Matt P

there was a (possibly short-lived) pgm3 model which was the cheapest option for a PGM, as far as i can see from google all the pgm models had white pickups so my assumption for this one is it's a bitsa made from PGM and RG parts, possibly due to accidental damage or just because those were the parts available. If the price is cheap enough it should be a good guitar, Ibanez are well known for building quality instruments at all price points so if these are all Ibanez parts it should be fine. Matt

thank you @Dad3353 for the in depth explanation, i tried to explain it myself but i was trying to get the comment in when i should have been working so i was a little rushed. My friend did indeed let the magic smoke out of the output transformer of his Laney 50w head and unfortunately replacement transformers were not easily available at the time so it was broken for parts rather than being repaired ( i actually have a few of the valves sitting in a box somewhere.) Matt

just a quick aside, make sure that you use a proper speaker cable for the connection not a guitar/instrument cable, getting this wrong can cause serious damage to the amp (a friend fried the output transformers of his beloved laney head when he got this wrong) make sure the cable is marked as speaker and you'll be fine. Matt

i once had a housemate that repainted his acoustic guitar with a collage of all of his friends and family as Simpsons characters painted using acrylic artists paints, it looked fantastic but totally killed the acoustic properties of the guitar, he ended up buying another guitar for playing and the painted one was hung on the wall. anything other than a thin coat will completely ruin any acoustic properties, it might be possible to save this one with a thin coat of something but depending how the finish was removed it might be too late (especially if coarse sandpaper was used as it may have thinned the wood and getting it smooth enough to re-finish will thin it even further) as @Dad3353 has said, some pictures of the guitar will help. if you want a stage guitar with an unusual/customised finish you would be best staring with a solid body electric, the addition of extra layers of paint will have only the tiniest effect on the sound, any additional paint can easily be applied over the top of the existing finish. Matt

Sorry, I must have missed this, I had one of the v5 combos for a while, it had a pretty good valvey tone, worked well for my bluesy playing. It isn't the loudest but great for playing at home, worked quite well plugged into a 4x12 as well. I leant mine to a friend and they fell in love with it, I was saving for a mesa boogie so I sold it to them, I never found the mesa and kind of wish I still had the bugera.

if i were in your position i think i'd probably go for one of the Artec pickups, they're easy enough to get and the artec stuff gets pretty good reviews http://artecsound.com/acou/index.html matt

hello, that link doesn't seem to work? the UST i have is part of a complete pickup/preamp system that i would like to keep together (it's a Fishman Eclipse Aura so quite a good one) it doesn't have the plug on the end as it connects directly to the board into a pair of screw terminals so it just has bare wires. Matt

It seems that B-band was sold to Belcat a while back, quite a few UST's are supplied with a 2.5mm jack plug on the end so if you could add a matching socket to the preamp somehow that would allow you to easily connect up the new pickup (and swap it out if required) the 2.5mm jack means that the hole required to get the cable through isn't too big and it can easily be threaded in. by modding the preamp out of the guitar you also can remove the risk of accidentally damaging anything with the soldering iron. which preamp is it? (i'be seen quite a few different B-band ones in my brief google) I might have a UST in my bits box that you could test with if you want, think it is a Fishman one. Matt

No worries, the offer stands if you ever want to try it, the trace is about as tiny as acoustic amps gets, the whole thing is only 8" cube and is designed to mount on a mic stand (it has a threaded boss built into the base.) Matt

if you are just using it as a monitor then try getting it as close to your ears as you can (with as low a volume as is possible) I used to use a Marshall AS50 for exactly the same thing and had a similar issue, i swapped to a tiny Trace acoustic cube on a stand high up and it was much better, you would be welcome to try out the Trace if you want as i'm mainly using IEM's for acoustic at the moment and i'm not far from you in Newcastle. Matt

Paging @Andyjr1515 (the only member i know is nearby) Hoping Andy can suggest shops with decent stocks of used gear in your approximate locality. Matt

For blues playing i'd definitely suggest some sort of semi acoustic, the 339 is a great choice, if you can find a shop with some secondhand gear then there are lots of really very good instruments around from the likes of epiphone, ibanez, yamaha and others. I'd say choose with your hands and your ears first, sometimes an instrument from a less well known or respected maker can turn out to be a peach, i had a vintage branded les paul copy that i paid 90 quid for and it totally nailed the Peter Green tone, similarly i have a very early Tanglewood semi acoustic that ii paid about 200 quid for that is fantastic for blues lead work. a double Humbucker guitar would be my choice for this, clean sounds can usually be found by rolling the volume off a bit, coil taps are an added bonus for those more single-coil sounds. If you could give us a rough idea of your location then you might get some suggestions on good shops to try out. Matt

is this to replace an existing guitar as an upgrade or are you looking for something to give you a different sound or look to an existing guitar? what guitar do you have at the moment and what do you like/dislike about it? when i bought my second electric guitar it was a more upmarket/higher quality instrument compared to my first guitar but it was a similar style (both superstrats) this made my original guitar the perfect backup for live use as they both covered similar sonic ground. I then later went on to buy different guitars to give me different sounds. Matt

this has reminded me that i need to get my Laney sorted, i tested it out last month as our guitarist wanted to try it out, and it was making a nasty buzz/hum. I've got a day off next week so i'll get it booked in with my favourite amp tech. I was considering a new set of valves but as none of them seem to be on their way out i might save that for another day (the price of valves seems to have gone up since i last looked.) I don't think that the LC15r has adjustable bias so i'd be happy to swap out the valves myself (matched power valves of course) Matt

i've just had a quick search on guitarchat and have seen your post about the guitar (i'm assuming it's the gear4music one) I would have described this more as a compact electro-acoustic rather than a thinline (which is more usually used to describe a hollow electric guitar in my experience) the case i ,linked above will not fit, the hiscox designed for APX guitars would be the best fit but as this is a budget guitar i guess that even a 60 quid case is possibnly too expensive (these do pop up for sale on ebay and Facebook marketplace and i have picked up Hiscox cases for as little as 30 quid in the past) I would look for one of the rigid foam cases probably, Gear4music might offer one as an option, if you take a few measurements (upper bout, lower bout, body thickness and length and total guitar length) then you should be able to match it so a suitable case. Matt

which guitar is this? (one person's definition of thinline is different to another's) I have a 335 copy (a very early Tanglewood) and i went for the Hiscox case, it's not the cheapest option but i've seen so many broken Gibson style headstocks that i consider it a worthwhile investment. I bought my case from ebay used for about 50 quid i think, they pop up regularly enough if you're prepared to be patient. this is the same as the one i have Hiscox Liteflite Case To Fit 335 Type Guitar | eBay I must say that Hiscox are always my number one chioce, the few instruments i own that don't have Hiscox cases are the ones where they don't make a suitable case (Banjo and a couple of 3/4 sized travel guitars as well as ukes) Matt

i tried a few different brands when i first started playing (rotosound, dean markley, ernie ball and a couple of others) but then swapped over to D'addario fairly early on, XL's in 10's and the phosphor 11's for acoustic. when internet shopping became a thing i went over to DR for both acoustic and electric but the prices went up and ordering in bulk wasn't always an option when I was a poor student so i went back to D'addario (it helps that the D'addario distribution centre for the uk is about 5 miles from my house and every shop around here stocks them and they were usually the cheapest option of the big names) for the last 15 years though i've been using Newtone for my acoustics, (heritage 12's and 13's) the combination of the balanced and lighter tensions as well as the longer than average life really suits me, i've also got a few friends using them so we put in bulk orders every so often. For my electric i've started just buying whatever Strings direct have the best deal on, the last lot were Fender which i believe are made by Daddario, i couldn't tell the difference to the XL's i took off. in my experience the difference between brands tone is far more apparent on acoustic instruments so that's where i pay more attention (and money) For my basses i started out using stainless DR';s (the Marcus miller signature ones) but then i was introduced toi flatwounds and have them on every one of my basses, (interestingly no 2 basses have the same brand strings, i have Daddaio chromes, La bella, status, ernie ball and ghs as well as innovations on the upright) Matt

i've had my eye on those Mooer preamps for a while, I have a saved search on ebay for cheap pedals so i might end up with one at some point. one recent purchase that might appeal to the OP is the palmer Pocket amp, it only has a few simulations but they're pretty good, i picked one up cheap and am using it as a preamp into my recording interface for practice/ noodling, Might be worth a look as they come up fairly often on ebay and often sell cheaply. (about 75 quid new) https://www.palmer-germany.com/en/products/guitar-effects/5141/pocket-amp-mk-2 Matt EDIT - as a bonus they have a decent DI output as well so one less thing to plug in, the only minor gripe is that it's not Phantom powered!

Hello, welcome to the Forum. i think we need a little more information in order to help, I've looked up the Di box you have and it's also a mixer unit (which is unusual for a DI box) are you just wanting to run the guitar into the Voodu or are you wanting to run a mix of signals? do you have other effects units that you want to use? My usual starting point is to draw out a simple diagram with boxes to represent each unit and then lines to show connections with arrows to indicate the flow of signal, this should give us an idea of what you are trying to achieve and then you should get some useful answers. Matt

hmm, that looks like it might be Mahogany or one of it's relatives, which doesn't really help a huge amount (if it was rosewood that would be a definite sign of a high end guitar) Did you manage to look at the to to see if it is laminated or solid? I did some research myself and it seems that there isn't anything online about these guitars, unfortunately there is very little documented on the early years of tanglewood, Matt

i can't help with the value but judging by the logo on the label it's from the early days of Tanglewood, strictly speaking it is a classical guitar rather than a parlour (which would have steel strings rather than the nylon ones fitted here) a good start would be to look at the edge of the soundhole and see if you determine if the top is made from solid wood or ply, Solid would indicate that it's a better quality guitar as ply is generally only used on the cheaper guitars. some pictures of the back and sides would also help to determine it's true value. It looks like a fairly nice instrument. Matt

I'm going to echo @ezbass and suggest a different amp is the way to go, there are so many good amps available these days that the best option is to go out and try as many as you can, i tend to veer towards british amps but as already said it's very much a personal thing. another option might be to get a multi-fx unit of some kind (the zoom units are pretty good these days) this will give you lots of different sounds as well as amp sims on some models. if you can i would also suggest having the guitar professionally set up to your own liking, the Pacifica's are really very good guitars for the money but a decent setup makes them even better. Matt

the Behringer GDI21 is basically a clone of the Sansamp GT2, I don't have any experience with it myself but i do own 2 of the acoustic versions and am very pleased with them, the bass version is also very popular as a backup DI in case of amp failure. for the cost you really can't go far wrong, the cases are plastic and the switch and controls feel a tiny bit flimsy but for the price they are generally excellent.

that's a difficult job to assess, you might have to resort to a very small screwdriver to prise it out in chunks, where do you live? there might be a member locally that could help you out, if you're in the north east of england i'd be happy to put it on my bench and remove the stuck bridge, i've probably got a spare replacement bridge that could be fitted in return for a pack of jelly babies or chocolate hobnobs. if it is glued then some gentle heat might help to loosen the glue. replacement bridge saddles are only a few quid on ebay, getting a nice snug fit and the right height takes time but isn't that difficult if you are patient. Matt

i've just scored one of these on ebay https://www.t-rex-effects.com/soulmate-acoustic it sounded pretty excellent on the youtube demo's i saw, hoping it does justice to my favourite acoustic guitar. there is an electric version as well. Matt