TONES @ The Guitar Rack #4
PRS USA Standard Stratocaster (Rosewood Limited)
+ Bogner Shiva…and a Porg?
TONES @ TGR #4 brings a new guitar, a new amp, and a visitor from the Star Wars universe too!
If you’re new to this series, please see the link below for the introductory blog post:
What is 'TONES @ The Guitar Rack'?
The Guitar
It’s about time we bring the first Fender model to the channel. This is one of my absolute favorite Stratocasters - a USA Standard Limited, built with the full Rosewood neck. Fender has done these in limited runs over the last few years, and it makes a SPECIAL strat in my opinion. The feel of a rosewood neck is always a joy to play, not to mention the overall resonance of the guitar as a result. If you can get your hands on one, I highly recommend it.
I have two upgrades on this guitar - the pickups have been swapped to a set of Fender Custom Shop Fat 50’s, and the tuners have been swapped to Fender locking. It’s a strat through and through, and a good one at that! The guitar is tuned to E standard. I like to use D’addario 9.5s (EXL 120+) on my strats in this tuning, for a great balance of both tone and fees.
I’ll get pictures of this one added to the gallery soon - stay tuned!
The Amp
When I want an amp that offers a perfect clean and crunch in one package, I always come back to the Shiva. The clean is just fantastic - balanced, bouncy, and just super pleasant in both tone and feel (no compression or pedals here - straight in). On the gain channel, the Shiva brings a fantastic ‘raunch’ typically associated Marshalls, but with a much smoother/darker flavor unique to the Bogner. It’s a beautiful sound, and just inspired you to keep playing. With the internal boost on, the amp just blooms further, making it that much more versatile. Us guitarists love to use weird adjectives to explain tone, but the word that always comes to mind for me with this amp is ‘chewy’. :)
My settings for this tone are in the picture below. This is the updated ‘green chassis’ version (so effects look works without any of the crazy hurdles).
Cabinet, Speaker, & Recording
The tone you’re hearing is again using my Suhr Reactive Load into my Axe FX 2 as an external IR loader. For the time being, I’m keeping this part of the chain as a consistent reference point, so same Mesa V30 cabinet IR as well. I may consider swapping the IR at some point in the future if it’s an amp that I WOULD NOT pair a V30 Mesa cab with in real life, but we’ll see how it goes. More details on that setup can be found in the Tones @ TGR #1 blog post.
Final Thoughts on the Tone
This video is a great example of guitar and amp matching - the Strat and Shiva go together SO well. The strat is a naturally bright(er) guitar with its single coils, and the darker nature of the Shiva allows that character to shine through without any harshness. I could play this pairing/tone all day, and I hope that comes through.
And what about the Porg? Well, I’m very curious to hear your thoughts on his impact on guitar tone in the YouTube comments. ;)
I hope you enjoyed ‘Tones @ The Guitar Rack #4’ - looking forward to your thoughts and feedback.
— Eric, The Guitar Rack