Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2023 i Guitarist

Just a few days before sending this issue to press, we learned the sad news that Bernie Marsden had passed away. A man who had known fame in Whitesnake and a host of other high-profile rock outfits, Bernie always had the knack of making anyone he spoke to feel like an old friend. So when the world learned he had died, there was a palpable sense of personal loss, not just pro forma regret. One heard the same things said of Bernie time and again: that he was ‘a lovely bloke’ who spoke to people like a ‘regular guy’, though he could have easily lorded it over mere mortals who hadn’t played stadiums in their time. But his modesty was disarming – for Bernie was co-writer behind huge hits that…

Headed by Neil Haynes in Banbury, Oxfordshire, Haynes Guitars is an extension of the long-running Guitar & Bass Builds, which makes necks, bodies and pickups, that Neil established in 2012 after his previous life as a cabinet maker. “I’ve been building guitars for about 30 years, since I was 21,” reflects Neil today. Work started on the new range around two years ago, and with the S-style Inflection, T-inspired Fidelity and the new SC22 (a 22-fret single-cut), our offset Demeanour makes up a pretty impressive four-guitar range. These might use shapes based on those we’ve seen countless times before, but the Haynes menu includes a seven-strong choice of metallic colours – along with other limited-run hues such as our Ultraviolet. “I use a modern polyurethane on the body,” says Neil.…

The original Octahive, with its blue distressed finish, was one of Beetronics’ earliest pedals and, according to the company, the “high gain fuzz with a well-pronounced high-pitch octave” was based on the 70s Tycobrahe Octavia. That version has now been superseded with a refreshed V2 design that Beetronics says retains the circuitry and sonic qualities of the original, while adding new features. On the original unit, the octave mode was turned on and off via a toggle switch on the chassis’ side. But this time round, the V2 uses the footswitch to do the job; it’s certainly more convenient in a live context than reaching down for a toggle switch. To switch between straight fuzz (Buzzz mode) and Octave requires a quick double-tap on the footswitch. There are two LEDs…

Artist: Emma Tricca Album: Aspirin Sun (Bella Union) Rome-raised and London-based Emma Tricca is something of an adventurer, both in life and her art. Her music is rich and textured, and unafraid to challenge standard tropes, while remaining solidly in that singer-songwriter bracket. It feels like she could have applied her colourful approach to any art form. “I don’t think I chose music, I think it chose me,” she begins. “I was on tour with Robyn Hitchcock and he asked me how I got into music, and fingerpicking specifically, and I remember talking about a magazine I saw when I was five years old with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan on the cover. I remember thinking that this was what I was going to do.” The Other Side Of Grief…

NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE When the Guitarist team meet for a get-together (like the one we recently had to celebrate our 500th issue), the topic of conversation often turns to guitars we regret selling. Now, I’m an impetuous fellow, so the instruments that have come and gone in my life are many and varied. Actually, not so varied since they tend to number the same few models that I lusted after as a kid. So it’s Strats, Les Pauls, Teles, ES-335s, Martin, Epiphone and Gibson acoustics, latterly PRSes, Taylors, Takamines, a Yamaha or two with the odd waif and stray thrown in. It’s my musical preference to own these models, and nothing against any of the brilliant instruments that we are lucky enough to see and play on a daily basis. “I’ve…

STAR LETTER ANNIVERSARY WALTZ I bought a new Epiphone FT-150 in the early 1970s from Norman Hackett’s music shop in Reading. I couldn’t believe how cheap it was until the shop pointed out it was ‘Made in Japan’, as noted on the label inside the guitar. This didn’t deter me in the slightest, it’s a lovely thing that plays well and looks good. Epiphone, in my mind at that time, was a revered guitar brand, looked like a Gibson but was more exclusive. It was to replace my Gibson SG Special bought in 1966 on HP. My biggest regret is selling the SG, but it had to be cashed in at the time, probably to go towards a car, having given up my group days as other priorities came to…

For us consumers, it’s virtually a full-time job to keep up with new designs from the UK’s rich seam of pickup makers. A quick check on Cream T’s new website, for example, reveals quite a few changes and some new additions that have sneaked in since we last took a look. Along with the new Cream Of The Crop humbucker set on our Aurora Custom V2, another addition is the Spot humbucker set, although these actually go back to the early days of Cream T. “The idea to clone pickups [using Thomas Nilsen’s Pickup Oracle Machine aka the ‘super scanner’] actually came from Matthieu Lucas, the owner of Matt’s Guitars in France,” explains Tim Lobley. The first guitar they scanned was the ’59 Burst (serial number 9-1688) nicknamed ‘Spot’, which…

ELECTRO-HARMONIX NANO PEDALS FROM £79 CONTACT Electro-Harmonix WEB www.ehx.com What You Need To Know 1 What’s a Nano pedal? It’s all about the size! These are basically smaller, more ’board-friendly versions of larger pedals in the Electro-Harmonix roster. 2 Do they do exactly what the bigger pedals do? Well, they have to squeeze the circuitry into a smaller chassis, so there may be differences in certain cases – for instance, the Nano Metal Muff loses the Top Boost footswitch of the current larger version, but it gains a noise gate. 3 There are other EHX pedals this size that aren’t labelled as Nano… That’s right, that particular chassis is used for 59 products at the time of writing. Let’s just call them Nano-sized… Few pedals companies have…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “It was a red 1968 Fender Mustang with the racing stripes across it. I had to mow yards in my neighbourhood where I lived and my dad said if I got enough money, he would match it. I had a pretty cool dad. So I got that Fender Mustang with the whammy bar and I pretended it was a Stratocaster. Before that I had two acoustic Silvertones that I bought at garage sales.” What was the last guitar you bought, and why? “I bought a guitar yesterday! It was in Northampton, Massachusetts, at a local guitar store. It’s an Alvarez acoustic from the 70s and it reminded me of my brother’s guitar that I used to play while…

Cable manufacturers often take their lead from the hi-fi industry when it comes to marketing. Terms such as oxygen-free, skin effect, directionality and dielectric biasing are bandied about and, while there may be a scientific basis for some of these claims, the idea is to make customers think there’s always something better out there. Not all cables are created equal, but factors that affect their sonic characteristics can usually be measured and quantified. As musicians, we are primarily concerned with instrument and speaker cables. So, what’s the difference? Speaker Cable Cables used to connect amplifiers to speakers are very different from the cables used to connect instruments to amplifiers or pedals to pedals. Speaker cable is by far the simplest, and the two key requirements are adequate power handling and…

Vintage Icons “It’s a really interesting piece. Was it a mistake? Was it a prototype?” “This is a Gibson SG Special-style prototype guitar from 1960, and it doesn’t say ‘Les Paul’ on the headstock. Les Paul’s relationship with Gibson deteriorated for a period of time and his contract eventually expired. [First shipped with rounded double-cutaways in early 1959 after transitioning from a single-cutaway design, the Les Paul Special was rebranded SG Special in late 1959 before changing to pointed double-cutaways in 1961.] With dual P-90s, dot inlays, three-aside tuners, and so on, it’s clearly based on the SG Special; the only difference is – and it’s a major one – this guitar does not feature body contours. “When I got this guitar years ago, there were a number of things…

Bernie Marsden was one of Britain’s best-loved rock and blues guitarists, known not just for his role in penning huge Whitesnake hits such as Here I Go Again but also because of his enduring love for vintage guitars. Bernie’s touring took him all round the world and that provided the springboard for his many decades of guitar collecting, which saw him acquire a bevy of beautiful, rare and classic electrics, which he used across his prolific career. So when news went out that Bernie was putting key guitars from his collection up for sale, it unsurprisingly caused quite a stir. Mike Long of ATB Guitars in Cheltenham had the honour of being appointed the agent for what are arguably the most interesting guitars from Bernie’s collection. News that Bernie’s infamously…

Signature guitar design is easy, isn’t it? Take an off-the-peg model, give it a lick of paint, put a squiggle on it somewhere, and talk up the proprietary tonal benefits until the cash rolls in? Well, actually, no. If you know anything about Rush legend Alex Lifeson, it should be that he has an eye for detail when it comes to the music he makes, and the instruments he uses to make it, so a guitar bearing his name is likely to be a little bit outside of the norm. Sure enough, this is evidenced by his Gibson and Epiphone signature models. The former first appeared in 2011 as a Custom Shop model, and in 2021 Gibson and Alex ported many of that high-end model’s features – most notably the…

Can it really be two decades since Tim Mills kicked off Bare Knuckle Pickups? Since then, it’s not only become the pre-eminent pickup maker in the UK, inspiring many others to follow, but it’s also one of the most respected worldwide, by players and guitar makers from Fender downwards. I’d struggle to name a Bare Knuckle pickup I haven’t enjoyed. Like many, I use them daily for gigs, recording and as a reference for comparison. 20 years on, the company offers an extensive range of models, but its most recent pickups have been signature models such as the Chris Robertson Peacemaker for the Black Stone Cherry guitarist, and Rabea Massaad’s Silo humbuckers. Joining them when it launched earlier this year is Rabea’s ultimate set for Stratocasters, the Triptych. Rather than…

CONFESSIONS OF A LUTHIER Often, I will explain to my guitar-building students that when their work is scrutinised by an experienced luthier, it is not likely to be the sound of the instrument that provides the first measure of the craftsmanship. Nor is it the playability of the fingerboard. Or the carve of the neck. A fancy inlay here or there may distract the casual viewer, but not the eye of a veteran guitar maker. The craft is, in fact, found in the decorative, curvaceous trim of the binding. Binding is a strip of material installed into a channel cut along the corners of the body of an electric or acoustic guitar. It can be a plain celluloid strip running around the perimeter of the instrument on the front (and,…

To the uninitiated, Bernie Marsden might have been easy to miss. In an industry of leather, motorbikes and top hats – and from a generation where ‘lead guitarist’ was shorthand for ‘show-off’ – the man once dubbed ‘British blues-rock’s secret weapon’ had the unstarry, affable, anecdote-ready demeanour of a pub regular. But as the guitar community well knows, there was much more to Marsden, who died at the age of 72 as this issue went to press. The myriad reasons to toast the great journeyman’s final flight span from the anthems he wrote (which included Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again) through to the young musicians he mentored, the sweetness of his touch and the treasures of his superb vintage guitar collection. Perhaps above all, among the pan-generational cohort of Guitarist…

Jaime Royal ‘Robbie’ Robertson was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. He started learning the guitar at the age of 9, and, as a young teen, cut his teeth in popular music bands in the mid- to late-50s. By the time he was 16 he had received his first break when Ronnie Hawkins spotted the young musician in Toronto playing with The Suedes, and joined them on stage. Hawkins then invited Robbie to play bass for his backing band The Hawks, joining drummer and singer Levon Helm and later recruiting bassist Rick Danko (Robbie switching to guitar), pianist Richard Manuel and keyboardist Garth Hudson in the early 60s. The line-up would go on to become The Band. By 1964, tired of playing rockabilly, the group parted from Hawkins. For years,…

TURNSTONE TG £12,240 CONTACT Turnstone Guitars PHONE 01342 545005 WEB www.turnstoneguitar.co.uk What You Need To Know 1 Yikes. How much? Well, yes. As we explain in the main body of this review, it’s not often we get the chance to experience an instrument of this level. We thought it was a good opportunity to explore what exactly is on offer in terms of build quality and tone at the more rarified end of the market. 2 Is Madagascan rosewood the ‘new Brazilian’? In many ways it is, yes. As the export of Brazilian rosewood (yesteryear’s go-to body wood for many premium acoustics) becomes more and more controlled and, hence, a rare commodity, Brazilian is rapidly approaching unobtanium levels and Madagascan is an able substitute. 3 Koa for…

BLUEPRINT: Sunbear Pickups Stuart Robson of Sunbear Pickups is a man who loves to talk tone. So it was no surprise that, during a casual conversation with the UK-based maker, the subject of the best-sounding humbuckers we’d ever heard came up. I nominated a spectacular set I’d played on an early 60s ES-335 at Vintage ‘n’ Rare Guitars in Bath. “What year was the 335?” asked Stuart, somewhat intrigued. “1961,” I replied. “Ah…” he said – and thereby hung a tale. It transpired Stuart had come to believe the pickups made right at the end of the fabled PAF humbucker’s production run ( just as it transitioned into the so-called ‘Patent Number’ humbucker that was its successor) had something really special about them – a kind of warm but biting…

When a press release dropped into our inbox announcing a new EMG pickup, we weren’t expecting the brand’s first foray into the world of the offset Fender Jazzmaster. Known for its modern active pickup designs – which the company has been making since 1976 – EMG almost seems a mismatch for the funky Jazzmaster, doesn’t it? On the other hand, with the offset enjoying a huge revival, you might well ask, what took ’em so long? There are actually two new releases. First, there’s the EMG JMaster pickup set, which as usual includes a solderless wiring kit with a master volume and master tone, and costs £199 in black and £219 in ivory or white. Then there’s the JMaster Pickguard System, including those pickups and also a full replacement for…

Choosing the right speaker cabinet for a new amp can be hard, and the same goes when upgrading cabs. A lot of us have done what you’d hope is the sensible thing and chosen the manufacturer’s recommendation – the one that comes with the amp – but this isn’t always the safest bet. By now, you’ve probably noticed my belief that there are no rights or wrongs in music, just opinions, and however well intentioned or well informed, the amp may have been intended to be used in a different way to how you had planned. Sadly, there are also a few situations in which the cab is the result of a couple of well-known speakers chucked in a box with little thought. As a cab maker, I like to…

Crosspicking Blues Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Lewis Pequeño Bastardo & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 15 mins per example HAVE YOU EVER BEEN in a situation where an idea didn’t feel as easy to play as it was to dream up? Most of us have – and the barrier is generally technique. This doesn’t have to mean rippling neo-classical arpeggios, it can happen in the blues or any other genre, for that matter. However, sometimes it’s hard to know how to go about solving issues such as this without feeling condemned to a punishing practice schedule akin to ‘technique bootcamp’. One genre where advanced picking is put to more melodic use is bluegrass, which heavily features licks and arpeggios across the strings, often played with a technique called…

Vintage guitars are obviously an incredibly important part of your life and you built your collection over several decades. Why sell them now? “Well, I’ve got to the stage where I’ve known for probably 20 years or more that these are all going to be sold at some point. You get to reach 60 and then suddenly you’re 65 and then you’re 70 and then you’re more… and you think, ‘It’s about time these went.’ I don’t want to leave them posthumously for my family to deal with. That may sound a bit morbid, but when you look at [lots for sale in guitar auction catalogues] it’s always: ‘from the estate of so and so…’ and it’s sad. So this way [by selling my collection now, through a store] I…

FIRST PLAY ORANGE OR30H HEAD It’s been a dire time for the music industry over the past few years, and yet with the memory of pandemic lockdowns receding, there’s cautious optimism as festivals return and live music comes to terms with the new post-Brexit normality. Orange has been quieter than usual, like most amp manufacturers. However, confidence is climbing and once more we’re seeing new models being announced, including this much-anticipated British-made head, the new OR30H. While Orange’s well-known steel-jacketed Tiny Terror was one of the first compact and lightweight heads, arguably kickstarting the ‘small and portable’ trend, it’s fair to say most people’s perception of Orange is the big, heavy picture-frame plywood cabinet surrounding an armour-plated steel chassis (that needs a weightlifting course or a team of roadies to move…

Alexander Dumble didn’t build many amplifiers in his lifetime, so if and when one comes up for sale it’s going to be for silly money. Fortunately, there are some pedal manufacturers out there that have a handle on how to get close to the Dumble feel and tone – and that includes J Rockett. In its line-up, J Rockett has a pedal called The Dude, which was based on a Dumble Overdrive Special amp owned by Keith Urban. It also had another pedal, the Hot Rubber Monkey (HRM), which featured the brand’s interpretation of an ODS with an EQ modification. Alexander Dumble did what he called the ‘Hot Rubber Monkey’ mod on certain later amps and it comprised a passive tonestack (treble, mid and bass on trimmers inside the amp)…

New Releases From £129 CONTACT VariousWEB See below We find ourselves saying this often, but there’s never been a more vibrant time to be a gear-obsessed guitar player. This is evidenced by this month’s instalment of Gas Supply where we’ve stumbled across new releases ranging from a nearly forgotten Leo Fender design, a surprisingly low-cost electric from a legend of British guitar making, and new takes on the humble overdrive from equally revered pedal designers. There was so much, we could barely fit it all in. Don’t light a match, there’s been a GAS leak! ORIGIN EFFECTS HALCYON GOLD £249 Guitar player certainties: your lost plectrum is in the washing machine; you will fish-hook yourself at least once when changing strings; and you will one day own a Klon-style overdrive.…

Artist: Robin Trower Album: Twice Removed From Yesterday 50th Anniversary (Chrysalis) The fact that we’re enjoying so many 50th anniversary album re-releases now proves the point that the early 1970s was an absolute treasure hoard of brilliant music. One such gem is the first solo album from Robin Trower. Initially coming to prominence with Procol Harum, it wasn’t long before Robin flew the nest to put his own band together with his signature Uni-Vibe-drenched psychedelic guitar sound to the fore. We catch up with Robin to reminisce about the album that set the course for his solo career. How did you come to put the band together for the album? “When I left Procol Harum I actually teamed up with a singer called Frankie Miller and we put a band…

SUBSTITUTE Of all the alternative tunings in use today, open G must be a contender for ‘most popular’. But before we continue, please allow me to be pedantic for a moment and point out that ‘altered’ and ‘open’ tunings can mean different things. An open tuning is where the open strings of the guitar are tuned to a chord: in this case, G major (low to high: DGDGBD). An altered tuning can be almost any combination of notes; Jimmy Page, Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell have all used both altered and open tunings. With this issue’s examples below, you could say I’m coming from the Keith Richards’ school of thought, but open G is also very popular with slide players. Robert Johnson used this tuning on several of his most…

“Robert Wyatt’s blend of jazz and experimental weirdness… That’s the channel I’m subscribed to at the moment” Laurel Canyon-based Jonathan Wilson is an achiever, be it at making highly sought after electric guitars (which he did for some years), touring with Roger Waters, producing work for the likes of Roy Harper and Father John Misty (among many others) or making his own broad, experimental and often thrilling records. His latest, Eat The Worm, is partly a love letter to 1960s jazz, partly a beatnik poem about the decline of modern culture. Beguiling, baffling, beautiful, it is a cryptic mescaline dream of an album. “It was at some point during the pandemic that I started some new songs,” Jonathan explains. “I had an album [Dixie Blur] that came out on 6…

It’s been six years since we featured luthier Rosie Heydenrych in our Workshop series and, since then, her reputation as a builder has become established with players who seek out the very finest in custom-built instruments. Back in 2017, Rosie operated from a small unit on an industrial estate in Newchapel on the Surrey/Sussex borders. She’s still at the same address, but has scaled up her facility considerably. “I’ve expanded quite a bit,” she says, “I was just in one little room, then I moved into the unit next door, which enabled me to buy bigger machinery. I stayed there for a couple of years and then I outgrew that unit and moved back into my old unit, [while also keeping] the one I was in.” Rosie’s husband, Karl, now…

You can’t help thinking that guitar design is going backwards. It seems that if an instrument isn’t chasing a tone and style from yesteryear, a classic artist or a classic recording, well, don’t bother. Yamaha can certainly be accused of jumping on that bandwagon. Its huge-selling Pacifica guitars, for example, are far from original: that was the idea for their creation in the first place. But Revstar was always about being a little different – the design and, to a certain extent, the craft perhaps fall more in line with the company’s history of innovation than those Pacificas. Yet I’ll put my hands up and say that after having this superbly made and far-from-expensive house guest for the past few months, I’ve been sat a little on the fence. Is…

Classic Gear Les Paul’s initial tenure as a Gibson signature artist lasted approximately a decade. Having first lent his name to the firm’s 1952 single-cutaway debut solidbody Goldtop, the Les Paul brand was dropped in 1963 when the entire pointed double-cutaway line was redesignated SG. Throughout the 60s, single-cutaway Les Pauls were seen in the hands of many a guitar hero, including Keith Richards, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Consequently, these old-style instruments became highly sought after. With a renewed enthusiasm, Les reacquainted himself with Gibson, telling the company’s owners CMI, “The kids own rock ’n’ roll, and it’s just getting started.” Subsequently, with the guitarist back on board, the Les Paul brand was officially reinstated with the release of the dual pickup/maple top Custom and Standard models in 1968.…

Welcome to the second volume of Guitarist’s Iconic Guitars series of mini-magazines. When we learned that Whitesnake hero Bernie Marsden was selling gems from his lifelong collection of guitars, we took the chance to document those beautiful instruments and talk to Bernie himself about them for this publication. Little did we know that, tragically, it was to be the last time we were to speak with him. He passed away unexpectedly only days after the feature was completed. Now, as the world of guitar mourns one of its best-loved heroes, we’ve taken the decision to present this celebration of Bernie’s passion for guitars as it was written – made with his participation and full approval and containing what are now all-too poignant insights into his lifelong passion for these guitars.…

Gibson Firebirds are possibly the most confusing of all the classic guitars from the vintage era. First, you have to get your head around the reverse/non-reverse thing, and then learn the numbering system. The reverse Firebird was manufactured from 1963 to mid-1965 with model numbers I, III, V and VII. The Firebird I had one pickup, two knobs, an unbound fretboard with dot markers and a wraptail bridge. The III had a second pickup, with a bound fretboard, two extra control knobs, a selector switch and a spring vibrato. Like the Firebird I, all the hardware was nickel plated. The V got a Deluxe vibrato with a lyre and leaf cover, a tune-omatic bridge and trapezoid inlays, while the VII was akin to a Les Paul Custom, with three pickups,…