| Rockbeare Guitars |

Designer Cliff Brown parked these two prototypes with me for a couple of days so I could really get to know them.  Wow – easily amongst the best amps I’ve played.

They have a novel approach to power scaling, which is important as they’re designed to get most of their overdrive from saturation of the power amp and not preamp as in many cases.

So understanding the relationship between the ‘headroom’ and volume controls is key to understanding these amps.  The next step is to get used to the two simple and very powerful low and high eq knobs and the three switchable amp modes.

Then its just dial in some onboard digital reverb, and maybe some of the amps’ lovely organic trem if you fancy.

These amps do everything well – from clean headroom country sounds, through jangly indie rhythm, blues leads to harder rock. And they make each guitar sound like a bigger version of itself, great detail and texture.

I’ll post much more detail when my own arrives in a few months!

I’m testing two prototype amps from 633 Amps this weekend.

The Safire (grey housing) is 36w and the Nighthawk (orange) nearer 60w. Headroom control scales power down to a few watts and is the most effective scaling I’ve come across. Useful and very musical, doesn’t just squash things.

Very similar sounds, very clear, rich and textured on the high headroom settings and great drive with lower headroom and higher volume.

Both have onboard reverb and really organic trem. The Safire has low and high-gain (hot & sweet) inputs, the Nighthawk has one input and internal remote-controlled channel switching.

All the controls actually do something, the simple ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ EQ really effective. So far, these guys make every guitar I’ve played through them sound great, bigger! Fantastic…

I’ve just posted a short video demo of the remarkable Mooer Mod Factory stompbox.

I replaced my Mooer Tremolator with it, and in a single micropedal, it offers Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Envlope Filter, Tremolo, Slicer (an extreme squarewave trem), Vibrato (good for Leslie), Univibe, Auto Wah, Touch Wah, and Ring Modulator.

Each of the effects (except perhaps the rather nasty Ring Modulator) can be bettered by dedicated stompboxes, but at massive cost in terms of financial outlay and space needed.

The Mod Factory offers the most ‘power’ in the smallest space I’ve ever come across.  And it’s only £59.

…but after trashing three of my four Mooer micro pedals, I decided to install a protective rail on my Pedaltrain Nano mini jamming board.  Here it is, very robust, looks good and will protect the pedals’ switches as required.  It’s off-centre so I can attach a bigger pedal at the front, like a wireless tuner or somesuch….

I read about these online and liked what I saw. Great maker (Lovepedal).  Great designer (Alfonso Hermida, who created the celebrated ZenDrive).  And pitched at the space between overdrive and fuzz, so complimentary to everything else on my pedalboards.

So on this promise, I bought one sight unseen.  They shipped from US really quickly and I’ve now had a chance to explore and gig it.

It’s a very useful pedal and very musical/harmonic. Like any fuzz-based stomp, it’s a little tricky and quite sensitive to which amps and guitars you use it with.

Great with Strat & Tele, and also my ‘burst, Bonamassa in a box. Less so with P90’s, a bit dark, which is a pity as they’re my favourite pickups. Maybe I just need to do a bit more tweaking…

My micro pedalboard was sitting on top of my small amp before rehearsal the other day when a colleague tripped over my lead and pulled it onto the floor. It landed topside up and broke the switches on three of the four Mooer stompboxes. Bugger.

On the drive, it just broke the switch tip, but on the delay and reverb it tore the screwed housing from the switch body inside. No damage to the pcb’s underneath and all three work fine within whichever switched position they’re locked into, so they’re off for repair.

The cost will be about the same as replacement of one pedal, which beats having to replace all three.  The board sounds so good and is so practical, it’s easily worth it!

…but no sign of the obvious at Charvel’s booth at NAMM 2014 – a reissue Charvel Spectrum.  C’mon fellas, it’s probably the greatest model you ever made!

When you jam, there’s no time to set up.  Some jams have a ‘no stomp boxes’ rule to hasten  changeovers.  (This also ensures that no-one sounds as good as the house band, whose gear is often used, but whether or not, are more familiar with the gear and space.  I should know, I’ve been in enough house bands and have played the game myself).

So I wanted something that gives me all the control I need but sets up instantly.  That means seriously portable and no reliance on mains power.

After designing and exploring its fabrication, I gave up on a combined tuner, od and delay.  I also reviewed Analog Alien’s otherwise excellent Rumble Seat pedal, which combines od, delay and reverb.  But I rejected it because it needs external power.

Thus I arrived at this setup.  It gives me all the tones I need for blues-based jamming, is very portable as it straps onto my gigbag, and is powered by Pedaltrain’s Volto rechargeable power supply (which can also plug in if there’s nearby juice)…

And in use, it sounds really good too.  Not a toy at all.

Hosted by Guitar enthusiast Kevin Bacon, Turn It Up!’s producers describe it as “featuring stunning vintage guitar collections, legendary performances and the nostalgia, myth and sex appeal of the electric guitar”.

I helped fund it and just got my pre-release copy, so I’d be bound to agree.  See more at turnitup.com.

….homepage here. Great, useful site.  My guitar’s on it here.