Trumpet - 4 years (haven't played since '86 :()

I played Euphonium (Baritone) in middle school and high school for around 6 years, although I was never good at it. I actually hated playing, but A) most of my friends were in band, and B) marching band got me out of P.E..

Piano for 16 years, violin for 13 years.

Playing the violin did a lot for my general musical abilities, and I can say I went to All State in high school thanks to it, but to be honest I never really liked the violin much. I prefer the piano much more.

My Rigs - "Toys For Big Boys"
 

GUITARS
• Fender Stratocaster, Clapton Model
• Epiphone
• Ovation 12 string
• Gianinni 6 string
• Line 6 Variax 300
• Washburn HB32 Semi Hollow Body
* Mahogany Jazz/Blues Guitar

COMBOS
• Fender Ultimate Chorus 100W
• Fender Stage 100 DSP 100W
• Fender Dyna-Touch III Deluxe
900 Guitar Combo Amp 90W
• Fender Super Reverb 85W

• Pignose 40W Tube

HEADS
• Marshall TSL 100W
• Fender Stage 100 DSP 100W

PA SYSTEMS
• Yamaha EMX5000
• Yamaha 660
• Yamaha StagePas 300
• 2 S115V Speakers & Stands
• 2 BR 12 Speakers

• 2 Shure SM57
• 1 Shure SM58
• 1 Shure SM58S
• 1 Shure SM58A Beta

LIGHTING
• Chauvet Par 38 Lighting System
• Chauvet DMX-4 Dimmer/Relay Pack KC
RECORDING
• Tascam DPO01FX 8 track digital recording unit
with 40 GB hard drive
CABS
• Marshall 1/2 stack 4X12
MISC
• Boss JS5 JamStation
• BBE Processor 362 Sound Maximizer
• American Audio MCD 810
• Digitech RP12 System
• Vox Wah
• Boss Pedals
• Roland GR20 Guitar Synth

You gotta play for over 40 years to have this stuff....an understanding wife helps too. Also take the first step and admit you have MAS - Musicians Aquisition Syndrome. It's like the twelve step programs, admit you are powerless! 'Cept for the gear!

I have a American Fender Strat, a Sigma (Martin's cheap line) acoustic, a 60's "Rocky Mount" Amp that I love but is pretty big, along with some tiny practice amps (Roland, Gorilla)

Been playing over 20 years, but I suck.

I played the saxophone (alto) for about seven years...and I still play occasionally, but not often. :(

Guitar for 16 years and now I'm a full time guitar teacher..

In play a lot of stuff like piano, trumpet, and some bowed instruments, not well or proficiently, but in that way that anyone with a good ear and some technical skill can sit down and tackle. Wind instruments and complex percussion is a bit beyond me, I just end up going caveman on them.

I’ve played guitar for over a decade. I’ve got two Fender Telecaster Deluxes (one classic, one reissue), a standard Fender P Bass, an old Silvertone hollow body, a cheapie Epiphone acoustic, and a no name pawn shop monstrosity I make noise on. Right now I’ve got an old Crate amp, but in the past I’ve played on everything from a Fender reverb stack, to a ragged pawn shop Peavey that was surprisingly good. Boss Reverb/Delay, Ibanez Echo, Blue Box, Tube Screamer, Boss JPN Feedback, Boss Loop Station, and such for pedals.

My main inspiration growing up was being fascinated with the instrumental music to horror films, surf rock, and THE MAN: Ennio Morricone. I didn’t put together trying to play that kind of stuff myself until I heard the soundtracks by Sonic Youth for ‟Made in America‟ and J Mascis for ‟Gas, Food, Lodging.‟ I dont shy away from themes, but I find myself making a lot of feedback and ambient drone stuff these past few years.

Guitar for some 20 odd years now, although I hardly play at all anymore.

I sold off most of my old equipment/gear, and just have a couple of pedals and a Marshall amp to play on when the mood strikes me.

For guitars, though, I still have ...
Fender American Telecaster ('90)
Ephiphone SG ('03)
Ovation 6 String Acoutic ('86)
...and my very first electric guitar, a Cort Les Paul copy (Silver Sunburst) that I got for my 18th birthday back in the early 80's.

Not going to lie, band that first inspired me to play was KISS.

Thinking about starting to play bass, but don't have the extra $$ to go out and buy one currently. If I did, I'd probably get a Gibson or Ephiphone Thunderbird. I've always loved that model, and I'm just a 'classics' kind of guy in general.

Guitar for 5 years

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...01/bassamp.jpg

1978 Rickenbacker 4001.
Mesa Boogie 400+
Mesa Boogie 2x15"
Gallien-Krueger RB400 (or something. I forget)

I started playing bass in 1995, around my 15th birthday. Never really gave it much thought before, but two guitar playing friends of mine who were also into punk said "You should get a bass and we can start a band." So I did. I guess my original "role models" were Captain Sensible / Algy Ward (The Damned / Saints), and other punk rock guys. By age 16 or so it would be Bruce Foxton (The Jam), Dave Allen (Gang of Four) Clint Conley (Mission of Burma), Joe Lally (Fugazi), Nate Young (Sunny Day Real Estate), Peter Hook (Joy Division / New Order) etc.

Also:

http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l2...4001/noise.jpg

The last few months I've been accumulating various electronics / effects pedals to make noise with. Pictured above (clockwise order from bottom right, more or less):

Behringer UB802 Mixer
Sirkut Electronics Synth Noise Box
Daphon analog delay
Sirkut Electronics Ring Modulator
Boss Metal Zone distortion
DOD Death Metal distortion
Digitech Bass Synth Wah
Sirkut Electronics White Noise Generator
DanElectro Fab Metal distortion
DOD Bass Grunge distortion (In the photo, the last two have a contact mic plugged into them.)

Since then I've gotten a few things; a 4ms Noise Swash , Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb, E-H Double Muff fuzz, a telephone recorder that picks up electro-magnetic signals, and various self-made metal things to mic. Influences for this side of things would be Merzbow, Kevin Drumm, Guilty Connector, Government Alpha, Aube, etc.

I guess maybe I should list my equipment as well

Guitars:
-LTD MH 1000
-LTD Viper 400
-Yamaha AEX 502 - semi hollowbody
-Fernandes Nomad Deluxe (travel guitar with built in speaker and digitech effects unit)
-Ovation LX Standard Elite
-Fender American Precision bass

AMPS:
-Peavey 5150 II Head
-Mesa Boogie 4X12 Slant Cab
-Peavey Bandit 112 (for teaching)
-Peavey Rage 158 (for my students)
-Randall Rg 120
-Peavey Microbass

Effects:
Boss GT-3

Recording
-ZOOM MRS-1608 digital 16 track recorder

<b>freshticles</b>, how do you like the multi-effects unit compared to individual stompboxes? I've always wanted to simplify my life with a single floor unit that 'does it all', but I've never been happy with any of them.

I've had some great gear over the years, but now that I'm a busy father of two, I just don't have very much time for music and it's been relegated to a hobby. Here's what I've had:

Guitars:

Ibanez Jem7VWH (only guitar I still have)
Ernie Ball Musicman John Petrucci Custom(great tone, but couldn't adjust to the VERY thin neck profile)
Fender Highway 1 Telecaster (never quite gelled with it, but it was great for dropped-D stuff)
Various strats (I've never found one I've liked enough to keep)
Ibanez JS1000 (never could get the action quite right)
PRS CE-24 (always wanted a Custom 24, so I eventually sold this one)
Ibanez UV7 (fantastic tone and one of the only guitars I regret selling)

Amps:

Line 6 Flextone 3 (couldn't find a tone I liked enough to keep it)
Mesa Boogie Mark IV head (One of the best hard-rock tones I've heard, immensibly tweakalbe. Mesa's are great amps, but not for a 'set-and-forget' player, which I consider myself to be. Evntually sold this for...)
Bogner Shiva 80watt head (one of the creamiest classic rock distorted tones I've ever heard and worth every penny. Financial setbacks a couple of years ago forced me to sell this)
Carvin Legacy VL100 (Steve Vai's signature amp. Great tones, but FAR too loud for an at-home player like me. This thing begs to be opened up and played at higher volumes)
Line 6 POD XT Live (one of only two amp/direct gear I now own. I think it's one of the better ones you can get. As usual. the presets sometimes leave a lot to be desired, but there are some great parameter adjustments you can make)
M-Audio Blackbox (another very inexpensive direct recording/amp emulation interface. For the money, I've found it to be a great value)

Effects:
I still have a couple of stomp boxes around since the digital stuff isn't quite there in terms of reproducing some of the subtleites:

Homebrew Electronics - Ultimate Fuzz Octave (the best fuzz/octavia unit I've ever played, hands down)
Fulltone O.C.D. - great, smooth overdrive tones. You can coax some great Zeppelin tones from it.
Budda Bud-Wah - Very vocal sounding wah, but not quite enough range for my taste. I may consider replacing this with a Vox Clyde McCoy instead
Digitech Whammy (Re-Issue) - everyone needs to have one. The originals just commanded too high a price to warrant buying one. I don't use it much, it colors the guitar signal horribly, but when I want a little wierdness, it does the job nicely.

I've played drums on and off for about 20 years now. (I basically stopped through grad school, but have recently taken it back up again)

My current kit:
Sonor Force 3001 -6 piece.
(10x9 tom, 12x11, tom, 13x12 tom, 16x16 floor tom, 16x22 kick, 6.5x14 snare)
DW 5002A double bass pedal
DW 5500T high hat pedal
Cymbals:
16" & 18" Zildjian Z power crashes
19" Zildjian A Rock crash
12" UFIP splash
14" & 20" Wuhan chinas
20" Sabian HH Leopard ride
20" Zildjian K flat top custom ride
13" Sabian fusion hats
6" Paiste bell

just piano.

Wow, old thread... My gear has definitely changed in the last 3 years.

wenders: You didn't ask me but I figured I would reply to this... I picked up a Boss ME-50 for my rig a year or two ago and it works and sounds a lot like the individual stomps. I'd recommend looking at the Boss units if you're still thinking about it, but only Boss. Very simple to use with solid construction and none of that ridiculous menu crap that a lot of multi-units (Digitech, Line 6, I'm looking at you) have. The expression pedal part of the Boss units is crap though, I still use my wah and volume pedals.

Right now my rig is like this:

Guitar --> Cry Baby --> Boss TU-2 tuner --> Boss CS-3 Compressor --> TS-9 Tube Screamer --> Proco Rat II --> Boss PS-2 Phaser --> Boss CE-5 Chorus - Boss PS-2 Pitch Shift/Delay --> Alesis Nanoverb --> Amp

It's a lot of effects, but there's very little noise and everything works well. I'm thinking of adding a flanger and maybe substituting a Small Stone for the PS-2. With that much invested I don't think I'm going to switch to a multi-effects unit, although I may pick one up (like a Pod) for recording directly into my computer.

If I think of it I'll post pictures of everything.

I play bass, sometimes I mess around with guitar when needed. I searched up another post with pics of all of my stuff:

Rickenbacker 650A
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC00694.jpg

Rickenbacker 330
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC00683.jpg

Rickenbacker 650D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC00746.jpg

Rickenbacker 4003 in baby blue
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC00173.jpg

G&L L-1500
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC02414.jpg

Rickenbacker 4003 in midnight blue
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC02332.jpg

fender 300t/Aguilar 8x10"
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC01018.jpg

Ken smith designs jazz
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...r/DSC00454.jpg[/QUOTE]


I've added a G&L L-2500 since, and got rid of the KSD. I also am trying to find a nice 2x15 to add with the aguilar 8x10. My current pedal setup goes bass ---> boss TU2 -----> fender 300 head :) Its great not having to deal with pedals anymore.

I actually usually loathe effects and have never used them live, but my singer had this unit stashed with all of his gear in my jam space and I wanted to try it out. He's since forgotten about it and it's pretty much mine. I really only use it for lessons and it's great for switching between the different styles of music I have to teach. Other than that, I really don't have much use for it. As far as I can tell, it sounds alright.

My son plays these:

http://images.music123.com/products/...ean/161779.jpg

http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbas...5/8/269658.jpg

http://www.musicroom.com/images/cata...DSGRX70JCA.jpg

Yeah, that's a nice chain, you don't need to add a multi-effects unit. I am a little surprised that you don't need a noise gate in there somewhere though.

ytrez - Your son must be a metal dude. :rock2:

It's surprisingly quiet, but that's probably because I use really study patch cables and all the effects I use are pretty solidly built.

Here's what it looks like:

http://users.ameritech.net/cinemastuff/Pedalboard2.jpg