Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i Guitarist

Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk I think my first introduction to The Who was way back in 1970 when a school friend played me the Live At Leeds album. I was aware of them beforehand, but the album’s explosive content put the band – and Pete Townshend’s guitar playing – firmly on my musical map. I soon bought my own copy and revelled not only in repeated doses of tracks like Substitute, Magic Bus and the 14-minute-long version of My Generation, but also the paperwork that accompanied the album. These were the days of vinyl, of course, and in those days Live At Leeds came in a manila folder, as opposed to the more usual sleeve. The record…

Introduced back in 2010 at that year’s winter NAMM Show, Blackstar’s HT Venue series of mid-priced combos and heads quickly established the company as the go-to brand for working players at all levels. Seven years later in 2017, we were among the first to glimpse the updated HT Venue Mk II. And today, almost another seven years on again, we’re looking at the upgrade to the upgrade, in the shape of the new HT Venue Mk III. Has Blackstar’s unceasing R&D program produced another winner? Let’s take a look at possibly the most popular combo in the range, the 1x12 Club 40. Like its predecessors, the new Mk III Club 40 is a good-looking amp, with pleasing proportions enhanced by Blackstar’s elegant revised styling. A smart new metal badge sits…

FIRST PLAY | MXR M309 JOSHUA AMBIENT ECHO Tuned by Jeorge Tripps to deliver the sort of iconic soundscapes created by vintage rack-style processing, so says MXR, the Joshua Ambient Echo features rhythmic delays with an optional second echo, modulation, octave voicing on the repeats and tap tempo. The new pedal is set up by default as mono in/mono out, but it can be switched to stereo output. While there is the expected trio of Delay Time, Regen (Feedback) and Mix knobs, you can also set the delay time via tap tempo from the pedal itself or an external tap footswitch. A Division knob sets the rhythmic tap value of the repeats so you can have a straight quarter-note, dotted eighth note, eighth note, eighth-note triplet or a double delay…

New Year, New Gear From £77 CONTACT Various WEB See below It’s that time of year again, where we start feeling all festive. Taking time to be with our loved ones, unwrapping all the surprises… No, we don’t mean Christmas (that will have passed, hopefully without incident, by the time you read this). We mean our gear. You see, somehow it’s now 2024, which means we’re getting a glimpse of the releases from the imminent NAMM Show. In fact, we’ve brought you more GAS than the boiled sprouts you didn’t eat. The turkey might be out of the way, but it’s never too late to wish you Happy New Gear! BOSS RV-200 £259 You can never have enough reverb. So says Boss, as it arrives with a 200 Series pedal…

Artist: Ariel Posen Album: Reasons Why (Independent Release) Many would agree that seeing Ariel Posen live is an unforgettable experience. His understanding of all the elements that go towards creating great guitar tone – whether it be in standard tuning or dropped to the depths of his custom baritone – have gained him the respect of both his peers and audiences alike. His latest album, Reasons Why, came out in the autumn of last year and the ensuing European tour saw him playing in our very own backyard. And so the invitation went out for him to join us for a debrief – plus an accompanying video – about his latest venture. What sort of mindset did you have when entering the studio to record Reasons Why? “The impetus was…

OpinionRAISING THE TONE Years ago, I was offered the opportunity to have a Buzz Feiten conversion performed on my acoustic guitar. The process involves installing a new nut with a ‘shelf’ that lips over the end of the fretboard and shortens the distance between the take-off point of the open strings and the 1st fret. The saddle is also relocated and carved for carefully calculated intonation offsets. Feiten’s tuning system is designed to overcome well-known issues with standard equal temperament tuning, and promises more in-tune-sounding open chords, as well as improved keyboard compatibility. I can report that it performed as promised, but once the novelty had worn off I noticed that the guitar’s tone had become thinner and a bit sterile. Since then, I’ve observed that acoustic and electric guitars…

KEVIN ‘GEORDIE’ WALKER 18 December 1958 – 26 November 2023 Perhaps Killing Joke’s frontman Jaz Coleman said it best. The guitar playing of his lifelong foil Geordie Walker – who died in November after a stroke at the age of 64 – was “like a fire from heaven”. From the late 70s, when Walker first took the stage as co-founder of the seminal British post-punk band, the results could be pulverising, shaking your bones, a seismic strain of the heaviest metal. But in the same breath – even the same bar – his guitar work could be a melodic, mellifluous cascade, mobilising pan-generational players in genres from grunge and shoegaze to disco and dub. As Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses wrote: “Geordie was a true inventor of a massive…

“In the early days, Mark said he could never afford to buy a Les Paul from the ‘classic’ years” Kerry Keane Some guitarists, such as Brian May, are forever associated with a single guitar. Others, such as Mark Knopfler, have browsed through a century and more of the luthier’s craft to track down unique sounds. During the course of his 50-year career, Mark has used everything from Les Paul reissues to jazz-era D’Angelico archtops to create ageless tracks such as Money For Nothing and Brothers In Arms, and Mark’s thick catalogue of solo albums such as Tracker, Get Lucky, Down The Road Wherever and more. In the process, he built up one of the most enviable collections of recording instruments you’ll find. So it’s all the more remarkable that he’s…

BLUEPRINT: Mule Resophonic Guitars Resonator guitars occupy an unusual place in guitar mythology. Nearly all players find them attractive as iconic designs – and it’s hardly a surprise as they not only conjure up the world of pre-war Delta Blues but also troubadours of the rock era such as Rory Gallagher. Despite this allure, however, they are often pigeonholed as niche instruments that are only good for playing slide on. Thus, though they occupy a hallowed place in our imaginations, they’re much less often found in the average player’s guitar collection than flat-top acoustics. This is rather a shame as a good resonator can work so well for fingerpicking – as in Mark Knopfler’s intro to the Dire Straits track Romeo And Juliet. And that’s something not lost on a…

The MOD SQUAD As we’ve documented before in The Mod Squad, building a guitar today is pretty simple. Buy a kit from StewMac and, with a few basic tools and some of that modding knowledge you’ve accrued, you can build your own T, S or J-style on your living-room table. Ha! But turn the clock back five decades and things were rather different. Aside from the obvious ‘what did we do before the internet?’ issue, guitar kits didn’t exist and getting any information on guitar making, especially of the electric variety, wasn’t easy. Why bother? Well, my adventures started after I’d asked my dad if he’d loan me the money to buy an electric guitar from the Bell Musical Instrument catalogue. He replied, ‘No, but why don’t we make one?’…

TALKING LOUD As with many things these days, head to YouTube and you’ll find a reactionary video about almost any topic – and this is especially true when it comes to guitar speakers. You’ll hear stories about how a certain speaker from 1997 sounds best if it was made before lunch on a Tuesday, or that another speaker is the worst thing ever but only if it has the blue sticker, otherwise it’s amazing. A lot of this is generally just to get clicks, and even if there is a bit of truth somewhere, it tends to get lost beneath a million and one assumptions. To me, rarely has this been more true than for Celestion’s G12T-75. The T75 was released in the early 80s and soon became the go-to…

Blues Dues Epiphone’s latest collaboration with Joe Bonamassa is another stunner with the tones and playability to match p18 Elite Jazzer Joe Pass was an amazing performer and soloist whose albums are masterclasses in the fine art of playing jazz guitar p76 Under The Hammer Mark Knopfler becomes the latest guitar superstar to send some of his precious instruments off to Christie’s auction room p70…

The first decent guitar that this reviewer put his pennies away each week for was a white SG Custom, inspired by Alice Cooper’s original guitarist Glen Buxton on the band’s rendition of Under My Wheels on The Old Grey Whistle Test. The SG never materialised, but that’s another story. While Buxton’s Custom was the later 1966 to ’71 style with the large scratchplate, Joe Bonamassa’s own SG comes from the middle of the 1961 to ’66 era, with the small pickguard and ‘lyre’ engraved long Maestro Vibrola that appeared in ’63, just as the twin-cutaway Les Paul model changed its name to SG. A faithful recreation of its Gibson forbear, our Epiphone features a two-piece mahogany body with chamfered edges and pincer-like horns, the lower a touch shorter than the…

FIRST PLAY | BEETRONICS NECTAR TONE SWEETENER If you asked us to describe Beetronics’ range of pedals thus far, the overarching theme would be ‘quirky’. The pedals are not just visually and sometimes physically adrift of the norm, but they can be a little niche in the sonics that they provide, too. And that’s no bad thing! The company’s latest offering in its Babee Series of diminutive pedals, the Nectar, is described as a “tone sweetener” and still has the eccentric visual look and form factor. But in terms of its range of sounds it’s aiming more for the mainstream. That said, this is Beetronics after all, so what we’ve got is the unusual prospect of having both drive and fuzz in one single-footswitch pedal. There is no footswitching between…

Artist: Twain Album: Noon (Keeled Scales) Virginia-born Mat Davidson, who goes by the name Twain for his solo work, has a long history of playing with acts such as Big Thief, The Low Anthem and The Deslondes, among others. For Noon – his most recent solo album – he puts in the work and plays guitar, keys, strings and wind instruments. Percussion and bass are performed by Austin Vaughn and Ken Woodward, so overall it’s a simple setup. “I’ve been making albums for a long time, so some practices have been well established,” Mat says. “We play live together, with no computers, only a few takes and no splicing of takes.” Itinerant Instrument This minimalist style links with Mat’s view of the guitar, an instrument he began exploring in his…

NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE Back in the late 90s and early Noughties I was pals with country band Hogan’s Heroes, having booked them for various Guitarist Shows around the UK. Their bassist, the late Brian Hodgson, was already a mate since we’d worked together in country artist Diane Solomon’s band. For years Hogan’s Heroes, which were named after their steel guitarist Gerry Hogan, were Albert Lee’s UK touring group, also featuring Peter Baron on drums, both of whom remain in the band today. But on two occasions Gerry asked me to stand in when only the band was required. “During the final song of Marty Stuart’s set, a superfast country rocker, he swung round, looked up at me and said, ‘Take it!’” The first time was when we backed Western swing pioneer…

SUBSTITUTE Though various scales and the CAGED chord approach are the broadest overview of the possibilities that exist all over the fretboard, one of the most common issues players face is how to apply this information in a musical context. These patterns can feel very separate from the business of making music and/or improvising. While it’s true to say much of this information (however overwhelming it may seem at first) does infiltrate and inform our playing over the longer term, there’s also a case for approaching it from another angle, such as choosing any chord (A minor in this feature) and looking for triads or, in this case, chord shapes around the fretboard. As you go through this process, related scale shapes and CAGED chords will reveal themselves from a…

PIONEERS Joe Pass was born Joseph Anthony Jacobi Passalacqua to Sicilian immigrants in New Jersey on 13 January 1929. He acquired his first guitar at the age of nine after being captivated by country legend Gene Autry’s appearance in the 1940 movie Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride. It wasn’t long before Joe’s interest became an obsession and he would practise for two hours before school and two hours after, and then continue for four more hours after dinner before he went to bed. His father drove him relentlessly and would ask his young son to work out – on the spot – any tune that happened to be on the radio. He also encouraged him to embellish melodies as he heard them. At that time Joe didn’t know what improvising was. To…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “In 1970 I worked in a corrugated-cardboard factory in Chelmsford as a machine setter/operator. I didn’t smoke, drink or take drugs and, since I earned good money, I saved up every week. When I had enough cash, I went to Guitar Village in Shaftesbury Avenue in London and bought a 1967 stripped-body Telecaster. For £105. I painted it black with Humbrol enamel! But it was an amazing guitar. Sadly, I sold it to get a white Strat, which wasn’t a patch on that lovely Tele.” What was the last guitar you bought and why? “In 1989, I spec’d a PRS Signature directly from Paul, to my exact requirements. It was a hand-signed, limited edition of 1,000 with Brazilian…

Compression In very simple terms, compressors are like automatic volume controls that kick in when the input signal exceeds a preset level. Then, once the input level has fallen back below that threshold level, the compressor resets itself and ceases to have any effect on the sound. Depending on the sophistication or design of the compressor itself, users may be able to set the level at which the compressor is activated, the speed of response, the speed at which it resets, and the overall output level of the compressor itself. We’ll explore those controls in more detail later, but first let’s discuss the origins of electronic compression. Narrow View For our purposes, dynamic range can be defined as the difference between the quietest and loudest parts of a musical performance.…

With Jimi In Mind Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Haynes Inflection & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 15 mins per example IN THIS ISSUE, I hope to demonstrate just a few of the different skills used by Jimi Hendrix that made his playing so fascinating and impossible to categorise. There are five examples, primarily inspired by the solos and rhythm parts on his version of Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower. I believe Jimi recorded most, if not all, of the parts on that track using a Gibson Flying V, but this was relatively unusual, so I have gone with the single coils that are more typically associated with Hendrix. The descending chord progression has a slight sting in the tail, ending with F# major, which still works fine playing…

We loved the all-American version of the Maroon 5 guitarist’s signature model on first meeting it back in 2016. The more affordable Indonesian-built Sterling By Music Man JV60 followed two years later and was pretty much a Southeast Asian take on that guitar but with a tweak or two here and there. Then for 2023 we heard about Sterling’s brand-new Chambered models – with and without Bigsby – and it’s the former version we finally got our hands on. That original Music Man Valentine featured a solid ash, double-cutaway body with roasted maple, 648mm (25.5-inch) scale neck with a 305mm (12-inch) radius fingerboard and slim 42mm (1.65-inch) wide nut. Also included were the company’s ‘modern classic’ hardtail bridge, plus push-push pots for both volume and tone: one for overall boost…

FIRST PLAY | TWO NOTES CAPTOR X SE While the digital revolution continues to advance, it’s also true that not every guitarist wants to give up their prized valve amp. Fortunately, there are ways of giving even the most vintage and basic valve circuits a new digital lease – and a very effective method is to use a load box. One of the best out there is the well-known Captor X from French company Two Notes, whose DynIR system is practically an industry standard. To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Two Notes recently released this special-edition, the Captor X SE, which is even more tempting. It certainly adds some vintage mojo to the standard model, with a brown enamel finish surrounding the metalwork and a warm amber grille light. On the…

CONFESSIONS OF A LUTHIER If you are the owner of an acoustic guitar, the words you never want to hear your luthier utter are ‘neck reset’. These days innovative bolt-on neck designs have become commonplace, but most decades-old handmade acoustics are likely to have traditional dovetailed joins, combining tight-fitting joinery with the power of glue to withstand a lifetime on the road. A neck reset is normally the course of action required when all other options have been exhausted; it is one of the most invasive repairs carried out by a guitar luthier. Essentially it involves removing the neck completely from the body, and fitting it back on again at a different angle. However the resulting change in geometry provides an opportunity to not only improve the sound but also…

STAR LETTER TOTALLY SWAMPED I’ve been a long time user of Fender guitars, but, as you can see from the enclosed picture [right], things have changed – and it’s all thanks to Guitarist. In edition 504 you published details of the new for 2024 PRS SE guitars. I couldn’t believe how good the Swamp Ash Special looked with its blue finish coupled to a maple neck. In a case of, “I don’t need it, but I want it”, I found one online at Peach Guitars at a reasonable price. My Swamp Ash Special is nicely finished, looks even better than the pictures and sounded quite good right out of the box – but I wanted to make some changes. The pickup selector was way too far back for me (I…

UNIVERSAL AUDIO HEAVENLY PLATE REVERB, EVERMORE STUDIO REVERB, ORION TAPE ECHO & 1176 STUDIO COMPRESSOR £199 EACH CONTACT Universal Audio WEB www.uaudio.com What You Need To Know 1 What’s this – more UAFX pedals but smaller? Yes, that’s about the size of it. These are the first in a new compact series that each sport an individual selected effect type taken from their larger-footprint pedals. 2 What’s the point in that? Well, rather than the bells and whistles do-it-all vibe, it’s a more focused approach in giving players something that they may really feel the need for at a more affordable price point. 3 Do they sound the same as those larger pedals? Exactly the same: it’s the same algorithm as found in the bigger pedal. The Orion, for example,…