Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2020 i Guitarist

My own reminiscences about Paul Reed Smith’s guitars begin around 1992. Up until that point, all I had seen from the company was its 24-fret neck models and, call me strange, but I have never got on with 24-fretters. But then, one day the brand-new Custom 22 came into the Guitarist office and my heart skipped a beat. Okay, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but I was assigned to review the guitar, which meant I had an extra dose of ‘hands on’ with the instrument. We’ve all had that experience where you’re desperately trying to justify yet another guitar joining the family to both yourself and your partner, and, in the end, I had to bid the 22 a fond farewell and it disappeared from my…

As the original PRS guitar, the 24-fret Custom has certainly earned its place in guitar history. For this milestone year there are three celebratory models – all Custom 24s – starting at the SE level then moving to the USA for the S2 and topped off with the ultimate Core version. While the Custom itself has constantly evolved over three-and-a-half decades and been the start point for the majority of subsequent PRS designs, it remains very much a halfway house between a Les Paul and a Stratocaster. In simple terms, it has the wood choice and construction style of the former but with the double-cutaway style and vibrato of the latter. A perfect hybrid? Its detractors, however, see this duality as its biggest failing: it’s not a Les Paul and…

PRICE: From £3,499 (inc case) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Double-cutaway, carved-top solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany with flame maple carved top NECK: 1-piece mahogany, Pattern profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43.13mm FINGERBOARD: Faux-bone bound rosewood, bird inlays, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: PRS Stoptail with brass inserts, vintage-style (non-locking) tuners – nickel plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: 2x PRS 58/15 ‘LT’ covered humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, master volume and tone control (with pull/push coil-split switch) WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.16/6.95 OPTIONS: With 10-grade figured maple top and hybrid hardware (£4,125); Artist Pack upgrade (£POA) RANGE OPTIONS: Other 22-fret double-cuts include the DGT (from £3,350), Custom 22 (£3,459), McCarty 594 (£3,699) and Paul’s Guitar (£3,799) LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Fire Red Burst (as reviewed) from choice of 19 standard…

Neil Young is one of the many artists streaming live performances online in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. His Fireside Sessions find him at home playing surprise deep cuts from his catalogue. See www.neilyoungarchives.com for more. Tom Morello has explained why he decided to finally put his name to a signature model, based on the ‘Soul Power’ Fender Strat he used as his main guitar in Audioslave. “[It’s something] I would never have done unless there was a crucial charity/social justice component to the whole procedure,” he told us. “And to that end we’re giving away hundreds of guitars to organisations.” These include charity Jail Guitar Doors founded by Billy Bragg and Wayne Kramer, local youth organisations and schools. The 2020 Glastonbury and Download festivals are just two of the…

What? Yamaha GC22 Grand Concert Classical Where seen? Yamaha Music, London Price? £975 Description? With a view to learning a bit of Brazilian jazz, and the need to buy online since all the shops are closed, it’s best to go for brands you know and trust.There are many great classical makers, but one of the nicest nylon-strings I owned was a Yamaha my mother gave me, so that’s the brand I’d naturally turn to.The GC22 is available with solid spruce or cedar top, and is the company’s cheapest offering with solid rosewood back and sides. Cedar has a warmer, friendlier tone whereas spruce has a more attacking sound. I’d go the cedar route as I’m a learner and I want my fumblings to sound as flattering as possible. So, How…

It’s no secret that women are underrepresented, numerically, in all corners of the music industry. From audio production to leadership, studies repeatedly find that women can face barriers to getting in and getting on that men don’t. One estimate puts the number of female luthiers as low as 50 to 100 worldwide. Scroll through trade association websites and luthier podcasts and you sense that perhaps three in every 100 luthiers are women. “For buyers, greater diversity at the workbench could mean greater design variety” This may all be changing. Certainly, there are women working as designers and builders within majors such as Gibson and Taylor, there are female directors such as Maton’s Linda Kitchen in Australia, and there are teams of female staff running things at the likes of PRS.And…

Claudia Pagelli designs guitars and husband Claudio builds them. Together, the Pagellis have been described as not so much top of their league but in a league of their own. Asymmetrical acoustics, open headstocks, even a stone soundboard – the wife-and-husband team long ago threw the rulebook out of the window. “My apprenticeship as a decorative designer and graphic artist, my time at art school, and my various jobs in the creative field were an advantage when it came to guitar design,” says Claudia, a co-founder of the Luthiers Beyond Limits group. “I wasn’t committed to guitar history, and I didn’t know how a guitar was constructed. So I have no limits when drawing or thinking of the end product. There is really no reason why a woman can’t work…

“My grandad was a carpenter and as a kid I spent a lot of time in his workshop, so I always liked manual work, being creative and making something of great utility,” says Martina Bartkova who has worked on binding, sanding, frets, dovetails and laser-cutting for Dowina in Slovakia. “This is dirty work. There is a lot of glue, wood dust. I like my work, but I think not a lot of women are inclined to do this. Guys didn’t believe in me; I needed to show them each day I was capable.” Currently working on necks and backplate design, Martina’s colleague Zuzana Jarjabkova aims to move on to design complete guitars. “Guitar making is still considered a man’s work. I don’t know if that is changing. But my colleagues…

JOHN MAYER When John Mayer and Paul Reed Smith unveiled their new Silver Sky in 2018, the online message boards erupted with the white-hot intensity of Hawaii’s K - ılauea volcano. Many guitarists were excited by the six-string creation. Others were, shall we say, less enthused. Mayer was amused by the ruckus – but not surprised. “Traditionally, the guitar world hasn’t embraced or tolerated evolution all that well,” he said. “The initial response was pretty negative; people tend to resist anything new. However, being a social-media target, I have experience that allows me to understand the mechanics of disapproval. I’m perfectly tuned to withstand that friction period of people saying they don’t like something. There are going to be people who will never embrace it, that’s fine. But it’s interesting…

PRS’s original neck profiles – Wide Fat, Wide Thin and Regular – were refocused and renamed in 2011 to “reflect modern tooling and programming that allows us to even more precisely shape and consistently reproduce our necks”, says PRS. So, the Wide Fat became the Pattern profile, the Wide Thin became the Pattern Thin and the Regular became (yup, you’ve got it!) the Pattern Regular. A fourth shape was added with the introduction of the 594, the Pattern Vintage. Nut widths for the Pattern necks are all identical in PRS’s specifications at 1 11/16 inches (42.86mm), except the Pattern Regular, which is 1 21/32 inches (42.06mm). The width at the body end of the neck is the same at 2 ¼ inches (57.15mm). It’s the depth and obviously the actual…

PRICE: £1,649 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany NECK: Mahogany, Pattern Thin profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 625mm (24.594”) NUT: Friction reducing FINGERBOARD: Faux-bone bound rosewood, bird inlays, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: PRS 2-piece bridge and tailpiece, vintage-style (non-locking) tuners, nickel plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: PRS 58/15 ‘S’ Treble and Bass humbuckers (bridge); 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual pickup volume and tone (with pull-switch partial coil-split) OPTIONS: Colour only LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Frost Blue Metallic (as reviewed), Frost Green Metallic, Tobacco Sunburst, Walnut, Vintage Cherry, Antique White and Black PROS All the attributes of the other two models in a vibrant rock ’n’ roll proposition; any guitar player could enjoy this CONS At this price, none…

ORIGIN: Canada TYPE: Multi-effects/synthesizer FEATURES: 20 ready-made effects; 23 audio modules; 22 control modules; 16 interface modules; 3 analysis modules; 64 writable patches; MIDI in/out; CV in/out; exp. pedal; ext. switch; 3x assignable footswitches CONTROLS: 1x rotary knob; buttons: 4x utility buttons (Page Left/Right, Back and Shift); 40x module grid/ page buttons (alternative/Shift functions include Move, Copy, Edit, Delete, Star, View, Save, Random, Undo, Help and Configure Menu); Select, Scroll & Bypass footswitches CONNECTIONS: Left/right input & left/right output standard jacks; Control Port jack for ext. switch/exp.pedal/MIDI in & out/0-5V control voltage in & out; 2x MIDI mini jacks: in & out (2x 3.5mm/5-pin dongles supplied); micro SD card slot (card and adaptor supplied) POWER: 2.1mm centre negative 9V DC adaptor (not supplied); 300mA current draw DIMENSIONS: 145 (w) x…

Writer DAVID MEAD, Guitarist, Acting Editor David first met the X10 during a brief video demo shoot for issue 456 and realised immediately that it promised a whole range of possibilities that demanded further exploration… Up until the point that our eyes first met across a busy video demo studio, my only acquaintance with the Emerald range of instruments was via the company’s Facebook ad campaign and Dave Burrluck’s Wishlist article. I was fascinated not only by the idea that the X10 was conceived as a hybrid electric and acoustic, with spec that would make it equally desirable in both camps, but also by the pickup options. “The build process is fascinating and one that’s poles apart from the more usual sawdust and wood shavings experience” The Graph Tech Ghost…

In keeping with our British-made thread, designer Luke White sent me some sample sets of his Anomaly pickup rings after they had featured on the Seth Baccus Nautilus Classic we’d reviewed in issue 449.“All product design, manufacturing and packaging takes place in the UK,” he states on his classy website. “Ethical manufacture is something that we take very seriously and, as such, our packaging is fully recyclable and contains no plastics; printing is limited to a single colour to further reduce our impact.” And these are rather good: a different, stylish and fresh take on the time-honoured humbucker mounting ring, with lightly convex tops, which are made from “high-quality, impact-modified ABS for extreme durability” and that feature internal ribs for added strength, while the height-adjustment screws are recessed adding to…

Difficulty 30 mins per example Tutor: Richard Barrett | Gear used: SSC, Hamstead Subspace Drive, Vox AC15 C1 The 80s Rock Ballad WE’VE PREVIOUSLY looked at some of the various (and sometimes unlikely) places where blues influence finds its way, and this month we continue that tradition. During the 80s, guitar solos moved in an increasingly technical, even academic, direction. The blues element was less prevalent in the output of players such as Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen. On the flip side, Gary Moore, John Sykes and Zakk Wylde combined modern, flashy playing with a recognisably ‘blues’ feel. The then ubiquitous hot-rodded locking whammy-equipped SuperStrats were/are great fun and can work well here – Gary Moore certainly had a flirtation with them – but the players we’re talking…

Increasingly, Eastman guitars are becoming the alternative choice to many longer-standing USA companies. The brand builds its guitars in Beijing, China, but uses a considerable number of consultants in Europe and America to design and constantly evolve its ranges. A recent tie-up with Dana Bourgeois, for example, promises a great deal for its acoustic programme. Eclectic maker Claudio Pagelli has his own Eastman-made design, while archtop maker Otto D’Ambrosio not only has his own El Rey signature models but heads up Eastman’s USA design and custom shop in California. Us rock ’n’ rollers might not have heard of Otto, but his involvement with Eastman dates back nearly two decades, just as he was starting out building archtops in New York. This particular model, Romeo, started from a question, as Otto…

PRICE: £1,799 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany with chamfered edge figured maple top NECK: Mahogany, Pattern Regular profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25”) NUT/WIDTH: Friction reducing/42.16mm FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, bird inlays, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 24, medium HARDWARE: PRS patented vibrato (cast), PRS designed low mass locking tuners – nickel-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: PRS 58/15 ‘S’Treble and Bass humbuckers (bridge); 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, master volume and tone, 2 mini-toggle coil split switches WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.37/7.4 OPTIONS: Colour only RANGE OPTIONS: The standard S2 Custom 24 (£1,699) has the same colour options but different electronics. The Core Custom 24 starts at £3,459; the 35th Anniversary version is £3,799 LEFT-HANDERS: No. The only PRS lefty is the SE Custom 24 (£825) FINISHES: Dark Cherry…

Blast Cult UKDC £4,290 CONTACT Blast Cult PHONE 07905 370122 WEB www.blastcult.co.uk With its new North London workshop in full swing, Blast Cult is now straddling both sides of the Atlantic. The innovative and super-stylish boutique builder is the brainchild of Louisianan luthier Jason Burns who founded the King Doublebass firm prior to setting up Blast Cult in Orange, California in 2011. As a touring musician, Jason’s R&D was mainly carried out on the road and his well-honed designs have routinely been spotted in the hands of fellow pros such as Brian Setzer and Phil Manzanera, with Ronnie Wood snapped holding a Blast Cult Hollow Vee (and looking very happy to boot!). Steeped in the culture of custom cars and golden-era guitars, Blast Cult is a melting pot of American…

This month’s column has been written from my home studio. It was either there or somewhere else in my house, because, at the time of writing, along with most of the planet, we’re in lockdown and not allowed to go anywhere. I will take this opportunity to say thank you for reading my column, and I genuinely hope it brings you a few minutes of enjoyment away from the craziness occurring in the outside world. I’ve spent a good proportion of the last few weeks in this room, in between attempting to be a home primary school teacher (struggling with Year 3 maths) and a reluctant DIY novice. One welcome reminder of my life as a studio musician has been recording some tracks for TV choirmaster Gareth Malone’s Great British…

Perhaps the most fundamental quality of any given chord is its tonality: major or minor. We learn that major keys or chords have a ‘happy’ sound and that minors can sound ‘sad’ – though different mixtures of the two can, of course, provide a variety of results. However, chords do not need to be a binary choice between major or minor. In fact, during the 60s, players such as Pete Townshend discovered that ‘straight’ major or minor chords could sound jarring through a distorted amp, the complex harmonics giving the wrong kind of overload as they hit the amp’s circuit... Enter the powerchord or ‘5’ chord – root and 5th only. Problem solved and a new genre created! Of course, things didn’t stop there. With or without an overdriven amp,…

Cory was first exposed to music by his father who would constantly play records around the house. Although not a musician himself, his father was what his son described as “a total music freak… a music head”. So Cory’s formative years were played out against a soundtrack provided by players such as Hendrix, Joe Pass, Pat Metheny and Ralph Towner. “My dad had all this ECM catalogue and CTI jazz catalogue, the Blue Note catalogue and then he had all this classic rock catalogue,” he tells us, having travelled over to Guitarist’s HQ on a rain-soaked day following his sold-out gig in Bristol. A great deal of the music he had heard courtesy of his dad was guitar driven and the young Cory was “interested in the sound, interested in…

It all started when… “I went to the Mariposa Folk Festival, late 60s, and saw Joni Mitchell playing a dulcimer and went to buy one at the local folklore centre in Toronto and it was too expensive. The fellow there suggested I buy a kit for half the price and make one myself, which I did. That’s when the bug bit. I continued to art college in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I kept finding myself making dulcimers. I realized that making musical instruments, specifically guitars, combined my love of art, woodworking and music. I heard about Jean-Claude Larrivée in Toronto. After spending a couple of months trying to persuade him to hire me, he eventually did. “What was spectacularly unusual when I started out in 1974 is almost normal now.…

Finding out about Linda Manzer, among other female luthiers, encouraged Rosie Heydenrych, in her mid-20s, to sign up for a guitar-making class at London Metropolitan University. She followed up with a two-year internship with a local maker, and volunteered with repairer Celine Camerlynck in London’s Denmark Street, before starting the Turnstone Guitar Company in 2015. What sets your guitars apart? “I’d like to say tone and playability, but that is for the player to identify. It’s exciting to use new woods, feel their differences in my hands and anticipate the contribution they will make to a finished instrument. I like to use different woods for bracing to emphasise tonal characteristics that a species excels at – walnut for warmth, padauk for clear treble, mahogany for crispness. I have become very…

As we write this, PRS has had to constantly battle with the perception that its guitars – irrespective of their obvious quality – are “overpriced”. In researching this feature, we came across a PRS price list from back in January 2001. At this time, the new Singlecut guitar listed for $3,000, a 10-grade flame maple top adding $550 to that price. The equivalent guitar today, the McCarty Singlecut 594, costs $3,800, the 10-top option putting an additional $630 on the price. Over 19 years that accounts for an increase of approximately 25 per cent, around 1.3 per cent per year if you like. Of course, back in 2001 the Singlecut was not cheap, but not only has virtually everything on the current Singlecut 594 model been updated and upgraded, in…

MARTIN SIMPSON Martin Simpson’s relationship with PRS began with a phone call from Paul Reed Smith telling him that the company was developing a line of acoustic guitars. “They sent out the first prototype and I thought it was brilliant,” says Martin. “But it felt like an electric guitar player’s guitar – the neck was too narrow and the string spacing wasn’t big – so they made another one that was superb, but again it just needed a bit more heft to it. The third one arrived: I got it out of the case and the phone rang and a voice said, ‘You’re happy now, right?’ It was Paul, of course, and I was happy. It was great!” “The size of the neck is an influencer on the feel and…

PRICE: £1,849 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany with chamfered edge figured maple top NECK: Mahogany, Pattern Vintage profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 625mm (24.594”) NUT: Friction reducing FINGERBOARD: Faux-bone bound rosewood, bird inlays, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: PRS 2-piece bridge and tailpiece, vintage-style (non-locking) tuners, nickel plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: PRS 58/15 ‘S’ Treble and Bass humbuckers (bridge); 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual pickup volume and tone (with pull-switch partial coil-split) OPTIONS: Colour only LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Whale Blue (as reviewed), Faded Blue Smokeburst, McCarty Sunburst, Dark Cherry Sunburst, Elephant Grey, Scarlet Red and Burnt Amber Burst PROS Cost-effective design and build; excellent neck shape and playability; increased versatility from four controls and coil-independent splits CONS Some opaque colours and…

KEELEY D&M Drive £229 A dual-format design featuring overdrive and boost sections that can be used individually or stacked, with the option of putting the boost before or after the drive. The circuits can also be split – each in separate loops of a switching system. EARTHQUAKER DEVICES Palisades £249 Two channels of drive, one with higher gain than the other, and a separately footswitchable boost offer instant access to four different gain levels. For the drive sound there’s a choice of six clipping voices and five different bandwidth settings. FENDER Santa Ana £169 A dual-footswitch FET-based drive and boost pedal, the Santa Ana offers two different voices (American and British) with a four-knob amp-style EQ. The footswitchable boost can boost either the drive stage or the…

1 What was the first pedal you built and how did the design come about? “Originally, all I wanted to do was play the guitar, so I used to buy a lot of different effects. I guess you could say I was quite knowledgeable about them, but I’d never built a pedal before I went to work for Catalinbread in Portland in 2007. I thought it was going to be a temporary thing, but I ended up tinkering around with a Fuzz Face circuit. Like a lot of guys, that’s what I cut my teeth on. The first pedal I designed was a [Mosrite] Fuzzrite-inspired fuzz pedal called the [Catalinbread] Merkin and that really started it all off for me. That was the moment I thought, ‘I guess I can…

“I don’t have a lot of guitars just sitting around in a warehouse; I use them” What was the last guitar you bought and why? “I didn’t really buy it, I traded it. I was doing some recording with Alice Cooper and the guitar player had a ’61 Les Paul Junior. I always liked those. I’d just had a [Gibson] signature model made of my SG, so I traded him for that. It had the wide, flat neck of a Les Paul Junior from ’61. Gibson did a run of 100 of those. It came out good. They also did my ’54 Les Paul Black Beauty.” What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “It wasn’t my own money, it was my dad’s money. He was…

GARY MOORE We Want Moore! Recorded live in 1984, this album captures Gary between the first phase of his solo career, culminating in Victims Of The Future album (1983), and about to embark on the much glossier radio-friendly production of Run For Cover (1985), before returning more to his blues roots later in the decade. Check out the extended solos in this version of Empty Rooms, the super-charged blues of Cold Hearted, and the melodic but fierce soloing on Shapes Of Things. BLUE MURDER Blue Murder After exiting Whitesnake rather mysteriously as the recording of their 1987 self-titled album drew to a close, ex-Thin Lizzy guitarist John Sykes was highly motivated to show he had actually been a significant part in its success. This is the first of just two…

PRICE: £1,950 (inc case) ORIGIN: China TYPE: Single-cutaway thinline semi-hollowbody BODY: Solid spruce carved top with f-holes, laminate mahogany back and sides NECK: Lightly figured Maple,‘traditional even C’ profile SCALE LENGTH: 629mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43.92mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony, pearl dot inlays (with half circle pearl side markers), 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium/jumbo (Jescar FW47104) HARDWARE: Gotoh GE-104B tune-o-matic bridge and GE101A stud tailpiece (nickel), Gotoh 510 HAP tuners (aged nickel) STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm ELECTRICS: 2x Lollar custom-wound Imperial humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector, master volume and individual pickup tone controls WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.41/5.3 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: The Romeo-SC (£1,950) swaps the Lollar pickups for a Seymour Duncan Tele-style Vintage Stack at the neck and a full-size ’59 at the bridge LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISH: Golden ’Burst (as reviewed): all…

Ted McCarty looms large in the early history of PRS Guitars: he was the Gibson president during its halcyon days who, in the words of Paul Reed Smith, “downloaded the hard disk” on how they made guitars back then. While Ted had no direct involvement in the McCarty Model that launched in 1994, at the time it was the most ‘vintage-style’ PRS, with the changes Paul had already made to his Custom recipe – for example, a 22-fret version, the development of the pre-intonated Stoptail wrapover bridge, plus suggestions that early PRS-user David Grissom had requested. Over the years, the player’s favourite dropped in and out of production, but it returned recently in 2016, and for 2020 it has a subtle refresh that brings it bang up to date. Back…

Jimi Hendrix – Live At Woodstock (1999) Amazon Prime From £2.49 to rent The myth of Woodstock in 1969 overtook the reality a long time ago, but Jimi always holds true. Still, it was hardly an ideal scenario: The Jimi Hendrix Experience had split after three albums and the guitarist formed Gypsy Sun And Rainbows including bassist Billy Cox and Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, second guitarist Larry Lee, and two percussionists. It was his only Hendrix band to include another six-stringer, and the line-up would play only a few shows before their dissolution. The second anomaly is that Hendrix was a headliner and yet he took to the Woodstock stage at around 8 o’clock in the morning; this was because technical and weather issues had pushed the festival to continue…

Fender Parallel Universe Volume II Series £1,959 to £2,279 It was back in 2018 that Fender launched its first run of Parallel Universe guitars, a series of genetically modified hybrids. Strat, Tele, Jaguar, even Gretsch DNA was spliced to create guitars that not even Leo Fender could have imagined. Now, there’s Parallel Universe Volume II, the next generation of monster mash-ups, which features eight unique interpretations of classic Fender designs built at the Corona facility in California. Hold on tight, folks. It’s about to get weird… [EM] Maverick Dorado £2,279 Originally released in 1969, the Fender Custom (aka Maverick) was built from leftover parts including Electric XII bodies and necks, the latter veneered to hide the extra tuner holes, and Mustang bridges. It was not a huge success.…

The world is a scary place right now and I trust we’re all keeping safe. But it’s important not to let ourselves wither away during lockdown. And with the fridge ever in sight and the wine-rack beckoning, applying our minds to other things is all the more crucial. At the time of writing, we are following guidelines at Guitarist and working from home. Like many of us, I’m striving to maintain a sense of norm, starting and finishing at my usual time, taking an hour for lunch that includes a distance-maintaining constitutional. Luckily, I live just metres from the canal towpath and a brisk stroll makes me feel so much more vital. But what about the evenings and weekends, which are also spent in lockdown? On the first Saturday and…

ART ATTACK I have been watching Portrait Artist Of The Year 2020. The competition was won by Christabel Blackburn – a London-based artist whose prize was a £10k commission to paint Nile Rodgers. The winning portrait is now hanging in the Royal Albert Hall. The portrait also includes Niles’ famous white Fender Strat and, for me, that is where the problem arises. I realise that the drawing of the guitar is not a photo and, to a degree, is stylised. However, the black dot markers on the Strat in the portrait are on frets 4, 6, 8, 10 and 13 [rather than 3, 5, 7, 9 and 12 in reality] and that rankles with my sensibilities. Surely a little bit of attention to detail should have been applied to such…

BE HONEST, YOU DON’T PRACTISE RHYTHM GUITAR ENOUGH, DO YOU? We’re all the same. Too busy with our graceful legato, gravity-defying bends and rippling neo-soul filigrees! However, it’s the rhythm and timing that hold music together, and there’s nothing quite like the crushing disappointment of listening to your amazing recording only to find that it’s all a bit sloppy and sluggish. A good rhythmic sense benefits every aspect of your playing, not just the ‘rhythm’ parts. When you listen to a master rhythm player like Cory Wong, you hear an immediacy and precision but also a flexibility in dynamics and phrasing. There’s only one way to achieve this – and that’s through practice! In this lesson, Cory shows us how he divides rhythm tasks between his hands. His picking hand…

It all started when… “I needed a life change and a career direction. I loved playing guitar, but I was a terrible performer. A few life events ended with me standing in the middle of the library wondering what I was going to do. Some soul-searching and a card catalogue lead to books on guitar making and repair. The book was pretty awful, but it planted a good seed. “There are so many truly fine builders doing perfect work. There are a lot of us who stand shoulder to shoulder about the things that mean the buyer will get a guitar that is worth what they pay” “The journey to my first guitar meandered through the search for suppliers and tools, a class at a junior college and a job…

Boutique builder Shelley Park describes her take on Gypsy jazz guitars as “a thoughtful modern interpretation of a classic design. It is my intention to provide the fit and finish expected by today’s acoustic player while respecting the work of Selmer-Maccaferri. I think my instruments offer playability and a sweet, nuanced tone while maintaining the responsiveness and projection these guitars are expected to have in a Hot Club swing context.” Park worked at Larrivée then for fellow Canadian David Webber before setting up on her own ’shop in Vancouver, British Columbia, “a province where I have access to local materials, both softwoods for soundboards and hardwoods for backs and sides. I am always glad to work with local spruce, maple and walnut. I’m excited about some of the composite replacements…

Guitar makers are little different from artists writing songs, making albums and touring the world. They have their successes and they have their failures; they fall out due to musical differences while their drummers spontaneously combust. Okay, so while that last bit might be a thing of fiction, for many the definition of a successful guitarist is simply one who sells records. It’s just as true of a guitar maker, large or small. PRS Guitars has long since been considered the ‘third’ guitar brand after the icons that are Fender and Gibson. It’s not something that stacks up from production numbers, but there is plenty to support the perception. There’s the quality proposition for starters. From day one, PRS’s focus on quality signalled a call to arms and helped restore…

The S stands for Stevensville, the location of PRS’s USA factory; the ‘2’ simply refers to the creation of a second production line conceived to create these more affordable guitars. The range originally launched in mid-2013 with just three guitars: the S2 Mira, S2 Starla and S2 Custom 24. While the Mira and Starla have dropped down into the fully ‘offshore’ SE range for this year, the current S2 range is expansive and kicks off with the all-mahogany vibrato-equipped S2 Standard 24 and 22 at £1,125 in satin and £1,395 in gloss. The unique-to-S2 hardtail Vela solidbody is £1,195 in gloss and £1,495 in satin; the Semi-Hollow version in satin/gloss is £1,295/£1,615. Of course, the maple-topped Custom is represented, too, all full-gloss with vibratos; the 24 and 22 are £1,699,…

PRICE: £1,849 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany with chamfered edge figured maple top NECK: Mahogany, Pattern Vintage profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 625mm (24.594”) NUT: Friction reducing FINGERBOARD: Faux-bone bound rosewood, bird inlays, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: PRS 2-piece bridge and tailpiece, vintage-style (non-locking) tuners, nickel plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: PRS 58/15 ‘S’ Treble and Bass humbuckers (bridge); 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual pickup volume and tone (with pull-switch partial coil-split) OPTIONS: Colour only LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Faded Blue Smokeburst (as reviewed), Whale Blue, McCarty Sunburst, Dark Cherry Sunburst, Elephant Grey, Scarlet Red and Burnt Amber Burst PROS Ditto double-cut model; more Les Paul-like heft here in weight and sound CONS Ditto double-cut; this is the heaviest of our trio…

ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Delay pedal FEATURES: 3 selectable bypass types (True bypass, DSP+True Bypass (trails), and DSP Bypass), 9 onboard presets, tap tempo, MIDI, 60ms to 2s delay time CONTROLS: Program selector, Time, Repeats, Mix, Tweak, Attack, Tweak switch (Mod/Tone/Age), Bank switch (A/B/C ), Division switch (quarter/eighth/ dotted eighth), Tap footswitch, Bypass footswitch EFFECTS PROGRAMS: Digital, Mod, Vintage, Dual, Reverse CONNECTIONS: Standard inputs (Left/Mono, Right), standard outputs ( Left/Mono, Right), MIDI IN, MIDI OUT POWER: Supplied 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 300mA DIMENSIONS: 73 (w) x 125 (d) x 60mm (h)…

THE BACKGROUND ANDY PAULLSON, Via email I’ve long been a fan of volume pedals, but I’ve a feeling, with some creative pedalboard routing, I could get even more interesting functionality and sonic results out of them. Could you tell me the optimal place or places you could put a volume pedal for ordinary level control on stage? And then suggest some more creative uses for volume pedals in either a big pedalboard or a pedalboard and two-amp rig? THE QUESTIONS 1 WHAT IS A VOLUME PEDAL – AND WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES VOLUME MAKE TO A ’BOARD? 2 CAN VOLUME PEDALS BE USED IN DIFFERENT LOCATIONS? 3 ARE THERE ANY OTHER USES FOR A VOLUME PEDAL? THE ANSWERS Andy, great question. A volume pedal is often a misunderstood beast. Lots of…

I’m sure somewhere some diligent person has listed all the companies, large and small, all over the world that make retrofit pickups for us to swap. If that list ran to 300 or more, I wouldn’t be surprised… although it’s probably higher. And when we consider that most pickup makers offer various types of pickups – full-size humbuckers, single coils for Fender-styles, P-90s, not to mention more leftfield designs such as mini-humbuckers or Gold Foils and the like – the actual number of pickups made each year could be rather staggering. That doesn’t even include all the pickups that are made for the actual guitars we buy. Like every other area of guitar-related gear, we have the choice of price and origin, but that doesn’t tell us much. The thing…

1955 Gibson ES-295 1. SERIAL NUMBER A-prefixed five-digit number inked onto orange oval label on back (visible through bass f-hole) 2. HEADSTOCK Unbound; mother-of-pearl Gibson logo and crown inlays; black finish 3. PLASTICS Two-layer (w/b) bell truss-rod cover; two cream-coloured dog-ear P-90 pickup covers; white pickup selector switch tip; four clear, gold-tinted speed knobs; clear pickguard with cream painted back and gold embossed floral design; white keystone tuner buttons 4. HARDWARE Gold-plated Les Paul trapeze combination tailpiece/bridge; individual gold-plated Kluson Deluxe tuners 5. PICKUPS & ELECTRONICS Two single-coil dog-ear P-90s with independent volume and tone controls; gold-coloured wooden bridge pickup spacer; gold-plated three-way pickup selector switch; side-mounted jack socket 6. BODY 16¼-inch wide; 3 3/8-inch deep; laminated maple with pressed, arched top; single Florentine cutaway; three-ply (w/b/w) top binding; single-bound…