Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2020 i Guitarist

Hello again, everyone. It’s great to be back after a short spell working on a book project (guitar-related, more of which another time). Big thanks to David Mead for very ably stepping into the editor’s chair while I was away. At time of writing, global efforts to halt the COVID-19 virus mean restrictions on socialising are still in place for most people, denying working guitarists much of their livelihood. Tragically, we’ve also lost some wonderful musicians to this horrible disease, including American troubadour John Prine, jazz guitar master John ‘Bucky’ Pizzarelli, and Matthew Seligman, who was bassist with new wave pioneers The Soft Boys and played on albums by numerous luminaries including Tori Amos, Morrissey and The Waterboys. Our deepest sympathies go out to the families, friends and fans they…

What type of mahogany are you using? “We use the highest grade African mahogany and I’m surprised how good it is. When I started, no-one would touch sapele or African mahogany; it was all about Brazilian. But Brazilian can be variable and a pain to work. When the Brazilian ran out, we tried it all. I can honestly say that African works very well for us. We’re using Cuban mahogany for our 25th Anniversary The Forty Three models, which I’m looking forward to hearing.” What about rosewood? “We switched from Indian to Santos when the CITES restrictions came in. Santos can look wonderful if the colour’s right. Again, on our 25th Anniversary we have some beautiful Madagascan rosewood for bridges and fretboards, so that combined with the Cuban mahogany and…

Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks have responded to ongoing fan demand for a reunion of Genesis’s early era line-up. “I think a reunion with Steve and Pete would be uphill,” Phil said when asked by Mojo. “Playing with Mike and Tony is the easy option.” Rutherford added: “I know people love the idea that the five of us will get together again, but the songs most people know and love are from the last 40 years. Peter left so long ago. I really don’t know what we could do with him now.” Tony Banks weighed in, too: “As much as I love those early albums, it would be weird to just do songs from that period.” The trio plan to begin their reunion tour in the UK this…

STRYMON COMPADRE £299 Effects guru Strymon has released the Compadre, a dual-voice compressor and boost pedal. Described as offering “true studio-quality analog compression with two distinct voices for smooth transparency or vintage squeeze”, the Compadre also provides a boost circuit that runs from clean to clipped. Your two comp options are Studio, which offers a “smooth, beautifully transparent” compression found in vintage studio gear, and Squeeze, a guitar-pedal-style compression that promotes maximum sustain. The boost function has three EQ settings (treble, mid and flat) and there’s a Dry control that allows you to mix the level of dry signal with the compressed output. www.strymon.net DANELECTRO ’57 £599 Danelectro’s run of retro reissues continues with the ’57 guitar. Like the current catalogue’s ’56 Baritone model (£599), the ’57 features a single-cutaway…

Although, at the time of writing, the nation’s music stores have their doors closed, it seems they are being way more active on social media, and their websites are buzzing with fantastic deals to keep things buoyant. Manufacturers, too, are carrying on within the guidelines, and so new models are still arriving, which is a very positive sign. I’ve also spoken with a few UK builders who have furloughed staff or are operating a minimal production schedule to keep customers happy and orders fulfilled. The point of this being that, when things do return to some semblance of normality, the music world will hopefully be able to pick up again and rebuild. Artists have also been busy, but this time it’s all on social media – not just the famous…

The Beatles acquired a number of other guitars beyond their main instruments, and we’ll consider a selection here. Paul got a Fender Esquire in the first few months of 1967, which he used briefly in the studio, notably on his solo on Good Morning, Good Morning from Sgt Pepper’s. He’d also picked up an Epiphone Texan flat-top in ’64, mainly to use live for Yesterday, but also as a songwriting tool – and he landed another nice acoustic, a Martin D-28, in ’68. A few guitars were used by the band collectively, including a Framus Hootenanny 5/024 flat-top 12-string, picked up around the start of ’65, and a Fender VI, given to the band by Fender along with several other bits of gear in 1968. John got a Martin D-28…

PRICE: £795 ORIGIN: China TYPE: Single-cutaway chambered body electric BODY: Chambered mahogany with carved figured maple (veneer) top NECK: Mahogany (3-piece),‘C’ profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 629mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43mm FINGERBOARD: Bound pau ferro, pearloid block inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium jumbo HARDWARE: Nickel-plated tune-omatic-style bridge with harp tailpiece, vintage-style open-gear tuners with ‘butterbean’ buttons STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: Guild HB-2 humbuckers with nickel covers, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual pickup volume (with pull/push coil-splits) and tone controls WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.52/7.74 OPTIONS: See Aristocrat P-90 RANGE OPTIONS: See gallery over the page LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Trans Black Burst (as reviewed) and Snow Crest White with gold hardware – all gloss polyester PROS Vintage style, weight, good build, pretty versatile old-school voice; excellent modding potential CONS Limited colour…

PRICE: £1,599 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: Mexico TYPE: 13-fret cutaway electro-acoustic TOP: Sitka spruce BACK/SIDES: Koa fine veneer MAX RIM DEPTH: 102mm (4”) MAX BODY WIDTH: 394mm (15.5”) NECK: Select hardwood, Low Profile Velocity neck shape w/ High performance taper SCALE LENGTH: 645mm (25.4”) TUNERS: Nickel-plated, open-geared Grover w/ ‘butterbean’ buttons NUT/WIDTH White Corian/ 44.23mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony, Celestial Bullseye style inlays, 406mm (16”) radius FRETS: 20, medium BRIDGE/SPACING: Ebony w/ compensated Tusq saddle/55mm ELECTRICS: Fishman MX-T w/ Sonicore under-saddle transducer, soundhole-placed volume and tone, phase switch and tuner WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.04/4.5 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: The Mexican-made Road Series is expansive and starts at £839 for the 000-10E all-matt finish LEFT-HANDERS: Not currently FINISH: All gloss natural with satin neck back (as reviewed) PROS Price, design, fingerboard access, electro system and…

THE BACKGROUND PETER COLLISTER, Via email I have a mid-sized pedalboard with a homemade plywood carcass, two plywood decks on split levels, power supply underneath and mostly concealed cabling below the decks. Being left-handed, I have hard-wired jacks in the left-hand side of the carcass so I don’t have a cable trailing across my legs. It works really well, but I wondered about making it look more like a Pete Cornish rig – and also making it a fair bit lighter. Maybe I could take all the pedal innards out and bolt them all up to the underneath of an aluminium top plate within a ply carcass. The question is, is there any reason not to do this in aluminium, such as earthing between pedals? I’m not electrically minded,…

Writer JAMIE DICKSON Guitarist, Editor-in-chief Editor Jamie tackles a recording project without mics or valve tone – but will Kemper’s newest profiling amp be the answer to his prayers? During the first instalment of this test, I decided to try out Kemper’s unique approach to digital amplification because my valve amp, a Dr Z Jaz 20/40 was proving too noisy for home recording. I made a quick call to the good folk at Kemper and they suggested I simply hang on to the Kemper Stage we reviewed back in issue 456 for the duration of this longterm test. “The beauty of the Kemper is that it can lead you to unlikely but luscious-sounding pairings of gear” The Stage is the latest incarnation of Kemper’s profiling hardware and resembles a floor-based…

1. SERIAL NUMBER Six digits impressed into upper rear of headstock; ‘Style E360TD’, ‘Epiphone Riviera’ and corresponding serial number ink-stamped onto rectangular blue label (visible through bass f-hole) 2. HEADSTOCK Elongated profile with bevelled edges; Epiphone logo and oval ‘cloud’ pearl inlays; black finish 3. PLASTICS Two-ply (b/w) truss rod cover with white epsilon logo; three-ply (w/b/w) bevelled edge pickguard with silver epsilon logo; two black pickup surrounds; four metal cap bonnet knobs (two ‘Volume’ and two ‘Tone’); white selector switch tip 4. HARDWARE Nickel-plated hardware: Frequensator tailpiece; ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge with nylon saddles; individual double-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with metal buttons 5. PICKUPS Two patent number (2,737,842) sticker mini-humbuckers with nickel-plated covers; independent volume and tone controls (including four 500kohms pots and two tone capacitors); three-way selector switch; front…

PRICE: £2,899 (inc hard case) ORIGIN: UK TYPE: Round-shoulder dreadnought acoustic TOP: Solid baked Sitka spruce, vintage X-braced, hand-scalloped BACK/SIDES: Solid African mahogany MAX RIM DEPTH: 120.7mm (4.75”) MAX BODY WIDTH: 410mm (16.14”) NECK: African mahogany SCALE LENGTH: 630mm (24.8”) TUNERS: 3-on-a-plate Kluson with plastic buttons NUT/WIDTH: Bone/42mm (1.65”) FINGERBOARD: Santos rosewood (pau ferro) FRETS: 19, medium fine BRIDGE/SPACING: Santos rosewood/56mm (2.2”) ELECTRICS: None OPTIONS: See ‘Maker’s Marks’ box RANGE OPTIONS: Plenty of slope-shoulder choice: the Hawaiian Master, The Thirty Eight, The Nineteen, The Nineteen Deluxe, The Forty Seven and The Thirty Six LEFT-HANDERS: Yes FINISH: Nitrocellulose, aged (as reviewed; gloss also available) Atkin Guitars 01227 719933 https://atkinguitars.com PROS Impeccable build, big tone, versatile, great playability CONS The Gibson it’s modelled after is still available…

Nato: According to Wikipedia, nato is “a collective name for wood from Mora trees – the best-known species are Mora excelsa (Mora) and Mora gonggrijpii (Morabukea)”. Yeah, tell us something we don’t know. The point is that it looks reddish brown enough to allow it to stand in for mahogany. Nato has been used on more affordable guitars for years, and provides a classic look and a light weight with good sustain. Although it’s often referred to as Eastern mahogany, the two timbers are not related.…

What? Recording King RM991 Resonator Where seen? Thomann.de Price? £655 Description? When I’m struggling to find inspiration, it’s often a new bit of gear that gets me back on track.A different type of pick, a pedal I haven’t tried, or a different style of guitar can all do it.To that end, how about this gorgeous-looking resonator from Recording King (a great old name recently brought back to life)? Like all good metal-body resonators, it’s made of nickel-plated bell brass. It also has a round mahogany neck (not square so it can only be used for slide), a rosewood fingerboard and three cones for a complex resonator tone.This looks like a lot of guitar for the money – the big names can retail for over £3,500 – so whether you want…

“BLUES IS BLUES,” says Tora Dahle Aagård in our interview, and while that opens one of the biggest cans of worms in music history, she’s got a point. We can all learn something from the many strands of blues, whether it’s the rawest Delta slide playing or the hippest New York fusion. Every generation adds a novel slant to what has gone before, so let’s learn some new takes on classic licks from this expressive Norwegian guitar-slinger… Example 1 Playing Through Changes THERE’S SOMETHING VERY SATISFYING about finding a symmetrical pattern that works across chord changes. Tora’s use of approach notes here is interesting: she uses the minor 3rd (G over E major) on two different strings, first to target the major 3rd (G#) and then to target the…

George Harrison bought his Futurama from Hessy’s Music Centre in Liverpool in the late 1950s and used it for the next few years until it was retired and replaced with a Gretsch Duo Jet in 1961. The guitar was initially given to the magazine Beat Instrumental as a competition prize, but, surprisingly, when the winner was drawn, he didn’t play guitar and opted to take a cash alternative. The guitar spent the next few decades in the care of Beat Instrumental’s editor Sean Mahoney and was put up for auction at Bonhams in June 2019 but didn’t make its reserve price. Seven Decades’ Phil Hylander subsequently negotiated directly with Mahoney’s family and bought the guitar. “If you look at pretty much any picture from that era, George is holding this…

The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, was released 50 years ago on 8 May 1970. Essentially the soundtrack to Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s ‘making of’ documentary that came out at the same time, the album attracted harshly critical reviews and the film itself was soured by the obvious turmoil within the band as they began to self-destruct. Happily, a new and more optimistic edit by Peter Jackson is due out in September, provisionally titled The Beatles: Get Back, and promising never before seen footage of The Fabs at work.…

Chambered electrics without f-holes (let alone single-cuts) are a rare breed, especially at this price. However, PRS has the well-liked SE Zach Myers (£799, inc gigbag) with its semi-solid construction, single f-hole, figured maple veneered maple top with mahogany back and neck, a pair of 245 ‘S’ humbuckers and adjustable Stoptail bridge. Gretsch’s Duo Jet preceded Guild’s M-75 Aristocrat by a year and was another example of a Les Paul-ish electric but with semi-solid construction. Offering great value for money, the solid-bodied G5230T Electromatic Jet FT in Black With Bigsby (£459 street price) features a chambered mahogany body, includes a licensed Bigsby and comes fitted with dual Black Top Filter’Tron humbuckers. Meanwhile, many of D’Angelico’s contemporary designs come from its illustrious jazz archtop heritage. The Indonesian-made single-cut Premier SS Stairstep…

PRICE: £795 ORIGIN: China TYPE: Single-cutaway chambered body electric BODY: Chambered mahogany with carved spruce (veneer) top NECK: Mahogany (3-piece),‘C’ profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 629mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43.57mm FINGERBOARD: Bound pau ferro, pearloid block inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium jumbo HARDWARE: Nickel-plated tune-omatic-style bridge with harp tailpiece, vintage-style open-gear tuners with ‘butterbean’ buttons STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: Guild Franz P90 soapbar single coils, 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, individual pickup volume and tone controls WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.45/7.59 OPTIONS: See Aristocrat HH RANGE OPTIONS: See gallery over the page LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Vintage Sunburst (as reviewed) PROS As the HH – vintage style, weight, good build and characterful old-school voice CONS No colour choice; no gigbag or lefty option…

Taylor’s 214ce (approx. £1,049) illustrates the friendly rivalry with Martin: it’s made in Mexico, with a Sitka spruce top, ‘layered’ koa back and sides, and a cutaway to maximise the top-fret access. It’s powered by Taylor’s ES electro system. Yamaha’s LL-TA TransAcoustic (approx. £879) is made in China at Yamaha’s own huge facility, and while it’s a 14-fret non-cutaway design, it features the unique ability to add chorus and reverb to its acoustic sound. Perfect at-home guitar? Our third choice here isn’t a traditional acoustic at all but certainly provides some excellent amplified acoustic and electric sounds: Fender’s Acoustasonic Stratocaster (£1,749). Via its doughnut-shaped soundhole, the unplugged acoustic response is certainly good enough for home noodling and practice, but it’s the Fishman-designed acoustic voices that provide diversity and choice, and…

It’s telling that the early videos made by Martin to support the launch of the SC-13E feature very electric guitar-style soundtracks. There are no delicate drop-tuned fingerstyle dabblings to accompany the images. It’s all a little unnerving, a perception that’s not helped in that no sooner do we catch up with Fred Greene than we’re discussing our mutual love of Joe Strummer and The Clash. What on earth is going on? “I’m sitting here with my Telecaster,” explains Fred. “I have a Telecaster because of Joe Strummer. I always like that it feels good, stood up around my neck. I wanted an acoustic guitar that felt that way: not too big, not too heavy,” he explains getting back on topic. “Certain guitars when you stand up and play can either…

Music never stops moving and the current generation of virtuosic but eclectic players are demanding more versatility and performance from their gear than ever before – especially when it comes to pickups. Rabea Massaad is well known from both his work in bands such as Dorje and also from his insightful YouTube demos of new gear. His playing ranges from intense, geometrically precise metal to Hendrixian fusion but also serene soundscapes of clean, contemporary tone. Therefore, making him a signature set of humbuckers to cover all bases without being bland was an intriguing puzzle that Tim Mills of Bare Knuckle Pickups was happy to take on. “Rabea’s used my pickups in his guitars for donkey’s years,” Tim reflects. “He’s a very genuine person and he’s absolutely 100 per cent obsessed…

What was the last guitar you bought and why? “I bought a 1956 Fender Duo-Sonic. I bought it because Luca Benedetti, the guy I play with frequently in Honeyfingers, came over with one and I just fell in love with it. The neck was like this perfect C shape. I mean, it’s a smaller scale, but that said, it just kissed your left hand. And the bevel, where the fingerboard curves on the top and bottom, is so lovely. Not to mention the Desert Sand paint job and the gold anodised pickguard, and somehow the silver volume and tone knobs look perfect. The middle position is just an amazing-sounding configuration. Honestly, the front and back pickups by themselves are wonderfully crappy – real low-fidelity – but that middle position… all…

PRODUCT: Wilkinson by HMI TE 52 guitar kit COST: £500 (approx) TYPE: Excellent quality all-in-one guitar kit, all you need is strings PARTS: Alder body, maple neck with 184mm fretboard radius; Wilkinson hardware and pickups; CRL and CTS electrical components SKILL LEVEL: Intermediate; needs some experience for nut, setup and finish Contact: support@ wilkinsondirect.com Web: www.stewmac.com PROS & CONS PROS Superb quality wood parts, hardware and electrics CONS Too many logo’d parts can spoil a vintage-intended build…

PRICE: £3,399 (inc case) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Offset double-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Okoume with bookmatched flame maple top NECK: Roasted figured maple, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT/WIDTH: Graphite/43mm FINGERBOARD: Roasted maple with dot inlays and hand-rubbed oil and wax finish, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 22, high-profile medium, stainless steel HARDWARE: Chrome ‘Modern Tremolo’ 6-saddle bridge with push-in arm, Schaller M6-IND locking tuners STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 54mm ELECTRICS: 2x Music Man Custom Wound humbuckers, master volume, master tone, 5-way pickup selector blade switch WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.5/7.9 OPTIONS: None. The Ball Family Reserve edition costs £3,999 RANGE OPTIONS: Dual-humbucker w/ vibrato options: StingRay RS, Valentine Tremolo and Steve Lukather (from £2,399, £2,649 & £2,349) LEFT HANDERS: No FINISHES: Honey Suckle (as reviewed), Cobra (roasted maple ’board, black hardware), Boujee Burst and…

There’s no disguising the influence of Gibson’s ubiquitous J-45 on The Forty Three from Atkin. As any connoisseur of acoustic guitars will know, from the model’s outset Gibson never stopped tinkering with its appointments, until recently mostly to its detriment. But with The Forty Three, Alister has settled on what many believe is its finest incarnation. This particular set of features arrived a year after the model’s 1942 debut. So we see the perfectly proportioned round-shouldered dreadnought outline, sultry dark brown sunburst finish, dot-inlaid fingerboard, straight bridge, torty teardrop pickguard, ‘banner’-style headstock with three-on-a-plate Kluson plastic-button tuners, seven-ply black-and-white soundhole rosette, and simple cream body binding. All this is built around a solid mahogany back, sides and neck, plus Santos rosewood fingerboard (pau ferro) and baked Sitka spruce top construction.…

Gibson TV Nine ongoing shows Video When Gibson announced its own online broadcasting ambitions at the beginning of the year, there were no half measures: it already had a feast of guitar goodness ready to go for its web-based TV channel with six regular series now expanded to nine. These include artist-focused formats including Icons going in-depth with Tony Iommi, to My First Gibson, and live acoustic showcase The Songbook. And don’t miss gear extravaganza The Collection, where you’ll see how Paul McCartney guitarist Brian Ray’s enviable Gibson collection is complemented by his Les Paul-shaped swimming pool in sunny Palm Springs. One of our favourite series, however, is The Process, which shines a light on the work and expertise that goes into crafting Gibson’s guitars. The lockdown is inevitably going…

Gretsch G2210 Streamliner Junior Jet Club £269 CONTACT Fender PHONE 01342 331700 WEB www.gretschguitars.com PICKUPS The Broad’Tron humbuckers are best suited to modern rock and punk tones. The stripped-down control layout consists of a master volume, master tone and a three-way pickup switch BODY While Gretsch Jets are usually chambered, the G2210 Streamliner Junior Jet Club features a solid nato body that runs to a depth of 44.45mm (1.75 inches) BRIDGE This Jet comes loaded with a nickel-finish wraparound bridge/tailpiece unit. This Gibson-style design is compensated to improve intonation NECK Unlike pricier Gretsch guitars, the G2210 comes spec’d with a bolt-on neck. The scale length is longer than the traditional Gretsch measurement of 625mm (24.6 inches) – you actually get a Gibson style 629mm (24.75-inch) scale Q&A Is this a…

Hopefully, by the time you read, this things have moved on a bit. But I’m currently writing this column from my home studio in north London, having very little option of being anywhere else at the moment because of the lockdown. I have, however, just finished sending some guitar tracks for an advertising campaign with a well-known media company for my friend Chris Hill – writer, renowned studio bass player and all round gentleman. The ad is an acoustic recreation of the Starship classic Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now and I was required to supply the acoustic guitar tracks. There’s an interesting phenomenon I’ve come across quite a few times, whereby producers don’t want you to sound too polished or practised (the first time I came across this was on…

One of the highlights of the January NAMM show in Anaheim – and doesn’t that feel a world away now – was the vibey display of custom colour SGs and Firebirds on show from Gibson. You couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement gazing at ’64 SG Standard reissues clad in Inverness Green and ’63 Firebirds in Heather Poly, historic custom colours that are vanishingly rare. But as Gibson’s resident vintage guru Mat Koehler explains, new technology has given Gibson the means to take an even more exacting approach to its reissues as the company enters a new era. “We already did a lot of work on hardware,” Mat says.“Last year saw us move to more accurate potentiometers and unpotted pickups. We really felt like now was the time to…

Blank Spaces A Home Away From Home Self-Released Firey indie guitar pop from NYC This is the second album from New York-based artist and producer Blank Spaces, but if you missed his well-regarded debut long-player, Memory Man, you’d do well to get acquainted with this compelling and mercurial follow-up. We’re too often slaves to labels when describing music, but A Home Away From Home is, at root, an album of intelligent indie guitar pop with more virtuosity and fire in the playing than you might typically expect of the genre, making Blank Spaces something of a latter-day Tom Verlaine. Metropolitan in spirit yet wide ranging in its themes, Note To Self’s stark but propulsive guitar lines and declamatory vocals channel Talking Heads, while the syncopated delay patterns of Magnet For…

“I was a huge fan of The Yardbirds when I was a kid. They were my second favourite band behind The Beatles, and it is a great honour to be part of that legacy,” Johnny A. tells us. Having filled some of the biggest shoes in rock ’n’ roll history, however, he’s now treading his own path with a standalone solo show. “It was great to fulfil the experience of playing music under the moniker of a band that influenced me so much as a kid,” he says. “I had a great time doing it, but I’ve been out of The Yardbirds since 2018. That’s when I started doing the solo shows. The completely solo shows. It was a huge undertaking to get that going. And it was a strange…

Stu Sutcliffe was the first bass player in The Beatles, using a ’59 Hofner 500/5, but he left the band in 1961, and soon Paul switched to bass. Paul bought his first bass guitar in Hamburg in 1961. It was a left-handed Hofner 500/1, a type known since as a Beatle Bass or, for its shape, as a violin bass. That ’61 Hofner saw him through the band’s early days, but in 1963 he bought a replacement, using the lefty ’63 500/1 on stage and in the studio throughout the glory years of The Beatles. The pickups provide the main visual clues to tell the two Hofners apart: the pickups of the ’61 bass are close together at the neck, while the ’63 bass has the pickups spaced conventionally at…

GUILD JETSTAR ST £545 The first Newark St model to be made in China instead of Korea, this Jetstar was relaunched in 2018 and is loosely based on the original Guild S-50, one of the first Guild electric solidbodies, originally released in 1963. The Jetstar ST differs from most of the other Newark St models with its 648mm (25.5-inch) scale and features all-mahogany construction with a pau ferro fingerboard. Powering comes from the pair of Guild LB-1 mini-humbuckers. It’s available in Black, Sea Foam Green and Vintage White finishes. “A retro vibe that’s matched by the sounds we hear,” we said in issue 437. GUILD S-100 POLARA £725 While the original S-100 Polara appeared in 1963, it didn’t adopt this more Gibson SG-like style until 1970. This contemporary version was…

The new body shape isn’t the only asymmetric feature of the SC-13E. While Martin’s Fred Greene explains the genesis of the new Low Profile Velocity neck design elsewhere in this feature, the neck “actually morphs from two asymmetric profiles: in the lower positions the bass side is rounder and fuller, the treble side with less of a shoulder – a shape that is virtually reversed in higher positions, the ‘meat’ moving to the treble side”, Martin tells us. The fingerboard is thinner, too: “Part of [the design] is making the neck feel how we wanted it,” says Fred Greene.“Those fingerboards are thinner than what are on our regular guitars.” Despite its electric-like setup, the frets remain very acoustic-like, measuring approximately 1.92mm wide by 0.9mm high on a fingerboard radius of…

Today, we have more information than ever about the vast topic of vintage Fender finishes. However, the line where science meets art can often get blurry and so the subject remains full of conflicting facts and opinions from the top down. Manufacturing techniques and materials have chopped, changed and evolved over time, along with the personal touches of those who were working in the factory, and it seems there have always been exceptions to the ‘rules’. Consequently, over the years, much confusion has arisen with regards to the dark art of guitar finishing, despite some well-established truths. Here we aim to furnish you with a good handful of that demystifying knowledge… 1 BLONDE Traditionally applied to ash-bodied Fender guitars, blonde was the standard transparent finish on Fender’s first solidbody…

1957 CMI purchases Epiphone and production relocates to Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory 1958 Gibson ES-335T introduced (same dimensions as Riviera) 1962 Riviera E360TD introduced; Royal Tan finish 1963 Transition from short ‘open book’ headstock to elongated type begins 1964 Nut width begins to transition from 1 11/16 to 1 9/16 inches 1965 Riviera 12-string (E360TD-12) introduced; Royal Tan or “shaded” sunburst finish 1966 Cherry & Sparkling Burgundy finishes (E360TDC/-12); ‘reflector’ & ‘witch hat’ knobs 1967 Tremotone vibrato tailpiece (E360TDV/C); peak production (over 1,400 Rivieras shipped) 1968 Production declines by around 77% 1969 Discontinued…

Difficulty 10 mins per example Tutor: Richard Barrett | Gear used: Fender Strat, Keeley Boss SD-1 mod, Audient Sono What Are You Implying? DUE TO ISOLATION, this Headlines is audio-only, which we hope will tide us over until we find a new normal, and deals with spelling out chords or harmony when soloing – a useful skill in a trio with just bass and drums. Listen to The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream and the John Mayer trio to see what I mean. As a soloist on guitar, this context gives a great deal of freedom, and also carries the responsibility of outlining the underlying chords/ harmony, at least some of the time! Listen to Little Wing or Tal Farlow play Here’s That Rainy Day and you’ll hear chords, triads and…

LARRY CARLTON TRIO The Paris Concert This album showcases more of Larry’s blues side, stripped of the production and overdubs you hear on many of his studio releases. We get to hear how he manages to put across Room 335 with just bass and drums, plus the laid-back blues of Cold Gold, and the funky doublestops and overdriven lead lines of The Prince. Larry’s deft touch with the guitar’s controls to manipulate the tone from moment to moment is in evidence throughout. JIMI HENDRIX Band Of Gypsys Here’s another live trio – Jimi, Billy Cox and Buddy Miles – coming from a very different angle to Larry Carlton. However, give it a listen and you’ll find that the combination of lead and rhythm ideas using chord voicings, doublestops, octaves and…