Innehållsförteckning för April 2022 från Guitarist

This month’s cover feature on 2022’s GAS-inducing crop of new guitars reminded me of a recent experience that taught me something. With an acoustic EP to record, I bought myself a Martin DR Centennial, an Adirondack spruce-topped limited-edition dreadnought the Pennsylvania company made for just one year in 2016. Happy with my new purchase – which sounded and played just as I’d hoped – I decided to sell on my longtime workhorse dreadnought, a Yamaha LL16. I’d had it for well over a decade and it had mellowed nicely. In a quiet way, it was probably the guitar I played the most at home. All the same, I put it up for sale and soon enough a young chap asked if he could pop round to try it. “Of course,”…

Back at the start of 2021, the only way to experience Relish’s patented pickup-swapping feature was to buy the original Trinity by Relish guitar (made in Indonesia by Cor-Tek). This retailed at approximately £1,500 and came with a second set of pickups, or you could move up to one of Relish’s Swiss-built guitars that start at around £3k. Sound Affects owner Tim Lobley liked the pickup-swapping concept but was less sure about the saleability of Relish’s modern design – and that kickstarted the Cream T Guitar company with pickup-swapping licensed from Relish (see Wishlist, page 26). Meanwhile, Relish itself was working hard on a more affordable version of the Trinity and here it is. Priced at just £599 (and including a decent gigbag), it’s available in a choice of four…

PRICE: £599 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: Indonesia TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric BODY: Basswood NECK: Maple, modern ‘C’ shape, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 650mm (25.59”) NUT/WIDTH: Graphite/41.7mm FINGERBOARD: Laurel, pearloid dot markers, 254mm (10”) radius FRETS: 24, medium jumbo stainless steel HARDWARE: Hard-tail 6-saddle bridge w/ through body stringing, enclosed tuners – chrome-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm ELECTRICS: 2x Relish XX humbuckers, 3-way lever pickup selector, master volume and tone. WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.86/6.3 OPTIONS: None aside from additional pickups (see website for prices) RANGE OPTIONS: The Swiss-made models also feature the pickup swap concept with a completely different construction. Prices start with Mary at CHF 3,499; the Jane starts at CHF 3,999 LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISHES: Rose (reviewed), Silver, Ice Blue and Olive Green metallics. Satin body, natural satin neck Sound Affects 01695 570023…

Orange has been turning out consistently great-sounding and innovative products for over 50 years, with a history that goes back to the early days of British blues and rock. Back then, the emphasis was on big, heavy 100-watt heads and 4x12 cabinets. Today, things have changed and many guitarists choose pedals to shape their sound, using amplification purely for making things louder. Consequently, self-contained preamps are increasingly popular and Orange has just released the new Guitar Butler, following on from its popular Bass Butler preamp introduced a couple of years ago. The Guitar Butler is a full Orange front-end, squeezed into a compact, pedalboard-friendly enclosure and built to Orange’s typically high standards. Inside the alloy box the electronics are all held on one large circuit board, excluding switches and sockets,…

1. Unlimited Inspiration Frusciante reflects on his return to RHCP Following Red Hot Chili Peppers’ return with John Frusciante and new song Black Summer (ahead of the new album, Love Unlimited, set for release on 1 April), the guitarist revealed how the band got its groove back: “When we started writing material, we began by playing old songs by people like Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, The Kinks, New York Dolls, Richard Barrett and others,” says Frusciante. “Ever so gradually, we started bringing in new ideas and turning jams into songs, and after a couple of months the new stuff was all we were playing… The feeling of effortless fun we had playing songs by other people stayed with us the whole time we were writing and, for me, this record…

With January being a traditionally quieter month for professional musicians, it was good to spend a few days at Abbey Road’s famous Studio Two recording the cast album for the West End show I’m currently doing – The Drifters Girl, starring Beverly Knight. The main difference between this and other sessions I’ve done is that obviously we’ve all played the music before, having done the show for the past three months. For me personally, the most stressful part of any typical session is the moment you open the pad of music in front of you – it could potentially be anything from an easy pop rhythm part to a fast classical-style film part, and all points in between via banjo and mandolin doubles. “The moment you open the music, it…

Over the past few years I’ve spent more and more time playing fingerstyle acoustic. Finally, I’ve reached the stage where I’ve written and rehearsed enough material to record an EP of instrumental folk – with John Renbourn as my main influence and other fingerstyle masters, such as Pierre Bensusan and Sheffield’s Martin Simpson, as ongoing sources of inspiration. So I have the studio booked, the material rehearsed and the guitars at the ready. But there’s still one problem… In the course of rehearsing the pieces I want to record, I’ve discovered some of the songs involve sliding licks that, eight times out of 10, cause an intrusive squeak that’s tolerable in the room but really jarring on a recording. Engineer Martin Holmes and I chew the fat about the best…

SEEING DOUBLE In issue 481, Neville Marten asked for any tales of famous guitar skirmishes. Mine, or should I say my guitar’s, is told in the attached photo [shown opposite] – here we see Mike Starr from Alice In Chains holding a rather awesome Rickenbacker 4080, a guitar that is now sitting here beside me in Bristol. The photo came in the case with the guitar when I acquired it a few years ago. It isn’t clear if Mike owned this guitar or if this is just a promo shot, but it’s a nice little slice of history for the guitar itself. A candidate for a future appearance in Classic Gear/Vintage Icons, perhaps? Steve Ghee, via email A double-neck Ricky is a rare bird among rare birds for sure, Steve,…

If you peruse the artists signed to the Mascot Label Group, it reads like a list of the sharpest guitar players around: from Vai to Robben Ford, the level of musicianship is incredible. But one artist on the roster seemed a little more intriguing. Los Angeles resident Eric Krasno is one of those interesting musicians who is happy to sit on a tasteful, minimal groove all through one song only to burn like a latter-day Wes Montgomery on the next. Blending elements of Herbie Hancock and Curtis Mayfield in his writing with chops worthy of Grant Green, Krasno really is a subtle gem of a musician. Krasno’s broad-based approach may come from his background as a producer – and he has produced some of the biggest names in music, from…

Being a company with a long and revered history can be a double-edged sword. On the positive side, everyone knows and respects the heritage. On the downside, it can make introducing new guitars, especially those with cutting-edge features, a risky business. That’s why Martin’s Modern Deluxe range, launched in 2019, was such a well-judged effort. The idea was to launch a small range of guitars that looked classic on the outside but which boasted enhanced performance thanks to cutting-edge materials and advanced design. The latter improvements were visually unobtrusive and included bridge pins made of a special alloy that transferred energy to the soundboard more efficiently, giving a volume hike, and torrefied VTS (Vintage Tone System) spruce tops that mimicked the rich sound of 80-year-old vintage classics. As well as…

TAYLOR AD27E FLAMETOP £2,495 CONTACT Taylor Guitars PHONE 00800 23750011 WEB www.taylorguitars.com What You Need To Know 1 Flame maple for an acoustic top? Okay, so it’s perhaps an unusual choice, but in a time of serious supply chain issues Taylor took the initiative to “cook with what’s in the pantry” and the company already had a good supply of flame maple. Experiments followed, a plan was formed and the AD27e Flametop was unleashed into the world. 2 How does it affect the sound? If you’re used to the established sound of a Taylor dread then prepare to have your eyebrows raised. There’s a dose of very engaging earthy, woody tones on offer here. 3 Is Taylor pursuing its V-Class bracing with this guitar? Indeed – and the result is…

ORIGIN: China TYPE: Distortion pedal FEATURES: True bypass, LED markers on control knobs CONTROLS: High, Low, Blend, Level A, Tone A, Gain A, Level B, Tone B, Gain B, Mode switch Mute/Series/Bypass, LED On/Off, Bypass footswitch, Distortion A footswitch, Distortion B footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 165mA DIMENSIONS: 170 (w) x 125 (d) x 63mm (h) ORIGIN: China TYPE: Reverb pedal FEATURES: True bypass, LED markers on control knobs, 3 reverb algorithms CONTROLS: Damping A, Time A, Mod A, Level A, Damping B, Time B, Mod B, Level B, Sustain, Type switch 1/2/3, LED On/Off, Bypass footswitch, Reverb A/B footswitch, Sustain footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 150mA DIMENSIONS: 170 (w) x 125 (d) x 63mm (h)…

“I have a Bradshaw switching system to control effects. The effects are in a rack or in a drawer and not on the stage, and the series of effects loops allows you to not be running through an effect when you’re not engaging it. That also allows me to use up to three different rigs together or separately. In the studio, I’ll put a little amp as a third rig with my stage amps as rigs one and two. On stage one, the amp is set to be more of a Marshall-type sound – it could be a Marshall or a Soldano or a Paul Reed Smith – and the other amp is more of a Fender-y sound, usually a Homestead or a Díaz. On stage I switch back and…

This year, Roland celebrates its 50th anniversary, having formed in 1972. Some of its earliest products include the AF-100 BeeBaa and AF-60 BeeGee fuzz pedals, and the AD-50 Double Beat fuzz/ wah, and by the following year, the first Space Echo tape delay units had arrived in the form of the RE-100 and RE-200. These were quickly superseded by the RE-101 and the now-iconic RE-201 in 1974. The magic produced by a Roland RE-201 Space Echo unit is hard to capture in words. But, as anyone who has had the pleasure of plugging into one of these vintage effects units knows, for sheer depth and complexity of tone it’s hard to beat. Genuine spring reverb is often imitated but seldom bettered, while high-quality tape echo is still coveted for its…

“While Fender seemed to hit it out of the park with the Esquire on its first run, it took Gibson several tries to get to its best guitar. The fact is the first Les Pauls with the trapeze tailpiece had several problems. The neck angle was bad and there was no way to palm[-mute] the strings. In other words, there was no way to play the guitar, well, the way we like to play it. The way Les liked to play was different, however; he was a jazz picker and he didn’t really palm the strings. It didn’t matter much to him. Consequently, the guitars from ’52 [when the Les Paul Model/Goldtop was released] to early ’53 are tougher to sell, and many people have used them for conversions to…

JAMES GANG JAMES GANG RIDES AGAIN This 1970 classic from James Gang kicks off with Funk #49, from which I briefly borrow the repicked bend for the beginning of my own solo. It’s also well worth checking out Joe Walsh’s funky blues-rock riffing and solo phrasing on tracks such as Asshton Park,Woman and Thanks. Pay particular attention to the way certain chord inversions can integrate into the pentatonic-based riffs and phrases; there are very few ‘straight’ powerchords to be found. JOE BONAMASSA DUST BOWL Joe has always straddled the gap between British Invasion-style blues, and classic and modern rock. Check out the title track for blues with a soul/funk tinge, plus some atmospheric textures. Elsewhere, try You Better Watch Yourself for a more traditional blues shuffle – though, as ever,…

The Gibson SG, perhaps rather like Fender’s Jazzmaster, the Rickenbacker 330 or even Gretsch’s 6120, is one of those guitars that most of us think, “I really should get one of those.” Yet as often than not these fine instruments stay languishing on the shelf in favour of another Strat, Tele or Les Paul. Well, if Epiphone’s recent form continues with this incarnation of the mother brand’s pointy-horned wonder, perhaps now might be the time for that to change. The SG’s entry to the market was somewhat controversial, since initially it bore Les Paul’s moniker, but the legendary musician, electronics genius and inventor didn’t like the guitar. He thought it was too flimsy and demanded Gibson remove his name. Hence the birth of the ‘Solid Guitar’ (SG) in 1961. But…

Outwardly, the contemporary Vox Bobcat (based on the Italian-made Vox original from the mid-60s) looks like any other Gibson thinline clone. But, as we discovered back in issue 469, it’s a different take on that hallowed design. It retains the 416mm (16.38-inch) width of that classic style, but the scale length is increased to 635mm (25-inch) and the weight-relieved centre block swaps to spruce, narrower under the pickups and fuller widthed from the tune-o-matic bridge to the base and at the neck joint. While that helped keep those original versions around the 3.2kg (7lb) mark, the addition of a Bigsby only marginally ups the weight and slightly changes the seated balance. The craft is faultless, if a little generic, with both bodies fully bound, including the f-holes – likewise, with…

The first recollection I have of any kind of lyrical mishearing (also known as a ‘mondegreen’) comes from when I was at school in Great Baddow, Essex. To set the scene, I should mention there’s a road in Great Baddow called Beehive Lane. In school assembly each morning, as well as singing the usual hymns, we’d have to recite the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Our Father, which art in heaven…’ One day the head teacher stopped the assembly and asked what words we were intonating. It turned out that many of the kids were in fact reciting, “Our Father, which art in Heaven, hello Beehive Lane” (rather than ‘be thy name’). If I ever go back there I can’t drive up that road without a smile on my face. Jumping forward…

While most guitar makers are back to something like normal service again after the world was tipped upside down by the pandemic, it’s true to say that 2022 is a changed landscape in terms of guitar gear. An influx of new and returning players has shaken up the market and, it’s fair to say, lots of longterm guitarists have heavily reassessed their musical priorities during the past two years.As we explored in our New Wave issue of last year, global supply problems have reshaped how guitars are being designed – and what were, until recently, only seeds of change are now rapidly bearing fruit. For example, bottlenecks in the supply of once common parts and materials from overseas have helped give British guitar making a boost – and in the…

York is fast becoming the manufacturing centre of the British production guitar. Regular readers of Guitarist will be aware that it’s the home of PJD Guitars, and it’s this company’s success that is driving a new venture: UKGB (UK Guitar Builders). Last year PJD was approached by Sound Affects owner, Tim Lobley, to consider making a guitar that incorporated Relish’s pickup-swapping technology. But rather than that becoming a PJD model, it kickstarted Cream T Guitars. PJD founder and UKGB co-founder, Leigh Dovey, explains more: “Within a month or two, Seth Baccus – who I’d spoken to over the years, I’d asked him tips and advice along the way – approached us. He said that he loved the guitars we were building, especially at the price we could build them at.…

1 FENDER HAMMERTONE SERIES PEDALS Following 2021’s release of its Dual pedals, Fender has further expanded its effects range with the Hammertone series, featuring no fewer than nine new stompboxes that are due to start shipping in April. Designed under the watchful eye of Fender Effects bod Stan Cotey, the Hammertone line-up gives us an affordable, well-rounded collection of pedals starting at £69.99. Included in the range are the Hammertone Overdrive (pictured), Distortion, Metal, Fuzz, Chorus, Flanger, Reverb, Delay and Space Delay. While the Hammertone range might appear straightforward with its series-wide utilitarian box design (in a hammer-style grey paint finish) and funky custom-coloured ‘F’ controls, there’s a little more going on than first meets the eye. The Distortion and Metal pedals feature four fairly standard controls with settings…

While some artists found it difficult to pick up a guitar during the national lockdowns of 2020, Billy Bragg was making his first album in eight years, entitled The Million Things That Never Happened. He’s always been one of the most distinctive, unflinching yet compassionate voices in rock. Emerging from the busking scene, songs like A New England from his 1983 debut album, Life’s Riot With Spy Vs Spy, confirmed him as a laureate of the London streets with an unvarnished ‘chop and clang’ style on guitar that matched the energy and honesty of his lyrics. His main squeeze back then was a rare Burns Steer semi-acoustic that’s still by his side today – along with a cherished collection of National Resonators and Gibson flat-tops that partly reflects Billy’s interest…

If you have set aside £2.5k to buy an acoustic guitar, the world is pretty much your oyster. Looking at the other contenders in the big-league makers, both Gibson and Martin serve up some stiff competition. We were impressed by Gibson’s Generation range, all of which clock in at well below the AD27e’s price point, but a standard J-45 costs around £2,399, with a Hummingbird Studio at the same price. If Martin is more your cup of tea, look no further than a D-18 for £2,499 or a souped-up D-28 Reimagined for slightly more at £2,999. If it has to be a Taylor, there is a whole stable of dreads on offer, a V-Class 327e Grand Pacific retailing at £1,929, for instance. Going bespoke, it’s worth looking at makers such…

ORIGIN: China TYPE: Drive pedal FEATURES: Buffered bypass CONTROLS: Gain, Level, Damping, Tone, Bypass footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 100mA DIMENSIONS: 60 (w) x 115 (d) x 50mm (h) ORIGIN: China TYPE: Drive pedal FEATURES: True bypass CONTROLS: Depth, Level, Speed, Fuzz, Fuzz Level, Bypass footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 100mA DIMENSIONS: 60 (w) x 115 (d) x 50mm (h) ORIGIN: China TYPE: Envelope pedal FEATURES: Buffered bypass CONTROLS: Tone, Attack, Q, Level, HP/BP/LP switch, Bypass footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 30mA DIMENSIONS: 60 (w) x 115 (d) x 50mm (h)…

While I can’t speak for anyone else, so much about my guitar habits has changed in the past two years. I channelled myself into a considerable amount of home recording, and before I knew it I’d ‘joined’ a couple of bands. However, these bands have zero intention of ever playing live, let alone in the same room. Long rehearsals were replaced with hours of coming up with ideas (usually the easy bit) then trying to record them to an acceptable standard (the harder bit). One band has a rigorous schedule to release one track a month; the other is yet to release anything, falling foul of today’s dilemma of not knowing when to stop! Working on tracks for the former project I’m usually sent an often pretty dense track with…

1972 Roland Corporation founded; early pedals released including AF-100, AF-60 & AD-50 1973 RE-100 (no reverb) & RE-200 Space Echo units 1974 RE-101 (no reverb) & RE-201 Space Echo units 1977 RE-301 Chorus Echo unit; reverb, tape delay & chorus 1979 RE-150 Space Echo unit (no reverb) 1982 RE-501 and SRE-555 (rackmount version) Chorus Echo units; reverb, tape delay & chorus 1988 RE-3 & RE-5 Digital Space Echo units 1990 RE-201 Space Echo discontinued 2007 Boss RE-20 Roland Space Echo RE-201; COSM technology 2022 ?…

PRICE: £749 (inc case) ORIGIN: China TYPE: Double-cutaway, solidbody electric BODY: Solid mahogany (two-piece) NECK: Mahogany,‘medium C’ profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.75”) NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Tusq/43mm FINGERBOARD: Bound Indian laurel, pearloid trapezoid inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium jumbo HARDWARE: Epiphone LockTone tune-o-matic bridge and stud tailpiece, Kluson-style vintage tuners – nickel plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm ELECTRICS: Gibson Burstbucker 2 (neck) and Burstbucker 3 (bridge), 3-way toggle pickup selector, 2x volumes, 2x tones (CTS pots/ Mallory capacitors) WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.61/6.75 OPTIONS: No LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISH: Aged Sixties Cherry (as reviewed), Aged Classic White – Aged Gloss Epiphone www.epiphone.com…

Artist: Molly Tuttle Album: Crooked Tree (Nonesuch Records) Your previous album, But I’d Rather Be With You, was a covers album, but new album Crooked Tree feels more like you’ve gone back to your roots. “I’d say so, yeah. The last album was such a cool experience – to record it in my house and work with [producer] Tony Berg. I think that record, to me, was pointing in a direction that I’ve been wanting to go and that I still want to go. But what came really naturally to me after that was when I started sitting down and writing these bluegrass songs, and I realised another dream of mine, which I haven’t actually ever really chased after, was recording a bluegrass album of original songs. So when I…

It was during the summer of 2005 when I first heard the thunderous ‘la pompe’ rhythm of a Gypsy jazz band, an intoxicating sound that would derail the direction of my guitar playing and ultimately come to define the next 15 years of my life. I was living on campus at university studying for an engineering degree (never completed) when my housemate returned from Paris with a CD: Dans Le Monde by Les Doigts De L’Homme. Even more than the impossibly fast melody lines, I became addicted to the infectious rhythm guitar playing. Hours were spent with my Stagg acoustic, recklessly trying to emulate the sound of the guitars on that record, totally unaware that their Gypsy jazz guitars were altogether a completely different beast from mine. “These guitars transmit…

Nobody is trying to minimise the sheer joy of unleashing a powerchord, but in some situations you may wish for something a little more harmonically complex. The trick is to find voicings that expand upon the traditional ‘5’ chord without becoming indistinguishable when played with drive. Players such as EVH, Steve Stevens, Ritchie Blackmore and Randy Rhoads have all managed this successfully in their rhythm parts and riffs – and the examples below will walk you through a few of their approaches. Before we get into the specifics, I’d like to talk in more general terms about tone. It has often been said that a good classic-rock rhythm tone isn’t as distorted as many would presume. Often the sustain and impact can be down to sheer volume and/or EQ. If…

With a background in music and electronics, combined with a somewhat entrepreneurial tendency, Howard Alexander Dumble (who later asked to be known as Alexander) had a future in amplifier design that was almost preordained. Growing up in Bakersfield, California, Dumble sold homemade transistor radios to his school friends and built a 200-watt PA system for the local junior baseball team. As an epicentre of progressive rock and electric guitar development, California – particularly Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area – was driven by local bands including Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Byrds, Little Feat and Santana. After leaving school, Dumble was introduced to the luthier Semie Moseley in Santa Cruz, who was looking for someone to design an amplifier to complement his Mosrite guitar range. Dumble built…

Back in the 50s, if you needed to amplify an electric signal of any sort you used an electron valve (aka vacuum tube), and there were thousands of factories churning out millions of them every day, supplying the global post-war consumer electronics boom. Today, it’s just guitar amps and some specialist hi-fi builders that remain doggedly allied to the glass tube. The manufacturing base has all but disappeared. In 2019 there were just three plants to fulfil world demand: New Sensor Corporation in Russia, JJ Electronic in Slovakia and Shuguang in China, the latter of which closed at the end of that year. At the time of writing, there’s still no word on production restarting. “The Chinese property market and the credit squeeze will make it very difficult to finance…

BOSS NEXTONE SPECIAL 1X12 COMBO £814 CONTACT Roland UK Ltd PHONE 01792 702701 WEB www.boss.info What You Need To Know 1 What’s this box of tricks, then? Boss’s Nextone Special combo is a new two-channel version of the Nextone Stage and Artist combos, with 80 watts of proper Class AB power and the acclaimed Boss Waza BW12 loudspeaker. A clever software editor lets you have all kinds of fun with different EQs and effects, as well as acting like a librarian for storing and recalling favourite patches. 2 Tell us about Tube Logic… This proprietary Roland/Boss technology emulates every component in a classic valve amp circuit so accurately that the amp response can be tweaked to very fine detail – for example, by changing virtual bias and ‘sag’ settings. Tube…

Wars typically speed up developments in technology and one goal throughout WWII was to find a replacement for the bulky, energy-hungry, fragile glass electron valve, more commonly known as the vacuum tube. The first working transistor was demonstrated by Bell Telephone Labs in 1947 and publicly announced in June 1948. Initially available only to the military, the first domestic products were hearing aids. The arrival of the first transistor radio – the Regency TR-1 in 1954 – was viewed as a novelty, but its small size and portability was a sign of things to come. Over 100,000 TR1s were sold in its first year, but Sony’s smaller and cheaper TR-63, introduced to the US in 1957, ended up selling in the millions. It was the success of these radios that…

PRICE: £2,495 (inc gigbag) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Grand Pacific dreadnought TOP: Flame big leaf maple BACK/SIDES: Big leaf maple MAX RIM DEPTH: 117.5mm MAX BODY WIDTH: 406mm NECK: Hard rock maple SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) TUNERS: Taylor nickel NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Tusq/ 44.5mm FINGERBOARD: Eucalyptus FRETS: 20 BRIDGE/SPACING: Eucalyptus/56mm ELECTRICS: Taylor Expression System 2 WEIGHT (kg/lb): 1.83/4.04 OPTIONS: The AD27 is available with a mahogany top (£1,619) and as the AD27e (£1,835). There’s also the smaller-bodied mahogany/ sapele Grand Concert AD22e (£1,955) RANGE OPTIONS: Other instruments in Taylor’s American Dream Series include the Natural top AD17 (£1,715) and AD17e (£1,835) and the Blacktop AD17 (£1,715) and AD17e (£1,919) LEFT-HANDERS: Yes FINISH: Satin PROS A well-built, workmanlike dreadnought with an unusual edge and lot of tone and personality CONS The price…

ORIGIN: China TYPE: Sustainer pedal FEATURES: Selectable True or Buffered Bypass, latching or momentary footswitch action, software editing CONTROLS: Decay, Level, Fade In, FX Type, Dry/Verb switch, Latch/Momentary switch, footswitch CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output, standard send, standard return, USB POWER: 9V DC adaptor 100mA (not supplied) DIMENSIONS: 72 (w) x 120 (d) x 50mm (h) 1. FOOTSWITCH The large footswitch can be set for latching or momentary operation by the toggle switch above it 2. FX TYPE ROTARY SWITCH Here you can set the amount of sustained layers (1, 2, 3 or infinite) or access three different TonePrint settings 3. DECAY & FADE IN KNOBS Envelope control for the sustained sound – this is very useful for creating a decay tail 4. DRY/VERB SWITCH This…

MANUFACTURER FENDER MODEL DUEL PUGILIST & DUAL MARINE LAYER PRICE £179 & £199 CONTACT FENDER 01342 331700 WWW.FENDER.COM We took a look at the original Fender Pugilist and Marine Layer pedals when they launched back in 2018. The company has now brought out Dual (or Duel in the case of the Pugilist) versions of them, each featuring two channels with switching options. Both have that Fender family look featuring LED-backlit knobs that let you see your control settings on a dark stage, and run from a nine-volt supply. These are quite large pedals but arguably need that much space for their three-footswitch operation, each with a global Bypass footswitch and two for functions relating to the twin channels. FENDER Duel Pugilist Distortion £179 This new version of the Pugilist…

What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money? “I guess it would be a Gibson SG Junior, around 1974 when I was 14. I started playing in bars and clubs when I was 14, but it was very rare, I’d just play whenever I could. That was my third guitar. The first guitar I had was a Norma for $59 that my dad got at a hardware store, and the next one was a Lyle copy of an SG. I guess [the SG Junior] was still bought by my dad. The next one I got was a Gibson ES-150 that I paid for – it was $350 – and that was from saving up.” What was the last guitar you bought and why? “Hmm, let’s…

Let’s Get Funky Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs SSC, Keeley-modded Boss SD-1, Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty  15 mins per example FOR THIS MONTH’S Blues Headlines I’ve gone with what is essentially a two-chord vamp (A7 and D), taking a blues-rock approach with nods to Joe Bonamassa, Gary Moore and a little bit of Joe Walsh. It is unashamedly pentatonic, with a few b5s to make it technically the ‘blues scale’ – plus a couple of brief triads and descending A Dorian run at the end. That said, I was not thinking in those terms as I played. The pentatonic and CAGED shapes exist within the same spaces on the fretboard, and, if you link the positions together, it’s easy to find yourself playing a linear scale pattern like…