White Whale 1 of 3 Acquired

Picked this up during the weekend from a friend of mine.  Its a Verellen Skyhammer from Seattle Washington.

I first fell in love when I played one a year ago (You can read about it here)

This is a little bit different from the standard model in the following ways:

• Clean/Pushed Channel has a full 3 band EQ.
• Pushed option is available via footswitch and modded to not have a tremendous increase in volume when selected
• Half Power Switch to knock it down to 50 Watts

I was really excited to try this out and was able to get time with it in our practice place.  Here's a few quick notes I mentally gathered:

• Master Volume, as stated before, has a great taper to it. No big jumps when you're adjusting. 10 means 10
• The Suhr Koko Boost works amazingly well with this thing
• All EQ adjustments have a great sweep and are interactive with each other. There are few tones that you can't achieve.
• Volume (Gain) for the Lead Channel not only increases the gain levels but adjusts the overall feel and tightness of the amp.
• The Lead Channel has an insane amount of gain on tap
• With the Koko Boost on Mid Boost, the Level was set on 11:30 and Mid set on 11:00. Volume was set at 10:00
• This tightened up a lot of the low end and maintained a tremendous amount of saturation
• The Pushed Clean has great classic and 80s rock tones available
• With the Koko Boost on Mid Boost, the Level was set on 11:30 and Mid set on 11:00. Volume was set at 2:00
•  This would stand very well with classic Marshalls
• Clean (non-Pushed) can be chimey but capable of great breakup when adjusting the Volume

I hope to get more time with it outside of practice and actually spend time with the Effects Loop and putting a Suhr Riot in front of the clean channel.

Side Note: I would LOVE to start putting clips/videos together for each amp I come across and post them. Frankly, I am not that great a player and would like to find someone that can do some riffing to help with this endeavor.

Home Rig

I got tired of lugging guitar cabs between our practice space and my house so I picked up this little Egnater 1x12.

Guitar > Maxon 808 > NS1 > Frenzel BUD50 > Egnater 1x12

December/January Update

Oddly enough, December started out pretty quiet but I have been able to wrangle in some trades in the past couple of weeks, which has been awesome. Here's a quick rundown:

I traded the Guiterrez for a Meteoro Mak3000. The Mak 3000 is the signature head of Andreas Kisser from Sepultura. 280 Watts (powered by 6 KT88s) and two channels. There's a lot of Marshall tone going on in that head. The biggest surprise was from the clean channel. It was great. You don't find that in a high gain head, especially when both channels share the same EQ.

In the past week, I traded the Mak3000 to a friend/former bandmate of mine for a Hughes & Kettner Triamp Mk1. I sold it to him a years ago and he's kept in great shape and has new pre and power tubes. Since selling it to him, I made the switch from EMG 81s (what was I thinking?) to Duncan JBs. I was blown away how great it sounds. All 6 channels have great tones and they take Overdrive pedals very well. It shares a lot of the same tonal qualities that the 5150 III does so I am having a hard time trying to figure out which one to use and which one Ryan will use for Unrestrained stuff.

Also last week, I traded one of my MXR EQ's and some cash for a Suhr Riot pedal. This is more of a distortion pedal than an overdrive. I have a huge gear boner for Suhr products since getting my Koko Boost. This doesn't disappoint. It's designed to put in front of a clean channel and you get that Suhr lead Channel. It's very tight but still have great saturation. I haven't had much time to play with it but that's my goal for the next week.

In other news, I am hopefully going to see the Mako back in my possession within the next month or two. February will mark 1 year since I sent it off to get modded and updated. As soon as I get it back, I will likely play it for a week before I put it up for sale.

I also picked up a Boss Heavy Metal (HM2) pedal. If you don't know, these things are basically responsible for the Swedish Death Metal Sound. Which, I prefer Dismember over any Entombed album.. but that's a different topic for a different forum. It's not the greatest thing but it does what it does and does it well. Because they aren't made anymore, you can't find one for less than $50 in working condition. Little do people know that Behringer makes a damn good copy of it, the HM300. You use it the same way and get the same results. Did I mention that they are only $25 brand new?

Gear List is updated.