Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2017 i Guitar Player

AFTER THE THOUSANDS OF BLAZING COUNTRY SOLOS JD Simo played for Nashville honky-tonkers and YouTube viewers before leaving the Don Kelly’ group in 2013, guitar enthusiasts were seriously surprised by the sound of his own band. Hell, no one even knew the guy could sing. When Simo, the record, turned out to be something of an homage to the great British power trios of the ’60s, complete with the guitarist’s Paul Rodgers- style vocals, fans were gob-smacked. Simo, the band, followed up their first outing with Let Love Show The Way, bringing the music back home with a Southern-rock vibe enhanced by the use of Duane Allman’s actual guitar. Both records revealed a band that could evoke the spirit of a bygone era while adding its own distinctive stamp. But…

HONING YOUR CHOPS INVOLVES much more than sheer velocity. If you want to play fast, concentrating on speed is fine, but you’ll also need to develop the ability to generate interesting melodic ideas to hold the listener’s attention. One way to accomplish this is by expanding licks and chord voicings you already know, via diatonic sequencing, whereby each note is raised or lowered to its neighboring scale step in accordance with its key center. Here’s how it works. ALL IN THE FAMILY Guitarists often tend to think of licks and chords as individual entities, when, in truth, both belong to families and have diatonic relatives and neighbors born from the notes of a given scale. That’s why it’s important to know your major key centers and what notes and chords…

AS STORIED AS IS THE NAME D’ANGELICO in the world of high-end custom archtop guitars, it’s been exciting to see both the brand and the art deco styling applied to several lines of more varied—and more affordable—models in recent years. New to the mid-priced Excel lineup, these Shoreline guitars are semi-acoustic thinlines in both single- and double-cutaway guise, each with full-on D’Angelico bling and some lively new color schemes. Both guitars were tested through custom tweed Deluxe and JTM45- style amps, with a selection of overdrive pedals. EXCEL SS SHORELINE Although the basic shape might hark back to several smaller-bodied archtops—Gibson’s ES-225 and ES-125 and Ibanez’s George Benson Signature model among them—D’Angelico’s new Excel SS Shoreline adds a mash-up of Manhattan jazz and Memphis rockabilly to create an unlikely mélange…

LINE 6’S HELIX AMP AND EFFECTS modeler instantly became one of the go-to devices for a subset of players who eschew amps onstage in favor of emulations. It joined Fractal’s Axe-FX II and the Kemper Profiler as a solution for guitarists who need to access a wide variety of sounds without hauling around a humongous pedalboard, or racks with drawers of pedals, amps, and amp switchers. But, as attractive as Helix LT is (and it is gorgeous), if you are playing in bar bands rather than with Katy Perry, you might find the $1,499 tariff a bit steep. Recognizing this, Line 6 has unveiled the LT version, which streets at $999. The number of available sounds and sound quality are exactly the same as the more expensive version. The economizing…

AFTER THE REVOLUTIONARY YET radically ahead-of-their-time Explorer and Flying V of the late ’50s were stricken from the catalog in the wake of disappointing sales, Gibson enlisted a highly acclaimed outside designer for its next adventure in modernity, and the results remain iconic to this day. Tapping the dangerous curves and tailfins of the Detroit auto industry, Gibson hired Ray Dietrich—designer of the Dusenberg car, among other things—to draw up an entirely new look for a solidbody electric guitar. The results hit the market in 1963 in a range of new Firebird models, known forever after as the “reverse-body” Firebirds for the way their shape flipped the approximate outline of the Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguar upside-down. Just as revolutionary as the Flying V and Explorer before it, the Firebird was…

Travelcaster Deluxe Traveler Guitar: Celebrating 25 Years on the Road Available May Remarkably portable. Incredibly playable. Inspired by over six decades of heritage and tradition, the all-new Traveler Guitar Travelcaster is a full 25 1/2” scale electric travel guitar. Specs, features, and our full lineup of cutting edge travel guitars available online. $299.99 www.travelerguitar.com travel@travelerguitar.com 909-307-2626 Shredneck BelAir Models Shredneck LLC Available Now Shrednecks practice and warm-up tools are for guitar and bass players to use when your instrument is not available or convenient. BelAir models feature real rosewood fingerboards, real nickel steel strings and chrome hardware. Includes Gig bag. MSRP: $129.99 www.shredneck.com New Limited-Edition Red ATH-M50x Professional Headphones Audio-Technica Available Now The critically acclaimed ATH-M50x provides exceptional clarity with deep, accurate bass response. Features large-aperture drivers, 90° swiveling earcups…

I’VE SUBSCRIBED TO GP SINCE THE EARLY 1980S, AND IT RECENTLY occurred to me that I would love to hear Joe Satriani play through, say, Brad Paisley’s rig, and vice versa. I think it would be a thought-provoking series on your You- Tube channel—getting great players out of their comfort zones, and having them plug into a rig used by a guitarist they respect or admire. I don’t wish to set up anyone for failure, so you’d have to find players who aren’t afraid to try a strange or vastly different setup. But I believe it would be very interesting to see how trading rigs might change a noted player’s approach or sound. —MARK LANSDON THE NOVEMBER 2017 CLASSIC COLUMN SHOWING a young Craig Anderton reminded me of his book,…

WHEN DEF LEPPARD RELEASED PYROMANIA IN 1983, the album was so successful that it was hard to imagine the British arena rockers would ever top it. Featuring radio hits such as “Photograph” and “Rock of Ages,” Pyro immediately, ahem, caught fire, and went on to sell more than ten million copies in America alone. But when it came time to start the next album, Def Leppard’s producer—the now legendary Robert John “Mutt” Lange—revealed surprisingly lofty ambitions for the band. “Mutt told us, ‘Every other rock band in the world is trying to make Pyromania 2, so let’s do something different,’” says Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen. “He said, ‘Let’s do a rock version of Thriller, where we have seven singles, and we create a genre of our own. Let’s make…

FOR A BAND TO SELL TENS OF MILLIONS of copies of an album, you can bet they must’ve found a winning formula. For the same outfit to survive tragedy then sell even more copies of their follow-up album, it’s a pretty safe assumption that they rank among the all-time greats. Such is the case of Sheffield, England’s Def Leppard. Hot off their 1983 breakthrough release, Pyromania, and subsequent world tour, drummer Rick Allen was involved in a car crash that resulted in the amputation of his left arm. Undaunted, Allen fashioned a clever electronic kit that allowed him to utilize his feet to cover parts traditionally played by hand, and the band hunkered down with veteran producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange to write and record their next album. The result…

AS THE LATEST ADDITION TO YAMAha’s long running Pacifica line, the 611VFMX has a lot to offer players who want the performance advantages of a hot-rodded S-type guitar. This bolt-neck design plays super easily thanks to its slim, satin-finished neck, which sports a relatively flat, gloss-finished fingerboard carrying 22 well-shaped frets and mother-of-pearl position dots. A superb setup assists in the intonation department, and similar attention to detail extends to the Wilkinson trem bridge, which, adjusted to float on our test guitar, had a butter-smooth action and excellent returnto- pitch capability (Yamaha informs us that the factory trem setup is for detune only). The locking Grover tuners also help stabilize the tuning, and a precisely cut Graphtech nut ensures the strings glide smoothly over it when you’re working the bar.…

MADE IN PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA, the Mendocino is the latest “standard” model from builder Barry Grzebik. Far from just a guitar maker, however, Grzebik was previously the Director of Engineering for Apogee Sound and now is an Acoustical Consultant and AV Systems Designer. How all this pro-sound experience has impacted his guitar building is a good question, but the Mendocino certainly demonstrates a high degree of craftsmanship in an interesting design centered around a one-piece mahogany semi-hollow body and neck, with a top of beautifully grained, solid old-growth redwood. The body’s width of 13.25” and depth of 1.75” makes this guitar feel very compact, and even even though the neck has a fairly thick profile, the overall weight is a mere 5 lbs—that’s acoustic guitar light! The gloss nitro finish is…

THREE YEARS AFTER PAYING TRIBUTE TO BLUES heroes such as Muddy Waters, Magic Sam, Willie Dixon, Stevie Ray Vaughan and the three Kings (Albert, Freddie, and B.B.) on the deeply reverential album Goin’ Home, Kenny Wayne Shepherd is expanding his musical palette on his eighth studio record, Lay It On Down [Concord], with a host of all-original songs that encompass country, gospel, soul, and straight-ahead rock. But the modern-day Strat king swears that, no matter what style of music he’s playing, blues is always a key part of the foundation. “I think if you’ve grown up playing the blues, and you’ve done this as long as I have, it’s impossible to extract that from your DNA,” says Shepherd. But Shepherd did change things up a bit on Lay It On…

WITH HER MULTIMEDIA THEATRE piece The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body—as well as her new Live at Berklee CD that features a 12-piece chamber orchestra— Kaki King continues to push the creative envelope of guitar artistry technically, sonically, and visually. When GP last interviewed King for the April 2014 issue, her singer-songwriter and electric-band phases had reached their conclusions, and she was once again focused on her forte—transcendent solo-acoustic performances. But there was a twist in the works. King soon unveiled her bold, new vision for the stage: The guitar itself visuals, as well as the centerpiece of a mythic creation story. The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body is stunning if you can see it performed live, but the 2015 soundtrack recording [Short Stuff Records]—produced by…

CLASSICAL COMPOSER AARON Copeland’s iconic “Hoedown” was a showstopper for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer during their heyday. Now, led by the band’s only survivor, drummer Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy carries on that bold tradition, opening their shows with a totally guitar-centric version of Copland’s rousing fanfare, which I first heard while on tour with this summer’s Yestival, which also featured Todd Rundgren and, of course, Yes. I guarantee when you hear guitarist Paul Bielatowicz’s bedazzling interpretation of the piece’s main theme and first variation, you’ll want to grab your ax and head for the woodshed! Ex. 1 illustrates how Bielatowicz—who also authors lessons for the British publication Guitar Techniques Magazine—plays the uptempo melody in 10th position on the top four strings, using a unique combination of alternate and sweep picking…

HOW TIME FLIES. BACK IN 2003, I reviewed the Gibson Custom Shop’s Johnny A Signature model, and it was a beauty. The Custom Shop was also nice enough to leave the guitar with us for years before requesting its return, so I had countless opportunities to noodle around on it while editing Guitar Player articles, and it was a real pleasure to play every time I picked it up. But it should have been an awesome guitar, because, quite frankly, it was made by the equivalent of a fine-art studio, and a recent check at sweetwater.com had its street price at $5,669 (a “$630 price drop!” said the banner). Now, Johnny A’s prize has made it over to the Epiphone team, and I bet you’re wondering how a $5k+ instrument…

FENDER INTRODUCED ITS PARAmount Series of premium acoustic guitars last year and received Editors’ Pick Awards from the GP staff. At Summer NAMM 2017 in Nashville, Fender added the Paramount Standard Travel acoustic- electric to the Paramount Series, and we requested a closer look straight away. The PM-TE arrived in a deluxe hardshell case, rather than a gig bag (like most instruments designed with portability in mind.) It’s a clear indication that this traveler is to be taken seriously as a musical instrument, and a peek inside confirmed that notion. The Paramount Travel does not fall into the travel-guitar trap of appearing like some quirky, dwarf, trail companion. Rather, it meets the eyes as a classy, scaled-down “orchestra” model. The bindings are crisp, and the twin soundhole rosettes help round…