Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2022 i Guitarist

This month’s cover feature interview with Eric Gales captures an artist at one of those rare, special moments when they reach their peak potential – all the years of blood, sweat and tears suddenly crystallise into an album that has impact and art that goes beyond anything they did before, no matter how high that bar was already set. Sometimes these ‘high-water mark’ albums are worked on for years before release, like a slow train coming over the horizon towards brilliant fruition. Other times, they just seem to represent a moment when the camera shutter (musically speaking) snapped shut on an artist in full flow, on the form of a lifetime – you might say that BB King’s famous Live At The Regal was a fine example of that. Other…

Working as founder of PJD Guitars and the newly formed guitar manufacturing hub UKGB, Leigh Dovey has had a busy year. In addition to his own brand, Leigh oversees the production of Cream T Guitars and the imminent Seth Baccus range. After the Cream T Aurora guitars, originally conceived by Billy F Gibbons and Thomas Nilsen, the Crossfire seems a more straightforward, cheaper-to-make design, correct? “Yes, this was a lot easier in terms of design and build for obvious reasons. Firstly, of course, it’s a bolt-on slab-body guitar, plus we’re now a lot more comfortable using the Relish pickup-swapping [system] after developing the Aurora. So the design was basically me and Tim Lobley [Sound Affects owner and co-founder of Cream T Guitars] getting our heads together on this one. Tim…

PRICE: €2,758 (inc hardcase) ORIGIN: Czech Republic TYPE: Grand Concert TOP: Western red cedar BACK/SIDES: Indian rosewood MAX RIM DEPTH: 115mm MAX BODY WIDTH: 394mm NECK: African mahogany SCALE LENGTH: 650mm TUNERS: Gotoh 510 Silver Patina NUT/WIDTH: 45mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony FRETS: 20 BRIDGE/SPACING: Ebony/55mm WEIGHT (LB/KG): 4.5/2.04 OPTIONS: Custom orders have a range of options available including nut width from 43mm-48mm: see website for details RANGE OPTIONS: Furch’s Yellow range includes the Yellow CR (€2,300),Yellow SR (€2,355), Yellow Master’s Choice (€2,728) and the Yellow Deluxe SR (€2,810) LEFT-HANDERS: Not on this model FINISH: Full pore gloss Furch Guitars +420 519 417 285 www.furchguitars.com PROS Quality build with a distinctive, contemporary sound CONS Some traditionalists may be put off by the above…

It’s difficult to pigeonhole Bill Orcutt’s inimitable, improvised, skeletal style of music, which sees him disregard the A and D strings on his guitar. His current album, Made Out Of Sound, with drummer Chris Corsano, has been described as “not-not-jazz”, whereas his solo acoustic work has veered more towards the blues, albeit in abstract. In the 90s, when he played as one of noise-trio Harry Pussy, his electric playing was full on and aggressive, while more recent records, after a decade-long hiatus, have demonstrated a more reserved side (for Bill), with moments of space and quiet interspersed with slashes of manic picking and howling. Back On The Horse When we speak to Bill, it’s the morning after a live solo show in San Francisco, his first in three years. “I…

Artist: Larry McCray Album: Blues Without You (KTBA Records) “Ihave some friends that used to tell me that Joe Bonamassa would play my music on his radio programme. So, of course, I didn’t believe it. And those same friends had been telling me, ‘Why don’t you reach out to Joe?’ The same friends that told me to reach out put me in touch with musician Larry Mitchell, who had a direct contact to Joe. I got the contact and sent Joe a text saying, ‘Joe, this is bluesman Larry McCray, just reaching out to see if there are any opportunities that we might be able to do something together?’ I know he had just done a record with Joanna Connor the year before, so I knew there was a possibility…

What? Fender 60th Anniversary Jaguar, Mystic Dakota Red Where seen? www.coda-music.com Price? £2,449 Here’s that ‘other’ Fender offset. Doesn’t it look spectacular in this new custom colour? The Jaguar – with its shorter 610mm (24-inch) scale length, extra metal plate for those ‘auxiliary’ rhythm tones, and in this iteration bound neck with pearloid block inlays on a round-lam rosewood ’board – looks jaw-dropping. This one (like my Jazz) has the matching painted headstock, and at its launch in 1962 was Fender’s premium offering. Several dealers have these in stock, but Coda currently boasts a fabulous array of Fender offsets, so if this one didn’t float your boat there are several that might. These guitars don’t come cheap, and several of Coda’s sit way north of four grand. But cripes, they do…

Left Standing: So there I was, all ready to buy myself a richly deserved present in the form of a new Guitarist t-shirt. As I already have the large-logo one, I thought I would throw my hard-earned down on one with a small logo… but, wait, what’s this? They are apparently only offered in left-handed versions. How else could one explain why the logo is over the left breast, right where the guitar strap of a right-handed player would be? I suppose I should be happy for the often-overlooked lefties, but it feels a bit too much like the discrimination those guitarists have faced from manufacturers down the years. So I’m off down the barricades like it’s 1968 all over again. What do we want? Right-handed shirts! When do we…

Anyone who has witnessed Eric Gales live will agree that he fully deserves his newfound status as blues-rock royalty. But his guitar vocabulary extends way beyond just those domains as it incorporates elements of jazz, funk, soul and gospel within its compass, all channelled into what he describes as his “upside-down and backwards” playing style. Touring to promote his new album, Crown, he recently wowed audiences across the UK with the unstoppable force of his live performance, a canny blend of showmanship and unbelievable chops. “Everybody is actually blown away, man,” he tells us as we settle down for a cuppa in the Guitarist studio. “And the response and the emotion that has been displayed by the audience receiving the material live has been awesome. Everybody’s been really enjoying it.”…

With a new product dropping on its website at 7pm every Friday night, you never quite know what might be coming out of Scott Cameron’s workshop at Golden Era Aged Guitars (previously SC Relics). Ranging from classic custom colours to metal flake finishes, Scott’s skilfully aged Fender-style bodies and necks are works of art in themselves. We asked him about some of the ins and outs when it comes to the tricky business of sparkle finishes. Many people have found refinishing their own guitars to be a satisfying experience. Would you recommend DIY-ing a sparkle finish? “Sparkle finishes are pretty niche and I wouldn’t recommend doing them in your garden shed. This isn’t a case of buying an aerosol from Manchester Guitar Tech or Halfords for a weekend project.” Run…

Fender’s American Ultra Luxe Stratocaster Floyd Rose (£2,399) uses an HSS configuration and comes with a double-locking vibrato along with compound radius fingerboard and 22 jumbo stainless-steel frets. The Mexican-made Player Stratocaster HSH (£739) will get you into the Guthrie vibe with its two-post vibrato, standard 241mm (9.5-inch) radius fingerboard and Player series pickups. PRS’s Fiore (£2,599) was designed with another hardworking guitarist, Mark Lettieri. This ash-bodied bolt-on also uses a two-post vibrato and some tricky series/parallel switching for the bridge humbucker. Ibanez’s RG range is packed with HSH models, but the AZ range has a more ‘hot-rod’ style. The AZ2402 (approx. £1,749) has some tricky Dyna-MIX9 switching system with Alter Switch from its dual Seymour Duncan Hyperion direct-mount humbuckers, and features a roasted neck with 24 stainless-steel frets. Another…

Less expensive and smaller, the new Boss RE-2 (£199) has the same basic sound, although there are no presets, no Tape Age or Saturation controls and a single Tone knob. If it really has to be tape, besides buying a vintage unit, the Australian Echo Fix EF-X2 (£2,190) is a new-build three-head machine inspired by the Space Echo. It has the seven head combinations and reverb. Strymon’s Volante Magnetic Echo Machine (£375) does a solid recreation of a multi-head tape echo, and not only does it recreate the sound of a machine with equidistant heads like the RE-201, it also has a knob that can vary the head spacing.…

Walrus Audio is quite prolific when putting out new pedals, but the two we have here are effectively new versions of pedals that are relatively recent. The original D1, reviewed in issue 459, has been revamped into a V2 version whose new features include a USB port for future upgrades – leading us to believe a V3 is likely to be delivered via software rather than having to buy a new physical pedal. The Slötvå, meanwhile, is based on the Slö pedal (reviewed in issue 447) and adds the ability to store presets. Both are surprisingly compact for twin-footswitch pedals. WALRUS AUDIO Mako D1 V2 £319 The latest version of the D1 features five different delay types (Digital, Mod, Vintage, Dual and Reverse), each with three instantly accessible adjustable…

Few sounds in rock are as viscerally memorable as the growling twang of Syd Barrett’s guitar in the opening notes of Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive from the band’s 1967 debut album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Unlike the stratospheric, soaring tones that characterised later-era Floyd tracks with David Gilmour on guitar, Syd Barrett’s guitar sound is jagged, janky and wiry, somewhere between Vox and Marshall in voice. The reason it’s a bit hard for the ear to pin down is that Syd used Selmer amps, which are collectible vintage items these days but largely forgotten by mainstream guitarists. The Treble And Bass model that Syd played on Floyd’s debut album is perhaps the best-known of Selmer’s 60s creations, but, for many years, the only way to capture the…

“We’ve been doing more fly dates, so I keep a pretty spartan rig. I’m actually carrying a silver-panel Fender Champ in my hand luggage on the plane. I was touring with a vintage 70s Champ for ages, but I tried a new one and I’ve been taking that out on the road a lot more. On my ’board, I have the Boss GT-1000Core, which is such a versatile pedal, and the Catalinbread Formula No 55. I used a Zvex Box Of Rock for about a thousand years, up until last week when I got some new drive pedals. There’s an Archer Ikon, a Fulltone OCD and a Vemuram Jan Ray – that was about £350, which is a complete joke, but my God, it’s good. I also have an old…

Bigsby vibratos were the must-have accessories for pioneering country pickers, rockabilly tearaways and 1960s psychedelic blues experimentalists. These days, they’re as popular as ever with indie rockers and ambient noiseniks. That’s quite remarkable for a product that has remained essentially unchanged since 1951 – but Bigsby vibratos simply work because they work simply. There was clearly demand for a mechanical guitar vibrato device long before Paul Bigsby turned his attention to it, and if you were a pro player then that probably meant a Kauffman Vibrola. Clayton Orr ‘Doc’ Kauffman came up with his design back during the 1930s when he worked for Rickenbacker, and he subsequently co-founded K&F Manufacturing Corporation with his close friend Leo Fender. Kauffman Vibrola users included Les Paul, Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, and it…

1. SERIAL NUMBER Six digits on rear of headstock 2. HEADSTOCK Asymmetrical reverse design; tuners on bass side; raised middle section; black/ natural finish 3. PLASTICS Gold Gibson logo on black truss rod cover; three-ply (w/b/w) pickguard with bevelled edge and Firebird emblem; two metal cap/reflector knobs labelled Volume and Tone 4. HARDWARE Nickel-plated: Kluson tuners with metal buttons; fully adjustable four-saddle bridge; stop tailpiece; bridge and pickup covers. Front-loading jack socket; two metal strap buttons; wooden tug bar 5. PICKUPS & ELECTRONICS Single bespoke humbucker; two 500k pots (volume and tone controls) 6. BODY Asymmetrical reverse design; 1½-inch depth; neck-through-body construction (two-piece mahogany); glued-on mahogany sides/wings; raised middle section; standard sunburst finish 7. NECK Two-piece mahogany neck-through-body construction; unbound 20-fret Brazilian rosewood fingerboard with pearl dot inlays; 34-inch scale…

We documented the development and launch of Cream T’s first guitar, the Aurora, last year and now we have another: the Crossfire. Unlike the more Gibson-esque construction style of the Aurora, the Crossfire is much more ‘Fender’, a straightforward bolt-on with a nod to the fashionable offset style. Uniquely, the Crossfire Skeleton model, which kicks of the mini-range at £1,799, comes without pickups. What? Well, the Crossfire only uses the Relish pickup swapping system, which is optional on the Aurora, and part of the design concept is to appeal to those customers that may have already purchased a pickup-swapping Aurora, so you can swap its pickups onto the altogether different Crossfire chassis. Next up is the Crossfire Standard at £2,199, which comes with three pickups; both come with a gigbag…

PRICE: From £1,799 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: UK TYPE: Double-cutaway, offset solidbody electric BODY: Obeche NECK: Quarter-sawn roasted figured maple, C profile, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/42.74mm FINGERBOARD: Quarter-sawn roasted figured maple, black dot inlays, compound 254-305mm (10-12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium (Jescar FW55090) HARDWARE: Gotoh hardtail bridge w/ block steel saddles and through-body stringing, vintage-style split-post tuners – nickel-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 53mm ELECTRICS: 6-way Free-Way lever pickup selector switch (3B3-01), master volume and tone controls WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.95/6.49 OPTIONS: Rosewood ’board. Skeleton (£1,799) without pickups; Standard (£2,199) 3x pickups (Whiskerbucker set and Duchess neck); SRT-6 (£2,799, our review model) 2x pickup sets, satin metallic colours, optional racing stripes, case RANGE OPTIONS: Aurora Standard 2 (£2,499); maple-topped Custom (£2,999) – both pickup-swapping FINISHES: Aero Blue Pearl (as reviewed),…

While the collaboration between George Lowden and Ed Sheeran – one of the acoustic world’s guitar-making giants and one of the planet’s biggest-selling artists – is known to most people, nothing quite prepares you for the actual experience of playing one of these exquisitely designed and simplistically constructed guitars made at Lowden’s HQ in County Down, Northern Ireland. Based on the 610mm (24-inch) scale Wee Lowden, originally designed for Sheeran, the small shape is one of two offered in the Sheeran By Lowden range. And while this model may be one of a 3,000-only run, aside from a few additional motifs, it’s essentially the same as the top-line W-04. All the Sheeran by Lowden guitars have a price point below £1k and, as such, are pared down to the essentials,…

Don’t be deceived by the somewhat ramshackle look of Bill’s setup; he’s rather particular about his gear.“I do have a preference for unique gear,” he smiles. “But you never want to perform with something that doesn’t work, so if the guitar doesn’t stay in tune or has some functional issue then it’s not gonna fly. So I don’t want it to be broken, but I like unique characteristics – I play with four strings, which says a lot. I like limitations that force you into making creative decisions that wouldn’t come about otherwise.”…

I’ve always felt the biggest musical gains are to be made when a player finds themselves slightly out of their comfort zone… And to a certain extent, that’s what happened to me this past week, as I found myself in the unexpected position of standing in (or ‘depping’, as it’s colloquially known) for the legendary Paul Jackson Jr for a run of gigs at Soho’s PizzaExpress Jazz Club. Having tested positive for Covid, Paul was unable to fly to London, but the gig was originally billed as a double header with the equally legendary Eric Marienthal on saxophone. So it ended up being Eric and myself, with Phil Mulford on bass guitar, Jack Pollitt on drums and Neil Angilley on keyboard completing the rhythm section. “In my opinion, if you…

Without a doubt, one of the great privileges of being a guitar maker is having the opportunity to work with many of the best woods in the world. Given the limitations of exporting tropical hardwoods in recent years, the guitar market now accepts a much broader range of tonewoods than ever before, offering up the promise of a host of new sounds and exciting possibilities. The great benefit of running a small workshop is getting to spend longer with each instrument than you ever would in a large production facility. This really gives the luthier time to work with a particular timber and to become well acquainted with it. Working with predominantly hand tools gives the maker a tactile connection with the wood, nurturing a bond that a machine or…

A cluster is the name of a chord that contains at least three consecutive scale tones, and these may well be dissonant – a semitone apart, for example. As you may expect, there are many ways to approach this concept and they involve a systematic approach to harmonised three-note triads. This is great on piano, but on a non-linear instrument such as the guitar, these methods of study – useful though they are – can leave you wondering how to apply the concepts in a ‘real world’ scenario. That’s where these chords come in. I have included examples with as little as four and up to all six strings. Admittedly, the open strings have played a large part here, as I wanted the chords to sound complete without any other…

The circuit here is a simple drive, and both volume and tone pots are 500k CTS. The tone cap is valued at .047 microfarads, while the volume control uses a 680 picofarads ceramic disc capacitor and a 150kohms resistor in parallel in the usual position across the first two lugs of the pot. A four-pole five-way lever switch provides the tricky coil selection and mixing of the single coils, while the single-coil simulations, switched simultaneously, are achieved by filtering the screw coil of the bridge pickup and the slug coil of the neck through a 0.1 microfarad capacitor with a 1.5k resistor in series to ground filtering, effectively a low-pass filter. Aside from the fact that the HSH pickups were designed by ex-Fender guru Michael Frank-Braun and here are Korean-made,…

BOSS SPACE ECHO RE-202 £339 CONTACT Roland UK Ltd PHONE 01792 702701 WEB www.boss.info The RE-201 Space Echo has become the stuff of legend – as our recent retrospective in issue 483’s Classic Gear column on Roland’s multi-head tape echo explored. The company knew that such an important machine deserved to be celebrated in a pedal and came up with the Boss RE-20 around 15 years ago. However, technology moves on and the time was ripe to revisit the Space Echo, with new advancements allowing a deeper delve into its complex non-linear behaviour. Boss says that everything that influences the sound was carefully examined and recreated with new algorithms, the result being not one but two new pedals: the triple-footswitch RE-202 we have on test here, and the RE-2, which…

When it comes to cabinet emulation, impulse responses (IRs) provide digital snapshots of a real speaker, mic’d up in a real space. Having IRs at the appropriate point in your signal chain enables you to send realistic sound to front-of-house or for recording. TC’s Impulse IR Loader – a tiny pedal the same size of the company’s mini-pedals such as the Ditto looper – aims to simplify and facilitate that function. The pedal offers 25 built-in IRs alongside 74 empty slots for loading your own IRs of up to 200ms in length. It also has EQ in the form of low-shelf and high-frequency filters. Operation is simple. There’s a knob for setting the overall output level and a pair of backwards and forwards buttons to scroll through and select the…

1. Syd Barrett riffs out an early Floyd set, complete with bowed Rickenbacker bass parts from Roger Waters! 2. Paul Kossoff in full flight using more familiar Marshall Plexi backline. But the Selmer Treble And Bass had its place in his sonic arsenal, too, says Lee Harris 3. The amp-like controls presage a wider ‘pedal amp’ range by Thorpy 4. The rugged yet carefully engineered enclosure of the pedal is part of the signature style of ThorpyFX 5. A Grenadier Guards uniform is etched onto the pedal’s face…

Announced in spring 1963, the Gibson Thunderbird basses originally appeared as two distinct models: the single-pickup Thunderbird II and the dual-pickup Thunderbird IV. There were no I or III models, rather the II and IV designations conveniently sat betwixt their six-string siblings, the Firebirds (models I, III, V and VII). All six appeared together as a series intended to modernise Gibson’s solidbody line. The firm had attempted something similar in 1958 with the release of the ‘modernistic’ Flying V and Explorer, though production was halted by the following year. In the early 60s, Fender was leading the pack with its colourful, forward-thinking designs. The 34-inch scale Precision and Jazz Basses were unprecedented successes that had turned the music world on its head, while their automotive-influenced custom colour chart and less…

“This is not a regular Gibson custom colour. It’s actually an unknown colour – a blue that’s faded to green. There are a couple of small chips where you can see the blue. It’s kind of a Foam Green now. That has a lot to do with the clear lacquer yellowing with age. It’s got two initials on the bass bout written in old calligraphy style: ‘E.M.’ There’s a backstory to that. It belonged to a Bahamian guy who was considered to be the ‘Mozart of the Bahamas’. He played many instruments, and this was one of them. “It’s a cool piece, a very one-off kind of guitar. It’s stereo and has a Varitone, so in that sense it’s a Super 400CES-SV. It’s from 1964 and has a solid spruce…

Hailing from the Czech Republic, Petr Furch’s guitar company has been one that we’ve had our eyes – and ears – on for quite a while. While Furch is hardly a new name in acoustic guitars, in fact it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary, it has been something of a best-kept secret among players who want exquisite quality and tone without necessarily knocking on the doors of the more established makers like Taylor or Martin. And when we say ‘players’ we’re including artists here such as Al Di Meola, Suzanne Vega and Glen Hansard, alongside many more. It might seem a bold statement to make this early on in a review, but we can honestly say that we’ve never played a bad Furch guitar since the brand first appeared on our…

PRICE: £995 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: Northern Ireland TYPE: Wee Lowden-style electro-acoustic TOP: Solid Sitka spruce BACK/SIDES: Figured walnut 5-piece laminate MAX RIM DEPTH: 96mm (tapering to 86mm by the heel) MAX BODY WIDTH: 335mm NECK: Mahogany SCALE LENGTH: 610mm (24”) TUNERS: Enclosed die-cast, chrome NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Tusq/ 43.6mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony,‘=’ inlay at 7th fret, 406mm (16”) radius FRETS: 21, medium BRIDGE/SPACING: Ebony w/ compensated Tusq saddle/54.5mm ELECTRICS: LR Baggs EAS VTC WEIGHT (kg/lb): 1.84/4 OPTIONS: No, but the non-Equals W-04 costs £905 RANGE OPTIONS: Sheeran by Lowden guitars start with the W-01 (£655); the slightly larger-sized S Series models start at £770 LEFT-HANDERS: Not yet FINISH: Natural satin Sheeran by Lowden Guitars 02844 619161 www.sheeranguitars.com PROS Clean build; excellent specification for the cost and build location; balanced acoustic voice;…

There’s something about certain guitars that represents ultimate cool. Yet often their use seems to be confined to genre-specific styles and looks. Witness the glorious ‘rockabilly’ Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman and White Falcon. And another instrument I’ll get to in a minute. It’s always been my totally unscientific contention that rock and blues guitarists never turned onto these stunning-looking instruments because their complicated controls might lead to confusion in the heat of the action. You can even turn some guitars completely off with the idle moving of a switch, and that’s a no-no to the player at the apex of their show-stopping solo. And changing a broken string on a Bigsby, mid-gig? Hence those ergonomic Gibsons and Fenders ruling the blues-rock roost for so long. I remember criticising a…

In some ways, it’s surprising that so many players reach for new pickups when it’s time for a tone upgrade. For example, it’s tricky to audition different pickups to see which you like best before you buy, and this can make buying pickups a bit of a stab in the dark – good ones ain’t cheap and you aren’t guaranteed to like the end result if you do ‘upgrade’. So, is there anything you can do to ensure that all-important upgrade is a success? Who better to ask than Tim Mills, founder of highly respected British pickup maker Bare Knuckle Pickups. Tim has decades of experience voicing pickups to suit everyone from old-time blues guitarists to bleeding-edge metal artists, so he’s perfectly placed to offer good advice on this score.…

Eric manages to coax so many shades of tone from his guitar on tracks such as The Storm, Stand Upand Rattlin’ Change, with particularly fine soloing throughout. Solo highlights include The Storm, Survivor (which channels both Eric Johnson and SRV), plus Too Close To The Fireand My Own Best Friend, with their Little Wing/Lenny influenced chordwork. Special mention should go to Eric’s wife and collaborator, LaDonna, for her outstanding vocals on Take Me Just As I Am. Eric Gales’ new album, Crown, is out nowvia Provogue and a UK tour begins on 2 June www.ericgales.com…

1 Haven’t we seen this guitar before in a different colour? Yes and no! The main difference with this latest Guthrie Govan signature from Charvel is that it is manfactured in Japan, which recalls where the brand was actually made from 1986 to 1991. 2 So it’s a copy of the USA model? As Guthrie explains in our interview later on, this new model retains many of the US model’s features and is currently his ‘No 1’. It uses a basswood body with an ash veneer facing, and it’s quite a bit cheaper than the USA models, too. 3 This is clearly a guitar for Guthrie wannabees only, then? That’s the interesting thing. Guthrie’s wide-ranging style – is there anything he can’t play? – means that he needs a guitar…

PRICE: £2,449 (inc case) ORIGIN: Japan TYPE: Offset double-cutaway San Dimas-shaped solidbody electric BODY: Basswood with ash veneer facing NECK: Caramelised flame maple with graphite reinforcement, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5-inch) NUT: Graph Tech Tusq XL/43.1mm FINGERBOARD: Caramelized flame maple, Crème Dot inlays, 305-406mm (12-16”) compound radius, Luminlay side dots FRETS: 24, Jumbo stainless steel HARDWARE: Recessed Charvel locking vibrato, Gotoh rear-locking tuners STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 50.5mm ELECTRICS: Charvel Custom humbuckers (bridge and neck); Custom single coil (middle), 5-position lever pickup selector switch, master volume and tone (w/ knurled dome-style Luminlay numbered knobs), 2-position ‘single coil’ mini-switch (bridge and neck pickups only) WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.65/8.03 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: There are 2 USA GG signatures (both £3,699), the USA Signature HSH Caramelized Ash and the USA Signature HSH Flame Maple.…

1 Space Echo? Now, that sounds familiar… Yes, Roland had a family of tape echo units, the most iconic of which was the RE-201 Space Echo. Boss revived the name with its RE-20 digital pedal and now that is superseded by two pedals that are said to be truer to the original, the RE-202 here and the RE-2 compact pedal. 2 Why would I want one of these rather than an original? Convenience and practicality are big factors. Vintage units are rather expensive, require regular maintenance and won’t fit on your pedalboard (although a remote footswitch will). 3 Okay, fair point, but isn’t it all about the sound? Yes, but if a digital recreation can closely match the rich character of the real thing, then we’ll take it!…

MOOER Radar £170 A cabinet simulator in micro stompbox format, the Mooer Radar has models of 30 different cabs, 11 mics and four power amps, and can load impulse responses. It has 36 user presets and can be used with headphones. HOTONE Omni IR £129 Offering cabinet emulation in a compact pedal, the Omni has 40 onboard IRs and the capacity to load your own. It features four-band EQ, 40 presets and has an Aux In and headphone output for use when practising and jamming. TWO NOTES Torpedo CAB M+ £239 A respected name in the cab simulator world, Two Notes has a range of products. This unit features clean amp tones matched with official Celestion, Victory, Revv and Engl virtual cabinets. There’s a headphone output, too.…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “It was a 1972 Telecaster Custom reissue. I bought it from Cash Converters in Norwich when I was 15, played my first shows with it, dropped it down the stairs, all sorts of shit. But it was a great guitar. I love that ’72 Tele look, y’know, that black Keith Richards-esque guitar where it’s got four knobs like a Gibson. I got some great shit out of that Cash Converters, like an old Paul Rivera Fender Twin and a JCM800 for, like, 300 quid!” What was the last guitar you bought and why? “I had this very old parlour guitar and I thought,‘I have to retire this, it’s getting silly.’ So I was looking around for a new…