Been a Long Time Since I Blogged and Rolled

I'm an advocate of knowing about gear if you're in a band. Even if you're not a Musician(tm), but a punk who knows how to play power chords, it's a good idea to know how your implement of destruction works. I've been playing in bands since high school and I've owned a lot of guitars in my time. I've always been a fan of weird guitars, or guitars that weren't considered "great instruments" for their given application, but would define a certain sound. For example, the Fender Jazzmaster; not really a jazz guitar. I honestly don't think any Jazz guy ever used one of these. Instead, the garage rockers and certain members of the surf community jumped all over these guitars, as well as it's sibling guitars, the Jaguar and the Mustang. Later in 80's, these would be looked at as throw away guitars with the advent of the "hot rod strat" that companies like Ibanez, Jackson and EMG were making. You could commonly find these in pawn shops for fifty bucks, sitting there collecting dust. It wasn't until the alternative explosion of the early 90's that these guitars would get a new breath of life.
Much like the Jazzmaster, Jaguar, and Mustang, the Mosrite was a guitar that very few people jumped on, because of it's odd shape, until the Ventures started using these bad boys. In the 70's, there was a really small resurgence of the Mosrite when Johnny Ramone started playing a white Ventures II Mosrite through his Marshall Plexi (this was his set up all through his career as guitarist of the Ramones.) Over the years, the value of the Mosrite has sky rocketed, because of collectors and fans of surf rock and pop punk search for these. For a while, a company called GPC was making a "Weaselrite" guitar, which was the Ben Weasel signature guitar, which is commonly considered a better guitar than the original Ventures II Mosrite. People found it much more playable and comfortable to play as well as it's standard DiMarzio pick ups gave it a bit more "cut" than the original Mosrite pickups.
I recently stumbled across a company out of Cary NC called Dillion guitars who made a Mosrite copy that is being boasted as an incredible guitar. People are saying that it doesn't sound like a Mosrite, but really, the reason I'm attracted to the guitars is because they look really cool. I'm in the process of ordering one and I'm looking forward to getting it. Apparently, these are no longer in production and there's limited quantities floating around the country, so I'm considering myself lucky. They come in sunburst, Ventures red and Ramones white. Believe me, I'm excited.
I'm not sure if this guitar will forever replace my 1978 Gibson Les Paul Pro, but it might make a decent alternate. Mostly I want this guitar for the playability of the body style and the look. Even if it doesn't sound true to an original Ventures II, it doesn't matter, because it will probably still make for an excellent garage rock guitar of the Teen Generate variety. I'm really excited about plugging it into my Marshall Plexi and turning it up and peeling the paint off the walls as well as playing through my little Traynor Vox copy, drowning it in reverb.

As far as equipment goes, my personal opinion is that there are two amps that truly define the sound of punk rock. First is the Marshall Plexi line. This is the amp that Johnny Ramone used on all of the Ramones recordings and one of the most copied guitar sounds from one of the most desired guitar amps. Take a patch cable and bridge Channel 1's input two with Channel 2's input 1 to get the sound of raw punk rock. I have one of these amps and I will probably never buy another amp again, unless I find a...
Marshall JCM 800 is the guitar amp that was made famous by the 90's pop punk explosion. In fact, these are commonly looked at as the last great Marshall amp (some would argue the JCM 900, which I also really like) ever made. Commonly people feel that Marshall stopped trying to define rock amplification and were allowing rock bands define Marshall. The JCM 2000 is a good example of this. It was all bells and whistles and was an attempt to capture some of the market that Mesa Boogie was controlling. If you turned the knobs enough (and believe me, there's plenty of knobs to turn), you can dial in something close to it's older brothers, but really what you're going to get is the sound of a dated amp. Where Marshall prided itself on tone and classic British distortion, Mesa prides itself on it's lack of tone and abundant SoCal distortion. Recently, Marshall has reissued the JCM 800, so grab them while you can. Better still, pick up an original one. They go for as cheap as four hundred bucks. It'll have more character and sound sweet. Besides, there's always the chance that someone modded it and made it unique (much like my Plexi, which someone installed a master volume to the front panel where the little red light used to be.) If you want really great "rock" sounds out of a Marshall, hunt down the custom "hot rodded" JCM 800's and 900's that were floating around in the early 90's. These were after market mods that metal heads would have done to their Marshalls to make them sound "hotter."
If old school hardcore is your thing, check out the MXR Distortion + pedal. I have one of these and it's yet to fail me. These things were all over southern California in the early 80's and pretty much defined that sound. I'm a huge fan of the Disto+ and pretty much swear by it. Combine that with a Plexi and a Les Paul and you pretty much have all out destruction.
Keep in mind though, none of this is hard fast rules, these are just suggestions and an explanation of how classic sounds came about. This is punk rock; break the rules and think outside the box, just know what you're talking about and research what you're spending your money on.