Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i Guitarist

Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk Reading this month’s feature on the sale of the guitar collection of the late, legendary Jeff Beck (see page 58), I’m struck by how often players who do something truly unique have to adapt guitars or even build them to suit their needs. From the mongrel ‘Yardburst’ to the continually shifting spec of his late-era white Strats, Beck was always swapping out parts, hunting for an advantage like a race-car driver. This tells us that players who operate on the edge know every way in which their guitar is delivering – or not delivering – what they need out there at the perimeter, to paraphrase The Doors. Eddie Van Halen was the same,…

While the rarefied high-end electric guitar world seems to be escalating in price at an alarming rate, there’s no shortage of lookalike styles. So if you can’t afford (or justify) that posh-looking Tom Anderson or Suhr, increasingly there are options such as this new Jet JS-45 Elite that aims to capture some of that posh vibe with a far more attainable price tag. Designed by Primoz Virant in Slovenia and made in China, Jet guitars burst onto the scene about five years back focusing on well-made yet highly affordable lookalike designs. Its models quickly became a modding favourite, too, with perfectly good chassis that can be easily upgraded. While the current Jet range kicks off with direct copies such as the JS-300 (from £189), our review sample comes from the…

Electro-Harmonix seemed to hit the ground running in 2005 when it released the first version of its Polyphonic Octave Generator, which offered several octave voices with solid tracking. Since then, there have been plenty of different POG versions and several related spin-offs including two HOG pedals and the ‘9’ series that emulate the sounds of various keyboard instruments. And now we have the ultimate expression (to date) of it in the POG3. The new pedal has a much more upmarket feel than its predecessor, sporting three footswiches and red LEDs on each slider. But it offers more than just a facelift as there’s an extra slider to add in a +5th voice, 100 onboard presets, and an enhanced effects section with individual dry effect routing and expression control over almost…

Gibson Mary Ford Les Paul Standard £2,599 CONTACT Gibson PHONE 00800 44427661 WEB www.gibson.com That’s a Les Paul… Correct – but not just any Les Paul. As the saying goes, behind every great man, there stands a great woman. What we’re looking at here is the latest Les Paul: a signature model for Iris Colleen Summers, who you might know better as Mary Ford. Mary Ford? I thought she was the voice while Les played the guitar? There’s no doubt that Mary’s voice was the focal point, and while Les was no stranger to the charts prior to the pair’s musical and romantic partnerships, Mary’s voice doubtless contributed to the success of their hugely popular How High The Moon, which spent nine weeks at the top of the Billboard chart.…

Artist: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings Album: Woodland (Acony Records) The long-awaited new album of original material from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings comes 13 years after they worked together in a co-writing capacity on The Harrow & the Harvest and four years since cover album All The Good Times (Are Past & Gone) was released in July 2020. Just a few months before that, in March 2020, the pair’s historic Nashville studio was torn apart by the devastating tornado that hit the city – and now this 10-track album, produced by Rawlings, is something of a celebration of the return to their beloved space. “That whole experience and the aftermath definitely changed things,” begins David. How does it feel to be back in the studio? Gillian Welch: “I’m just…

When guitarists discuss ‘tone’, it usually involves which electric guitars, amps, pedals and speakers might provide the ultimate sonic bang for buck. It’s also unquestionably true that the law of diminishing returns mostly applies, where you spend 100 per cent more for 10 per cent of perceptible improvement. When it comes to acoustics, the situation seems even more nuanced, although unsurprisingly the diminishing returns scenario remains. Traditionally speaking, steel-string acoustics or ‘flattops’ are built using a restricted palette of timbers. So we’re talking rosewood, mahogany or maple back and sides, usually some variant of spruce, or sometimes cedar and occasionally mahogany or koa for the top. Necks are invariably mahogany or something either related, species-wise, or similar in nature, sometimes maple, and fingerboards are commonly rosewood or ebony. However, in…

It can’t have been an easy decision. In a brief statement about the forthcoming auction of Jeff Beck’s guitars in London, his widow, Sandra Beck, wrote movingly that: “These guitars were his great love and after almost two years of his passing it’s time to part with them as Jeff wished. After some hard thinking I decided they need to be shared, played and loved again. It is a massive wrench to part with them, but I know Jeff wanted for me to share this love. He was a maestro of his trade. He never lusted after commercial success. For him, it was just about the music.” Encapsulated here, in these words of devotion, is perhaps all you need to know about Jeff Beck. Gold discs might have been welcome…

Take a walk down New York’s 8th Street in modern times and you’ll find barely a sniff of the 60s counterculture that once pulsed in this neighbourhood. There is just one last holdout against the gentrification of Greenwich Village. Blink and you’ll miss the mirrored gunmetal door. Yet beyond it lies the city’s most fabled recording studio, conceived by Jimi Hendrix in the late 60s, operational by summer 1970, and the scene of the guitarist’s final creative burst before his death that September. By now, everybody knows about Hendrix’s 1966 touchdown in London and the shifting of rock’s tectonic plates, about this Seattle-born sonic terrorist’s onstage humbling of Clapton, and the breakout Bag O’ Nails show that forced Britain’s guitar class to give up or get serious. By contrast, one…

For vintage guitar enthusiasts, a shopping trip to the US is surely a fixture on the bucket list. Nashville, LA and Chicago may seem like the obvious destinations, but don’t discount New York – you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I recently travelled there to make a record with a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter called Orly Bendavid and her band, The Mona Dahls. With the studio sessions complete, the remaining time was spent recording overdubs in Orly’s home studio in the mornings and going guitar shopping during the afternoons. Orly, who also happens to be my niece, didn’t need any persuading; she’s an accomplished guitarist and the owner of a deep cutaway-bodied 1965 ES-125. She did all the phoning ahead to make appointments and took care of the travel arrangements. Time was tight so,…

Get Rhythm Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Lewis Pequeno Bastardo & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 10 mins per example MELODY AND RHYTHM are almost inextricably linked. I say ‘almost’ because you can have melody or harmony without a distinguishable rhythm, and rhythm itself can exist with no melodic content at all. The examples here contain elements of both, but I wanted to draw a clear distinction between the two before we start. Many songs can be recognised by hearing the rhythm alone. Artists such as Bo Diddley can even make a rhythm their musical signature, while Steve Lukather has created memorable rhythmic parts that really push a song along using a single note! I’ve leaned towards a funk style for these examples – this makes it easier to…

Don Musser acoustics They are undeniably obscure, but if you ever have a chance to play one, you should take it. Are these the ‘Dumbles’ of the unplugged world? p78 Non Plus Ultra Fender has revamped its top-flight contemporary electric line – we find out if the new American Ultra II guitars are worth it on p84 Building Jimi’s dream A new docu-flick on Electric Lady Studios tells the story of how Jimi’s dream recording environment came to fruition over on p108…

From its sonic heritage to its sumptuous styling, the new Gibson Falcon promises a journey back to the 1960s. Not so much a direct replica of the original 1961 GA-19RVT Falcon, this amp is more of an ‘influenced by’, re-engineered update with a contemporary twist in the form of Multi-Watt power scaling. Technologically groundbreaking, the original Falcon was one of the first combo amps to feature both reverb and tremolo. Although comparable in size and wattage to the Fender Deluxe amp, it was produced in much smaller numbers so it is quite rare to find a surviving example in the wild today. Let’s find out if this rare bird can indeed sing! It’s certainly a beautifully finished amplifier from its cream Tolex covering to that vintage-style oxblood speaker grille, while…

Walrus Audio started up back in 2011 with its first pedal, the Voyager Overdrive, a three-knob Klon-style stompbox that found favour with the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Ed O’Brien and Nels Cline. Now, for 2025, the company has brought out an updated version that greatly expands on the original. The Voyager MKII sports the obligatory Volume, Tone and Gain knobs, but it supplements those with a rotary switch that offers a choice of five variations of the diode clipping circuitry, plus a footswitchable parametric mid-frequency EQ. While the Tone knob operates a low-pass filter to place the top-end where you need it, the midrange EQ section targets frequencies at the heart of electric guitar sound – the centre frequency can be set between 250Hz and 2kHz, and cut or boosted…

Artist: Steve Logan Album: Psych Ward (Flip Flop Records) Cardiff-based singer, songwriter and guitarist Steve Logan makes intricate music that blends folk, Americana, blues and rock, sometimes with an acoustic edge and sometimes in an all-out rock style. Psych Ward leans on a more energetic sound, particularly on songs like the terrific Jesus Is My Vaccine, inviting comparisons to bands such as the Manic Street Preachers. “I wanted to blend everything I had done before,” Steve explains. “So British blues-rock, West Coast Americana and this Welsh post-punk, indie pop-rock. I wanted to try to put all of that stuff together.” Writing Politics The album’s multiple styles come together with an emphasis on strong writing, often with a political bent, much like the Manics. “People tend to realise my favourite band…

Back in the 70s my brother found an Edwardian tortoiseshell pendant in the shape of a spade you’d find on a playing card. The hole where the chain went had broken away and it was all but useless for its original purpose, so I whittled it into the shape of a Jim Dunlop ‘Stubby’ pick… For ethical reasons, real tortoiseshell wouldn’t be allowed today, but being a natural material, it had a slight ‘rasp’ when you stroked it against the string. Needless to say, the plectrum soon became my inseparable friend. I worked at CBS Fender in Enfield at the time, and various luminaries would come down to check out instruments. Fender’s John Hill would invite artists down and I’d tweak the guitars if they needed it. We sorted out…

AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra In the previous Substitute, we looked at the difference between extended and altered chords, and I wanted to give some further examples and explanations of how altered chords work in practical terms. After all, the guitar can be a tricky instrument on which to conceptualise music theory! All but one of the examples here have been altered – namely, at least one note has been raised or lowered from where you would normally expect to find it in the ‘parent’ scale. We’ll talk about which one is the odd one out (and why) later. We can get some pretty dissonant ‘murder mystery’ type chords without having to get our fingers in a twist. However, most chords don’t present themselves to us neatly on the fretboard in linear scale…

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money? “I started out with a beginner guitar called a Teisco, and after about a year or so I got my first good guitar, which was an Ibanez PF300. I eventually traded that for a Fender Stratocaster, and soon after got a Gibson ES-335 made in 1965. My parents bought those guitars for me, though. “The first guitar I actually bought myself was a Kramer Pacer. This was when Floyd Rose bridges first came out, and the stock Pacer came with one. A little before that, players were buying Floyds and having their guitars modified, which was not an easy thing to do. When the Pacer came out with a Floyd already installed, it was a no-brainer. Besides, it…

Debuting in 1958, the 6119 Tennessean was the least fancy of the four Chet Atkins models available from Gretsch. Eschewing the Western bling of the other instruments – including the 6120 beloved of Eddie Cochran, the 6122 Country Gentleman favoured by Atkins himself, and the Les Paul-sized 6121 chambered ‘solidbody’ Round-Up – it featured just one Filter’Tron humbucker at the bridge and was played most notably by The Beatles’ George Harrison, albeit in later form. Although nominally a 406mm (16-inch) wide single-cutaway hollowbody, the Tennessean’s depth wavered during its first few years until settling on the 64mm (2.5-inch) we see today. However, the most notable change came when Gretsch added a neck pickup, significantly enhancing the guitar’s versatility. The Tennessean’s colour choice of Deep Cherry Stain or Walnut further separated…

As we reach the second quarter of this century, it seems that nothing is safe from the ‘smart’ revolution. What started with our phones and TVs has made its way through our rigs and, now, the movement that we’re calling ‘The Internet of Strings’ has reached our acoustic guitars. “About bloomin’ time!” we hear you cry. Because it’s true, no good music has been made on an unplugged steel-string. Ever. You can’t even hear it over a drummer and, frankly, we don’t know how the dreadnought ever made it this far… In case AI and interconnectivity have stifled your perception, we are, of course, being sarcastic. Plus, the ‘smartification’ of our strummers isn’t exactly new, either. Lava Music has been around since 2013, and the Lava ME Air we’re looking…

PRS Private Stock 40th Anniversary McCarty Dragon £18,995 CONTACT PRS Guitars WEB www.prsguitars.com Back in 1992, PRS Guitars was just seven years old and plenty of people thought the first Dragon guitar was the beginning of the end. For a brand in its infancy known for high-end opulent guitars, that Dragon was a ‘love it or hate it’ run of just 50 pieces aimed not for the stage but for very well-heeled collectors. In reality, that particular guitar was more the starting point: a redesign of the recipe. Up until that stage, PRS’s set-neck guitars were only available with 24 frets. The Dragon introduced a shorter (and stiffer) 22-fret Wide Fat profile neck with a longer heel and a slightly steeper headstock back-angle in an attempt to improve the sound.…

When I tell my lutherie students that building an acoustic guitar from start to finish can take around 200 hours, I’m never quite sure whether they will perceive if that’s a long time or not. Given that the raw state of my materials resembles a tree more than it does a musical instrument, and that I work almost exclusively with hand tools, perhaps you could be forgiven for thinking it is a Herculean task beyond the scope of any straight-thinking enthusiast. What I propose, however, is that one should consider the acoustic guitar to be an assemblage of many components: the neck, sides, back, top, fingerboard and hardware. Breaking down the project into smaller chunks is an obvious way to make it more digestible and organised. However, it helps to…

OFFSET UPSET? I was fascinated by Dave Burrluck’s article in your Mod Squad column in issue 518, particularly by his comment, “Does the world really need another S-style, T-type or even offset?” It struck a chord as I was in a similar mind when I set to building my recent lefty guitar for myself and striving to come up with an original design. The ‘Blue Leopard’ finish was inspired by the blue leopard/Jaguar on the rear of Free’s Tons Of Sobs, one of my fave albums. The shape, while undeniably “another offset”, is surely original in that it is kind of an extreme offset – so extreme that it falls off a normal stand and has to go on one of those stage stands where it hangs, rather than sits.…

Within guitar culture, some individuals achieve legendary status but somehow remain under the radar. Examples may include the elusive pickup maker and guitar builder ‘Over The Pond Guy’, renowned restorer Clive Brown, the late Les Paul replica builder known as Terry Morgan, and amplifier designer Howard Dumble. These aren’t the type of people who engage with social media or even have websites, and a common phrase used in relation to them is ‘if you know, you know’. Most don’t – and a low profile combined with a high reputation and a shortage of solid information tends to foment fable and intrigue. Over in the US, there’s a renowned acoustic guitar maker who fits this profile and his name is Don Musser. He doesn’t have a website and never advertises, but…

FRACTAL AUDIO VP4 £700 CONTACT G66 PHONE 07392 395520 WEB www.fractalaudio.com What You Need To Know 1 Fractal? Doesn’t it specialise in amp emulations? Well, yes, the Axe-Fx III is the company’s flagship unit, but it also has loads of effects onboard – and the VP4 provides those effects for use with your own amp. 2 What’s with the VP4 name? The VP stands for ‘virtual pedalboard’ and it has four footswitches and four simultaneous effects. Logical, huh? 3 Does it go in front of my amp? Yes, you can place it like a standard chain of pedals, but you can also connect it with the four-cable method so you can have some of its effects in front of your amp and some in its effect loop. The US brand…

Back in issue 518 I kicked off a collaborative domestic build with Jason Snelling at Maybury Guitars. To be fair, ‘collaboration’ is used in its loosest sense as Jason did the hard work, creating a cool body from recycled timbers, turning a paddle headstock kit neck into a ready-to-finish masterpiece, and laying out all the geometry. All I had to do was load in the offset bridge and thimbles, mount the Bigsby into pre-drilled holes then fit the Sunbear BearTrons and wire it up. Once everything is all working I can worry about a finish. Thanks to Jason, things were all looking good, and thanks to Stuart Robson at Sunbear Pickups, even though I was still a few sandwiches short in the setup hamper, it’s sounding a lot better than…

“Not long ago I was at the Philadelphia Guitar Show and a buddy of mine told me he had something I’d probably never seen before – and, sure enough, it turned out he did. I had only ever seen photos of this version of the Epiphone Coronet, but I’d never owned one or even seen one in person. My friend literally had it for a matter of hours because he acquired it from the original owner, who had brought it into his shop the day before the show. I wouldn’t let him walk away until he’d sold it to me. “The earliest Epiphone Coronets had New York pickups and a thick body, and I’ve seen them in cherry, white and black. By 1960, the Coronet’s body had reduced in thickness…