Guitar YouTuber KDH is currently running a solo competition, and I thought I’d take a swing at it. I’m at best an intermediate player by modern standards, but KDH appears to be a bit of a hair metal revivalist himself and so I figured that my stuck-in-the-80s brand of shred would fit in quite nicely.
This solo is comped to fix a few bum notes – and so only part of this video is the actual live take – but it’s all improvised apart from that one really obviously thought-out-in-advance bit. I’m running my JEM through the Soldano SLO-100 X plugin, which seemed an obvious choice for this sort of sound.
I had a bit of help from my Sustainiac pickup again; if you look closely you can see me checking that it’s switched on (via the push-pull volume pot) just before the solo goes into the long held-note section that appears to feed back. It’s really a great choice for getting a close-enough approximation to a cranked amplifier for someone who, like me, accidentally left their Marshall Valvestate behind at a gig 20 years ago and just couldn’t be bothered ever to go back and get it.
The competition entry is closed now, I think. The prize was a custom Hufschmid Tantalum guitar which is sort of both quite my thing (superstrat) and very much not my thing (mahogany construction, very…. distinctive appointments). I’m really not in it to win; I already have plenty of guitars. Taking part was a lot of fun, though.
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