Best guitar amp that's at all affordable: Fender Hot-Rod Deluxe. The best clean sound for the $$$. Tube, sparkley, warm. Classic Fender sound.... Pedals to add any tone you want, but you must start with a beautiful clean sound as a base. This amp also has the best reverb unit you can get for the price (or considerably more). This amp's clean sound can do Hendix's Little Wing and The Wind Cries Mary beautifully, and is absolute DEAD ON for early Direstraits sounds also (Sultans of Swing, Lady Writer etc) when using the in-betweeny pickup settings on a strat.
I would steer clear of Marshall amps (unless you wanna splurge on a reissue 1960's era Marshall Stack!). The only really good Marshalls are the massive tube stacks, and these still need to be turned up to earthquake levels to get their signature tone. Also Marshall amps (with the exception of the old ones, or reissues of them) generally don't 'do' clean sounds very well...
Peavey also make some nice tube amps for reasonable $$$ but I'd go with the Hot-Rod Deluxe. Its also the best looking amp out of everything. I'd also steer clear of any digital modelling rubbish, they sound fake and they really aren't 'there' yet with that technology. If your into playing expressive, emotional solos with musical sounding feedback, awesome distortion tone etc etc then you'll really appreciate having a REAL tube amp in the long run. Digital stuff is like those cheap yamaha keyboards. 101 sounds, and they are all bad
! One or two really beautiful sounds is 100 times more rewarding in the long run. You can always muck with pedals for different tones...
I find these pedal companies the absolute best in the world:
http://www.mjmguitarfx.com/index.html - for vintage Hendrix style sound. In fact, the only thing stopping you from sounding as good as Hendrix with these pedals is your ability to play the guitar. This guy's pedals are better than Roger Mayer's fuzzes (the guy who made Hendrix's pedals!), and they are pretty good! I would reccommend the London Fuzz 1 VERY highly. It is the absolute best fuzz/distorsion effect ever made for psychedelic fuzzy wailing!
http://www.robertkeeley.com/product.php?id=10 - here is a pedal mod for a Boss DS-1. This may be uesful, as it turns a really cheap pedal that nearly every guitarist owns into something worth using. Steve Vai and Joe Satriani use this guy's DS-1 mods to get their amazing guitar sounds!!! Its like night and day with this mod... its worth buying a DS-1 just to do this mod to it!
Any of the distorsion/fuzz pedals I listed/linked to are the absolute BEST in the world.
For cheap, the Marshall Guvnor 2 is pretty amazing at getting a cranked Marshall sound at low volumes (very almost negates the wish for a huge stack - and the DS-1 with Keeley ultra mod negates the need for a Marshall stack easily!). You can set the Guvnor to sound a lot like Hendrix (Here he Comes/RedHouse type tone with a strat) or Clapton (Crossroads/Sunshine of Your Love - with a Les Paul), or much heavier, mid-scooped metal sounds. It has a lot of warm bass that goes a long way to getting rid of the typical distorsion pedal tinny-ness. With a subtle bit of chorus (Danelectro Cool Cat is the nicest one thats CHEAP(ish), and while using more full on settings on the Guvnor, you can get a really convincing Steve Vai crazy solo type tone.
I think I've covered the 'crazy solo sound' part...
Obviously some kind of echo/delay pedal will get you all the echos you want. A cheap Boss DD-3 is fine for this...
Squeelin' is up to your artificial harmonic technique and feedback use etc..
The guitar is up to your personal taste (single coils or humbuckers is the main thing). What type of music/guitarists do you like most?
Personally, if a Fender Strat is within reach (what do the cheaper Mexican built ones cost in the USA?) I'd grab that straight away (but I'm a single coil guy mostly). They are the best value guitar for their quality and tone IMO. If you like a more heavy sound, then Epiphone Les Paul or SG for classic rock ala AC/DC, Slash (G'N'R), early Clapton (cream era), Black sabbath etc.
But they don't have a whammy bar which detracts from the CRAAZY solo aspect you need!(although they are still very good value, beautiful guitars, and I can still go plenty crazy on a Les Paul type of guitar. But then I can go crazy on a $10 nylon acoustic, can still bend up four or five steps on them MWAHAHAH! They are soo not designed for how I play.. anyways!)
For aweome caraaayzy solo sound with echos and squeelin I assume (if its not a Hendrix strat kinda sound) there's only one other avenue to really go down. Thats nuts Ibanez (or similar brands like ESP or Jackson, but they LOOK heaps crappier) guitars with really good whammy bars (more usable than Fender ones). Steve Vai and Joe Satriani both play Ibanez (with respective signature guitars in the Ibanez product line) and all they play is crazy solos with lots of squeelin'!! Which of course is great!!
For you I'd recommend a Mexican strat if you like Jimi Hendix (which you can eventually fit with amazing pickups to make it the best strat in the known universe:
http://www.kinman.com/) - check out the "woodstock '69" strat pickups!!
Or if you like a more modern humbucker sound like Vai or Satriani I'd go Ibanez. Whatever is the most expensive one you can afford that has a whammy bar!!
Good luck, and good wailin'!
Personally, I have an American Stratocaster and an Epiphone Les Paul (fitted with good pickups) and recently a nuts Ibanez (JS series one, I like the look better than the really 'pointy' style Vai plays) and several amps, one of which is the Hot-Rod Deluxe. With all my pedals and stuff I can get awesome tones like any of the gutarists I mentioned with a bit of tweakin' and messing around. I am REALLY happy with my stuff. It is TOTALLY up to me to play as well as Hendrix/Vai etc etc to sound good, as the gear can get awesome tone!
Note that I didn't really work too carefully around the $1000 target, but thats a pretty unrealistic amount for both a guitar and amp that you'll behappy with for years and years to come. I reccommended the cheapest gear you can get and the bits and pieces (pedals) that you'd need to get TRULY world class amazing solo sounds. Its the cheapest way of getting a rig that can copy most tones and nail them most of the time. Basically as cheap as possible without ever compromising tone to any huge degree! Hope you found my help, er, helpful!
I'll just say you can trust me, I've spent 8 (or is it 9) years basically mucking with amps and guitars, and ALWAYS playing crazy solos with plenty of squeelin'! Btw if you don't have a wah-wah pedal get one ASAP! Cheaply, the Jimi Hendrix Cry Baby one or a Vox are the best (I've got the fancy top of the line Cry Baby with fancy knobs sticking out the edges everywhere). Basically, the standard CryBaby wah is not ideal (the wah sweep is really narrow and unexpressive) for crazy nuts guitar solos!
Cya, James Hassall (aka JIMI H when playing in my band..)
If you wanna chat guitars just add me to your messenger (james_hassall@hotmail.com) or you can ask a specific question about any bit of gear etc. It would be more helpful if you said exactly what type of tones you are shooting for... I'll answer you in this thread, but maybe not for a day or two...
Edit: That was one long ass post. I'm compensating for NO ONE else helping out. Most GTplanet people can't play crazy guitar solos me thinks...
