Shot guys!

I think I'll be avoiding the 'X' is better than 'Y' department hahaha! Things can always get a bit hairy there...
Giggsy, I'm a huge Therapy? fan and have all their albums. Loved them from '91 and although Troublegum was a really commercial album it was brilliant and done very tongue in cheek. They were just saying 'we can do that too, now f**k off and let us do our thing'. Suicide Pact is an insane album but is Andy Cairns' favourite, and one of mine too. I love their up yours attitude and complete and utter disregard for the corporate music world (like the Parlotones! ?).
If you'd like their catalogue let me know and I can bomb it all on a disc and send it on over to you.
Any fan of Therapy? is a friend of mine.
Have a good weekend.

Cheers

What a fantastic bunch of homo sapiens you all are! hah! Cheers for friendliness and general decency. Looking well forward to being a part of this here forum. I'm based in Pretoria, I play in a cover band and I dream of forming a hard rock, no bull, balls to the wall, good time, LOUD rock n roll band.

Rock music is like sex...bloody awesome but just not enough of it!!!!! (Well in SA anyway) ?

Bit late in getting here, so apologies and all that...

Love GF and think its great we all have a place to share our passions (and frustrations too). I've been playing on and off for 18 years. Bought gear, sold gear, joined bands, left bands, had fun, made some cash, lost friends and spent a lot of money.
When I started taking an interest in all things guitar back in high school I had a friend who was a couple of years older than me and by then he was already a pretty seasoned guitarist. His most endearing words to me were 'if you want to lose your friends, start a band!'
To some extent that was true as there were always run in's with drummers sisters, and the general discord that is inevitable when a bunch of broke muso's live in the same house!
Would I do it all again? hell yes! I still am if just a little less fervently than in the 90's. That was a strange period I remember well. Here we all were desperately trying to get a hang of myxolidian and phrygian scales and what not, when suddenly that enigma Cobain turned all our sweat into a heap of chordal dung. Man were some of us overjoyed though. I just couldn't get that stuff!!

So 15 odd years on, I'm still hacking away like some kind of deranged novice. It always seems like everyone else is better than me, but it's that that keeps driving me to...keep playing the way I do ?

If anything I learned the value of decent equipment. Those early days were just a mosh of solid state Peavey amps, Boss metal zones and the never ending on stage sound wars. Unable to ever cut through the mix I usually put it down to the drums being too loud, the mix just being horrific or too much beer.
As I grew older (I still don't concede to age!) I got hold of amps. Real amps. Tube amps. And that started to change it all for me. Suddenly I was there. That elusive place where I sounded like something. Out went the Boss multi effects, the crappy amps and the distortion.
I found my sound in a couple of old Elks as posted here, an Ibanez UE400 analogue multi effects and a couple of odds and ends. That said, it's all still a journey and one I enjoy every day.

Equipment wise...
Fender Aerodyne Tele with SD Hotrails in the bridge, stock P90 on the neck
'77 Ibanez Rocket Roll flying V with SD Pearly gates in the bridge and a '59 in the neck
Bog standard 2003 Epiphone Explorer
Elk Twin Amp 45 all tube 'jap scrap' beauty
Elk Stageman 30 (17 W all tube songstress)
Ibanez UE400 multi effects (won't blow it's trumpet but it's amazing)
Jim dunlop Cry Baby
EHX Memory boy (more for some weird effects than actual delay)

...and a penchant for good old fashioned hard rock about 10 miles wide!

Thanks for reading and rock (or pop, swing, groove...) on!

Cheers,

Cameron

Hey guys.

Thanks a ton for all the feedback, advice and comments. I'll see how it goes as far as upgrading goes, but so far I think I'm on to a good thing, so 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' would be the savvy way to go.

Later

Hey all.

I'm just curious to know if anyone else is using Elk amps? I have 2 now, a 15w combo (ES-30 also known as a Stageman) and a recently acquired Twin-Amp 45 head and cab (presumably a 45w but it doesn't seem to put out more than an AC30 so I'd say its a 30w job).
Tones from both are very glassy and Fenderish but very bright. Having fiddled around a bit now I have what I consider to be a great sound. Both amps are still fitted with their stock tubes and speakers and are in beautiful condition.
I picked up the ES-30 for R2800 and was very happy with my purchase although it did take me a while to get the sound I was looking for. I was on the lookout for another (bigger amp) and eventually picked up the Twin-Amp45 for R800 on Junkmail. It needed some work as there was very little volume and some serious red plating on one of the EL-34's, so I handed it over to Benjamin Craig in Nelspruit for a good seeing to (thanks man!). Both amps are now as good as they'll ever be, but I'm wondering if a speaker upgrade and tube replacement will take them from great to bloody brilliant.
If anyone has done a speaker/tube replacement job on an Elk, please let me know what the outcome was.
At the moment I'm running my Aerodyne Tele with a Seymour Duncan Hotrails in the bridge and the stock P-90 neck pup through an old Ibanez UE400 multi-effects and I'm getting all the tone, but I'm seriously curious about what a tube/speaker upgrade will do and whether it'll be worth the money.
Ive owned an old AC30, a Fender Princeton, a 70's JMP and a horde of solid state amps, but these two Jap amps have given me the unique sound I've been after for years.
Thanks for reading and hopefully somebody has the info or advice I'm after.