Started playing again with some people and more often on my own back in Feb(ish), then in May we had a pipe go in our house, our master bedroom had to be re-done so the basement/TV room became our bedroom, the spare room became storage, my office became a mix of storage, drywall chunks, and the computer, our livingroom became storage, our kitchen got really dusty. The restoration company has been dragging their heels big time. I'm at the point now where I'm calling the insurance company tomorrow to complain about them. Going on almost 10 weeks and all they've done is replace drywall, rip out carpet, primer, and one coat of paint. Total BS. So obviously the music stuff is on the back burner at the moment.
Anyways, now that I've bitched and moaned....
Larivee LV03RE acoustic that I've had for 3 years now, it's been a while since I played with any consistency, pretty much since I got married. Go figure.
Ash body New American Standard Tele (though I think they screwed up and sold me a deluxe from the sound of it and a couple of professional musician friend's opinions after playing it themselves).
Been playing through a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp, 40-watt all tube, nice amp, but I'm seriously looking at a Vox AC30C2 here at the local store. I was getting tired of the hot-tube sound from the Fender and the lack of control in the sweep of the volume knob. Play it at 1 or almost 2 and it's got nothin, throw it above 2 and it's too hot. Always has the tube feedback buzz, and not much in the way of tonal adjustment with the 3 EQ controls. It's a great amp for lead and concert stuff, but if you play in a smaller venue where it will be mic'd.... not worth it.
The Vox, on the other hand, has an awesome clean sound, warm crunch when over-driven, decent tone adjustment control, and the best part..... it has a master volume knob that the Fender lacks. The built in tremelo and F/X loop is nice too.
For pedals (in this order with no loop)
-Tuner (was a Fender pedal tuner that was great for using with single-coil pickups but it just shorted out, getting a BOSS)
-Boss CS3 Comp
-MXR M-134 Stereo Chorus (running Mono right now)
-DigiTech Hardwire RV-7 Reverb
-Boss DD-20 Gigadelay
-Boss TR-2 Tremolo
-Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer
I also have a RAT distortion pedal (love that thing, just not on the board right now), a BOSS Flanger, BOSS DD-5 delay, Cry-Baby Wah (found I don't use it all that much though, was more of an impulse buy way back when...).
General rule of thumb that I've found is to run the compression pedal first, and if not first than before any distortion/overdrive pedal. They seem to be that much better when they are getting a strong, steady signal. I liked having that tuner with the dual outputs, the 2nd output being a signal cutoff when the tuner was in use. I'm looking forward to trying out some stuff using an F/X loop with the Vox.