Innehållsförteckning för September 2016 från Total Guitar

How often do you use the controls on your guitar? We spend forever worrying about everything from technique to which new piece of gear we’re going to buy to help make us sound better, and while that’s all totally valid – it’s important to be able to play well, and good gear does inspire as well as improving your sound – all the while there’s a world of often untapped potential built into our guitars. Don’t believe me? Take some time to watch Jeff Beck play. Yes, he’s got monster chops, and some of the nicest gear money can buy, but he also pays a lot of attention to wringing every last variation of sound that he can out of his trusty Fender Strat, most importantly, the controls. Watching Jeff…

ON THE MEND (ES) Thanks for the article with Shawn Mendes in issue 283. After spotting the interview in her ‘old dad’s magazine’ my 13 year-old daughter now thinks I’m cool, and wants me to teach her to play the guitar. Just goes to show that inspiration can come from outside of distortion and Marshall stacks (that’ll come later!) I like the fact that he’s a big fan of John Mayer, too – but I draw the line at Bieber! DAMIEN GOULDING, via email We all draw the line at Bieber, Damo… QUESTION OF TONE Dear TG, I have been buying your mags for over a year, and I love them. I am in a hard-rock band, and I was wondering if you could do an article on how to…

EXCEPTIONAL EXCELLENT GOOD FOR FANS OF POOR Opeth SORCERESS Heritage was a line in the sand for Opeth in 2011. And it was more than the jettisoning of death metal vocals. Tonally Mikael Åkerfeldt and Fredrik Åkesson had taken a conscious path away from high gain tones and into single-coil excursions and a clarity to their clout. But as Pale Communion proved three years later, they hadn’t thrown the baby out with the bathwater; timbres change but Opeth still have the signature ethereal traits to their melodies. And the heavy is here, too, on a record stronger than those two predecessors. The catchy folk rock of Will O The Wisp and ghostly fingerpicked Sorceress 2 are classic mellow Opeth, while the build and fall of The Wilde Flowers and pace…

Most people in their 70s are picking out a comfortable chair to nap in, but not Jeff Beck. The guitar hero’s guitar hero is back with a new album, Loud Hailer, that sees him reinvent himself once again. From playing blues with the Yardbirds in the 60s, Beck has taken his beloved Fender Strat into the worlds of fusion and jazz-rock, rockabilly, electronica, and now he’s plunged into straight-ahead hard rock by teaming up with Rosie Bones and Carmen Vandenberg from the band Bones. Loud Hailer was written by the trio at Beck’s house, a process aided by several crates of Prosecco, and is released alongside BECK01 – a book of photographs chronicling both the guitarist’s long career and his lifelong love of hot rods. Preparing to mark 50 years…

Back in the day, Seymour Duncan (along with DiMarzio) pretty much invented the after-market pickup game, and the JB is the company’s best-selling unit. The birth of the JB came when Seymour Duncan (the man) installed a couple of rewound PAFs onto a guitar named the Tele-Gib for Jeff Beck in 1974, who used it on the influential Blow By Blow album. Duncan nicknamed the bridge pickup the ‘JB’, and by today’s standards its large 16.6kohm DC resistance puts in to the ‘high output’ category but players found it gave increased output without sounding harsh or dark like other high-output pickups of the time. In 1976, when the Seymour Duncan Company was formed, the JB, became the SH-4 JB Model; not ‘the Jeff Beck,’ as it’s…

For gain, gain and more gain, the Piranha doesn’t disappoint AT A GLANCE TYPE: Solid-state head with part-valve preamp OUTPUT: 20W VALVES: 1x 12AX7 CONTROLS: Gain, EQ, volume SOCKETS: Input, aux in, headphones out, speaker out, effects loop send/return WEIGHT: 1.1kg DIMENSIONS: [HxWxD] 80 x 180 x 130mm CONTACT: Barnes & Mullins 01691 652449 www.peavey.com EFFECTS LOOP THE Piranha has a proper buffered effects loop that works well with delay and modulation pedals EQ THE clever EQ knob has a very wide range, going from typical 6505 scooped thrash to 80s Brit-rock grunt in a single twist LOOKS COOL styling, graphics and red LED lights give the Piranha a very professional finish that works just as well for stage and studio THE Peavey 6505 Piranha micro-head was introduced at this…

AT A GLANCE TYPE: Overdrive, compressor, preamp and chorus pedals BYPASS: True bypass POWER: Battery or PSU (Vise Grip, 805) PSU only (Palladium, Catalina Chorus) CONTACT: Rosetti 01376 550033 www. seymourduncan.com BACK in 2002, Seymour Duncan branched out from its comfort zone dominating the world of after-market pickups, and dipped its toe into the much bigger ocean of stompboxes. Its first attempt was the Pickup Booster – a clever little box that beefed up single coils to make them sound like vintage humbuckers, and added a boost to humbuckers in order to maintain clarity and fidelity from your signal chain – it was an immediate hit. That was 14 years ago, and since then the Pickup Booster has received a makeover, while becoming part of a whole extended family of…

 TYPE: Chorus pedal The sounds are as authentic as can be thanks to an all-analogue circuit CONTROLS: Rate, depth, mode switch SOCKETS: Input, 2x outputs, power BYPASS: Buffered POWER: 9V battery, 9V power supply (not included) CONTACT: Roland UK 01792 702701 www.roland.co.uk ASK any wizened effects buff to name the best chorus pedal of all time, and they’ll likely cite the first one ever, Boss’s iconic 1976 CE-1 Chorus Ensemble unit, or perhaps its later compact-sized incarnation, the CE-2 Chorus. It’s a savvy move, then, that Boss has combined these two classic effects for the latest addition to its high-end Waza Craft series, while adding a few new features along the way. A tiny slider switch holds the key to the CE-2W’s versatility. On the left is the standard position…

Irish rock band U2’s career is littered with multi-platinum selling albums and legendary concert performances, including Live Aid and Live At Red Rocks. One was the third single to be released from their hugely popular 1991 album, Achtung Baby. Often with fingerstyle lines you can simply assign your fingers to specific strings, but things aren’t quite so straightforward here. Take a look at the tab and you’ll see that in bars 1, 2 and 3 alone your first and second fingers move across all of the top five strings. Still, each phrase can be distilled down to a bass note and two higher notes, so use your thumb (p) on the low notes and your first (i) and second (m) fingers for everything else. Just like U2’s original recording, the…

CHRIS BIRD THOUGH he’s usually to be found pick in hand, this month’s Jeff Beck lesson has given Chris the chance to hone his fingerstyle chops. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s more of the same on p102 where we’ve tabbed The Edge’s fingerpicked intro from U2’s epic track, One. Fingerpicking good! JOSH GARDNER AS we go to press No Man’s Sky, is still a day or two from release, and Josh is very excited. While he waits, he’s been passing he time listening to the game’s superb soundtrack from 65daysofstatic – find out about behind its creation in our feature with the band on p44. ROB LAING ROB fondly remembers bouncing around in the crowd to Feeder at Reading Festival in 1999, but it was an older and wiser…

USE A bridge position humbucker and dial in a medium overdrive tone. Set your amp up with a decent amount of middle and treble to help your sound cut through – a ‘scooped’ sound with less midrange will likely be thinner and weaker. The bass guitar doubles up an octave lower so try rolling off your bass a little to give the two instruments more of their own sonic space. Single coil-equipped guitars may need a little more gain and bass. ALL THE video lessons in this issue of Total Guitar are available to view online at www.bit.ly/tg284video…

“Music just brings a spark to me,” smiles Grant Nicholas. “I still feel excited about it. How can you not?” We’re certainly standing in an exciting space – a line of vintage guitars from Feeder history hang on one wall, AC30, Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Blues Jr and battered 70s Marshall JMP amps sit proudly at the back. There’s a recording rig on one side, and a collection of pedals on the floor, including no less than three Tone Benders. There are framed gold discs and album covers dotted around, it’s got leather seats… there’s probably a CD player, too, ahem. But Grant Nicholas’ cozy Treehouse studio in the garden of his suburban London home has become more than the writing haven he envisioned; it’s evolved into a creative HQ…

The Be Prog! My Friend festival is a hard proposition to argue with. Set in the hazy sunlit square of Barcelona’s historic and quite stunning Poble Espanyol, it certainly beats the sodden mud of the British festival season. And the opportunity it offers to grab a cool mojito and see three of progressive rock’s modern kingpins on the same bill is irresistible. It was also our chance to coax Steven Wilson, Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt and The Pineapple Thief’s Bruce Soord towards our table for their first ever interview together… You were all involved with the recent remixes of Opeth’s Damnation and Deliverance albums for their reissue – does dissecting other artists’ classic albums give you an extra insight as a musician? “Steven:…

1966 was a turning point for the Fab Four – while it marked arguably the peak of Beatlemania hysteria, it was also the year they stopped playing live after years of relentless touring. What followed was a surge of creativity – the ‘studio years’ saw the band begin to use the recording studio to experiment and innovate, and the result was the groundbreaking genius of Revolver. George Harrison’s abrasive album opener Taxman has a great guitar vamp, based on just a handful of chords and a sharp, attacking rhythm. The classic riff on the ’66 non-album track Paperback Writer sees the band in harder rock territory, while As Your Bird Can Sing opens on a harmony line – a technique that would become commonplace in the 70s, as bands such…

PRS SE ZACH MYERS £709 Another great Korean-made guitar, this semi-solid Singlecut sports fine-sounding SE 245 ’buckers and a one-piece wrapover bridge GRETSCH ELECTROMATIC G5435 PRO JET £539 Gretsch’s attempt at a Les Paul uses a sealed semi-soild body like the Bluesbird. There are many models, including a Bigsbyequipped version ITALIA MONDIAL DELUXE £769 This retro design sports a semisolid mahogany/ maple body with dual ’buckers plus a piezo. Bonkers… but in a good way!…

It’s very intuitive, and there’s an impressive range of effects AT A GLANCE TYPE: Modelling stompbox CONTROLS: 6x knobs, 1x bypass switch, Xtomp app SOCKETS: Stereo input and output, USB BYPASS: Switchable buffer/true bypass per-effect POWER: 9V adaptor CONTACT: MusicPsych Distribution 0207 607 6005 www.xtomp.com EFFECTS HOTONE is aiming to release up to 300 amp, effect and cab models – at time of writing it had just over 70 CONTROLS THE six controls are reassigned for every pedal, and illuminate to show which ones are active SMART CONTROL NO tiny screens or button pushes here; you load in the effects from your iOS or Android device GEAR you can control from your phone is all the rage these days, and the latest unit promising Bluetoothenabled effects wizardry is the Hotone…

D’ADDARIO NICKEL BRONZE ACOUSTIC STRINGS Gold medal for bronze strings CONSTRUCTED FROM a combination of nickel-plated phosphor bronze wrapped around a high-carbon NY steel core, D’Addario’s new Nickel Bronze strings promise to bring out the unique tonal characteristics of any guitar and allow it to shine. According to the string giant, the strings’ nickel-plated wrap wire enhance your acoustic’s clarity, resonance and projection, while offering improved string balance and harmonic overtones. Tuning stability and break resistance claim to be stronger, too, courtesy of the NY Steel core, as previously seen in D’Addario’s NYXL electric strings. Gauges range from 0.010 to 0.013. (£11.49, www.daddario.com ) BOSS TUNER APP It’s your Boss on the phone BOSS HAS been making tuners since way back – 1983, to be precise –…

WHAT IS TAB? TAB is short for tablature, a notational system used to give detailed information as to where notes should be played on the fretboard. Tab appears underneath conventional music notation as six horizontal lines that represent the strings of the guitar, from the sixth (thick) string at the bottom to the first (thin) string at the top. On these lines, numbers represent the frets where you should place your fingers. For example, an A note on the 2nd fret, third string, will be shown as a number ‘2’ on the third line down on the tab. Unfretted strings are shown with a ‘0’. The key and time signatures are shown in the traditional notation. TG also includes a timestamp to tell you where in the original track you’ll…

“Pretty much everywhere you turn there will either be acoustic guitars and related gear, or live music” Try out dream dreads, learn from the pros and see world class talent perform all under one roof in September as the London Acoustic Show returns with uke, mandolin and banjo players catered for, too, as well as the wealth of guitar-focussed activities on offer. “The London Acoustic Show is unique because it’s a multi-feature event,” says Acoustic Magazine editor Steve Harvey, who helps put the show together. “There are three main areas. Firstly we have an exhibition hall full of all the latest and best gear from all over the world. We also have a 450-seater, purpose-built auditorium for our main stage, where show visitors can watch some of the best acoustic…

“WE ESTABLISHED a really amazing relationship with ESP because the company built these amazing custom guitars for me and are very supportive of us, and what we do. They’re really hospitable to the band – and make great guitars. This is a maple top, mahogany body. It has my band logo inlaid, and these red Seymour Duncan pickups.” “IT’S GOT a piezo pickup that can be run simultaneously with the electric signal. I run the piezo through a tuner pedal to bypass the signal and turn it on and off. We have songs that have acoustic guitar in them that run along side electric guitars. In certain songs the piezo allows us to play acoustic and electric guitar simultaneously with one guitar. Some of the songs we use it on…

IT’Shard to believe that Blackstar is coming up to its 10th anniversary. In what seems like no time at all, the company has grown from a small operation with a handful of employees to one of the biggest names in the game. The first Blackstar amp was the Artisan; a pure valve amp focused on tone. Since then, we’ve seen everything from high-gain metal amps to Bluetooth-equipped practice amps. Late last year, Blackstar took things back to basics with the Artist Series: simplified valve amps at an affordable level. The Artist 30 offers a giggable, yet manageable 30-watt output, and the two-channel design has pedal fans in mind. Also on board is Blackstar’s ISF control, delivering US and British tonal response, plus a world of sounds in-between – there’s even…

In Beck’s new book, he mentions how he left a Strat that John McLaughlin gave him in a car outside Ronnie Scott’s… but it wasn’t there for long. The man himself recalls the scene when he came back out of the famous jazz club… “This guy goes, ‘He go up there!’” Beck remembers. “I went, ‘Why didn’t you chase him, you bastard?’ It was stupid. I only went in to say, ‘I’m here,’ tell the lads I’m here, and I got back… literally eight seconds. I went in there – gone. Mind you, it was in an El Camino pickup so you’ve got a short cab and big, wide back window and the case is sticking out with Fender written on it, clearly visible through the window…”…

“It all came off the back of a sound installation we did in Sheffield. Basically we designed this little black box together, Si [Wright, bass] did the hard part of writing the code and soldering it together. It’s called an Arduino. It’s a tiny little circuit board that’s all open-source hardware, and you can plug it into a USB on your computer and flash some instructions to a little chip on it that can do any number of things. You can build one for £10, and you get a little electronic box that will just do your bidding. So using the Arduino, we built this little box that converted MIDI commands to electrical impulses, and then we bought a bunch of EBows and we hacked them so the Arduino would…

Ian Bairnson (Kate Bush, Andy Parsons) Bruce: “The one guy I was really inspired by as a kid was a session guitarist called Ian Bairnson. He did a lot of lan Parsons solos and he was a little like Andy Latimer style, I think he had a Les Paul. He was just so melodic. He wasn’t like a widdler, you could sing all of his solos. But no one ever cites him. Say Ian Bairnson, they say ‘Who?’” Brian Godding (Mike Westbrook Orchestra) Steven: “I love a guitar player called Brian Godding, he was a British jazz player, and Mike Westbrook wrote these amazing pieces for jazz orchestra. He was in Magma, and he was in Blossom Toes. About 20 years after that he played this solo in the Mike…

This is a lighter weight single-cut with typical Guild class AT A GLANCE BODY: Chambered mahogany w/ carved maple top NECK: Mahogany, glued-in SCALE: 629mm (24.75") FINGERBOARD: Bound rosewood FRETS: 22 PICKUPS: 1x Seymour Duncan JB SH-4 (bridge), 1x Seymour Duncan ’59 Neck SH-1 (neck) CONTROLS: 3-position pickup selector toggle switch, individual pickup volume and tone controls (with pull/push coil-splits) HARDWARE: Nickel-plated Tone Pros NVR2 Locking tune-o-matic with stud tailpiece; Grover Sta-Tite open-backed tuners LEFT-HANDED: No FINISH: Ice Tea Burst (as reviewed), Jet Black CONTACT: Selectron UK Ltd 01795 419460 www.guildguitars.com PUKKA PUPS WHILE Guild has its own classic-sounding HB-1 full-size humbuckers (which are available as retro-fits), the Bluesbird uses a classic USA-made combo from Seymour Duncan: a JB at bridge and ’59 at neck: perfect for classic rock and…

The cone means each note is launched like a projectile AT A GLANCE BODY: Laminated mahogany NECK: Mahogany, set-in SCALE: 635mm (25") FINGERBOARD: Rosewood FRETS: 19, medium jumbo PICKUP: Fishman Nashville CONTROLS: N/A HARDWARE: Gretsch Ampli-Sonic Biscuit w/ weathered Poinsettia cover, trapeze tailpiece and open-back Grover Sta-Tite tuners LEFT-HANDED: No FINISH: Chieftain Red (as reviewed), 2-Colour Sunburst CONTACT: Fender GBI 01342 331700 www.gretschguitars.com V NECK THIS resonator’s set mahogany neck comes spec’d with the kind of vintage V-profile that was popular on acoustic guitars of the 30s and Fender electrics of the mid-50s PLUG IN THE Alligator comes loaded with a quality Fishman Nashville pickup that feeds off the bridge saddle and cone to faithfully reproduce the guitar’s acoustic tone RESONATOR BENEATH the Alligator’s faceplate lurks a spun aluminium cone…

Handling the WLO12SE is a joy, you can noodle away for hours AT A GLANCE TOP: Solid mahogany BACK & SIDES: Laminate mahogany NECK: Mahogany SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) FINGERBOARD: Rosewood FRETS: 20, vintage ELECTRICS: Fishman 301T w/ tuner; volume, bass & treble controls, phase button HARDWARE: Die-cast machineheads – chrome LEFT-HANDED: No FINISH: Gloss natural CONTACT: Sound Technology 01462 480000 www.soundtech.co.uk PLAYABILITY THIS Washburn punches way above its price tag with a great playing experience, thanks to a slim neck, 20 beautifully finished vintage frets and a low action TONE WOODS THE WLO12SE features an all-mahogany construction with a solid top and laminate back and sides. The body is protected by a flawless gloss finish with black binding ELECTRICS THIS little electro-acoustic comes loaded with the Fishman 301T preamp…

 TYPE: Mellotron emulator In its quest seemingly to make keyboard players redundant, EHX has produced the Mel9 CONTROLS: Dry/effect volumes, attack, sustain, model select SOCKETS: Input, dry and effect outputs BYPASS: Buffer POWER: 9V adaptor (included) CONTACT: Electro-Harmonix www.ehx.com WHEN The Beatles used a Mellotron on Strawberry Fields Forever, it immediately elevated the instrument to ‘must-have’ status for many bands in the late 60s/early 70s. The legendary instrument was sort of a forbear to the digital sample-playback keyboards that are made today, except it used tape loops to offer recreations of orchestra, flute, cello, strings and more. The nature of the technology meant that unlike today’s pristine duplications of samples, the sounds actually ended up being slightly crunchy, warbly alternatives that became the sound of the instrument in their own…

ZEPPELIN’S mix of Celtic, Arabic and Indian styles was underpinned by blues, and on this track from their self-titled debut you can hear the band in their rawest, bluesiest form, self-financed and with no overdubs! Jimmy Page is on blistering form, showing no mercy to his Fender Telecaster and a tiny Supro amp turned up to 10. Though his phrasing is mostly based on the minor pentatonic scale, the rhythm of Page’s phrasing is incredibly complex, as a quick glance at our transcription will confirm. A lot of phrases are repeated though, so take it one lick at a time. In particular, the very first lick in the first verse is repeated throughout the track. In typical bluesy style Page varies the lick every time. Unless you’re dead set on…

10. The Who – Leeds University, Leeds, 14 February 1970 “It was packed to the rafters and then some,” recalls Roger Daltrey of the dynamite set recorded for 1970’s deathless Live At Leeds. “I heard there were a thousand fans on the roof.” As the band’s most mythologised show, we’d sell our kidneys to have been down the front, with Townshend’s Hiwatt making our cheeks and trousers flap. 9. Guns N’ Roses – The Marquee, London, 19 June 1987 Seeing the Gunners reunite for an enormodome show is one thing. But imagine crushing into a sticky-floored sweatbox for their debut UK gig – live and dangerous in every sense of the word. 8. Nirvana – Sony Music Studios, New York, 18 November 1993 Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged set had the makings…