Author: automattack

Gear for Catharsis shows

Last weekend Catharsis played a few shows in Europe. We made arrangements to borrow amps, so here’s a rundown of what I used. Originally I was planning to bring a small pedalboard with a tuner, overdrive, and distortion pedal, but that was too much to fit in my backpack. I took my distortion pedal and a Snark clip-on tuner instead.

BLITZ – Oslo, Norway: Sunn Model T reissue

sunn model-t

I was excited to see this on stage when we got to the venue. I used the clean channel (channel 1) and it didn’t sound so good. The distortion was a little too gritty. Thinking back, I should have tried cleaning up the dirty channel and using my distortion pedal as a boost. Lesson learned.

 

LUTAKKO Fest – Jyväskylä, Finland: Engle E656

engle e656

I was intimidated by this amp. Too many knobs, switches, and options for my liking. But we had almost an hour to set up and line-check so I took my time and explored the amp. I ended up using channel 3, which is a high-gain channel, but I turned the gain as low as possible, using my pedal as a boost. The cleans weren’t very clean, but it was okay. This amp sounded way better than the Sunn.

 

Cyklopen – Stockholm, Sweden: Marshall JMP 100

Would you believe I forgot take a picture of this classic amp? Sound-wise, meh… It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what I expected. It sounded good, but I think my issues were with the room; concrete floor, metal walls and ceiling. There was a weird boomy mid-range to everything, and I had trouble controlling feedback.

EDIT: Someone posted surprisingly good video footage so you can hear (and see) it in action.

 

Köpi – Berlin, Germany: Sovtek Mig 100

sovtek mig 100

This amp ruled! It sounded great, and was plenty loud. No uncontrollable squeally feedback. I was so impressed, I’m seriously considering buying one (after selling one of my current amps, of course).

Catharsis Rehearsal Gear

Catharsis rehearsed this weekend for the upcoming European shows. Here’s a quick rundown of the gear Jimmy and I used.

My gear:
laney gh100l

pedalboard

I used my Laney GH100L, a borrowed Marshal 1960 cabinet, and a small set of dirt pedals you’ve seen before. For the shows, I may remove the Polytune and use a Snark clip-on tuner instead. I’m trying to lighten my load as much as possible.

Jimmy’s gear:
5150-3

amptweaker

Jimmy used his 50 watt 5150-III head, his Marshal 1960 cabinet, and an Amptweaker TightRock straight into the effects loop return! This is a novel approach I hadn’t considered before, which relies on the amp having an effects loop. Since we’re borrowing amps at these (and probably most future) shows, I’m a little skeptical. But this pedal sounds great in the instrument input or the loop.

The TightRock is a cool pedal with loads of unique features, including an effects loop that’s activated when the pedal is disengaged. You can use it to A/B between distortion sounds, for “only clean channel” effects, or to send a clean signal to a different amp (by not using the return). The distortion sounds great, and I’ll definitely have to look into getting one of these or the FatRock.