ak3ldama's Journal: Guitars, Pickups, and I'm dumb.

So I knew I needed to get new pickups, so i took my oldish Epiphone Les Paul Special (kinda junk - but definitely bad pickups.) One is the Seymour Duncan JB (SH-4) and the other is a Seymour Duncan 59 (SH-1b.) I put two $70 pickups in an old guitar I paid $200 for about 10 years ago. But it sounds great.

Better in fact than the Ibanez I just bought. I paid $620 for it. It may not need a new neck pickup, but it at least needs a hotter bridge pickup. I also need a good distortion pedal; when I was in high school I had a DOD Big Pig Fat Distortion but frankly I don't want to use it anymore. I want a Tube Screamer, or a Boss Metal Zone. From what I understand, for straight up Death Metal/Thrash Metal and such the Boss is great (and what I'll get), whereas the Ibanez TS is more of an overdrive which only gives good distortion in combination with a good amp and its distortion. Anyways, it feels good to play guitar after not playing any while in college. If I keep practicing and getting better I will next have to get a nice Gibson Les Paul or perhaps just a Gibson Explorer.

Also: I recently installed a couple hard drives in my at home computer in Raid 0 (striped) and it flies. Winamp goes through the mp3 tag info so fast it's rediculous.

I have the Death Metal distortion pedal

[RailGunner]

DigiTech's Death Metal pedal is fantastic. Two output lines, one for an amp if you're playing a gig, the other is a line out for recording sessions.
Great distortion out of it. I've been very happy with it in the two years I've owned it. Before that, I used a DOD Super American Metal pedal, and got good sound out of that, but nothing like the Death Metal pedal...

However, if you don't have one already - you'll notice a huge difference if you get a compression / sustain pedal. If I had known the difference

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[ak3ldama]

What kind of guitars do you have?

Re:

[RailGunner]

I own 5, 3 acoustic (classical, 6 string, 12 string) and 2 electric: a blood red Jackson Stealth Pro Ex and a red Jackson Rhoads with a reverse head stock.

Both were purchased before Jackson was bought up by Fender.

Fortunately, my guitars last me decades so I won't have to decide on a new guitar manufacturer any time soon.

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[ak3ldama]

I have just recently learned about how Fender bought Jackson, it is too bad they let quality slip. I like the Jackson King model (normal styled V) but now I probably won't consider one. Several big names have switched to Dean. When I heard the new Megadeth album I assumed Dave did, because it has a sound like the latest Trivium album. I don't really like the look of Dean guitars though, so now the choices for new V guitars went down; i guess there is always used. Looking at guitar shops and used guitar