As I'm playing my first gig of the year, I thought it might be useful to share a quick post about the electric guitars and the rig I use for my live work. Guitar - amp - cabinet setup.
So, this is it:

I always take two guitars to a gig, basically in case I break a string and have to continue without taking a break. I used to only take one electric guitar and one acoustic (my Takamine EF300W), and as I used to break at least one string during a gig on my red guitar this meant me having to complete a gig on my acoustic through the PA. Not ideal. As I started to move away from acoustic material, I thought it better to take two electrics instead, simple enough as I have a few decent ones. So I now normally use my two USA G&L's; the red ASAT Classic and the 'honeyburst' Comanche (pictured above). This gives the me the flexibility to use the hot pickups on the ASAT for rocking out and the cleaner pickups on the Comanche for the more 'jazzy' stuff I do and anything that would need a whammy bar. Occasionally, if I feel I need more of a 'Les Paul' sound or in places where I from experience I know the 50 cycle hum from the mains supply is too much through the rig, I'll also take my humbuckered Fender Custom FMT Telecaster and as a spare, my Jet JS400 HSS 'strat' which is my surprisingly good budget beast.
Moving on the effects, I use a Zoom G3X and I know most guitarists would find this a bit 'cheap' or 'bedroom' to use this budget multi-effects unit, preferring either expensive and effective Line 6 gear or individual Boss analogue effects units on a pedal board, but I don't use it to get guitar tones, I only use it to get some compression and a couple of reverbs and a tremelo only through the Send and Return of the amp. It's never let me down, except once when I accidentally stepped on a combination of switches at the same time and managed to do a factory reset! Luckily, it was soon after I'd set up and I was well early to the gig, so had time to go into the unit and reset the effects I wanted, which took me about ten minutes. I'm pretty careful now. It's small, light and all-in-one so less to set up. Anyway, I've found the audience don't notice. Most wouldn't comment on your pedal set-up.

One of the reasons I use the set up I do is because it is lightweight. Gone are the days when I used to play through a 100W Marshall Combo or a 120W modified Peavey Transistor/Valve hybrid amp, both of which weighed over thirty kilos and caused me to occasionally need a chiropractor. I remember putting furniture roller wheels on the four corners of the bottom of the 35 kilo Peavey and after a few gigs, the wheels started to collapse.
So now I use a head and a cab. Much easier to manhandle. An Egnater Tweaker 40 amp and a Marshall MX112 cabinet.

I've found that a 40 watt amplifier and an 80 watt cabinet is more than enough loudness I need for the majority of venues I play. I like the single 12" speaker Marshall 16 Ohm cabinet which lets the higher frequencies come through without detriment to the mid range. The Egnater has optional outputs to the cabinet for 4, 8 and 16 Ohm. I bought the amp first and selected the cab on the basis of the amp.
The Egnater is an analogue modelling tube amp, designed in the US and built in China. You'll find a few on eBay and they tend to hold their second-hand value as they're sought after. New, they're around half to a third of the price of a more prestigious tube amp and they give you basically very close Fender, Vox and Marshall tube amp sounds. They do tend to have reliability issues with power supply (failure) but fortunately I've never yet had a problem. I bought this amp a few years ago second hand from an old school friend for a really good price and it came with a custom built aluminium flight case which was almost as heavy as the amp itself. Needles to say, I use a soft cover when transporting the amp in my car. No need to put my back out any more! One weak point is the foot switch which comes with the amp; its cable is cheap and not adequately protected, and I've had a couple of cable breakages which has lead to me disconnecting it from the switch and cutting about half a metre from the length. One day, I'll replace the whole thing. I don't need six metres of cheap connecting cable anyway. It's not so bad though, just inconvenient. When it failed during a gig, I just had to take a few steps back and use the switch on the amp instead, after pulling out the switch cable jack from the amp, otherwise the foot switch overrides the amp switch and you can't change channel.
The one good thing about this amp is that it has two switchable channels; one I set up as a clean channel and the other as a dirty channel, both switchable by a foot switch or directly on the amp by a channel button. There's a decent amount of headroom in the amp to give you good clean sounds but not enough to prevent you form getting that gritty, overdriven sound that rock and dirty blues needs. These days, 40 watts is more than enough to make your ears bleed, certainly in the small club scene. Even on a bigger stage, at summer outdoor festivals and the like, you'd be miking the cab through the stage PA anyway.
So there it is, my Guitar Amp Cabinet Setup: inexpensive (apart from the guitars!) and effective. Let me know in the comments your experiences with amps and cabs.
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