New VIDEO with original Trainwreck Rocket

[geetarpicker]

Was just pointed to this from TGP. Very nice video of the ultra rare Rocket. Has nice pro audio and great playing. It's about time someone got one of these amps on Youtube! Ken tried to talk me into ordering one "back in the day" and I should have jumped on one when I had the chance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lLcL13Z1FQ

[kec]

Ken would be pleased with that video. Nicely done.

Thanks Glen!

[tweedeluxe]

Thanks for posting that, Glen! Great to finally hear one.

Out of curiosity, have you ever had the chance to play a Rocket or any of Ken's other more rare designs?

[dartanion]

Great video, even if the audio and video are out of sync.

FWIW Tweedeluxe, all of Ken's amps are rare. The Rocket is very rare and the DLM is extremely rare.

[tweedeluxe]

okay, then - the RARER designs like the Rocket, DLM, Songwriter 30 . . .

[geetarpicker]

Thanks for posting that, Glen! Great to finally hear one.

Out of curiosity, have you ever had the chance to play a Rocket or any of Ken's other more rare designs?

I was at Ken's a couple times and got to play a Rocket and his original red Fuzz face pretty sure it was a germanium one. That was a great combination, and the 1st time I ever had played a pedal that responded much like and amp and cleaned up well. I remember the Rocket had that AC30 vibe but with better lows. I have a pic of the Songwriter that Ken sent me, but I never saw or played one in person.

[dr. who]

Is it the same pics of the SW30 that have been posted?

[jaysg]

With the exception of the single line stuff at the end, I was highly underwhelmed. I'm not sure that was the right guitar or cab...dunno.

[Structo]

Man, I hate it when the audio and video are not synced.

The final solo sounded pretty good but there wasn't much there that I haven't heard before in other amps.

I suppose the magic is in owning the amp that Ken built.

[geetarpicker]

Well it is a Rocket which basically is quite similar to an AC30 at least in theory. A great clean tone, and medium dirt. I played one and though I really liked it I didn't see it as an amp I'd use all the time at least without some pedal assistance. I'd miss the Express gain and wide range clean to dirty. Still, in the studio I'd probably do alot of clean tracks with a Rocket if I had one though I'll admit many amps do that well. Truly though, Brad Paisley has his Liverpool but I think he wouldn't regret picking up an original Rocket once he got over the $. I guess finding one actually for sale would be the harder part. I was impressed with the video, at least they didn't use the built in camera mic. It probably wouldn't have been hard to fix the sync issues. I do my videos using a simple $99 editing program that still requires the audio and video to be manually synced up. However it takes time and maybe they just ran out of patience and didn't think anyone would care. I've found on Youtube some folks are very picky, better watch what you wear as they're are alot of fashion critics!

[hitchcaster]

IMHO i wasn't that impressed with tone of it.. especially the overdriven tones.. not sure why that is, cause ive heard other clips that sounded really good. yeah, the video was killer but all i care about is the sound personally. thanks for posting it though, good to check out!

[martins3325]

Thanks for posting...cool to hear a real one! Though i DO like it, I guess I am a little underwhelmed by the built up expectations of people talking about it like the end all of el-84 amps...like if God decided to build an AC30 a rocket would be the result. Im not quite hear all THAT. Just a really good sounding amp. Outside of your clips Glen, one of the best amp tones I think Ive ever heard is a clip of a guy with a ef-86 '62 AC30, a Tele, and KOT pedal. Of course everyone digs different guitar tones, but the tone on this clip does it for me..especially when the KOT kicks in. From what im hearing --once again just my ears-- I wouldnt trade the Rocket rig tone for the AC30 rig tone. --price aside obviously--.
AC30 clip I LOVE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsJncZho1sY

Worst gear mistake I ever made was selling a copper panel AC30 Ken had worked on --raised in Central NJ so that wasn't unusual to find-- amp KILLED ..ah well...young and stupid!

[rooster]

Yeah, both clips were nice to see and hear. I think the first clip that Glen pointed out really needs to have all the visual playing sync'd up to the sounds - why bother showing footage at this point, closeup on the amp would have worked. But good tone and the Baker is probably an earlier one, eh? Bright gtr there, I love that in a HB gtr - but ultimately not as sweet as Glen's either! Maybe, Glen, your '59, being unique as it is, caused you to walk away from the Rocket? Well, sometimes its more than the amp of course.

The 2nd clip was sweet in so many ways. Screw the amp and the tubes and the pedal, all good of course, but the groove was a blast. Yes, the tone was AC30/4. He's lucky he found a EF86 that was non-microphonic, too. Man, and where do you find a drummer that will lay out that much that isn't some studio pro, you know? Shite!

[NowFender]

Used VLC media player v. 0.9.9, goto show extended setting on bottom right icon and syncronization to speed up audio 0.300s..sync's right up to watch. Downloaded with youtube downloader.
thanks for posting it Glenn. also enjoyed the ac30 clip from martins3325
gotta laugh at his comment about the unreliable ac30 starting to hum after they finished the clip..

[RJ Guitars]

This is a great addition to the Trainwreck archives. In many ways this sounds really similar to many of the AGF Rocket builds which is reassuring to any of us who have built one. However, my first thought as I listened to the clips was that the early distortion wasn't all that pleasant - a little fuzzy but not really sweet and crunchy. On the Rockets I've built and the others I've heard, early crunch is something they do really well. This is also true of the clips that Derek Ferwerda has pointed us to where he is using Trainwreck Rocket #1.

I won't be quick to write this off though because the guitar, the cabinet and any number of other factors all add in to what we are hearing. IMHO, this isn't the total representation of how a Rocket sounds but still brought some good stuff to the table. The single note lead tone on the last part of the video is really pleasant to me and again reassuring because the singing lead tone is one of my favorite things about my own Rocket build. I'd like to confirm where he had the volume control to get that much gain.

I wouldn't mind seeing a better visual to audio sync but I'm pleased that he put this together and shared it.

rj