Category: guitar

Sovtek Mig100

 

Remember how I played a Sovtek Mig100 in Berlin over the summer? I’ve been on the hunt for one at a good price ever since. I finally tracked one down.

Though I haven’t had a chance to really crank it, it’s extremely loud, clean, and warm sounding. Not brittle at all. It’s missing the back grate that protects the tubes, but I think I can make one fairly easily. The plastic jacks and switches are still there, so maybe soon I’ll get Matt Weed to replace them with metal ones. Or maybe I’ll wait until something breaks…

Now I have to decide which amp to sell – my Laney GH100L or two-channel Dual Rectifier.

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.