In addition to building guitars, I do actually try to play them too. I’ve been taking lessons for the last couple of years, and whilst in no way a master, I’ve got to a point where I can do a little bit of improv blues when the mood takes me - as it did this morning whilst having my morning cup of coffee.

Here I’m jamming on my Blues Deluxe guitar, plugged into the amp I made earlier this year, running through the Keeley D&M Drive, into my new Hall of Fame 2 reverb by TC Electronic and then into my most used pedal, the Ditto x2 Looper, also by TC Electronic.

A looper in my mind is an essential practice pedal, letting you lay down a rhythm track and then play some lead over it - whilst backing tracks may offer more variety, there’s something nice about the instantaneous nature of using a looper to put down whatever inspires you at that moment. The Ditto x2 also lets you load loops onto it, so I have a folder on my computer of drum beats at different bpm and bar lengths, so I can also have drum + rhythm + lead. But mostly I just play along like this of a morning.

Whilst I don’t regret not adding reverb to my first amp build (always best not to get too complicated the first time you do something) I do miss having reverb, and good reverb at that. I’ve played with some reverb effects via my iPad using the OMEC Teleport, and it’s just made me appreciate how getting a nice sounding reverb is quite hard. So I finally caved in and got a dedicated reverb pedal, and I’m so happy with my initial playing with the Hall of Fame 2. I look forward to playing with tone prints and creating my own reverbs through that at some point, but right now I’m just enjoying the lush tones from the built in spring and room reverbs.