Marshall sell DSL50 stack in aid of BBC Children in Need

It has been brough to my attention that the lovely folks at Marshall Amplifiers have custom finished a full DSL 50 stack in the appropriate Children in Need colours. The amp also features a life size Pudsey Bear graphic who you can rock out with when the need takes you.

There have already been quite a few bids but hey, its for a great cause so if your wallet is feeling a little full and you think a bright yellow marshall stack is whats missing in your life then here's a link: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Marshall-50-watt-Pudsey-Amplifier-and-Speaker_W0QQitemZ230400431200QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_MusicalInstr_Amplifiers_RL?hash=item35a4ef9460

Morpheus Droptune

Sorry to my handful of avid readers that I've not been blogging of late, I've been uninspired words wise despite having plenty to write about and I've just got a new band together so pretty much all of my energies are going into that at the moment. This is a good thing though because gear is made to be gigged and if I'm gigging it then I'm more likely to write about it!

You already all know that getting my pedalboard right is something of a dark art to me and one that I certainly haven't mastered yet and now that I have a new band on the go I've been looking at expanding my tonal arsenal with a few choice pedals... I'm already running a T Rex Dr Swamp Dual Distortion an Ernie Ball Wah an Electro Harmonix Small Stone Phaser and an MXR carbon copy analogue delay and have decided that I want to get an EQ pedal to shape my distortion and use as a boost (probably an MXR eq), a reverb pedal and an octave pedal. My biggest problem is the fact that I am a snob and I preferably want pedals that no one has ever heard of or that not too many people have heard of.

So how happy was I yesterday when I was shown the new Morpheus Drop Tune pedal... it not only works as a polyphonic octaver with some of the best tracking I've ever heard but it also lets you digitally drop your entire guitars tuning from one semitone up to seven semitones! Needless to say I am getting one as soon as I have the cash!!! Expect a full review in the future but for now here is a link to the Morpheus Pedals website: http://www.morpheusefx.com/pages/droptune.html

Review: Blackstar Series 1 45 Watt Combo

For those of you who haven’t already tried Blackstars frankly stunning gear already, I’d advise you do so right away. You may have heard of this British valve amp company thanks to their stunning HT-5 valve amps and their HT series valve pedals or possibly for their super loud, handwired Artisan series of amps which made ‘boutique’ tones available to a wider market last year. You may also have seen that they have been throwing gear at artists left right and centre and their products have been seen on stages with Paul Weller, Funeral For A Friend and Razorlight to name but a few.

What you might not know is that Blackstar are in fact a bunch of guys that up until a couple of years ago worked for Marshall but just weren’t happy with the way things were going so decided to ditch the big M and start their own amp company with blackjack and hookers. Card games and prostitutes aside they have just unleashed their next series of amps, the formidable high gain, multi channel ‘series 1’ range. The series 1 consists of three amps; a 200 watt head (last seen on stage with James Hetfield of Metallica) a 100 watt head and a 45 watt 2x12” combo which is what I’m going to be reviewing today purely because it is my favourite of the trio.

The interesting feature that these amps provide is a built in attenuator (which they call ‘Dynamic Power Reduction’ or DPR for short) that you can use while this amp is active which can take the amp to a tenth of its power or anywhere in between basically meaning that you can take your carefully honed super loud stage tone into a much quieter environment such as the studio or rehearsal room and believe me these amps pack series tone.

The Series one boasts 1xECC82 valve (12AU7) and 2xECC83 valve (12AX7) in its preamp and a duet of trusty EL34’s within its power amp stage which drive a pair of 12” speakers and is all wrapped up in a weighty birch ply cabinet. Sensibly they’ve decided to include two recessed carrying handles either side so lugging it in and out of your tour van is not too much of an issue. The control panel is mounted on the front of the amp as opposed to being slotted into the top which in my opinion makes it much easier to tweak presuming you have it raised to a sensible height off the ground to start with.

The spec sheet says that the amp has two channels, a clean and a crunch although closer inspection reveals that each channel has two separate modes. The clean channel offers up a ‘bright clean’ which has a classic USA sparkle to it (think fender twin) and provides highly satisfying sounds, rolling the gain down and the volume up gives you plenty of headroom for ultra clean spank but backing off the volume and cranking the gain gives you a much more satisfying edge of break up sound that is easily cleaned up by backing off the volume on your guitar. The ‘warm clean’ is where the action really is and you can feel the very sinew vibrating in your gut as a gorgeous Marshall ‘plexi’ tone emanates forth, this sounds especially good on lower wattage settings for extra breakup.

The overdriven channel offers you up ‘Crunch’ and ‘Super Crunch’ which essentially gives you a Clark Kent and a Superman of overdrives. The crunch channel is ideal for mild mannered, thick and throaty blues tones and even when the gain is pushed never sounds harsh and always sounds musical, the clarity when playing open chords is superb and even when switching from a Mexican standard telecaster to an SG standard the tone never became muddy. Super Crunch does indeed offer up some seriously juicy distortion but it does not distort to the harsh extremes of say a Boogie Dual Rectifier or Peavey 6505. Some metal players have actually complained that this amp does not have enough gain, I dealt with these people by throwing a tubescreamer in their general direction which works as a superb top boost for this amplifier.

The 45 watt combo only has a single EQ section for its two channels but it’s a superbly musical and easy to use interface with the obvious bass, middle and treble allowing you to sculpt a wide range of sonic textures. The real genius here is the inclusion of Blackstars patented ‘ISF’ (Infinate Shape Feature) which essentially changes the voicing of the amp from USA (think Mesa) to UK (think Marshall) and its effect is even more apparent when used on higher gain settings. I can see that some may complain that the clean and dirty channels don’t have separate EQ’s but this amp has such a ring to it that it’s not necessary (the 200 watt head does indeed have separate EQ’s for each channel if you’re interested.)

The master section provides you with a master volume and a presence and resonance control which are essentially treble and bass controls that allow you to smooth of your tone, add insane top end cut or wonderfully boomy low end to taste. The final control is the DPR which proves itself to be insanely effective. In all honesty the amp was so damn loud I had it on 4.5 watts almost the entire time only moving it up to the full 45 watts when I wanted to see how loud it goes, the answer is very.

A special mention must also go out to the included footswitch which offers switching between all four modes essentially giving you four channels at your feet and connects to the amp using a 15 pin connection like your computer monitor uses, screws and all, meaning that it’s very unlikely that it’ll accidentally get snagged out whilst rocking out. For the rack boffins out there the amp also features MIDI capabilty but I'm a simple man with simple needs and don't have time for such things...

So all in all a superb trio of amps from Blackstar, in fact I’ll even go so far as to say that it’s a modern classic to rival such legendary amps such as the Fender Twin and the JCM 800, it’s really THAT good. So good in fact that I’m sold out until November!

Gibson Nighthawk

This one almost escaped my gearlust radar, Gibson have done a limited run of the Nighthawk which as you can see is one sexy-yet-unusual looking piece of candy. Interestingly it has the Burstbucker 3 pickup at the Bridge and a P-90 at the next, same as the recently reviewed Dark Fire, although without all of that Robot gubbins so no risk of it overthrowing humanity. The Nighthawk has had a few incarnations now and each time the pickup combination seems to change but this currently configuration would be ideal for some fat blues/rock sounds.

Needless to say, I want one and if someone could kindly lend me a grand and let me know which UK dealers have got them (I foolishly didn't think to order one for my own shop for some strange reason... I ordered a holy explorer instead, obviously didn't have my ready brek that morning) then I might just have to pop and try one out!

For Sale: My Awesome Musicman Stingray

Sadly, dear readers, I have decided to sell my bass because it is currently 'surplus to requirements'. You can check out all the information at the gumtree ad here: http://www.gumtree.com/london/13/45186513.html

Please stay tuned for more exciting Guitarism blogs including my review of the awesome new Blackstar Series 1 amps which have to be some of the nicest high gain amps in ages!

Review: Ernie Ball Wah

Just before my birthday this year I decided to treat myself, I also decided that I couldn’t possibly call my serious guitar player unless I owned a wah pedal. Now as you may have read before choosing pedals isn’t an easy business for me because I am, in short, a complete snob. This means that I have to wade through heaps and heaps of boutique models before I finally settle on the pedal I think I want, right?

Well not this time, choosing the Ernie Ball was easy because it’s far and away the best wah pedal I have ever heard. The other models I looked at were things such as the EVH wah, the Buddy Guy Crybaby, the Crybaby 535Q and the Fulltone Clyde Wah but these all had funny controls and extra knobs that meant I had more chance of ruining my sound through over tweaking. The Ernie Ball Wah is simple, it works using the same mechanism as their great volume pedals which of course means that it also has the same great sweep and glide action as the volume pedals. It also has two great big green LED’s on the side so you know when it’s on, this is handy for the player who like me enjoys to knock back a beer or three before hitting the stage and sometimes turns the wrong pedal on altogether.

Sonically the EBW (as it shall henceforth be known) instantly hits the sweet spot that you could send years searching for tweaking your deluxe Clyde wah only to loose when you sneeze whilst turning a knob. Through a clean amp it adds character and definition to your sound whilst retaining the intrinsic qualities that made your tone sound great to begin with. Give it a little overdrive and it sings without ever becoming too harsh on the top end or muddy in the mid to low range.

There’s little more I can say about this pedal other than get out there and try one, even better compare it to a standard crybaby (come in my shop I’ll happily set it up for you to try!) and hear the massive difference in the quality of sound. Yes they might be pricy but you only need one wah and it needs to be this one.

Review: Gibson Dark Fire

After what seemed like months of waiting a batch of Gibson’s almost mythical Dark Fire Les Pauls finally arrived at my store last month. They were originally due to arrive way back in December 2008 but the boffins at Gibson refused to release the stock until they had got it just right, well, apart from those over in the States that were allegedly released and then recalled…

It took me ages to unpack it, first I had to tear past the industrial sized staples and cut through the heavy duty security tape on the outer cardboard box, one of those plain brown affairs that gives very little away. From this I removed the inner box, a smart black number with the Gibson logo emblazoned on the front in giant lettering. Within this box were two packages, one was the glorious white Gibson case that boasted the fact that it was a limited edition first run (of 4000) guitar and the other was a smaller black box containing a few goodies such as the RIP interface which I’ll speak about later on and the charger which needs to be employed before the guitar can be used.

I gently lift the guitar out of it’s case and hold in my hands what feels like a hybrid in terms of Gibson design. The top is a nice piece of book matched figured maple stained a beautiful glossy blood red and bound with black binding. The mahogany body and neck is left with a satin finish and is painted to look as if at some point in it’s life it had been set on fire (see what they did there) which of course it hasn’t because that would be quite foolish. The headstock looks great with the flaming torch logo from the old jazz models of yesteryear but I found the red metallic red truss rod cover a little garish, a black one would have been smarter. The carbon fibre style inlays on the ebony fretboard which also adorns the pickup covers looks great and adds to the modern ‘supercar’ feel of the guitar.

It didn’t feel too heavy despite all the extra gubbins inside, the body is chambered and the overall weight of the guitar is very well balanced with no drooping headstocks to be found. The neck is big and chunky which suits me and my oversized palms but several wimpy UK players prefer the pansy thinner 60’s neck and I’m sure they’d moan about that given the chance.

First of all I tried to use it without reading the instructions, 15 minutes later the guitar was back in its case and I had declared it to be the shittest thing ever. Two days later I read the instructions and it all made sense. The guitar offers 18 different tunings from standard to delta blues all the way to drop B sharp for the beardiest among us. The guitar tunes itself using 6 tiny piezo sensors under the bridge (which you also use to get the guitars acoustic sound) which pick up the vibrations of the strings and then tells the guitar to tune it using 6 motorized machine heads. What’s clever about the Dark Fire is that it can tune all 6 strings at once very quickly where the original Robot Guitar tuned 3 and then the other 3 a little bit slower. The guitar I tried was having trouble with its intonation but you can use the same on board technology to intonate the guitar but this seemed quite time consuming so I didn’t bother, it was time to rock.

Plugging into a Marshall JVM410 Head I quickly tested the clean sounds of the guitar. Gibson opted for a Burstbucker 3 humbucker in the bridge which is supposed to sound like an overwound PAF and it gives a full rich ‘hot vintage’ clean sound with plenty of bite and just sending the amp into a nice warm overdrive when I roll up the volume control on the guitar. The neck pickup is a P-90H which is a stacked version of the standard P-90 single coil, essentially this means it is one P-90 sitting on top of another and the second coil acts as a hum canceller without affecting the sound. The tone is essentially P-90, fat, round and clear like a transparent hippo (the African savannahs biggest killer) and when overdriven gives wonderful clarity and bite without the usual hum associated with these pickups.

When I switch the amp onto one of its overdriven channels the sounds are unmistakably Gibson but my ears tell me that this guitar sounds a touch more open and modern than a Les Paul Traditional for example but yes, it’s definitely a Gibson.

Pulling up the Master Control Knob or MCK activates the guitars Robot controls which operates tuning but also lets you activate the chameleon tone circuit which gives you access to a host of other sounds. The first of these is the acoustic sound from the piezo sensors which you can cleverly blend in as much or as little as you want using the pickup selector switch (however this control did feel a little flimsy). Through the Marshall stack the acoustic sound sounded weak and glass like but through a DI box into a PA system it sounded quite pleasing and useable but I do think it would have been nice if the piezo had a separate output so that you could send your electric sounds to your amp and your acoustic sounds straight to the front of house. Still having it wired the way they do makes it very easy to do a stirring rendition of Pinball Wizard.

Finally I tested some of the chameleon tone settings which include options such as metal, blues and twang etc and if I’m right works by re-voicing the pickups somehow. Still, twang didn’t sound quite like a Telecaster and L5 seemed to just sound like the acoustic setting but the sounds were definitely useable but surely if you were in a studio you’d just use a different guitar?

The one function I didn’t have the opportunity to test was the RIP interface which is a firewire audio device that not only is a good sound card and an easy way to record this guitar to your computer but also uses the output of each piezo transducer to record the output of each string individually. Now I didn’t see this work but combined with the free Guitar Rig 3 software (excellent amp and effects modeling package from the guys at Native Instruments) you could get some seriously crazy things going on and really does give the recording musician some interesting options when recording guitar! Imagine being able to play a staccato chord and then manipulate the audio so that it sounds like an arpeggiated chord, genius! Or you could just play an arpeggio like you wanted to in the first place, it’s your call.

So all in all I do think this is a very cool guitar but if I had this kind of money to spend on a Gibson I’d much rather have one of their historic custom shop models. I don’t think I’d have the confidence to gig this guitar either but for the avid guitar collector who also fancies himself as a bit of a studio wizard this might just be the guitar for you, maybe.

Les Paul: 1915 - 2009

It is with great sadness that I write that Les Paul, inventor, pioneer and forward thinker has passed away today at the ripe old age of 94. It's hard to put into words what this means to a guitarist such as myself, only two weeks ago I finally managed to try the new Les Paul Dark Fire, one of the most forward thinking instruments on the planet at the moment and now the man whose very name adorns each and every one of these instruments is no longer with us.

I've not much more to say other than my love and condolences go out to his family, to all those his brilliance has touched over the years and to all my fellow guitarists who no doubt will be feeling a bit like I am at the moment.

Needless to say I shall be playing 'How High the Moon' on repeat at work tomorrow.

GUITARISM WILL RETURN! Watch this space.

Ampeg Micro VR

About a year ago the boys at Ampeg announced a very exciting product called the Micro VR which would catapault them to the centre of a very large 'mini-stack' bandwagon. Sensibly it seems that many musicians (most of whom can't or won't drive which is pretty impossible in Central London anyway...) are now opting for these portable yet powerful rigs but up until now bass rigs of this nature such as those by Mark Bass have been pretty damn expensive and have been very clinical and well... simply UNCOOL in appearance.

Now as far as bass goes, Ampeg is cool... I mean look at that lovely silver and black package on the left there, admit it, you WANT one and you haven't even heard it yet. Well finally I have and to say I was suitably impressed would be an understatement.

The Micro VR boasts 200 Watts of power from a MOSFET based circuit and comes with a matching 2x10" Cabinet. It's styled after the monstrous SVT VR rig which boasts a 300 Watt Valve Head (which takes two people to lift) and a huge 8x10" Cabinet (which takes two people to lift, if those two people are Superman and The Incredible Hulk) and has far too much power for your average weekend musician. The first thing that blew me away about the rig was just how compact it was, in fact I would go so far to say it's cute plus you can pick the head up with one hand and the cab doesn't weigh much more!

Taking in my hand a trusty Music Man Stingray I surveyed the basic yet functional controls, an input gain, a three band EQ and an output volume control. The start of the circuit has a 15dB pad switch for more aggressive styles of play at high volumes and the output stage has a limiter so loud slap or pick playing won't blow your speakers out. Setting the controls at a halfway position I gradually increased the volume until I had the gain and volume controls half way up. It was more than loud enough for any small gig and in case it isn't it has a balanced DI out round the back, after playing around with the controls for only five minutes I managed to coax a range of vintage bass tones after this little monster. For posterity I quickly tried it with a Gibson Grabber II bass so that I could rate its sound with both Active and Passive instruments and was again pleased to find that the character of the bass in my hand remained completely intact yet the amp held its own with its tight, punchy vintage rock sound.

Lets be honest here, bass gear is for the most part very boring and doesn't really belong in this blog but this has to be the coolest piece of bass gear I've tried in ages so it had to get a mention. Stocks are very limited apparently so if you want one I'd snap it up ASAP! Also if you could buy me one too that would be superb, ta.

House of Lies

So after publishing my article on how GREAT nitrocellulose lacquer is and how it is one of the main reasons I spent the extra cash when I purchased my American Vintage series '62 Telecaster a colleague of mine tells me that he has heard on the guitar grapevine that Fender apply their nitrocellulose finishes over a layer of polyurethane which would surely defeat the purpose!

If this is some way of Fender saving time and money over build quality then I do not think that is an acceptable excuse! I am calling on YOU the Guitarism masses (BOTH OF YOU) to find out if this is indeed the case and if so I will be writing an open letter to Fender to find out why this is the case.

Fallout

I'd like to apologise for not keeping this blog updated during the last couple of weeks but unfortunately life sometimes gets in the way of fucking cool guitar equipment. I've just spent the morning trawling through some of the fantastic youtube demonstrations by Andy at ProGuitarShop.com and came across this demo of the Barber Dirty Bomb distortion pedal... even through my weedy laptop speakers this sounds like one fearsome distortion, I seriously recommend you check it out.

And the winner is...

So after much deliberation I have finally settled on and purchased a new distortion/overdrive pedal! As you may already know I have been searching for a great sounding dual overdrive pedal for some time and every indicator was pointing towards the ever popular fulltone full drive 2. Despite this the sudden boom in this pedals popularity over here in the UK got me thinking outside the box... "Do I still really want to sound like everyone else?" I said out loud to myself. I mean I was getting rid of a boss overdrive and a Rat so that I could focus on getting MY tone!

The winner was the fantastic T Rex Dr. Swamp... Two independently switchable identical overdrive channels with a great gain range and a fantastic small and rather attractive casing if I do say so myself... What made me settle on this pedal is that you can get a great range of overdrive tones from it. At low settings you can get a really nice treble booster kind of sound but by winding it up to half way you are already in thick overdrive territory. Once you get past the half way mark the signal really starts to break up and you get a really thick and creamy distortion that borders on the edge of a big muff fuzz sound but still retains enough clarity to cut through the mix. The level control is very sensible and stays within usable parameters rather than being far too quiet or too loud, what I really liked it when you wind the volume up all the way instead of being deafeningly loud it pushes the amp harder giving you a natural compression and really thick sustain! The EQ too is very usable and instead of operating in the extremes it works in a very musical frequency range and allows to you easily sweep from dark rhythm sounds through to cut like a knife lead!

I'm using it by setting the first channel with the gain at around 11 o'clock for chord work and the second channel with the volume and tone a little higher and the gain at around 4 o'clock for a boosted lead sound.

Now that its nestled happily on my pedal board it's worth saying that honorable mentions to the new Radial Bones Texas Drive which lost our due to not having separate gain control for each channel, the Visual Sound Jekyll and Hyde which lost out to frankly looking ATROCIOUS (I'm not having tat on my pedal board)... sadly as good as the full drive was it just didn't have the gain range I was looking for!

Anyway next I think I might plump for an Ernie Ball wah as I've been looking for THAT wah sound for ages now and its the sweetest I've ever heard and I need a new tuner pedal cos mines on the blink and I keep hearing good things about the Korg pitchblack... Don't forget it's my birthday soon people!

Oh, and finally via the magic of Youtube here is a video of the Dr. Swamp in action by the lovely people at proguitarshop.com:

Tanglewood Love

Now those that know me well know that I'm not often lost for words. In fact I'm not going to deny that the words SHUT UP are often used in my vicinity but I've been away this weekend and haven't put much thought into what to write.

However this weekend I took my relatively new Tanglewood TW60 with me on my journey to my Wife's' parents place partly because I get at a loose end if I don't have a guitar nearby to pick up and play when the mood takes me (as if often does) and partly because I have a solo gig this Saturday that I really should rehearse for...

When it comes down to it I am primarily an electric guitar player. There are things you can do with electrics that you just cannot muster from an acoustic because the acoustic is a different animal, it just needs to be played differently to get the best results from it. As I learnt the hard way you can't just apply electric guitar techniques to an acoustic because it will most probably sound shit.

The good think about my acoustic is that it looks nice, it has a lovely solid spruce top (the flecking in the grain leads me to believe it might be Nepalese spruce...) in a sunburst finish with lovely natural mahogany back and sides. It even has a discrete B-Band AT3 pickup with built in tuner (handy for tone deaf idiots like myself) and I chose to get one without a cutaway as I preferred the sound from a full body. Anyway something about these factors gave me the ability to sway my Wife into letting me keep it on a STAND in our LIVING ROOM so I can pick it up and play it WHENEVER I WANT, except if there is something she wants to watch on the telly.

I pretty much bought this guitar on a whim 6 months ago but with its sound improving the more I play it and it completely opening up my playing style so I can thoroughly enjoy this instrument mean that it has pretty much paid for itself. My heart goes out to you my lovely TW60!

A note about nitrocellulose

So avid readers may already have noticed a casual mention here and there to the wonderful stuff that is nitrocellulose lacquer. You must be asking yourself 'how can the same thing that makes gunpowder be so important to the overall tone of a freakin' guitar!' Well I'll tell you...

As important as the pickups and the choice of woods are in making a guitar sound good the wood needs to resonate when the strings are played and it's the different characteristics of different woods produce a myriad of wonderful tones. The majority of guitar makers now choose to lacquer their guitars using polyurethane and if you look at the figures it makes sense... It's cheaper, it takes much less time to apply, its tougher than an old dog with no face and its easier to apply. Great stuff except that you effectively seal the guitar in an airtight casing that inhibits the natural vibrations of the wood! Sure applying nitrocellulose is expensive, time consuming (applying several coats of this stuff takes weeks) and fiddly but if you're buying (or indeed making) a guitar that's made of endangered tone woods such as mahogany or swamp ash then surely you not only want it to resonate naturally but also allow it to age and breathe properly?

Another property of nitrocellulose lacquer is that it's porous and this is what allows the wood breathe and age as it should. You may have heard the term 'opening up' used when talking about guitars, particularly when referring to Spruce tops on acoustic guitars however all woods will in fact open up as they age. It's been claimed by some science types that if wood resonates a particular way regularly then it will 'learn' the best way to resonate which will in time give a guitar a louder and fuller sound. This is perhaps why some of the old Fenders, Gibsons, Martins etc sound superb, all of these companies used (and still use) nitrocellulose lacquer and as it thins over time these guitars are effectively resonating closer to their maximum potential. Also how good is the word 'resonance' say it out loud, brilliant, eh?

If you'd like to find out more about Nitrocellulose then you could check out this Wikipedia entry but it mostly talks about gunpowder (which is also great as explosions are cool in a non war context) and you should also read the Gibson blurb which you can find in the finishes section for every guitar because they admirably still use it on every guitar that leaves their factory.

True Vintage?

Now I'm quite aware that I enthusiastically kicked started this blog by gushing about Gibson, it could be said that I am on a Gibson trip at the moment probably due to the superb stock that arrives fresh from the States to my shop on a weekly basis and mostly because I WANT ONE. However when it comes down to the brass tacks I am at heart a Fender devotee.

Ever since I first, if you'll excuse the phrase, grasped an axe I wanted a Telecaster and eventually in 2005 my wish was granted and I became the proud owner of a 1972 Telecaster Deluxe Reissue, not your typical Tele I'll admit but I tried every tele-esque guitar that my local guitar store had to offer and that was the one that came up trumps. Shortly after this I would move to London, start working in a guitar shop myself and join a band, through this I started to meet the gear obsessed individuals I call friends and the world of the vintage and the boutique opened up to me.

I clearly remember the first time I picked up a Custom Shop Fender Strat, I had been working at my old store Sound Control for a few weeks and I was mocking what I then though were outrageous price tags for such an instrument. However when I played it I heard what a Fender was MEANT to sound like, the tone was open, fat and dynamic. It was like the guitar responded to every pulse of BLOOD through my veins and at the same time it dawned on me that what Fender were passing off as the American 'Standard' was nothing but a great falsehood.

Returning to one of their so called 'Standard' instruments I found myself to be incredibly disappointed. What I once respected now sounded dull and lifeless... what was even more shocking is that I found their made in Mexico reissues, such as my own, were superior in sound and feel to what should be the mainstay of the Fender product lineup. In short I wanted a Custom Shop Tele but the £2500 price tag was something that even my huge sales assistant salary just couldn't handle... It was then I was introduced to Fenders undervalued and often misunderstood 'American Vintage' series. The features I wanted were all there; it was built as close as possible to Leo Fenders original specifications, had a super thin nitrocellulose lacquer, and glorius sounding vintage reissue pickups... just like the Custom Shop guitars that I so yearned to own! Shortly after this I would purchase my much loved '62 Telecaster reissue and it was at this point that I finally felt like I owned a 'real' Fender.

Now I'm not saying that the other guitars in Fenders HUGE product lineup aren't the genuine article, of course they are but they are not what Fender WERE about and to me they lack heart and soul. If Gibson can put out guitars under £1000 such as the SG Special and Les Paul Studio which still have classically voiced pickups and are made by hand then why can't Fender? It probably costs Fender around $50-100 to put together one of their American standard guitars judging by the way they are made and what they are made from but seems to be the Fender name that commands the price tag. In short, Fender need sort it out and potential Fender buyers make sure you check out the American Vintage and Vintage Hot Rod Series as well as some of the fantastic Artist Models such as the Eric Johnson Strat before you splash your cash. If that kind of price tag is unreasonable then you'd be better off looking to the made in Mexico Classic Player series such as the Classic Player 60's Strat and the Baja Telecaster as you get a lot more bang for your buck.

This is just my opinion by the way but feel free to get your flame on...

You Little Gem

Well, it would appear that I'm only two weeks into my blog and I'm already behind on my blogging. Anyone who knows me would simply shrug and say that it's a typical sign of my laziness and well, I'd agree!

Truth is I've been genuinely busy of late partly doing the rock and roll thing and going on a small tour with my band and also spending what feels like an eternity installing the epic amount of music software I've amassed over the last few years onto my new laptop.

While scrabbling for a story to satisfy my guitar itch it became clear that I should pay homage to the glorious orange box that exudes the sweet sweet sound of ROCK whenever I connect my guitar to it, my lovely Orange Rocker 30 combo.

Now you might read this and think I'm stupid and well, you'd be right but I don't always use my own amp at gigs despite me spending more money than is sensible on it in the first place. You see I live in London and I don't drive and I've lost count of the times I've borrowed another bands amp because it's been more convinient and above all cheaper than getting a cab. I remember wincing at the sound of my Big Muff through a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, being electrocuted by a battered old Line 6 Flextone 2 and having my ear drums shredded by the machete like treble of a Marshall JCM900. This tour was different, we had a VAN and everything, and at every gig I played I made a point of proudly carrying my rocker 30 inside each venue.

One of the first things I learnt as a guitarist is just how important a decent amp is and when it was time to choose mine I set myself the following criteria; it had to be loud, compact, produce that sweet bell like valve tone, be as basic as possible and love to be driven with pedals in a similar way Michael Vaughan might cover drive a cricket ball to the long boundary. (Sport pun there, apologies.)

The rocker 30 is as simple as it is brilliant, although you can switch between a 'natural' and 'dirty' channels it really is just a one channel amp. Running at 30 watts in class 'A' (this means that when its been switched on for a while you can cook your breakfast on it) the natural channel provides you with nothing but a volume knob and bypasses the pre amp stage completely running your signal directly into it's pair of (I prefer electro harmonix) EL-34 power valves. This allows you to go from a ringing clean sound to classic valve break up easily but it provides a surprisingly useful amount of clean headroom even for a 30 watt amp! The Dirty channel is where things get interesting and is the channel I use. Engaging this channel switches in a set of 12AX7 pre amp valves and allows you to control the input gain as well as the output volume which, combined with a very musical 3 band EQ allows you to easily dial in your desired sound with no fuss whatsoever. I like to set the gain to around 11 o'clock just before the signal starts to break up, just high enough to add a little grit to beef up the clean sound, I then leave the bass and the mids flat adding just enough treble to help cut through the mix.

I remember the first time I tried one of these amps and it literally sang to me and I knew it was the amp for me. In fact all of the Orange Rockerverb series comes highly recommended, forget any preconceptions you may have about how Orange amps sound because the higher wattage amps have gain for decades that will impress even those of us who sit in very dark rooms and have unfeasibly long beards.

I just wish people would stop telling me to turn it down...

A Distortion Dilemma

Now when it comes to overdrive and distortion I think it's safe to say that I'm an obsessive. I've been searching for THAT sound in my head ever since I first flicked the channel switch on my first ever practice amp and made sweet (well not so sweet if I am being honest) distortion for the first time.

I've owned several overdrive and distortion pedals over the years and the first one that I bought was an Ibanez DS-7 which was recommended to me by an assistant in a guitar shop when I didn't really know what I was looking for. I was pretty content with it when I tried it in store but the more I played with it the more disappointed I got with it. To be honest I still use it occasionally when I am after a horrible filthy bass distortion but if you are looking for Ibanez pedals stick with their much better reissue series.

The second pedal I bought was an Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi (The made in NYC version) purely because I wanted to sound like I was in Smashing Pumpkins. This is still one of my favourite all time pedals, it generates a harmonically rich, creamy distortion that is superb for single note lines and power chords but lacks a little clarity with normal chord work. When I started gigging I paired it with a trusty Boss SD-1 which provided me with a cleaner, more natural and dynamic sounding overdrive and allowed me to cut through the mix when playing rhythm parts. My bands Sound Engineer Joe tells me at the end of every gig to get rid of the SD-1 because he is sick of the sound of Boss pedals (and who can blame him when over 10 million of them have been sold since they were first released!)

After a few gigs though I soon realised the great flaw of my beloved big muff, the rich, deep sound might have sounded great on its own but I'm not in a three piece grunge band, I'm in an 8 piece where my guitar needs to be relatively low in the mix a lot of the time and the muff just wasn't cutting the mustard. While looking for a solution I saw a guitar player using a Pro Co Rat reissue and thought it sounded great and there was soon one winging its way to me in the post.

Here I learned a valuable lesson... I ordered the pedal online without even trying one first based purely on the assumption that it would work with my set up. Yes I'm young, foolish and above all too lazy to take a 20 minute train ride into the centre of London where a PLETHORA of albeit quite average (vintage and rare and Macari's excused) guitar stores are waiting for me to come and test their wares. Although the Rat cut through the mix, it just wasn't the sound I was after. Never mind, maybe one day I'll get it modified by Robert Keeley and maximise it's true face melting potential.

I've been working in guitar shops for a few years now and I'll admit that I've become a bit of a gear snob. Anything labelled as 'boutique' or 'hand wired' gets me all excited and high price tags seem insignificant when all you can focus on is pure, unadulterated TONE. I've decided that my setup requires a twin distortion pedal so that I can have my rhythm channel and a lead channel and easily switch between the two. I found that trying to use two separate pedals to achieve the same effect just causes one pedal to compress the hell out of the other which is just no good at all.

As previously mentioned I had already pretty much made my mind up on the superb sounding Fulltone Full Drive 2 Mosfet but then this time I decided that I wasn't going to be made a fool of and started researching the market. I found a great article on the Gibson Website where they compare some of the most respected boutique pedals on the market to the new range of Visual Sound pedals and this turned me on to the potential of their Jekyll and Hyde (as used by the Strokes but don't let that put you off...) Following this I started talking to a few of the many sales reps that visit my shop and was turned on to the new Bones series by Tonebone (none of the three really cut it for me after trying them all in series) and now I've been told to check out T-Rex pedals (the distributor is kindly lending me a few next week!) and after checking out their superb website and listening to some demos I have high hopes that their Dr. Swamp pedal may just take the title of being my go to overdrive.

What I have discovered is that almost every guitar company and its mum and churning out overdrive and distortion pedals like it's nobodies business... None of them seem content with just making ONE damn good overdrive and ONE damn good distortion and then maybe putting both of them in the same box for folks like me! Be warned that if you are looking to upgrade your pedal board that it's not going to be an easy ride.

Going Bare Knuckle: Part 2

On Friday night my bandmates in Brontosaurus Chorus and I jumped into our trusty driver come sound engineers brand-new second-hand tour bus/van and headed to a pub called The Hobbit in Southampton to peddle our Indie Pop wares. The gig went as well as could be expected my only complaint being the lack of an audience but when you play in a band doing original material in a town that hasn't really heard of you this is considered the Norm.

What excited me most was that two days previously my friend Nick replaced the stock pickups in my '62 Reissue Telecaster with a set of Bare Knuckle 'The Boss' pickups. The blurb on the box promised 'Classic Tele sound with extra weight in the mid range for driving rhythm and cutting lead' and it wasn't wrong. Earlier in the day I set up all my pedals and amp the same as how I usually have them at a gig so that I could get used to the new sound and dynamic response of my guitar. I feared that I may have chosen a set of pickups with too high an output for my tastes despite the fact that it was a higher output that I so desired but I was frightened that I would loose the vintage characteristics that made my Tele a Tele.

In the end it turns out there was no need for it, when clean the dynamics and response had improved no end although to my ears the overall sound of the instrument seemed darker, which was probably to do with the more distinguished mids and fatter low end. The real icing on the cake came when I kicked on my overdrive (for the record I'm currently using a Boss SD-1 and a Pro-Co Rat II but I'm currently in the market for both a new overdrive and a distortion unit so all suggestions are welcome!) and found that the lacklustre sound that once plagued me was no more and instead the overdrive was not only thicker and richer but the tonal characteristics of my pickups shone through much more than before. Satisfied I packed up my gear and headed off to the gig.

After the gig I chatted with our sound engineer Joe about whether or not he noticed any difference and he said that the sound seemed instantly more open and full but he also noticed a lot more top end cut that lent itself to the mix. In my band I have a string section a keyboard and a trumpet to compete with so I can never be quite as loud as I would like but now with my new pickups I can be a little bit more confident that I'll be heard playing at a slightly lower volume than usual.

So, am I one step closer in my never ending quest for the ultimate guitar tone? Probably, but the search for that perfect guitar sound is an eternal one and the next step for me is to replace my overdrive pedal and I'm currently thinking that a Fulltone Full Drive II MOSFET is the way to go.

The photo in this post was taken by my friend Di and used with her permission, you can see more of her photos at her Flickr.

Going Bare Knuckle: Part 1

So in my last post I mentioned that my go-to guitar was my very much loved American Vintage '62 Reissue Telecaster which I bought back in May 2008. The things which attracted me to this guitar included the gloriously dark rosewood fingerboard, the white binding which framed the black nitrocellulose lacquered solid alder body and the dynamic, open sounding pickups that produced that satisfying Tele' twang. Essentially this was evil embodied in a guitar but as the months drew on I kept getting the feeling that it just wasn't evil enough...

I've always been a bit funny about changing the pickups in a guitar because I always felt that if it doesn't sound right when you try it out in the shop then surely it's not the guitar for you but now that I'm in the position where I have a guitar which I love dearly that isn't quite cutting the mustard I suddenly understand why pickup changes are so commonplace.

I first heard of Bare Knuckle Pickups when I was trawling the 'net for information about Matt Bellamy's custom built Manson Guitars (he's particularly fond of the Nailbomb Humbuckers or so I am led to believe.) The guys at Bare Knuckle make pickups the old fashioned way, by hand, right here in the UK and a quick google search will reveal that they are regarded very highly by many all across the Globe. It was this that drew me towards them, not that fact that many players from all over the world were choosing them but the fact that they are made in England.

The guitar market is dominated by products made in the US, Japan and more recently we are seeing a great deal of quality products coming out of Korea and China. I found the fact that I could customise my guitar with a home grown product immensely appealing and with that it was simply a case of choosing the set that was right for me. I knew that I wanted a bigger and fatter clean sound and be able to push my amp harder when I kicked in some overdrive and thanks to the great descriptions on the site I almost instantly decided that 'The Boss' set was the one that looked like it would fit the bill. My only qualm here being that I couldn't find any audio clips for their single coils on the site but there are plenty of great clips for their more popular humbuckers.

So now I have the pickups in my possesion and my friend Nick will be installing them for me tomorrow so that I'll be able to road test them at my next gig this Friday! I'll be bringing a full report on how many faces I melted with my extra melty solos this weekend.

The Trouble with Gibson

There was a time in my life when I disliked Gibson guitars, I found them clunky, unattractive and generally old hat. Mind you when I was 17 all I wanted was an ESP that I could tune to drop C but now my go to guitar is my '62 reissue Telecaster. So as you can see times change and as I've recently discovered, so have Gibson...

A couple of years back I worked at the Oxford Street branch of the now sadly defunct Sound Control and I remember finding the wall of Les Paul's and SG's distinctly unappealing and spent most of my time lusting in the direction of our Fender Custom Shop stock. Eventually I remember deciding to try out a couple of Gibson's just for the hell of it first plumping for a White Les Paul Custom that we'd had in stock seemingly forever. It was horrible, the intonation was so bad nothing above the 12th fret was in tune, and the sound coming through my go to test amp (an Orange Rocker 30 which I would later go on to purchase for myself) was dull and lifeless. Dissapointed I went for an Ebony Les Paul Standard which advertised itself has having a '60's neck but with it found no satisfaction and decided that maybe Gibson guitars were just not for me. Later investigation on a few Guitar forums soon led to the discovery that there were many dissapointed Gibson fans out there and talk of poor quality control in recent years that seemed evident in the instruments I had tried.

In the last 12 months there have been many changes, apart from entering a global recession which robbed me of my previous job it seems that Gibson have managed to completely restructure their entire European dealership as well as some of the key parts of their business. Choosing to go direct to a few select dealers that can make the most of their product rather than sell as much as they can to a UK based supplier whose telesales staff didn't seem to know their arse from their 335. A new spangly website has also appeared which has to be one of the most exciting guitar websites on the 'net. Pristine photos and audio demos of all their guitars are all present and correct as well as extensive, accurate write-ups for all of their instruments but that's not all, oh no! You can barely keep up with all the interesting, educational and amusing articles, posts and blogs that appear on the site daily that all seem totally relevant, a recent highlight for me being the well photographed tours of their Nashville and Memphis guitar building facilties. Plus their product line-up continues to expand and impress, the Dark Fire looks to be the most forward thinking instrument since someone first decided to strap a magnet to a piece of wood and I find myself waiting with baited breath for the next 'Limited Run' instrument to be announced, exciting stuff indeed.

I'm now fortunate enough to bask in the glory of working for one of these fabled UK Gibson dealers and stock is arriving thick and fast. True sometimes we have to wait a few months to get what we want but who cares when every single guitar you remove from that white fur lined case, as you are hit with the smell of nitrocellulose and vanilla is set up beautifully and screams at you to strum the living daylights out of it. It seems that Gibson have rediscovered their pride, oh and the PLEK machine which electronically simulates string tension whilst setting up the frets to perfection. The Les Pauls have been given new life in the form of the classic 'Traditional' and the forward thinking '2008 Standard' the latter being my favourite of mine for the record. The Archtops are as beautiful and versatile as ever, the specials and the studios scream like rock-pigs and a special mention must go out to the historically accurate 'VOS' (Vintage Original Spec) series as these truely special instruments sing like nothing else.

So I lay my hat down, I take back every bad thing I ever said about these guitars but just answer me one thing; How the hell am I going to afford that 1961 SG VOS in Faded Cherry?

Guitarism: Day One

Hello and welcome to Guitarism!

Guitarism is a new blog by me, Matt Curtis that aims to waffle, rant and pour a general stream of guitar related consciousness directly onto the Internet. The focus of this blog will primarily be on gear that is readily available to try and buy at your local music store and as I am currently the resident guitar geek at the Wembley Guitar Centre and I play guitar with London based indie pop botherers Brontosaurus Chorus as well as trying to pass off what I like to call 'music' with my side project Typewriter I feel vaguely qualified to write about what I love; guitars.

I'll be aiming to bring you the latest in guitar, pedal and amp geekery two or three times a week and look forward to lots of nice feedback and a little bit of hating to keep things interesting.

Happy Reading

Matt