The ESP Guitar Company

It's almost June now in 2020.

As of March 2020 all of my gigs were canceled for the local bar band I play in but yesterday I was asked about playing on July 4th. So let's hope that we are getting closer to be  playing live gigs every weekend again. I am in North Jersey, Sussex County near the border of Warwick, NY. We play mostly in Sussex County and in Hudson Valley NY. I think it's time to end this lock down already.

I played at this bar and didn't notice the sign behind me until the first set break. I am playing my comfortable ESP EC-50. I have 2 of them. I get a lot of people saying a lot of comments about the gear I use and my setup. Most are not good comments while I am setting up, before I plug in. But once I plug in and start playing, they have a change of heart and sometimes I have a small group of people checking out my setup asking questions. I have regulars sometimes bringing their friends to check it out so here is my live setup.

I have two tube heads one is a Bugera 333XL and the other is a small Peavey 6505plus mh. I use one or the other. I like having a backup. I think the mh stands for micro head. In this pic the 6505 plus lunchbox is being used. I can see the red led light on. I have a PINETONE 2x12 cabinet made by hand down the road from me. I use to give the owner Joe guitar lessons and he made one for me that accepts almost any configuration from 4ohm to 8ohm to 16ohm mono or stereo. I was using a mesa boogie 2x12 but there is something about the PINETONE that really sounds great too and it's more veratile for my gear setup. I use various pedals but 3 that stand out and really give me my sound besides the tube saturation from the amp are. I really need my Maxon OD 808, my boss NS-2 and my Keely mini katana clean boost pedal. I use the whammy pedal, wah pedal and delay pedal, chorus. All the stuff to play RUSH to Rage against the Machine but all my stuff is analog so I have to use my feet and dance a bit to turn on my delay and chorus in my effects loop. I like my ESP guitars without a whammy bar so I can change the tunings quickly when needed. My phaser mx90 for Van Halen goes before the amp with the other pedals. I only have the delay and chorus going to my effects loop. I never liked any of the digital gear but I would give it a try again because I like the idea of it being convenient and my pedal board is pretty sloppy. One other main thing that I always use is my power for my pedal and my amp head must both come from the same source and that source needs to have my furman power conditioner then the amp and pedal board can plug into the furman. Other than that I use a Jazz 3 dunlop guitar pic the larger one black, not red and I use the orange pack ernie ball guitar strings 9-46 sometimes I will change the low E to a 48.