I've had enough - gear trading stops here!

[Fourth Feline]

Well Dave, first song in last night ( at a wedding reception- which was great because it was a mature couple and the groom being a muso) I lost my pedals and quickly unplugged and went straight into my amp. I managed to get through the first set perfectly well and enjoyed the experience. Not a first for me admittedly and I am not as good as Phil X but you can get a lot out of a Tele/Laney VC30. I almost didn't bother sorting things out for the second set- bearing in mind I normally use eq, Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde, T Trex Tremster and Visual Sound H20 (not necessarily in that order). Back to basics is very satisfying.

That description brought back happy memories ! When I was last gigging, the 'usual' was Tele / Laney LH50R - or Strat / Fender Twin. The Tele/ Laney was the most fun because it all felt very relaxing and informal somehow , like being allowed into the Office job  with your jeans and T.shirt on.  :)  As this was over 10 years ago, I had not yet discovered B.K.P.  (  and the sage advice offered on this excellent forum ) . I did go through a long phase of trying to fill the stage with pedals.

The very best times - and the most enjoyable gigs,  were just Tele / Laney  and playing less / listening more.  :D

[Philly Q]

To get slightly back on topic(!), I've found myself really inspired by the Phil X gig Ian and I went to.  You can go so much tonal variety from one guitar an overdrive pedal and a decent amp - volume/tone controls and picking weight and position can make such a difference.

I'm going to have to do a gig with a really, really basic setup sometime just to see how it sounds....

I'm not a proper gigging guitarist so my comment here is pretty irrelevant, but that's one of the reasons I'm so fond of Les Paul Juniors and amps with no more than two or three knobs.

Yes, I'm a bit of a technophobe in some ways, but if there's less to fiddle with, there's less to go wrong, less to worry over and it's down to the player to try to squeeze out different sounds through more "primitive" means.

[Ian Price]

Less to go wrong is quite right! One of the bigger gigs I did was at the Basingstoke festival. It turned out sort of ok in the end but there was a pretty embarrassing moment when I stomped on the fuzz factory without realising I had somehow wound the output up to full. Cue about 5 seconds of 'noise' before I realised what had happened and turned the pedal off as quickly as I could do!

Since then I only really ever gigged with an amp and the tele (and perhaps an overdrive if I was feeling adventurous).