David

im still using .88mm tortex ones ive also been using dunlop JazzIII's lately too David

for a heavy metal type distortion, i would check out the Danelectro Paisley Liquid metal as its supposed to be pretty damn good also check out the Zoom Tri-metal, they are discontinued now but you could probably get hold of one cheap/secondhand and its also pretty cool for a tuner, as an alternative to the TU-2 check out the Korg DT-10, ive read lots of good things about it, just as good if not better than the Boss, plus its shiney David

indeed why he has a rammstein cd, i dunno David

its more than enough to compete with a drummer for jamming or anything, and i am pretty happy it would be fine in drakes. as i said before, the only problems i could see was if you wanted to play super clean jazz or something at full blast, but for anythign else, its cool David

oooh i havent seen the dvd, sounds good though i do have a copy of the cd though, which ironically, i copied off a german person David

sorry, the only time ive played there was before i got this amp so was borrowing a friends (AVT100 to be exact) but i would have no worries with the amp being underpowered, i would be slightly worried if you wanted perfect cleans at full blast, but for most people it would be fine with the gain on the clean channel up a bit and getting warm/slightly overdriven if anything more than disty compared to distorted it would still be good live as clean fully distorted its putting out about 45 watts, which is almost 50 watts, so the difference between the 401 combo and 50 head is not very much at all, the extra speakers would help a bit, but you can always run it with a cab too... so i would have no worries one thing to note, 40 watts dosent sound much, but since its a valve amp its quite a bit louder than a ss equivalent David

loud enough, i had it nicely cranked last time i played in kef, which was a nice volume for gigging (possibly a little louder than i will next time, but fine) I dont see why you would really want a bigger amp, unless you intend playing jazz in wembly... and its pretty cool for bedroom volumes too, plus its a lot easier to cart about than a head + cab i love the amp basically and rob, could you send me the PDF to the_enema@hotmail.com, much thanks David

do you have stuff on the DSL401 (or indeed any of the combo versions) or only just the heads? if you have the combo versions too, would i be able to get a copy of it, mainly so i can do the biasing myself when it comes time for a retube? David

the ENGL powerball is supposed to be amazing for high gain stuff like you are looking at, it would be my choice also the Peavey 5150 or the marshall mode four would be good choices best bet is to try them all out first, see what you like/dont lke David

like money, but much cooler... David

if you dont use the trem at all, then its probably a good idea to block the trem on it, for one if a string breaks you will still be in tune,and it should help add some more sustain to the guitar David

if you know nothing at all, try and get someone who knows how to solder to show you first so you can get an idea i would also have a look on the net for any proper guides to soldering properly and i would have a practise on something esle before attempting the guitar, rip out the old pots and have a shot wiring them together to get the idea of how to solder, then if you feel you can do it, go on the the real stuff if you try and find you solder like you are using your feet not hands, then i would get someone else to do it, either a friend who will do it or pay a bit of cash to get a shop or someone to do it for you David

your in depth description of this mystical device astounds me therefore i have absolutely no clue as to wat you are on about David

well unless you want to ask us something, i dont really know what you expect us to reply... the quesiton was 'do you get microphonic valves?' which was answered, and some more (extra) info given would you liek me to tell you more about valves? just ask anything and i will try to help David

well the pose is... cause you avatars is missing the background... David

yep, that you good to go not too sure on what power amps are good value or whatever, the best bet would be to ask somewhere like harmony central and see what they say there what your looking for is a half decent wattage (pa's will be designed to need much bigger wattages than for just guitar) rack mounted poweramp David

also i am very sure that john petrucci shold be on the list he hsa one of the fastest right hands on the planet (fnar) David

PA speakers are made to produce full range sounds, ie everything from bass to trumpets and more. Guitar speakers are only designed to produce guitar sounds, so cut off lots of extrra frequencys that are extra or sound bad (try playing guitar through a stereo and it will sound poo...) so even thuogh a guitar speaker will work fine, they will still colour the sound of the moddelling device, which is already making the sounds of the speakers, so the resultying sound wont be as good as it would eb with full range speakers the main problem is that all guitar speakers sound different, and colour the sound in different ways... you can turn off the speaker sims on vamps/pods, but i would prefer to get full range speakers that let me use the cabs of my choce (as you can mix and match cabs in the preamp to get loads of different sounds) so yes, you can use a guitar cab, but it wont let you use the modelling device to its full potential David

most of them are nice enough, some happier and nicer than others, but all of them are generally helpful and nice eg, Elliot is always very nice and friendly to me, while Aron (the guy with the long ginger hair) tends to be a bit more surly, but still helpful if you need to ask him anything how much credit do you have there that you want to get rid of? David

yes you do get microphonic valves... if you think you have one, try this test, switch the amp on and take off the back to you can see the valves, then tap them one by one with something like a pencil (so you dont burn yourself or have any risk of a shock) and if one rings out when you tap it, its microphonic and needs to be replaced. David

well the way i would go about it... get hold of an amp modelling preamp, somehting like the Behringer V-amp pro (my choice) or the Line 6 POD pro, these will give you all the amp models you will ever need, along with cab modelling and some fx to play with since these are basically an all in one unit, a guitar based poweramp and cab will colour the tone, and then lose the point in having cab simulation... so what you would use would be a PA style full range rack mounted power amp, this will sit nicely in a rack case with the pre and amplify the sound as intended, the bonus is that these are also usually cheaper than the equivalent wattage guitar power amp then some monitor/pa style cabs to give you some lovely noise, you could either buy a normal pa cab, or get hold of some full range pa style speakers and switch them into a cab of your choice David

i want one, just dont have the omney to buy it... David

if you wanted it blocked, wouldnt it have been a better idea to buy a guitar without a floyd inthe first place... i wouldnt want to pay for a floyd then not be able to use it, i do block mine for alternative tunings sometimes, but the block comes out aftre im done playing in the other tuning David

everything is fine as it is now the avatars are a fine size, not big enough to get annoying (as i have seen on other forums) but big enough to recognise people by as for images in sigs, theres no real need, and i know its really annoying for people on dialup to have to wait for all the images to load while viewing threads everyitng is fine now, so just leave it David

it takes quite a while to get it right, but its not hard to do remember the guage and brand of strings you have used, so next time you can use the same ones the trem needs to be set up for different guages/brands as they all have slightly different tensions you will probably have to make small ajustments with every string change, but these will be simpe and quick enough if you are using the same brand/guage David