Innehållsförteckning för November 2023 från Guitarist

Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk While Jamie’s away on secondment to another department for three months, I’ll be acting as your host for the next few issues of the magazine and, getting straight down to business, let’s talk about this month’s cover star. “I’m a polarising character, I know this going in. You either like it or you don’t. And if you don’t, that’s fine…,” says Joe Bonamassa in this month’s extensive interview. And we would agree. Joe is possibly the most divisive guitarist in the world at present, with a hoard of fans hanging on every note he wrings out of whatever (quite probably vintage) instrument he has at his fingertips on the one hand. Or an…

Earlier this year, in issue 497, we were pleasantly impressed by Maybury’s Cholla, a unique slice of original British-made craft and powered by a set of superb Sunbear pickups, also UK-made. Maybury is the name chosen by sole luthier Jason Snelling for his small range of models, but aside from these, his start-up models are coined Upscalers. The concept is simple: by using reclaimed wood for the body, pre-loved necks and parts, Jason can offer a handmade UK build at a much lower price point than his standard models. As you can see, the Fish Hook S is loosely based on the Stratocaster, those hooked horns and slightly offset waist adding plenty of originality. But it’s the rustic-looking teal chalk-paint finish over a vividly grained spruce body (floor joists from…

If someone decides to buy one of your guitars, you might be lucky enough to catch the moment they decide that it’s the guitar for them. It probably won’t be when they first open the case, or while they gawp at your flawless hand-applied finish, or even when they hear the guitar for the first time. It’s likely to happen the moment they wrap their fingers around the neck and begin to play – you will see it in their eyes. That crucial component – the fingerboard – forms the interface between the player and instrument. This humble strip of hardwood, which serves to connect the frets to the neck, does a lot more than provide a runway for incendiary guitar licks and blistering riffs. The fingerboard is the only…

STAR LETTER LEFT TURN I have been building a lefty J-style and the body I bought off eBay proved to be slightly under the normal Jag/Jazz size. Furthermore, when I fitted in a Harley Benton 25.5-inch scale neck (also bought off eBay), I was shocked to find the distance from the 12th fret to the centre point of the tune-o-matic bridge was 13-plus inches. To make it right I routed out the neck pocket in the bridge direction and drilled new neck bolt holes. I thought I’d got it spot on, but when it was finished and strung up, the notes at the 12th fret were sharp, so I moved the saddles as far as they would go to increase the string lengths. But unfortunately they were still slightly sharp…

“Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they’ll say Laurel Canyon,” said ex-resident Joni Mitchell. And as our taxi winds uphill through Laurel Canyon on a summer’s day, talk naturally turns to its (in)famous inhabitants. Once the stomping ground of Frank Zappa, David Crosby and Jim Morrison (to name but a few), this fabled neighbourhood in the Hollywood Hills is the stuff of legend, and we’re excited to be here. But not everybody shares our excitement. When we reach our destination and start to unload, the Uber driver appears nervous and is keen to get back in his Toyota. Pointing to a nearby tree, he informs us the last time he was here he encountered a mountain lion. As the car speeds off downhill, we buzz the…

BOSS DM-101 DELAY MACHINE £449 CONTACT Roland UK WEB www.boss.info/uk What You Need To Know 1 Another Boss delay? Yes, the Roland/Boss designers have been quite prolific recently with the digital RE-202 and RE-2 versions of the Space Echo, the SDE-3000D floor-pedal based on the SDE-3000 rackmount digital delay, and now this! 2 What’s so special about this one? It’s completely analogue. This unit uses bucket brigade (BBD) chips in the tradition of the fondly remembered DM-2 and DM-3 pedals, but it goes way beyond their capabilities by using eight 2048-stage BBDs with targeted CPU control. 3 BBDs are old technology. Do we really need this when we could just have a digital emulation? Well, a lot of players really like the sound of a real BBD analogue delay and…

Last issue, we started a small series on what to look for and where to start when buying a new cab. The first topic we looked at was the cab’s functionality, by which I mean what its main purpose is and what features will help address your sound goals. One of the key points we covered is how ‘big’ a sound you want, which can, in part, be controlled by whether a cab has an open or closed-back. This leads on to a common situation in which a player is looking for a new cab and may justifiably have less experience in choosing one because their past endeavours mostly revolve around using combos (amps where the speakers and amplifier are in the same cabinet). So let’s take a closer look…

Aside from creating some very tidy (if highly derivative) designs, Vintage, the long-running house brand of UK distributor John Hornby Skewes, has a neat tie-up with the UK’s Ben Court, the man behind Joe Doe Guitars. He describes himself as follows: “By day, I’m a screenwriter for film and TV, and by nights and weekends I make custom-built guitars with stories built in.” Our Joe Doe ‘Gas Jockey’ is one of three new designs released this year and its story concerns a certain “Wally ‘Songman’ Saban, a living, breathing, human jukebox”, says the blurb. “Pull up into his New Jersey gas station on Fellowship Road and he’ll not only fill your car with gas, but will play any song you can think of …” The tall tale continues over at…

If you want to connect your guitar to a computer for recording or to access software amp simulations, then you’ll need an audio interface. Now, while there are plenty of them available out there, apart from including a Hi-Z input (which you’ll need in order to plug in a guitar), few manufacturers of these boxes add features that are directly of benefit to us guitar players. One exception is IK Multimedia who has a range of audio interfaces that are tailor-made for guitarists. We took a look at its flagship Axe I/O unit about four years ago, but now the company has come up with something a lot more cost-effective with the new Axe I/O One. This unit has just one input, as opposed to its namesake’s twin inputs for…

PRS SE 2024 models From £695 CONTACT PRS Guitars Europe PHONE 01223 874301 WEB www.prsguitars.com JARGON CRUNCHING Swamp Thing The difference between ash and swamp ash is all about where it grows. Swamp ash generally comes from wetlands, causing the tree to grow quickly and less densely. This porous grain means that when it’s dried out, the comparative weight is much lower, making it an ideal wood for guitars. Uh-oh, these look expensive… They do, don’t they? But you’ll be glad to hear that rather than being high-end, limited runs or pricey artist-spec’d models, what we’re actually seeing here is a trio of new PRS SE guitars, and there looks to be a strong focus on bringing the eye-catching tradition of PRS to its more affordable import line of guitars.…

Artist: John Scofield Album: Uncle John’s Band (ECM) What happened was, I recorded a bunch of tracks with my buddies. We had a lot of songs and we just recorded all of them and it turned out to be a lot of music.” John Scofield is musing about releasing a new double-CD package during our Zoom interview. “And then Manfred Eicher [head of the ECM label] said, ‘Well, we’ll just put it all out.’ I still think maybe I should have gone back and just selected the best ones, but, hey, put it all out there. Maybe some of it will float!” The result is Uncle John’s Band, the title of which is drawn from a Grateful Dead song; not a band you’d immediately associate with cutting-edge jazz improvisation. How…

Many of us put considerable effort into perfecting our tone, often spending hours carefully dialling in our amps. But things can go pear-shaped when we venture beyond the bedroom or rehearsal studio. Tight lows begin to boom, sweet treble becomes shrill, and there’s way too much reverb. Or maybe you can’t hear yourself properly in the mix. Maybe you put a strip of masking tape across the top of your amp’s control panel with all your settings carefully marked, so could it really be your fault? Unfortunately, this is what happens when perfectly honed tone butts up against unfavourable room acoustics. There’s no point in digging your heels in because no venue is going to summon a team of acoustic engineers to revoice the room just for you. You’re going…

Fingerstyle acoustic maestro Clive Carroll first met John Renbourn almost by accident. Studying at a London music conservatory, Clive decided to go home to his parents’ house one weekend and noticed that Renbourn was playing at his local folk club. He seized the opportunity, contacted the organiser and asked if he could open the show as support. “So I turned up armed with some Elizabethan lute galliards, some Joe Pass-influenced numbers and some original pieces as well,” he tells us. “I met John briefly before I started, but what I didn’t realise was that he came up and listened to my entire set.” By the end of the night, John and Clive realised they shared a lot of musical tastes, specifically medieval/ Renaissance music, jazz and some contemporary classical music.…

BLUEPRINT: G7th Capo Company The saying ‘Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door’ could easily be applied to G7th capos. Over the years, guitarists have struggled with rudimentary plastic-covered metal bars secured by elastic, or what G7th’s chief designer refers to as items looking like instruments of medieval torture. The fact is that this was an area of guitar accessorising – and an important one, when you consider how many players rely on them – that had not been re-evaluated for decades. Since the lightbulb moment that Nick Campling describes below, G7th capos have been sprouting on the guitar fingerboards worldwide, with an impressive roster of players leading the charge. With a new capo just released that will welcome seven- and eight-string players…

Well-known for its excellent speaker-cabinet emulation products found in many high-end amplifiers, Two Notes is just as adept when it comes to analogue circuits, too. Introduced at last year’s NAMM Show, the company’s ReVolt analogue three-channel preamp/DI condenses 2016’s critically acclaimed Le Clean, Le Crunch and Le Lead models into a single preamp/DI design. This is intended to give a quick and effective front-end solution for guitarists who want to send their pedalboard sounds to outboard sound reinforcement. It’s available for both bass and guitar, the latter of which we have here. The ReVolt is a typically neat and well-made product. The top and bottom halves are made of aluminium and secured by four small machine screws. Inside, there’s a pair of high-quality PCBs behind the front-panel footswitches and controls,…

What Origin Effects did for the Tube Screamer with its Halcyon Green Overdrive, it is doing again for the Klon Centaur with the Halcyon Gold Overdrive – taking the essence of a classic pedal and moving it a little bit further on in terms of its versatility and playability. The basic added features that both pedals have in common are threefold: Origin’s Adaptive circuitry can be switched in to automatically adjust voicing in response to pick attack and volume changes; there’s a knob to adjust the amount of dry sound as a component of the signal; and a toggle-switch provides a choice of an authentic original voicing or a modified one. With its innovative features designed to go beyond the capabilities of the original, this is not a direct clone,…

Artist: Christopher Libertino Album: Cartography (Paradox Lost Music) The latest album from guitarist, composer and musical academic Christopher Libertino is titled Cartography, and it could easily be compared to a cinematic experience. There is a sense of adventure throughout the nine tracks that gives the music a certain freedom. “When I want to know what I’m doing, I play the keyboard. And if I don’t want to know what I’m doing, I play the guitar,” Christopher says. “There’s something about the way the guitar is laid out. [But] when you start getting into the effects stuff… I like to go off the trail and not know what I’ll run into.” Formal Vs Self-Education Christopher, who currently lives in New York, has a music degree from Harvard and also studied at…

As you may know, for years I’ve taught at the International Guitar Festival’s summer school in Bath. Over that time it’s morphed into ‘Blues Songs’, and we learn four or five numbers that the class performs at the student concert on the final evening. This year they expanded things with a vocal course, and my own band’s keyboard player (it’s his band, too), Adrian, came along to play for this course. As a generous kind of fellow, he also offered to play for other classes’ chosen tracks, including mine. Why do I tell you this? Well, as each of the guitar tutors tuned up and greeted each other, Adrian spotted the fact that the first thing they asked was, “Bought any new gear lately?” Or, “What have you brought with…

Last issue’s featured tuning was open G. And to be absolutely correct, DADGAD (that’s low to high) is not actually an open tuning, rather an altered one. I say this because we do not get a clear chord by playing the open strings. Nevertheless, this tuning does offer some very interesting open chords using a minimum of complicated fingerings – though, as we will see, there is no reason why we can’t go there for some interesting and unusual chord voicings. Davey Graham is the guitarist credited with bringing this tuning back from Morocco in the early 60s, but it has subsequently been used by a host of others – notably Jimmy Page on Kashmir and Black Mountain Side. Jimmy Page also invented several lush, jazzy voicings for Led Zeppelin’s…

PIONEERS It’s worth remembering that not all musicians had influence during their lifetimes. For example, Robert Johnson, as iconic as he is now, died in obscurity with his incredible music only making an impact decades after his death when his recordings were rediscovered as the ‘blues revival’ gained traction in Europe. Of those who did have an influence at the time, William ‘Big Bill’ Broonzy stands tall. Even now, 65 years after his passing, Broonzy continues to influence blues musicians as much as he does folk, country and jazz artists – just as he did way back in the 1920s when his powerful voice and guitar was first unleashed on the record-buying world. Separating fact from fiction in the story of Broonzy’s life is complicated. Like many early blues artists…

VINTERA II ’50S JAZZMASTER £1,149 It might be the Excalibur of alternative rock, but these ’50s Jazzmasters are dressed to impress with gold-coloured, anodised aluminium ’plates, regardless of whether you choose Sonic Blue or Desert Sand. Of course, the pickups are a pair of 50s-inspired Jazzmaster single coils, and it wouldn’t be complete without the classic JM vibrato and the rhythm/lead circuit. An archetypal old-time Jazzmaster that’ll have you hanging 10. VINTERA II ’60S BASS VI £1,249 Is it a guitar? Is it a bass? Technically, it’s the latter – and it might just be the hidden gem in the Vintera II line-up. With an alder boy, maple neck and 762mm (30-inch) scale-length rosewood fingerboard, it starts an octave below our usual lane. But thanks to the six-string design, familiar…

What was the first guitar you bought with your own money? “The first guitar I bought with my own money was a Fender Custom Shop 1954 reissue Strat at a local music store called Shreveport Music [in Louisiana]. It was one of the first Custom Shop guitars that I ever really saw hanging on a wall and it got my attention because it had this very flame-y maple neck on it. And it had a Mary Kaye type finish – it was an ash body with a translucent off-white finish. I’m not sure why they call it a ’54 reissue; it looked like a Mary Kaye Strat but without the gold hardware. I just thought it was so fancy. “I bought the guitar after I signed my record contract. I…

Before steel strings became commonplace, most guitar necks were able to remain fairly straight under the low tension of gut strings without any reinforcement. But steel strings have much higher tension, and in order to counteract the pull, guitar manufacturers carved very chunky necks. We’re not talking cool late-1950s profiles here – because necks from the early steel-string era can be an uncomfortable handful. Clearly, Gibson recognised this and company employee Thaddeus McHugh came up with a design for an adjustable truss rod. Trussed Up Born in 1859, Thaddeus (Ted) lived in Kalamazoo all his life and spent 30 years at Gibson. His patent application was filed in 1921 and US Patent #1446758 was granted on 27 February 1923 with an anticipated expiration date of 27 February 1940. The patent…

“This is a 1954 Fender Stratocaster and it’s the earliest Strat build that I’ve ever seen. It’s a very special guitar. It does not have a serial number on the vibrato cover [as standard on early 1954 Stratocasters]; it has a regular neckplate serial number. However, we know Stratocasters were not built in a special order, and we also know many of the earliest ones were sent back to Fender for some reworking. If you read books and talk to people, you’ll hear that a lot of the early Strats have the serial number on the back cover, not on the neckplate. But this guitar is a great example that proves the theory that serial numbers were random. “This Stratocaster was owned by a guy called Bill Wesley and there’s…

Playing In a Trio Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs Choptank T, Keeley Boss SD-1 & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 10 mins per example WHATEVER WE’RE PLAYING or soloing on, it’s always essential to keep the basic chord harmony in mind. However, in a trio format of drums, bass and guitar this is especially important because there is nowhere to hide. I’m specifically thinking of John Mayer, Hendrix and SRV here. The trio format gives you an awful lot of freedom to play around with different ideas, such as switching between major and minor, superimposing different triads over whatever chord the bass is implying (more on this in a moment), or leading the way with dynamics in terms of volume or rhythmic complexity. Overall, I would consider this…