So the Bugera went down and this is the WHOLE Process of redoing my entire rig, the thought process, and what was involved.

In that time, the Bugera has gone down a LOT of times, including on-stage at least twice, and I've been through an EXPENSIVE Consumable called "Vacuum Tubes" - or "valves" as the brits like to call them. The thing about TUbe Amps, is they are - not to be sexist - a bit like a hot person in a relationship whose high maintenance....they're pretty, they sound awesome, and they are fun when things are good, but when things are awful, they can be really, really, really, irritating.

And things are different now, I'm 42, I don't want to be in the garage in July spending six and a half hours with a multimeter and a pencil tracking down microphonic tubes, biasing power tubes, chasing down failed capacitors, spraying crackly pots, contemplating polarity of my speakers....I just want the fuggin' thing to WORK and sound good while doing it. I also am now married, and have a career, so anything that could turn a potential live situation into a no-brainer rather than a "well, what am I going to do that night the Bugera conks out again" scenario.

So I knew what I wanted, something that sounded like a EL34/12ax7 Tube amp, without tubes, with some more versitility. The Bugera, functionality wise, was pefect at the time I got it, but in 2025, I found some things I DON'T like about the 333XL. First was the lack of a Reverb footswitch, meaning I had to turn on the Reverb from the amplifier panel. And that wasw about it. I also kinda' thought having a couple more channels could be useful.

Previously, I was running a TU2 Tuner for the tuner, 2 home built FUzz Boxes, an EHX PitchFork, a CryBaby Wah, a Behringer Phaser, EHX Small CLone, BOSS Digital Delay, Digitech Flanger, and a Behringer Noise gate. All this had to be crammed onto a 20"x24" SKB PS-45 PRo POwered Pedalboard, and attached with Velcro (actually, when it came to rebuilding the rig, I'd started drilling holes in the PS-45 to use cable ties instead because I was sick of pedals coming loose before every show, and sometimes taking cables out with them).

And I needed a way to switch the BOSS Katana. So at first I looked at getting a MIDI Buddy, A MIDI Commander, or a Behringer FCB1010 - which was about half the length of my pedalboard, and the same width. Then I had a lightbulb in my head as Guitar Center denied me a FCB1010 for $92 because it came back "broken"....I HAVE a MIDI Controller already, called a Line6 HD500. So I tried that out. And the beauty in that, is I can run it on my NEW board setup, and have MORE effects capabilities than I ever had with my old analog board. Including even a second backup of the HD500 built in should the KAtana go down. My redaundancy is now BUILT INTO the rig - I like this idea. And being as I'm learning about Networks and Reduandancy - this is like taking my I.T. principles, and applying them to my music.

This meant I could ditch almost everything, but the pitch shifter if I wanted. So basically, two pedals, and one I'd need with the other setup anyway. Then something caught my eye....

See, with each rig, I liek to EVOLVE my sound a little as well. And one thing I've been dabbling with, and trying to homebrew, is Guitar Synthesis. BOSS Made a Synthesizer for ugitar that doesn't need any external hardware for the guitar - the SY-1. A Polyphonic guitar synth in a regular BOSS sized stompbox. It's not convenient, but I used to also tweak settings on my EHX Stereo PolyCHorus a BUNCH with Smokin' 66' - I had a setting for I Try and I Try, a setting for Listen, a setting for some alien-sounding craziness....so bending down to work with two less knobs on a pedal roughly 1/3rd or 1/4th the size of the EHX PolyChorus makes a lot of sense, especially if I'm using it.

But the challenge of this is....how about Distortion WITH the synth? Because I'm going to want to layer distorted guitar and synthesizer from time to time. Once the subject comes in, we shall explore the ideas of how this works, and I'll probably make a video for YouTube around it as well. Distortion in can either help or harm tracking, distortion after can make the signal sound kinda' cool and big, running distortion through the loop of the pedal helps blend the signal by allowing a CLEAN signal into the pedal circuit, and then the distortion is fed through the loop. Another crazy Idea I had was to run the FX loop of the amp through the loop of the pedal....while feeding the signal from the beginning of my effects chain through the pedal. A smaller, more local idea, would be a separate distortion for the pedal, like my FazzFuzz, SkullFuzz, or maybe a new LM386 based pedal of my own design designed to get a tight distortion similar to my amp sound, or even finish the Samsquanch distortion pedal I designed.

Then there's the subject of packaging all this. How am I going to make it portable? Well, my idea was to build my board into it's own custom case. The idea is to add no more than an inch to the HD500 with the sides, and then have a hangover-piece - with added supports that sit on top of the Line6 HD500 between the knobs and LCD. The LCD area has a cutaway that lets the display be visible to me on stage, while the overhang holds my synth, pitch shifter, and fuzz/distortion pedals. I also have to take my giant clodhopper hobbitses feet into consideration as well. The entire side where the wah/expression pedal is, is open! Behind it is where teh cables will be neatly wrapped up around special wraps - making teardown from a live show incredibly easy, and keeping the cables far more tidy than the PS-45 ever did.

These days, the guitar has more to do with the base-level tone of what I'm trying to achieve. The "let's take up all of the bandwidth" guitars are Nikki (EMGs), Kramer (Invader...basically), Explorer (GuitarMadness Hexbucker) are usually what I use on the really heavy stuff, and the stuff that needs a strong synth presense for tracking reasons (and the fact all three can go full on glass).

The Paul Dean is probably the guitar I use the most for straight up 80's New Wavey type stuff. In that mid-output tier is that one, the Sunburst Jaguar, the Mad-Rite kinda' links this and the high gain group above together by being high output but having the bridge pickup smacked against the bridge so close the saddles hang over the pickup ring! You can usually tell when I use the Paul Dean, there's that howling midrange resonance Paul has added to my usual sound, and there's no whammy bar. Our tone I think is very close, except mines a little more midrangey. There's kinda' a whole stretch of tone from the mid-late 80's that I fall closely into tone-wise.