Need help on essentials for a new rig.

I would spring for a nice rack. You are going to have a ton of money in your gear and you want maximum protection. SKB stuff is OK in my opinion. IF you don't want to lug the extra weight of an Anvil style box, it is probably the way to go. I recommend the top end stuff for a few reasons. It is tougher, it seals "water tight" on the front and rear and most importantly, it has rear rails. You can run your power conditioner and other stuff on the rear rails and you end up with a smaller, better balanced rack.

I would definately go with the Korg tuner. The PL tuner works ok, but it is so small, you'll have to walk right up to your amp to tune. The Korg is automatic and can be seen from accross the stage. As far as set up goes, if your amp's tuner out has a footswitch, I'd go that way. IF not, you can place the Korg tuner in-line between the pre and power and use the footswitch on it. It is important to be able to mute and tune silently. No one wants to hear you tune.

Any quality namebrand cable is fine. I use the DiMarzio braided ones for no other reason that I like the way they look. They are about $1 a foot.

Use the shortest cables possible between items in the rack. Just make sure you are using a cable designed as a speaker cable and of appropreate guage for the power use to run from the power amp to the cabinet.

Chas

 

Personally I prefer wooden rackcases to SKB's stuff. Granted amps are metal an could take a good bit of a beating, but if I'm shelling out the big bucks for an amp I want more than a plastic wrapping. I'm not saying SKB's are bad, I haven't owned one so I don't know how they hold up compared to wood cases. It's more a mental thing. I feel safer with a wooden case than a plastic SKB.

I love Korg tuners, I use a discontinued DTR1-Pro, which is basically a DTR2 but black. Deadly accurate, and amazingly fast. I've never seen the Furman Tuner/Power Supply in person, so I don't know how it holds up. I do like Furman's power supplies, I use a PL-8. Haven't used the lights too much, but I haven't gigged with it yet. I'm sure it'll come in handy on dark stages. See if you can try both out, and you could still use the tuner out of your amp you'd just need a longer cable. I like the idea of both tuner and power supply together, don't know how it comes together though.

I use a monster cable to go from my amp to cab, haven't had a problem with it in two years. As for bass to amp, the brand I'm using is Horizon. I've only seen them in one store in West Texas, but they may be everywhere where you live. I've used this same cable around 2 years, and it's never given me any problems.

 

I am going to check out those Planet Waves cables by DiMarzio -- I'll let you know how they pan out when I get 'em.