Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2022 i Guitarist

This year’s beautiful crop of award-winning instruments in our Gear Of The Year feature (page 60) highlights that, for all the right reasons, it’s harder than ever to decide how to spend your budget when it comes to upgrading your rig. Not only is the range of quality guitar brands wider than ever, but the quality of entry-level gear is frankly astonishing. Guitars such as those in Gretsch’s Streamliner range or Epiphone’s Crestwood Custom really do make you wonder if you need much more to get the job done. And yet, at the top end of the market, there are guitars that offer possibly the best performance and tone from a new guitar there’s ever been, including during the 50s golden era of the big USA makers. The PRS Paul’s…

It’s fair to say Alan Entwistle is a walking encyclopaedia of the electric guitar with considerable knowledge of the instrument’s early years. But rather like Trev Wilkinson (the pair have considerable shared history), until the pandemic Alan spent most of his time working in China, designing and developing guitars for a number of brands. “I constantly travel back and forth from China,” Alan tells us, “although currently I can’t get back due to the pandemic. I work with a couple of factories in China: the main one produces Burns and Revelation, and the other one produces the high-end Burns guitars. I’ve been doing that for about a decade now. I was working with Tanglewood, too, but that stopped, which is why I revived the Revelation brand, including a version of…

Pat Martino died on 1 November 2021, at the age of 77, after suffering with chronic respiratory disorder, which had forced him to stop performing back in 2018. He leaves a legacy of b being one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time, and a also achieved one of the most remarkable comebacks for any musician. Some 13 years after his 1967 debut album as a bandleader with El Hombre and a run of seminal albums including 1974’s Consciousness, Martino suffered an aneurysm and the resulting surgery left him with amnesia and no recollection of his career or how to play g guitar. His long recovery and comeback, marked by 1 1987 live album The Return, was remarkable, and is traced in the acclaimed 2008 documentary, Martino Unstrung. A…

Artist: Nigel Price Organ Trio Album: Wes Reimagined (Ubuntu Music) Wes is such a wonderful inspiration for so many players – what was your motivation for doing the album? “Wes has been such an inspiration to so many generations of jazz guitar players. He just had a very direct, sort of melodic approach. And he’s such a massive, massive entity. I think that sooner or later, every jazz guitarist is going to be confronted by his legacy – it’s pure and honest and open. When it all boils down to it, he’s the man, basically. I guess I’ve sort of been known as the Wes guy for years and years. And I was never really that guy – not really – it’s just that I was kind of keeping people…

What? Cordoba C9 ‘Crossover’ Cedar Top, Slim Neck Where seen? www.gak.co.uk Price? £747 Many players love the sound of a nylon-string guitar but are put off by their large necks and wide, flat fingerboards. Several manufacturers now make ‘crossover’ guitars – essentially classical in style and sound but with narrower necks and radiused ’boards. Cordoba has a great reputation for hand-building quality classicals at very reasonable prices. So if you’re thinking of taking the plunge, GAK online currently has the C9 Cedar for a very reasonable £747. It features a solid cedar top, solid mahogany back and sides with rosewood binding, and that much more playable mahogany neck with rosewood fingerboard. It’s a purely acoustic instrument, so you’d need to fit a pickup system should you want to use it live,…

“I can’t speak for anyone else, but the lockdown months have changed my approach to the guitar: I’ve come out the other end with a definite less-is-more approach. The first casualty of this new mindset was my pedalboard. Instead, I strapped on my Les Paul, plugged straight into my amp and clipped on a headstock tuner. “Of course, working like this puts extra focus on your volume and tone controls (not to mention your amp!). I’ve always used them, but with no solo boost I now need to make the guitar do everything. I’m winding the volume way down for my cleaner rhythm tones, so I can edge it up a little for more crunch – then full up for maximum bluster. The tone control needs to earn its living,…

“I started playing slide because I fell in love with the sound. Years later, little has changed. While many great slide players, such as Mick Taylor, play in standard tuning with a pretty regular setup, I prefer a dedicated guitar tuned to open G or E but not set too heavily in terms of string gauge or height. And while Elmore James still inspires me, spend a little time with Derek Trucks and you’ll realise what a slide can do. Whatever your level, stick a bottleneck on your finger and you’ll be noticed: a simple overdub on a recording is just as effective as a face-melting solo. My favourite slide guitar of the year? Fender’s Acoustasonic Jazzmaster. It’s easy to set up with its Micro-Tilt, and you can get a…

EVENTIDE ULT RATAP Reviewer Trevor Curwen called the UltraTap “one of the most impressive delay pedals you can get your hands on”, and here’s why. Standard delays generate regular repeats that are all the same time interval apart. Multi-tap delays, by contrast, let you add extra ‘taps’, yielding powerful rhythmic, atmospheric effects as echoes propagating at different rates cascade into one another. The UltraTap is based on the idea of a multi-head tape echo, except one that features up to 64 virtual heads. Sonically, this grants you “a comprehensive resource for creating a variety of rhythmic delays, atmospheric ambiences, swells and modulations”. A remarkable sound-shaper that goes way beyond standard delay tones. Price: £279 Website: www.eventideaudio.com UNIVERSAL AUDIO ASTRA MODULATION MACHINE Universal Audio made its name with authentic plug-in emulations…

“Not a mod in its strictest sense, but this did involve modifying how a certain instrument played and looked. My great friend and bandmate of 35 years, Roger Newell, died recently. I wanted a musical keepsake so his widow, Gilly, sold me his stage Fender Precision; he’d used it with us on literally thousands of gigs. It’s actually an early JV Squier and I’ve played it many times when Rog and I swapped instruments to do the instrumental Diamonds. Rog liked his basses to fight back, so the action was scary and it had mighty hawsers for strings. It also hadn’t been cleaned or set up for decades, so that was last weekend’s task: new D’Addario 0.045 to 0.0105 nickel bass strings, a thorough clean of the rosewood ’board, a…

CREAM T AURORA STANDARD 2PS £2,499 CONTACT Cream T Guitars PHONE 01695 570023 WEB www.creamtguitars.com What You Need To Know 1 What’s the deal here and who the heck is Cream T? Regular readers will know of Cream T pickups and its designer Thomas Nilsen, not least for the way that he creates his pickups by making scans of original vintage pickups via his ‘bonkers’ Oracle box. A classic case of snake oil and smoke and mirrors, we thought… until we started using them. Like a certain Mr Gibbons, we were impressed. 2 So Billy Gibbons has actually designed this guitar? Yes – along with Thomas, of course, Billy has put on his guitar designer’s hat to create a brand-new model. 3 And what’s special about the pickup here, then?…

With the ability to revoice the guitar in seconds, it’s like having a mini vintage guitar collection The Aurora range starts with the all-mahogany Standard 2 (£1,999); the Standard 2PS (£2,499, as reviewed) is the same guitar but includes pickup swapping and an extra set of pickups. The Custom adds a thin maple top and a little more decoration; the MP2 (£2,499) features fixed pickups, while the MP2PS (£2,999) has pickup swapping. Moving on up and the BFGT2 (£3,499) shifts the specification more towards the needs of Billy F Gibbons, so we get the same three controls (but with no pickup-selecting toggle switch) and a Music City wraparound single-piece bridge. The BFGT2PS (£3,999) adds pickup swapping. A final limited-edition model, personally signed by Billy, the BFGT1PS (also £3,999) comes in…

The majority of us probably rarely think about what’s inside our guitar pedals. We like the thought of them being mystic devices created by sonic magicians, with access to unobtanium unicorn dust. However, I honestly think that the narrative becomes even more magical when you understand the story behind some of the crucial components in there. So let’s take a quick look at the PT2399 and FV-1 chips and how they helped shape the pedal scene as we know it today. PT2399 CMOS ECHO/ DELAY CHIP This pivotal integrated delay circuit was developed in the late 90s by Princeton Technology. With a delay time ranging from 30ms to 340ms, it was originally designed for adding slapback delays and reverberating sounds to karaoke machines and entertainment systems. But it quickly became…

What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money? “My parents gifted me the first guitar that I ever played, which was an Alvarez acoustic. It was one of those deals where if you walk into a big guitar store, they’re on display and you can snag them for Christmas or something like that. That was my first acoustic. And then when I was a young teenager I worked at a little ice cream store and saved up money. The first guitar I bought was on a super impulse, based on what it looked like and based on the price. I bought a Silvertone – the one that has the amp built into the case. “In retrospect, I wish I had bought something like a vintage…

1. SERIAL NUMBER ‘A’-prefixed five-digit serial number 2. HEADSTOCK Multiple-bound; flowerpot motif and Gibson logo pearl inlays; black nitrocellulose finish 3. HARDWARE Gold-plated: Bigsby vibrato; Kluson metal keystone tuners; Tune-o-matic bridge with rosewood base; pickguard bracket 4. NECK Two-piece maple (with mahogany centre strip); 23 ½-inch scale length; 1 5/8-inch nut width; multiple-bound 22-fret ebony fingerboard with pointed end; pearl block inlays; 14th-fret body join; custom cherry nitrocellulose finish 5. BODY Carved spruce top; solid maple back and sides; 17 by 21 by 2 ¼ inches (w/l/d); single Venetian cutaway; seven-ply top binding; three-ply back binding; bound f-holes; custom cherry nitrocellulose finish 6. PLASTICS Personalised cellulose nitrate pickguard reads ‘Custom Crafted for Buddy Long’; two-ply (b/w) ‘bell’ truss rod cover; two black pickup surrounds; four black bonnet knobs; white switch…

MATT SCHOFIELD FAR AS I CAN SEE The combination of chordal and pentatonic ideas is integral not just to Matt’s solos but his chord figures and embellishments. Check out Clean Break to hear this in action. The Day You Left also clearly displays how comfortable he is mixing CAGED/chordal and pentatonic approaches. You’ll also hear this happening fast on the uptempo swing of Everything; the harmony and chordal structure is there, but you’ll hardly, if ever, hear a whole chord explicitly played. KIRK FLETCHER SHADES OF BLUE Kirk really is a master of combining chordal and pentatonic ideas seamlessly in a variety of musical scenarios. Check out his aggressive Chuck Berry-tinged playing on Blues For Boo Boo. Country Girl showcases how he can keep the rhythm part harmonically detailed and…

Picture a modern take on the single-cut and there’s every chance that what springs to mind is ESP’s Eclipse – a refined example of the classic format where the fat has been trimmed and slick, glossy precision replaces dust and mojo. The ESP Eclipse is the single-cut for people who are less interested in tradition and, as with much of the brand’s identity, has attracted a number of players who spend their time on the ‘red channel’; James Hetfield, Alex Skolnik, Lamb Of God’s Will Adler and Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher are all examples of players who have chosen a blackout over a ’Burst. Except the Eclipse is no longer the new kid on the block, as evidenced by our review guitar, the ESP E-II Eclipse Full Thickness. As part of…

In keeping with this issue’s theme of Gear Of The Year, I’ve been thinking about the imminent task of selling some semi-redundant gear. This was catalysed by the fact I’ve recently given up a fairly large storage facility, which I’ve had for a while. So now is the time to decide which bits of gear are totally essential to my work as a professional musician, and which were more ‘want’ rather than ‘need’ purchases… “I once had an amp blow up just before the guitar solo in an orchestral rendition of Purple Rain… It sounded like someone playing the kazoo” My latest purchase is a new Fender hand-wired ’64 Custom Deluxe Reverb. For me, the Fender amp sound is the perfect platform on which to build everything else. I very…

Recently, I saw the conclusion of a special guitar that I was commissioned to build almost a year ago. I was challenged to build what was essentially a traditional fingerstyle guitar using an elegantly figured set of English walnut coupled with a dramatic ‘bearclaw’ Sitka spruce soundboard. This was to be combined with a fingerboard decorated with hand-cut geometric inlays and an asymmetric soundhole rosette. As if that wasn’t enough, I was also encouraged to find some creative ways to make the guitar more ergonomic. “Once you have acquired the technical skills necessary to build a musical instrument, one is obliged to probe the boundaries of the craft” Readers of this column will likely know by now that I have fairly strong feelings towards innovation in hand-built guitar making. Once…

Just in case you were wondering, ‘consolidated’ is not a theoretical term – though I thought it might be a good idea to bring a few different 9ths together in one place, highlighting their differences and similarities both in music theory and on the fretboard. This can help when dealing with all manner of extended chords and harmony in a variety of genres. I’m dealing with a couple of different sub-categories here. Major or minor is something I’ll assume we’re all familiar with. However, major or minor 7ths are also very significant once we start extending chords. With no disrespect intended to the 6th, 7ths really are the bedrock of extended chords. While the 9th, 11th and 13th add detail and melody, unless these are raised or lowered (known as…

Want to see something in the mag? Tell us at guitarist@futurenet.com Perhaps Guitarist magazine could occasionally feature a spot called ‘Reader’s Rigs’ where readers could provide details and pictures of their guitar setups for other readers’ general interest? Tony Bilny, via email Great idea, Tony, we’ll give it a whirl. If you fancy sending your rig in to be featured in these pages, send us a clear, high-resolution digital pic by email of your guitar, amp and pedalboard setup along with up to 100 words on why it puts a smile on your face when you play. We’ll print the best here.…

“I first came across the concept of a pedalboard as a young teenager in the late 80s when a hip older guy showed me his Boss BCB-6 – a pedalboard that was released in 1983 and the same one used by pioneering electric guitar players such as by Les Paul, Gary Moore and Robert Smith. “These days, teenagers eloquently debate the merits of various pedalboard switching systems, but back then I barely knew the difference between fuzz and overdrive. I was intrigued. ‘What was a compression?’ ‘Why is a chorus?’ ‘Where is fuzz?’ Et cetera. Within a few years I was confidently hauling a fully loaded BCB-6 around to gigs and rehearsals myself. “Fast-forward a few misspent decades and here I am returning to the source of inspiration with a…

“A lesson I relearned this year was that an acoustic guitar becomes a totally different beast once you plug it into an amp. I’ve been saying it for years in reviews of electro-acoustics, but it still surprised me when I had occasion to spend some serious practice time with an amp recently. Having been booked for a gig in the early part of 2022, I thought it was a good chance to take a look at the gear I traditionally use when playing live. Before now, I’ve used a Yamaha AG Stomp – a remarkable preamp/multi-effects unit and microphone modeller that has served me well in the past. This time around, though, I thought I’d use an amp, the Da Capo 75 coming along at just the right time. The…

“Soldering is a handy skill for guitarists – as long as you remember to stay away from the hot bit. Even with years of experience, it only takes a split-second lapse of concentration to inflict injuries that can take weeks to repair. I recently did a long-overdue rewire of my pedalboard, replacing a fickle loop switch with Lehle’s excellent Little Lehle III, and a gannet’s nest of co-ax with homemade patch leads for the neatest result. After impetuous enthusiasm nearly burnt me big time on the first plug, I took a deep breath and repeated the mantra ‘fingers first’ as I slowly and carefully made 24 solder connections. A muddy initial result was traced to one imperfect joint, and after a cautious resolder I had the best-sounding pedals I’ve heard…

BEETRONICS VEZZPA OCTAVE STINGER We’ve long been fans of Filipe Pampuri’s powerful effects that combine arresting fuzz and drive tones with a playful aesthetic. His latest, the Vezzpa, brings together a wonderfully scuzzy fuzz with a ‘stinger’ mode (toggled with a double-tap of the footswitch) that delivers electrifying Jimi-style, up-octave lead tones. Though the Vezzpa mounts only two controls, Sustain and Volume, there’s plenty of scope to sculpt sound. Turning down the Sustain yields a classic op-amp fuzz, while winding up Sustain yields a gated, high-gain fuzz with ripped-Velcro fuzztones that slam on and off with abruptness. The digital footswitch also permits momentary engagement of the whole effect for performance options. Price: £199 Website: www.beetronicsfx.com BROWNE AMPLIFICATION PROTEIN DUAL OVERDRIVE If there’s a serious pretender to the crown worn by…

“I’ve made two significant purchases this year. The first was a new wiring loom from Axesrus.co.uk for a partscaster Strat. This particular guitar was originally put together by Martyn Booth back in 1992. Over the years I’ve replaced the pickups but never got around to replacing the wiring, which had worn out over time. It now has CTS 250k pots, Orange Drop caps, an Oak Grigsby five-way switch and Switchcraft jack socket and is reborn as one of my favourite instruments. The other purchase was a Fender Mustang Micro headphone amp that I bought because I live in a flat and don’t often get the chance to play through an amp at volume there. It’s a handy little device with a good array of modelled amps, the ‘60’s British’ being…

Judging by our inbox, the interest in modding continues unabated and I’d like to apologise right now for the products, parts and projects I’ve not had time to squeeze into The Mod Squad this past year. Aside from detailing my own modding adventures, quite a few of our staff have requested a little help… Our editor-in-chief asked me to revoice his Telecaster; our art editor’s mate needed an overhaul on his lowly Squier Showmaster (which I still haven’t finished!); and one of our commercial team wanted a pickup to be installed on his Shergold. I think I might have to put my rates up… But many, many now very famous guitar makers all started by repairing guitars, citing that it’s where they learned about instruments – the good and bad…

As to the pickup swapping, the Trinity by Relish guitar (€699) is available in three colours; extra sets of Relish and other brand pickups start at €249. Relish’s Swiss-made guitars start with the Mary (from €3,499). The Modern strand of Gibson’s current catalogue includes its solderless Quick Connect system for the pickups. It’s not an instant way to swap out pickups, but if you can use a screwdriver it doesn’t take very long at all. Guitars such as the Les Paul Classic (with a street price of £1,799) and the Studio (£1,399) come recommended from us. Still with Gibson, the USA production Les Paul Special, with dual P-90s and single-piece bridge, streets at £1,349, while the lightly aged Murphy Lab version from the Custom Shop is more costly at £3,799.…

PRICE: £2,499 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: UK TYPE: Single-cutaway, chambered body hardtail electric BODY: 2-piece mahogany NECK: Quarter-sawn mahogany, 59 LP Style profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43.2mm FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, cream acrylic dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium (Jescar FW55090) HARDWARE: Gotoh tune-o-maticstyle bridge and lightweight stud tailpiece, Gotoh SXB510 open-backed tuners – nickel-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm ELECTRICS: Cream T Whiskerbucker humbuckers (with included Duchess P90 single coil and Banger & Mash), 3-way toggle pickup selector switch, neck and bridge volume controls (with pull-switch coil-spits) and master tone controls WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.69/8.12 OPTIONS: The fixed pickup Standard 2 costs £1,999. Cream T Hiscox hard case adds £75 (if purchased at order). Additional Cream T pickups with Relish mounting add £15 to standard-mount pickups. Other brands will…

The Accomplished Badger from London-based Fredric Effects is a preamp/booster pedal that will provide a degree of colouration to enhance your signal in a specific way. It features two gain stages with an op-amp buffer/ boost driving a germanium transistor gain stage that features individually selected vintage new-old-stock components, tested for optimal gain and low leakage. While the pedal has been around for a few years, what we have here is a new iteration: the MkII version, which now incorporates an internal charge pump so it can run at 18 volts from its nine-volt input, and features an audio-grade Triad output transformer that is said to deliver a more musical saturation and break-up. You also get three DIP switches inside the pedal for more options. A Volume knob controls the…

“I’m playing acoustic guitar, mostly, so I have my two Martin models: the 000-18 and the D-28. I use a [Radial Engineering] Tone Bone, which is a preamp and a DI, and so I can run a line into my effects and then run a line direct into a PA. “In my effects, I have an Xotic EP clean boost and a compressor, the 2026 from Bondi Effects in Australia. I use their Art Van Delay, too, which is modelled on the Boss DM-2. For reverb and echo I have [Strymon’s] El Capistan. Since I finally muscled up the money to get it, it’s been such a great pedal for me, very versatile – it gives me that tape echo I like. I also have this really great overdrive pedal…

“This is a 1958 Fender Precision Bass. It has a white transparent blonde finish over an ash body with a solid maple neck. It comes with its original tweed case and a matching 1958 Fender Bassman amplifier – both in impeccable condition. This bass has a gold anodised pickguard, which Leo Fender started using in 1954 on special orders. They thought a metallic pickguard had good shielding properties, but the 60-cycle hum continued to be a problem. In ’59, the [gold anodised] pickguard was replaced by the more familiar tortoiseshell [cellulose nitrate] ’guard and rosewood ’boards became standard. In the late 50s, a variety of custom colours were available, but the regular Precision Bass finish was sunburst, moving from a two- to three-tone sunburst in February 1958. “This beautiful guitar…

PRICE: £2,499 (inc case) ORIGIN: Japan TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Mahogany with maple cap/ flamed maple veneer NECK: Mahogany, set-through SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/42mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony with Flag inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, extra jumbo HARDWARE: Gotoh tune-o-maticstyle bridge and tailpiece, Gotoh Magnum Lock locking tuners, Dunlop strap locks – black-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 50mm ELECTRICS: 2x Fishman Fluence Classic Open Core, bridge volume, neck volume, master tone – pull-push pots access the extra sounds WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.84/8.45 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: Vintage Honeyburst version w/ Seymour Duncan 59/JB and Black Natural Burst w/ EMG 66TW/57TW (both £2,220) LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Tobacco Sunburst (as reviewed) – high gloss with satin neck back Sound Service +49 (0)30 7071 300 www.espguitars.com PROS Sits nicely between vintage and modern…

Gentlefolk of a certain age might well remember Watkins’ Rapier models the first time around. For the rest of us, they’re a footnote, a nod back to the time when us Brits made guitars in considerable numbers. But like any modern retro repro, the backstory is irrelevant to the quality and price of the instrument on offer – and that’s what we’re concentrating on here. Although at a lowly full list price of £429, this new Chinese-made Rapier 33 doesn’t exactly inspire confidence… Well, let’s scotch that right here and now: this is not only a very tidily made guitar, it also has a very in-tune vibrato system and one of the most creatively bonkers control circuits we’ve ever encountered. Straight out of the box it plays really well, it’s…

PRICE: £429 ORIGIN: China TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric bolt-on BODY: Okoume NECK: Canadian maple, soft ‘C’ profile, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech NuBone/ 42.9mm FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, pearloid dot markers, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium, plus larger gauge zero fret HARDWARE: Original-style Rapier Hi Lo vibrato with roller saddle tune-omatic-style bridge, Wilkinson E-Z-Lok tuners – chromed-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm ELECTRICS: 3x Alan Entwistle EWR64 mini-humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector, 2x slide switch (middle pickup on/off; bass-cut), volume 1 (bridge and neck), volume 2 (middle), master tone WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.44/7.58 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: None LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Fiesta Red (as reviewed), 3 Tone Sunburst, Arctic White, Daphne Blue – all gloss including neck back and headstock John Hornby Skewes & Co. Ltd 01132 865381 www.jhs.co.uk PROS…

Sönke Meinen Spark Independent Release Second album from solo acoustic guitar master Sönke Meinen’s debut album, Perpetuum Mobile, was a top-seller with almost two million plays on streaming platforms as well as very healthy physical sales. He’s also a prize-winning instrumentalist as well as a seasoned performer, and here he’s taken on the roles of composer, player and producer of his follow-up release, Spark. The album trips across many genres, the lilting new-age resonance of the opener Prologue is contrasted with the athletic thrust ofSparklemuffin and the classically influenced tour de force Harlequin’s Waltz. The bulk of the album was recorded using a specially built crossover nylon-string guitar, with just two tracks on steel-string. Meanwhile, there are beautiful string arrangements accompanying tracks Song For The Dreamers and Heartland, which add…

You may recall that last year I recorded the first ever album of my own compositions and called it The Blues Headlines. I had a bunch of CDs made up and Mick is still kindly selling them from the That Pedal Show shop. My mate Adrian Nash, who played all the keys and sang harmonies on my album, has produced one of his own, called Straight Lines, with many of the musicians overlapping. So we had an idea… Another friend does the marketing for Komedia, an immensely cool venue in Bath, and she suggested we have a combined album launch event where we play both of them live with a full band. Both albums will go up on the streaming platforms that day, too. “With fewer than 100 days until…

Normally, this column focuses on maximising your guitar tone, from fitting new pickups to tweaking amplifier settings. But what if your very ability to hear the sound of your guitar in detail started slipping away? Sadly, that’s exactly what happens to too many players – including luminaries such as Brian Setzer and Paul Gilbert – and often it is a permanent condition. Hearing damage is an occupational hazard for anyone who likes to play loud, but its legacy can be a lifetime of being dogged by tinnitus (intrusive ‘phantom’ sounds, such as persistent ringing in the ears) or the permanent loss of important parts of your hearing range. It’s a nightmare scenario for any musician, but it’s also totally avoidable, says Tom Trones, the Norwegian founder of Minuendo, a maker…

Jerry Cantrell is speaking to Guitarist from Los Angeles where, earlier this year, he finished work on his latest solo album, Brighten. Following up 2002’s Degradation Trip, the ‘lockdown record’ was a colossal team effort that spanned the breadth of the country from LA to New York during some of the most challenging times the music industry has ever faced. But then again, “I don’t remember any record I’ve made being easy,” says the Alice In Chains guitarist. “When you’ve been doing this as long as we have, you’ve got the benefit of knowing you’ve got there before. So when there are moments of doubt, you recognise that it’s just part of the process.” How do you maintain your excitement for Alice In Chains? “It’ll be 34 years in December…

“This year’s main electric purchase was an interesting mongrel that I found on sale at World Guitars in Stonehouse. Nestled among a host of sparkling new PRS and Tom Anderson instruments, I spotted what looked like an early 70s Tele Custom with a high-gloss natural finish body plus original electronics and hardware. Closer inspection revealed it had a lovely neck, with honey-coloured lacquer and even a little figuring. The body, however, was a Warmoth replacement. You could tell because it was the proper shape for a Tele – original mid-to-late 70s Teles lost their classic outline due to worn-out tooling at Fender. It turned out the guitar was a project of the late Jeff Pumfrett, who ran World Guitars for many years. It sounded great so I bought it for…

“As 2021 dawned, I was sure my current set of instruments was what I’d still have at the end. How wrong was I? First, I decided I needed a home recorder to jot ideas down, so duly bought a Zoom R16 on which I quickly wrote and recorded a song then never touched it again. Next was a Fiesta Red Custom Shop Fender Precision; I actually bought this outright, but it’s now gone (as you’ll discover in my commentary on page 76). I then traded my Martin OM-28 Reimagined for a CS Gibson Hummingbird, purely as a stage guitar for its spectacular looks. It’s brilliant, too. “Then came the Daphne Blue Telecaster that I’d so hankered after but which, when it came, didn’t match my ’52-style Butterscotch one. So that…

2021 saw a return to the live stage for many artists and so we were curious to find out what gear they had been buying to power their performances ANDY TIMMONS “I’m really enjoying the Mesa California Tweed amp: exquisite clean tones and it takes pedals well. Also I’m extremely happy to have the new Keeley Halo on my ’board now. It’s my signature dual echo pedal that’s been in the works for a couple of years, being released early 2022.” PAUL GILBERT “I bought a drum set! Wait… you probably want guitar gear. I got a Marshall SV20C amp and put it right next to me so I can feel the air move. And I’m also getting my slide-magnet installation down to a science. First, I get a neodymium…

“Like fellow Guitarist writer Rod Brakes, I’ve been building a smaller pedalboard this year. I needed a light, compact ’board with clean power but only the essentials, tonally, for those times where you just want to carry a small combo and a minimum of effects to a gig. I boiled those ‘essentials’ down to two drive pedals (which chop and change as needed), a J Rockett Tranquilizer phaser, a delay, a Free The Tone Ambi Space digital reverb, and a Boss RC-10R looper, then mounted the lot on a small wooden board bolted to angled steel feet made for the purpose by Wolfmeister. With limited space, it’s tempting to choose a pedal that ‘does it all’, so I fitted a Boss DD-7 delay that could do everything from reverse delay…

“It took us a while to get into a groove, especially with writing together. We could always see the potential, but it took nearly 10 years for us to find it”GRACE BOND In a world where military-grade hype seems to power most of the music industry, it’s refreshing to witness a record spring almost out of nowhere because it’s such a strong, feral slice of rock ’n’ roll that you’re compelled to pay attention. Such was We Fly Free, the debut album by East Anglian husband-and-wife duo Aaron and Grace Bond. Despite being launched in the Covid-blighted year of 2020, the record lit up the lockdown airwaves like a stray firework and saw the pair take four British Blues Awards in the same year, the first album to do so…

BENSON Germanium Boost £219 Featuring a single rotary knob, this USA-made boost pedal has an error correction circuit to correctly bias the germanium transistor so it is impervious to component drift, leakage and sensitivity to temperature. EXPRESSO FX Germanium Boost £189 This boost with NOS Mullard Germanium transistors features seven different voicings accessed through a stepped rotary switch – achieved using seven separate, high-quality NOS capacitors and not by simply adding a tone stack. XOTIC RC Booster V2 £179 This latest version includes the same 20dB of clean boost as the original RC Booster (discontinued in 2017) but has a second independently footswitchable gain channel for fatter tones. Two-band EQ offers up to 15dB of boost or cut.…

For anyone who missed the review in last month’s issue, the Da Capo 75 is a brand-new acoustic amp from designer Udo Roesner, the man responsible for the AER Compact 60. Visually it’s very similar, but Udo has rethought his AER creation and carefully enriched the Da Capo with new features, while enhancing practically everything that made the Compact 60 such a milestone for live acoustic performance in the first place. Basically, the Da Capo is a two-channel 75-watt amp with built-in effects that has a comprehensive EQ section, a custom designed twin-cone speaker, an effects loop and just about every output a soundman could possibly ask for. In short, we liked it very much and instantly decided that further probing was called for, hence its presence here as a…

The year 1954 was a watershed one for Gibson. For the first time in the company’s history, electric guitars outsold acoustics. In the post-war era, musical tastes were changing fast and Gibson rose to the occasion in order to meet demand at every opportunity. After Ted McCarty came onboard in 1948 as CEO (soon to be president) of Gibson, the company hit one home run after another: the perennially popular ES-175 in 1949; the flagship L-5CES and Super 400CES electric archtops in 1951; and its first solidbody, the Les Paul Model, in 1952. By ’55, the Les Paul range had expanded to include four other models – the Custom, Special, Junior and TV – and total sales figures show a steady increase year-on-year as the solidbody electric guitar continued to…

CAGED Blues Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs Choptank & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 10 mins per example IN CASE THE TITLE had you wondering, CAGED is an acronym comprising five essential chord shapes. Though these are easiest (by far) to play in the open position, the shapes give us patterns to work with all over the fretboard. Barre chords using the E and A shapes are the most common and easily used examples, but the point here is not to play whole chords, just to be aware of where the shapes occur on the fretboard. A good example – and one I’ve used frequently in my solo this month – is the open C chord shape in a few different positions. Doing this with a barre is…