Blogging » Guitars, blues, rock, jazz and the music biz
We read ‘em, so you don’t have to, that’s our monthly motto. It’s mid-April, again I’m buying May mags so here’s what happened in print publishing land this current month. Some interesting features for your reading pleasure.
Guitarist
Great cover story, “Son of a Burst.’ This feature compares a 1959 Gibson goldtop Les Paul original owned by rocker Bernie Marsden and worth $475,000 with the new Gibson Les Paul Classic Custom ($2,225, American-made) and the new PRS SE Bernie Marsden ($460, Korean-made). Check out the great A/B video above, showing Bernie playing the Beast and its Korean signature copy.
Peter Eggle Guitars - Berlin Evo '50
It’s fascinating in that it takes apart all three (to some degree), shows you the inside of the ’59, named the “Beast,” and gives you a rundown on the Classic Custom and the PRS SE BM. Hands down, no surprise, the original surpasses. And the Classic Custom is a nice guitar, tried one yesterday, very sweet appointments and tones. The review of the PRS SE in this article has it sounding more like the ’59 beast than the more expensive new Les Paul. That said the new Les Paul, at more than 5X the cost of the PRS, is likely the better overall guitar of the two new ones. But tone-wise, according to Bernie and the editors, nice job Paul Reed Smith and the PRS team. Glad they overturned that 2001 lawsuit Gibson filed in 2005.
Also on tap, review of Flying Colors release and interview with Steve Morse; review of the PRS Stripped 58, review of beautiful Patrick Eggle Guitars Berlin Evo Legend ’50, only $5,000! – a Brit luthier who came up with his own version of the PRS Custom 24 20 years ago. Boy, I crave a quilted and figured top like this one.
Premier Guitar
This mag is consistently thorough with long-form articles and eye-candy intermingled in a balanced manner. My fave U.S. guitar magazine I find. This month has a unique feature, part of their Studio Legends series on Iconic Engineers, on Alan Parsons and his recording of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. If you don’t know him from his hits in the ’70s from the Alan Parsons Project (Eye in the Sky, anybody?), his first work as a 19-year-old assistant engineer at Abbey Road was to track Let It Be and Abbey Road, the last two from The Beatles. Wow, that’s the way to learn the ropes.
Alan Parsons at Abbey Road Studios
He was promoted to full engineer and recorded the Pink Floyd magnum opus, Dark Side of the Moon. It took nearly a year of recording, hit the charts in March 1973, made the top of the charts within a week and grew to one of the best-selling albums of all time. Interesting series from PG, Insights from Iconic Engineers, and Parsons sure qualifies. Noteworthy tidbits from an engineer who has recorded the guitar tones of David Gilmour and George Harrison, to name just a few (ok, The Hollies, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, and on and on):
Vox AC4C1-BL
Strong issue with great roundup of NAMM 2012, including mention of over 100 new models promoted at the winter 2011-2012 show this year. Included mention of an amp I pre-ordered from Sweetwater.com. It’s called the Vox AC4C1-BL and it came and sings beautifully to my ears, especially for $299. It’s a new version of my current AC4 with gain and mains knobs, bass and treble EQ, without the wattage attenuation of the AC4. Great tones.
Richard Thompson & his Danelectro
This issue has a solid three-page piece on Richard Thompson and the release of a new live Blu-Ray recording. Nice photo of RT and a cool baby blue Danelectro! Inset box memorable for this quote:
I think there is a time that as a songwriter you say: things are so bad I’m going to write a song that names names. You don’t hold back…you just say: things are shit, it’s time for the revolution, let’s kick out the despots…There is a time for that kind of song./ I think otherwise you’re better served by writing under a few veils with political songs, so you write political allegory, you write a political song as a love song, or as a kind of satire, where it’s a little softer and not so in your face. I think if you do that the songs have a longer shelf life.”
Gibson Novoselic RD Bass
And because, I have neglected to cover any magazine’s work covering the world of electric basses, for an online friend of mine in Georgia, there’s a review of a sweet looking new Gibson bass in this issue. It’s a reissue of the maple RD Artists model that Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic used on Nevermind, called the Gibson Novaselic RD Bass. Here’s the build specs: “Maple body, set maple neck with 20 medium nickel frets on an obeche fingerboard, Grover shamrock tuners and Gibson three-point string-through bridge with chrome hardware; passive pickups with one Seymour Duncan Basslines STK-Jn and one STK-Jb pickup; comes in black ebony only and weighs about 12 pounds with a 34″ scale. According to reviewer, its 12.2 lbs make it “one of the heaviest four-strings we’ve ever played.”
I’m on the PRS emailing list, so I saw the release of their new David Grissom model the other week, The PRS Private Stock Collection Series II DGT. Recent posts at great guitar blog Guitar Noize reminded me of how cool this guitar looks, and how sweet the specs are. The GN gang details the guitar and provides video link to a demo. This PRS guitar sparkles. I love the quilted top and the micro bursts.
PRS Private Stock Collection Series II DGT
I met Paul Reed Smith the other day, when he came to Rudy’s Music in NYC for a PRS Experience 2011 tour. Great experience, I must admit. He had his guitar tech take my Custom 24 to their factory for mods! (More on that later.) Got a chance to see David Grissom play and hold a guitar tone clinic that day. He was playing one of his DGT Standards.
David Grissom & Paul Reed Smith
This new guitar looks special, and at $15K, you would certainly expect so.
On the subject of custom guitars, this xmas got a book about the Fender Custom Shop. Beautiful coffee table book. Mouth watering. Went over to the Fender Custom Shop to drool today.
The Dream Factory by Tom Wheeler
Thinking a thinline masterbuilt telegretscher with bigsby would look and sound awfully nice, yes?
TeleGretscher - Fender Custom Shop
Thanks to Guitar World for posting this piece about guy who made a guitar with a Millennium Falcon shaped body. Bulky, but cool. Working lights and sounds and an R2-D2 headstock. This one is for all the adolescents and adultescents out there who dream of playing funky guitar in that bar in a land far, far away…
And on the subject, this band claims to be from “Mosh Eisley.” OMG!
To salve my G.A.S. affliction, here are some great-looking new guitars to salivate over.
Dennis Fano is a luthier who builds innovative retro AND modern guitars. His brand, Fano Guitars, is part of the Premier Builders Guild group of luthiers. I lust after the Fano Alt De Facto RB6.
Fano Guitars has also introduced a new retro modern electric guitar with a lucite body. Intriguing. Unveiled at NAMM 2012.
Fano Guitars Alt de Facto RB6
Fano Guitars Fanosphear
Ibanez George Benson
Ibanez has a new George Benson model hollowbody jazz guitar. Looks nice. Thanks to GuitarSite.com for the post, looks like a good blog site I discovered surfing today.
Suhr Guitars released this Guthrie Govan Antique Modern model late last year. The feature I love is the blower switch:
“… a push-button “Blower” switch which allows you to go to a full-on bridge humbucker sound with a simple push of the button from whatever volume, tone, 5-way setting you’re at.”
Have you heard of Knaggs Guitars? Knaggs was a master builder for PRS, started his own boutique show recently. This Chena model guitar comes with a hefty price tag, $9K! But sweet, and likely the build quality is superb. Thanks to Guitar Noize for the pic and post.
Knaggs Guitar
More on the PRS Experience event at Rudy’s Music in Soho, NYC. In addition to seeing the great band with Davy Knowles and David Grissom play two fine blues tunes, we were treated to a 15-minute guitar clinic on tone from great artist and session player David Grissom.
Grissom started by turning off his stompboxs. He was using a new PRS amp modded by master amp-maker Doug Sewell. (Doug was also at the event modding amps behind the counter.)
PRS amp maker Doug Sewell
Using his sweet signature PRS DGT guitar, he demonstrated how he had a great crunchy rhythm tone and a clear tone without turning on a pedal and using the volume knob only. Next he ran through using his two main efx boxes, an Xotic EP Booster and a Fulltone Plimsoul. Effectively, the booster gives him a warm and fat but not too heavy overdriven tone. Switching from the Xotic to the Plimsoul gives Grissom’s guitar the high-gain overdrive channel.
All in all, he demo’s what he called his four channels, two without pedals, then adding one pedal, and lastly switching booster pedals. Someone asked what it sounded like with all pedals on, and by using both booster and overdrive together, he got a deep, rocking tone for his extra fifth channel. Grissom had this to say, “Tone is in your hands… When I have tone like this, I can play what I hear.”
Last November, several months ago, I went to Rudy’s Music in Soho to check out the PRS Experience traveling show. They came to the store and took it over for the day. Paul Reed Smith, the designer who turbo charged the electric guitar with his boutique designs and luthier work in the ’70s, came with an entire team of PRS staffers and a demo band with two headliners, Davy Knowles and David Grissom. As well as acoustic maestro Tony McManus.
Tony McManus at Rudy's Music, NYC
David Grissom & Paul Reed Smith
I’m a fan of Davy’s music and thought it would be cool to meet him and the man, Paul Reed Smith, himself. Additionally, Rudy’s Music is a great store, love the staff and Rudy.
The group Paul brought was tight, they jammed on two songs allowing Davy Knowles and David Grissom and demo guitarist Mike Ault to open up on long solos. The bass player and drummer laid it down, and the three guitars made for nice comping and great soloing. So glad I happened to go to this event and that my iPhone could capture such nice sounding video while perched on my knee. I’ll post more on this event, as I have a great story to share about guitar modifications and PRS factory.
Monday, Monday… Here are some blogs that had interesting posts the past few days.
From Hypebot: Indie label launches new music subscription model. Interesting idea from Stones Throw Records, you pay $10 per month and get all their music, from all their signed artists. Details from the label here.
From GuitarNoize: Gibson unveils metal Les Paul Studio at NAMM 2012, even has a Floyd Rose Trem, sacrilegious!
From Jason Shadrick, associate editor of Premier Guitar magazine: His fave 2011 picks of the PG gear video rig rundowns, where artists and their techs show their gear and give a rundown of information.
From TrueFire: What’s Your Blues Nickname? Great idea, a nickname tool using your initials. I’m Brown Hips Rivers!
From the iHeartGuitarBlog: Blogger gets his own Taylor solid body using the solidbody configurator. Neat idea, like picking your own BMW car, you can configure all the mods on your Taylor solidbody and print out the specs and image. Here’s my purple one. LOL.
Two helpful posts from blogger @hishamdahoud on Hypebot, the first an overview of the 2011 State of Online Music from NextBigSound:
… the numbers are quite staggering: 64 billion new plays, 16 billion profile views, and 3.5 billion new fan connections. Metrics include data taken from SoundCloud, Twitter, Vevo, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and Wikipedia.
Dahoud points out Soundcloud having the largest growth; noted the indie artists ranking on Soundcloud versus the big pop artists on the other services; and pointed out each service had it’s own most active day of the week. All from the same infographic.
The other post from Dahoud is about an interesting new web tool for artists:
Artist Growth, a sophisticated set of cloud-based artist management tools that also utilizes specialized apps for mobile devices, has officially launched. Created by Nashville based musicians turned entrepreneurs Matt Urmy and Jonathan Sexton, Artist Growth’s proprietary technology integrates finances, calendars, inventory, contacts, social media and mentoring resources within a single cloud-interface.
This certainly sounds like a tool that indie artists will want to use. There’s a video demo at the bottom of the post here.
Eye candy from NAMM 2012 via GuitarNoize a great indie guitar blog. Link to GuitarNoize post.
This new G5-VG Stratocaster comes with built in COSM effects from Roland. Awesome! I use the Roland Micro BR-80 which is sweet and has the same built in guitar efx, very effextive. LOL. Seriously, at the flip of a rotary dial near the tone pots, you can get these sounds: strat, tele, humbucker, acoustic, 12-string, sitar, drop D tuning, and on and on. The demo is incredible, must see for guitar fans.
The fluid and tasteful Alex Hutchings demos the G5-VG here.
Love to try this one, see what the acoustic or 12-string sounds feel like coming out of the axe.
PRS launches new guitar this month, the P22. This guitar melds a solidbody electric with a PRS LR Baggs piezo pickup.
The beauty of this new guitar is the ability to get sweet acoustic tones and sounds out of a solidbody that also lets you rock out. PRS has used the piezo tech from their hollowbody line, and made it small enough to fit into a 22-fret solid PRS guitar. I have a great PRS Hollowbody I and it comes with two input jacks, like the P22, and you can switch from piezo to electric if you have two amps set up.
This new P22 sounds like a great hybrid. Check out this demo:
I’ve been reading guitar mags monthly for about a year now, and I’ve never loved the print medium more. Guitar mags on tablets are ineffective (but that’s another post). Of all the mags, I tend to like the U.K. mags best, but GP retains my loyalty and still hits home. I do confess, I like the larger format of the UK books.
Here’s a roundup of interesting guitars, reviews, videos, photos, lessons and features such as guitar tab from the January 2012 U.S. and U.K. print mags.
Guitar Player January 2012
Cover article features Joe Satriani and Michael Anthony, and the new super group, Chickenfoot, with Sammy Hagar and Chad Smith (on drums). Interview is a low key discussion with the famed guitarist and bassist on their second album, how they approached it, recorded it, and played. GP does not link to their articles, so you can only read this as a subscriber or by buying on newsstand.
Gear reviews include two interesting guitars:
Fano Alt de Facto SP6 — This intrigues me, it is a new, modern-built electric guitar, relic’d. Very sweet, might be on my fantasy list. Again, no link at GP.com, so here’s a cool demo by Eric Gales playing one upside down at Namm 2011:
Teye Gypsy La Llama S-Series
Also, from GP this month, a review of a cool-looking guitar, the Teye Gypsy La Llama S-Series. Boss!
Guitar World January 2012
The other U.S. book, like GP, of the five I’ve been reading regularly, is Guitar World, published by same company as the one that puts out two of the UK titles.
This month’s features include:
Guitar & Bass Magazine January 2012
One of my fave mags, this U.K. title has luscious photos, solid reviews of axes and gears, nicely laid out and informative news section in the front of book, and all-around appealing editorial. This month’s tidbits:
Guitarist Magazine January 2012
Another fine U.K. title, put out by Future Publishing owner of Guitar Techniques, as well as Guitar World in the U.S. This month’s cover story is relatively uninteresting to me, a feature about famous cover bands, zzzzzz….
But outside of the boring January doldrums, there are solid interviews with Billy Gibbons, Richie Kotzen and metal group Opeth. A slew of nice guitar and gear reviews round this issue out:
Guitar Techniques Magazine January 2012
This title, aforementioned, is really a fab idea for music publishing. The entire magazine is devoted solely to techniques and teaching tips, but most importantly, it comes bound with a CD that contains numerous backing tracks and solo examples. Each month! I’ve collected hundreds of useful examples and great backing tracks, including, recently, Pink Floyd’s Money and Free’s All Right Now. Invaluable. Here’s this month’s features:
Premier Guitar Magazine January 2012
An oft overlooked U.S. mag, that does a decent job each month. A deep dive into guitars, gear, vintage tech tips, lessons, strong features, and, of course, guitar and gear reviews.
One of my fave monthly features is Opening Notes, a photo feature with full-page photos of artists touring. Great shots. This month boasts an exclusive book excerpt with photos from a new book on Stevie Ray Vaughn’s final years (1983-1990). Deep inside info about SRV’s touring rig, what went down on select concert evenings, and more. Excellent. Also of interest: