My Gear Series: Epiphone G400

My first ever guitar.

So today's post will be the start a series called "My Gear", which basically reviews all the equipment I currently/have owned. The Epiphone G400 is a nice mid-range guitar, suitable for Gibson SG fans, but without the money. These days, G400s are made in China (boo...) but luckily I bought one of the earlier models which were made in Korea (yay...).

So the good things about this guitar? They are relatively cheap, compared to the Les Paul range of the Epiphone brand, and they look pretty cool.

What about the not so good things? These guitar are top-heavy, meaning that the neck is heavier than the body. The annoying thing about this is that when you are playing while standing up, the neck will always sink unless you hold it up. Also, the pick-ups on these guitars sound fairly mediocre, especially the neck pick-up, which tends to sound drowned and muddy. The treble pick-up sounds fairly decent for a "meh" pick-up, and is the only humbucker I use when I play, which can be confounding if I want a warmer sound. Finally, the controls/jack tend to be flimsy and can undo themselves at times.

Some tips to improve this guitar? If you own this guitar and hold similar views as me, I recommend the following:
1. Change the pick-ups to any sort of Seymour Duncan humbucker.
2. If you can't afford pick-ups, replace the stock 500k pots with 1meg ones. This will definitely open up the sound to some degree.

Overall score? 2.5/5. ... this may be biased due to the fact that I am a Fender sort of guy. ;P

Fender Jazzmaster

A sexy Jazzmaster. Mmmmm...

Well look what we have here? An ultimate surfer's guitar? Not only that, this versatile beast sounds great playing anything from country to hard rock. The Fender Jazzmaster sports an Alder body and a Rosewood fretboard, but what sets it apart from other guitars are its pick-ups.

These wide-range single coil pick-ups are unique to the Jazzmaster, and sound absolutely amazing. Being single coil and coupled with 1 meg pots, the sonic detail and clarity of these pick-ups are second to none. Sure, it may look like I'm simply advertising this guitar, but I seriously do love it. One great thing about the pick-ups are the positions available for selection. You have your standard Rhythm and Treble, but only on the Jazzmaster the middle selection uses both pick-ups in parallel, cancelling the hum and using both pick-ups like a humbucker. The resulting tone you get is extremely fat, yet clear. The pick-up selectors above the rhythm (neck) pick-up totally gives the guitar a darker tone, as it switches to pots with a lower resistance.

In my opinion, the Jazzmaster through a Fender Tweed amp makes a perfect lead guitar, backed by a Gibson humbucking guitar as rhythm.

Finally, here's a cool video of PhilX demoing a Vintage Jazzmaster. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdtknZ2Eoz4

BOSS GT-10 Multi-FX Pedal

Its the only Multi-FX you'll ever need...

Ahh the BOSS GT-10. This thing actually kinda looks scary... but alas, it wouldn't even hurt a fly. Unless you place it on top of a fly or something...

Now, the GT-10 is in my opinion, the best sounding/most versatile Multi-FX board you will ever see. It models a whole heap of amps, and to add to the flexibility, there are a ton of cabinets, mics and other settings to fiddle with, so you can definitely get the sound you want. It also has a intuitive interface and an EZ wizard for noobs, where all you need to do is select the genre you want to play, and visually plot tone, gain and what not on a X-Y axis sort of thing. So easy!

The GT-10 also sports a USB out port, so you can connect to your computer and record straight from there, no noise, no nothing, just pure guitar. I recommend using this with Garageband, its by far the easiest to use and understand. Also, if you live in an apartment/shared living area, where amps aren't the best idea, you can plug headphones straight into the back of this unit and listen to what you play from there! No more complaining from them damn neighbours!

Ahh the BOSS GT-10... I think I'm in love.

a new guitar blog???

hi there people and welcome to nesiced's guitar blog!
the latest info on anything electric guitar, from gibson to fender, amps to stompboxes, rhythm to lead. anything will be posted here.
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