Hey guys it's Bob from Better Music here, coming from the Froth Hut with the first of a brand
new segment that we're doing called "Staff Rig Rundowns". Rig Rundowns on Youtube are
extremely popular and we get asked a lot about the gear we use, different pedals, different
amps and things that we use, so we decided to start it ourselves and do our own thing.
We're going to start off with my rig, I play in a grind core band called Wretch, the music
itself is very fast, very intense short bursts of anger. The music is kind of along the lines
of Napalm Death and Pig Destroyer, Brutal Truth, that sort of stuff, so it calls for
a very short very sharp and aggressive sound. The amp that I use is a Marshall DSL100, this
amp is a cracking head, it's probably my favourite, or my second favourite Marshall, behind the
800, everybody loves the 800's, I couldn't find one, so I bought a DSL instead and I'm
extremely happy with it. This amp does everything I want it to do. Two channels, EL34's you
really can't go wrong, plenty of power, plenty of grunt plenty of everything, as you can
see with the EQ I'm not doing anything too full on, I'm generally running everything
at about 7 and the gain is on about 3 on the ultra channel and on the clean it's just a
clean sound.
So the cabinet itself as you can tell is very very haggard it is used it is an old and abused
cab. This is about 12-13 years old now this cab, it's a Pro Audio cab, back in the day
Pro Audio suppliers used to make their own cabinets, they'd make their own PA speakers,
bass things the whole lot and they would brand them themselves. This was their top of the
line guitar cab, it was made by a company called Kelly. The cabinet itself is loaded
with Mesa Boogie vintage 50 speakers, now vintage 50 speakers are the speakers that
Mesa Boogie used to use back in the day, before vintage 30s became as popular as they are.
If you remember the old Mesa Boogie quad boxes with the steel and they had the Mesa Boogie
logo on the front. So those cabinets were loaded with 2 black shadow celestion C90 speakers
and 2 vintage 50s. Had a very unique sound. This cab is one of two cabs like this, it
was built by the guitar and amplifier tech out a Pro Audio supplies in the early 2000's
by the name of Adam Warner, one of my really really good mates. He built the cab with 4
vintage 50s in it and it has this sound like no other. The vintage 50 has a slightly bigger
voice coil than the vintage 30 so it's a slightly darker sound, so it's an extremely unique
cab, and the other Pro Audio cab the fury, I guess locals would remember them, the fur
covered, or like the fuzzy covered cabs, it's one of those but loaded with the vintage 50
speakers, it's owned by a chap called Bilvas, a good mate of mine called Bilvas. So there's
only two of these cabs around, so this one has seen much action, as you can tell, it's
what I guess custom shop would call a heavy relic. From there I'm gonna go into the return
of the effects loop, so from the effects loop, I go into the ever faithful Boss Super Chorus
CH-1, this was the second pedal I ever bought, I love this pedal, it's Zakk Wylde in a pedal,
it's rad, and then I go into the MXR Micro Amp, so the micro amp is like a clean boost
the way I'm running it into the loop, it goes as a clean boost. So that into the send of
the amp, and that's the effects loop taken care of. So from the front of the amplifier,
I'm coming in to my newest pedal, the Boss Noise Suppressor, I got this a few weeks ago
and I love it, it's just tightened everything up, it's great, I'm a big fan of Boss pedals
and the Noise Suppressor was one of my lists of pedals to get. So from the Noise Suppressor
into the Crowther Hotcake. Now the Crowther Hotcakes are made in New Zealand by the drummer
from Split Ends, they were made for Neal and Tim Finn I believe he actually made them for
him and they just gained momentum from there. People like Deano from Fear Factory was using
one at one stage in the 90s as well, cracking overdrive pedal, I love this pedal. From there
we are going into an Electro-Harmonix Soul Preacher, the compressor pedal. So the Soul
Preacher is great for country music, I play metal and pop and rock and stuff but I love
country music as well and you gotta have a compressor, so the Soul Preacher works really
well for that. From there I am going into the Zakk Wylde Wah, it's the most full on
and angro wah I could find without all the overdrives and all that stuff in it, it's
just a simple straight ahead Wah pedal, but its got this really agro sweep, so from the
low to the high is this really, it's just full on, Which is what I like. And then from
there into the ever faithful Boss TU-3 Tuner. So I've got two channels, I've got all of
these effects and things that I use all comes into this, my Schecter. I love this guitar,
this is a Schecter, USA production PT, cracking guitar, I am a massive fan of Schecter guitars.
This one, USA built, essentially a telecaster, but loaded with humbuckers. Now I've done
a couple of mods to this as well, and people always ask about the guitar mods that I do.
What i've done is I've thrown the EMG set in there, just an 81 85 but I've put them
in backwards. So traditionally the 81 would be in the bridge, and the 85 would be in the
neck, I've swapped it around because I love the thickness the 85 gives in the bridge,
it gives it a chunkier, thicker sound, and the 82 in the neck is slightly brighter so
it works really really well. The other thing I've done is I've taken the tone circuit out,
and I've just got two volumes, a bridge and a neck. Again in grind core it's about simplicity,
so just volume straight ahead, you don't use tone in grind core.
So what I'll do is I'll take you through a couple of the sounds that I use. You can hear
what each pedal is doing. I think that's probably going to be the best thing, so strap yourself In!
That's just the clean sound, I'll bring the chorus in.
Compressor...
So you can hear a big difference there...
So from there we'll go into the second channel, so this is just the amp on it's own, a little
bit of drive, the gain's on three, so...
Now if I sharpen it up with the hotcake a bit.
and add the noise suppressor and it cuts it all out so it's nice and tight.
I've got the boost, so.
It's just so smooth, it's easy. As you can tell it's all about functionality with this.
The music calls for really sharp, really direct sounds, so it's about everything being really
close and easy to get to. The one thing I didn't mention is this whole thing is powered
by a Pedaltrain Volto, the little rechargeable power supply. Cracking unit, I'm a big fan
of that, the fact that I can take all of this stuff in an out, so later on down the track
I'll do another rig rundown with my covers rig, if you like, I've got rig that I use
for covers bands that I play in that uses a few of these pedals and a few others as
well, but yeah, a lot of fun. Hope you enjoyed the first Better Music staff rig rundown.
If you've got any questions or comments, just put them in the comments below, and ROCK ON!