u/ughmart

Brief context; I wanted a new guitar for my birthday earlier this year and didn’t have a ‘335 style guitar in the collection. Picked this up brand new from Sweetwater and after having it for 6 (ish) months I can confirm it’s the best guitar I’ve ever owned.

Everything about this guitar is amazing. The fit and finish are next level. The “vintage gloss” finish is insanely nice and comfortable on the back of the neck. The Gibson Custombucker pickups are smooth and articulate. Hardware is really good too. The spec package is truly nuts on these IBGC guitars. Rosewood board is also one of the best I’ve seen in years come from a production run instrument, let alone an Epiphone.

The guitar also sets up extremely well. I had it PLEK’d from Sweetwater which if you’ve ever considered it, go for it. Seriously. Lowest action and smoothest playing experience I’ve ever felt on a guitar.

My main guitars have been an ‘82 SG Standard and a ‘77 Les Paul Custom and this Epiphone absolutely smokes both of them for just about every genre/style I throw at it. I even had both Gibsons refretted and restored shortly before picking up the Epi and they still don’t play nearly as well as the Epi does.

The only qualms I have about this guitar are that the frets are really small and the nut was not cut well from the factory or from Sweetwater. Sweetwater were really cool about it though when I brought the nut up to them. No fault there really. They’re the best as we all know and the customer service was next level as always. Also, the Custombucker neck pickup is really warm in this guitar. I could see it having a bit more bite in a Les Paul but it took some getting used to in this one.

Why am I posting this? I’ve owned so many new and vintage Fenders and Gibsons and have kept only the ones that are sentimental to me. This thing is an absolute beast and is the only guitar I really play anymore. Epiphone is crushing it with these IBGC instruments at a fraction of the cost of Gibson production and a fraction of a fraction of Gibson Custom Shop. Epiphone QC is really insane for the price range considering Fender Mexico has some insanely wack guitars coming out of the factory and Gibson production has its flaws as it always has.

Absolutely, 1000% my new number one for now and probably a long time.

TLDR; Dunlop Tortex .88 are goated.

Been on kind of a bender lately trying new picks out. For years I was Ernie Ball Power Slinkies and Dunlop .73s and that’s what I used on everything; Fender, Gibson, etc. It was like that for a good solid 6 years or so.

Went through a phase in 2022 where I was playing in a punk band that required D#, D standard, and drop B tunings. I was doing a lot of strumming and found the .60 to be way more comfortable since I wasn’t playing leads. For the life of me I couldn’t commit to a string brand or gauge (Dunlop, DR, Ernie Ball, D’Addario, all of them…).

Flash forward to 2026. After a long time of experimenting and realizing that .011s in standard were too much, so I bumped down to .010s. Tried so many brands over the years but I usually stick with Ernie Ball, though I do love DRs when I can find them. I found that for the amount of lead work I’ve been practicing, the .60 and even the .73 were just a little light. In comes the .88…

I haven’t used .88s since I started playing over 15 years ago when the guy behind the counter at the local guitar store said “these are good” and I forgot how much of a goldilocks pick they really are. Stiff enough for really precise lead playing yet flexible enough for the mid-temp older guy alternative rock I’ve been leaning towards. Since I picked up a handful of these I’ve noticed that I have to be much more methodical in my lead playing and strumming and because of this I am hearing and feeling a lot more note accuracy, precision, and confidence.

Happy I’ve found something I like after feeling really uncomfortable with but tolerating the .60s I’ve been using for 4 years. Sometimes I wish I could just forget about everything I know about this stuff and go back to what it was like when I was 15 and just used what the dude at the local guitar shop said was good. I remember being young and saying “i want to play blues and jazz” and the guy points at a pack of D’Addario .011s and says “these say ‘blues’ and ‘jazz’ on them, use these”…

What’s your favorite pick??

So a day or two ago I hurt my right index finger after work doing something kinda stupid at home. It sucks because the weekends are kind of the only time I get to really sit and play all day in a way that’s not an hour or so of late night practice. Well I went to practice the other night and my finger was mad sore. I could still play but I was slipping bends and goofing up barre chords all over the place. I kind of totally handicapped my finger.

I went to the local guitar shop today and picked up some 9.5-44 and 9.5-45 gauge strings to give myself a break from 10s and you know what? They’re not bad.

The 9.5-44 set is good and is what’s on my 335 right now. I think the top strings are balanced really well, more so than 10s, but the bottom strings are right on the threshold of being a little too floppy for me. the 9.5-46 are really great and I have them on my Sheraton. All of the strings E-e are balanced really well, certainly more so than the 9-42 and 9-46 sets I’ve experimented with in the past. It’s hard to tell what I like better.

Both sets have a good balance between the sound of 10s and the flexibility of 9s but to be honest at first it was hard to tell the difference between these and 10s. After a few hours of playing though I’ve really grown to like them.

This is probably not a gauge I’ll switch to in the long term because, honestly, I kinda feel embarrassed about using half gauges since it feels so nitpicky to me lol. For the time being though, I like them a lot.

What are your thoughts on half-gauge strings? Goldilocks gauges or unnecessary nitpicking?

I have this Blues Junior that I recently acquired and I really love it! I’ve been really happy with just how many sounds I can get from it and I usually keep it on the edge of breakup.

My problem is, I’m having trouble dialing in *the sound* and am looking for some setting suggestions to approximate the following;

1. Crunchy tweed-style Deluxe/Champ tones
2. Scooped, edge of breakup, reverbed-out, and bright black/silver panel tones

Now, I know what I’m working with here and I don’t expect to nail these tones. Just trying to work with what I’ve got without having to swap components and get a new amp.

Thanks in advance!!!

A local shop had this in wicked cheap and I had to snatch it up.

I was a huge Alabama Shakes fan in high school and I saw their guitarist use one of these in a live performance. Knew then and there I had to have one!

Specifying the month because it changes a lot lol.

Not much to see here. Overdrive, vibrato, and a phaser. Tuner and volume pedal for clean tones/swells. Does everything I’ve been doing lately really well; indie, alternative, alt-country, etc.

Kinda fell in love recently with the Full Drive 2. It’s a pedal I deliberately ignored for years as another Tube Screamer clone and I admittedly hate Tube Screamers. I actually like this pedal a lot. It adds a good amount of brightness and fullness on the lower gain settings and the boost function gets me Sustain For Dayz.

The Julia is probably the best vibrato I’ve owned. I’ve had a number of them and have also tried using choruses as vibratos. This just works for a painfully slow and subtle seasick sound that is usually on all the time.

The Phase 90 rocks. Not much can be said. It will probably get switched out for a script reissue soon. Same with the tuner. I also have the coolest volume pedal in the world courtesy of my fiancé and her love of Hello Kitty.

Everything’s powered by a 1-Spot. I like those. They’re quiet enough and every time I’ve purchased a SOL/ISO 5/ whatever I always go back to the 1-Spot.

This is going into a Blues Junior set for mild breakup and before that is a 335 most of the time.

I acquired both of these pedals secondhand recently and wanted to do a little write up on them since they’re still abundant on the used market (clones included) and both a viable option for a solid, durable overdrive. This is an observation post for anyone on the fence about trying one/wanting some information.

First I’ll address the elephant in the room; the person responsible for these circuits is a huge dillweed. Many of us are aware of the tone deaf and frankly gross things this person has said publicly regarding important social issues and catastrophic acts of violence. I’ve actually had email conversations regarding some
of these pedals in the past with this person and they have been awful. That said, in my opinion you are not fattening anyone’s pockets or selling out by supporting your local shop, Reverb seller, or Marketplace individual by buying secondhand.

(Note; Fulltone is actually owned by Jackson Audio now and they are doing all of the production and distribution of these pedals. Jackson Audio is sick. They’re good peeps. If you want to support them, go for it. They make good stuff.)

Both of these pedals are overdrive/distortion pedals. The OCD is a single channel OD/distortion and the FD2 is an overdrive with a second channel. (The boost cannot be engaged independently from the drive. On the FD3 you can do this.)

The OCD is a stupidly versatile medium/high gain pedal that I have enjoyed for years and played in a variety of contexts. It features the HP/LP switch and to my ears it does as follows; HP adds more gain, more mids, and makes this a super aggressive and heavy distortion where as the LP is a little cleaner, a little more “transparent”, and retains the sound of your amp better. (When I say “transparent” it actually just has less midrange artifacts. It still colors the tone enough but I think it’s the most true to what is going into the pedal/where it’s going out of in this setting.) It also retains a lot of low end which I love and is the best part about this pedal imo.

To my ear *this is not a low-gain drive pedal*. With the gain set at 9 o’clock, it’s pretty damn heavy. It’s really great as a heavy overdrive/distortion into a clean pedal platform amp. I think it excels at this. When driving an already overdriven amp, things can get pretty crazy and, depending on the settings, a little muddy. That said, it’s perfectly usable as a gain boost that, at the lowest gain setting, provides a good hard rock/rhythm tone.

Basically you can go from AC/DC to Hum, Kiss to Title Fight, and Rush to At The Drive In with this pedal and that’s rad. Really good for rhythm or lead but not good at both at the same time. I find it gets lost in the mix a bit in LP mode but is great for chords vs HP mode which is great for leads but a little too much for rhythm.

I have heard people describe the OCD as a “Marshall in a box” and I think this is partially true. It’s not an “amp in a box pedal” like the ZVEX Box of Rock or Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret. It does have a lot of the characteristics of a Marshall (especially in HP mode) in gain structure and EQ.

(Side note; the one pictured is a limited edition V2. I actually don’t like the V2 as much as I like the V1s. I emailed the person who designed these circuits upon purchasing this exact pedal when it came out asking about some of the differences I heard and he was a huge jerk about it.)

The Full Drive 2 Mosfet straight up rocks. Out of the two of them, it is my favorite for driving an amp on the edge of breakup. It actually might be one of my favorite drive pedals period. It is a true low/medium gain overdrive that doesn’t really hit distortion territory. The design is based off of a Tube Screamer but with the clipping characteristics of an SD-1 which I think is really cool. There are two switches that make this pedal ridiculously versatile. The first controls the overdrive characteristics and the second controls the clipping diodes and how the pedal functions.

Comp Cut removes the diodes altogether for a clean boost/light overdrive that is really cutting and bright but still relatively transparent (and very loud). FM stands for “Flat Mids” and it’s basically the original FD circuit but with a more even frequency response. The Vintage setting is the OG Full Drive circuit that has a solid mid hump but doesn’t cut as much bass/accentuate as much high end as the TS.

Standard is the standard clipping diodes and Mosfet is mosfet chips. Mosfet sounds a little
brighter and cleaner whereas Standard has a little more sag and squish to it to my ear. Maybe a little more compression too.

I can’t say this enough; this pedal rocks. As a low/mid gain overdrive into a clean amp it’s awesome but driving a tube amp on the edge of breakup is where this pedal really shines. That said, it does very well into a clean pedal platform too, it just doesn’t have as much sauce. I’ve gotten some really incredible tones from this thing from ‘90s alt country crunch to straight up indie rock goodness, and singing, super saturated and compressed Phish-esque tones with the boost engaged. This pedal does rhythm, lead, and everything in between. Don’t expect to get your shoegaze on with this one though. It definitely does not have the heft of the OCD. This pedal is much more even in its tonal characteristics and really stands out in a mix with a pleasing and not awful midrange presence that is present in all modes.

Stacking the boost on top of the OD is seriously awesome. The sustain is nuts and it can get pretty heavy but doesn’t go too crazy. Like I said before you can only engage the boost when the OD is already on. This has been fixed with the FD3.

So yeah, these are great pedals still. These both have been staples in the boutique world for years and are an affordable and readily available way to get some seriously stellar tones. There are so many drives out there that do (relatively) the same thing as these do and for about the same amount of money. Pick what you like! What I like about these though is that they’re solid, cheap (~$100 a piece), and really easy to dial in.

(Side note; if supporting this company in any way rubs you the wrong way, I totally get it. Or, if you don’t have the money to spend on one of these, I also get it. There are some great clones/advancements of the circuit out there from some amazing builders including but not limited to Wampler, Fuzzrocious, Warm Audio, Joyo, etc.)

Thanks for reading this if you did. If you didn’t, thanks for opening the post and saying “hell no” when you looked at how long it is.

*Full disclosure: I’ve actually owned two Supro amps, a Keeley Custom 12 and a Delta King 8. I am just trying to get some first-hand opinions from players and techs before I buy another one*

A Supro Keeley Custom 10 popped up for sale near me that I’d like to pick up. I am a casual player with tentative plans to get back into gigging so I am looking for something a bit bigger. I’m also looking at a Blues Junior around the same price as they have a reputation for being solid and reliable for all playing contexts.

I’ve really liked the two Supro amps I’ve owned over the past five years or so. Great tones and exceptional looks. Weight is good and they seem solid on the surface. My Delta King 8 seems to be holding up really well for light home use.

The problem I’m having that’s making me so iffy about getting another one secondhand is that I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about these amps failing in all kinds of ways from innocuous to straight up dangerous. (And while I believe that his videos are extremely educational and fun, the influence of the examples that have come across the Psionic Audio workbench is minor on my feelings right now.)

*For people who play, gig, and work on these amps, what are your opinions? Is the build and component quality so terrible that I should look elsewhere for a reliable gigging/home use amp?*

TIA for the feedback!