NGD and NAD (nothing too exciting)

[Luke51411]

I was perusing craigslist and found a squier bullet strat and a marshall valvestate 2000 amp for a decent price. I've been wanting a project guitar so I figured why not, the amp is a bonus! Apparently it is a tube preamp and solid state power amp or some sort of configuration like that. It's nothing earth shattering but it's better than my Fender Fromtman! It's not in the best cosmetic shape but I may spruce it up a bit. It sounds pretty nice for the value! It also has an effects loop and some digital effects to mess around with. Again, nothing earth shattering but definitely an upgrade from my frontman. The squier is in like new condition. I figure I can upgrade my mim strat (the one on the left) and put the removed parts in the squier! Two for one! Haha. The squier doesn't sound bad, it seems a bit nasally and it makes me appreciate my hot rodded mim even more but I think it's something I can work with to coax some monster tone out of. I'm definitely going to do some work on the electronics first, install some new pups, pots, and switch.

[Luke51411]

I'm also excited about the fx loop so I can use the stm800 as a preamp when I get it built!

[TGP39]

It looks like someone kicked in the front end?  Is the speaker cone unscathed?  I love the guitar....I'm sure it will be banging once you work it over.

Steve

[Luke51411]

The guy said he had a bad breakup... The speaker is good. He said he had it reconned. The guitar actually sounds pretty good as is, it takes a bit more tweaking with the guitar and amp to get it to sound good whereas my Mim strat sounds good at most settings. Also, it's been a long time since I've had regular single coils so i could just not be used to those. My Fender has Lace golds in the neck, dimarzio something in the middle (I can't remember) and SD hot rails in the bridge. Actually the squire seems to be quieter noise wise than I remember my mim being with stock pups.

[blearyeyes]

I have a Marshall Valvestate amp.  Freakin loud with a second speaker cab. Clean channel is not like a tube amp but with pedals all things are possible! it's got a lot of power!..  Anything new is exciting! Very cool score..

[chromesphere]

My first amp was a valvestate 8080 (80 watt).  I used to use it in a punk band I was in when I was 17-18.  I always thought it was a piece of crap, but a few years ago I dusted it off and gave it a go.  The clean channel's not half bad at all!  Of course I wouldn't have had the ears to work that out as a kid and would have just gone straight for the distortion, maxed out, as loud as I could go without p1ssing off the neighbours

[Luke51411]

I'm getting some nice sounds out of it, the dirt channels are... More useable than the dirt on my frontman and that one is starting to crap out on me, now I can take it apart and get the issue sorted without being left with no amp.
The clean channel can overdrive nicely with a boost or light OD in front. It's as close as I've come to owning an actual tube amp sadly... I'll get one eventually... New gear is exciting! I've already got a parts order in to freshen up the guitar. I have an American standard pup I'm going to put in the neck then I have new pots and 5way switch coming (I don't like the way the squire one feels, too stiff.) I'm getting a push pull pot because I really like the neck/bridge combo on my mim strat. I think I'll use it as the M/B tone pot because I put the push pull as my vol pot on my other guitar and I always bump it when strumming. Eventually I'll get new tuners and probably replace all the pups. I'd like to get an ash body and do a natural finish but that's way out in the future.

[Luke51411]

I'm also getting black knobs and pup covers. I think they look better against the white pickguard. I want to do that on my other strat too but I have the white lace sensor in there and I like that pup quite a bit. The green pup cover is from my wanna be punk rawk days haha... I used to have dymo labels all over the pickguard too

[Luke51411]

I've got some new tuners on the way now as well as a new 3 ply pickguard. The stock tuners loosen right up when you turn them to the left, you have to try to get it to pitch on the tightening stroke... I pulled the pickguard off to do some mod wiring even though I'm probably going to replace everything when I get the pots, switch, and pickguard. It has 500k 16mm pots on it, I'm going to see if it sounds better with 250k pots first of all. Then who knows... killswitch... onboard dirt... neck/bridge pup option... the sky is the limit I suppose. Also of note... the body is routed for any configuration of pickups... there is just a hole under all of the pups instead of individual cutouts for the pups. Hooray mass production.

[blearyeyes]

The Valvestate has a solid state front end that runs into a tube before hitting the power chips.

[Luke51411]

The Valvestate has a solid state front end that runs into a tube before hitting the power chips.

Ah ok that makes sense. Would it have been that difficult for them to have at least had an all valve pre?

[blearyeyes]

At that point you might as well have an all valve power amp..lol

[Luke51411]

Yeah I guess that's true... The things they do for marketing... Ah well, it was cheap

[Luke51411]

I probably should have saved a bit and just bought a tube amp... Haha oh well I wanted a cheap project guitar just for fun and he wouldn't sell the amp separate.