Innehållsförteckning för March 2020 från Guitarist

It’s still early enough in the year to think about making resolutions for the next 12 months. Like most guitarists, I never feel I have enough time to improve my playing skills. In fact, I generally need some sort of terrifying deadline to properly focus my attention on learning. In the past couple of years, gigs have been the main spur to musical growth, because once the gig’s booked there’s no getting out of it. You have to sink or swim. One thing I learned from recent Hendrix and Cream tribute gigs is that if you really want to grow, you have to leave your comfort zone and tackle something tricky enough that it’s not a sure thing you’ll succeed with flying colours. There were definitely points while we were…

In 1959, an electric guitar was born that would change the world. A triumph of innovative design, this thing would pass through the hands of rock stars like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. It ascended to icon status in its own right, an instrument that doesn’t look, sound or feel like anything else. At this point, you’re likely picturing the ’59 Gibson Les Paul Standard. The infamous £250k ‘Bursts’. Joe Bonamassa’s pension pot. Not so fast… You see, 1959 was also the year that saw the arrival of the Danelectro 3021 Shorthorn. If ever a guitar got ideas above its station, it’s this double-cutaway, low-budget classic. Envisioned by guitar, er, visionary Nathan Daniel, the 3021 extracted the maximum rock-star-baiting tone from the humblest of materials. The man’s ideas had legs.…

With 18 years’ experience behind it and a respectable number of awards to its credit, Faith has built a reputation as a builder of medium-priced quality acoustics that’s embedded in the psyche of players worldwide. The mastermind behind the design of the instruments is Patrick James Eggle – a luthier who knows a thing or two about guitars, both electric and acoustic, after all. In the past, Faith has brought us series such as the PJE Legacy, Blood Moon, Nomad and Eclipse and sprouted body shapes that are named after celestial bodies like Venus, Saturn, Mercury and Mars. The Blue Moon Series is the company’s latest theme and the model we have here is a Neptune, a planet from the outer reaches of the solar system and, coincidentally, blue in…

Buck & Evans 16 February to 14 March Various UK and Ireland venues Last year ended with Chris Buck being voted the top blues guitarist of 2019 by MusicRadar readers, seeing him rise above the likes of Bonamassa and Gales. This achievement proves how much his emotive playing is connecting but also that listeners are open-minded to new talent and want to see it recognised. The blues is a hard nut to crack, with harder critics, and Buck is wary of being tagged as a bluesman. But his feel is so undeniably part of a lineage. “Utterly surreal, if I’m honest,” is Buck’s reaction to it all. “Just to be nominated was a shock, but the prospect of winning genuinely hadn’t even crossed my mind. The idea of ranking your…

NAMM Report Teaser As we write this, the Guitarist team is at the NAMM Show in Anaheim, California. So while we feverishly prepare our in-depth show report for the next issue, let’s take a peek at some of the gear that’s tickling our collective fancy so far this year. Winter NAMM always throws up a mountain of killer new gear. This year there’s talk of a Fender Custom Shop Joe Bonamassa ’51 Nocaster, Slash-endorsed Gibsons, and female-artist signature guitars. Until we nail down the details on what we saw, take a look at this little lot… [EM] MANSON MATT BELLAMY META SERIES £569 Ever since Muse frontman, Matt Bellamy, did a Victor Kiam and loved it so much he bought the company, we’ve been intrigued to see what was coming…

Last month I recalled a Clapton interview that he gave after 461 Ocean Boulevard’s release, saying he was pleased with it until he heard one of Stevie Wonder’s seminal albums. After the magazine had gone to press I panicked, thinking I’d maybe imagined it – it was 40 plus years ago after all. If I did, apologies. If I didn’t, it’s a wonderful accolade from one supreme artist to another. My point for mentioning it here is that it threw up a number of things that, in hindsight, seem so surreal that I wonder again, did they happen at all? Okay, they’re nothing for those who already inhabit that glittery world, but for an ordinary bloke like me quite hard to believe. Like the time the wife of a famous…

THINK BIGSBY I read with interest the Longtermers article in the last edition of Guitarist, which mentioned the awkward procedure of restringing a guitar fitted with a Bigsby B7 tremolo arm. Quite a lot of guitarists find this somewhat fiddly. I find the easiest way to restring with a Bigsby is to first slightly bend the end of the new string just under half an inch from the ball at the bottom of the string. This makes it easier to hook under the bottom bar of the Bigsby. Then pull the string tight and place a capo around the 9th fret. This will then hold the string tightly in place while you then pull the string through the machinehead and tighten as usual. Dennis Homes, via email Many thanks indeed,…

IN KEEPING WITH HIS ORIGINS in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jonathon Long’s guitar style is a melting pot of the many strands of Americana. You can hear elements of Delta blues, gospel, Southern rock and country rock, all underpinned by the legacy of the great urban blues guitar legends – the three Kings, Collins, Buddy Guy. In this lesson, Jonathon shows a few of his favourite licks, demonstrating how a simple idea can be extended, modified and combined with other ideas to create an almost limitless stock of licks. All of these examples are in the key of A major, so you can immediately start dropping them into your blues solos. [AC] Example 1 Outlining A Chord JONATHON STARTS WITH a tiny cell of an idea that we’ll be using…

What does working on this guitar mean to you? “I play guitar because of that record, Black Sabbath. When I was 10 years old and my dad had a vinyl record collection, that one was in it and I was going through the records and that cover really was so eerie and it caught my attention. So I wanted to see what that was about and I put that record on. I had to open it because my dad had never opened that record. I don’t even know why he had it – he doesn’t live today, so I can’t really go back and ask him – but he never really opened it. So I opened it up and put it on and then I heard that song Black Sabbath…

Gibson Custom Shop 1963 Les Paul SG Custom Reissue w/ Maestro Vibrola £5,299 Top of the line in ’63 and today, this reissue Custom has been painstakingly recreated using Gibson’s traditional building methods. Sporting a solid one-piece mahogany body and long tenon, hide-glue fit neck, Classic White vintage patina nitro finish, solid ebony fretboard, mother-of-pearl block inlays, and Custombucker Alnico III humbuckers, this guitar was built to turn heads. Gibson Custom Shop 1961 Les Paul SG Standard Reissue Stop Bar £3,399 The model is hand-crafted using old-school Kalamazoo factory methods and materials, with a hide-glue ’board/neck/body construction and a nitrocellulose Cherry Red finish. The ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge has brass saddles and a lightweight aluminium stop bar to maximise coupling between the strings and body, providing greater resonance, sustain…

I WISH I’D HAVE BEEN A MUCH MORE ARDENT PRACTISER. I PLAYED ALL THE TIME BUT I WASN’T ALWAYS PRACTISING. BIG DIFFERENCE!Andy Timmons The ability to read music notation is the single biggest regret raised by our celebrity panel of guitarists. So many either wish they could read, had started earlier or could do it better. It’s a skill set that, once acquired, has countless benefits. If you can’t read at all then it’s a wise musician that puts it high on the ‘to-do’ agenda. A versatile picking technique is an admirable quality that many wish they had developed more at an earlier stage. It’s a guitarist’s most important source of dynamics and time keeping so make sure your practice covers this as extensively as possible. That said, it’s often…

“The traction we’ve gotten from the Forest Stewardship Council-certified models is less than I would have expected. We use cherry. Well, cherry works, but it’s not the wood that most people think of. I think it’s just tradition. We’ve done too good a job of convincing the vast majority of guitar players that high-end acoustic guitars must be made from rosewood, mahogany, ebony and spruce. And, yeah, they work – but other woods work also.” CHRIS MARTIN IV, MARTIN GUITARS “People automatically think the guitar maker needs to get it together and stop wasting trees. And yet we use so few of them. And we make something that is not a wasteful product. We could stop being so dang picky about the materials, but that’s symbiotic with the players.” BOB…

Dumping traditional tonewoods for engineered materials may be a step too far for some. But it’s an obvious area to explore. California’s Blackbird Guitars produces completely wood-free instruments made from a “flax linen fiber and bio-based resin material” called Ekoa, which it says is lighter than carbon fibre, stiffer than fibreglass, stable under temperature and humidity changes, and offers “a better soundboard than spruce because of its superior stiffness-to-weight values”. For individual components, the wood fibre-based composite Richlite, approved by the Forest Stewardship Council, Rainforest Alliance and Greenguard, is already familiar as fingerboards and bridges on, for example, Martin’s Mexican-made guitars. Rocklite, meanwhile, is a blend of American tulip and European eucalyptus, says its UK developer Steve Keys. Luthiers in Sweden have been early adopters, in the US Michael Bashkin…

The majority of hollowbodies or semis follow well-trodden paths. Ibanez’s Artstar AS153 (£899) is a stylish take on a centre-blocked semi and reflects a long-standing association with the jazz and fusion worlds. Along with dual Super 58 humbuckers, the neck pickup’s Tri Sound switch offers parallel and single-coil switching. Godin makes a number of classy hollow and semi-hollow guitars in Canada. The single-cut Montreal Premiere, for example, is 378mm (14.89 inches) wide with a cedar ‘breathe through’ centre block. The twinhumbucking Sunburst HG kicks off the mini range at around £1,500. A more cost-effective Indonesian-made guitar of similar style is the D’Angelico Premier SS Stoptail, which retails at £709. Gretsch has the G2655 Streamliner Center Block Jr Double Cutaway (approx. £340), also available with Bigsby, which reduces its classic double-cut…

We’d been at PRS HQ for a matter of minutes when we were ushered into an office expecting to be shown the latest high-ticket guitars for 2020. Instead, we spent the following hour and a bit discussing the new SE offerings, primarily the Hollowbody guitars made not in Korea or Indonesia but in China – a first for a PRS electric. How? Why? “It’s pretty simple,” Jack Higginbotham, PRS’s chief operating officer, tells us. “We are very happy with our SE acoustic guitars made in Dalian, China, through Cor-Tek. We have an incredible relationship with the man that runs that factory. Instead of him saying, ‘No, we do things our way,’ he has embraced our mission and our philosophy on what makes a good acoustic guitar. I feel very connected…

MANUFACTURER THORPY FX MODEL HEAVY WATER PRICE £189 CONTACT WWW.THORPYFX.COM VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra ThorpyFX’s The Dane, a twinfootswich pedal featuring overdrive and boost, has many admirers but not all of them need a new overdrive. Consequently, after many requests to put just the boost side into a pedal in its own right, Thorpy has done just that. The result is the Heavy Water, which not only provides that exact same high-headroom clean boost but also pairs it with a second boost that features germanium diodes in its circuitry for a different character. Separate footswitches enable the two boosts to be used individually or together: the ‘Dane’ boost (RHS) running into the germanium boost (LHS). Both feature a knob to control the amount of boost plus another to adjust the low-end.…

Roger Bucknall began building guitars professionally in 1973 on the Fylde coast of Lancashire, although he actually built his first instrument in his father’s garage at the age of nine. With a degree in engineering – he insists guitar building is simply engineering with wood – and an interest in the works of William Shakespeare (all Fylde models bear the name of one of the Bard’s characters) combined with a love of guitar and music in general, he set up shop. Relocating to Fylde’s current location in Penrith in the mid-90s, Roger has made guitars for folk legends, including Martin Simpson, Martin Carthy, Davey Graham and Nic Jones, and jazz players Al Di Meola, Pat Metheny and Biréli Lagrène, as well as artists like Sting, Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney.…

What was the last guitar you bought and why? “The last guitar I bought was an Ibanez Pat Metheny guitar. He’s had a few different signatures over the years; this one was a bit thinner than the one that came out in the late 90s. I think it was from about 2009 – I don’t remember the exact date – but it’s a thinner body, so you’ve got a fighting chance of it not being a total feedback monster if you do what you’re not supposed to do, which is play through distortion. I bought it on Reverb.com and it’s really cool.” What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money? “Sometimes it’s fun to have a pointy guitar and Ibanez made some really pointy ones…

1959 Telecaster Custom released; front/back body binding; sunburst finish standard 1972 Original Telecaster Custom (model number 11-1400) discontinued Mid-1972 New version (model number 11-0700) appears; 1x wide-range humbucker (front) January 1973 Debut list price $315; sunburst finish standard; rosewood fretboard or fretted maple neck 1975 6x individually adjustable bridge saddles replace 3x twin saddles 1976 Serial number relocates from neckplate to front of headstock 1977 Black Strat-style knobs replace black metal cap Gibson-style knobs September 1980 Final list price $675; choice of standard finishes in Black, Natural, Wine or Tobacco Sunburst 1981 Dropped from Fender price list…

Difficulty 15 mins Tutor: Richard Barrett | Gear used: Knaggs Choptank, Vox AC15 C1 Modern Funky Blues SOMETIMES IT’S INTERESTING to think about when the electric blues was an ‘up and coming’ genre, before Eric Clapton and his Gibson Les Paul, before the invention of the overdrive pedal and the era of guitar shops full of people noodling on the pentatonic scale. The idea of electric guitar was new – and resisted by many (especially Gibson!) – but players were looking for new sounds, or perhaps simply to be heard in the first instance, later realising the possibilities amplification brought to the table. For many, this reached its zenith with artists such as Jimi Hendrix, who combined his instrumental skills with an array of pioneering gadgetry, as well as his…

PRICE: £549 ORIGIN: Korea TYPE: Twin-cutaway ‘shorthorn’ chambered electric guitar BODY: Masonite with hardwood frame NECK: Maple, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25”) NUT/WIDTH: Aluminium/42mm FINGERBOARD: Pau ferro, 355mm (14”) radius FRETS: 21, medium HARDWARE: Chrome recessed 6-saddle hardtail bridge and vintage-style tuners BRIDGE/SPACING: 52mm ELECTRICS: 2x NOS+ Lipstick single-coil pickups, 2x concentric volume and tone controls and 3-way pickup selector toggle switch WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.7/6 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: Standard ’59 featuring the classic wood saddle bridge (£449); ’59X 12-string from £579; ’59M NOS (£499); ’59 12-string (£529); ’59 12-string with f-hole from £579; Vintage ’56 Baritone (£579) LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISH: Deep Blue Metalflake (as reviewed), Silver Metalflake John Hornby Skewes 01132 865381 www.danelectro.com PROS It’s your classic Dano: it rocks, it jangles, and it punches way above its price…

PRICE: £979 (inc hard case) ORIGIN: Indonesia TYPE: Baby jumbo cutaway electro TOP: Figured Java mango BACK/SIDES: Figured Java mango MAX RIM DEPTH: 116mm MAX BOARD DEPTH: 405mm NECK: Mahogany SCALE LENGTH: 650mm (25.6”) NUT/WIDTH: Tusq/43mm FINGERBOARD: Macassan ebony, mother-of-pearl ‘F’ at 12th fret, 406mm (16”) radius FRETS: 20 BRIDGE/SPACING: Macassan ebony/55mm ELECTRICS: Fishman Ink 3 Preamp with under-saddle pickup WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.4/5.2 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: The Faith Neptune Range includes the FNCE natural (£809), FNCETB Trembesi Neptune (£849), HiGloss Neptune FNCEHG (£969) and HiGloss Baritone Neptune FNBCEHG (£1,099) LEFT-HANDERS: Not this model. A Natural Neptune left-handed model, the FNCEL, costs £829 FINISH: Gloss body with satin neck (as reviewed) FINISHES: Blue Burst (as reviewed), Ash Green Burst (with maple fingerboard) Barnes & Mullins 01691 652449 www.faithguitars.com PROS An…

NEW VINTAGE FINISHES DISTRESSED FROM £329 In what we can only describe as distressing scenes, Vintage has announced a bunch of new finishes for its guitars. The big news is the brand is bringing forth colour-over-colour style finishes previously only seen on pricey gear such as Fender and Gibson Custom Shop stuff and boutique Rock N’ Roll Relic guitars. The single-cut V120 models are now available in Distressed Black-over-Cherry Red and Distressed Gun Hill Blue-over-Sunburst (pictured). The LP-inspired V100 guitar features Distressed Black-over-Sunburst and Distressed Goldtop options. In other news, the V6 Icon S-types now come in aged Firenza Red and Ventura Green while the HSS humbucker-loaded version now features Ultra-Gloss-Relic Laguna Blue and Sunset Sunburst options. The T-style V62 is also available with a heavily distressed black finish. https://vintageguitarsrus.com…

What? Gibson SG Junior Where seen? Anderton’s, Guildford Price? £1,149 Description? Even 60 years on the SG shape is radical and exciting.And, a bit like Fender’s Tele, capable of adapting itself to virtually any amendments – different pickups, scratchplates, inlays, bridge and tailpiece styles. But it works particularly well in this stripped-down Junior format that Gibson has wisely reintroduced. The uncompromising single P-90 pickup and single volume and tone control means you have to work to get the most out of it. But the rewards are so worth it: sweet strum tones with the volume on 2 or 3; bright riffing on about 7; filthy lead flat-out; and, of course, anything from Angus to‘woman’ tone on the other pot. Okay, it’s a two-piece not single mahogany slab for the body,…

The title might sound foreboding, but this way of looking at chord voicings has given us classics such as Buddy Holly’s Raining In My Heart and Barbra Streisand’s Evergreen. Having looked at the diminished 5th (aka #4) last time, it seems only right to redress the balance and look at what happens when you raise (augment) the 5th in a chord. Understanding the harmonic implications of this will give you a wider vocabulary of ideas to call upon when improvising, too. Though these examples stick with basic E, A and D voicings, they can be transposed all over the fretboard and applied to any type of chord. It would be a good use of time to seek these out and become familiar with them in the contexts of both chords…

First of all, tell us about the monkey sticker. Does it have a particular significance? “Well, I had this jacket that I bought from Take 6 in London. I just barely afforded it and I wore it all the time. I wanted to make it a bit different for on stage, so I started putting metal stars and things on it. Then I found these monkeys and I thought, ‘I’ll put a couple of them on, and I’ll put one on the guitar as well.’ So I put one on the guitar and it became known as the ‘Monkey’ guitar.” And how did the idea come about to recreate the Monkey SG with Gibson? “It’s been talked about for quite a while. When the new owners came in they said,…

Gibson’s 2019 offered includes the Sustainable series, which the company described as “built with the environment in mind”. Based on the J-45, L-00 and Hummingbird body shapes, the series incorporates Alaskan Sitka spruce tops, North American walnut, Central American mahogany necks and Richlite fingerboards and bridges. Robi Johns, sales and marketing director for Gibson Acoustic, says the spruce and walnut are from “sustainable sources, and we expect them to be around for many years to follow”. On top of Richlite’s eco-credentials, he says it also provides the right black background for maple inlay. “The Sustainable series was created for us to march forward as a responsible wood user,” says Johns, and to appeal to “consumers looking for a more natural instrument, an earthy kind of instrument”. Johns says the Sustainable…

“Using reclaimed wood is rather more green and sustainable – for a small-production luthier – than even using local sustainable woods,” says UK guitar maker Adrian Lucas. “You might have a wardrobe that comes to the end of its life, but the material it was made from is as good as the day it was built and it’s such a waste to discard the whole thing. “Reclaimed wood can be of a very high quality,” he continues, since moisture and chemical content may have stabilised. Finding big enough pieces intact can be a challenge but “a four-piece back is every bit as good as a two-piece, and can often allow one to maintain quarter-sawn grain over the whole width”. Among the most alluring of salvaged woods, bog oak or Fenland…

PRICE: £899 (inc case) ORIGIN: China TYPE: Double-cutaway hollowbody electric BODY: Double-bound mahogany laminate NECK: Mahogany, Wide Fat profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43.2mm FINGERBOARD: Bound ebony, pearloid bird inlays, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: PRS Adjustable Stoptail, PRS designed tuners – nickel-plated STRING SPACING/BRIDGE: 52mm ELECTRICS: PRS 58/15 ‘S’Treble and Bass humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.79/6.15 OPTIONS: None. See Hollowbody II RANGE OPTIONS: The USA Core-level Hollowbody range includes the II Piezo (from £4,749). Both the Hollowbody I 12-string (from £4,830) and the McCarty 594 Hollowbody II (from £4,429) have updated specs for 2020 LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Fire Red Burst (as reviewed) and McCarty Tobacco Sunburst PROS Upscaled design; laminate construction; excellent pickup choice. A classy hollowbody CONS Darker sounding than the…

KEMPER PROFILER STAGE £1,449 CONTACT Kemper PHONE +49 2361 486 4679 WEB www.kemper-amps.com What You Need To Know 1 Has Guitarist gone completely digital, then? No, but we’re definitely in a time of immense development in digital amplification. The problem might well be which brand or product to go for. 2 So, what is the Profiler Stage? A new floor-standing version of Kemper’s Profiler head preamp, combined with the Kemper Remote foot controller. Like the original Profiler head, it doesn’t have a power stage, so you’ll need a powered cab of some sort if you want to use it live without a proper PA. However, it does come with full profiling capability. 3 Will it suit me? If you’re an occasional amateur guitarist, it’s probably overkill, but if you’re tech-savvy and can…

CARL MARTIN Dual Injection £99 Here, two separately footswitchable boosts are taken from the company’s Hot Drive’n Boost and put into one pedal that can be used in serial or parallel (one boost in the signal chain before your amp, one boost in your amp’s effect loop). MAXON DB10 Dual Booster £145 The DB10 features two completely independent boost circuits in a single compact housing, each with its own input and output jacks: the Clean channel is a transparent boost, and the Vintage channel is based on a classic treble booster. SUHR Dual Boost £199 Suhr’s offering includes two independent boosts, each with its own Boost and Hi-Cut controls. There is only a single footswitch here, but you can switch from Boost 1 to Boost 2 by…

1 What was the first pedal you built and how did the design come about? “The first pedal I built was an Electra distortion [from geofex.com]. This was around 2002. I printed out the circuit, bought some parts and just soldered them together using a bit of cardboard to hold them in place. And it worked! I couldn’t believe it. I was amazed. The first Rainger FX pedal was the Freakenstein Fuzz. When I first started doing my own pedals, I was etching the board with chemicals and hand-drilling them. I took a few down to a shop in Denmark Street and they phoned me later that day asking for more! And it went on from there. It’s been full blast from 2009 onwards.” 2 What do you think it…

Roger has recently released a double-CD – Strings That Nimble Leap – featuring music from players of his instruments including Martin Simpson, Gordon Giltrap, John Smith and Martin Carthy and many others. It was a project that took eight months to complete and all the profits will be split between three charities. “The charities are Mind, Help Musicians UK and The Woodland Trust,” he tells us. “I asked all the artists to give me a track. They’ve all done it free of charge – and nearly all of it is stuff that isn’t published elsewhere. An awful lot of it is specially written, nearly all of it is specially recorded.And some you’ll never hear elsewhere, ever again…” So if you want to hear over two hours of excellent acoustic music…

“I used to buy a lot of things on eBay before Reverb was there and once in a while you’d get something that was messed up, but generally people who sell on eBay or Reverb want to have a good reputation because they’ve got their rating and so if they sell you a bad product, or it’s not as advertised, it’s going to affect that reputation. The other thing is that I play with such a high action so almost any guitar works for me. I dunno, I guess my best tip is buy lots of them!”…

PAUL RODGERS Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters Bringing in guest guitarists such as Brian Setzer, Trevor Rabin, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy and Neal Schon, Paul Rodgers reimagines a selection of classic Muddy Waters tracks, giving each of them a free rein. The results are very interesting, to say the least! It would be a shame to pick out individual tracks to recommend, but Rollin’ Stone featuring Jeff Beck might be the track to check out if you’re not going to listen to the whole thing. ERIC GALES TRIO Ghost Notes As an instrumental album, Ghost Notes presents a great opportunity to study Eric’s unusual phrasing at length. You should bear in mind that Eric plays his guitars left-handed/upside-down, too, so there will certainly be some surprises in…

PRICE: £699 ORIGIN: Korea TYPE: Reverse double-cutaway chambered electric guitar BODY: Masonite with hardwood frame NECK: Maple, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25”) NUT/WIDTH: Graphite/43mm FINGERBOARD: Pau ferro, 355mm (14”) radius FRETS: 21, medium HARDWARE: Nickel Wilkinson WVS50 IIK vibrato and vintage-style tuners BRIDGE/SPACING: 52mm ELECTRICS: 1x Dual Lipstick humbucker (bridge), 1x P-90-style single coil (neck), master volume and master tone with push/pull coil-split and 3-way pickup selector toggle switch WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.2/7.4 OPTIONS: None RANGE OPTIONS: ’66 hardtail with f-hole in 3-Tone Sunburst, Gloss Black and Trans Red (£999) LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISH: 3-Tone Sunburst (as reviewed), Gloss Black, Vintage Cream PROS A classic in the making; killer feel and tone; butter-wouldn’t-melt looks; the vibrato adds versatility CONS When you’ve got a minute, sort us out a hardtail option…

Joe Bonamassa’s love for British blues is no secret – he toured with a set honouring Page, Clapton and Beck in 2016 – but his 14th studio album finds him going further towards the source, writing and tracking in England’s most legendary studio. “It’ll be a nice change of pace because we’ve done the last two records in Nashville,” he says, having told us of the plan to track the record at Abbey Road. “We’re looking forward to getting into the raunchy weather and, you know, putting our ‘wellies’ on and cranking one out properly.” British influences will be heavy on his mind: “It’s very purpose-based and maybe a bit more raw and rock than people normally associate with me,” Joe adds. The seeds for the record were sown when…

After the madness of the pre-Christmas season where a lot of people are trying to finish off musical projects before the holidays, and live shows are popular, it’s usual for professional musicians to experience a quieter period in January. This was what I was expecting… until I received a fairly last-minute call for what turned out to be possibly one of the toughest studio gigs I’ve ever done. I was subbing for another guitar player Leo Abrahams, recording a pop/light opera reworking of Turandot for Italian star Riccardo Cocciante. The project was being recorded at AIR Studios Lyndhurst in Hampstead, north London. AIR is a huge old building, originally a church, and was George Martin’s studio for a long time. Many large orchestral sessions are recorded in the main hall,…

One of the problems with evaluating guitar strings is that most players are loathe to change a new set of strings for another one until they’ve had at least a gig’s use or a few weeks of home playing out of them. The reluctance to waste strings is understandable, but it means by the time you come round to fit a new set, you’ve probably forgotten what the last ones sounded like. That’s not a problem if you’ve settled on a favourite set and use it time after time. But if you’re trying to decide whether a completely new set of strings would suit you better than the ones you’ve used in the past, that time-lag can make meaningful comparison difficult. “I picked out three sets that looked likely to…

REVERSE RELIC I wonder if any on-the-ball luthiers have spotted the business opportunity offered by the popularity of reliced guitars as shown in the excellent Guitarist Relic Issue (455). Buyers of Fender Relic (and especially Heavy Relic models) may find them difficult to sell at a later date, being so worn and battered. Yellow-aged plastic, bare wood, scratched and worn lacquer and rusted metal parts could definitely lower the resale value. I suggest a ‘de-relicing’ service for owners of the Relic and Heavy Relic models. For a similar cost to the original relicing, the instrument could be taken apart, the body stripped down to the bare wood and refinished in a deep lustrous gloss. The ‘worn’ parts such as the pickguard could be replaced, as could rusted and yellowed parts…

Marcus King El Dorado Spinefarm An outstanding debut from US singer-songwriter “He’s regularly the best guitar player in the room, hands down,” El Dorado producer Dan Auerbach says of Marcus King. Still only 23 years old, Marcus has been performing for 11 years and has already chalked up appearances on US TV and at the Grand Ole Opry, as well as appearing at Clapton’s Crossroads Festival. The buzz Stateside is considerable, but so far he’s not quite so well known on this side of the Atlantic – something that this, his debut solo album, might change. El Dorado mixes Southern-style rock with some genre-bending twists here and there. Marcus is a powerful songwriter as well as being an excellent guitarist. Stay tuned for UK dates later this year. [DM] Standout…

Back in August we had one of those rare hallelujah moments where you get truly knocked off your feet by a player you’d never encountered before. Jonathon Long, a 31 year old from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, may not be a household name quite yet, but his effortless command of country, jazz and blues licks recalls greats such as Danny Gatton – not a comparison we use lightly. When we caught up with Jonathon last summer, he was playing on a blues-themed cruise hosted by Joe Bonamassa. But he’s about as far from the blues-rock cookie-cutter as can be, citing Johnny A, Tony Rice and Guthrie Govan as equally important influences in his rich inner musical landscape. He’s also got huge chops, which he delivers with the passion of a travelling…

“There’s been so many highs that we’ve had over the years. Every stage we’ve gone through. For us, when we first played Madison Square Gardens, that was like, ‘Oh,’ you know. And then we actually did it again and again and again, and then we got this plaque from Madison Square Gardens for selling the most seats at one point. So those were high times. And then different events we’ve done have become another high point. There’s so many of them. But it was definitely a high. “The low points of it were all the other things that happened. The management thing we went through at one point, which was awful – getting law suits while we were in a bloody recording session, you know. Going to court in the…

Throughout the 1950s, Gibson continuously revisited and reworked its Les Paul range. One of the most significant changes occurred in 1958 when, in response to customer requests, Gibson modernised its single-cutaway Les Paul Junior, TV and Special models with double-cutaway body designs. Featuring rounded horns, the revised Junior and TV guitars began shipping that year, followed by the Special in early ’59. Then in late ’59 Gibson rebranded the Les Paul Special and Les Paul TV; renamed the SG Special and SG TV respectively, it marked the beginning of the end for Gibson’s original Les Paul range of solidbody electrics that began in 1952 with the Les Paul Model (Goldtop) . By 1961, these rounded double-cutaway guitars, along with the Les Paul Standard/ ’Burst and Les Paul Custom’s classic single-cutaway…

JOE BONAMASSA America’s new king of blues-rock guitar 1) A technique-based ‘I wish’ “Legato: I have absolutely no capacity to play anything using the legato technique. Eric Johnson blends legato and picking perfectly in my opinion. I am an Al Di Meola school player, especially when it comes to faster playing. I pick literally every note unless I’m on stage playing pretend rock star. I’ve tried to incorporate legato a little, but as my tech – who is extremely good at it and a huge Allan Holdsworth fan – glares over with the look of, ‘You are embarrassing yourself, Bonamassa,’ I decided it was not in my best interest to pursue that avenue.” 2) A theory-based ‘I wish’ “One of my strengths and weaknesses is that I have…

Where’s your next acoustic guitar tonewood coming from? In the face of ecological crisis and concerns over supply, acoustic guitar makers are shaking up their methods and materials. In this, the second part of our report on the future of acoustic guitar woods, we ask what the next generation of acoustics will be made from. Do makers keep going after the same revered species of wood? Protect and replant the ones we like the sound of? Search out lookalikes and use them up, too? Stand back and let forests recover while cooking up synthetic materials? Or how about picking over our old waste – furniture, whisky barrels, railway sleepers? Spoiler: it turns out to be all of the above. The 2017 trade clampdown on the rosewood (Dalbergia) species – and…

“Mother Earth will be cheering you on,” says Martin, if you pick up one of its Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-endorsed acoustics. There are currently two of Martin’s 150 or so models that carry the FSC stamp, meaning all materials in an instrument have been judged to meet the organisation’s forest management standards. At one end of the FSC range, the OME Cherry features a Sitka spruce top, cherry back and sides, mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard and bridge, plus African blackwood headplate. The most expensive in the range, the 00-DB Jeff Tweedy is Martin’s first Custom Artist model certified by the FSC and carrying the Rainforest Alliance seal. Mahogany top, back, sides, neck and headplate, and Richlite fingerboard are all FSC certified. Richlite also appears as fretboards and bridges on the…

PRICE: £999 (inc case) ORIGIN: China TYPE: Double-cutaway hollowbody electric BODY: Double-bound flame maple laminate (top and back), 5-ply w/ mahogany laminate sides NECK: Mahogany, Wide Fat profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 635mm (25”) NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43mm FINGERBOARD: Bound ebony, pearloid bird inlays, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: PRS Adjustable Stoptail, PRS designed tuners – nickel-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: PRS 58/15 ‘S’Treble and Bass humbuckers, 3-way toggle pickup selector WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.75/6.05 OPTIONS: None. See Hollowbody Standard RANGE OPTIONS: PRS currently offers four Semi-Hollow models: CE 24 (£2,325), S2 Vela (£1,615, and in Satin finish £1,295), and the SE Custom 22 Semi-Hollow (£799) LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Charcoal Burst (as reviewed) and Tri-Color Sunburst PROS Ditto the Standard; there’s more snap and clarity to this version, making it the…

Line 6’s Helix Floor (£1,199) is very popular. For good reason: at the last count it featured 45 amps, 30 cabs, 16 mics and 70 effects models, accessed from a high-definition colour display, making editing a pleasure. It has assignable colour-coded footswitches, programmable scribble strips and an integral expression pedal. For those on a tighter budget, the HeadRush Pedalboard (£774), like the Helix, features a big seven-inch full-colour touchscreen display, making for fast, intuitive drag-and-drop editing through what must be one of the best user interfaces in this class. The latest software adds extra amps, cabs, impulse responses and effects to rival the competition, with quad processor-powered realism and a mad looper that can record samples up to 20 minutes long. Boss pedals are so abundant it’s worth remembering the…

MANUFACTURER ELECTRO-HARMONIX MODEL RAM’S HEAD BIG MUFF PI PRICE £92 CONTACT WWW.EHX.COM So, which is the most desired Big Muff of them all? There have been many variations over the years, but a lot of Muff aficionados have a soft spot for the V2 Muff produced for a few years from 1973 and known as the ‘Ram’s Head’ because of that bizarre little face on the front. The popularity may also have something to do with the fact that it’s the model most associated with David Gilmour. Now in its nano range of Big Muff reissues (that also includes the V1 Triangle Muff, Op-Amp Big Muff and Green Russian), Electro-Harmonix has launched the Ram’s Head Big Muff Pi, said to be a reproduction of the ‘violet’ version, the most common…

THE BACKGROUND ARTHUR WHILE via email For some reason, over Christmas I found myself listening to The Police. While doing so I fell down the rabbit hole of trying to nail Andy Summers’ guitar tone. What I don’t understand, however, is why perceived wisdom states he used a flanger to achieve a lot of his signature sounds and yet to me it sounds like a chorus. Am I missing something or is internet wisdom wrong – and why? Also, what modern pedals would you choose to emulate Andy Summers’ sound? THE QUESTIONS 1 WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CHORUS PEDAL AND A FLANGER? 2 DID ANDY SUMMERS USE A CHORUS OR FLANGER DURING HIS TIME IN THE POLICE? 3 WHAT MODERN RIG WOULD YOU RECOMMEND TO ACHIEVE ANDY SUMMERS’…

Writer DAVE BURRLUCK Guitarist, Gear Reviews Editor In a Longtermers special, our reviews editor decides to test out not one but two guitars that share some commonality on paper but are priced about £3.5k apart. Nurse! Get the meds… We often say that the ‘best’ guitar is simply the one that suits you and your budget. If you’re just starting out, or indeed returning to this guitar-playing lark, we’d never advise spending a lot of money; likewise, if you only have the occasional noodle. But if you take your craft seriously, gig out a lot and hopefully earn some money in the process, you might want an instrument that’ll support your aims. Two instruments I reviewed in issue 455 – a lowly Fret-King Country Squire Semitone Special and a lofty…

As long as we’ve had the electric guitar there have been two main types of pickup selector switch most commonly in use: the ‘Gibson-style’ toggle switch, and the ‘Fender-style’ lever or blade switch. You can count the other types of pickup selector switches used in the past 60-something years on the fingers of your left hand. These are very basic switches that have barely changed at all. Today, we have more varieties of these ‘standard’ switches than we did back in the 1950s, and that includes a price scale from touring pro to starter quality. The three-position (or three-way) toggle switch is typically used on a twin-pickup guitar selecting either or both combined in parallel. The lever switch in its basic form again offers three positions but is more flexible,…

There are two unique versions of the Fender Telecaster Custom. The first appeared in catalogues from 1959 and was intended as an upmarket alternative to the regular Telecaster. With its “custom treatment of the body” – including a three-tone sunburst finish over alder along with top and back binding – it stood apart from the standard ash-bodied Telecaster’s more austere blonde finish. However, with the same pickups, electronics and hardware, both models function identically as instruments. During the late 60s and early 70s, Fender experienced a creative boom and began to experiment further using the Telecaster as a hotbed for new ideas. Subsequently, in 1968, the semi-acoustic Telecaster Thinline was released, along with the short-lived flower power-inspired Paisley Red and Blue Flower Telecasters. The following year saw the introduction of…

1. SERIAL NUMBER Six digits stamped into neckplate (typically between 540000 and 590000 during 1974) 2. HEADSTOCK Traditional Telecaster-style headstock with bullet truss rod nut; two metal ‘butterfly’ string trees; black with gold outline CBS ‘Fender’ logo and black ‘Telecaster Custom’ decals 3. PLASTICS Three-ply (b/w/b) elongated scratchplate; four black Gibson-style metal cap knobs (independent ‘Vol’ and ‘Tone’ pickup controls); white pickup selector switch tip 4. HARDWARE Standard Tele string-through-body bridge with three adjustable twin saddles and six rear ferrules; Fender ‘F’ logo tuners; ‘three bolt’ Tilt Neck system; adjustable truss rod; recessed side jack; two strap buttons 5. PICKUPS One ‘wide-range’ humbucker with adjustable polepieces and Fender logo chrome cover; one standard Tele bridge pickup; three-way selector switch; individual pickup tone and volume 1meg-ohm pots; two 0.022uF tone capacitors…