On the guitar front, I had picked up that Epiphone Les Paul PlusTop Pro, and that is my primary go-to guitar. What I've been looking into is a backup to that guitar. I've been looking at the used Epiphone market, and been highly disappointed. I found a beautiful ebony Les Paul Custom (made in China) at one of my favorite corner shops, but they wanted $50 less than a new Epiphone Les Paul Custom Pro which has ProBucker pickups and locking hardware. So I decided to go the GFS route and get an Xaviere XV500 (with case and GFS locking tuners).
The other temptation was getting a counterfeit Gibson from overseas, and modding the hell out of it. I won't go into detail on the source as there is great question on the legality and ethics of these. The price on these is about half of a new Epiphone, and they're made to look like an actual Gibson (some even have the logo, serial numbers, and "MADE IN USA" stamp on them).
Another candidate was the AXL Badwater 1216 Jr.
This might be an upcoming purchase, as these are some great Les Paul Jr cloneS. They also have one called the Badwater which has upgraded hardware and a Lindy Fralin dogear P-90, but costs north of $500.
For an amp, I'm going with a used Vox AC15C1.
These things can be obtained for under the $500 mark used, and do exactly what I want them to do. I generally stick with an overdrive sound and run it all day. This isn't a great amp for clean, but is a spectacular amp for bright, clear crunch. Very British sounding, and it looks phenomenal. It's also sized more like a 2x10 combo than a 1x12. Great all-tube attack. I was looking to Bugera, but they are getting harder and harder to find, and the Vox was in my price range. The other reason for getting this amp is the rest of the band uses combos (the bass player has a Behringer that I sold him), and I don't want to overpower the rest of the band with my usual guitar amp; Sovtek Mig 60 with a custom built 6x10 cab.
For pedals, I'm going with Joyo. These are Chinese made clones of some really great pedals, and come in at under $30. I'm going with the JF-02 Ultimate Overdrive which is in the realm of a Fulltone OCD pedal.
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I'm also going to try their JT-305 Guitar Bass Chromatic Pedal for tuning. I had thought about trying out the Snark tuner pedal, but this is a little cheaper. The GFS pedals at www.guitarfetish.com were another candidate, but there again, they were about $10 more, and shipping was twice as much as Amazon.
The pedal board will contain those 2 pedals, a TS-808 (Ibanez Tubescreamer) clone which will be purchased later, my X2 XDS95 wireless receiver, and a OneSpot power supply. I've looked at quite a few pedalboards in my search. The one I use for my bass rig is by Road Runner, and has been holding up quite well over the 6 years I've had it. PedalTrain seems to be the more popular pedalboards among us blue-color musicians, but they all work on a concept that involves pulling the board out of the case.
A pedalboard should just have a lift-off top. What I found through Rhondo Music is the CNB pedalboards.
These work the right way, and can be purchases from around $30 to about $100, depending on how fancy you need to get.
Another mention should be the PedalTrain Volto.
This is a battery-pack that is meant to power you're pedals for up to 36 hours. Like everything else these days, the power supply for charging it looks to be a mini-USB cable. The Volto comes in great in that it is one less thing to plug in when setting up a pedalboard, and you don't have to search the front of the stage for a place to plug in your pedals. The cables included will power 6 pedals. I wouldn't mind picking one of these up, they go for about $100.
