easytoslip wrote:have a good direction in which to point me in regards to Waldo buffer? Dimarzio super IIs are pickups with distortion from what I read, I'm guessing Waldo buffer is an alteration of the guitar as well. What kind of amp(s) do you run this guitar into, and do you list a bunch of analog pedals off or one system like a Boss pedalboard, and have you gotten into Moog's at all? I've heard they're like driving a really smooth loaded car
Waldo's buffer is just a unity gain device that changes the impedance of the guitar's signal. It doesn't do anything to change the tone, other than mitigate any high frequency loss due to the length of the cable runs, which people describe as a more "high fidelity" sound to the guitar.
The Super II pickups are the second generation of DiMarzio's Super Distortion pickups; they have more treble and less bass than the originals (also known as Dual Sounds, which Garcia used when the Tiger first came out (79-81). However, there is nothing distorted about the sound of the DiMarzios, they just have a hot output which makes it easier to make your amp distort if you want them to. The guitar will sound perfectly clean into a clean amp.
With Playing Dead, I am using the Fractal Audio AxeFX Ultra, a two space digital modeling device. I have designed a Garcia preset that emulates a Fender Twin Reverb preamp, solid state power amp, tube reverb, a 2X12 speaker cabinet loaded with JBL E-120 speakers (sampled off my own Hard Truckers cabinet), and all the effects I used to use analog -- Q-tron, octave, phaser, overdrive, wah, delay. I plug the guitar into the AxeFX Ultra, and the AxeFX Ultra gets plugged straight into the soundboard. I monitor the guitar onstage with a pair of QSC K-12 powered monitors.
I used to run a big analog rig, but I find this to be way more consistent, easier to hear onstage and it sounds good enough to my ears. Haven't changed a thing on it or bought a new piece of gear for several years now.
Well, I did buy the AxeFX II ... but I haven't played with it yet.