Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i Guitarist

This month’s cover story on page 52 is about the anniversary of Gibson’s twin-horned devil, the SG, and is a reminder that we have little idea of how new gear will stand the test of time. At the time of launch, the SG was rejected by its supposed endorsee, Les Paul, and the guitar went on to have an up-and-down 60s career before being eclipsed by the very guitar it replaced – the sunburst Les Paul – after the latter was championed by Eric Clapton. The SG found its true métier later, in the hands of hard rock and metal players during the 70s. In both cases, the fortunes of the designs were determined by how much backing they received from high-profile players. Likewise, Fender’s offset Jaguar and Jazzmaster electrics…

By contrast to the mighty Standard and Custom, the Les Paul Deluxe, originally produced from 1969 until 1984, was never quite in the same classic league. It shone brightly and sold in significant numbers in its early years because the single-cut Standard had, of course, been replaced in 1961 by the very different Les Paul/SG. But more and more high-profile players were picking up and playing Standards during the 60s, which simply increased demand that Gibson ignored. Even when the classic shape made a comeback in 1968, it was in the form of the twin-pickup Custom and, briefly, the goldtop P-90. So when the Deluxe launched the following year, its appeal was obvious. Except for the fact that, with its minihumbuckers, it wasn’t a Les Paul Standard – and its…

PRICE: £2,199 (inc case) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Single-cutaway, solidbody electric BODY: 1-piece mahogany (no weight relief) with carved plain maple top NECK: 1-piece mahogany, rounded ‘C’ profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.6”) NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech/43.53mm FINGERBOARD: Single-bound Indian rosewood, acrylic trapezoid inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: Tune-o-matic bridge, aluminium stud tailpiece, vintage-style ‘Gibson Deluxe’ keystone tuners – chrome plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 50mm ELECTRICS: 2x Gibson Mini Humbucker w/chrome covers, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual volume and tone controls (hand-wired with Orange Drop capacitors) WEIGHT (KG/LB): 4.44/9.77 OPTIONS: No RANGE OPTIONS: The Les Paul Standard ’50s, ’50s P-90 and ’60s all cost the same (£2,199) LEFT-HANDERS: Not currently listed for this model, but the ’50s and ’60s Standard are available left-handed FINISHES: 70s Cherry Sunburst (as…

Artist: Rory Gallagher Album: Rory Gallagher (1971) How did you get the call to play on Rory’s first solo album? “I was in a band called Deep Joy and we’d opened for Taste [Rory’s earlier band] at a lot of their shows in England and also Europe. Taste broke up in the October of 1970, actually in Belfast – and we headed back there, too. Deep Joy had kind of been on a starvation diet when we were living in London – you just couldn’t keep on going, waiting for the big break that never actually came. So we split up ourselves on New Year’s Eve 1970, going into 1971. The drummer with Deep Joy at the time was Wilgar Campbell, who went on to become the drummer in Rory’s…

What? Epiphone Inspired By Gibson ES-335 Where seen? PMTonline.co.uk Price? £488 If my ES-335 story has you hankering after something of a semi-solid nature, look no further than this lovely ES-335 from Epiphone. We’ve been bowled over by the build and tone of Epi instruments recently, and this Cherry Red beauty, with the much prettier ’60s Kalamazoo-style Epiphone headstock, is a very classy addition to the line. With a matched pair of Alnico Classic Pro humbuckers, rounded ‘C’ profile neck and laminated maple body with solid centre block, it’s a real steal for under £500. No matter what style you play, an ES-335 will seldom disappoint, so what are you waiting for? And Cherry Red surely is the colour!…

There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion, Edgar Allen Poe once wrote. He wasn’t writing about guitars, to be sure, but those words seem made for Gibson’s SG… The guitars’ devilish horns arrest your attention straight away, but it takes a while to notice that the body is subtly offset, too. The carve on the top of the body is wider and more sensuous than the lower edge of the instrument. Everywhere on the SG you find asymmetry, contradictions. For example, the vibrato unit that was originally fitted to it was infamous for not working properly and yet the guitar’s balance isn’t quite right without it, because the SG was designed to have a counterweight to its long neck behind the bridge. Oddities like this didn’t…

GIBSON SG TRIBUTE £999 This is the entry-level Gibson USA SG and it certainly gives more than a flavour of the classic design. It’s available in either Cherry or Natural Walnut satin nitro, over an all-mahogany body and neck with dot-inlaid rosewood fingerboard. The full-face ‘batwing’ pickguard emulates the larger design that appeared in 1966 from which the open-coil 490R and 490T Alnico II humbuckers are suspended. Hardware is nickel-plated and includes Vintage Deluxe tuners with keystone buttons, a Nashville tune-o-matic bridge and aluminium stopbar tailpiece. GIBSON SG JUNIOR £1,249 If you’ve never plugged in an SG Jr, you’re missing out. Next up the ladder in terms of price and part of Gibson’s Original collection, there are no frills, but the gloss-nitro finish over the all-mahogany build (in Cherry only),…

A number of high-end brands offer gig-worn relics – from Fender and Gibson, obviously, to boutique-level builders such as Rock N Roll Relics and Nash. Even ‘posh’ makers including Tom Anderson are relicing their instruments these days. And yet it’s still rare to find this sort of treatment in the lower end of the market. Vintage itself is one exception with its Icon models, which are factory aged: a V120 will cost you £339, while a ‘lemon drop’ V100 is £509 (although there are no Bigsby options). We’re seeing an increasing amount of makers that specialise in reliced guitars in the UK such as County Londonderry’s SC Relics (from £1,600) and Relic Guitars UK in Essex, although most seem to specialise in bolt-ons. While setup work, fitting new pickups and…

PRICE: £999 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: China/Vietnam TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany NECK: Mahogany, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 629mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech NuBone/43.2mm FINGERBOARD: Lignum Rosa, pearloid dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium jumbo HARDWARE: Graphtech ResoMax Sonic 1 wrapover bridge, Grover V138N tuners - aged nickel STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.4mm ELECTRICS: Bare Knuckle Boot Camp Old Guard P-90 single coil w/ dog-ear cover, master volume and master tone WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.55/7.81 OPTIONS: Check the Vintage website RANGE OPTIONS: In the standard Vintage Reissued range, the V120 starts at £339; the aged Vintage Icon costs the same LEFT-HANDERS: Not this model FINISHES: Aged Red over Sunburst – acrylic aged top-coats PROS A crackin’ Junior-style build with real-world aged refinish – definitely worth a punt CONS It basically remains…

YAMAHA NCX5 & NTX5 BOTH £1,786 It’s a whole different world when it comes to amplifying an acoustic guitar to an audience CONTACT Yamaha PHONE 01908 366700 WEB http://uk.yamaha.com You sometimes hear an adage about old Gibson Les Pauls: “no two sound the same”. This can also be applied to the steel-string acoustic, and perhaps more so to the nylon-string classical guitar. It’s one thing making a great-sounding acoustic guitar, but a whole different world when it comes to amplifying it to an audience. Creating a good sound in both environments, then, is challenging. But that’s exactly the design brief of Yamaha’s decade-old NX guitars. “With resolution of these problems firmly in mind, we set out to create a guitar that would satisfy in terms of design, playability and sound…

PRICE: £1,786 (inc soft case) ORIGIN: Japan TYPE: Classical cutaway nylon-string electro with 12-fret neck joint TOP: Solid European spruce BACK/SIDES: Solid walnut MAX RIM DEPTH: 100mm MAX BODY WIDTH: 380mm NECK: African mahogany SCALE LENGTH: 650mm (25.6”) TUNERS: Classical style 3-a-side with black rollers, gold-plated with black marble-like buttons NUT/WIDTH: Bone/52.3mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony, flat, no position markers except side dots at 5th and 7th frets FRETS: 19, medium/small BRIDGE/SPACING: Stained walnut with ebony topped tie-block/58.5mm ELECTRICS: Yamaha Atmosfeel with under-saddle, contact sensor (top) and internal mic. Preamp with master volume, mic blend and treble EQ quick-release battery holder end-jack/strap button WEIGHT (kg/lb): 1.99/4.38 OPTIONS: See NTX5 RANGE OPTIONS: The all-solid NCX3 (£940) is also available with a cedar top at the same price. The start-up NCX1 with solid Sitka…

What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money? “The first proper guitar I really remember aspiring to for a very long time was my Les Paul. I had a Squier Telecaster prior to that, then I graduated up to an Epiphone Les Paul that my old man very kindly bought me – and then it was the Les Paul. “I was a huge Slash fan when I was growing up and so I was intent on getting a bona fide Gibson Les Paul at some point. It was sort of hovered over my head as an incentive to do well in my GCSE exams by my parents, as long as I met them half way on it. Of course, the first thing I did with…

By the end of the 1970s, the Fender Stratocaster was a shadow of its former self in terms of design and build quality. Though the 1979 sales figures were encouraging, it soon became clear that if the Strat was to survive another decade, then serious change was needed. Indeed, if the 1980s are to be remembered for anything as far as the Stratocaster goes, it’s for the multitude of permutations that arose in an increasingly competitive environment. The original Stratocaster design had already spawned countless derivatives that were being sold by other companies, and these were increasingly becoming well-established alternatives. Coupled with a perceptible decline in Fender’s quality throughout the 1970s, players began to look elsewhere for new Stratocaster-style guitars or scanned the ever-more popular vintage market for a tried-and-trusted…

“I’m really lucky. At the moment I have a 1939 000-45 and a 1941 D-45. The D-45s first appeared in 1933 as 12-fret models (the first was made for Gene Autry) and then they went to the 14-fret design a little later. They are the pinnacle of Martin, but it was really just a very well-appointed D-28; they were similarly constructed using Brazilian rosewood for the back and sides, Adirondack spruce for the top, and they had an ebony fingerboard and bridge. “When you talk about ‘pre-war’ guitars, people’s definitions can sometimes overlap. A lot of people think of that term as pre-World War II. But that means different things to different countries. And if you’re talking about the USA, we didn’t enter the war until right after the attack…

As the world begins to open up to live performances again, this special acoustic supplement to Guitarist magazine is designed to help you bring the magic of unplugged music to an audience near you – even if that audience is just family and friends at home. At the top of the bill is David Mead’s deep dive into how to get a top-flight acoustic sound on stage. It’s not easy to get a natural, feedback-free tone when performing live, but, over on page 12, we talk to some of the world’s greatest players and acoustic sound engineers who share how to sound incredible and keep the sonic gremlins at bay. Of course, it helps to have the right kit, too, and that’s why, from page 28, you’ll find guides to…

Playing an acoustic guitar in a live setting was once a precarious business. In the very beginning you were lucky to get heard in any venue that was bigger than your living room, and, even when microphones came to the rescue, it meant players had to remain static for fear of fading away completely. Jump forward to the late 60s and members of the singer-songwriter boom were either content to stay put in front of mics or try taping electric guitar pickups into their guitar’s soundholes – ironically turning their dreadnoughts into would-be electric guitars. But at least they could move around a little. Later on saw the dawn of the transducer ‘bug’, which affixed to the guitar with a putty-like substance that resembled Blu Tack. At the time, they…

GODIN A6 ULTRA £899 (approx) The long-running Canadian company has led the way in popularising the hybrid-guitar concept mixing piezo acoustic, magnetic electric and synth access on numerous acoustic and solidbody platforms. Currently in short supply, Music Street has the A6 Ultra on pre-order so you might be lucky. Expect an electric feel to the neck, paired with a chambered silver-leaf maple body with spruce top. With the magnetic sound provided by the neck-placed Godin humbucker and with dual acoustic and electric outputs you can easily run a two amp set-up. www.musicstreet.co.uk PRS SE HOLLOWBODY II PIEZO £1,349 While PRS has long offered both solidbody and hollowbody ‘hybrids’ with onboard piezo acoustic sounds designed in conjunction with LR Baggs, its prices can be prohibitive for many. However, this SE version…

On The Streets “Busking was the key factor in learning how to be a rhythm guitarist. I started to really appreciate those 50s and 60s players, like the Everly Brothers, Elvis and Eddie Cochran. They were going at acoustic guitar like they were playing electric guitar – but electric guitar didn’t really exist yet. When you listen to Wake Up Little Susie, that is just a masterclass in hardcore, precise acoustic rhythm guitar… Busking made me transfer over to steel-string with a pick.” Times Change “I still feel like a very scrappy guitarist. I think I err on the side of rhythm playing. Although age is a great factor in this. I feel like I might become more of a picker. I’m a huge Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake fan,…

PRICE: £799 (with Deluxe padded gigbag) ORIGIN: Ensenada, Mexico TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Solid 2-piece alder NECK: Maple, 4-bolt neck join, satin urethane finish with gloss urethane headstock facing SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT: Synthetic bone, 42mm FINGERBOARD: Glued-on maple, with black dot markers, satin urethane finish, 241 mm radius FRETS: 21, medium jumbo HARDWARE: Cut-down Telecaster bridge with through-body stringing, early P-Bass style control plate TUNERS: Vintage style 6-a-side, chrome/nickel plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 55mm ELECTRICS: 1x Noventa soapbar pickup, single volume and tone control WEIGHT (KG/LB): 3.5/7.7 OPTIONS: Pau ferro fingerboard on Sunburst version RANGE OPTIONS: Noventa Strat (as reviewed, £849), Noventa Jazzmaster with 3 x Noventa pickups (£899) LEFT-HANDERS: Not yet available FINISHES: Vintage Blonde (as reviewed), Fiesta Red, Two-Tone Sunburst PROS It’s the simplest of…

1. Strum As You Are Fender Jag-Stang returns as a Mexican-made model To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Nevermind, Fender has reissued the Kurt Cobain Jag-Stang model, which the Nirvana singer helped design before his death in 1994. The guitar’s body combines features from Cobain’s favoured Jaguar and Mustang with a 24-inch short-scale body and slider switches for phase options on the single-coil and humbucker pickups. It retails at £1,249 and will be available in October. 2. Roxy Music All aboard for new PRS John Mayer Silver Sky finish The Roxy Pink guitar as played by John Mayer in his video for Last Train Home, from new album Sob Rock, is now availableto buy as a production finish with a rosewood fretboard. Mayer gifted early models to musician…

It’s increasingly rare that sessions happen where the whole rhythm section are in a top-quality studio together, recording original music with enough time to be creative and experimental with the material in question. I was lucky enough to experience this over the past few days, with an EP (remember those?) of music written by Rob Eckland. I’ve mostly worked for Rob in more commercial capacities, the most recent example being the ITV house band for Alan Carr, but happily he’s decided to release some tracks of his own. We went into north London’s Livingston Studio 1 for two days to record five tracks. The lineup comprised Ralph Salmins on drums, Steve Pearce on bass, Jeff Leach on keys, Tommy Emmerton and myself on guitars, and Rob playing piano. The combined…

As any luthier will tell you, taking on repair work can provide quite an education in guitar building. Recently, a guitar came in through the door that is precisely the kind I relish: an instrument in which there is scope for many small improvements, but which should hopefully add up to quite a lot. “Deep grooves scar nearly every single fret along the fingerboard, showing all the signs of having enjoyed many blistering arpeggio runs” The guitar is a Gypsy-jazz style guitar, instantly bringing to mind vibrant campfire jazz jams associated with the Gypsy-infused music of Django Reinhardt. Deep grooves scar nearly every single fret along the fingerboard, showing all the signs of having enjoyed many blistering arpeggio runs and non-stop la pompe rhythm playing for the last decade at…

SETTING THE TONE I recently learned that I am interested in tone! I know the sounds I like: the high-gain sound of humbuckers through a distortion pedal or dirty channel of a Mesa, the in-between quack of positions 2 and 4 on a Strat, or the sound of certain players or guitars. My taste in sound probably hasn’t changed that much, but it’s only in recent times that I’ve become more sensitive to the nuances of tone, and this has really fuelled a new pleasure in playing guitar. It’s not just about audible pleasure, my new awareness impacts my playing, making me more mindful of picking dynamics, use of volume and tone controls, opting for lower gain settings on my drive pedal or amp in order to discover how picking…

The Gibson SG design, officially launched in 1961, was a radical departure for the solidbody guitar, almost as if a sculptor had been at work rather than a guitar maker. The body was a stylish blend of bevels and points and angles, and the relatively lightweight instrument invited players to reach its topmost frets with ease and speed thanks to a pair of pointy cutaways. It was unlike anything any company had produced before – even if the shadow of Fender was evident across some of its ideas. Gibson’s motivation to introduce this new design seems almost beyond belief in retrospect. The idea was to replace the original single-cutaway Les Paul. That’s correct. Managers at the firm saw sales dipping, so to them the solution was obvious: ditch the earlier…

VINTAGE PROSHOP V120 & V100 £999 & £1,499 CONTACT John Hornby Skewes PHONE 01132 865381 WEB www.vintageguitarsrus.com We last caught up with Vintage, the house brand of the large and long-running UK distributor John Hornby Skewes (JHS), back in issue 465 to celebrate its 25th Anniversary. Many players will be familiar with its legal copies of many classics, and the company was also quick to jump on the relic bandwagon with its Icon range, which started back in 2006 and currently features over 20 models aged at their source in the Eastern Asia. The ProShop Unique guitars were launched just before the pandemic at Winter NAMM 2020. However, these instruments are created from standard Vintage Reissued or Icon models in Garforth, Leeds, at JHS’s HQ. It’s not really a range…

PRICE: £1,499 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: China/Vietnam TYPE: Single-cutaway, carved top solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany with carved maple top NECK: Mahogany, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 629mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Tusq XL/ 41.7mm FINGERBOARD: Lignum Rosa, pearloid ‘crown’ inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium jumbo HARDWARE: Licensed Bigsby B70, locking roller-saddle bridge, Grover Roto-Grip Locking Rotomatic tuners – aged nickel STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 50.5mm ELECTRICS: Bare Knuckle Boot Camp Old Guard humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual volume and tone controls for each pickup WEIGHT (kg/lb): 4.22/9.28 OPTIONS: Check the Vintage website RANGE OPTIONS: In the standard Vintage Reissued range, the V100 starts at £369; the aged Vintage Icon versions at £419 LEFT-HANDERS: Yes, the Reissued V100 lefty is available in 3 versions from £439; there’s a single Icon model,…

1 What’s the deal here? Simple: Yamaha wanted to create a nylon-string guitar that really worked plugged in. The NX series plays hard and fast with the construction style of the traditional Spanish classical guitar – of which Yamaha has considerable history – resulting in the ‘crossover’ style of the NTX models and the more classical-inspired style of the NCX. 2 Aren’t Rodrigo y Gabriela involved in these guitars? Yes, they were consultants on the original series – and use heavily customised versions of those guitars – and had considerable input on these new NTX5 and NCX5 models we see here. In fact, although they’re not signature models, they do bear their signatures on the labels. 3 Has much changed? Yes, these new models retain the look and function of…

PRICE: £1,786 (inc soft case) ORIGIN: Japan TYPE: Medium-bodied cutaway, nylon string electro with 14-fret neck joint TOP: Solid European spruce BACK/SIDES: Solid walnut MAX RIM DEPTH: 90mm MAX BODY WIDTH: 380mm NECK: African mahogany SCALE LENGTH: 650mm (25.6”) TUNERS: Classical style 3-a-side with black rollers, gold-plated with black marble-like buttons NUT/WIDTH: Bone/48.3mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony, 600mm (23.6”) radius, no position markers except side dots at 5th and 7th frets FRETS: 22, medium/small BRIDGE/SPACING: Stained walnut with ebony topped tie-block/53mm ELECTRICS: Yamaha Atmosfeel with under-saddle, contact sensor (top) and internal mic. Preamp with master volume, mic blend and treble EQ quick-release battery holder end-jack/strap button WEIGHT (kg/lb): 1.86/4.09 OPTIONS: See NCX5 RANGE OPTIONS: The NTX3 (in natural or brown sunburst) costs £940; the NTX1 (natural, brown sunburst, black) costs £423, again…

Redbeard Effects, a UK-based guitar effects company, is a collaboration between Adrian Thorpe, the driving force behind ThorpyFX pedals, and guitarist Mikey Demus from the band Skindred. The Angry Rhubarb is the brand’s third pedal – following on from the Red Mist MKIV drive pedal and the Honey Badger Octave Fuzz – and is the direct result of pondering whether an overdrive circuit sounds better before or after EQ. Now a reality, it actually offers EQ sandwiched between two independent overdrive circuits. The semi-parametric EQ here covers a frequency range of 80Hz to 4kHz with up to 6dB of boost or cut for the selected frequency. In front of the EQ is a low to medium drive controlled by the Pre Drive knob, while after the EQ, the Post Drive…

When looking for new inspiration for sound designs and pedal combinations, I’ve always found it rewarding to dive into a very specific artist or genre. Using your ears to intently listen, analyse and decipher exactly what’s going on, sound-wise, is an extremely satisfying exercise. I recently decided to practise that in one of my Tonal Teamwork videos on YouTube, as I dove into a very specific sound from one of my favourite bands, Cocteau Twins. I like to call the sound ‘the dream-pop wash’. Dream-pop hit the airwaves sometime in the 1980s and is very often mentioned in the same breath as shoegaze, as they are both built on a rich, textural tapestry of hypnotic sounds. But where shoegaze tends to rely on a heavier and dense wall-of-sound, with copious…

“Rickenbacker co-founder George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar pickup in 1931 but they didn’t start manufacturing electric instruments until late 1932,” says Martin. “His pickup design featured two large horseshoe-shaped magnets to boost the signal, necessary because the suitable amplification was yet to be developed, plus the original coil slugs were made from non-magnetised ferrous metal. Pioneering times! “The original application of the horseshoe pickup wasn’t just for ‘frying pan’ lap steels; Rickenbacker launched an electric Spanish guitar at exactly the same moment. Interestingly though, their very first ‘Electro Spanish’ featured a revolutionary 17th fret neck joint. Beauchamp was clearly aware of the electric guitar’s potential from the outset as players could now solo up the dusty end and actually be heard! “Although the horseshoe was well suited to lap…

1980 The Strat; Jimi Hendrix-inspired prototype 1981 Walnut Strat; Gold Stratocaster; ‘Dan Smith’ Stratocaster specs: small headstock, 4-bolt neck 1982 Vintage series ’57 and ’62 Stratocasters (Japan) 1983 Vintage series ’57 and ’62 Stratocasters (USA); ‘Standard’ Stratocaster specs: 2 knobs, 90-degree jack 1984 Elite series: Walnut Elite, Gold Elite, and Elite Stratocasters; Stratocaster now Standard Stratocaster 1985 CBS sells Fender (FMIC new owners); Contemporary Stratocasters (Japan) 1986 American Standard Stratocaster developed 1987 Strat Plus; Eric Clapton and Yngwie Malmsteen signature model Stratocasters 1988 H.M. Strat 1989 Deluxe Strat Plus…

IN THE NEVERENDING QUEST to push our playing in new and fresh directions, it’s good to try new shapes, patterns and scales. In this solo, I’m forcing myself to explore different ideas by avoiding anything overtly pentatonic. Instead, I’m concentrating mainly on the E minor scale (E F# G A B C D E) and referencing, or quoting directly from, a couple of arpeggios related to the backing chords. I’ll get more into the specifics of this later, but before that I’d like to admit that the title of this article is somewhat misleading: I’m not removing the pentatonic scale, simply enhancing it. If we take the E minor pentatonic (E G A B D) and compare with the E minor scale mentioned earlier, you will see that there are…

“There was a time when ‘semi-acoustic’ guitars were very popular. Generally, they were very heavily built, with great playability and not prone to feedback, but the downside was the limitation in the acoustic sound. For a while the amplified acoustic guitar sound was a distinct experience, to the extent that audiences expected it, and stopped appreciating the pure acoustic sound. We tend to forget that volume is really a part of tone, no instrument sounds the same at high volumes as it does with no amplification. Our ears are not linear. “Technology has changed a lot: notch filters and graphic equalisers to catch a troublesome frequency, phase inversion to deal with a difficult venue, and new pickups that don’t turn the guitar into a microphone.There is a growing trend to…

FENDER CALIFORNIA SERIES NEWPORTER PLAYER £309 Who says acoustic guitars need to be all woody and cost a fortune? Not Fender. The California Player range includes the cutaway dreadnought Redondo, the small-body Malibu and this mid-size Newporter, all available in six top finishes from Natural and Sunburst to more classic Fender colours, such as Candy Apple Red. Tops are solid spruce with laminate mahogany back and sides, plus they come with a Fishman CD-1 pickup/preamp system. There is plenty of choice up for grabs in the other California ranges too. www.fender.com PRS SE P20 £419 PRS isn’t known for its acoustic guitars but these small-bodied SEs have proved hugely successful. Along with the larger bodied Angelus and Tonare models, this parlour-sized Tonare is available in three satin finishes over the…

PRICE: £849 (with Deluxe padded gigbag) ORIGIN: Ensenada, Mexico TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Solid 2-piece alder NECK: Maple, 4-bolt neck join, satin urethane finish with gloss urethane headstock facing SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT/WIDTH: Synthetic bone, 42mm FINGERBOARD: Glued-on maple, with black dot markers, satin urethane finish, 241 mm radius FRETS: 21, medium jumbo HARDWARE: Hardtail Stratocaster bridge with through-body stringing, recessed jack socket TUNERS: Vintage style 6-a-side, chrome/nickel plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm ELECTRICS: 2x Noventa soapbar pickups, single volume and tone controls, 3-way selector WEIGHT (KG/LB): 3.3/7.27 OPTIONS: Pau ferro fingerboard on Crimson Red version RANGE OPTIONS: Noventa Tele (as reviewed, £799), Noventa Jazzmaster with 3x Noventa pickups (£899) LEFT-HANDERS: Not yet available FINISHES: Daphne Blue (as reviewed), Crimson Red, Surf Green PROS It has everything the…

Charvel Guthrie Govan Signature MJ San Dimas £2,299 CONTACT Fender Musical Instruments EMEA PHONE 01342 331700 WEB www.charvel.com That’s a serious-looking instrument! Indeed. Serious technical ability requires an instrument to match, and this Charvel is the latest signature model for one of the scariest players on the planet, Mr Guthrie Govan. This time it comes out of Charvel’s Japanese facility, cutting the price of a Guthrie signature model by hundreds, while still offering the features we’ve come to know and love from GG’s collaborations. But before we start throwing the ‘affordable’ word around, it’s still a pro-level instrument with a far-from-cheap price tag. Where does this sit with the US-made models? Let’s take a look next to the full-fat version. Basswood body? Tick. Caramelised maple neck? Present (sans flame). HSH…

Before the 2008 crash destroyed almost anything entrepreneur-ish, Guitar Techniques’Jason Sidwell and I used to run weekend guitar breaks. We’d get guys like Guthrie, Dave Kilminster, Phil Hilborne and co to come along and give their slant on improving the playing of our students. It was fun and we shared many a lightbulb moment with our cohorts. One weekend, Jason and I were in the bar of our hotel waiting for Dave Kilminster, our co-tutor for the weekend, to arrive. Just after 11pm Dave rushed in, looking flustered. ‘I’ve left my effing Tele at a gas station halfway between here and home,’ he exclaimed, ‘And need to drive back and see if it’s still there...’ It was his much beloved black ’72. Dave had stopped for fuel, opened the boot…

Not as commonly seen ‘in the field’ as your more regularly featured 7ths, 9ths and 11ths and so on, the diminished 7th chord (Root- b 3- b 5- bb 7; yes, that’s double b 7!) is still an essential part of diatonic harmony – or the chord scale, if you prefer. We have a set structure for the major scale – tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone (TTSTTTS, for short) – there is a structure to how this is arranged in diatonic/chordal harmony: major-minor-minor-major-major-minor-diminished (or m7 b 5)-major. This is what Western ears are used to hearing and find harmonious. If you travel to India or the Middle East, you will find different structures and conventions at play. Cue a clumsy segue here into mentioning George Harrison, who did much to popularise Indian music in…

As the world slowly opens up to live music once more, few people are more eager to get back on the road than Troy Redfern. With a new album, The Fire Cosmic!, in the shops and an autumn tour with fellow bluesers Robert Jon & The Wreck, plus some summer festival appearances under his belt, his enthusiasm is infectious. Like so many musicians before him, Troy’s interest in music started early. “When I was six years old I discovered Queen through one of my older brothers and kind of became obsessed,” he tells us, as we settle down in the Guitarist studios. “I got A Night At The Opera and would listen to that incessantly, and then Sheer Heart Attack…” But it was courtesy of Michael J Fox’s guitar-wielding exploits…

When it comes to modern Gibson guitars, you’ll often hear vintage-guitar aficionados using the phrase, ‘they don’t make ’em like they used to’. Yet slowly, over a period of decades, Gibson has got closer and closer to recreating the ‘real thing’. However, it is modern technology that is paving the way for a new level of accuracy, not least in Gibson’s ability to digitally scan original instruments down to the smallest detail. “We got this technology about three years ago and it was instantly a game-changer,” explains Mat Koehler, Gibson’s Head of Product Development. “Before that, it might take six to eight hours to simply scan a neck with the laser process we used. And that data wasn’t always easily transferable as opposed to scanning it in 3D and already…

Out Of Reach “My father played the guitar, but he wouldn’t let me touch his. I think, because of that, I wanted to play it even more. That was the impetus, really: what is it about this thing that means I’ve got to stay away from it? I found my first guitar in a pawn shop. It cost three pounds and I said to my mum, ‘Can I have it?’ She said, ‘Well, we haven’t got the money, but if they’ll swap these two prams for it, you can have it’. I’ve still got that guitar. It’s a big-bodied, no-name guitar and I just started learning on that. And I’ll tell you something else. My father used to hide his guitar on the top shelf down in the cellar, which…

1 Reliced copies! Whatever next? Vintage already has its Icon range where the models are reliced in their factories of origin in China and Vietnam. These ProShop Unique guitars are one-offs that start with a standard Vintage model and are aged and modded here in the UK. 2 Do they offer custom orders? At the moment, these are almost concept guitars illustrating what the small team at John Hornby Skewes can create. They hope to offer a bespoke service in the near future, but you can put in a request via any Vintage dealer. 3 We don’t usually see Bigsbys and Bare Knuckle pickups on a Vintage guitar… That’s the point. A staple of retailers all over the world, Vintage is renowned for its affordability and obviously has to use…

“What I’ve tried to show you is the different techniques that we’re doing here,” Nathan tells us. “The V120 was done by one of our technicians who does the kind of ‘rat’ styles – so that’s an acrylic white under-coat and a red acrylic top-coat. Then it’s stripped back and aged. All the parts are individually aged by us as well. It might have been a bit more aged than you were expecting, but we wanted to really show the original sunburst under the red. “I tackled the V100 in a different manner. The original goldtop is over sprayed – as is the headstock face – in nitrocellulose, but we obviously do a little work on the neck back. We have to put the ProShop decal on, so we have…

To say that the modding community has mushroomed in the past few years is an understatement, and it was certainly fuelled by the long months of lockdown. The desire to tweak and mod reflects the ever-increasing ranges of aftermarket parts, pickups, wiring looms, not to mention tools and finishing potions. It’s definitely something that’s on the radar at John Hornby Skewes. “I do find it interesting the number of people there are now really focusing in on selling bits, like Northwest Guitars,” says JHS managing director, Dennis Drumm. “People like that who have great websites, great ideas. People are building and modding their guitars, it’s really creative.” JHS also distributes many aftermarket bits itself – including Wilkinson, Graph Tech, Grover and Guitar Tech – and is the source of the…

Back in issue 473 we illustrated the diversity of the mainstream electro-nylon market with Auden’s York (£1,099) and Córdoba’s Fusion 5 (£450). Córdoba’s range of both acoustic and electro nylon-strings is vast and well worth checking out, particularly for guitars such as the GK Studio (approx. £639). We also name-checked Taylor’s Academy Series 12e-N (approx. £679). Harder to find currently are Godin’s more stylised Multiac models, although the Multiac Encore Nylon (approx. £1,100) is an excellent choice for the stage. If you have a more specific classical style in mind, there are plenty of European makers to consider, many offering their own electro styles. The German-made Hanika brand, for example, now has its own UK website conceived by Devon-based retailer Classical Guitars Plus. Highly recommended.…

J ROCKETT Rockaway Archer $249 Developed for Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens as an all-in-one solution to his overdrive and EQ needs, this pedal features a six-band graphic EQ with 18dB of cut or boost at each frequency. DR SCIENTIST The Elements £189 This is a dual-channel overdrive/distortion with a wide gain range and a full three-band equaliser. There are toggle switch options for clipping modes, bass cut frequencies and midrange frequencies. COLE MUSIC Paradrive $189 The Paradrive is an FET-based overdrive pedal with parametric EQ, featuring up to 15dB of cut or boost in a range from 100Hz to 4kHz. It features two clipping options selected with a toggle switch.…

Fender American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster with Dave Burrluck Writer DAVE BURRLUCK Guitarist, Gear Reviews Editor Every time we mention this guitar we get mail. Our reviews editor continues exploring this divisive instrument, with additional viewpoints from a reader and a seasoned pro… In the more sociable months of early summer, our borrowed Acoustasonic gets quite a lot of attention.“It’s much better in the flesh… but it still looks wrong,” offers one of my more traditional music mates. “Wow, it feels really good!” says a more open-minded pro musician whose world of work is only just beginning to look a little brighter. I first encountered the modern Acoustasonic concept with the launch of the Telecaster version at Winter NAMM 2019. At Fender’s pre-show bash, Guitarist’s editor-in-chief, Jamie Dickson, and I were taken…

Unique is not a word many of us can use when describing the instruments we mod and create. Yes, you might have come up with some wonderful steampunk mash-up, but chances are it’ll have a Tele, Strat or Les Paul-like outline. If you’re lucky to have anything remotely resembling a workshop to create your own outline then it’s a different matter, but I suspect for most of us our chances of creating a uniquely shaped guitar are slight. Gretsch’s G2215 P90 Streamliner Junior Jet Club [1], however, is certainly pretty unique, isn’t it? A bound slab-bodied Jet with a wrapover bridge, a humbucker/P-90 pickup complement, plus a lowly full retail of £370, which is even lower in-store. There are three colours, too: Sahara Metallic, Mint Metallic and our Single Barrel…

1. SERIAL NUMBER “E”-prefixed (Eighties) 6-digit ‘serial number’ decal on front of headstock 2. HEADSTOCK Small/pre-CBS-style profile; truss-rod adjustment via recess behind nut; silver/black-outlined Fender logo, “Stratocaster/Made in USA” decal 3. BODY Alder; double-cutaway; rounded edges; forearm and belly contours; no back routing; Black poly finish 4. PICKUPS 3x height-adjustable single-coil ‘floating’ pickups; 1x volume pot; 1x tone pot; 5-way selector switch; 90-degree front-loading jack socket 5. HARDWARE Top-loading Freeflyte vibrato system with chrome-plated push-in arm; neck plate and 6x individual tuners all chrome-plated and stamped “Fender”; 2x metal string trees; 2x metal strap buttons 6. PLASTICS Single-layer white pickguard with 12 screw holes; 3x white pickup covers; 2x white control knobs (1x ‘volume’ and 1x ‘tone’); white switch tip 7. NECK 4-bolt; single-piece fretted maple; 25½” scale length; 12-inch…

JOE BONAMASSA REDEMPTION Taking elements of the blues and putting them in a harder rock context with a bit of Americana thrown in is something Joe does well. Of course, this means lashings of pentatonic! However, on tracks such as Molly O, you can hear this also includes hints of minor scale. Self-Inflicted Wounds takes this further – and it’s worth comparing it with Joe’s approach on Just Cos You Can…, which is far more pentatonic, giving a more traditional blues feel. RORY GALLAGHER AGAINST THE GRAIN Rory Gallagher must be one of the most difficult players to explain or emulate. Undoubtedly inspired by the blues, Rory took it to so many other places. His solos/melodic lines on tracks such as Ain’t Too Good, Lost At Sea and At The…

David Crosby is one of the leaders of a musical revolution inspired both by British invasion bands of the 6os and the music of the American folk and blues minstrels. Alongside fellow singer-songwriters Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, they melded their influences into a new kind of electro-acoustic folk-rock, using open tunings and introspective lyrics, often layered up with glorious vocal harmonies. Crosby was at the heart of The Byrds and several iterations of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young brand and has, until recently, continued to work with various members. This has included recording, gigging and doing sessions with Nash, as on David Gilmour’s solo album On An Island, plus legendary Royal Albert Hall appearance Remember That Night (captured on the DVD). Crosby and Nash also sang…

TOMMY EMMANUEL, CGP If playing acoustic is your thing then Tommy needs no introduction.  He’s conquered stages worldwide with his amazing performances and unreal technique. Influenced by Chet Atkins, his concerts are a masterclass in dynamics and pacing – and he’s renowned among front-of-house engineers for being very picky about his live sound… “I’m using my signature Maton acoustics through an Udo Roesner Da Capo amp. I still use the AER Pocket Tools preamp as a direct signal into the PA, and then I go into the amp and then out of the amp and into the PA as well. So you get all the amp frequencies, all the direct frequencies and that way you can use your pickup and your microphone flat out. You get all that tone at…

AUDEN ARTIST MAHOGANY CHESTER SPRUCE CUTAWAY £1,349 Using a clever manufacturing method, Auden import the ‘shell’ from a small factory in China and do all the important stuff at its workshop in Northamptonshire. And so we have a wide range of carefully made guitars that don’t break the bank. The Chester is a cutaway 000-style with mahogany back and sides, AAA spruce top, and ebony fingerboard. Other top features include the high-ratio Schertler tuners, bone nut and excellent-sounding Brad Clark Supernatural pickup/preamp system. Price includes a hard case. www.audenguitars.com TAKAMINE P5NC £1,499 Original road-warriors, Takamine, need no introduction for stage-aimed players. The only problem you might have is deciding which guitar suits you. Oh, and their impenetrable model-numbering system, of course. This P5NC is from the Pro Series and is…