That's DEFINITELY not cool. Should get $$$ back at least!

Did you watch the video?

Most of my profiles come from these guys. Here is an example of clean, edge of breakup, and OD tone without tons of effects. It's true that most of the factory profiles are metal oriented, but there are plenty of cleaner ones out there of incredible amps.

People are starting to use them more and more. Ron Thal used a Line 6 Helix on the last Sons of Apollo record and his recent solo albums. And Mark Knopfler uses Kemper live. That’s a pretty good endorsement

Hands down, without a doubt, the best Klon copy is a RYRA. The Tumnus does sound great too though.

I tried one too for the VAC 45, but I also bought the cheapest one I could find, so it puts out sound at low volume but really suffers from lack of presence. I'll eventually save up enough for something like a Fryette Power Station, but I just spent all my attenuator money on the VSC 12, so it evens out.

Mine was the Bad Cat Unleash, I think it was about $500. It was the one to buy when I got it. I just did a search because I couldn't remember the name and there are a zillion on the market now.

Anyone use Orange amps? I got a solid state Crush Pro 120 and i think it's pretty decent for the price. Saves me usage on my vintage Sunn. Would like to demo some of their other amps someday.

That’s awesome! I met up with Sam yesterday morning and he had your amp with him. He’s going to bring the next one over and let me try it for a few days. Congrats!

I have this Orange Amp set up for practice. I love Orange Amps.

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Been playing with this Boss ME-80 lately. Fun little multi-effect board.

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Wow I like the look and color ! Sweet me jelly .

Here's my Teye Guitar A-Series La Llama I recently got back after selling it 10 years ago. Its all hand engraved by master builder Teye, who was friends with Tony Zemaitis. Teye's guitars are inspired from Tony's single cut shape, with many improvements both structurally and in cosmetics.

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Be prepared to fall in love! I don't know if I can ever buy another amp after having two Samamps. The range and tone are just so incredible. They can go from scream to mellow, and the wattage variability makes them so versatile in literally any setting.

Tres Humbuckers. Full Shred!

Speaking of Boss, I brought home this JB-2 yesterday and tried it out this morning. It's a combination of the classic Boss Blues Driver and JHS Angry Charlie pedals. It has the ability to use them individually, stack them or run them parallel. Got it at a nice used price, thinking I didnt really need another dirt pedal, just wanting to try it out. Well, I think it's a keeper.

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Can anybody recommend a good looper pedal? User friendly but also advanced enough to store some loops etc.

I have a total cheapie one now with one button. It was given to me by a friend. Fun to mess around with but I think I’m ready for something a little better and more user friendly.

Have you guys heard of Billy Strings? I'm primarily a hard rock guy, but this dude rips! The second tune is straight bluegrass heavy metal.

Billy Strings is great! Check out Molly Tuttle, too. She’s another bluegrass phenom, but has some crossover stuff, too.

From a couple of years ago. This video shows off her incredible right hand technique:

This is from this year. You got to love a bluegrass picker who will cover a Rancid song!

My Strymon Timeline has a pretty nice looper built in but I think there are some better, dedicated loop pedals out there.

I have the EHX 720 in my setup which I like because it has a good stereo in and stereo out and is simple as all hell... I have a really early one and there is a tiny bit of a delay from when you stop the loop and stat overdubbing that drives me mad when I'm trying to do an actual loop. I believe they improved on this in the 1440 models. Doesn't really affect my style of playing since I'm mostly doing boring slow shit, but might affect yours. The UX of the pedal is hard to beat though. Dead easy to use with a smallish footprint.

If you don't need all those features, memory banks and what not, the Ditto 2x is also pretty user friendly.

I really love my Ditto X2. I've had it on my board for years. It doesn't overwhelm you with too many options and sounds great.

As far as YouTube jams go, my favorite is Elevated Jam Tracks.

2 out of the 3 live performances I've seen this year were solo guitar players with loopers. Typical bars that would normally have a rock cover band. I have friends doing this as well. I have a feeling it might be the next thing, I hope it's short lived. I'm not talking run a loop just to play a guitar solo or guitar harmony, this was throughout the entire song. They created a backing track on the fly using the microphone and/or guitar. It's a cool idea, but I think it's more suited for a Youtube video over a live performance. It takes a couple minutes for the song to get going, and the songs end up being very long. I really don't want to hear Sublime's What I Got for 10 minutes. Given the reduced budgets of bars when they start to open, and the fact that most solo acoustic acts are boring as hell, this might take off.

That Elevated Jams Channel looks cool, I'll have to spend some time with that over the week off. Thanks!

THAT sucks. Although I can tell you that there are a lot of bands around my area (DC is not a ginormous music scene, but it's fairly healthy) who have this attitude like they should get paid top dollar for playing. There's a very small number of bands who are good enough to even warrant getting paid at ALL IMO. My band is mostly originals so we don't get paid at ever LOL. Bars don't like dealing with attitude - you have to figure out how to co-exist. If you're a dick, you aren't going to be booked again. I wonder if the guitar player dudes are just easier to deal with. Unfortunately the general public is not used to live music for the most part any more, so "live music!" isn't really a draw. I have a feeling (a hope ?) that will change once we are done quarantining.

Out of curiosity what is considered a lot of money in DC? Outside of the city here the average bar cover band is in the $5-600 range. Typically free parking with reasonable load ins. Some of the places will give us a deal on drinks or even cover the tab. In my 30's I was in a more top 40 pop band and played some of the best rooms in Boston. I wanna say the average was maybe $12-1500. This was split between 6 people instead of 4, parking is a fortune in Boston. 20% chance of getting a ticket while you are double parked. Club owners were all total dicks, full price overpriced drinks. I do miss those young attractive crowds, but I don't miss all of that hassle. Weddings were a lot more money, but still not worth it. I've been gigging in bars since the 90's and the pay scale hasn't changed all that much. I know a bunch of guys that are ok with making $100/man. I'm glad this is no longer my main source of income, just a hobby in my 40's. What's the cover band pay like in your city?

I have a buddy who lives in DC and got hooked up with a group called Flashband. Are you familiar with that? The concept is so cool to me. I wish we had something like it in Birmingham. Basically you hook up with a random draw of different band members and there's a big concert every month with all the bands. I feel like it gives your average player (like me) a chance to get on a real stage.

That’s what we were getting in the 90s.

Generally $600, split 5 ways with an extra $100 for me for my PA. Sometimes a little more.

There’s no live cover band scene here at all now. Its history. DJs do everything.

rd

Me too! Like I said not much has changed since the 90's around here. We get a little more money but a lot of the perks have gone away. Much less free food and beer and now a lot of clubs 1099.

It's not great. People here usually want to hear a DJ, so the bar scene is fairly crowded for the few places that book live. The actual rooms are a little bette r- maybe Couple hundred bucks, $1500 on a SUPER good night. LOTS of places still "pay you in beer". But the clubs here are a lot smaller than in Boston. If you get booked in a room like Jammin Java or Pearl Street Warehouse, you better sell a LOT of drinks (bar is split with the club, door magically disappears).

My band is a 3-piece, I play keys, sing and guitar, so we don't have to split the money as thinly - 25% for each guy, plus 25% in the band kitty. Each guy is responsible for their own gear, but we have a lot of automation, lights, laptop, etc that we split. It's a LOT of work; I would love to find another keys player, but have so far struck out on finding a unicorn who a) can play b) is not an asshole and c) is reliable

Yep, absolutely! I don't have time (like I said above, I write all our stuff, arrange it, play keys, guitar, and sing, and uh have a day job and a family), but the other 2 guys in my band do Flashbands.

It is REALLY awesome for people to get up and get connections, get experience playing in bigger rooms. I think it's incredible for networking, too. It's phenomenal for the weekend warrior type player. But it's a 2-sided coin: if you're an amateur players, you get all these great first-time experiences, meet people, etc. If you're looking for people to fill in a working band, all you meet are amateur players who aren't looking for a full-time thing. Guys who don't know how to soundcheck, who fool around like they're in high school still, don't know how to behave during a rehearsal. Anyway, it's only marketed as a fun thing, so you can't expect Berklee college of music players. I do think it's genius, and they have specific themes, rules you have to follow (each band can only have 1 guitarist this month, or all Surf songs, or covers have to be all by dead musicians, etc)

That's how its becoming here too. I mean let's face it - most bands really do suck! haha! We've had some success hooking up with up-and-coming promoters who need to fill venues, but usually you don't get paid much - you just have to accept that's all for exposure. A few years ago we played a 2-hour set in the basement of this 3-level club with maybe 5 people watching. I believe we made $100. Our guitarist pouted the whole time - I had to kick him out the next day - it was not awesome.

I just picked up an RC-1 secondhand. I like it, but I'm still getting used to the functions. Down the road, I think I'll be looking for something with storage, so maybe the RC-5 is the way to go.

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I have a question for all of you guitar experts out there. I’m an amateur guitar player working my way through the lessons on the Fender Play app. I’m having a ton of fun and am making good process. I play a cheap Fender Squier Bullet Strat and use an Orange Crush 35RT amp. I don’t have any pedals, but thought it would be fun to buy my first. I’m assuming my first pedal should be an overdrive or distortion pedal. I was thinking about the BOSS Blues Driver. So, as a beginner, what would be a good versatile pedal for just general rock guitar? I’m wide open to suggestions. Thanks in advance for the help.

What type of music are you playing? Do you dislike the amp distortion? Buying used is a good way to sample a bunch of pedals, you shouldn't lose more than a few bucks if you want to turn around and sell it. Guitar Center used to have a very loose return policy as well, maybe they still do. Distortion/overdrive is a pretty typical first pedal to buy. I'm not familiar with that particular pedal, I've always used a Tubescreamer. Boss makes great pedals though, and that one has been around forever so I'm sure it's a solid choice. If I were to pick one pedal it would probably be a delay pedal, but I really like my amp distortion. Much like pinball machines, guitar pedals have a tendency to multiply!

A Wah Pedal is the only pedal a man truly needs...

but a looper is a nice thing to have while you are practicing solo.

So is a metronome and I would be remiss to not add that.

At this point, just general rock music. I just learned Foghat - Slow Ride. I’ve been working on the riff for Pantera - Cowboys from Hell. I’m more of a jam band guy, but I’m not good enough to play any of that type of music.

I did look on Craigslist locally and there I’d a BOSS OS-2 Overdrive for $60 that I’m sure I could get for less. A delay pedal is on my list as well. I could always get both. I also saw a lot of people like the Tube Screamer. From what I’ve read and listened to, I think that may be a bit better than the Blues Driver for me. However, given my skill level any of them are probably fine.

Blues Driver is a great pedal. I have one in the form of a BOSS Angry Driver, which includes the Blues Driver circuit as a 2 in 1 pedal, with another circuit built in.

I use 3 dirt pedals. A Black Russian Big Muff (fuzz), a modified RAT circuit made by EQD (distortion), and the Angry Driver (overdrive). I like the variety of tones that I get with switching pickups. I go tone chasing and experiment for hours, but that's just me.

I'd watch some youtube videos to get an idea of how these pedals can sound, but nothing beats trying it out on your own set up. Fair warning, pedals can certainly lead you down a rabbit hole. There are many boutique pedal makers out there now and some can be pretty pricey. I've found some pretty good pedals that i'm sticking with while ignoring the hype.

Get the Blues Driver or the Overdrive for sure. Maybe down the road a nice reverb or delay pedal, or both. BOSS and MXR are good brands to start with.

Thanks for all the great advice. I actually just grabbed the BOSS Overdrive pedal I mentioned from CL. The guy happened to live close and it was only $50 and like new. I figured it was good enough for what I need and now I have extra money for a delay or reverb.

By the way, I did see the Angry Drive which I also looked like a great choice.

Just get the Kemper Profiler and the pedal board and be done with it. Greatest guitar purchase ever...and you can truly sound like any guitarist you want to. Soundwise anyway. The talent is entirely up to you.

I used a Boss DS-1 ($49 at Sweetwater/Guitar Center) and Boss delay for years gigging around the Detroit area. Check out the Boss DD8 delay, tons of functionality, $159.

Still using my original DS1, over thirty years later.

Thanks for the Boss DD8 recommendation. I’ll check it out.