The tools of the Trade - Chapter I
Greetings from the Forest, and welcome to the “Tools of the Trade” series.
This format is where we show our equipment, and go full on music geek with you guys. We may not have the most state-of-the-art, balls-to-the-wall, top gear equipment like big acts have, but we do with what we have. Our band has a DIY approach to music-making, and we don’t mind to share a secret or two, and perhaps teach something new to you guys while we are at it!
So let us start this very first chapter on “The tools of the trade” with Azazel’s guitar:
This is a Jackson JS32 Warrior SBK AH. It is quite lightweight, due to its Basswood body, and the action on the neck is a dream to play, all thanks to its maple neck with graphite reinforcement and scarf joint, and Amaranth fretboard with 24 Jumbo frets.
It has the stock humbuckers, 2x Jackson high output zebra humbuckers, and it is tuned in B standard. Maybe down in the future the guitar may be subjected to some upgrades, but it has served us well as it is.
This guitar had it’s debut on the Daemon Forest album, and was pretty much the workhorse behind the project.
The guitar is setup with D'Addario XL .012 gauge strings, and at the moment, feeds into this badboy:
That is a Hughes & Kettner Vortex 4x12 Cabinet Black with a Hughes & Kettner Vortex 2-Channel 100-Watt Solid State Guitar Amp Head. It is a blast from the 90’s, and still quite serviceable to this day.
It is a 100W transistor, which is sufficient for concerts. It has 2 channels (light / full), reverb, a knob of distortion, which is super convenient to move from a soft distortion to a more harsher tone.
This amp is very easy to use. In a very short time, we get a very good sound, either plain or distortion.
The body is still very heavy (think of the wheels to transport it), but it is not too disturbing end.
The amp is quite versatile. We can play with clear sound really correct, or good ol’cavernous black metal without any problems. In addition, the transition from one to another is quick, given the dedicated button on the distortion.
Hughes & Kettner do not produce these anymore, so you can only find these used. A great place to search for it is at Reverb.com.
But the more alerted reader may have seen something else (and no, I am not talking about the cat), a second amp is there. And just a neat tid-bit, you have heard it in action before. Can you guess where? I will leave such reveal down bellow.
That smaller unit would be this:
This is a Roland Cube 80XL.
Don’t let the small size of this boy deceive you, he is quite able to roar thunder pretty easily.
This is a 80-watt guitar amp with 12" high-performance speaker, has the possibility to connect three footswitches, including JC Clean, Lead, and Solo with memory capability. It comes with 11 COSM amp models, eight effects, a 80-second Phrase Looper built in, three-band EQ plus Presence control for fine-tuning.
Also, this amp is sturdy and muscular for it small size. It is a fantastic addition to our equipment, when we need effects on the fly, or simply fool arround with the effect bank to pull out some tasty sounds.
Rolland is known to deliver pro-quality equipment all-around, but sometimes they don’t come in cheap. But this little amp is worth every single penny.
As a proof of concept, this amp was the one used on our latest release “Lisbon Pogrom 1506”.
Stay tuned for the second chapter of “The tools of the trade”, as this one you will enter the more nerdy side of Sharkuel, and his “Ursula 3.0”!
Note: the cat belongs to Azazel, and is named Azazel as well. So say hi to Azazel Jr.!
