Inhoudsopgave van January 2023 - Guitarist

One of the great qualities of music is that it is with us through all life’s significant moments – the happy and, inevitably, the tragic, too. As we went to press with this issue, we learned the sad news that Canvey Island’s most famous son Wilko Johnson had passed away. An inspiration to so many guitarists, he’d already endured and survived pancreatic cancer in 2013 against the odds –in fact, he had nearly a decade more of life to live, which he lived to the full. Look out for our full tribute to Wilko next issue. We’re sadder still to report a loss even closer to home. Longtime Guitarist writer and reviewer Ed Mitchell died in October, at the age of 52. He had been suffering from cancer. Ed grew…

FIRST PLAY Many players turn their noses up at cheapo lookalikes and, to be honest, we might be accused of that, too. Vintage’s long-running V100 rips off Gibson style in unashamed fashion, but in a hugely competitive and over-stocked market it shows no signs of being retired. In 2022, for example, Vintage released not only this Bigsby-equipped, flame-topped version in a trio of colours but also the V100M – what we would call a ‘Deluxe’ – with rather fashionable mini-humbuckers and a threesome in the colour department. Yet what the V100 lacks in originality is compensated by some really rather good-for-the-money craft. It’s certainly a long way from a boat anchor-weighted guitar-shaped object: it weighs in at 3.88kg (8.54lb) and appears to be fully solid, not weight relieved. A quick…

RAISING THE TONECompetition Up until recently, if you wanted a modded Fender you could either do the work yourself or dig deep and order a Custom Shop guitar. While the allure of CS instruments hasn’t waned, neither has their price tag – CS electrics typically cost north of three grand these days, with Heavy Relic aged instruments just shy of £5k in many cases. That’s simply out of reach for the majority of players, no matter how toneful or vibey the instruments themselves may be. Nonetheless, we live in an era of personalisation, and over in the States the option to customise your purchase is built into every burger and beverage order, never mind the stuff you really dream of buying. That’s why Fender has made a big deal of…

Fender Player Plus Meteora HH Based on a guitar that first appeared in Fender’s 2018 Parallel Universe range, designer Josh Hurst “wanted to make something that was revolutionary while also recalling Fender’s rich history”. Well, it’s certainly different (not least for Fender!), and as a guitar with a futuristic body shape and ‘Fireball’-named humbuckers, we immediately pigeonholed it as a metal machine. How wrong we were. It was the voicing of those pickups with their Wide Range-like polepiece style that changed our minds, “combin[ing] clarity with enough power for light classic crunch on a cleaner amp…” we noted. “If you like lower-output ’buckers, especially designs from Gretsch or Guild, then you’ll be at home.” Price: £879 Website: www.fender.com Eastman Juliet PB It might have been delayed by all the production…

Charvel Guthrie Govan Signature MJ San Dimas SD24 CM Guthrie Govan’s relationship with Charvel USA is long running, and for 2022 a new, more affordable Japanese-made model proves his recipe works wherever it’s made. The body is basswood with a thin ash veneer facing, and the neck is carbon-reinforced roasted maple with some jumbo stainless-steel frets. The vibrato system is superb, too, with a locking bridge, locking tuners and a slippery Graph Tech Tusq XL nut, while the Charvel HSH pickups and some tricky ‘single coil’ switching provide the voice. Or should we say voices? We commented that it’s “a perfectly aimed working tool that covers vast amounts of ground”. Price: £2,449 Website: www.charvel.com Patrick James Eggle Macon SC Goldtop With over three decades of both electric and acoustic guitar-making…

Positive Grid Spark Mini Positive Grid’s Spark Mini isn’t just about bringing digital modelling to the masses, although it does that perfectly well. For guitarists who mostly play at home, either for internet broadcasting or just for fun, big loud amplifiers aren’t necessary and can often be a disadvantage, as most big amps – especially valve ones – are designed to sound good at the kind of volume levels that would cause friction with even the best of neighbours. The Spark Mini’s clever speaker design does a good job of creating stadium tone at bedroom-friendly volume. Combined with the Smart Jam app and ToneCloud online preset library, it’s really great fun to use, which is what it’s surely all about. Price: £219 Website: www.positivegrid.com PRS HDRX 20 Head Paul Reed…

Alter Bridge’s singer/guitarist Myles Kennedy and co‑shredder/backing vocalist Mark Tremonti are deep in contemplation. Sitting in Kensington’s Royal Garden Hotel, they’re discussing the name of their highly anticipated seventh album, Pawns & Kings. “It was a phrase that jumped out to us on many levels,” says Myles. “With the title track’s lyrics, ‘The last shall be first,’ and also that idea of rising above impossible circumstances? That’s empowering. That was a theme that we could stand behind.” It’s little wonder that this underdog narrative appealed. Forged as they were from two imploded bands – Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall and drummer Scott Phillips from Creed, and Myles Kennedy from The Mayfield Four – few favoured Alter Bridge’s chances of success when they emerged back in 2004. Even Myles had…

BLUEPRINT: Martin Custom Shop Super Dreadnought Go big or go home, as they say – and a new guitar design from Martin, the company that gave birth to the Dreadnought in the early 1900s, certainly does that, though more subtly than you might think. The Super Dreadnought, recently debuted by Martin’s Custom Shop, takes the classic square-shouldered, bass-rich design that’s been copied by nearly every acoustic maker in the world and enlarges it even further. The result is a louder, grander instrument that “hits you in the chest” when you play. But does it only boom or can it whisper, too? And how do you make a larger guitar feel comfortable under the arm of both strummers and fingerstylists alike? These were the challenges that Scott Sasser, director of Martin’s…

Having taken a reverse approach to this kit-build, in that I built it all first before I applied any finish, I now have to ‘unbuild’ it so I can apply a finish to the mahogany body and plain maple neck. It seemed like a blooming good idea at the time because – to put it somewhat bluntly – if the final guitar wasn’t very inspiring, then I wouldn’t need to spend time and money finishing it myself or indeed calling in a professional. The thing is, I’ve taken a bit of a diversion from StewMac’s instructions: I’ve ditched the supplied scratchplate and made a couple of separate Perspex plates for the toggle switch and the volume, tone and output jack, leaving the central ‘swimming pool’ rout open. I then loaded…

FIRST PLAY Blackstar’s rise to fame as one of the world’s leading guitar amplification manufacturers is well documented, and certainly one of the reasons it’s arrived at the top and stayed there is that the team never seems to stop innovating. Almost every month, or so it seems, there’s something new to tempt us and now it’s the turn of Blackstar’s Dept. 10, its ‘blue sky’ research and development team. Hot on the heels of last year’s multi-award-winning valve Dual Drive, Dual Distortion and Boost pedals, the latest product to bear the Dept. 10 moniker is the Amped 1, a 100-watt multi-function amplifier in a package small enough to fit on your pedalboard. Like all Blackstar products, the Amped 1 is smartly presented with clean, uncluttered cosmetics. The electronics are…

FIRST PLAY Over the past few years Boss has been introducing Waza Craft versions of some of its compact pedal series: premium versions featuring a complete redesign of the original circuits by the original developers. Some of these have been welcome revamps of pedals that have been out of production for some time, such as the CE-2, the DM-2 and the Dimension C. But this latest is not only one of the earliest Boss compacts but one that has been continuously in the Boss catalogue since 1978 and is, in fact, its bestseller. The DS-1W retains the original pedal’s triumvirate of Tone, Distortion and Level knobs but features two modes selected via a top-panel toggle switch. S is Standard mode, offering the sound of an original DS-1, while C is…

NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE Back in the old days we had to learn about guitars from experience, or from the few books at our disposal, many of whose ‘facts’ it turned out were rather questionable. Thank goodness for Professor Google! I was a total ignoramus when I first started buying guitars. My first quality instrument was a 1967 Tele, and my next the infamous ‘Jimi’ bitser Strat. The Tele was the round-lam rosewood-fingerboard type, while the Strat had a slab neck. I therefore presumed all Teles were round lam and all Strats slab ’boards. It was years before I found out. But I took them both to bits and learned how they were put together and how the geometry of the guitar’s action worked. It set me in good stead for later.…

SUBSTITUTE AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra If you’ve ever arranged a chord progression to avoid unwieldy jumps between chords (in either physical or intervallic terms), then you’ve already applied this principle to your playing. Voice leading has also been described as when the transition between chords encapsulates the melody, as opposed to a top line played over block chords. Have a listen to some Joe Pass and you’ll hear this in action. The five examples transition between A minor and Fmaj7 by moving one note of the chord down a semitone at a time – or chromatically, to use the technical term. If you were to play an A minor, D7 then Fmaj7 using barre chord shapes, and then play the examples one after the other, you’ll get a sense of how the…

After some years of relatively flat, consistent prices, 2022 has seen numerous guitar companies pushing up their prices – and we can expect more. What’s driving these increases? Or have guitar companies just gotten greedy? “The biggest driver has been Covid,” states Gavin Mortimer, emphatically. “For example, there was the price of a shipping container that ended up costing four times as much as it did pre-Covid. And during the height of Covid you were lucky to actually get a container on a boat because there weren’t enough people… because of Covid! Now, expand that one illustration across all the parts necessary to make a guitar either in the USA or Indonesia. Literally, the logistical costs – fuel costs have doubled – and raw material costs have all sky-rocketed. Magnets…

Córdoba Stage The nylon-string Cordoba Stage is a hybrid instrument designed for live use and so its (good) looks fall well outside those of a conventional ‘classical’ guitar. It has a finger-friendly reduced-width ’board, a 406mm (16-inch) radius and classy soundports on the upper bout. The spruce top sits atop a chambered mahogany body, while the mahogany neck sports a slightly rounded heel to aid upper-fret access and comfort. Its crossover style will also appeal to steel-string acoustic and electric players, feeling familiar under the hands. A mix of under-saddle pickup and body sensors ensures that all your nylon-string needs are catered for; it delivers an almost mic’d up, natural-sounding portfolio. Price: £625 Website: www.cordobaguitars.com Furch Yellow Deluxe GC-CR The Czech Republic’s Furch company has been causing ripples among acoustic…

When acoustic became pretty much my main focus, I started trying to get more performance out of my Yamaha dreadnought and the Martin that followed. I must have tried 20 different types of acoustic string, by different makers. Ernie Ball’s Paradigm Phosphor Bronze set (£19.99) impressed on whatever I tried them on. They just seemed to have ‘more’ of everything across the frequency spectrum, going some way to justifying their high price. Later, I also came to appreciate Elixir’s Nanoweb Phosphor Bronze 13-53 set (also £19.99), primarily because their protective coating reduces finger squeaks dramatically and they sound great. True, both sets of strings were pricey, but given the importance of strings to an acoustic’s voice, the investment was worth it. And herein lies an important point. Not all that…

As someone once said, never work with children or animals – or soldering irons. Okay, they didn’t say that last bit, but they probably should have. As regular readers will know, I recently took on the project of building a Klon-based overdrive kit made by US lutherie parts supplier StewMac. Unlike my first DIY foray into pedal-building years ago, the kit was supplied with a comprehensive manual and video lessons on the StewMac YouTube channel. So the process should be relatively foolproof. But as we like to test things thoroughly here at Guitarist, it’s only appropriate that I should start the build by doing something foolish. “Pleased with my impeccable prep, I then realise I have failed to remove the iron’s plastic guard” Keen to show readers how the process…

It’s astonishing that Chet Atkins, George Harrison, Neil Young, Steven Stills, Malcom Young, Pete Townshend and Brian Setzer all relied on the same pickup to achieve some of their greatest tones. Whether it’s country fingerstyle picking, 60s rock, indie jangle, power pop or classic rock, the Filter’Tron can do it all. Even so, this particular pickup fell out of favour for over a decade after music became heavier and louder, and players became sustain‑obsessed. The main issue was that they were exclusive to hollowbodied Gretsch guitars that were largely unsuited to the latest trends. In the early 1980s, a Long Island greaser called Brian Setzer brought his virtuoso chops to the rockabilly revival and made Gretsch guitars cool again. Goths and indie players followed suit, with the likes of Billy…

FIRST PLAY Chapman Guitars, headed by internet guitar whizz Rob Chapman (aka the ‘Monkey Lord’ or simply ‘Chappers’), has built a solid and pretty unique place in the worldwide guitar market. Its modern-aimed, value-for-money instruments are built in Indonesia and Korea, and in many cases have been collaborative designs, spec’d by the brand’s considerable online fanbase. The company celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2019, and at the tail end of 2022 has chalked up another milestone: its first UK-made guitars. In truth, the idea for these UK builds goes back a few years when a ‘British Standard’ range was announced at the 2018 Winter NAMM show. Unfortunately, this series never made it to market. The ML1 was the first Chapman design, and rather than being any kind of radical reinvention…

FIRST PLAY Third in the series of Walrus Audio’s Five-State pedals, the Eons fuzz follows the Ages overdrive and the Era distortion, which offer five different gain states and five distortion modes respectively. Adopting the same basic format, a five-way mode switch gives you distinct variations on the fuzz effect, which can be tweaked with an array of five knobs. Volume, Gain, Bass and Treble controls may be standard kit in a dirt pedal, but the secret weapon here is the fifth knob, which can adjust the pedal’s operating voltage, starving the circuit from 18 volts down to a ‘battery-on-its-last-legs’ three volts. Mode 1 delivers a traditional silicon fuzz that can be smooth and sustain-y, and features plenty of leeway for focusing the overall sound via the two tone knobs,…

Artist: Jake Xerxes Fussell Album: Good And Green Again (Paradise Of Bachelors) The son of creative parents (folklorist father and artist/teacher mother) from Georgia, Jake began his journey on solid ground and has become an inimitable collector and performer of traditional and more obscure songs from the South. “I listened to a lot of classic fingerpickers from the South when I started out,” Jake tells us. “People like the Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotten and Etta Baker. But also there were the pre-war artists like Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller who were important.” Serving The Song Jake found himself in circles where he could learn styles from notable musicians firsthand. “There was a blues guitarist from Talbot County, Georgia, called Precious Bryant, who I was learning…

CONFESSIONS OF A LUTHIER I made the surprising realisation this week that there are no less than 18 projects currently underway in my workshop. Among various repair and restoration jobs in progress were my current builds, my students’ guitars and a half-abandoned electric guitar that I started building for myself (which inevitably ends up taking a back seat in lieu of more important work). I welcome the diversity of the jobs, but this month one subject just kept cropping up: tension. “The three factors that affect string tension are the material and thickness of the strings, the tuning, and the scale length of the instrument” It started when one of my guitar-making students asked me why two of his classical guitars appear to have different amounts of tension in the…

STAR LETTER KILLING FLAWS I’m after a bit of help in understanding the persistence of design flaws or poor detailing in the mainstream guitar market by the big companies and those that are “inspired by” or just copy them. The ageing craze baffles me, but nothing looks cooler to me than a Les Paul or an SG. The continual inclusion of original design flaws that golden era guitars had I simply don’t get, though. We all know that the heel and cutaway on a Les Paul restricts upper-fret access, and if we had no option but to be honest we would all say it’s not a clever design. While the likes of Patrick Eggle, PRS and even Sid Poole many years earlier have improved the design, the big brands and…

Yamaha Revstar RSS02T Yamaha’s ‘just different enough’ Revstar plundered the company’s past and produced a striking range that, after seven years of production, was reworked for 2022. The MkII versions – which come in Indonesian-made Element and Standard versions, with the Japanese-made Professional model topping the line – retain the Revstar style, though the body width is slightly increased, and the Standard and Pro models are lightly chambered, while their necks have carbon reinforcement and feature a new Focus switch (a passive boost). The Standard RSS02T boasts the Café Racer-inspired tailpiece of the original model, along with those soapbar single coils. If you want to break away from the classics, start here. Price: £649 Website: http://uk.yamaha.com Magneto U-One Eric Gales Eric Gales hooked up with Magneto over a decade ago…

Cream T Crossfire Cream T started off as just pickup makers, but its guitars – made by the new-venture UK Guitar Builders in York – are attracting attention, too, especially since they feature pickup-swapping technology, licensed from Relish Guitars in Switzerland. First off we got the Aurora, co-designed by Billy Gibbons, while this Crossfire offset swaps the style, notably with its lightweight obeche body. But it’s the unfussy craft that most impresses: a beautifully made boutique-level guitar with some of the best necks in production anywhere in the world. Add in those swappable Cream T (or, indeed, other brand) pickups and you have a hugely versatile proposition. Price: From £1,799 Website: www.creamtpickupsdirect.com PJD Carey Apprentice Classed by PJD as a “streamlined” version of its best-selling Carey model, the Apprentice could…

Boss Waza Craft DS-1W The longest-running and best-selling Boss compact pedal has received the Waza Craft treatment. While the pedal still retains its original scooped-mid distortion sound in Standard mode, it adds a new Custom mode with a different tonal profile, featuring a thicker and more prominent midrange for real presence in the mix when kicked in. This is aided by the fact that it’s also a welcome 6dB louder, offering more scope in placement of the Level knob for boost. In addition, this mode features an increased sensitivity leading to a more dynamic and nuanced playing experience. You can still buy a DS-1 in its original form, but for versatility this version is a no-brainer, even at almost twice the price. Price: £125 Website: www.roland.co.uk Thermion Stone Age If…

IN MY LIFE Charlie Burchill Sparking Up “My very first guitar, my mother got me when I was maybe nine. It’s a true story – she bought me this guitar with coupons from Embassy cigarette packets! I started playing when I was about 12. I had two older brothers: one of them, he fancied playing guitar and bought a semi-decent one that I eventually nicked off him. He gave up and I carried on.” Local Heroes “Jim [Kerr] and I, we joined Johnny And The Self Abusers in 1977. The punk scene was flourishing in Glasgow and it created so many opportunities for everybody. We didn’t really come from a punk background – Jim and I were much more into The Doors, Velvet Underground and Roxy Music –…

KITTYCASTERFX TREMDRIVER & GROOVY WIZARD $399 & $299 CONTACT KittycasterFX WEB www.kittycasterfx.com What You Need To Know 1 KittycasterFX? Never heard of them… While you may not have heard of this new company, which only formed in April of this year, Catalinbread is likely to be a familiar name. And these pedals are the brainchild of Howard Gee, former Catalinbread pedal designer. 2 What makes these different? Howard’s idea here was to make the most responsive guitar pedal ever. He says that these are designed to bring out every nuance of your playing and to make your rig sound bigger and more dynamic. 3 Only two pedals? So far, but both have plenty packed into them. The Tremdriver offers an Echoplex-style preamp plus Harmonic tremolo, while the Groovy Wizard’s powers…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “I bought a Gibson 335 in 1981. There were a bunch of guitar players who played 335s in those days – it was de rigueur to have a 335 because of Larry Carlton. Everybody wanted to sound like Larry Carlton and I was no different. I can’t remember how much it cost – probably about 350 or maybe 500 quid. That was the market value in those days. And then I sold it like a mug. “Before then I was just using acoustic guitars. I had an Ovation, the Glen Campbell Ovation, and another one I can’t remember. Just two different Ovations. I was really into them because I wanted to be like Al Di Meola and John…

Back in the early stages of guitar amplification, in the days of the Fender Tweed amps, combos were the norm. Later, with the advent of increased power and the need for volume, the head and cab came into being. It is this period that I find most interesting as the difference between combos and head‑and‑cab amplifiers seems to go on two different paths. Here, I want to briefly explain how a few key design features can vastly change how an amp sounds in the room. The rule of thumb when pitting a combo against its head‑and‑cab variant is that the combo will tend to sound less direct and often more ambient. A lot of this is due to its back‑panel and baffle design. The first part is simple: combos are…

The pictured Telecaster Custom was expertly restored to original spec at ATB Guitars in Cheltenham. By analysing the woodgrain, finish and other details such as neck date and pot codes, the team concluded it is the same prototypical instrument that appeared in Fender literature when the model was released in 1959. Reads the ’59 catalogue: “The new Telecaster Custom dual pickup and Esquire Custom single pickup guitar offer all the fine playing and design features of the regular Telecaster and Esquire models plus custom treatment of the body and neck.” Costing $229.50, the Custom Telecaster was touted as a fancier, upmarket alternative to the plain, utilitarian design of the regular $199.50 Tele. This “custom treatment” included a rosewood ’board, three-ply pickguard, bound body, and three-tone sunburst finish. Appearing in ’58,…

This is a 1936 Martin D-18 with a shaded top – probably the cleanest one in the world. Shipping records show they shipped two shaded top guitars in ’36. The Martin ledger goes all the way back to before the American Civil War, which is pretty amazing. It’s possible that not all ‘dark tops’, as they were referred to in the Martin catalogue, were recorded being shipped as such, and some collectors estimate the figures to be higher. Even so, there aren’t many out there. “In my mind, this is the pinnacle of a great-sounding Martin. Purists will sing the praises of 30s Martins, but I’ve had a lot from the 40s and 50s that sound great as well. The look of this guitar is beyond belief, but it sounds…

Matt Schofield Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs Choptank, Boss Keeley SD-1, Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 20 mins per example AS BLUES GUITAR EVOLVES over the decades, different influences filter in and undoubtedly techniques progress and tones refine. But certain elements always remain, as listening to a few of the current generation of players such as Oz Noy and Philip Sayce will demonstrate. This issue, I’ve chosen to model the solo (approximately) on the style of another modern blues player, Matt Schofield, particularly his rendition of Elmore James’s Stranger Blues. The rhumba beat gives a lively rhythm section to play over and the major chords in the backing encourage a few steps outside the straight pentatonic, such as some 6ths. There’s also plenty of the all-important blues/quarter-tone bends…