David Grissom Gear Guide

ADHD's Gear Guides at any Budget. I'm a firm believer that the tone comes from the hands. If your trying to achieve a certain guitar hero's tone you have to not just have the chops but you've got to get down their style of attack with your picking hand as well. That said every step you take toward finding the right gear is often very inspiring and WILL get you closer to “that” sound. I'm going to break these down into Guitars, Pickups, Pedals and Amps.

David Grissom Gear Guide

David Grissom is not one of the more famous guitar heroes in the world of guitar. But among those in the know he is deeply respected for his tone, tasty chops and resume. He has a unique style that blends Texas Blues with Americana and Nashville chops. He has played with Joe Ely, John Mellencamp, Buddy Guy, and The Allman Brothers Band as well as being a musical director for the Dixie Chicks among others. As with many players his style of playing is more important than his gear choices. 

Guitars- David Grissom was an early adopter of PRS guitars in an effort to stand out in the Texas Strat crowd. Finding a guitar that falls somewhere between Strats and Les Pauls while still retaining and vintage tone and feel. 

PRS DGT

PRS DGT- The Paul Reed Smith David Grissom Tremolo model began as a custom ordered McCarty model with a tremolo. David then had the neck reshaped the knobs changed and the pickups custom wound to sound more like the pickups in an old 335 he had. While doing sessions in Nashville several players started ordering guitars with the same setup from PRS so Mr Smith finally made it it's own signature model.

PRS S2 Custom22

PRS S2 Custom 22- Unlike the custom 24 the Custom 22 pickups are wound closer to vintage sounds. The S2 models are made in the USA and even though there have been a few cost saving measures they keep everything that is important to the tone.

PRS SE Custom 22- The PRS SE line is made overseas but Mr Smith was adamant that the quality had to surpass other lines made in south east Asia. They really are great guitars for the money.   

Pickups- David's choice of pickups are a vintage voiced humbucker. On his signature guitar they used PRS unique coil split that still keeps the hum in check. You will have to look on eBay or Reverb  for them because at this time they are not available through retailers without buying the whole guitar. 

Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates set- Made to replicate the pickups in Billy Gibbons favorite 59 Les Paul these are an excellent cost effective replacement set for vintage humbucker tones. 

Seymour Duncan Vintage Blues set- A little cleaner and smoother than the Pearly Gates set the Vintage Blues uses the popular Seymour Duncan 59 pickups and make an killer drop in replacement set for anyone wanting a great PAF sound.

Pedals- David likes to play around with pedals but keeps things pretty simple. He likes several delays and a couple of boost pedals to push the amp. A chorus and sometimes a tremolo round out the set. He says he'll throw a wah in the front if he needs it. Everything goes into the front of the amp. 

Psionic Audio Telos Buffer/Overdrive/Boost- The Telos pedal that David has been using for a while uses a fantastic buffer as well as a clean boost and drive pedal. The reviews on it are really great.

Xotic EP Booster- While not exactly a neutral boost the EP booster has become a favorite booster of
players everywhere. The boost circuit was taken from an echoplex another studio trick of famous tone seakers. David loves using to push his amp and other pedals past crunch and into distortion.

Fulltone Plimsoul- The Fulltone Plimsoul is renowned for being a versatile overdrive with a ton of amp like gain. One of the neat features is a blend knob that brings in a harder clipping section.

Joyo Ultimate Drive- The Joyo Ultimate Drive is an exact clone of the Fulltone OCD. It's known as a very versatile amp like overdrive pedal. While the OCD is better made the Joyo it is a favorite pedal of budget boards. I did a review of it here, and while it's not my favorite pedal I keep it a round for adding a vintage flavor drive when I need it.

Arion Chorus- The Arion Chorus pedal is one of those secret weapons that shows up on boards all the time. David uses a modded pedal that has true bypass to get an organ sound when he plucks chords. The original version sounds killer and is cheap.

Line 6 DL4- David like versatile delays and has used this as well as a Line 6 M9 both of which sound great and are programmable. But he has also warned that they are not the most road worth of tools.

Amps- David likes straight forward vintage style amps. No effects loops or no scooped tones here.

PRS DG30- David worked hand in hand with PRS's famed amp designer Doug Sewell for several years to develop a 30 watt and 50 watt version of an amp with a blend of vintage Marshall's and Vox's. The result is a beautiful and fantastic sounding set of amps that he makes sound like gold.

Vox AC15- Vox is one of the original big three amp builders and has carved out their unique sound in the amp world. They have several AC30's and AC15's at all price points.

Egnator Tweaker- The Egnator Tweaker became the darling of guys on forums for a few years and
with good reason. They are versatile, well made, and sound very good for the money. They also play great with pedals.

Obviously there are a lot of great pedals out there but these are a great place to start your tone search.

The Joyo JF-02 Ultimate Drive and the Great Clone Wars

Clones are not exactly a new thing in our industry. Almost every guitar manufacturer makes a strat copy. Supposedly Marshall was copying Fender's Baseman when he started building amps. And while some people have plenty of money to burn most of us don't mind saving a few bucks on something that delivers the same sound. Enter Joyo, Mooer, and a host of other pedal builders that copy, without hesitation, some of the more popular pedal designs. You have to decide for yourself if you would rather support original designs or the cheap knock offs and whether it is ethical or not but here is my review of the Joyo Ultimate Drive.

 Lets start with the look. It's ugly. It has some sort of devilish tribal tattoo looking graphic on a matte black finish that I'm sure appeals to a certain demographic. The controls are a Gain, Tone, Level and a high and low switch and of course a true bypass stomp switch. For the most part that's pretty self explanatory, the high/low switch changes the mid frequency that that is emphasized. There is a lot of gain on tap and it sounds more saturated than a lot of pedals, more like power amp distortion than preamp distortion in my opinion. There is also a lot of volume boost available in the Level knob, so if you want to use it to push the front of your amp or another pedal it's great for that. The Tone knob is a bit different than other pedals as well. It rolls of the high end but not the low. If you like a nice tight bottom end this may not work for you. And this brings us to the overall tone of the pedal. It's fairly transparent and reactive to the sounds your using. As I mentioned above it works great as a booster. It sounds beautiful in low gain big loose bottom end type sound. And it's very reactive to your pickups and volume knob. I love running a fuzz into it too, together they make a very powerful combination. Some people feel like they sound great in any combination, but when I hooked up to a friend of mines amps it sounded thin and kind of anemic. This goes to show it really doesn't work for everyone and while I like the pedal, it doesn't stay on my board.

 This brings me to something I hinted at at the beginning of the review. With very little digging around on the internet you'll find that this pedal is confirmed to be a copy of the Fulltone OCD which is hailed by many people as the best Overdrive out there. There is a video on YouTube where a guys compares the OCD to a Suhr Riot. In his demo the OCD and Riot sound very similar. They are NOT. The Riot has a tighter type of distortion and a very tight bottom end. The OCD is much looser and spongier sounding to my ears. Both work great for different sounds. After reading a lot of reviews and being a fan of Overdrives I was planning on buying a Fulltone OCD but now I'm glad I didn't. I decided that I would buy the Joyo. I figured as cheap as it was it would probably break at some point and if I liked it I could buy the Fulltone which are better built. I like the pedal but I as I stated earlier it doesn't stay on my board and I probably wouldn't replace it.

 When I do use it, I like using it in the low gain range, and using the level to boost the sound of my amp. The low setting seems a bit smoother to me but it really depends on which guitar and pickups I'm using. As I said earlier I also like using it with a Fuzz running into it, it's kind of tricky but if you get it set up right it sound very alive. If you get the chance to try one of these or and OCD and you like it, my personal thought is you should get the OCD. If you like overdrives and haven't gotten the chance to try one of these the price on the Joyo pedals make them disposable. You can get three or four different Joyo pedals for the price of the one OCD try them out and not feel bad for having something expensive sitting there for occasional use. Of course the flip side is you really can't sell the Joyo for anything on ebay where the OCD will bring almost as much money as you paid for it. So is it the Ultimate Drive or a cheap knockoff? At this price it's easy for you to decide.
This review was completely unsolicited, I received no compensation for it and all views and opinions are my own.