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GALLERY: L.A. Amp Show 2012

See the boutique amps, guitars, and effects on display at this year''s L.A. Amp Show.

"Friedman brought two brand new models to the show: the Steve Stevens signature SS-100 (left), and the Pink Taco (right). The SS-100 features quad EL34s, runs at 100 watts, and is described by Dave Friedman simply as ""beastlyяvery beastly!"" The lunchbox-sized but huge-sounding Pink Taco is 20 watts, runs off of twin EL84s, and sounds like a hot-rodded Marshall Plexi, but only weighs 15 pounds. Retail on the Pink Taco is $1,299 and the SS-100 is $3,600."

Billy Corgan and The Machines of God announce 'A Return to Zero Tour' kicking off on June 7th, featuring classic tracks and deep cuts from iconic albums. Tickets available for presale on April 1st. Don't miss this unforgettable experience! Tour dates include Baltimore, Boston, New York, and more.

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An easy guide to re-anchoring a loose tuning machine, restoring a “lost” input jack, refinishing dinged frets, and staunching a dinged surface. Result: no repair fees!

Pardon my French, but I’m about to misethe hell out of some en scenein this article about do-it-yourself guitar repair. Buckle-vous up.

The Guitarist is in the middle of double-tracking a solo. It’s not quite right. Creative juices are flowing, but at any moment, the gate could slam shut. Their social media feed is stagnant, and the algorithm thirsts for content. The studio is 80 bucks an hour. That new boutique fuzz pedal would sound great on this track, surely? It would, of course, as these things are the cure for all problems, but it rests just out of reach.

Desperate for a solution, the Guitarist rests their perfect new guitar against the warm tube amp–only for a moment … but a horrible amplified bwaang from wood, string, and concrete’s violent meeting breaks the temporary silence as gravity muscles potential into the kinetic. The Guitarist breathes a defeated “aw, man,” like a loosened balloon farting hopelessly across an empty room. The gate closes, juices no longer loose, locked, impenetrable by any transistor-based effect. And it’s time to assess the damage.”

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The typical controls on a compressor can be confusing and often misunderstood. At the heart of the MXR Studio Compressor is the ratio control, which offers up four levels of squish.

Compression might be the most misunderstood effect on your board—until now.

I was recently listening to three accomplished guitar players discuss the how, when, and where to use compressors in their guitar rigs. All three players had wildly different views on all aspects of compressordom, from where they should be used in a signal chain to whether they are even worth the hardware that holds them together.

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The least exciting piece of your rig can impact your tone in a big way. Here’s what you need to know.

Hello, and welcome back to Mod Garage. This month, we will have a closer look at an often overlooked part of our guitar signal chain: the guitar cable. We’ll work out what really counts and how your cable’s tonal imprint differs from your guitar’s tone-control function.

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