Ibanez TS9

I'm a little frustrated by the cork-sniffery that takes because of the Tubescreamer line. This one sounds good; I like it. I'm aware that the TS-808s have a kind of holy grail mysticism associated with them, but I don't understand how musicians--people who pride themselves on running against the grain, free-spiritedness, &c--all subscribe to the same set of rules and opinions about this. The Klon, the Tim, Dumble--maybe it is better. Maybe I'm missing something.

In any case, this is a necessary piece of the electric guitar puzzle. I play a telecaster, and I have this on pretty frequently to get a little more meat on its bones. Does get a tad noisy, as my guitar's giant ashtray bridge is pretty microphonic, especially when I'm not phase-cancelling the pickups.

I really like all the things that it is supposed to do--midrange "bump," light drive, even a clean boost for leads. If I trusted the crappy black plastic-enclosed beetle-looking tubescreamers more, I'd have gotten one of them for cheap. As it stands, this is a primary color when putting together guitar tones. Inventive? No. Practical? Heck yes.

Frankenbass

My apologies for the string of "franken-" posts. I'm not sure what to call all these things, as they're all custom or cobbled together out of a bunch of parts. I built this fretless bass up from individual parts from a kit over the summer of 2012. I'm actually really happy with this, and found the process of putting it together to be really rewarding.

I'd always wanted a fretless, as I find "fretted" basses a little...well, boring. I don't like that there are only so many notes to play, and I find that so much of the way that I play bass is dependent on glissando, groove, and pulsating rhythmic figures that the frets slowed me down. As Jaco says, frets are speedbumps. With a fretless bass, I can do a couple things that were otherwise impossible:
1) I can treat strings (particularly the low E string) as these frequency machines rather than as a series of rigidly formulated note-steps. What I mean by this is that I like to hang out on one string often (the A string is so fun for this) and just chug along, quickly sliding to or from other notes. Fretless bass is like playing an electric rubber band whose tension you keep adjusting to change the pitch.
2) Pinch harmonics take on a whole new level of awesome. You can slide them like a crazy whistle, as there are no frets to interrupt string vibration when you move them around.
3) Playing out of tune. You can add so much menace by finishing a note in a riff by moving your finger down a half inch--like the bass is dying, or giving up the line altogether.Just slowly finishing a riff by detuning it or sliding down toward the nut just makes things feel a little more awesome.

I bought the tortoise shell pickguard and finished this with an almond-colored paint. I didn't have the patience to buff this out to a high gloss, or to load it up with tons of clear coats. So I decided--instead of going for a pro finish--that I'd rather weather this thing and not have to worry about every nick and ding. I took some sandpaper to it, knocked it into some solid objects, and said "there. Done." Now I have no worries--it's mine, I put it together, I like it, and it sounds pretty good.

The setup posed a problem. The action needs to be as low as possible on fretless basses or they're near impossible to play, so I had to stick 2 or 3 pieces of sandpaper between the neck and the body.to lower it down to playable levels. After much fiddling with allen wrenches, truss rods and bridge saddles, it plays nice and smooth.

Finally, I installed a thumb rest on the pickguard. I've always been curious about those things, and I really like it. I tend to play with one finger (the Jamerson "claw"), and I pretty much never play slap bass, as I'm tired of hearing it, so the thumb rest gives me a nice, solid place to hang out.

Frankenstrat

This has been my main guitar for a couple years now. I like the playability of strats--the contoured body, the fast necks, the relatively light weight. As far as build, this thing stays in tune and feel solid as a rock.

Having said all that, I have no idea where this thing comes from. I traded some guy in Detroit an old Peavey amp for this guitar. I believe it has a Fender tele neck, but the body is made from bits of a bunch of different guitars' parts. The guy who gave it to me had done some work as a luthier, so it's set up really well. The action is great, and he put the pickguard together himself. It has a knurled edge that he used some kind of router on, so there are pieces of this that are pretty unusual.

I'm pretty sure at this point that I prefer single coils. This can be a noisy guitar under the wrong circumstances, and a guitar with humbuckers would help, but I just feel like it sounds less guitar-y. I've had semi-hollow body humbucking guitars, Strats, Les Pauls, and a whole variety of other Frankensteinish things, but this one has proven to be the most versatile. When my wife and I moved from Detroit to Buffalo a few years ago and couldn't afford groceries, I had a fire sale for gear. This one survived.

Frankenkit

Ignore the dog.

I've had a half dozen drum kits. I've sold all of them off because they actually had resale value. Tama kits, Gretsch kits, Roland V drums, Pearl, even a really sweet TKO that got me off the ground. I've hung on to this one because it's the one that I've spent the most time putting together. As you can see, it isn't a kit for everyone. If I remember correctly, the dimensions are:

• 28x14 bass drum. I picked this up at a yard sale for $20. I had to do a bunch of work on it to get the hardware set up on it; it was missing a bunch of tension rods, and they need to be about a foot long, so they're really hard to find. It's an ancient marching band bass drum with a bunch of students' names carved into it. "T-Bone" was apparently a pretty big deal at Some Local Detroit High. This drum sounds as big as you'd think, especially with an Aquarian super kick II on it. 
• 5.5x14 Pacific hand-hammered brass snare drum. 
• 13x9 rack tom. This drum is from a Pearl kit from the late 80s.
• 16x16 Tama floor tom.
• 12" hi-hats. The bottom is an A series Zildjian splash; the top is a K splash. I know that's weird, but I like small hats. 
• 16" AAXplosion crash.
• 21" Zildjian sweet ride. The best cymbal I've ever owned--this thing is so loud, so washy, so fun to bash on. It's also a pretty good ride in terms of stick definition.
• Pang cymbal (not pictured). It's a whole bunch of cymbals that I've cracked and ruined over the last decade. For some reason, I keep them around and put them on a stand. It's a more popular idea these days, but it's kind of like a china sound with a really fast attack. 
• I also swear by the Iron Cobra pedals. I don't care about any of the other hardware, so long as it's sturdy enough to hold gear up (which is actually not an easy thing to assume--there's some junk out there). The Cobra always comes with me. 
• Also, a quick note on the wrap: since every one of these drums comes from a different place, they all looked terrible together. I kind of wanted drums that looked like momma dressed 'em all at the same time, so I came up with this idea. I grew up reading my Dad's Marvel Comics and fell in love with Jack Kirby's pencil work. I printed these images on some high quality paper, pulled the wraps off the shells, and used double sided tape to secure the sheets to the shells. I picked up a cheap sheet of mylar adhesive from the craft store and put it on nice and tight. I've had them like this for a couple years, and I'm starting to think of something else. We'll see.

Rocktron Hush

Doesn't get much simpler than this pedal--step on it, one knob, an LED, and that's about it. It worked just fine, but it turns out I didn't have the noise problems I imagined I would. As often as I run multiple fuzzes or overdrives, I don't leave them going carelessly.

I found someone looking to trade a TR-2 for a noise gate, and this puppy was gone.

Behringer DD400

My first delay pedal. Not proud of that. Unfortunately, this pedal has a major problem: it doesn't sound good. It does, in fact, to all the things a delay pedal might do--produces digital repeats, has knobs, possesses a switch that you step on to turn it on and off, &c. The trick is, with this pedal, all of those things kind of suck.

I don't know why I still give Behringer a shot. This pedal is housed in a crappy, thin plastic enclosure, and it sounds like what it is--a digitally modeled knockoff delay pedal. I thought maybe I'd found a diamond in the rough, but instead I found a pedal suitable only for bedroom players who tip-toe on pedals. I'm a big boy, and I tend to leave marks in flimsier metal enclosures, much less molded plastic. I kept this one long enough to not be able to return it. So I sold it. It will find a good home, but not with someone who cares very much about delay.

Dunlop Crybaby Wah

The Crybaby is the standard wah seemingly everyone uses. I found it to be a huge tone-sucker, scratchy, and requiring a super sensitive/heavy-footed touch to get those stupid mash-down switches to work. I can just never get them to do what I want, so I like the optical kind.

Seems like everyone needs a wah pedal, as there are some phrases that just ask for it. I tend to use my Morley bass wah as more of a filter; I give it a real slow sweep over a measure or so before starting it up again. Sounds cooler that way that with the widdly-diddly minor pentatonic stuff that everyone seems to gravitate toward when they step into a wah pedal. I'm not trying to disparage that kind of playing, but...oh, who am I kidding? If the world never heard another blues lick, it'd be a better place. Enough, already. Most kids music uses pentatonic scales, too.

Despite my experience, I can see how everyone finds this to be a fine sounding wah with a good throw, an easy sweep. I can see why people like it, but it just sounded so tame, and so typical for a wah. I'm trying to come up with my own stuff, my own sound, and this pedal wasn't helping me get there.