Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Guitarist

This month’s relicing theme, focused on the art of recreating the past, also threw the future of guitar-making into sharper contrast. This issue sees the publication of the first feature in a special two-part report on the pressure that traditional tonewoods are under due to deforestation. Most guitarists will now be aware of CITES restrictions on the use of rosewood in manufacturing, which prompted many luthiers to use alternative woods in its place, such as pau ferro. Common sense has now prevailed in that particular case, with CITES recently granting an exemption for instrument makers – whose use of rosewood is tiny compared with the international furniture trade. But, sadly, it seems likely this will not be the last time a well-known tonewood has to be specially protected by international…

Lowden’s reputation among the fingerstyle elite is well established. After all, players such as Richard Thompson, Jon Gomm, Pierre Bensusan (all of whom have signature models within the range) and the late Eric Roche can’t be wrong. And the variety of styles on offer between those four players is testament to the versatility inherent within the instruments from George Lowden’s workshops. Much of the work done there is satisfying customers’ special orders, the deal being that you can pretty much choose your own spec variations based on the different models in the line. Different wood combinations and many other refinements are all in a day’s work for George’s team of luthiers. And if you have something really fancy in mind – fan frets, for example – there’s no problem there,…

CARVIN MACH100 PEDAL AMPLIFIER $199 (£155) US manufacturer Carvin has unveiled its Mach100 Pedal Amplifier. Designed for “the modern guitarist who wants a compact high-output amplifier that fits right on the pedalboard”, this two-channel mini-beast can drive a pair of cabinets with 16, eight or four-ohm impedance. Other features include a line-in jack for mp3 players and so on, and a 3.5mm ’phones socket to allow monitoring. Master volume duties are attended to by a level control, while the Mute switch does exactly what you would expect of it. It might not have the stage presence of a Marshall head, but think of the money you’ll save on roadies… https://carvinaudio.com FENDER SMOLDER ACOUSTIC OD £129 Among Fender’s recently expanded stompbox range sits the intriguing Smolder Acoustic OD. Yes, that’s OD…

NEW LEASE OF LIFE I’ve taken up guitar in my 70s and have one lesson a week. My tutor has a lot of young kids who can’t afford much and so, for a while now, I’ve been buying cheap secondhand guitars from various sources – Gumtree, car-boot sales, etc. Then I clean them up, respraying if necessary, before sorting out the frets and electrics and generally getting them into a good playable state. They can then be sold to the kids for what they’ve cost me. With a bit of careful work and setup, these cheap instruments made in the Far East can become usable for the amateur player. Recently, however, someone gave me a couple of wrecks that he no longer wanted – an Encore LP style that I…

As a new boxset of early Fleetwood Mac rarities is released, we ask Greeny super-fan Andy for his verdict and memories… “When we hit the summer of love in 1967, everything exploded for me. We’d gone through the British blues boom, so John Mayall was on my radar, and through listening to Mayall and Clapton, the next port of call was obviously Peter Green. Bluesbreakers tracks like The Supernatural blew me away. Clapton took me into another dimension as far as what could be done on guitar with single-string soloing. But Peter had this kind of mojo. It was a bit scary. “He was the complete package. He had light and shade in his playing: he’d go from a whisper to an out-and-out screeching solo. He pioneered that out-of-phase pickup…

You might think a brand-new guitar aged to appear as though it’s been used and abused for many years is an abomination. But Fender has often said that as far as its Custom Shop is concerned, aged guitars make up the majority of what it produces. Degrees or levels of relicing are well catered for by the Custom Shop and have evolved over time. The 2019 Custom Guitar Design Guide, for example, offers six ageing styles that progress from as-new through to very bashed up: New Old Stock (NOS), Closet Classic, Lush Closet Classic, Journeyman Relic, Relic and Heavy Relic. “It’s very rare we order NOS these days,” says Julian White as we settle into our conversation at World Guitars. “If it is NOS, then it’s a Hank Marvin-style Strat…

VINTAGE V100 ICON £449 Vintage’s Icon range houses many lookalikes that are also given the ‘bash it up a bit’ treatment. They’ll get the purists annoyed, but there’s demand for what are good low-end guitars. In its Distressed Lemon Drop finish with reversed neck pickup, this one chases a Peter Green vibe. Vintage also offers Strat- and Tele-style V6 and V52 models, while the VS6 in Distressed Cherry knocks off a Gibson SG. www.jhs.co.uk SC RELICS £SEE WEBSITE Making quite a name for itself in the UK with its aged nitro necks and bodies, Scott Cameron’s SC Relics is typical of a more home-spun take on ageing and relicing. While offering all sorts of bodies and necks for partscaster builds, not to mention a refinish and restoration service, SC Relics…

‘From a sustainable source’, ‘responsibly harvested’ – you probably don’t take such labels at face value when applied to a guitar wood any more than you would ‘healthy’ on a chicken sandwich. But ask guitar makers what they mean by sustainable tonewoods and you get some rich insights… “The term ‘sustainable’ or ‘sustainability’ is probably the most overused word today. By definition, sustainability means the ability to sustain at a certain level over time. When people ask that question, I wonder are they talking about the species, the forest management unit, the broader ecosystem including all the critters and people long-dependent upon the resource? Are they talking about our waste stream, our energy use, how our employees travel to work? I really try to avoid using the word loosely. I…

PRS has its own 35th anniversary to celebrate this year and many owners will know the work of Joe Knaggs who helped create plenty of production models such as the Mira, which returns this year in the SE range (£599) along with the new SE Hollowbodies (from £899). The USA Core-level Paul’s Guitar (from £3,799) impressed us in 2019, while custom Private Stock instruments start around £6k upwards depending on specification. Germany-based Nik Huber follows a similar path to Knaggs but produces fewer instruments per year. The Dolphin, Surfmeister and Twangmeister follow a similar Tele-inspired outline to the Choptank with varying style and appointments. Expect prices from £4k. Patrick James Eggle in the UK is well known in these pages for his small-number builds. His Oz is based on a…

Long before he formed the company, Paul Gough’s hobbies were woodwork and playing guitar and so, in many ways, starting making speaker cabs for rock ’n’ rollers seemed a fairly obvious choice from the outset. Having gone to university to study maths and physics, he developed a keen interest in the science side of acoustics. “I thought I was going to come up with the equations to build the best cabs, you know,” he remembers. “But it turns out it’s more experience of building and knowledge of woods, that kind of stuff. There are no magic equations.” After leaving university, Paul started working as a musician, touring with bands, but it was the down-time between tours that started him on the journey of making custom cabs. “I wanted stuff to…

Early 1967 Hollowbody Telecaster (spruce top/no f-hole) prototyped Early 1968 Semi-acoustic/f-hole Telecaster prototyped July 1968 Telecaster Thinline released; natural mahogany or ash finish standard; maple cap fingerboard October 1968 3-Tone Sunburst finish additionally available as standard 1969 Fretted maple necks (skunk stripe and headstock plug); rosewood fingerboards optional 1971 Humbuckers replace standard Telecaster pickups; 3-bolt/tilt neck; fretted maple neck only 1973 Natural mahogany finish option omitted from Fender price list 1976 Serial number relocates from neck plate to headstock 1979 Discontinued…

Exactly why Fret-King has never hit the big-time is beyond us. The company has consistently produced good guitars, and has always ticked the affordable box at its ‘Black Label’ level. The brand parted company with its original owner and designer, Trev Wilkinson, in 2018, but there remains no shortage of guitars, now made in India. The current range is certainly expansive, covering numerous classics with the Strat-inspired Corona, the Eclat’s take on a Les Paul and, as here, the Tele-derived Country Squire. Along the way, Fret-King has hooked hugely experienced artists such as Jerry Donahue, Geoff Whitehorn, Jon Verity, Danny Bryant, Gordon Giltrap, John Jorgenson, John Etheridge and Dave Colwell. The Country Squire Semitone Special was introduced back in 2013 in a single Green Burst finish with an all-maple neck…

PRICE: £5,635 (inc case) ORIGIN: Northern Ireland TYPE: OM/Grand Performance TOP: Alpine spruce BACK/SIDES: Cocobolo MAX RIM DEPTH: 112mm MAX BODY WIDTH: 396mm NECK: Mahogany/rosewood SCALE LENGTH: 650mm (25.5”) TUNERS: Lowden-badged Gotoh 510 NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43.5mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony with maple bindings FRETS: 20 STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: Rosewood/56mm ELECTRICS: N/A WEIGHT (kg/lb): 1.9/4.18 OPTIONS: As Lowden acoustics are made to custom order, the world is your oyster: various wood combinations, nut widths, soundbox bevel, neck profiles, string width at bridge, LR Baggs or Highlander pickups – see website for full list RANGE OPTIONS: The FM model is available to order from the 35 and 50 Series. Prices start from £4,355 LEFT-HANDERS: To order FINISHES: Matt natural Lowden Guitars 0284 461 9161 www.lowdenguitars.com 8/10 PROS This is an excellently built acoustic with a…

Fender CEO Andy Mooney recently highlighted the 90 per cent abandonment rate of new guitarists within the first year – and the company’s plans to address it. According to Mooney, the company found that 45 per cent of the guitars Fender sold in a year went to new players, of which 90 per cent abandoned the instrument within their first year. “As an industry, we don’t have a problem attracting new entrants, we have a member-retention issue.” In response, the company is being proactive in providing two different services to make learning easier for beginners – and increase the industry’s customer base as a result. Its Fender Play online tuition subscription service is aimed at teaching players fundamental techniques as well as songs. Meanwhile, the Fender Songs service that has…

In contrast to last month’s sessions spent at Abbey Road for the Cats film, and involving plenty of DI gear and sight reading, I’ve been installed in Clapham’s Vinylizor studios for the last few days, recording an album for Matt Fisher of Procol Harum fame. This was a great contrast to the aforementioned session, which also included fairly limited guitar palettes in a massive orchestra. This time around I was the only recorded musician in the room, playing new music (albeit heavily influenced by the 60s, mostly The Beatles), and using real guitar amps and a variety of gear – plus the more creative side of my brain. The sessions were being produced by friend Gordon Davis, who has worked with The Waterboys, Del Amitri, Dave Stewart and Jon Bon…

present and so it’s perfectly fine to call them 7 b 5. Hopefully that’s clear… Believe it or not, the #4/ b 5 interval these chords are built around was actually banned from use in Renaissance church music, though we believe a more modern attitude prevails these days along the lines of ‘enjoy dissonance responsibly’! Dancing Days. Most of these chord shapes demonstrate the inclusion of a sus #4 added to a regular 5 chord – we’re calling it a #4 rather than a b 5 because there is already a 5th present in the chord and we have to make it obvious to avoid any confusion. This isn’t so in the last two examples because there is no ‘regular’ 5th Like all dissonant chords and intervals, context is everything.…

FOR MANY YEARS, Greg Koch was one of those classic ‘best guitarists you’ve never heard’, but thanks to online videos and his tireless touring and clinic work, he’s finally getting some deserved recognition. Although rooted in blues and blues-rock, his style covers the whole gamut of American music traditions. He can effortlessly mix grungy rock riffs, slippery swing chords, old-time fingerpicking and vertiginous country bends… and all with a sense of humour and a taste for the unexpected. In the following examples, Greg demonstrates several of his favourite approaches for breathing new life into familiar licks. We’re in a hybrid Mixolydian blues scale tonality here, working in A major and then E major, so you can apply these ideas to a huge range of rock, blues and country contexts. Greg…

“I love old guitars, so I always try to recreate them as accurately as I possibly can,” Dale Wilson told us during a visit to Fender’s Custom Shop three years ago. “So I’m always on this quest to learn more about how they feel, how they look, how they sound. I’m trying to recreate those guitars – the texture, how they feel when you’re holding them, and how they look.” We then asked him how he ensured his more heavily aged guitars were authentic recreations of genuine wear patterns, rather than just arbitrarily distressed finishes. “It’s pictures,” he explained. “I have a catalogue. There’s hundreds and hundreds of old guitars in it. Maybe it’s something somebody’s selling on eBay or whatever – I’ll search them out and save the ones…

Make no mistake, whether or not you like it, relicing (ageing, distressing… whatever you call it) is an art. Each practitioner will find their own ways and methods. One of Lukas Fronzoli’s many tasks at Knaggs Guitars is to relic any order, a finish upcharge (of around £400) on gloss nitro only. Like many, Lukas studied hours of YouTube videos for hints and tips before finding his own way. “I like to have the whole guitar put together before I start beating on it: it helps tell the story” LUKAS FRONZOLI “I’ve done a fair amount of ageing and relicing now, so I’ve developed my own techniques,” he explains from the workshop in Maryland. “Occasionally, it can be pretty exciting like when someone ordered a replica of David Gilmour’s black…

“I’m looking at Sitka spruce right now out of my window and there’s one that’s about 130ft tall and the other is about 100ft tall,” says Andrew Thoms from the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska. “They’re growing, they’re putting off seeds, they’re fantastic. And you could cut those trees down and mill those up and the wood coming out of them would be terrible and you wouldn’t even want to use it to make framing for your house. Probably it’s going to be full of knots. It’s not good wood. You can’t build musical instruments out of it. If you built a musical instrument out of it, it would crack or break or warp or not give you good music. And most of the Sitka spruce that’s out there…

HUGHES & KETTNER BLACK SPIRIT 200 FLOOR £899 CONTACT JHS PHONE 01132 865381 WEB www.hughes-and-kettner.com What You Need To Know 1 Another digital modeller? No, this is a new floorboard version of the Black Spirit 200 head, essentially a rework of the valve-powered GrandMeister Deluxe on a solid-state platform. It combines that head with an integrated FSM-432 MIDI controller. 2 Interesting. Does it make the tea for you as well? Ha, nearly. It centres around a four-channel preamp that uses H&K’s Bionic Spirit Tone Generator technology. There are high-quality digital effects, 200 watts of Class D power, Red Box cabinet simulator, three effects loops, Bluetooth control… 3 Is this the future? While many of us will never leave our head/cab or combo setups, these one-stop floorboards that can be hooked up to…

ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Modulation pedal FEATURES: Buffered bypass, Momentary footswitch mode, Tap Tempo, FX: Tremolo, Harmonic tremolo, Vibrato, Univibe, Chorus, Rotary, Flange, TZF, Phase, Pitch, Filter CONTROLS: Depth, Rate, Volume/Colour, Modulation Type, Mode button, Bypass footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output, Tap input POWER: 9V DC adaptor (supplied) 150mA DIMENSIONS: 71 (w) x 112 (d) x 50mm (h) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Drive pedal FEATURES: Buffered bypass CONTROLS: Volume, Dry, Gain, Treble, Mid, Bass, Boost button, Hi/Norm/ Lo input level switch, Bypass footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output, Boost footswitch input POWER: 9V DC adaptor (supplied) 50mA DIMENSIONS: 71 (w) x 112 (d) x 50mm (h) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Bass simulation pedal FEATURES: Buffered bypass, Programs: Precision, Longhorn, Fretless, Synth, Virtual, Bowed, Split Bass, 3:03, Flip-Flop CONTROLS: Dry Volume, Effect Volume,…

1 What was the first pedal you built and how did the design come about? “The first Effectrode pedal was a tube phaser. It evolved from various designs. The first was a rackmount unit and then that was stripped down to a unit called The Big Green Phasing Machine, which had 10 tubes and an EM80 ‘magic eye’. After that came a stompbox with three [non-visible] tubes inside, a 12AX7 and two 12AT7s, and three knobs – blend, rate and width – that we named the Phaseomatic. We made about 20 of those in the first batch [Phaseomatic PM-1A] and have carried on refining the design ever since.” 2 What do you think makes Effectrode unique? “Over the years, I’ve tried to be innovative and put more interesting features into…

Writer JAMIE DICKSON Guitarist, Editor-in-chief This month,Jamie’s ES-330 has its final play-off against the challenger from Eastman. But first, it’s time to change strings… Think of the worst swear word you know. Go on, a really bad one. Now, if you’re contemplating restringing any guitars equipped with old-style Bigsby vibratos you should prepare yourself to say that naughty word (and many others like it) out loud several times before you have finished your task. For it is a seriously fiddly and frustrating process. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the sound of a Bigsby’s subtle shimmer when it’s in use – but let it also be said that the Bigsby B7 is one of the least user-friendly contraptions known to humankind, when it comes to actually restringing the… bothersome…

1. SERIAL NUMBER Six digits stamped into neck plate (typically in the 540000 to 590000 range) 2. HEADSTOCK Bullet truss rod nut; two ‘butterfly’ string trees; black with gold outline CBS ‘Fender’ logo and black ‘Telecaster Thinline’ decals, two patent numbers 3. PLASTICS Three-ply (w/b/w) pickguard; black ‘top hat’ pickup selector switch tip 4. HARDWARE String-through-body chrome ‘hard-tail’ Stratocaster-style bridge with six adjustable saddles and six metal ferrules; Fender ‘F’ logo Schaller tuners; recessed jack socket (side); two strap buttons; two chrome-plated knurled knobs 5. PICKUPS Two ‘Wide Range’ Cunife humbuckers with adjustable polepieces and ‘Fender’ logo engraved chrome covers; three-way selector switch; master volume and tone 1mega-ohm pots; 0.022uF tone capacitor 6. BODY Semi-hollow construction; two-piece ash top/sides and back; single f-hole on bass side; natural ash polyester finish…

Difficulty 10 mins Tutor: Richard Barrett | Gear used: Knaggs Choptank, Vox AC15 C1 Major Blues Shuffle PLAYING A PINK FLOYD-TYPE MINOR BLUES and a bouncy major blues like this are very different ventures and require a different vocabulary. In this ‘one chord vamp’ solo, I’ve used the major pentatonic scale (A, B, C#, E, F#) with a few extras, such as a C natural – almost always bent slightly sharp but not as far as C#! There is lots of emphasis on the F#, too. This is a real ‘blues’ thing: the F# doesn’t appear in the backing in any way, so you could say we’re creating an extra dimension to the harmony by superimposing it. I’ve made a real point of combining the C and F# together in…

PRICE: £599 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: India TYPE: Single-cutaway, semi-solid electric BODY: Chambered American alder NECK: Maple, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT/WIDTH: Synthetic/42.5mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony, white dots, measured 241mm (9.5”) radius FRETS: 22, medium tall HARDWARE: Wilkinson string through or top-load WTB bridge with compensated brass saddles, Wilkinson WJ07 tuners – chrome-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 54mm ELECTRICS: Wilkinson pickups: WVC 3+3 humbucker (neck), over-wound Alnico V WHS single coil (middle) and WVOBT single coil (bridge), 5-way pickup selector switch, master volume, master tone, Vari-coil control (splits neck pickup and taps bridge pickup) WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.97/6.54 OPTIONS: Also available in Ash Green Burst with maple fingerboard (£599) RANGE OPTIONS: Various Country Squire models start at £569 LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Blue Burst (as reviewed), Ash Green Burst (with maple ’board) JHS 01132…

Mick Fleetwood & Friends… 25 February London Palladium “Peter Green is the reason there’s a Fleetwood Mac” was Mick Fleetwood’s assessment of the guitarist’s importance to the band they founded in 1967, alongside Jeremy Spencer and John McVie. This early line-up’s importance to British blues is undeniable, with guitarist Danny Kirwan later adding his own chapter to the story. Whether it was Kirwin’s passing in 2018 that prompted this evening of celebration is unclear – and the possibility of seeing Green on the stage at the Palladium even less so. But the confirmed artists will make this memorable: Billy Gibbons, David Gilmour, Andy Fairweather Low and Jonny Lang are guitarists who cross the Atlantic, while familiar faces like Christine McVie, John Mayall and Bill Wyman are entwined in the story…

Remember when Eric Clapton re-emerged from his darkest days and got back into the studio, he made the cathartic, largely excellent and career-affirming, 461 Ocean Boulevard (named after the house in Florida where he stayed while recording it)? Well, I recall reading a contemporaneous interview with Eric where he said something like, “I was feeling pretty pleased with it until I heard Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book…” Now, I’ve recently been putting some of my own songs down and, while I’d never dare compare my noodlings to music by artists of such rarified stature, I’ve discovered that, unless you’re super-confident in your abilities, it’s hard not to do exactly that. It’s humbling. I’m sure if you’ve ever committed anything to ‘tape’ you’ll know exactly what I mean. Plus I’ve never been…

Smith & Brewer Another Shade Of Smith & Brewer smithandbrewer.com  8/10 Debut album for folksy pop duo Acoustic – and occasionally electric – duo Ben Smith and Jimmy Brewer have been treading the boards together since they met following an event hosted by Joan Armatrading. Originally intending only to write together, they soon realised that their voices complemented each other and went on to fill support slots for artists like 10cc, Ralph McTell (on whose latest album they contributed backing vocals) and Fairport Convention. This, their first studio album, was recorded in a friend’s barn over the course of a week and the result is a collection of songs that skip between Americana, country and folk with very adept guitar playing – both are Auden endorsees – and sublime harmony…

What was your first gig and how did it go? “It was with my dad’s band when I was nine years old and I got up and did a couple of Deep Purple numbers with them. I just had a Strat copy; I think it was made by Encore. I had to prove that I was going to stick with it before my dad would buy me a proper guitar – and even then the next one was a Hohner Revelation, a 27-fret thing.” Describe your current stage rig… “I currently use a Kemper Profiler. Absolutely love it. I use profiles by Michael Britt, a Nashville session guy and probably the most famous profile maker. I run that into a Marshall cab on stage and obviously it goes out to…

There’s a note of disbelief in Andy Powell’s voice as he reels off the vital statistics of Wishbone Ash. 50 years. 25 studio albums. And too many ex-band members to compute (some going more quietly than others). “I joke on stage with our newest member, Mark Abrahams, that I’ve burnt out nine guitar players before him,” chuckles Powell. “But he takes it very well.” As the sole remaining member of the line-up that set out with 1970’s Wishbone Ash, and lifted off with 1972’s masterpiece, Argus, Powell is the custodian and mouthpiece of this band – and there couldn’t be a better man for the job. Friendly, engaging, garrulous and great company, he’ll happily lead you down memory lane, from Flying Vs to court cases. “I’m giving you a lot…

Many of us love old guitars because of what they are. And it seems we even love guitars that look like old guitars, because of what they pretend to be. The knocks and dings that a real old, worn guitar accumulates are mementoes of actual events. That bash there happened when it fell down the stairs at that terrible session, remember? This bit here is where my elbow’s rested the last x-hundred-and-something gigs. Flip it over and that’s where my fave belt buckle has left its unreadable signature. An aged new guitar, however – the type we often call a relic – is an ersatz axe. And usually it’s someone else’s take on the history of dings. Nonetheless, you could take matters into your own hands, a potentially dangerous move…

Ever since Relic guitars made their debut, we’ve received a steady stream of letters about them at Guitarist: some rants, others more akin to love letters. Whatever else aged guitars might be, you’re not indifferent to them. We certainly still get our share of mail from those who will never be reconciled to the idea. Lately, though, it feels like there’s been a bit of a shift as more players get to grips with the idea that the visual look of aged guitars is only part of the subtle charms of what they offer. Indeed, looks may ultimately be less significant than the general feel and played-in vibe of nicely aged guitars, which invites you to pick them up and play them rather than reverently gaze at them in their…

“How much rosewood does the industry use?” says Scott Paul who campaigned on forests with Greenpeace before joining Taylor Guitars as sustainability lead.“I went everywhere trying to answer these questions and the data really doesn’t exist. If you look at global data in the forest product trade, it’s not very sophisticated and there’s a lot of holes.” Crude estimates, though, say the volume of wood that guitars take is a tiny splinter of global use – some say far less than one 10th of one per cent. But splinters can be a pain. Tonewoods can influence what we do to forests in ways that go beyond volume: hordes of pulp-grade trees can be cleared to reach a few hundred music-grade Sitka. Even careful selective harvesting can affect complex ecologies –…

PRICE: approx. £4,100 (inc case) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Single-cutaway, solidbody electric BODY: Swamp ash NECK: 1-piece figured maple, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/42.1mm FINGERBOARD: Nicaraguan rosewood,‘clay’ dots, 216mm (8.5”) radius FRETS: 22, ‘tall thin’ HARDWARE: Knaggs Chesapeake hardtail bridge (aged black plated with chrome-plated brass saddles), Kluson-style vintage tuners (aged nickel-plated) STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 53.5mm ELECTRICS: 3x Fralin Blues Specials, 5-way lever pickup selector switch, master volume, tone 1 (neck/middle), tone 2 (bridge) WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.55/7.81 OPTIONS: Only finish on this limited run. The standard Choptank starts at £3,700 and has a large options list (see website) RANGE OPTIONS: The 25.5” Chesapeake range includes the best-selling double-cutaway Severn, the Severn X and the ‘offset’Tuckahoe with the same start price as the Choptank LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: English walnut (as…

ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Amp modeller and IR cab pedal FEATURES: Selectable true or buffered bypass, AMPS: Fender Deluxe Reverb, Vox AC30TB, Marshall Plexi (Super Lead model number 1959) CABS: 1x12 Fender Deluxe Reverb, 1x12 Fender Blues Junior, 2x10 Fender Vibrolux, 2x12 Vox AC30-6 open back fawn, 1x12 Custom cab w/ Celestion Blue AlNiCo, 4x12 Mesa/Boogie Half-Back, 4x12 Marshall w/ Celestion G12M-25s, 2x12 Custom cab w/ Celestion Vintage 30s, 8x12 Marshall w/ Celestion T652s CONTROLS: Drive, Level, Bass, Middle, Treble, Room, Amp selector switch, Cab selector switch, Audio input selector switch, On footswitch, Favorite footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard outputs (L, R), EXP/MIDI, USB, stereo minijack headphone ouput POWER: Supplied 9V DC adaptor, 500mA DIMENSIONS: 102 (w) x 114 (d) x 44mm (h)…

VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra As midrange voicing greatly affects the character of distortion, it follows that a drive pedal with adjustable midrange would have increased flexibility over its peers, which appears to be the main thrust of the Logan Transcend Drive. Standard Level and Drive knobs accompany smaller knobs, which very effectively adjust Lows and Highs by up to 15dB, but the two-knob midrange adjustment offers more detailed shaping using semi-parametric EQ. There’s cut or boost of up to 12dB around a frequency in a range from the low-end thump of 100Hz through to the chimey ‘presence’ of 2.5kHz, with a choice of where the midrange sits in the pedal’s signal path. Putting it before the main gain stage can really focus the character of the drive – a boost adding…

THE BACKGROUND ROB MOSS, VIA EMAIL I’ve started to go down an experimental route and am now using the guitar more as a trigger to create ethereal soundscapes and noise. It’s raised some eyebrows at the local jam nights, but I’ve found a synth-based club that seems to relish the style. Can you recommend any pedals to help me create inspiring musical noise? Also, could this approach damage my amp? I use loads of feedback and squeals, which are achieved by stacking different pedals… THE QUESTIONS 1 WHAT PEDALS DO YOU RECOMMEND FOR INSPIRING ETHEREAL SOUNDSCAPES? 2 WHAT PEDALS DO YOU RECOMMEND TO ACHIEVE MUSICAL NOISE-BASED MUSIC? 3 WILL STACKING PEDALS DAMAGE MY AMP? 4 ANYTHING ELSE I COULD TRY? EXPERIMENTAL PEDALS Pedals such as Eventide’s H9, Boss’s RV-500 and…

Fender released the Broadcaster/ Telecaster and Esquire in 1950, followed by their upscaled variants the Telecaster Custom and Esquire Custom in 1959. So, from the late 60s onwards, the company attempted to compete against its industry rivals while appealing to the rapidly changing musical and aesthetic styles of the time by releasing further Telecaster designs. Gibson/Epiphone, Gretsch, Guild and Rickenbacker had all achieved success with their semi-/hollow-bodied thinline electrics, and the new CBS regime at Fender was keen to explore similar options. Thus, having approached ex-Rickenbacker guitar designer and builder Roger Rossmeisl about the idea as early as 1965, the company unveiled its new Coronado semi-acoustic range in January 1966. It was a strong indicator of the Telecaster’s next destination. With its basic slab/non-contoured body design, the humble Telecaster was…

ROBBEN FORD & THE BLUE LINE Handful Of Blues Robben is a real master of the style we’re looking at this month, bringing a jazzy sophistication to authentic blues licks, and using a tone that is satisfyingly overdriven but never over the top. Check his playing on Rugged Road and When I Leave Here for some major pentatonic ideas and chord fragments. The Miller’s Son brings a more Clapton/ Bluesbreakers vibe, with a few twists that bring new life into traditional ideas. KIRK FLETCHER Shades Of Blue Kirk Fletcher is an expert at incorporating chord playing into solos, as you’ll hear on Blues For Boo Boo. If you’re looking for more BB King-style traditional solo lines then check out Welfare Blues, though you’ll still hear some useful chord/doublestop ideas here…