN use a delay pedal, in front of a high gain amp.

I might find a song out of this 😉

I recently purchased a Wampler Euphoria Overdrive pedal. Playing drop D riffs with a “natural, transparent overdrive” pedal, is probably not what it was intended for. But what the hell, I liked the sound!!

The video for this was filmed on my iPhone, with the audio from a Shure SM57 on my amp.

The Nightwires had a stonking practise this week. I’m so priviledged to be able to play with such great musicians as Russell, Rob and Dave. I think we get better and better and that makes it more enjoyable. I think we’ve pretty much accepted that after playing for 10 plus years without getting where we want to be, we are playing still because we love playing and because we are great friends. I still personally get quite annoyed when I see other acts getting great support slots etc, but we get over looked, but I’m sure lots of artists feel like that. I’m trying to not sound bitter, but the shit you go through as an “unsigned” musician, gets worse over time, as the struggle becomes more and more futile.

But, and its a big but, when you can write songs that make you smile when you play them and when listen back to them, you have to keep playing. I’d provided Russell with 5 new songs and he’s worked his magic on 4 of them. When we played them with the band this week, after a couple of runs through of each one, they are already sounding incredible. Definitely a bit of a Tom Petty vibe going on with a couple of them and the fact that we enjoyed playing them so much, bodes well for them getting into the set.

This was also the first opportunity I’ve had to really fire up the Morgan Amplification AC 20 Deluxe. My god, its incredible! I set it for a clean but dirty sound, so play softly and its clean but dig in and attack the guitar and it hits you with a beautiful blues rock sound. Its perfect for the rootsy sound of the Nightwires songs. I bloody love it!

So, these 4 songs we have are about ready to gig. And I’m hopeful that we could produce a new EP soon, as I feel the need to rock again 😉

I’ve done a little update of my pedalboard. The Wampler Euphoria has finally been added and I’ve taken the Phase 90 off. Its the first time in years I’ve not had the Phase 90 on my board, its really because the TC Electronic Shaker sounds so lush and lovely and I only want one modulation pedal on there.

The footswitch is for my Victory head and it needs a block of wood under it, to raise it up and make it easier to reach. It also looks like there will be space on the board for my Ditto looper, which is nice!