Innehållsförteckning för Vol. 145 från Australian Guitar

FENDER + MOFI = THE PRETTIEST TURNTABLE OF ALL TIME? Fender has partnered with audio tech company Mobile Fidelity Electronics (MoFi) for its first-ever turntable, the PrecisionDeck. Limited to only 1,000 units worldwide, the new turntable has a shape designed by Fender Master Builder Yuriy Shishkov, is built using the same swamp ash wood as found on Fender’s Precision Bass guitars and finished in Fender’s three-color sunburst. Internally, the components are designed and built by MoFi, with the same technology found in the company’s award-winning UltraDeck turntable system. Fender describes the system as “ready to play straight out of the box” thanks to its pre-mounted MoFi MasterTracker pickup, which utilises two low-mass magnets aligned in a V formation parallel to the record’s grooves to “accurately extract music from LPs”. Other…

It was just five years ago when Amyl And The Sniffers (a play on the name of frontwoman Amy Taylor, and an underground sex shop owner’s drug of choice) first burst to life. The quartet wrote, recorded and laid their seal of approval on their debut EP, 2016’s Giddy Up, in a jaw-dropping twelve hours. They’d bump up the timeframe to a few weeks for its follow-up, 2017’s Big Attraction, and further to a few months for their eponymous 2018 full-length. Comparatively, their latest record – the punchy and polychromatic Comfort To Me – may as well have taken them a lifetime. Work on the new LP started shortly after Taylor and co. wrapped up the touring cycle for their ’18 debut, riding the high of a record that not…

For most people, time stood still throughout much of 2020, with the initial wave of the COVID pandemic restricting us to our homes. Jerry Cantrell was no exception – in virtual lockdown, the legendary Alice In Chains frontman was forced to stay close to his home base in Seattle. Before COVID hit, he had just recorded most of the basics for his new solo album (a three-way production he shares with Tyler Bates and Paul Figueroa) in Los Angeles, and once he returned to Seattle he resumed work on the record at home studios in one-on-one sessions, or by sending files back and forth between musicians. Depending on how you keep score, Brighten is either Cantrell’s third or fourth solo album. and as the record’s optimistic and walloping title track…

Breaking out at the peak of the playlist age, Parcels earned their crust with a slate of snappy indie-pop songs tailored for the dancefloor. And of course they did – just a year after minting their debut EP (2015’s Clockscared), the Byron-native quintet won the hearts of French techno giants Daft Punk. By the time their eponymous full-length effort dropped in 2018, Parcels were veritable superstars, packing out crowds everywhere from Sydney to Sweden. The band are known largely for their prowess with synths, not guitars – which is what their defiantly analogue follow-up, Day/Night, such a striking affair. More surprising is how, despite their rise to fame via platforms like Spotify and sharp, hype-riding single drops, their new effort is a conceptual epic – two conceptual epics, in fact…

Sometimes it’s good to change things up and try a different guitar, or even a different instrument entirely. This frees you from habits that may have become traps, and forces you to think consciously about the simplest things. The approach we’ll take to this idea here is alternative/open tunings, in this case open D (low to high: D A D F# A D). Raking across the open strings will give you a ringing D major chord, with exactly the same ‘stacking’ of intervals found when playing an E chord in standard tuning. However, regular chord shapes may or may not work in this new tuning. Part of the fun is trying them out for yourself and discovering some nice (and not so nice!) surprises, though the chords below will give…

In most cases, the guitar solo serves as a major component in classic rock and metal songs. Think “Comfortably Numb”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Free Bird”… But there have been cases in which classic tunes in the rock canon have gone solo-less. Now of course, the majority of first-wave punk rockers cut out guitar solos altogether, a trend that began with the Ramones and continues to this day. But for this list, we’re talking about mostly good old fashioned classic rock and metal from the golden age of the ‘60s through to the ‘90s. And, of course, it wasn’t due to the guitarist in the band not being technically gifted enough to supply a solo, but rather, it just didn’t fit into the song – or the riff was strong enough to…

Getting ready for my return to playing live, I realise I need to spend a bit of time giving my gigging guitars some love. Now, it’s not like I’m Dallas Schoo and I’ve got The Edge on the phone saying he needs his 20-something gigging guitars all restrung and in tip-top condition before five o’clock. Nope, I’ve just got the two: one for the main stuff, the other for slide. Simple. That said, I’m a bit embarrassed when I pull out my slide guitar, which I haven’t used since October 2020. Do strings corrode and fingerboards get gunkier just from a guitar being in a gigbag? Or did I forget to give it a wipe down after its last hurrah? My main guitar, a start-up ultra-basic-spec Knaggs Kenai, has had…

The new Rocket range of combos from Ampeg has five models of varying specifications, and all share a vintage, old-school vibe. With a simple but effective control layout, cool styling and all the connections you would expect to see, these combos can be used in a variety of settings and applications. We’re looking at the 108 and 110 models, which focus on home, rehearsal and small acoustic gig situations. Let’s see what they can do. Both combos are lightweight and portable, aided by their speaker sizes, and both are finished in the ‘black diamond’ material seen on previous Ampeg combos. Metal corners protect the units from bumps and scrapes, while cloth speaker grilles, a recessed control panel and a tough carry-handle situated on the upper facing feature on both units.…

First up is the Noventa Stratocaster, which at a glance offers us the familiar shape of a Strat with P-90 pickups. There’s the alder body in the classic double=cut silhouette, with a 21-fret maple neck. To traditionalists, that’s where the Strat definition will end. It’s available in the Daphne Blue of our review model or Surf Green, with both options fitted with a maple fingerboard. However, if Fender’s ‘classic’ colours aren’t what you’re looking for, it’s also available in the more contemporary Crimson Red Transparent, but the fingerboard switches to Pau Ferro – a combination that to us echoes the visuals of Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins’ signature Telecaster, but in Strat form. That’s not all, though, as there are some pretty major staple spec changes here, too. Gone is…

In addition to offering a panoply of popular digital and tube amplifiers, Fender’s amp team has been firing on all cylinders by keenly re-envisioning many of their legendary tube amps, much less some overlooked original models. Speaking of which, guitarists won’t have to dig much further for these buried treasures than Fender’s ’68 Custom Pro Reverb and ’68 Custom Vibro Champ Reverb – two silver-panelled combo amps that have been totally revamped from their vintage counterparts in distinguishing ways that will appeal to many gigging musicians and the home-recording cognoscenti, respectively. While I haven’t had the opportunity to check out the diminutive Vibro Champ Reverb, I did have the pleasure of reviewing the workhorse 40-watt ’68 Custom Pro Reverb, which combines the clean headroom of Fender’s Twin Reverb with the…

Outside of the mainstream, we’d argue some of the most exciting guitar riffs of the past decade have their roots in the math and post-rock spectrum. From Yvette Young’s singular fingerstyle in Covet to the masterful looped phrases of Giraffes? Giraffes! and And So I Watch You From Afar’s syncopated bombast, instrumental rock plays host to some of contemporary guitar’s most thrilling moments – and now you can add Irish guitar/drums duo Bicurious to that list. With an onslaught of smart octave-doubled tones, Bicurious follow in a long line of UK and Irish riff merchants. Their debut album, (re)constructed, makes for an arresting listen, filled with ingenious chord shifts and nuanced tonal inflections. But more than anything, it’s chock-full of grade-A riff upon grade-A riff, with catchiness and virtuosity in…

AARON SHANAHAN HAILS FROM BRISBANE, QLD PLAYS IN DREAM DALI SOUNDS LIKEHEADY, LABYRINTHINE STONER-POP LATEST DROP “LET HER BE” (SINGLE OUT NOW VIA SUNNY ISLAND) What’s your current go-to guitar? I’ve had a few brands and types of guitars in the past – and I would love to try more different types with Dream Dali – but my go-to is the Fender Stratocaster. It’s a very malleable and affordable guitar to get different sounds with. How did you initially fall in love with the instrument? I am still yet to fall in love with a guitar, but I’ve always had a steady relationship with the Fender Strat. I once owned a custom-made Ernie Ball guitar that was great looking and had a tone that you could manipulate easily. Ernie Ball…

Hell hath no fury like the Hard-Ons. Though the epochal Aussie punks had a rough start to the year – what with touring off the cards, a long-gestating doco axed right after it bagged funding, and their perennial frontman ousted after misconduct allegations surfaced – the band trotted on, chins held high and guitars clutched tightly. And now, the Hard-Ons are arguably in the best shape they’ve ever been – and not just because shredder Peter ‘Blackie’ Black is a personal trainer by trade. Rejuvenated with new vocalist Tim Rogers – who you may also know from his 30-odd years leading You Am I, or his show-stopping solo work – the Hard-Ons are at their fiercest and fieriest right now. They’re also at their poppiest, making full use of Rogers’…

Grunge is back, baby! And while it may be the gloomy, suburban streets of Seattle that it first took off, there’s a decent argument to be made for Canberra as the genre’s new hotspot. Case in point: Moaning Lisa. It was 2016 when the quartet first burst onto the scene, and over the past five years, they’ve cultivated an ironclad identity of unremitting fierceness, rough and rugged in sound with all the emotional intensity to match. According to frontwoman Charlie Versegi, the band’s debut album, Something Like This But Not This, is “a very no-bullshit, cutthroat record” – one that is “defiantly rooted in reality” wherein every track cuts “straight to the point, no f***ing around”. These kinds of quotes usually reek of PR fodder (this one does indeed come…

When the post-hardcore icons Quicksand made their cataclysmic comeback in 2012, fans couldn’t have imagined how intense and eruptive their first album in over two decades would be. But 2017’s Interiors was the definitive distillation of everything that made Quicksand great in the ‘90s, and everything that made punk in 2010s great on its own accord. It was an unapologetically fan-serving record, with stacks of the meaty riffs and supercharged vocal runs that galvanised Walter Schreifels as a bonafide icon. Now, they’ve returned once more with Distant Populations: an album that’s… Not scaled-back, by any means, but certainly more refined. It doesn’t feel like a modern-day reflection of what Quicksand were in the ‘90s, like Interiors did, but rather like a modern-day reflection of what Quicksand are right now. It’s…

After the Philly-based indie lords in The War On Drugs won a Grammy – taking home the token for Best Rock Album with their 2017 opus, A Deeper Understanding – it makes sense that they’d spend a little more time than usual simmering away on the next record. In addition to being a critical darling, A Deeper Understanding also marked the band’s commercial peak: it was top-ten record in the US, top-five Down Under and top-three in the UK – hell, it outright topped the charts in Belgium and came just one spot shy in the Netherlands, too! So yeah, there was a little bit of pressure on the sextet for album #4. Thus led to one of The War On Drugs’ most conscientious endeavours in songwriting; they spent three…

TTo quote the opening line of Porcupine Tree’s “Time Flies”, Steven Wilson was “born in ’67, the year of Sgt. Pepper’. Indeed, Wilson’s playing style is strongly rooted in The Beatles’ brand of psychedelic art-rock, with further influences ranging from Pink Floyd-style prog to industrial rock à la Nine Inch Nails, as well as metal inspiration from Opeth. His guitar style centres around drop-D tuned riffs, lush chord progressions, and melodic, emotive leads, and we have four tab examples here to help you get inside his musical mind. Gear-wise, Steven has been a longtime user of PRS guitars (though a ’63 Relic Telecaster has featured in his rig in recent years) and Bad Cat amps – so you’ll need a high-gain valve-based basic tone. We don’t have space here to…

One of the most insightful pieces of advice any musician can be given is: it’s not what you play, it’s how you play it. On the guitar this is particularly pertinent, given its ability to produce different tones depending on the way the string is struck (and with what). Further than this, we have the option of open or fretted strings, the latter giving a number of choices. For example, the A found at the second fret of the G string is the same note found at the seventh fret of the D string, the 12th fret of the A string, or even the 17th fret of the low E. However, compare these side by side and you’ll hear a world of tonal difference. Logistically speaking, you will also find…

Whether or not you consider the Gibson Les Paul a “signature model”, there’ve been some truly revolutionary artist-inspired gear lines over the years – some models even becoming the most popular guitars in a manufacturer’s line. Just look at the MXR EVH Phase 90, undoubtedly the most iconic and enduring phaser pedal of ’em all. It’s the perfect tribute, in tone and aesthetics, to the man who popularised the sound more than anyone else. Then there’s the Ibanez Jem, co-designed in 1987 with Steve Vai, the high-performance seven-string shred machine that would inspire a whole new range of superstrats under the RG series, which – let us not forget – continues to thrive, alongside the instruments bearing his name. Of course, there will always be those who dislike playing a…

The world of the guitar is not one: it is multiple. Each style, whether it is rock, jazz, flamenco or folk, has its own uses and its own playing modes, but also its own instrument (amplified or dry guitars, cutaway or non-cutaway, half-body or quarter-body), and its own types of strings (nylon, carbon, metal). As such, it can seem daunting taking those first few steps into the world of classical guitar, especially if it’s a world that’s wholly unfamiliar. Questions relating to playing styles you’re currently unaccustomed to, or reservations you may have about what instruments are up to the task, are all barriers that prevent many from testing the genre out for themselves. So, what can we expect from the world of classical guitar? Here, we break down the…

Any discussion of pedalboard power supplies has to come with the disclaimer that they are hardly the shiniest or most fun thing you can buy for your rig. Nevertheless, apart from a decent distortion, delay and guitar tuner, they’re the most important purchase you can make for a pedalboard. No crowd will ever notice the difference between subtle flavours of overdrive, or a modern amp sim and the real thing, but they will notice ground hum and signal noise. Moreover, they’ll definitely notice your rig cutting out because of a dead battery. With that in mind, we’ve compiled nine convincing arguments as to why a pedalboard power supply should be next on your hit-list. If you decide to take the plunge, there’s some buying advice nestled in here, too too.…

EPIPHONE SLASH LES PAUL STANDARD RRP: $2,299 • australismusic.com.au Perfect for every stage and players of all levels, the Epiphone Slash Les Paul Standard features a mahogany body, maple cap with AAA flame maple veneer, a Graph Tech nut, Epiphone LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece, and Slash’s personal touches including a C-shape neck profile, Epiphone Custom ProBucker pickups, colour-coordinated hardware appointments, CTS potentiometers with Orange Drop capacitors, Epiphone Strap Locks, and a custom hardshell case. Exclusive to the Slash Collection are Slash’s “Skully” signature drawing on the back of the headstock and Slash’s signature on the truss rod cover. ERNIE BALL’S NEW STRAPS RRP: $55.95 • cmcmusic.com.au Just in time for Christmas, Ernie Ball has released six new eye-catching strap designs – three additions to their Comfort Collection…

The audio waveforms shown in DAWs and other audio tools map amplitude changes over time, which is easy for a computer to create and easy for a human to read. They say nothing about the frequency content within a sound, though. This is where spectral editors come in. These allow us to see the constantly-fluctuating frequencies within a passage of audio and, more importantly, they allow us to edit specific frequencies and frequency ranges. This makes spectral editors well-suited to corrective tasks, although they are also powerful sound design tools, and so these are the use-cases that Steinberg have focused on with their latest version of SpectraLayers. SpectraLayers Pro 8 is Steinberg’s third iteration of the software (it’s changed hands a few times). The program can run in standalone mode…

Some claim that cheap cables treated with care will do everything an audiophile requires of them. Others are in the “you get what you pay for” camp. In the competitive gear marketplace, every product requires its own assessment – snake-oil salesmen rub shoulders with honest brokers trying to sell an excellent product. Most would agree that Warm Audio fall into the latter camp, what with the acclaim they’ve earned for their preamps, compressors and EQs. Now with their rack gear a fixture of many professional and project studios, they’ve dropped a line of cables for us to check out. AG were provided with an assortment of cables – TRS, TS, XLR, and XLR to TRS – in Warm’s Professional and Premium designation. The Professional cables here are similar to the…

THE BUOYS Unsolicited Advice For Your DIY Disaster SPUNK Lacquering their youthful, sunkissed power-pop jams with lyrical barbs that shoot straight for the heart, The Buoys’ sophomore EP would feel just as much at home roaring from the PAs at next year’s Splendour In The Grass as it would through a pair of AirPods during a casual quarter-life crisis. Zoe Catterall and Hilary Geddes’ yin-and-yang fretwork sears with a frisky, jangly grunt, contrasted wonderfully by Courtney Cunningham’s rounded and propulsive basslines. Teeming with energy even at their lowest point, the band often veer scarily close to the edge of overkill – you know what they say: if you ain’t redlining, you ain’t headlining – but they always know just when to reel it back in. Case in point: the dizzying…

The new album from New Orleans blues-rocker Samantha Fish, Faster, doesn’t sound like it was created during a dark time in history. With a slinky, devious opening riff and a flirtatious vow to “make your heart beat faster,” Fish lets us know from note one that life in COVID lockdown hasn’t taken the mischievous glint out of her eyes. “This album… I feel like it’s a big moment for me,” the singer and guitarist offers. “I feel like we all went through something collectively last year. I think it’s transformative for us as a group of people, but also individually, and so for me, this is about shaking off everything.” Though her first love is the blues, Fish has taken many musical styles to the fitting room over the years…

Cutting her teeth on the bustling streets of Melbourne, it was her warm, honeyed folkiness and labyrinthine poetry that gave Courtney Barnett her most ardent supporters. Becoming an international indie-rock stalwart seemingly overnight, she cranked up the energy for her summery debut full-length, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (2015), and sank farther into the rabbithole of grungy, punky grit on its follow-up, Tell Me How You Really Feel (2018). But for her third solo album, Things Take Time, Take Time, the story-centric singer-songwriter has, in a sense, returned to her roots. It wasn’t entirely intentional, either. When Barnett was starting out, she was bound to the volumetric constraints of sharehouses and flats, writing gentler songs on acoustic guitars to avoid complaints from her neighbours. It…

Second albums have a tendency to make or break bands. Oftentimes, an outfit’s sophomore effort will be the record that really galvanises their chemistry, with amplified energy and calculated confidence. But sometimes it can be the record that totally derails what structure that outfit had, proving either that their first album was a fluke, or that their confidence after a successful debut grew a little too unwieldy. Loser, thankfully, fit much more into the first category than the second. Speaking with frontman Tim Maxwell, the Melbournite’s confidence is not misplaced – he’s a bloody great songwriter (and an even better performer), and he certainly knows it. He and brother Will have been shredding together their whole lives, but it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that they finally joined forces in an…

Politically charged punk-rock is no recent invention, and in the social and cultural climates of 2021, the genre thrives like it never has before – for good reason. It’s easy to see Melbourne trio Mod Con as just one star in an ever-expanding, seemingly infinite galaxy of them… But that doesn’t mean they aren’t incredibly significant. Like any good star, Mod Con burn brightly, explosive and authoritative with their tight and turbulent slivers of fascist-bashing brilliance. Evermore is that clear on the band’s second album Modern Condition, fusing punchy P90 juts and belting basslines with an experimental flair that makes each subsequent track more engrossing than the last. It’s the purest distillation of a group whose minds run rampant with creativity – case in point, the band itself is somewhat…

When it’s put to Tom DeLonge that the new Angels & Airwaves record, Lifeforms, is easily their most sonically and tonally expansive music to date, he seems genuinely pleased and nods back in wholehearted agreement. “Thank you so much,” he smiles, talking to us from his car while parked under a palm tree on a warm summer’s day. “We were really trying, you know. It was a big collaboration and a long effort to get here, but I think we have a really diverse palette on this album. I’m excited for people to hear it… It’s a very different album for our band. All I’m really after right now is sounding more unpredictable!” So what kind of guitar gear are we hearing on the album? It’s so funny these days…

When Yngwie Malmsteen spoke with Guitar Player earlier this year to reveal how he composed “Far Beyond The Sun”, his signature song, it was clear that his love for the 1984 track was practically eclipsed by his enthusiasm for his latest creation, Parabellum (Music Theories Recordings). “It is extremely neoclassical,” he said of the new album. “People will think I’ve lost my mind. It is like my Concerto” – 1998’s Concerto Suite For Electric Guitar And Orchestra In E Flat Minor Op.1 – “but metal. I went totally over the top.” Malmsteen has often liked to joke that as far as he is concerned, “more is more”, and the new album exemplifies that philosophy in spades. “What is exciting is when something comes to me, makes me think, ‘Wow!’ and…

Anyone who has studied chord theory will confirm that the basis of a major or minor chord is the triad of root, 3rd (or b3rd) and 5th. Once we start altering or extending chords, though, the picture becomes slightly less clear. A sharp or flat 5th deviates from the norm, but it still refers to the ‘root, 3rd, 5th’ formula as a basis. Sometimes, one of the notes from the basic triad is omitted altogether. Power or ‘5’ chords omit the 3rd, blurring the lines between major and minor. In extended chords (7th, 9th, 11th and 13th) the 5th is usually omitted – partly to keep these chords from sounding too harmonically ‘dense’. The 5th is a very strong-sounding interval, lending itself more to rock than jazzy extended chords. Another…

Certain chords can really evoke moods beyond the major equals happy, minor equals sad premise. If you’ve ever played or heard the Lydian mode, you’ll know the fundamental difference that raising the fourth degree of the regular major scale by a semitone can make. By combining this into a chord, we can alter it in a similar way. This sort of harmony is often featured in film soundtracks and you will also hear it prominently in the Simpsons theme tune! You may ask, how is this different from a b5? It’s all about the context. Though a D# and Eb are the same note enharmonically speaking, the b5 is more traditionally associated with the blues (where it often coexists with the unaltered 4th), plus heavy metal, half diminished or diminished…

The history of guitar synths is a story that goes back decades. When manufacturers started integrating synthesiser concepts with the guitar, it vastly extended the capabilities of the instrument and opened up a new universe of sounds. So, let’s dive right into what guitar synths are, how they work, and the history of their technological evolution. WHAT IS A GUITAR SYNTH? A guitar synth is effectively a synthesiser module that receives input information from a guitar (or guitar-like controller) instead of a keyboard. There are a few ways this can be done. One is by having a dedicated guitar or guitar-like controller, or by using a hexaphonic (or divided) pickup. Via this special pickup, the synth module receives a signal from each individual string. It also sends pitch and articulation…

There are countless ways you can upgrade your home recording studio. From big ticket items like a new laptop or instrument, through to small inexpensive items which make life a bit easier. In this guide to cheap home studio upgrades, we’re going to concentrate on those small wins, including things which might not instantly come to mind when you think about home studio setups, but could have a huge impact on your workflow, motivation or inspiration. STUDIO MONITOR STANDS One of the best home studio upgrades you can make is to invest in a set of dedicated studio monitor stands for your studio speakers. Studio monitors often take up a huge amount of space on your desk, so moving them off gives you more room to add more gear. Plus,…

When Gibson recognised the power (and growing popularity) of Martin’s D series guitars, they set about designing their own big-bodied acoustic (slightly wider, of course) and, in 1931, produced the Jumbo model (later called the Advanced Jumbo) which had a sound all of its own. Gibson’s dreadnought didn’t have the booming bass of a Martin, but it’s tone was warm and even, with a smooth treble response – perfect for the then-popular country western artists, as well as the folk revival scene that would emerge in just a decade or so. Like its inspiration, the Faith Mars is an all-solid instrument and has much of what makes those round-shouldered dreadnoughts of olde so appealing. The African mahogany back and sides support a Sitka spruce top with a beautifully rich grain.…

Power supplies are up there with cables and straps as items that are not particularly exciting, but extremely important. Sure, it’s not as fun to get all excited about isolated power supplies as it is to fight over whether Les Pauls are any good – but frankly, your sound is going to suck if you don’t take care of every little point along the signal chain that can either introduce noise or stop your guitar from sounding the clearest and most faithful it can be. Things get even trickier when you start to add a whole bunch of different analog and digital pedals together. Noise can come in many forms, from digital chatter to ground hum, interference, and just plain ol’ crappy power. Voodoo Lab has been across the whole…

Packing a massive 50W into a small package, this tiny but mighty amp boasts 11 amp models (23 if you use the app/software), a range of different effects, Bluetooth connectivity, eight slots for custom presets and two three-inch speakers working in stereo. It can be powered via mains, or batteries. The first thing we noticed is how much bigger it sounds than its actual size suggests – you can dial in some great sounding, big rock tones all pumped out by a pair of three-inch speakers. There is a little bit of that ‘boxiness’ that you usually get with small amps, but nowhere near as much as you might think. The Adio Air GT keeps up with amps much bigger than this. Whilst the amp models aren’t exactly spot-on replications…