Every pedalboard must have one of these...

Any gigging guitarist will tell you that one of their major complaints is the amount of noise that's generated through their rig due to overhead lighting and other signal interferences. I've noticed that as soon as I turn on my compressor pedal or drive pedals that the noise floor increases exponentially. Heaven forbid I actually play a guitar equipped with single-coil pickups. Yikes! Well, I've found an awesome solution to this problem and I'm telling you, it really works!

The Decimator pedal really lives up to its name. Place this beauty last in your signal chain, or run it through your amps effects loop and listen to it clean up the noise. It only has one knob for adjusting the amount of noise reduction you need. I start with it set rather low, then I turn on all my noise-makers and adjust the knob until I can't hear any more hiss or buzz. I have found that setting the knob above 12 0'clock tends to 'squish' your sound and some single-note runs may not be translated properly. This is a problem inherent with all noise-reducing circuits. At low to moderate levels they work wonders, but the higher settings start to negatively affect your sound.

I've done pretty much everything I can to keep my rig isolated from the hum and buzz of overhead lights and such, but having the Decimator in my rig has really made a HUGE impact. The sound guys I work with must have thanked me 20 times for buying this pedal. If you have a noisy rig, do yourself a favor and check out this awesome pedal!

Bigger IS better...

It's pretty obvious to us guitar players that as we get older, at some point we simply must own a huge-ass hollowbody guitar replete with a Bigsby vibrato. (I'm sure that it's written in stone somewhere in the 10 commandments for guitar players ;)

Far be it from me to go against the grain, so I decided that I'd join the club and get myself this beautiful Gretsch 5120 Electrosonic from Guitar Center. I've always envied Brian Setzer's guitar and while this is not his signature model it still comes pretty close for about a quarter of the price. I've played quite a few hollow body electrics over the years but have always been disappointed with the ones in my price range. Who wouldn't love to have a Gibson reissue ES-335? But at $3k there are few of us who can afford 'em. At around $600 you can cruise down to your local GC and try the Gretsch on for size. I played this one through a reissue 59' Fender Bassman and I was simply stunned. The pickups really nail that vintage Filter-Tron sound. The more expensive models have the TV Jones pickups in them, but I've not had the opportunity to try them out side by side to compare tonal qualities.

I really dig the clear pickguard they put on this guitar and the setup was really pretty good. I've played Gibson's that are $2k+ that don't play or sound this good. Anyhow, this guitar is one cool Cat and I highly recommend checking one out when you have a chance.