Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i Guitarist

The question of how to get the vintage vibe from your guitar is getting more complex by the year. A high-end reissue should be an obvious choice for the vintage guitar fan who can’t afford the real deal. But, as usual, things aren’t quite that simple. Just to muddy the waters further, the price of the most prestigious reissues is climbing to be almost on a par with tatty examples of the real thing. This doesn’t hold true of the most sought-after electrics, such as sunburst Les Pauls from the late 50s, but get into Gibson’s less-prized 60s models and the picture changes. For example, a 1961 Les Paul/SG Custom with maybe a refin or some other non-original details can often be found for around the same price as an…

FUNDRAISER FOR JASON BECKER Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Metallica, Neal Schon and KISS are among the musicians who have donated guitars to raise money for Jason Becker’s medical expenses via Reverb.com. Virtuoso musician Becker has been living with ALS for 30 years and currently is recovering from a major health scare. DragonForce guitarist Herman Li has helped to organise fundraising that saw Satriani’s Ibanez ‘Flame’ JS1000 sell for £59,058. GEORGE HARRISON ALTER EGO Beatles collaborator Klaus Voorman has cast some doubt on George Harrison’s reputation as the ‘quiet’ Beatle – at least in the early days. In an interview with Uncut, Voorman recalls meeting Harrison as a teenager in Hamburg during the autumn of 1960. “The first time I saw George he was only 17,” says Voorman. “He was different…

Artist: Kirk Fletcher Album: My Blues Pathway (Cleopatra Blues) What was your route into the blues? “My blues pathway sort of started in my father’s church even before getting into playing blues, and really being a part of the church and soulful music. It was very bluesy in a way, and that’s really the thing that has been consistent throughout my life: blues music in general and soulful music and things that are really moving. And then I got into playing blues. Along the way there were times when I doubted myself and maybe played other styles or got away from blues and everything like that. But all of those things were part of a pathway leading back to the things that I really love, which is blues and the…

’Bird’s The Word What? Gibson Murphy Lab ’63 Firebird V, Antique Frost Blue, Heavy Aged Where seen? www.richtonemusic.co.uk Price? £7,499 If you read this column regularly you’ll know I don’t usually choose pricey gear. But checking out the Murphy Lab range I saw this fabulous-looking thing. In gorgeous ‘heavy aged’Antique Frost Blue it’s instant Johnny Winter (whether he ever played this colour or not). With all-mahogany, through-neck construction it features Alnico 5 Firebird mini-humbuckers, long Maestro Vibrola tailpiece, tune-o-matic bridge, and banjo tuners on a reverse headstock. Of course, you //could buy a 2013 Mini Cooper Convertible for the same dosh (I checked), but I’ll leave that up to you.…

Late last year I was clearing my late mum’s house when I came across my first guitar. It’s a cheap Kay, which my parents bought for me secondhand for about £16 in 1976. I never really got on with it, although it inspired me to set up my first band in 1977. I didn’t know what to do with my old guitar, so I took it home and decided to test it out. The action was still poor and it was difficult to keep in tune. The pickup also had a fault, so I decided to pimp it up with a few adjustments and modifications. I searched online and bought some hardware from Northwest Guitars, including a new set of strings, Fender-style inline tuners, a Wilkinson soapbar pickup and a…

Gwenifer explains how she gets her sound When Gwenifer began lessons in alternating thumb fingerstyle with her specialist tutor, she also started to explore the riches of alternate tunings, with a few becoming integral to her sound.“My default tuning these days is probably C minor,” she tells us.“C G C G C Eb. It’s always the minor ones that I like, so I also go to G minor [D G D G Bb D] and D minor [DADFAD].Very occasionally I’ll use a major tuning if I feel like it, but most of the time I’m in minor.They’re spooky.They just have that sound, that sympathetic drone that comes with them and gives them a spooky vibe that I like.That with a bit of discord – can’t beat it. I’m a big…

There are 50 different guitars in the current Murphy Lab line-up based on some 20 historic Gibson models in different ageing levels and colours. Our 1959 ES-335 also comes in ultralight aged Ebony with gold-hardware (£5,699) and, to the same spec as our reviewed model, light aged in Watermelon Red (£6,599) and ultra-heavy aged in Vintage Natural (£8,199). Meanwhile, our reviewed Junior comes in an ultra-light aged format at £3,799 (there’s also a twin-pickup 1957 Les Paul Special Single Cut ultra-light at the same price). The 1959 Les Paul Standard in Murphy Lab dress starts at ultra-light aged in Factory Burst, Southern Fade Burst and Sunrise Teaburst (£6,099). The light aged level comes in Dirty Lemon Burst, Cherry Tea Burst and Royal Tea Burst (£6,999). Next up is the heavy…

PRICE: £9,199 (inc aged Lifton pink-lined case) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Single-cutaway, solid body electric BODY: Solid mahogany with flamed maple cap, hide glued NECK: Mahogany, 59 ‘medium C’ profile with long tenon and hide glue join SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”) NUT/WIDTH: Nylon, 42.85mm FINGERBOARD: Bound dark Indian rosewood, cellulose nitrate trapezoid, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium/jumbo HARDWARE: Heavy aged nickel plated ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge, lightweight aluminium stopbar tailpiece, Kluson vintage, single line, single ring deluxe tuners, authentic profile pickup covers STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm ELECTRICS: 2x Gibson Custombucker Alnico 3 pickups, 2x volumes, 2x tones, 3-way pickup selector; CTS 500k pots with paper-in-oil capacitors WEIGHT (kg/lb): 5.55/7.82 RANGE OPTIONS: See Murphy Options box LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISH: Lemon Burst (as reviewed). Various colours available (see Murphy Options) – ultra-heavy aged…

With similar functions for capturing sounds, the Kemper Profiler Stage (£1,401) combines the Kemper Profiler digital guitar amplifier with the Profiler Remote foot controller. Line 6 modelling and effects floorboards are massively popular choices. There’s the large Helix Floor (£1,230 street price) and the Helix LT (£799 street price), but the HX Stomp XL (£599 street price) offers great foot-switching ability in a smaller package. Fractal Audio’s Axe-Fx III is arguably the king of the hardware processors, but the company’s FM3 floorboard (€1,299) is the unit most equivalent to the Quad Cortex, but only has three footswitches.…

In 1998, Scott McKeon was the winner of Guitarist’s Young Guitarist Of The Year competition. In 2021, he’s back in our pages as the signatory for the SM Fuzz, although he could just as easily be here for his session work (studio and live) or his solo career. Not exactly a new pedal, the SM Fuzz first saw the light of day in 2011 and has been used by the likes of Doyle Bramhall II, Gary Clark Jr, Robbie McIntosh and James Bay, but it’s been out of production for some time. However, it’s now back and available in a new batch. The pedal sets out to deliver the sort of vintage fuzz tone found in pedals from the 1960s, and key to that aim is the use of germanium…

If, like me, you tend to scroll through random gear groups and forums during your downtime, you’ve probably encountered a question such as: should I get delay pedal X or delay pedal Y? And as you sift through the replies you’ve probably also encountered one or several witty meme-lords answering, ‘Why not both?’ followed by a clever gif or a slew of pretending-to-roll-onuncomfortable-imaginary-floor-whilechuckling-on-the-inside acronyms… While these kinds of replies rarely contribute any real constructive feedback or useful insight, the idea of owning two pedals of the same type is actually one of creative value, as it lets you toggle between two different shades of the same effect, as well as achieve a third and completely new texture when you combine them. Most of us have messed around with stacking overdrives…

“The last stage rig I used was two of my signature Charvel guitars: an ash-bodied one tuned down to D and a basswood one with a maple top not tuned down to D. That would run through a Fractal FX8, and then I do the four-cable method thing with that. “The amp of choice would be a Victory V30 MkII. The core of my live rig with The Aristocrats is there’s a volume pedal in there all the time just before the input of the amp – and it doubles as a bit of a noise gate and it also enables me to approximate messing about with the volume knob on the guitar but without my picking hand ever leaving the string. There’s a wah always in the chain and…

Fresh from the shock of the new in the form of Rabea Massaad’s excellent Bare Knuckle Silo humbuckers that we checked out in last issue’s Mod Squad, it’s time to consider the opposite strand of the signature pickup world, and so we’re looking backwards! “Visually, this signature set aims to be exact replicas of Bernie’s pickups” For every top-level player who’s deserving of their own signature pickup (tweaked for their signature guitar perhaps), there seems to be an increasing number of signature pickups that aren’t improved or enhanced, they’re simply recreations of the artist’s pickups in one of their significant guitars, presumably with the warts ’n’ all of time and heavy use. Few pickup makers, however, base their entire range on such historic signature designs. But one exception here in…

1. SERIAL NUMBER 89479; stamped on neckplate 2. HEADSTOCK Stauffer/Bigsby-style profile; decals read ‘Fender Stratocaster with Synchronized Tremolo’ and ‘Original Contour Body’; three patent numbers; nitrocellulose clearcoat 3. BODY Alder; double-cutaway; rounded edges; forearm and belly contours; Fiesta Red nitrocellulose finish 4. PICKUPS Three height-adjustable single-coil ‘floating’ pickups; master volume pot; neck pickup tone pot; middle pickup tone pot; one tone capacitor; three-way selector switch; front-loading jack socket 5. HARDWARE Six nickel-plated ‘single-line’ Kluson Deluxe tuners; ‘butterfly’ metal string tree; Synchronized Tremolo vibrato system with six fully adjustable saddles; two metal strap buttons; chrome-plated: jack plate, neckplate, detachable vibrato arm and ‘ash tray’ bridge cover 6. PLASTICS Three-layer (w/b/w) ‘mint green’ cellulose nitrate pickguard with 11 screw holes; three white pickup covers with rubber spacers; three white control knobs (one…

Having koa back and sides on your handmade Lowden would have previously meant a price upscale, but now this exotic timber has made it into the catalogue as a standard across the company’s F, S and O body sizes. If you’re at all unfamiliar with koa, we’ll spend a few moments considering the role it plays in the game of providing an acoustic guitar with its singular tone. George Lowden himself says of the wood: “Koa is a comparatively lighter tonewood, which means if you like to play gently, it’s an excellent choice. It gives you the ability to express yourself and have lots of different nuances of tone. Just touch the guitar and it will respond.” Conventional wisdom adds that it’s a tropical hardwood, found in Hawaii, and that…

PRICE: £1,059 ORIGIN: Mexico TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric guitar BODY: Mahogany NECK: Slab-sawn caramelised maple, graphite reinforcement and Luminlay side dots, bolt-on SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”) NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Tusq XL/ 43.3mm FINGERBOARD: Caramelised maple with rolled edges and small dot inlays, 305-406mm (12-16”) radius FRETS: 24, jumbo HARDWARE: Recessed Gotoh Custom 510 6-saddle floating bridge with screw-in arm, Charvel diecast locking tuners – gold-plated STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 53mm ELECTRICS: Seymour Duncan Full Shred SH-10B humbucker (bridge), Custom Flat Strat SSL-6 single coil (middle), Custom Alnico II Pro APH-1N humbucker (neck), master volume, No-Load master tone, 5-way pickup selector lever switch WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.31/7.3 RANGE OPTIONS: In Mystic Blue at the same price; made-in-Japan MJ DK24 HSH 2PT E Mahogany is £2,039 LEFT HANDERS: No FINISH: Natural satin to body;…

“I shall apologise in advance for demonstrating galactic levels of hypocrisy in future columns by regaling you with tales of gear purchases” In order to minimise on porterage/cartage costs recently, I’ve been leaving different setups at a couple of different studios and venues. But, ironically, that’s meant I’ve been on a bit of a gear-buying spree. However, there’s a nagging voice in my head, which is kind of an echo of my long-suffering wife: do I really need all these guitars? I think I could have survived almost my entire career with essentially three guitars, a Fender Princeton, one or two decent drive pedals and a Line 6 HX Effects just in case. Over the years, I’ve spent tens of thousands of pounds on amp heads with switching systems, a…

“The ‘perfect’ guitar keeps bracing lightweight and in all the right places, but provides enough strength for longterm reliability” When I’m discussing a potential guitar commission with a client, there are so many different aspects to cover, but a handful of topics are perennial. Naturally, a lot of players are keen to talk over which timbers we might be using. The shape and outward design of the guitar is key, too. But how often do players think about what’s going on ‘under the hood’, so to speak? I have been working on a pair of guitar soundboards for clients, and (perhaps dauntingly) one of them has requested that I experiment a little bit, so this week I have been turning my attention to bracing patterns. Soundboard bracing is the name…

Certain chords can really evoke moods beyond the major equals happy, minor equals sad premise. If you’ve ever played or heard the Lydian mode, you’ll know the fundamental difference that raising the fourth degree of the regular major scale by a semitone can make. By combining this into a chord, we can alter it in a similar way. This sort of harmony is often featured in film soundtracks and you will also hear it prominently in The Simpsons theme tune! You may ask, how is this different from a b5? It’s all about the context. Though a D# and Eb are the same note enharmonically speaking, the b5 is more traditionally associated with the blues (where it often coexists with the unaltered 4th), plus heavy metal, half diminished or diminished…

Want to see something in the mag? Tell us at guitarist@futurenet.com Reader Dave Leask would like to see the variety of takes on the Tele For reasons beyond my control I’ve managed to slip behind in reading my favourite mag, so I’ve just read the 75th Anniversary Telecaster article in issue 471. The opening few sentences brought me to the realisation that the Telecaster really is the Land Rover of electric guitars. I recently joined a Facebook group for amateur guitar builders and found that the Tele is the most popular choice for builders. When you think of all the different models, configurations and special editions that Fender alone has released, I think this would make a great feature as part of the Tele’s 75th year celebrations. It would be…

Ida Mae are currently on home turf having relocated from the US back to Blighty. But slide guitar phenomenon Chris Turpin and multi-instrumentalist Stephanie Jean stand poised to hit the road again. The duo had chalked up thousands of miles on tour supporting the likes of Willie Nelson & Alison Krauss, Greta Van Fleet and Marcus King, but the pandemic suddenly forced them to isolate at their Nashville home-from-home where they immediately set about writing and recording Ida Mae’s new album, Click Click Domino. “Everything except the acoustic drums, bass and strings was recorded at our place in Nashville,” Chris tells us. “Ethan Johns tracked the drums in his studio, and our bass player, Nick Pini, also tracked his parts separately. It’s a proper lockdown record!” Ida Mae’s connection with…

PRICE: £5,099 (inc Lifton pink-lined case) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Double-cutaway, semisolid electric BODY: Laminated maple/poplar/ maple with f-holes and solid maple centre block NECK: Mahogany, 59 ‘medium C’ profile with hide glue join SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”) NUT/WIDTH: Nylon/42.85mm FINGERBOARD: Bound dark Indian rosewood, pearloid dot markers, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium/jumbo HARDWARE: Nickel-plated ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge, lightweight aluminium stopbar tailpiece, Kluson vintage, single line, single ring deluxe tuners STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm ELECTRICS: 2x Gibson Custombucker Alnico 3 pickups, 2x volumes, 2x tones, 3-way pickup selector; CTS 500k pots with paper-in-oil capacitors WEIGHT (kg/lb): 5.55/7.82 RANGE OPTIONS: See Murphy Options box LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISH: Ebony (as reviewed). Vintage Natural and Watermelon Red are also available (see Murphy Options) – ultra-light aged nitrocellulose PROS It’s a fabulous example of…

Most of us have limited access to real vintage pieces, especially models that haven’t been molested. It can be the same for many guitar makers who may base their ’59-alike builds on far-from-vintage instruments, or even use books such as The Beauty Of The ’Burst (Yasuhiko Iwanade) as their guide. When it comes to ageing and relicing, it can be just as difficult: not every artisan working in this area has a real piece to study before they create their ageing. Evaluating authentic ageing, then, can be just as difficult. The finish of our Murphy Aged ’57 Junior illustrates a problem: there’s not one definitive colour The TV Yellow finish of our Murphy Aged ’57 Junior illustrates another typical problem: there’s not one definitive colour. Some are more sand-like, mustard…

NEURAL DSP QUAD CORTEX £1,449 CONTACT Neural DSP WEB www.neuraldsp.com Digital signal processing (DSP) in a hardware unit (providing a whole modelled signal chain of amp and cab simulation plus effects) is becoming increasingly popular, with many players opting for the likes of the Line 6 Helix or similar over a conventional amp-plus-pedals rig. New to the genre – and the subject of much buzz since its reveal at the 2020 NAMM Show – is the Quad Cortex, which manufacturer Neural is promoting as “the most powerful floor modeller on the planet”. Not only does the unit possess enormous processing capacity with 2GHz of dedicated DSP from its Quad-Core SHARC architecture, but it also has touchscreen capability implemented to a degree that we have never seen before in a guitar…

ANALOG MAN Sun Face from $195 (plus import taxes) Analog Man has been producing its boutique take on the Fuzz Face for quite some time and offers a range of different options when ordering – particularly in specifying which germanium transistors the unit uses. D*A*M 1965 Tone Distorter £384 D*A*M is a go-to name in homegrown boutique vintage fuzz pedals and currently makes Macari’s range of Tone Benders. This one, however, is one of the few pedals currently available direct from the company and is essentially a MK1 Tone Bender. KING TONE Guitar miniFUZZ-Ge £259 Built with carefully selected germanium transistors, this pedal offers control over bias, a three-way tone toggle switch, and switchable power filtering when using a nine-volt DC adapter to make the DC sound…

Fender American Acoustasonic Jazzmaster with Dave Burrluck Writer DAVE BURRLUCK Guitarist, Gear Reviews Editor Following our review in issue 472, we continue our look at one of the most inspiring and divisive guitars of this year. Will our love affair continue? Now, where were we? Ah, yes, recording. Thanks to our production deadlines, I was halfway through working on a demo track and our art editor – he who must be obeyed – recalled this Acoustasonic Jazzmaster back to our photo studio. Pronto. Then there were video demos to be done. While that’s the same in every issue, it left me with a half-finished acoustic bed and some rather rattled band members. As many of us have found over these past months, recording ain’t what it used to be. Back…

“When you’re looking at choosing a speaker, the first spec you need to consider is impedance,” says John. “Every amplifier has an output impedance, and the idea is to match that with the speaker(s). Power rating is the other important thing to be aware of. You need a power rating that is equal to or greater than the max output of the amplifier. In essence, changing a speaker is quite simple; in most cases it’s a straightforward thing to do. Some amps are trickier than others, but it’s normally a 10-minute job for an experienced tech. “There is a big movement towards mixing speakers. If, for example, you have a 2x12 unit, you can pick and choose some interesting sounds. It is a nice thing to experiment with and can…

By the beginning of the 1960s, the Stratocaster had already experienced its most significant changes. In 1959, rosewood fretboards with ‘clay’ dot markers superseded the guitar’s initial fretted maple-neck design, and an 11-hole, three-layer ‘mint green’ nitrate pickguard replaced the original eight-hole, single-layer white plastic ’guard. The first rosewood fretboards had a flat base and are thus referred to as ‘slab’ fretboards. Slab ’boards can be easily identified at either end of the neck, exhibiting a downwards curve at the headstock. In August 1962, Fender began using a curved-base veneer rosewood fretboard, which became thinner the following year. Contrary to slab ’boards, veneer ’boards display an upwards curve at the headstock end. By 1960, Fender had addressed the issue of fading that occurred with the red aniline layer of its…

“My first Fender guitar was a Jaguar. When I was a child, I used to check the local buy-and-sell newspaper every day and one day, among a garage sale, I saw the words ‘Gibson guitar’. That’s all it said. I was nine years old, so I asked my dad to drive me over there with my $40, which I had made delivering newspapers. It was an ES-125TC. They wanted $100 for it and my father broke these people’s chops relentlessly until I got it for $40. I was so excited. You know, a Gibson guitar! “Anyway, after having that guitar for about a year, I decided I wanted to sell it because I wanted to save some money for a Stratocaster. So, with my parents’ help, I put an ad…

SANTO & JOHNNY VOLUME SECONDO The first and most well-known track, Sleepwalk, was something of an influence on the demo solo (be sure to check out Jeff Beck’s cover of this, too). Though the melodies are played on lap steel and are ostensibly simple, keep an ear open for how they negotiate potentially tricky changes, such as those between major and minor tonalities. This also features on September Song and Venus, which moves through quite a few changes. THE SHADOWS 50 GOLDEN GREATS The way Hank Marvin delivers a melody is always worth a careful listen no matter what he’s playing – but most relevant for the way the melodies frame the chord changes underneath are the following tracks: Man Of Mystery with its descending chord sequence; Midnight, which has…

PRICE: £3,750 (inc case) ORIGIN: Northern Ireland TYPE: Lowden F Style (medium jumbo) TOP: Sitka spruce BACK/SIDES: Koa MAX RIM DEPTH: 120mm MAX BODY WIDTH: 406mm NECK: 5-piece mahogany/rosewood SCALE LENGTH: 650mm (25.6”) TUNERS: Gotoh SG381 with ebony buttons NUT/WIDTH: Bone/45mm FINGERBOARD: Ebony FRETS: 20 BRIDGE/SPACING: Rosewood/55mm WEIGHT (kg/lb): 1.93/4.25 OPTIONS: 12-string, cutaway (on all models except 12-string), fan fret, special neck width, shallow profile neck, LR Baggs Anthem or Highlander iP-1/iP-2 pickups. See website for details RANGE OPTIONS: Koa/Sitka spruce combo also available on Lowden’s S and O body shapes at same price LEFT-HANDERS: Yes, no additional cost FINISH: Hand-rubbed satin Lowden Guitars 02844 619161 www.lowdenguitars.com PROS Expertly built; gentle, sweet tonality with a very promising future CONS Koa might be untested sonic waters for some…

Is it just us or are Charvel guitars becoming rather classy? This Pro-Mod was launched at the start of this year and certainly caught our eye. It continues the theme of an instrument with progressive but pared-back and simplified style – a real rock staple without the ubiquitous double-locking Floyd Rose vibrato. Even the gold-plated hardware looks right against the light red-brown colour of the natural finished mahogany body and that ‘caramelised’ maple neck. In the flesh, we’re just as impressed. It’s a classy piece. The roots of Charvel – as a hot-rod ‘Strat’ maker – remain very evident here. The slightly smaller ‘Dinky’ body shape, with its deeper cutaways, looks classic enough viewed face-on, but flip the guitar over and additional shaping is everywhere. There’s the curved and domed…

Dim Gray Flown Grim Day Records  8/10 Haunting post-prog from Norway Oslo-based trio Dim Gray’s debut album grabs you from the first track. Originally a digital-only affair, the album is now receiving a well-deserved release on both vinyl and CD. The three-piece comprises Håkon Høiberg on guitars and vocals, Oskar Holldorff on keyboards and vocals and Tom Ian Klungland on drums and vocals – but there’s no power-trio posturing here because the band’s sound is augmented by strings and a variety of sundry instrumentation. In keeping with the group’s prog credentials, Flown is a concept album and it’s possible to hear references to Steven Wilson’s Porcupine Tree with smatterings of Sigur Rós and even Fleet Foxes. It’s an intriguing blend of well-written and superbly performed material that stays with you.…

“It had been ages since I’d sat in front of a trouser-flappingly loud setup, and I have to say it was an exhilarating experience” Last week (as I write this) I spent a really interesting and enjoyable day over at the That Pedal Show headquarters in Somerset. As I had just reviewed the Murphy Lab Les Paul and ES-335 in this issue, Dave Mead suggested it would be a great idea to see how they sounded when played in anger. And why not try them alongside my own Tom Murphy Les Paul (which Mick Taylor of That Pedal Show has had for the past year), and Mick’s blonde ’58 Custom Shop 335? I cleared it with Jamie and Mick rang me the day before the shoot to discuss what amp…

“Jimi and I were both into science fiction, so we were interested in painting a sonic picture that would make your mind travel” There’s a thriving market for gear that emulates the tones of famous guitarists – and few players’ tones have been so widely emulated as that of Jimi Hendrix. Roger Mayer knows a bit more than the average pedal-maker about that subject, however. As a young electronics engineer with an interest in music, Roger struck up a friendship with Hendrix shortly after Jimi arrived in the UK in late 1966. This relationship saw Roger become Jimi’s technical adviser on guitar tone and the nascent world of effects pedals. “I met Jimi a few days after my 21st birthday in January 1967,” Roger recalls. “I spoke to him straight…

Gwenifer Raymond’s rich, powerful solo acoustic instrumental music first took flight with her debut album, You Never Were Much Of A Dancer. A 13-song flurry of acoustic guitar and banjo compositions – very much in the vein of the big hitters of American primitive, John Fahey and Jack Rose – the set was a riveting demonstration of her often-blistering playing. For Gwenifer’s second release, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, she has composed music that feels more personal and confident. Longer pieces unfold in complex forms and worry less about typical structure. “The first album was the result of spending years playing in [American primitive] style and gathering songs,” she says. “Some of the riffs went back to when I was learning. With the second album, I’d been playing this music…

“It’s obviously been extremely hard to release and promote an album essentially into a vacuum,” Steven Wilson says at the start of our Zoom interview. “There’s no touring. There’s no record store appearances. There’s no TV I can do. I can’t travel to Europe and do the press and TV I would normally have done. So I basically sat at home talking to people on Zoom like I am now, which is pretty much all I can do…” The irony is that Steven’s latest album, The Future Bites, paints the picture of a society dominated and shaped by its online activity. This is a future that can’t be too far off as more and more we live, shop, listen to music and generally amuse ourselves through the weird wide web,…

PRICE: £5,499 (inc Lifton pink-lined case) ORIGIN: USA TYPE: Single-cutaway, single pickup solidbody BODY: 1 mahogany NECK: 1 mahogany,‘Chunky C’ profile, glued-in SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”) NUT/WIDTH: Nylon/42.85mm FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, pearloid dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius FRETS: 22, medium HARDWARE: Wrapover bridge/ tailpiece Kluson strip tuners with white buttons – Murphy Lab heavy aged nickel STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 50mm ELECTRICS: Custom Dogear P-90, volume and tone controls. CTS 500k pots with paper-in-oil capacitors WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.42/7.5 RANGE OPTIONS: See Murphy Options box. The standard Custom Shop non-aged 1957 Les Paul Junior Single Cut Reissue VOS (in TV Yellow or Vintage Sunburst) costs £3,299 LEFT-HANDERS: No FINISH: TV Yellow (as reviewed) – heavy aged nitro-cellulose PROS Believable finish; great weight; big neck; playability; sound is close to the real thing CONS…

“The nitro is a big plus in how the guitars are going to age over time, which I think will be very gracefully” As far as its instruments go, Gibson is enjoying a renaissance. The new leadership team hit the ground running with the initial reorganisation and focus of its mainstream USA Production line into Original and Modern Collections devoid of the annual specification changes that confused and annoyed us in equal measure. The smaller output, higher dollar Custom Shop has seen similar focus, which, as of the start of this year, now has this new vintage-aimed strand, the Murphy Lab, named after Tom Murphy who instigated its creation back in 2019. “Tom Murphy came to me with a guitar case – which he’d aged, by the way, so it…

1 Neural? Never heard of them… Neural is a Finnish company, known for its software plug-ins. The brand’s mission is to design the next generation of both audio software and hardware products. 2 So, it’s a bit high-tech? Well, any digital modeller could be defined as such, but this particular one leans towards a more modern approach with a sophisticated touchscreen, Wi-Fi connection and a massive amount of digital signal processing (DSP). 3 Plenty of footswitches but only one knob. How does that work? The huge volume knob is right where you need it, while the touchscreen takes care of a lot of what knobs, switches and buttons normally do. But there are actually knobs – they’re just cleverly implemented as the cap on each of the footswitches!…

What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money? “I’m going to have to say an Ibanez JEM, I think. I had the precursor to that in the form of an Ibanez RG550, which was none more black, but I don’t know if that quite qualifies as my first serious guitar because I bought it wishing it were a JEM. So when I actually got a JEM, that felt like a momentous occasion… for about a year and then I thought,‘I’m going to have to sell this because it looks like somebody else’s guitar.’ I sold that guitar not long after acquiring it in the hope of shedding any unnecessary Steve Vai connotation and ended up buying a more grown-up looking Paul Reed Smith.” What was…

“The book is a document of the hand-builder, the craftsperson that Melvyn was” If you were thinking about making an electric guitar back in the late 80s, you probably know of Melvyn Hiscock’s authoritative tome. Originally published in 1986, Make Your Own Electric Guitar has been referenced as an influence by plenty of guitar makers, from Saul Koll to Ola Strandberg. Back then, in pre-internet times, there really wasn’t very much else to browse and Melvyn’s book seemed very contemporary. Donald Brosnac’s books of the late 70s were the best resource we’d had, but they seemed rather, well, American and out of touch by the time Melvyn’s book hit the shelves. The original 160-page edition now seems more like a notebook in comparison to 2021’s third volume, in larger format,…

1960 5-digit serial numbers; black-bottom pickups; formvar coil wire; ‘spaghetti’ logo 1961 Headstock patent numbers; thicker C-profile neck 1962 Brazilian rosewood veneer fretboard; L-prefixed serial number (late ’62) 1963 Thinner fretboard veneer; pickguard screw adjacent to middle pickup 1964 Grey-bottom pickups; enamel coil wire; ‘transition’ logo (gold/black outline); pearloid dots 1965 New pickguard plastic; ‘F’-stamped neckplate, 6-digit serial number & flared headstock (late ’65) 1966 ‘F’ logo tuners (most still with ‘double-line’ Kluson Deluxe brand); Indian rosewood fretboard 1967 Optional maple fretboard advertised; CBS logo (black/gold outline); large model name decal 1968 Polyester finishes 1969 9 remaining custom colour options (including Blond)…

Dangerous Waters Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs Choptank & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty  | 10 mins per example PETER GREEN once compared improvising to crossing a river, with the ‘right’ notes being like stepping stones and the wrong ones… well, you’d need a change of clothes! Improvising over anything that departs from the ‘standard’ I-IV-V 12-bar progression requires us to keep an ear out for chords, which may mean venturing away from our safe ‘stepping stones’. For this solo, I’m referring to the C minor pentatonic/blues scale. To do this, we need to look at the content of the chords we’re playing over. Take this in small sections at a time. The first section moves through Cmajor/Abmaj7/Fadd9. Though it may sound a drearily methodical task, check each chord…

Demystifying The Modes Part 7: The G# Locrian Mode Tutor: Robbie Calvo | Gear used: Yamaha Revstar 502TFM & Line 6 Helix Floor Difficulty  | 15 mins per example THE LOCRIAN MODE is the seventh mode of the major scale and creates a really dark, dissonant sound – perfect for movie soundtracks or haunting pop melodies. The A major scale contains these seven notes: A B C# D E F# G# A The G# Locrian mode contains the same seven tones as the A major scale but starts and resolves on the seventh degree, G#: G# A B C# D E F# G# Note that paying the A major scale from the seventh degree produces the G# Locrian mode. Think of the Locrian mode as a natural minor scale with…