Leaderboard

Out of the pedals I tried the Friedman had the low end "thunk" and tightness that was part of what I was looking for. It lacks some of the fluid gain characteristics as well as some of the mid frequencies that I liked in other pedals I tried. Running it into an amp that was already breaking up either through amp preamp gain or a pedal seemed to add the fluid nature and mids I was looking for as well as retaining the tight low end thunk. A pedal I thought was pretty great with my gear was the Marshall JCM800 pedal. I will probably keep it as well. I wasnt expecting much from it tbh, but when it arrived and I plugged it in it ticked off so much of what I was looking for. I also heard things I liked I didnt know I was looking for. Also, I discovered that the Boss MS3 has a Guv'nor in its OD/distortion settings. With the use of EQ, compression and noise gate settings in the MS3 I could dial in some really great sounds that also felt right under the fingers. I bought the MS-3 after I stopped playing thinking it might be a cool thing to spark some creativity. I never explored it beyond turning it on and playing with delays etc. Its still like a new unexplored toy to me after 8yrs of owning it.

I'm not a distortion kind of guy, so take the following "cum grano salis", https://1981inventions.com/ it seems you didn't mention it Bondi Effects "Sick As" is a Klon clone kind of OD, the High Headroom version is a distortion unit: https://bondieffects.com/products/high-shredroom-sick-as-neon-pink Crowther Audio Prunes and Custard https://www.asapeurope.com/collections/crowther-audio/products/crowther-audio-prunes-custard-special-deal Hot Cake: https://www.asapeurope.com/collections/crowther-audio/products/crowther-audio-hotcake I'm sure I'm missing much more

Best bet is to play a few examples. I can't say for sure, but I think the neck is a little different carve on the CC H535. I have a 2001 H535, the neck is a bit thinner, perhaps a little thinner than I might prefer, but not razor thin. It has the HRW's, the wooden pickguard and lovely figured blonde wood. The weight sorting is a real thing, as lighter woods are in demand, people ask for it a lot these days. Probably 'cause all us old people are the only ones still playing electric guitar. Fender and Gibson do it on custom shop products, so there's demand and money for lighter woods. Yesterday, I played a Collings I35LC-vintage with the factory, Collings spec Throbak pickups. Man, that's a nice guitar. Neck on it was just perfect. I just didn't have that much money burning a hole in my pocket.