New gear and creativity

[gasman]

Listening to Les and Phil in the Open Mic section got me to wondering: How much does new gear affect your creativity and playing? Les was using his new E-Band and Phil was using his new guitar, and Rob did some great videos using his new gear. So there must be something to having new/different gear and letting your creative juices flow.

I mentioned in the Ash Tele thread that I was planning on getting a guitar very similar to it, but I don't think I can swing it quite yet. I had some unexpected auto repair expenses, so I think it will have to wait a while. In the mean time, I am thinking of getting a looper off of CL. Much more affordable at the moment, and maybe it will get my creative juices flowing and maybe I will finally post a sound clip on here one of these days!

What do you guys think about all this?

[469roadking]

I think most all gear should be inspiring to some degree. Every time I buy or trade for a new pedal I play with it until I find inspiration with the new tone or sound or I sell it. New guitars or amps are the same way. I play differently on my white tele (more of a standard affair) than on my Anderson with the trem bar. Pick up selection makes a difference in what I hear and so how I play.
For what it's worth I think the looper is a great choice, even over a new guitar because you can lay down different chord patterns and play over them. I promise you'll learn more about how music works doing this than almost anything else. At least that's the way it works for me.
I don't have a looper but my oldest son is an excellent guitarist and we play together as often as possible. When he moves out I guess I'll have to get a looper too. ;D
Well there's my .02 Gman.

[rayden44]

Recording boxes are usually more expensive, so a looper is the next best thing. The Boss RC2 can do 15 mins, the RC3 does something stupid like 3 hours and has drum tracks too I believe. The RC3 isn't over here yet, but you guys should have them. Loopers are expensive compared to your usual drive pedals, closer in price to things like octavers and pitch shifters.

Otherwise if you've got some sort of line out off your amp you could run it to your PC sound input and record it using something free like Audacity, then play back to it.

On the reviews I did of my gear I was just recording into the camera mic of our digital camera (regular digital camera in movie mode, not a digital video recorder). This was since Mojo kept annoying me by his videos coming off so well without using anything really special - thought I'd give that a go so that's another option.

[pwfirst]

Every time I get a new toy something new and different comes out of it. My new soft ware came with many new soft syths or pre recorded lics that I am just now starting to put into my songs.
Ebow very versitile little noise maker that can give you neat string sound that is great in many songs, My new ovation gives me that ringing acoustic sound that is easier to play than my standard acoustic so my fingering sound improve in the recordings. Then the new software where I can cut and patch and add any effect post recording that I could ever want. Love new toys.

[lesblues]

I too love new guitar related toys. I do though think that sometimes I spend too much time looking for new toys instead of playing my guitar! Having said that, I believe the eband is the best thing I have been given so far and I had never even heard of it before. Kudos to Lady Ann for researching it. She knew I felt that being able to jam with another guitarist would help me improve musically and as I don't know anyone locally who wants to jam and HJ lives about 300 miles away, Ann thought this was the next best thing. She was right I haven't actually played through my amp since I received the eband. It just makes it so much more pleasurable to learn songs and once I get my FS6 (tomorrow) I'll be able to use the looper function and much more. I haven't been this excited about a new guitar toy since I got my first guitar and amp. Seriously! ;D

[gasman]

Thanks for the input guys! Unfortunately, the looper I was looking at on CL is not there anymore - must have been sold already. Regardless, I will probably get one somewhere along the way one of these days. Anyway, I can always use Audacity in the mean time, as Rob suggests.

You guys have some interesting ideas about gear and creativity. I agree with RK that different guitars make you play (or want to play) differently. I rotate my guitars and keep one out for usually a month at a time. After that, I want to play another one. Right now, I've had my Jet King out since November because I have not been able to play very much during this time. It's been a very busy time for me and playing is down on my list of things to do. I really want to bring out another guitar (which in this case, is my Epi Dot), but I still want to experiment more with my Jet King paired up with my DA5 amp.

I agree with Phil and Les about new 'toys' also. I still consider my DA5 a new 'toy', and I've tried to go through all of my settings on it with each of my guitars. When I do this, I am just playing chord progessions and little riffs that I learned a long time ago, nothing new. Even though I am not doing anything new with my DA5, I am getting better at playing the things that I already know, so in that sense, my new 'toy' (DA5) is helping me improve my playing.

[rayden44]

DA5 has some nice varied settings on it. I find sometimes a bit of tremolo or delay will usually slow me down a bit (not that I need that!). Takes me out of a steve cropper sort of quick strumming style and I'll let the notes ring a bit more than usual. I like that Rotary setting for that There's a chorus + delay that works nicely too. Usually get into some minor stuff too when letting notes ring. Othertimes It's just into clean + some reverb and business as usual

[gasman]

The DA5 does indeed have some nice settings. I'm with you on the business as usual stuff - I choose one of the cleaner settings and add reverb. I like the three Blues settings a lot. I also like to play around with the first crunch setting. It's a very versatile amp. I don't use high gain very much, but it's nice to have three high gain settings to choose from - each with a slightly different sound. As for the effects, I think the chorus + delay is my favorite, but they are all fun to mess around with. A great amp for sure!