Hank Marquardt's Gear

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Agile AL2000 Agile AL2000
Agile AL2000

Gosh, this is a $225 guitar? This thing is awesome for that price. Is it perfect, no, is it worth 2x, maybe 3x at a retail store, yeah, it probably is. First off, it’s beautiful … yeah, that’s superficial, but it’s got a flame top, nice bindings, professional fretwork.

I’m still getting used to it, it’s got a much darker sound than my Peavey and the pickups are a little weak … those might be the thing that most needs upgrading in my opinion, that and the cheap plastic vol/tone knobs … that last item is picky, but well, they are cheap plastic ;) It’s reasonably well setup right out of the box with 0.10s on it.

You’ll get to hear it next round.

Dated: 02/15/2010

Roland Micro Cube
Roland Micro Cube

Here’s the rest of my sound, my Roland Micro Cube. This is still in current production, but mine is 5 or 6 years old. I bought it because I wanted to get a variety of decent sounds just to noodle with, for cheap. Think it was $125, and does exactly what I need it to do. It records like a champ too, all of my Fretwar submissions are recorded through this .. I think I’ve used all the amp models at some point in doing Fretwar, so if you’ve listened to my submissions, you have a pretty good idea of what this amp can do … not bad for 3W of power.

Figure pictures of the rest of the rig aren’t that exciting but i"ll mention — I use a Shure SM57 mic into a Yamaha MG12 mixer as a preamp … this then flows into the ins on a MAudio 2496 sound card in my PC …. i run a Linux DAW consisting of Jack, Ardour, Hydrogen (Drums) and Rosegarden (sequencer … used mostly for bass)

Peavey Tracer
Peavey Tracer

So here it is, my guitar. I was a gear whore back in the 80’s … probably had 10 guitars, a couple stacks and a bunch of pedals, this is all that’s left of that era — I think this was bought in ‘87 or ‘88, new from Windy City Music for about $250. 00. Never recorded (meaningfully anyway) before Fretwar, but it’s done a really good job … most of the time I just use the bridge humbucker, but for cleaner sound and faux acoustic sounds I use both pickups. It has a Kahler version of the Floyd Rose bar.