Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Guitarist

Reading this month’s cover feature on the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s landmark recording The Dark Side Of The Moon, I’m struck by both its roots as a live performance and its extended evolution as one. For if albums are the crystallisation of music into a polished, durable form, then stage performance is music at its most vividly, transiently alive. In many cases, the best gigs are like unrepeatable miracles: the crowd, the players, the spirit of the time and place itself – all coming together to deliver something you really had to be there to fully appreciate. Rory Gallagher’s Christmas shows in Belfast at the height of the Troubles fall into such a category, so, too, do legendary gigs such as Hendrix at Woodstock. In an era when so…

Stepping outside of the mainstream isn’t for everyone, but if you fancy something a little different then the UK has a host of guitar makers ready to turn your dreams into a special instrument. At the end of 2022 we were chatting to Maybury Guitars’ Jason Snelling about this custom world and suggested he build us a guitar. We soon had a basic spec in place, more of a quasi-custom instrument, to show off his wares. Jason draws from three basic designs and we were attracted to his Cholla model. You could have fun spotting the influences and references here. The outline looks a little like an offset Telecaster with a thinner upper horn, but then you could suggest it’s quite a nod in the direction of the EVH’s Wolfang.…

Eric Bibb Ridin’ Report Records (available now) 9/10 A strong narrative for Grammy-nominated bluesman’s masterful release Eric Bibb often deals with social commentary and his new album, Ridin’, is a case in point. He draws inspiration from an old oil painting by artist Eastman Johnson called ‘A Ride For Liberty’ (1862) that depicts an African American family fleeing enslavement during the American Civil War. “Johnson’s painting embodies all the hope, determination and courage that is at the core of the African American experience and needed now throughout the world,” Eric tells us, emphasising the core message that runs throughout the album. With rich and poignant storytelling, Eric is a masterful lyricist who makes the blues sound fresh and vibrant. With 15 tracks on offer and a colourful array of guest…

CONFESSIONS OF A LUTHIER One of the highlights in my lutherie calendar is the annual group guitar-making course that I run at my workshop. With a healthy mixture of excitement and trepidation I look forward to this three-week extravaganza of woodworking that sees a handful of students and I attempt to hew, glue and shape a modest pile of rough sawn timber into an ensemble of finely crafted guitars. Day one has seen us take a deep dive into that most recondite realm of guitar making: side bending. The notion of the craftsperson gently persuading a straight plank of wood to take on the shape of a guitar with little more than heat, water and persistence stirs up quite the romantic image of the guitar maker at work. Witnessing the…

STAR LETTER WIDE WORLD I buy Guitarist almost every month and I cannot praise it enough. I’ve been playing guitar for 44 years, mostly professionally, and I always find the magazine to be an incredible wealth of knowledge. The Jeff Beck issue was a welcome and comprehensive compendium of his career yet I would love to have seen an in-depth analysis of his guitar setup, especially the setup on his legendary floating bridge. There are so many aspects of it that have not been covered – it could be a very important tile in the mosaic of the tributes paid to this most important of guitarists. Also, I would have liked to have seen more about his love for Arabic music. He stated in many interviews that the oud (the…

HISTORIC HARDWARE If you happened to be watching The Stranglers performing Golden Brown on BBC’s Top Of The Pops in the early 1980s, you may have found yourself wondering about the strange-looking guitar that singer Hugh Cornwell was holding. None more black in colour, of course, but with a strange blade-like body shape with a Fender-ish headstock, it wasn’t immediately unidentifiable from any sources we have to hand. But when we ran into Hugh last year, we were able to ascertain that the guitar was a Höfner and so we contacted Steve Russell, a Höfner historian, who identified the guitar as an S7L, a highly unusual model that was only available between 1978 and 1984. It was known as the ‘Razorwood’ because of its body shape and featured an interesting…

Back in April 2022, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released Unlimited Love, their 12th studio effort and, more significantly, their first with John Frusciante, arguably their most fan-beloved guitarist, in more than 15 years. Given that, this time, the Chili Peppers entered the studio with a clutch of ideas and came out with not one but two new albums – and double albums at that, including the 17-track follow-up, Return Of The Dream Canteen – it can be surmised that Frusciante’s return has borne plenty of fresh creative fruit. As the band has headed out on the road to play the new music and the classics on stage, that renewal has only continued. Helping to fuel that renewal is, as always, John’s eclectic and characterful collection of vintage guitars –…

PRS SE STARLA STOPTAIL £710 The third most affordable PRS after the SE Standard (£645) and Standard 24-08 (£675), the Starla started life in the USA Core range then moved to the S2 and finally the SE line. That might seem a demotion, but this SE version is lightweight and ripe for modding. We put one through The Mod Squad back in issues 457 and 458, added SE locking tuners and pukka USA 58/18 ’buckers. PRS SE ZACH MYERS £979 In anyone’s book this is an underground success. You might not be familiar with Zach’s music, but this long-running semi-hollow Singlecut covers a huge amount of ground and this year is updated with the 594 scale length. It also features the USA-spec adjustable Stoptail bridge, 245 ‘S’ humbuckers (with coil-splits)…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “One of my earliest ones was an Aria Pro II with a Floyd Rose, which played beautifully but didn’t fit my aesthetic as a player – not that I didn’t love guys like Vai and Satriani. But I did something terrible. I was in a jazz band in high school and they had an American Strat. It was from a weird year: an ’86 or something, when Strats had two knobs instead of three. And I actually stole it from the school. I could not part with it. I just kinda slipped out the back door, like, ‘I’m just gonna hang onto this guitar forever…’” What was the last guitar you bought and why? “I just bought two…

Most of us are aware of harmonic nodes. You get the strongest one at the 12th fret, which is exactly halfway along the string length. There’s one at the 5th, which is a quarter length and another at the 7th. If you place your finger lightly on a string at the 5th and slowly move your finger towards the nut while picking, you hear a bunch more harmonics of varying intensity. A low E string resonates at 82Hz in standard tuning, and that’s the fundamental frequency. The sound we actually hear is a combination of the fundamental frequency, which gives the pitch of the note, combined with all those upper harmonics that provide the timbre or tonal characteristics. The fundamental frequency is always the loudest, and the harmonic overtones get…

“You’ll notice this guitar has, most unusually, a side jack [as opposed to a front-mounted jack] and it’s thinner than a regular 335. It’s 1/8-inch thinner than the standard depth [of 1 ¾ inches]. It’s also got a crazy figured Brazilian rosewood fretboard. I’ve never seen such figuring on a ’board. It’s got a black streak that runs down the treble side. It starts off on the 6th fret and continues getting wider towards the bass side. “The ledger says that it was made specially for Mel Bay and was shipped to Mel Bay Music in Kirkwood, Missouri. At the same time, he ordered an EB-2 bass, also with a side jack. I don’t have that bass, unfortunately, but Mel ordered them together, which is pretty cool. The EB-2 is…

FIRST PLAYCRAZY TUBE CIRCUITS UNOBTANIUM Among all the rare gear that goes for silly money and deserves the ‘unobtanium’ moniker, an original Klon Centaur and a Dumble amp are prime contenders. So how about a dual-footswitch drive pedal (for under 300 quid) that aims to deliver the tonal essence of both? On the left side you get the D-style sounds, and on the right there’s the K-type. Normal signal flow is the K feeding the D, but there’s a send and return loop for routing flexibility, inserting other pedals between the two, or having them as independent effects via a switcher. The K-type side is said to be an accurate recreation of the original circuit with the same germanium diodes, but you do get a couple of toggle-switched variations: a…

Marshall Pedal Reissues £179 each CONTACT Marshall Amplification PHONE 01908 375411 WEB www.marshall.com JARGON CRUNCHING Effects Loop The Guv’nor is home to an effects loop on the back via a single socket, which is engaged whenever the pedal isn’t bypassed. Rather than modify the pedal, however, Marshall has kept the same dual-purpose send/return jack, so you’ll need to use an insert cable (remember those?) to give you send and return sockets. I remember these from my youth! Behold. After a year-long speculation, Marshall has confirmed that the rumours are true with the reissue of its four 80s and 90s pedals, some of which have become sought after at a highly inflated price. If you don’t recognise them, meet the Bluesbreaker, Shredmaster, Drivemaster and Guv’nor. Why are these releases so significant?…

Artist: Eric Bibb Album: Ridin’ (Repute Records) Eric Bibb has long been one of the most powerful, soulful storytellers in music. But with his new album, Ridin’, he may have made his masterwork. Tracing the difficult paths African-Americans took to escape slavery in the 19th century, the musical canvas he paints on proves large enough to examine what it means to seek freedom, security and dignity in the present day, too. We join Eric to learn more about his captivating songcraft and the strangely beguiling voice of the six-string banjo. The album initially took its inspiration from a painting, didn’t it? “Yes, I don’t remember exactly where I first came across it… but Eastman Johnson was a painter who was successful and prolific during his career. But he painted this…

RAISING THE TONE While we were putting together issue 492’s tribute to 70 years of the Les Paul, I asked Gibson’s senior director of product development, Mat Koehler, what his favourite pickups for Les Pauls were. While acknowledging the allure of the fabled PAF, he named the humble mini-humbucker as his favourite, under-rated tonemaker. “It’s just a very specific sweet tone that I really enjoy,” he mused. “And a lot of the great recordings of the 70s and beyond were done on mini-humbuckers – and you just don’t realise it.” Not to be confused with the similar-looking Firebird pickup, which was constructed by winding coils round two bar magnets mounted edgewise on a baseplate, the minihumbucker, as its name suggests, was somewhat truer to the concept of a downsized standard…

In the latter days of his career, the thunderous response that met Gary Rossington at Lynyrd Skynyrd shows went far deeper than an appreciation for his fiery Les Paul licks. For those who had followed the Southern rockers from their inception in 1964, the modest man half-hidden beneath the brim of a cowboy hat was a talisman, representing the last link to the classic Skynyrd line-up who had perished in a horror plane crash at the peak of their powers. From that dark day in 1977 until his death on 5 March, Rossington never forgot he was carrying the flag for his fallen comrades. “We just want to spread the word of Skynyrd and the guys who are not with us any longer,” Rossington told Guitarist in 2012. “I think…

STRYMON CLOUDBURST AMBIENT REVERB £279 CONTACT Musicpsych PHONE 0207 607 6005 WEB www.strymon.net What You Need To Know 1 That’s bit small for a Strymon pedal, isn’t it? Yes, this is the first of a new pedal platform and is definitely more pedalboard-friendly. 2 What’s the idea? Strymon wanted to come up with pedals that were smaller, simpler to operate and less expensive than its larger offerings, while still maintaining the company’s signature sound quality. 3 But it’s yet another reverb… Why not? Strymon has a great history with reverb pedals and its customers had been asking for reverb in a smaller box, too. This one has taken the Cloud algorithm from the BigSky and tweaked it to make it more usable in varied musical situations. Strymon…

Chances are you’ll have played a guitar – or even purchased one – with a Wilkinson pickup on it and, odds on, it’ll be an instrument with a pretty lowly price tag. In fact, although Trev Wilkinson has designed hardware that has, and is, used by many top pros (and we can include the late, great Jeff Beck here) via licensing deals with numerous Asian factories, affordability has been central to the brand for a few decades now. It’s often said that you can successfully go down in price point – Gibson/Epiphone, Fender/ Squier, PRS USA/PRS SE and so on – but going the other way is less common. And yet that’s exactly what Trev has done with a raft of new ‘premium’ hardware and – get to the point!…

Look at the marketing literature of most speaker cabinets and amplifiers and it will say words to the effect of “sounds twice as big as it looks”, “spreads the sound better than anything else” or “super lightweight but sounds massive”. We’re all a little guilty of this. Often it is just us designers being proud of a design we’ve worked hard on – after all, a well-designed cab can make up ground in these areas, but sometimes it’s just marketing, too. What you won’t find is the claim that a cab sounds really small, with next to no low-end and lacking in resonance. The tendency is to state how big something sounds. In practical terms, this means it’s not lacking in the lower frequencies (a frequency band that can be…

Takamine acoustics need little introduction from us as their reputation for high-quality, road-warrior six-strings is well established. After arriving on these shores in the mid-70s, the brand has gone from strength to strength, appearing on stage in the hands of numerous headlining bands, from the Eagles to Bruce Springsteen and beyond. Price wise, there is a Takamine to suit practically every budget, with models spanning the high-end Pro Series to more wallet-friendly budget instruments. They pretty much cover players’ needs in terms of body shapes, too, and a quick look at the catalogue reveals a vast array of thinlines, dreadnoughts, cutaway nylon-strings… you name it. The GD34CE BLK decodes as a G30 Series cutaway electro in black and is based on Takamine’s more upmarket model, the EF341SC as used by…

FIRST PLAYWALRUS AUDIO MELEE: WALL OF NOISE The Walrus Audio Melee: Wall Of Noise pretty much describes itself – it offers a tussle of distortion and reverb with a joystick to blend the two, complemented by a straightforward array of a volume knob and three toggle switches. The first two provide three variations on tone and reverb decay, while the third switch toggles the effect order from the conventional distortion feeding into the reverb to the more experimental option of creating a distorted reverb trail, truly conjuring up a huge wall of noise. There’s also a secondary function to add modulation (none/slight/high) to the reverb tail. You get a choice of three reverb types: a huge ambient reverb for washes of sound, a doomy octave down reverb, and a reverse…

Artist: The Blackheart Orchestra Album: Hotel Utopia (Ceander Records) The Blackheart Orchestra are Manchester-based multi-instrumental duo Chrissy Mostyn and Rick Pilkington, a band that have seen their sound expand into what they now dub as “the smallest orchestra in the world”, bringing in 13 instruments – including guitar, bass, mandola, vintage synths, omnichord, percussion and more – to flesh out a setup that started far more sparsely. “In the beginning, we were one acoustic guitar and two voices,” Chrissy tells us. “It was completely stripped back and as pure as you could get.” Natural Evolution The band, which began as simply Black Heart, have always defied pigeonholing, and perhaps even more so now. “We hope so – because everyone wants to be different and unique,” says Rick. “But nothing’s on…

NEVILLE’S ADVOCATE When I started out, my lust was for a Cherry Red Gibson ES-335, which I bagged aged just 22. My inspiration was clearly Clapton’s ‘Cream’ guitar. However, I’d bought a Fender first as the £105 I’d so far scrimped together burned a ’67 Telecaster-sized hole in my pocket. My next GAS was for a white SG Custom, thanks to Alice Cooper’s original guitarist Glen Buxton. I never got one. Then came my white ’59 Strat (inspiration: Paul Kossoff), then a black 1972 Les Paul Custom (Clapton again). And on it went. Over the years I’ve spent more time on stage with Fenders as they seem to sit in a live mix better, at least to these ears, and I’ve got so used to a Strat’s controls. However, reading…

SUBSTITUTEOpinion AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra Originally a term derived from the low notes of an organ played with a pedal, the name ‘pedal tone’ is now more commonly used to describe a static bass note played under changing chords. In fact, I’m going a bit further than that here: my example chords feature static notes at the top, too. These chords are really a series of descending intervals played in harmony on the third and fourth strings. Combined with the open fifth string (A) and the open first and second strings (B and E), the result is a shifting harmony, tied together with all those common notes. A pattern like this could be arranged for other instruments but sounds unique on the guitar due to the differing tonalities of open and fretted…

On Friday 3 March, Douglas Reynolds, longtime friend of renowned slide guitar maestro David Lindley, announced his death via the David Lindley Medical Fundraiser. The level of public support received is unsurprising considering the effect Lindley’s art had on the world. Born on 21 March 1944 in San Marino, California, his introduction to music was early, with his father John’s extensive collection of 78s directing him towards an abundance of musical styles, including Korean folk and Indian sitar music, both of which would influence his own mesmeric style of fusion; music his friend Ben Harper considered to be “straight up sorcery”. California in the early 60s was one of the most eclectic musical hubs of the world, and Lindley’s talent was such that by his late teens he was considered…

The Dark Side Of The Moon SPEAK TO ME The creeping introduction of the pounding heartbeat was lifted from the band’s contribution to the Zabriskie Point soundtrack in 1970. Fading in from a deep, resonant heartbeat, it seems to suggest a baby’s first bleary impressions of the brash, cynical world. Credited to Mason, although written by Waters, the title came from the album’s engineer Alan Parsons’ oft-repeated instruction from the studio control booth. It also featured a vari-speeded clock lifted from Time, a scream from The Great Gig In The Sky and spoken parts: “I’ve been mad for fucking years” from road manager Chris Adamson, and “I’ve always been mad” from Abbey Road Studio doorman Gerry O’Driscoll. And then… BREATHE (IN THE AIR) The languorous chord progression of Breathe (In…

BLUEPRINT: Furch Guitars VIDEO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra If you want a good example of how marketing shapes our lives, you only have to think about how readily the idea of progress is accepted by consumers, in relation to certain products. With digital cameras, for example, progress is seen not only as good but indispensable. Every year, makers such as Canon and Nikon launch new models that boast the highest-ever image quality and the most-advanced features ever brought to market. But what if we were talking about malt whisky, instead of cameras? In that context, progress feels like a dirty word. Heritage, tradition and craft are the qualities we think about as we swirl the amber liquor around in our glass. And yet, behind the scenes, technology helps improve our favourite drinks,…

As far as 12-string electric guitars go, it’s hard to beat a Rickenbacker Capri model. The Fender Electric XII is perhaps the greatest competitor in terms of playability and sound, and the Gibson EDS-1275 doubleneck also deserves an honourable mention. But with The Beatles’ George Harrison and The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn chiming away on Rickenbackers, while topping the charts on both sides of the Atlantic during the mid-60s, it’s difficult to argue that a more era-defining 12-string exists. Comprising six- and 12-string instruments, the ‘300 series’ semihollowbody Capri line is to Rickenbacker what the Les Paul is to Gibson, or the Stratocaster is to Fender. An icon of the guitar world, this timeless design continues to define the company’s identity and, along with the popular Rickenbacker bass family, is its…

VIDEO & AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra Using Chromatics Tutor Richard BarrettGear used Fender Strat, Boss Keeley SD & Vox AC15C1Difficulty | 15 mins per example THERE IS AN OLD MUSICIAN’S ADAGE that says when improvising, you’re only ever a semitone away from the ‘right note’. While this is perfectly true, it doesn’t always feel that way when we get into difficulties. At one time or another we’ve all found ourselves using a less than optimum blues scale shape or phrase over a tricky chord progression! There’s no substitute for preparation, but we can minimise such problems by getting more familiar with those ‘in-between’ notes and access more options, not just from the blues scale shapes but any favourite licks or patterns. Using the b5 or ‘blue note’ as part of the…