Índex per October 2015 a Guitarist

The role of blues in shaping rock guitar is well acknowledged, but guitarists do themselves an injustice if they overlook what jazz has brought to the table, as we were reminded by this issue’s interview with John Etheridge (see Jazz Conversations, p94). For example, a while back we interviewed Don Felder – the Eagles guitarist who co-wrote Hotel California – and he told us that the sound of the horn players of the 40s, whose music he grew up around, helped him understand what good phrasing was. The horn players of jazz had to stop and pause between phrases to take a breath and the natural gaps this created gave them room to consider the next move and then make it, with feeling and deliberation. Now think about the closing…

It’s going to be an interesting autumn for John Mayer as his search for a main-squeeze guitar continues. He’s playing US dates between October and December with Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, alongside Allman Brothers’ Oteil Burbridge and Ratdog keyboardist Jeff Chimenti under the banner Dead & Company. “I’ve followed the guitar wherever it pointed, and it’s never steered me wrong,” Mayer said on Instagram. “I hope you’ll ride along with me, because we’re going to have some fun.” But what guitar will it be? Recent Twitter posts have revealed he’s moving away from the guitar he’s been most associated with, responding to a fan’s Twitter question, ‘So no more Strat?’ with a succinct, ‘That ship has sailed.’ Meanwhile, Mayer is currently on the list…

At Green Man festival in Wales recently one of the best guitar tones we heard all weekend belonged to J Willgoose of Public Service Broadcasting. The band, in case you’re not familiar with their work, set old public information films and NASA spaceflight footage to their own original synth and guitar soundtracks. The effect is oddly uplifting and at times even moving – and in their homage to the famous World War Two aircraft, Spitfire, there’s a thrilling moment when Wilgoose hammers out eight open chords on a Rickenbacker 330 that evoke the power and the glory of early tracks by The Who perfectly. The sound is as unmistakable as the roar of a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine – but why do Rickys sound so distinctive? Clearly, a big part of…

NO-SEE DC I thought your initial revamp was already good, but 398 is so much better than the past; more meat and really useful features on playing, too. Have you ever thought about publishing a compendium of, say 12 months’ worth, of the Blues Headlines, Masterclass, chord Substitutes, techniques etc? I’m a subscriber, but I’d still pay extra to get all these in a compilation format? I see from Jeff Pumfrett’s World Guitars website that Neville has ditched his DC-30. Wondered what he’s using now? Perhaps he could describe his decision process? Gordon Boath, via email Thanks for the kind words, Gordon – to kick things off, we’ll be compiling Denny Ilett’s excellent series of Aces lessons and articles on great jazz guitarists into a stand-alone special edition later this…

Ask Mark Tremonti for his solution to writer’s block and the 41-year-old metaller can only shrug: “I don’t run into that too often.” True enough. From his 90s breakout with Florida post-grungers Creed, through the anvil-heavy anthemics of Alter Bridge, onto the solo career that began with 2012’s All I Was, the guitarist has driven nine studio albums with his hard, hooky, virtuoso fretwork. Even now, in 2015, the creative wellspring remains a torrent, with Tremonti releasing his second solo set, Cauterize, and readying a third, Dust. “Every album has pushed me,” says the guitarist, as he prepares to share his wisdom. “If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse…” Singing helps my slinging “It’s funny, but when you’re singing in a band, it’s almost like all the worries about…

An effect that’s become indispensable to Nalle’s live tone is the Schaffer Replica, built by AC/DC obsessive Fil Olivieri of SoloDallas.com. Based on Ken Schaffer’s original mid-70s wireless box – the Schaffer-Vega [Diversity System] – it provides players with the same main effect Angus Young championed on AC/DC’s classic 70s and early-80s recordings. “This guy had been calling me over and over again telling me I had to try this pedal he’d made and I kept putting him off… but I’d always been interested in a top boost kind of pedal. Then I tried it and I’ve got to say – it’s fucking incredible, man! It really adds an amazing overdrive vibe to the amp. I was really blown away by it and it worked out really well when I…

Fender recently released a new HHH Dave Murray Strat in Two-Colour Sunburst. Dave explains the original that inspired it, and the change that made it even more essential as a live guitar for Maiden. “I had my custom Fender Strat made about 15 years ago, and it had the Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in it. Then Colin, my guitar tech, suggested putting the Seymour Duncan JB Jr in the middle position to get more of a cleaner, jangly kind of sound. And it worked fantastically. I’ll have it in the five-way position set in the middle of the Hot Rails, and it gives a nice clean tone. With the Maiden material, although there’s a lot of heavy chord tones, there’s also a lot of cleans in between, so that Strat…

Tosin Abasi (Animals As Leaders) The Animals As Leaders founder and guitarist has recently completed a week-long stint as part of the prestigious G4 line-up in Los Angeles, along with Joe Satriani, Guthrie Govan’s Aristocrats, and Mike Keneally. His prog-metal credentials are all present and correct: great picking technique, ingenious sweep ideas, and the ability to play in any other time signature than 4/4. However, to just label Tosin as a shredder would be doing him an injustice as the sense of jazz harmony displayed within his chord-melody chops showcases a versatility not often seen in this genre. Animals As Leaders tour quite heavily and have released three albums since their formation in 2007. Their music is certainly not for the rhythmically faint-hearted, but check out their latest release,…

You’ve probably heard of the impressive amp-modelling technology that Fractal Audio Systems has won so many guitarists over to in recent years, but the company’s equally powerful effects have had less attention. Now Fractal has put them in a stand-alone unit for the first time, throwing down the gauntlet as far as high-end, ultra-editable multi-effects goes. Check out what reviewer Trevor Curwen has to say about the new FX8 on p131. Meanwhile, the classic tremolo effect is about as atmospheric an addition to your clean tone as you can have – but these days, you can have your wobble served up a lot of different ways. So we rounded up a few of the top contenders this issue – read the full report on p136 to see which suits you…

The Flint seems designed for habitual Fender amp users who are faced with the problem of having to use a hired/ borrowed amp, and features both reverb and tremolo, individually footswitchable. While the reverb simulations cover spring, plate and hall sounds, it’s the tremolos that we’re interested in here, and all three Fender varieties are available: there’s a ’61 harmonic vibrato, ’63 power tube bias tremolo and a ’65 photocell tremolo. Intensity (depth) and speed adjustment knobs grace the front panel but there are also secondary functions like setting the pedal for a slight boost when it’s kicked in and setting the order of the two effects. Three trem flavours cover plenty of bases from the choppy ’65 to the more rounded ’63 and the delightful harmonic tremolo with its…

This is a recently launched revamped version of the original that adds stereo operation and a channel phase knob that can adjust the phase between left and right output channels from 0 to 180 degrees, which results in some interesting sonic variations. The shape of the tremolo waveform here is continuously variable from sine wave through triangle to square wave, and you can also tweak the shape, so there’s load of variations – from familiar vintage tones to extreme helicopter chops. While the depth knob works as you’d expect, you can adjust the speed in three ways – either conventionally with the knob or via the tap tempo footswitch, either as tapped or by engaging the ratio switch to dial in speeds up to four times faster than your quickest…

Where the Golden Brownie does the high-gain-amp-in-a-box thing, the Tube Squasher falls squarely into the low- to medium-gain overdrive category. What you are getting here is a smooth valve-like overdrive that responds organically to your playing dynamics, as well as plenty of extra gain to drive your amp while you are at it. The sound is delivered via a familiar array of drive, level and tone knobs, but there’s also a toggle switch for two quite different modes. One setting offers the sound with ‘nowt taken out’ – full and fat in the bottom end – while the other filters out some bass for a tauter low end that lends itself nicely to chordal rhythm playing. The Tone control’s range has been wisely chosen to focus on the upper mid…

Expert panel Jamie Dickson Guitaristeditor Jamie is as happy with steel wool in his hand as he is with Steely Dan in his headphones, and loves vintage-gear restoration and ambitious signal chains. Dave Burrluck Guitarist’s assiduous reviews editor is also the author of numerous guitar books.Very handy with a fret file and indeed any aspect of a finely fettled six-string. Mick Taylor Ex-editorof Guitarist,Mick haswieldedAllenkeys, screwdrivers and sandpaper from an early age; he also has a worrying obsession with pedalboards. Neville Marten Edited Guitaristfor13years, after working for both Fender and Gibson as a repairer. From desirable Les Pauls to dream Strats, he’s owned and worked on the lot. Nick Guppy Guitarist’s amplifier specialist has built up a wealth of experience gained from collecting, repairing and restoring all kinds of guitar-related…

This month, the guitar we’re looking at is something of an oddball that required a fair amount of sleuthing on our part to gather all the details. It was made by a builder called Göran Malmberg, about whom very little is known and whose website seems more concerned with custom-built sports cars than it does the instruments that have passed through his workshop! However, a guitar of his can be seen in the hands of no less than Eric Clapton in an early Cream video and there are speaker cabinets bearing the Malmberg marque behind Jimmy Page in a Led Zeppelin performance filmed during the late 1960s. Possibly his most celebrated instrument was used by Björn Ulvaeus during ABBA’s 1974 Eurovision success in Brighton – remember the guitar shaped like…

FIRST PLAY RICK TURNER MODEL 1 C-LB £4,950 WHAT IS IT? Innovative electric design that’s good enough for Lindsey Buckingham Rick Turner isn’t exactly a household name, but many musicians have been touched by his guitars and his basses. Lindsey Buckingham has famously used Turner’s guitars throughout his career, and John Mayer is a recent adoptee. Turner co-founded the hugely influential Alembic company in 1970, and also co-founded Highlander Musical Audio, and D-TAR (with Seymour Duncan), focusing on acoustic amplification. Today, based in Santa Cruz, he employs four luthiers to make his Compass Rose ukes, Turner Model 1s, Electroline basses, and Renaissance guitars and basses, outputting around 24 instruments a month. “We are essentially a custom shop,” he tells us. “Every instrument we build has a very complete work order…

We’d heard credible murmurings about the project as early as last summer, and now the signature guitar collaboration between contemporary indie rock’s most fascinating player, Annie Clark (St Vincent) and Ernie Ball Music Man has been realised with a bold design and high-profile premiere. St Vincent debuted the guitar with a spotlight blues solo in her guest appearance at Taylor Swift’s Los Angeles Staples Center show on 25 August to perform a version of Beck’s song Dreams, alongside the man himself. The Ernie Ball Music Man St Vincent signature ($1,899) is available in black or custom Vincent Blue, a colour hand-mixed by Annie, and it has an African mahogany body, rosewood neck and fretboard with St Vincent inlays, Schaller locking tuners, and a five-way pickup selector for three mini humbuckers.…

You often don’t have to add anything to freshen up old chords; you just have to look at them from a new angle. This A-D-Em-D progression is very simple and crops up in loads of songs, notably Louie Louie. It’s an interesting substitute in itself, because it’d be even simpler to play E major rather than E minor (a straight I-IV-V-IV in A). So we’ll bear that in mind, too… BUT first, remember how we sustained open strings through multiple chords in last issue’s Substitute, like an ‘aural glue’? The advanced version of this is the pedal tone, a note that remains static, sustaining or repeating, while other notes and chords change. Pedal tones can be low or high, but they’re really common as bass notes – think of any…

A LIFE LESSON Dear Guitarist, I’m 60 and have played guitar in a blues-rock band since the age of 17. I recently got a call from a 22-year-old local guy who asked if I would teach him how to play a bit of rock and blues, after he’d seen one of our gigs. I hadn’t taught anyone before, but I decided to do so, for an agreed hourly fee, with the first lesson free to see if it worked out. Well, I can tell you, it’s one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done in my guitar-playing history! This young guy totally loves the music I grew up with and is incredibly enthusiastic when I show him classic songs we guitarists love. I’m introducing him to Cream, Free, Bad…

What was your first gig? “My very first gig was a jazz-guitar duet with another guitar player named Brian Pardo. We played at a restaurant and we each made $12. It was the first time I was out reading the Real Book and having an audience and I realised just how awful that was and that it was such a distraction, not having that clear path to making eye contact with the audience. After that, I started to focus on memorising things.” Describe your current stage rig… “It’s interesting, because I’ve made a whole lot changes in the last year. I have a new amp, which is a guitar-player’s dream. It’s made by Thomas Blug and it’s 3lbs, 100 watts and four channels; it’s essentially like a 100-watt Marshall that…

Every now and then, you come across a guitarist who has the full deck of virtues: a player who has great feel, but articulates assertively and precisely; who has great creativity, but also the theoretical grasp to give structure and clarity to improvisations. They’re rare, but Oz Noy is such a one. Born in Israel, Oz moved to New York in 1996 and immediately started turning heads. Pretty soon, he’d notched up a rack of critically acclaimed albums, including his debut Oz Live!, which was recorded at New York’s legendary Bitter End. Subsequent releases included the Twisted Blues series, which featured Oz’s unique cocktail of bebop and blues. Since then, he’s toured the world, become recognised as one of the guitar’s rising stars, and been hailed as a virtuoso by…

From the opening notes of 5 AM, the track that kicks off David Gilmour’s new album, Rattle That Lock, you know you’re in for something reflective. There’s always been something intimate and yearning about Gilmour’s remarkable guitar playing, but 5 AM conveys something much deeper; amidst the familiar longing he manages to wring out of the notes he so expertly delivers. Seated in the London offices of his long-time publicist, Gilmour is fit and engaged. At the outset of our conversation, we remind him of a previous meeting at a party in the early 90s, around the time of the making of Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell, and that he’d said a total of about eight words the entire evening. “That sounds about par for the course,” Gilmour says with…

Now here’s a curious thing. From Buddy Holly to Mark Knopfler, so many celebrated guitarists have used Strats over the years that the sleek, twin-horned outline of the Strat is as familiar as the back of your hand. In fact, if you asked a child to draw an electric guitar there’s a high chance they’d draw something that resembled one, right down to the trio of pickups with one mounted at angle at the bridge. But take a really close look at a variety of Strats built over the six decades that they’ve been manufactured and you start to realise that the Strat’s iconic body shape, as well as more obvious spec changes, has drifted quite a bit from its original form over time. Indeed, it’s only when you get…

What You Need To Know 1 Another new Schecter model range, then? There’s no doubt that Schecter offers a mind-boggling number of models. But the Hybrid series was devised purely in response to customer feedback and incorporates the features most requested from its huge customer base into one range. 2 Will these guitars interest nonmetal players, too? Probably less so, although that’s more to do with aesthetics than suitability to other genres. Schecter produces guitars that would suit most genres of rock, and there are a number of models in its USA Custom range that we’d consider more versatile. 3 By the way, who’s Keith Merrow? He’s a highly-respected online demonstrator of guitar products with a vast army of followers (his opinion is much sought after). As well as being…

What You Need To Know 1 Guitar synths? Why don’t I just buy a keyboard-based synth? Ah, but can you play keys as well as you play guitar? A keyboard will give you synth sounds but it won’t give you the magical blends of guitar, synth and effects that the SY-300 offers. 2 Do I need a special pickup? To trigger sounds via MIDI, you need a guitar equipped with a hexaphonic pickup that tracks each string separately. The SY-300 doesn’t use pitch-to-MIDI conversion and is designed to take a signal direct from your guitar or bass: it’s more of a sophisticated effects processor that can output synthesiser sounds. 3 So, sort of a pedal-based synth? Yes, and between parent company Roland’s long history of both keyboard and guitar synths…

The DynaTrem offers tremolo and reverb, although the reverb is only available in one of three modes, either with tremolo or by itself. The pedal’s agenda is dynamic tremolo that responds to your playing: play harder and you can either get faster or deeper tremolo in the first two modes, the depth variation seeming the more natural of the two when playing. The third mode offers ‘Harmonic Tremolo + Reverb’ for that phase-y tremolo with a hint of pitch shift combined with a spacey ambience. There’s usefully adjustable output level and, while the depth and rate knobs do their normal job for mode three, they also feature an element of setting how the parameters react to playing dynamics in modes one and two. A Shape knob offers four different waveforms…

Wampler’s Latitude Deluxe (£217), released last year, is a fully featured tremolo that includes tap tempo with four subdivisions, a choice of three waveforms, and adjustable Attack and Space for fine tuning of the wave shape. That’s a pretty comprehensive feature set, but if you are looking for something less complex, the newly minted Latitude Standard takes the Fender-inspired portion of the sound from the Deluxe and puts it in a more compact pedalboard-friendly form. There’s a no-brainer user interface that gives you access to standard depth and speed controls and a variable output that offers a slight boost to ensure your sound’s prominence in the mix. A pulsing red LED always show the tremolo speed, even in bypass, while a bright blue LED lets you know the effect is…

This month, our editor takes to the stage with the Yamaha SLG200S – a skeletal solidbody guitar that emulates studio-recorded acoustic tones – to see if the latest version of the Silent Guitar concept is more than just a ‘practice’tool “It sounds very much like an acoustic: I went straight through the PA and the tone was impressive” It’s one of those invitations you can’t refuse. A friend, Claire, is getting married and she’s asked if I and her other guitar-playing friend Paddy could play her up the aisle with a rendition of Mardy Bum by the Arctic Monkeys. Paddy’s playing a Gretsch through a little Skylark combo, so there’s going to be no shortage of tremulous twang – therefore, in the interests of providing some genteel tonal contrast, I…

Q I love the look of vintage instruments, but as my playing moves towards jazz-fusion, I find myself wanting a humbucker at the bridge, serious build quality and modern playability (flat-ish or compound radius neck and medium to large frets). I don’t like the HSS Strat-style concept or bling-y ‘trophy’ guitars. Basically, I want a lightweight, beautifully built solidbody with retro looks and a bridge humbucker/neck P-90 or single coil, ideally, but another humbucker could work. Classic-ish looks are a must, and it must come in under a grand! Tim Godden, via email A We recognise this, Tim, because we’ve all been through it. The ‘classic’ guitar idiosyncrasies have become unappealing to you for whatever reason and it’s in your head that there’s something better out there that addresses them.…

LAST month’s column introduced a bending approach in the familiar context of the minor pentatonic scale. This time, we’ll be applying a similarly systematic approach to seven-note diatonic scales and also introducing a few new inflections to your bending vocabulary… The following examples are (almost) all based on the E major scale, which contains the notes E, F#, G#, A, B, C# and D#. Some of the following ideas work best when applied ‘positionally’, with the fretting hand rooted in one small area of the fretboard and using multiple strings, whereas other ideas show more of their true potential when you stay on a single string and utilise the whole length of the neck to achieve melodic range. Let’s go through the examples in sequence… EX.1 illustrates a whole fretboard’s…

Rory Gallagher Top Priority Bad Penny comes from this great ’79 album – named after his record company’s promise to make the record ‘top priority’ after his early success in America. Check out Rory’s completeness as a musician throughout, and how wonderful his tone and touch were, even then. Queen Sheer Heart Attack One of the band’s best, it features thefabulous Killer Queen with its gorgeous solo full of compositional melody and a complete lack of ‘lick playing’. All the guitar playing on the album is wonderful, of course, and there are definite hints of Rory’s influence here and there. Gary Moore Out In The Fields (Best Of) In Gary’s rockier moments, his Irish background would often surface, both lyrically and in the writing and solos. Here, his playing would…

Eric Clapton Live At The Royal Albert Hall: Slowhand At 70 In cinemas worldwide from 14 September When Slowhand celebrated his 70th birthday in May with a myriad of friends and fans in a seven-night residency at the hallowed dome of the Albert Hall, he was in very familiar surroundings. The iconic bluesman has played over 200 shows at the venue, 178 of them as a headliner. But even by Clapton’s standards, these performances marked a huge milestone after 50 years at the forefront of the guitar world. Now fans will have the chance to share the night in a cinema experience that will frame the live performance with a featurette filmed exclusively for audiences, presented by respected music broadcaster Paul Gambaccini and interviews with renowned musicians and Clapton collaborators…

1 Fender Special Edition Classic Series Stratocasters £559 These special-edition Fenders have finishes that were real car colours from the 50s and 60s that were not chosen for guitars the first time round by company icons Leo Fender and Messrs Tavares, Fullerton, Randall and White. Now Canary Diamond, Apple Green, Jetstream Blue (shown), Lilac, Rangoon Red and Cerulean Blue are finally getting their chance to shine. The six finishes are split evenly with three each in 50s and 60s specs. www.fender.com 2 MXR Custom Shop Joe Bonamassa FET Driver $169.99 Available in a limited run of 300 and sold exclusively through the guitarist’s official online store, the FET driver aims to capture the rich tones of an overdriven tube amp by cascading an op-amp gain stage into a FET stage…

1 What was your first guitar and when did you get it? “My very first guitar was a Kay knock-off acoustic, and it was called a Jay. I got that one in a garage sale back when I was eight or nine years old. I think it was only about $5. But, y’know, it got me started. I still have it, and it’s almost playable – but it’s really not a great guitar.” 2 The building’s burning down: what one guitar from your collection would you save? “I have a Gibson SG that I’ve had signed by a lot of people that I’ve been lucky enough to play with – and a lot of them are no longer with us. I played that guitar for years, and I had Hubert…

Who Is He? Born in a small village in Surrey, singer-songwriter Fabian Holland has two albums of self-penned songs under his belt and a busy touring schedule to boot. Currently, he lives aboard a canal boat, which might sound like a romantic lifestyle, but, he tells us, that notion is brought to an abrupt halt the minute that winter visits the waterways. Who Has He Listened To? Fabian started playing at the age of seven. His younger years were set to the soundtrack of his father playing harmonica and listening to blues and so, to begin with, he was drawn towards playing electric guitar, but his father insisted that he begin his musical journey on acoustic. Classical guitar lessons followed, but the urge to dabble on electric proved a strong…

It’s been a whole two years since Guitarist caught up with Vintage Trouble’s inimitable six-string hero, Nalle Colt, and the four-piece rhythm ’n’ blues rockers have been typically busy in the interim. As well as garnering all kinds of further acclaim for their frenzied live sets at festivals and concert halls across the planet, the band have also found time to cut their sophomore album, 1 Hopeful Rd, with legendary producer Don Was. Back in July 2013, we met Nalle on the eve of Vintage Trouble’s Wembley Arena support slot on The Who’s Quadrophenia tour, the final gig on a mammoth 51-show trek. This time around, the band is slap-bang in the middle of yet another major world jaunt, opening for none other than AC/DC across Europe and North America.…

By album number 16, most bands could be forgiven for going through the motions somewhat: phoning it in, mellowing out and resting on the laurels of their past hits from their immense back catalogue. But Iron Maiden proved some time ago that they’re not ‘most bands’. Metal’s national treasures have just made a 90-minute double album and decided to shake up their creative process in doing so. Within the maelstrom of creativity on The Book Of Souls are a pair of steady hands belonging to a man whose fluid legato and easy smile are synonymous with the band’s heritage. Dave Murray has been a cornerstone of Iron Maiden since 1978 (he originally joined, then left, in 1976), first partnering with guitarist Dennis Stratton for the band’s seminal self-titled debut in…

Equally at home on acoustic, solidbody and archtop electric, and just about everything in between, John Etheridge has been involved with some of the world’s finest musicians over his 45-year career. Stylistically, he’s played the lot – including solo jazz, fusion, gypsy and even touching on world music on occasion – and to have such a vast range of styles available to him, his influences have to be pretty diverse, too. We sat down with him and asked him how it all started… Is it true The Shadows were your first musical influence? “No, they were my first inspiration; my first influence was Django Reinhardt. In my first band, the rhythm guitarist’s dad heard the rubbish we were playing and said, ‘Have a listen to this bloke Django.’ On every…

ESP LTD AJ-7 £889 From ESP’s second tier LTD range, the signature model of renowned guitar teacher Andy James sports a neck-through design, mahogany body and a pair of high-octane active EMGs. This is a serious metal workhorse with great hardware at a competitive price. www.espguitars.com IBANEZ UV70P £949 The original and, for some, the best seven-string guitar – it still gives modern extended-range guitars a run for their money. This more affordable Premium version was introduced last year. The benchmark in seven-string guitar design since its introduction in 1990. www.ibanez.com IBANEZ ROADCORE RC1320 £969 With a retro and unusual body shape, the Roadcore was introduced in 2014. It features a slim mahogany body, maple neck and 22-fret rosewood ’board. Add to that the ultra-versatile pickup combo of a Seymour…

Despite its compact size, the Jack Rabbit packs plenty onboard. In addition to the standard rate and depth knobs, the output level knob can go from unity gain to supply 14dB of boost, which can really drive an amp into overdrive – turn down the trem depth to use it as a pure boost. The modulation waveform is also variable with Sine, Square, Triangle, Reverse Ramp and Ramp shapes for a range of sounds from rounded Fender-style throb through to harder-edged on/off stutters. If you want to change speeds on the fly, two tempo modes with three subdivisions (quartet note, eighth note and quarter note triplet) are possible by holding down the footswitch for two seconds. There’s normal Tap tempo and a Strum tempo mode where you set the tempo…

Certainly the coolest looking of the pedals collected in this round-up with its surf green chassis and cream chickenhead knobs, the Surf Trem is also the most basic of the pedals on test with just amp-style depth and speed control. Now, while the Surf Trem – which is part of Denmark-based Carl Martin’s Vintage Series – has been around for a few years in a couple of different-shaped enclosures, this particular unit is a newly released revision of the pedal that, alongside the standard red LED on/off indicator, adds a second bright blue LED that pulses in time with the speed of the tremolo, whether bypassed or not, leaving you in no doubt as to the trem speed. The circuitry of the pedal is taken from the company’s TremO’vibe tremolo…

Xvive has a range of US-designed/ Chinese-built pedals that includes the Analog series Micro pedals, two of which have been designed in conjunction with German guitarist Thomas Blug, he of the BluGuitar AMP1. Designed to deliver 1980s style high-gain hard rock tones, the Golden Brownie is described by Xvive as a “Marshall JCM800 in a box”, and there’s definitely a Brit valve flavour there, from mild breakup through to a full-on distortion and all points in between. Key to the tone are the two EQ knobs, Tone and Presence, which complement each other. They seem to be cutting or boosting the upper frequencies in slightly different ranges to dial in a sweet spot with the correct amount of brightness. This pedal will save valuable real estate on your ’board, while…

With the lightweight, ultra-portable VB800 and NL12 pairing already put to the test on pedalboard-aided clean tones, MusicRadar’s guitar guru unleashes the high-gain fury at his local pub residency. But can he handle the heat? “I was clipping the Matrix’s wings when it should be soaring on harmonically charged distortion” For those just tuning in, my motives for testing this Matrix head ’n’ cab were solely weight-based: it was a rig I could carry down the road to the local pub for my weekly covers band residency, without breaking my back or putting my bandmates out. Little did I realise its more rock-orientated tones – owing to the VB800’s JCM-derived design and NL12’s closed-back enclosure – would reignite a fire within me, one that was once driven by 100-watt heads…

The background Martin Fennemore, Guitarist reader: When I plug my Boss digital delay pedal into the front of my Mesa/Boogie Express 5:25 and dial in some overdrive on the amp, the sound becomes harsh. However, if I connect the delay pedal via the amp’s effects loop, it sounds fine. Moving on, if I use an Ibanez Tube Screamer overdrive followed by the delay into the front of the amp set to a clean sound, it also sounds fine. I’m a little confused by all of this – I’m trying to reduce the amount of cables and clutter on stage because I want to keep things simple as it distracts me from playing the guitar! Please help… The questions 1. What are the technical reasons behind why the delay sound is…

Rory Remembered Difficulty 20 mins per example tutor: Neville Marten | Gear used: Fender 1966 telecaster, Vox AC15CC (rhythm), Marshall JtM45 (lead) It’s an almost unbelievable 20 years since we lost Rory Gallagher. Guitarist markedthe anniversary last month with an in-depth look at Rory’s guitars, so I thought it might be appropriate to revisit a previous blues column so you can ingest a little more of Rory’s magic. It’s not on video, but I did like this track and the licks, so I hope you do, too. I was lucky enough to know Rory for the last few years of his life. To reiterate what every other person I know who ever met him will say: he was a beautiful person, supremely modest, always ready with a kind word even…

Electrics Burns Hank Marvin 40th anniversary guitar VGC never gigged £1,100-00 ovno. Call bob on 01363777646 or 07710274728. Email andersongunsmith@talktalk.net Nr. Exeter, Devon Collings I35LC, semi-acoustic, flame blonde, immaculate, deluxe hard case, papers, 2011 top shelf guitar. £2,800 Colin 07885 488780 Email steeleman64@aol.com Essex Epiphone Casino, Korean, Peerless factory SN R00M0545, Blonde, very good condition with case, £425. Email brianlewisinnis@googlemail.com or call 020 8806 5213 London E5 area Epiphone Dot VSB with Epiphone hardcase. Unused condition. £250. Email philharris453@gmail.com Epiphone EA-250 Riviera Kalamazoo. Made in Japan, rare, collectable, almost perfect condition, all original. Pick up only, can deliver in Liverpool. £399. Call Kenny on 07812 431 256 Fender Chris Shiflet Telecaster Deluxe, mint condition. Professionally set up. Home use only but I’m a Strat man. £450 ono. Tel: 07873-320555 or…