2010 PREMIER GEAR AWARDS
Real McCoy Custom RMC8-Guitar Eqwahlyzer
Brad Plunkett’s mid-’60s design
for the Italian Vox Clyde McCoy
is widely regarded as one of the
greatest wah circuits. And for
many pedal makers, building a fair
emulation of that iconic stomper
would have been a major accomplishment. But Geoffrey Teese,
the man behind Real McCoy
Custom wahs, has always had the
will and wizardry to constructively
tinker with classic wah sounds.
And the RMC8-Guitar Eqwahlyzer
(November 2010) does a beautiful job of delivering the much-loved Plunkett/Clyde McCoy flavor, with
equalization capabilities that enable you to customize the voice to your
rig and style. The versatility doesn’t stop there, either. A toggle switch
allows you to switch the sweep contour between a NOS Icar-taper pot
and an expanded-range taper that’s reminiscent of an aged Icar-taper
ROC-POT 5. 2 wah pot. Reviewer Steve Ouimette loved the way the
controls enabled him to modify the wah’s tone to better suit humbuckers, P-90s, and single-coils. And he remarked, “no matter what combination of guitars and amps I used, the RMC8 delivered in spades. The
tone was always lush, the sweep was smooth and free of scratchiness,
and the sonic flexibility was nearly unlimited. It can be easy to grow
weary of a wah when it’s a one-trick pony. But there’s almost no end to
what the RMC8 can deliver.”
Street $269
realmccoycustom.com
they’re intertwined with classic songs and the tones of our heroes.
But even the best ideas leave room for refinement, evolution, or
variation. Each item in this category of Premier Gear winners bravely
attempts to add something extra to these totems of great guitar
thinking. And in every instance, they’ve gotten something really right.
3 Monkeys Grease Monkey
The 30-watt Grease
Monkey (December 2009
web exclusive) is powered
by four EL84 tubes and
serves up a British flavor
that’s truly gargantuan.
Reviewer Gary Guzman
noted that the Grease
Monkey might have more accurately been called King Kong for
its massive output. He also called it a “tonal monster,” noting its
“extreme touch sensitivity and dynamic range.” Players that gravitate
toward bare-bones amps will love the Monkey’s simple control set,
which features Cut and Shape controls that enable a little more roar
than an AC30 and a little more clean headroom than a Marshall. The
Grease Monkey is one of the cooler-looking amps we’ve seen around
the PG offices, too.
Street $2250
3monkeysamps.com
Ultimate Ears 4 Pro Series Custom Monitors
Few performing musicians—even seasoned
pros—warm up to in-ear monitors right off
the bat. No matter how muddy a stage mix
is, the same in-ear-monitor mix will usually sound—and feel—weirder. But as our
reviewer John Bohlinger found, Ultimate
Ears 4 Pro in-ear monitors (January 2010)
are, how shall we put it . . . unnaturally
natural. Bohlinger performed with the
Ultimate Ears 4 Pro in settings including
an open-air festival, an intermediate-sized
club, and a recording studio, and he found them superior to wedge
monitors or headphones in every instance. According to Bohlinger,
had he “started with the UE 4 Pros, I would’ve stopped right there
and saved myself lots of money and aggravation.” With everyone
from the Rolling Stones to Van Halen in agreement, maybe we’ll have
to start imagining a world without wedges.
Street $399
ultimateears.com
BC Audio Amplifier No. 7
You can pack a lot of stuff
in an ammunition box—your
baseball card collection, your
guitar cables, and a couple
stompboxes. But an amplifier?
Naturally, there’s a lot more
to Bruce Clement’s ammo box
amp, dubbed the No. 7, than
visual gimmicks. Reviewer Steve Ouimette found that the 15-watt,
point-to-point-wired, 6V6-powered No. 7 (January 2010) had an
exceedingly unique voice that sounded much more akin to an AC30
or a baby Marshall Super Lead than a 6V6-driven amp. He found
headroom aplenty by simply rolling off his guitar’s tone control, but
he was also able to drive the amp to saturated, Hendrixian heights by
setting the amp’s controls to the max. Ouimette also found the BC
No. 7 exceedingly pedal friendly when he ran octave dividers, fuzzes,
and distortion boxes through it. “It’s like having a handful of your
favorite classic tube amps at your fingertips but still hearing something new and fresh. This is an amp that you can play for hours and
never get bored with.” Pass the ammo!
Street $1795
bcaudio.com
TRIED AND TRUE—WITH A TWIST
There are a lot of ideas in the gear world that just plain work—and
always will. The sounds they make are all but hardwired into our
musical memories and subconscious, often because of how intricately
Creation Audio Labs Holy Fire
Tired of overdrives that suck tone and shrink the sound of your
guitar and amp? The Holy Fire (April 2010) might just be the fix.
Reviewer Steve Ouimette found it to be capable of tones ranging
from warm and subtle overdrive to brutal fuzz perfect for wall-shaking stoner rock. But Ouimette also found that the Holy Fire
