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Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

So here we are, quite a few months into the “worst recession since the 1980’s” or biggest “economic crisis since the 1930’s” as described by various media outlets intent of frightening us all.

Are we having fun yet?

From this guitarists perspective several interesting things have happened in the last few months.

In terms of the wider economy and currency markets both the Dollar, Euro and Yen have risen sharply. So prices have gone up across the board, most horribly is the now near 20% rise in the value of the Yen, which has basically made grey importing a Japanese Fender or other far east exotica (ESP/Burny/Caparison etc) uneconomically viable. The unofficial Clapton type J-craft Strat I’d finally set my heart on (I was still gonna replace those nasty small frets with Dunlop 6100 fretwire though) was suddenly going to come into the UK for near £750 used as opposed to £550, so that idea was quashed finally.

It didn’t get much better thanks to the rise in the Euro, although its now dropped slightly, suddenly all thos nice deals on Thomann.de suddenly looked very unaffordable. In April a Fender Richie Kotzen Telecaster was near £1200 as opposed to just under a grand previously, its now just over a grand….ouch!

The drop in VAT to 15% seems to have made didly squat to guitar prices as many companies announced large price hikes in January 09 and the currency markets cancelled out a lot of this. So saving £30 here and there on a £600+ guitar really seemed meaningless.

What has suprised me was Ebay, the prices commanded on there seeemd fantastical, especially for used Gibsons, all of a sudden people were paying used prices that were virtually the new retail price a year or so earlier. From what I could see this was people in a feeding frenzy hoping to get a good deal, but really just supporting a fantasy land.

Back in March when I was looking to purchase a used Gibson SG I was amazed how many advertisers were trying to sell me a 2001-2005 guitar for around the £800-850 mark. At the time Gibson had raised the price of a new SG standard to £1199 and the dollar had affected this, however it soon dropped back down to £999 in most dealers. After browsing Gumtree for 3 weeks I found a totally mint 03 SG Standard in heritage Cherry for £650.00 so it appears some sellers are realistic.

In terms of Fenders though, things are now bordering on the ridiculous. American Standard Guitars have gone through the roof again and are obviously not selling as Fender are offering a free Fender Champion 600 practice amp if you buy one from them now….why not simply drop the price. Irrespective of currency values, that is the most automated guitar factory on earth. It shouldn’t cost so much.

But with Fender everything has gone up, the newish Mexican made “Road Worn” Strats are on the £800+ price point too. I tried one in Cologne in April and I thought the relic’ing was about the same standard as one of Trev Wilkinsons “Vintage” brand copies. It was ok, but not the best Strat I played, and fender have never gotten away from the “insubstantial” feel on their Mex Strats. i’ve tried the basses and they’ve always been fine. But for some reason I can always tell Im playing a Mexican Strat, whatever is missing, Im picking up on it.

So where does that leave the humble guitarist?

Well there is an upside…despite Soundcontrol going to the wall. I’ve noticed a slew of new independant guitar shops that have risen out of the ashes of the “Dixon’s of music retail”. In some cases these are new shops, in others, just smaller businesses that have expanded. But I see that as tremedously healthy for the british guitarist. As now there is less of a sense of monopoly out there,m which means shops can get on with being competitive, giving good customer service and all the other old fashioned shit that chain retailing scum like Soundcontrol tried to extinguish. In addition, not everyone is classified land is a complete idiot. There are some great guitar deals out there just waiting to be had. If you’ve got the cash now is a brilliant time to buy anything musical. Just as long as you do your research and avoid people trying to panic you.

Lots of OMG shock horror on various guitar forums at the moment. Joe Satriani has apparently decided to dump his longstanding endorsement of Peavey amps and use Marshall JVM410’s on the upcoming tour of the new “Supergroup” Chickenfoot. Despite having the Peavey JSX signature series heads made to his exacting specifications, Satriani has decided to go for the new(ish) 4 channel head from marshall.

Now lots of people are pointing out quite correctly that Satch doesnt actually use the 2 distortion channels on his own amps & instead uses his own signature distortion pedal, made by Vox…. The Satchurator through his Peaveys clean channel and that its unlikely that there will be much difference in tone through the clean channel of a JVM.

Whatever the reason its good news for Marshall, who, thanks to the exchange rate and a much revamped product line, seem to be regaining ground lost in recent years. But all this news has done to my mind is point out the absolute nonsense surrounding Endorsement deals and the “signature” product industry as a whole.

Its quite common knowledge that a guitarist may be endorsing one brand of amplifier or guitar, while actually using another. The biggest culprits for this racket must surely be Laney & Crate, who whenever I see the artists in their adverts onstage its usually with another brand of amplifier. When Oceansize mentioned how good Laney were in a recent issue of Guitarist, it was embarrissing to see in the accompanying pictures of their backline a Marshall JCM2000 head perched atop a Laney 4 x12 in the background. Crate are also comical in the way most of their endorsers either endorse cabinets only and use another brand of amp ( Marcos Curiel from POD with a Mesa dual rectifier) or just practise amps (Lita Ford/Yngwie Malmsteen). In the early 90’s Bon Jovi’s Ritchie Sambora had a wall of Fender Tonemaster heads onstage and hidden behind them 5 rackmounted Marshall JCM800’s . Even Status Quo allegedly have Vox AC30 chassis built into Marshall JCM cabinets.

The biggest pisstakers in all this though are a tie between

1: Metallica – Kirk Hammetts new signature Randall Head isn’t all he uses, he still confesses to using Boogies live, with the bulk of his tone being created by Triaxis preamps and Dual Rectifiers again, and while James Hetfield talked to Guitarist mag about using a Diezel VH4 as the main amp in the woeful “St. Anger “sessions. His producer Bob Rock told Guitar world it was all done with a Marshall DSL100. Not that I imagine they’d be queuing up to admit to that one…..Ahem.

2: Eddie Van Halen – THe 5150 brand is now ubiquitous, with products made by Fender, Dunlop, Peavey, Musicman & Kramer. The big problem here is while Eddie is a legend, do you really want to buy equipment from a man who hasn’t written anything decent for 17+ years & made all his greatest work on a “parts” guitar costing $50 & an old Marshall plexi?

As with guitars it gets even weirder. Despite having longstanding endorsements with PRS & Gibson. The one guitar Rush’s Alex Lifeson has used as his main recording guitar for the last 2 decades is a decidedly non collectable 52 reissue telecaster. Lifeson bought it in 83 and its on pretty much every Rush record since then.

Obviously a musician has the right to use whatever he or she feels does the job best. But in this world of massive advertising campaigns and marketing hyperbole. It’d be nice to see some honesty rather than PR for a change.

Happy 2009, this is my first post for a while…..(7 months) and see’s my playing and indeed my interest in the guitar going through somewhat of a transitional period. Having stopped gigging and left the band I was in. The idea of playing music live in front of people seems strangely alien right now.

I guess this happens to everyone now and again, you suddenly find yourself at a musical crossroads, unsure what to do next (if anything at all?).

I’m old enough to have been here before though, this feeling last happened to me in 1997 when…through a combination of circumstances and personal choice the guitar just took a back seat for a while.

I’d come out of a hard gigging band several years earlier and moved down South to study. One would assume such a time would mean endless oppertunities for musical alchemy and a greater choice of both musicians and possibilities.

How wrong I was.

As the musical sands shifted I suddenly found no real demand for a player like myself.

My crunchy power chords, textural influences and preference for lush delay lines seemed rather lost in the late 90’s. The very few bands I auditioned for seemed either lost in a post Oasis/post Britpop confection or stuck in a “US underground punk” haze of low fi incompetence.

It seemed rather odd meeting blokes from Camden putting on Mancunian accents and playing along to simplistic sub Gallager/Weller songs
(ever notice that whenever Noel G is on the cover of an English guitar magazine, they have a beginners special article inside….I mean why not go the whole hog & publish a special “underclass lads” edition with all the architypal “ladrock” favourites, articles on ripping off the Beatles Slade & Weller, using simple chords, gigging with an ASBO, organising rehearsals around a curfew order, a guide to shoplifting the best Les Paul copy from Cash Converters and styling your hair like Rick “remember him?” Witter).

On the other hand the “American Underground Punk” influenced crowd I knew seemed all to incompetent for my tastes. Anti Corporate dandys bashing out 3 chords in £100 trainers made by children in the third world?….Nah…it wasn’t really me!

This lack of musical oppertunity kept me away from the guitar for several years. When I eventually returned to the six string, It took me about 3 years to properly re-immerse myself into the instrument. It wasn’t easy, but I think that when I did re-emerge, I was a better musician and more tasteful player than before.

But what goes around comes around, I’ve spent much of the last 5 years of my life in bands and although brimming with musical ideas, my motiviation to do something beyond playing for my own pleasure is simply not there at this moment in time. This is actually more liberating than it sounds, however my biggest fear is reaching a point where I’ve lost ground in both ability and musicality. No one likes to go backwards when they stand still do they?

In light of both wanting to do something different and realising at the same time that I lack motivation to do in the first place. I think its a good strategy to keep myself involved in a more relaxed way. So a small recording project of a friends has allowed me to keep playing and be reasonably creative without the pressures of gigging, audiences, soundchecks, promoters, other bands and all the other annoyances of being a performing musician.

The other issue of this downtime is taking a closer look at my rig. Which in terms of amps & pedals has been largely unchanged since 2002.

I bought a Gibson SG earlier in the year and I have fallen back in love with the thick syrupy sound of humbuckers on a mahogany set neck guitar. In my friends recording project I’m running out of a Sansamp pedal into a Mac, its simple, quick and sounds ok for now.

If I were to gig again I don’t know what I’d use. The amp & pedalboard stand idly in a corner of the room. There are things I’d refine and things I’d change, but thats a set of decisions to be made another time.

Of late I’ve been taking many trips down memory lane back to the 80’s to be precise, my formative years as a guitarist and the decade that like it or not shaped me.

My own personal 80’s influences can be neatly divided into 3 categories

The Texturalists: Will Sergant, John McGeoch,The Edge, Jamie West-Oram, Robert Smith, Johnny Marr – Non of these guys were known for soloing,but they created atmosphere and dynamics with interesting ideas and use of effects,with Marr and sergant alternative tunings were often applied, with McGeoch just really mad ideas. They taught me lots about applying the guitar in a group situation and about using my imagination.

The Shredders: Vivian Campbell,Jake E Lee,Gary Moore,Rhandy Rhoads, George Lynch, John Sykes

A lot of fans of the first group of guitarists would probably be horrified that someone who owns a Smiths album would listen to someone like George Lynch, but thats just silly. Music is a broad church and a real player will see the good in most things. In particular this later group taught me about playing with fire and passion and also the fact that its actually quite useful to know your scales and modes. They also gave me something to aim for technically.

The in betweeners: Alex Lifeson, Reeves Gabriels – These guys could do both equally well and frequently did.

The hardware of the 80’s was in the main Stratocaster type guitars, not by Fender you understand. But by makers who in many cases started out putting together high quality components for the proffessional user like Schecter,Charvel/Jackson, Tom Anderson, Suhr, Buddy Blaze etc. The top selling guitar in North America from the mid-late 80’s was Kramer, followed by Ibanez with its high performance RG guitars. Every guitar was much the same, the usual components were

Basswood Body: Cheap, tonally neutral and had little grain so applying a mad paintjob to it was easy
22 fret neck with Jumbo frets
Floyd Rose locking Tremelo System or sometimes a Kahler
2 single coils & 1 Humbucking pickup
Flashy Paintjob

Now I’ve been thinking about a Stratocaster for a while and I’ve yet to find a guitar that really has everything I like, which has annoyed me. Back in the late 70’s many guitarists felt the same and thus the replacement part industry was born, which then gave way to the 80’s definitive guitar, the Superstrat, and of course the biggest names who made those guitars. Charvel/Jackson, Hamer, Ibanez,Schecter,Kramer, Valley Arts etc etc.

Of course Fashions changed and with Fenders reversal in fortunes comes the Irony that they now own Charvel/Jackson as well as Hamer as part of the massive FMIC group. Gibson own Kramer, Valley arts and Steinberger.

Now I’ve been thinking that as I cant find my ideal Strat, perhaps the time has come to put one together, take a used unloved guitar with a good neck and body and add the rest myself??

Hmm

Watch this Space.

Well its that time again, the smell of the crowds and the roar of a Ginsters pasty on the Motorway services at 3am.

Our first stop was the Lionheart Brothers gig at the Nottingham Bodega Social in January. Overall it was ok, but it didnt help that we had to set up on top of their backline, so I spent 30 minutes with a Marshall stack up my arse. It so close to me that I could feel it rather than hear it.

Overall things went ok, but it was shaky. We ended the set with a new song, which I’m not against, but it did seem a bit risky. The Christmas break had meant we needed to polish up a bit but the audience seemed bigger at the end of the set than at the beginning so that was something.

Next stop was Hoxton Bar & Kitchen to support Nottingham legends Six.By Seven. Unfortunately my amp had recently been faulty & allthough repaired the previos day….. a problem with noisy FX loops appeared in Soundcheck and I was thus forced to use our HoS backup rig consisting of my Sansamp TriAC preamp pedal through our singers old 1978 Marshall JMP head. The Sansamp is great, but it is reactive to the peculiarities of the amp your putting it through. Distortion was Ok, but the clean sounds just seemd too toppy and lifeless. As we’d arrived horribly late due to traffic, our soundcheck was a panic and…

Deprived of my usual tonal comforts I just played the gig as best as I could, but it wasn’t enjoyable for me. The SixbySeven audience was polite enough, but you could tell we werent really their cup of tea. We also decided to play 2 new songs, which was a risk too far. They seemed to love the first song and the last 2, the bit in the middle??

Then our next stop 2 weeks later was the Bull & Gate in Londons Kentish town. This time we were opening for Brazillian shoegazers Wry, who decided to have the longest soundcheck in the history of man. We even went out for dinner & came back and they were only just setting up the other support bands backline. As I sipped my Guinness & black I began to worry.

However my fears were unfounded, the gig went great, we’d been sensible and pulled back to playing our normal set with added discipline and aplomb. The one new song we played went down great and I even enjoyed playing the one song in the set I dont usually enjoy.

Compared to 2007, my 2008 rig remains unchanged, save for the exra delay line, A TC Electronics ND-1 Novadelay is being used for synchronous delays in “Wish It Away” and to add exta atmospherics in our new tunes.

I still havent forgotten about the £500 Stratocaster challenge, I’ll post an update soon.

Peace Out