i was inspired by a video that keith williams did a 5 watt world and if you haven't heard
of his channel i'd highly recommend it he made a video a little while ago on how he used just one
guitar one amp and one simple pedal board for 30 days and he made a really good case for doing so
so in this video i'm going to do the same thing one amp one guitar one pedal for 30 days
my goal is to improve on what i think is my preferred style of playing a preferred
genre of music the blues of course the blues could be played on acoustic guitar
and that was a consideration i mean that made the guitar rig or the whole rick even simpler
i mean what's good enough for tommy emmanuel is good enough for me right but then again
bending strings on an acoustic guitar is tricky especially four note bends lower down the neck
plus i played my acoustic guitar for two hours straight recently whilst i was working on a
project and my forearms ached for days but that could be a good thing my 50s mexican
strats got porter custom vintage pickups and my squier strat has got lolla strat special
pickups porter pickups when used with a good overdrive will sound nice and gritty to give me
that growly blue sound if i need it but we'll clean up as well and the squire strap pickups
take a lot more to break up as they are really clean and chimey and the squier's
fretboard radius is nine and a half inch it's a little easier play with a lighter touch
whereas the 50 strat's got seven and a quarter radius and jumbo frets and that leads me onto the
thinline tele two porter vintage paf humbuckers 12 inch radius plus when it's not plugged in it still
resonates really really well as does my ibanez so you see my dilemma my own choice i thought
was easy as i've only got three amps the fender hot rod deluxe the hagerman one watter and the
super champ x2 which one should i choose and stick with with regards to one pedal i've got a lot of
choice everything from overdrive reverb delay tremolo flange and so on well overdrives were
out as i can crank up all the amps and get them over driven even the hot rod through the captor x
and the hot rod has reverb so does the super champ so that's an added bonus i really didn't want to
get away from my main goal which was to improve as a blues player and focus on my technique and
accuracy as keith said in his video as well i'm guilty of switching between guitars and i watched
a video recently from the guitar pilgrim and he's only got one guitar he's a killer player
so what did i choose well i chose my 50s road worn strat with a seven and a quarter inch radius neck
porter vintage custom strat pickups and the guitar's recently been set up actually by fat
cat custom guitars as it was going out of tune a bit when i played chords lower down on the neck he
re-cut the nut for me polished all the frets and crown them the amp of choice was the super champ
it's got reverb in it so i kept that on dialed the gain up a bit on preset 10 which is a british
dirty sound as for the pedal i went with the boss tr1 tremolo to add something extra to the sound
so i chose the 50s road worn strat because well i fell in love with it early on it's comfortable
to play it's a great neck beautiful pickups the neck is thinner than my other guitars
and it's got a really comfortable soft v profile i just can't help play it
and i've upgraded it quite a bit from the pickups pickguard knobs nut etc just something about it
it's my favorite guitar and also i know the sound of it i chose the super champ x2 well because it's
simple i just switch it on and go i use setting 10 on the amp which is a british dirty tone that way
i can get the gain i like and then dial it back on the strat to clean it up it's also got a nice
reverb on it and it's got a nice low end for the speaker that's in it as well and it would chime up
lovely if i just adjust the treble and the pedal i chose was the boss tr2 tremolo i love the sound of
it and it adds a really nice tremolo sound to the signal the original and best right so that was my
practice rig for 30 days i really enjoyed getting to know the gear that i have you know fiddling
about with it tweaking it to get different types of sounds it was a great minimalist learning
experience as well and it changed my mind a bit about gear yeah i still have a lot of it but to
be honest most of it's decor for the videos but i do revisit them now and again because you know
why not so what did i miss in the 30 days honestly not a lot at my playing level which i would class
as advanced beginner gear isn't going to improve my playing at all and that's after all the point
to improve as a player to get better at something that brings me such joy
so you're asking why i did it yeah what's the actual point of the video well many of us suffer
from gas i know i do gear acquisition syndrome and that creates option paralysis you know switching
between guitars switching between amps and pedals is just not going to improve your playing
and after all tone really is in the hands and over 30 days i got used to how all my choices sounded
and felt like i dialed in a great tone after fiddling with the amp for me to practice with
i feel like i really improved as a player so i was focused more on playing rather than settings
i didn't waste time choosing and i spent more time with a familiar guitar in my hands and a
familiar tone in my ears and i'll carry this on from now on i have in fact sold a few of my
guitars in the process practice over gear that's a bit rich though coming from a gear review channel
but nothing wrong with splashing out now and again on something you've worked really hard for so why
don't you give it a go over the next 30 days just grab one guitar one amp and perhaps one pedal
just to familiarize yourself with those things before you go out and buy anything else cheers