Current rig - 1st post

[Hans Moleman]

Hi Everyone, I found this forum a little while back and I must say as a guitarist that's into Phish this is a great resource. I thought I'd introduce myself by posting some info on my current gigging rig, which seems to be a hot topic around here. The goal was to come up with a rig that was as versatile as possible to play a wide variety of styles/gigs while still being portable enough to take to gigs on the subway. I'm very, very happy with this setup. Here's it is:

I'm playing a heavily modified Gibson SG (early 90's I think) into the following pedalboard:



Signal Chain:
Dunlop Hendrix wah
Analogman TS9 w/ silver mod
Cmatmods Signa Drive
Lovepedal Tweed Twin (I think that's the name)
Strymon OB.1
Option 5 Destination Rotation
Polytune Mini
Ernie Ball Volume Jr
MXR Carbon Copy
Strymon Flint (expression pedal controlling the tremolo speed)

From the board I go straight into either a Deluxe Reverb Reissue (lots of mods here as well) or this Phaez amp:



Phaez is a Canadian company that seems to be little known even in Canada (I live in Toronto). Everything is custom built. This amp is 35 watts and has 2 channels: 1st channel is a Vox AC30ish  and the other channel is a massive Marshall Plexi tone. This amp is fantastic but it really depends on the gig if I use it or not - it's so freaking loud. My main band has another guitarist and this amp could easily drown him out so I've been mostly using the DRR lately. The Fender sounds great too and is way more portable, which is really nice.
The speaker cab was made by Saxon Cabs is a ported back 2x12 loaded with 2 Eminence Cannabis Rex (I have 1 in the deluxe too).

I'm not sure how 'trey-inspired' this setup is, but it gets a crazy wide variety of tones. Right now I'm really happy with it. Anyways, nice to be here, would love to hear any questions comments or suggestions!

[ColForbin]

Greetings fellow Canadian!  I'm from PEI, and you are right, I have never heard of Phaez amps, I will check them out however.  Nice rig btw, I'm a big fan of the signa drive, I think it is killer!  And on to my real question, what have you modded on your SG?  Details son!

[Heady Jam Fan]

Cool rig!

Phaez gets a decent amount of praise on TGP, but I didn't know they were Canadian.

I agree with Colonel - what mods on both the amp and the guitar?

[Happyorange27]

Hans, you should should 'Solo'.... Bad Star Wars joke! 
Dude you seem cool as hell. I love that you have the Cannabis Rex's!  Yummy right?  Anyway your rig is clean and spicy. Glad you are here with some fresh air dude.

[Hans Moleman]

Thanks for all the comments guys. I'm very happy with this setup. Knowing me I'll probably make a bunch of changes 6 months from now, but I'm really digging this.

I'll have to check out TGP to see what they're saying about Phaez. I bought mine used for almost nothing, they have very little resale value because they're so customized. I'm extremely happy with it. As I said though, it's big and loud so I've been using my deluxe for gigs lately.

The signa drive is  amazing. It's my favorite overdrive, so good.

I was worried someone would ask about the mods! They were all done a while ago but I'll see if I can remember it all.

For the SG: I had all the pots swapped out for 500k pots instead of 250k. Even bigger improvement than I thought, particularly on the neck pickup. Pickups were swapped to Seymour Duncan's. Can't remember which ones, but they were vintage style (alnico PAF's - antiquities maybe??). Finally, I had the bridge volume removed from the circuit altogether so I'm just using the bridge volume as a master volume. I ride the volume pot a ton when I play and it was a pain with two. Now it's one volume, two tone pots. I'm loving that set up. The neck volume knob is also much closer to the strings on an SG so it's much easier to make adjustments on the fly.

For the Deluxe: swapped the original speaker for a Cannabis Rex, clipped the bright cap on the reverb channel and it has a bunch of NOS tubes. The tubes were actually done by the original owner, haven't touched them since I bought it. I think he made some subtle changes to the tone stack as well, but I wouldn't have a clue what they are.

Happy - I never even though about the Star Wars aspect to that name! Hans Moleman is actually a Simpsons character, and I play in a band called the Hans Moleman Experience: https://soundcloud.com/hans-moleman-experience

Anyways great to hear from you all. Nice to be here.