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Now even though I play guitar in a band associated with Shoegazing it may suprise you I hardly use any effects…..thats right, a wah wah for a bit of tone shaping, a Pro Co Rat II for solo’s and a bit of echo and thats it for me…..as many a Gourmet Chef would only use a few simple ingredients to cook with, in order to preserve the flavour of meat or fish. I follow suit and let the tone come from my fingers and the amp. Some guitarists I know sprinkle FX everywhere like Domino Pizza Chefs going mad…piling on dollops of Chorus/Flange and phasing to the point you can hardly hear the original note…..good luck to em, but its not for me.

However I do like a good Echo unit.

Probably the most successful FX pedal of the last decade has been the Line 6 DL-4 Delay Modeller. For around £200.00 you got a great delay with a myriad of amazing echoes…………

Now I don’t buy into the idea that modelling works and I don’t think for a minute that the modelled tones of the Line 6 sound remotely like those of a Boss DD-3, Roland Space Echo or EHX Memory Man plus or anything else it claims to emulate.

However it doesn’t matter, the sounds themselves are very useable and the DL-4 has quickly found itself the mainstay of many a touring professional or weekend warriors pedalboard. I bought one myself in 2000 and aside from the tap/tempo button falling off somewhere outside the Buffalo Bar in Islington, ownership has generally been a hassle free experience.

Now recently I’ve found myself needing another delay unit as the nature of my bands music changes and we add to and consolidate the sound. I did try a Marshall Echohead a while back, which is amazing and incredibly cheaply priced, but it seemed a bit “classic rock” maybe.

I then bought a Boss-DD3 off Ebay last year,but it had a fault and I got a refund. It was 50 quid used and seemed ok. But heres my beef…..

Roland have just released the “Space Echo” as a COSM modelling pedal. It probably won’t sound like an Original RE-201 or 301 Space Echo but I bet it’ll be useable and have a range of delays to get you excited, yet there like £120.00 excluding mains adaptor and thats a lot of pedal for the money.

Boss DD-3’s are around £84 new. So for less than £40 more your getting twice the functionality and twice the pedal. It seems mad. Out in retail land there are loads of cheap affordable and excellent didgital delay units that all outspec the DD-3 in a heartbeat. Line 6, Digitech,Marshall, Yamaha etc….all have a delay pedal under or around £100…..so do people still actually buy the DD-3???? If so………….. Why???

I know its an evergreen classic used on many a hit record, but surely the time has come for Roland to make it really cheap like they have with the SD-1 Super Overdrive. Come on Roland, Time marches on…you make it in China now to save money…so bring the price down;)

As I’m going to be moving soon I’ve decided to have a cull of the 300+ guitar magazines sitting on my bookcase at any one time. This has been most interesting as I’ve trawled through the lot of them deciding what to keep and what to send for recycling. I’ve unearthed some interesting facts I thought I’d share.

1: Tom Morello only has one pose for magazine covers…..it’s true!!! He’s always staring at you, pointing his fingers manically toward you as though he’s bursting out of the Magazine like some sort of twisted General Kitchener, whether its on the cover of Guitarist, Total Guitar, Guitar World or GuitarPlayer he’s always giving this self conscious pose and it upsets me, he’s been to Harvard for fucks sake, don’t they teach you how to pose for magazine covers here, doesn’t he think we’ll notice…

2: Gary Moore: Ha ha poor sod, where there was once only brilliance……now….. he’s like the senile aunt of the guitar always putting his big foot in his mouth….one minute he’s saying he’s back to Rock, then the next minute he’s slagging Rock off and saying how he’s a proper bluesman, even though back in the 60’s he bought a Gibson Les Paul off a person who at the time was starting to display signs of a mental illness and then made £399,781.00 of profit from selling said guitar 30 years later. Then he threatened to sue the bloke who bought it off him….. Oh how my heart bleeds for you Gary! Your as much a bluesman as I am a Zen Buddhist in drag.

In last months Guitarist mag Gary said that someone his age shouldn’t be making Rock music anymore. Funnily enough in that same issue the album of the month was ‘Snakes & Arrows’ by Rush featuring the Rock guitar work of a certain 54 year old Alex Lifeson. Good old Alex just keeps on going and his credibility and influence seems to grow more each year, unlike a certain Mr Moore. I do wonder what Alex Lifeson, Dave Gilmour, Steve Lukather, Neil Schon, Michael Schenker, John Sykes, Edward Van Halen and the other members of perhaps the greatest generation of Rock guitarists make of such fucking stupid statements. Do they care??

3: Thin Lizzy, or whats left of them. It seems if Guitarist magazine is an article short, they will always always wheel out Scott Gorham…..the first 3 or 4 times this was interesting…..now it is fucking boring…. I know about Phil, the drinking, the fighting, the smack habits….how Scott stopped playing his Les Paul in the 80’s and now usues a Strat and how his Marshalls are modified by a guy in Chandlers…..I’ve read the same interview in different magazines so often in the last decade…..its commited to my memory forever…..this same rule applies to Lambchop and Brian May. Has anyone in future publishing got more than 10 numbers in their phonebook?

4: Gibson guitar reviews - Its amazing how the reviews text will always question the general cosmetic fit and finish of every guitar reviewed……yet they will always get high amounts of stars saying that even though the binding is falling off the neck and its 3 grand, it really is a bargain!!!! Honest Guv….

5: Oasis transcriptions……..why would anyone need any help learning such simplistic and unadventurous material, unless they were…..well…..thick. Can’t Guitarist Mag do a “special needs” edition one month to placate these poor desperate souls and give proper transcriptions the rest of the year?

At the moment I’m on a search for a nice cheap spare guitar, something that can get battered in the back of a van, fall off stage and be used as a weapon on drunken hecklers. y’know a good all rounder.

While my Kotzen Tele continues to be the only guitar I use live. I’m not enjoying bringing along a £1000+ of Les Paul as a spare. To be frank, its been scaring the shit out of me.

So in my usual saturday morning hangover time wander around the shops, I stumbled upon one of the new Squier Tele’s. These are now made in commerce friendly but very politically dubious Indonesia, a country not known for its electric guitar building. However the build quality is a real eye opener. I was expecting it to be as shocking as their human rights record. Boy was I wrong.

The modernish “C” shaped neck felt pretty good, as good as anything Fenders Mexican plant has churned out recently. Hardware is pretty basic, but good for the price. Electronics are 2 Duncan Designed P90’s with dual volumes and tone controls.

The biggest suprise is the tone,the P90 type pickups were fruity and full, not the usual cheapo guitar pickups. Much as I love the PRS SE range I know I’d have to gut the electronics in order to make it work onstage. Not so here, think Townsend at Woodstock and your almost there, I got some great rasping chords and chiming arpeggio’s but the single coils also gave me some nice modern filthy riffs on the shops Marshall JCM with equal aplomb. Clean or dirty this felt like a £500 guitar and retailing at around £220 ish thats pretty impressive.

My verdict…………… its a great sounding and playing guitar. I almost got my wallet out save for one or two tiny issues…….

1)The weight! It was like having Beth Ditto after a good feed bouncing up and down on my knee for 20 minutes, even with a guitar strap on it was as heavy as a Les Paul if not heavier. My Kotzen Tele is mediumweight for a Tele, but this is a real bruiser of a guitar.

The wood used is supposedly Agathis a locally sourced wood Fender have used before on their De Armond range of cheap guitars a few years ago. Its supposed to be tonally a bit like Mahogany, but felt more like Limestone…..Ouch. I wondered if the nice indonesians were making guitars out of all the surplus weapons of torture and oppression the British government had sold them???? (political swipe there kids)

My recomendation is yes buy this guitar but join a Gym first or have a Chiropractor on standby. You’ll be singing the blues alright when you pop your back at the Dog & Duck on a friday. My second issue is…

 2) if your an ethical consumer into fairtrade coffee and banana’s and I always see sensitive indie kids doing that kinda thing, maybe subscribe to Amnesty International and have a long think about how this great playing and sounding guitar only cost £200???

Ahhh the London Guitar Show 2007, overcrowded, warm beer, shit food….Guitars….on show…. to try…??????

Where was Fender……?…..Gibsons display was hidden away on a tourbus via invitation only WTF? Lots of signs on guitars saying “Do Not Touch” “Achtung” and “Ovens this way” (that last bit was a joke, a sick one maybe but…).

Lets rewind back 20 years, your humble scribe is 17 working in a supermarket stacking shelves trying to shag a dental nurse called Donna and messing up his A Levels. His main axe is a plywood bodied Kramer Striker 300st complete with non locking Floyd Rose. He has no money save for his supermarket wages…… 

But by golly I used to go to the public days at the British Music Fair and play…..everything, because they wanted me to try everything. Ibanez, ESP’s that cost more than a months salary now….Kramers, Gibson’s Aria’s Yamaha’s etc etc. It was one big freakin sweetshop of Axe’s and the trade people were happy cos even though I was skint, they saw me as an investment, they knew one day I’d come back to them and buy some of those lovely guitars and amps and guess what ….I did.

But now in a climate where guitar sales are bigger than ever, the big guitar companies are too bloody measily to write some off as demo models and win over the british public.

Back in the 80’s Peter Cook’s used to sell all the BMF ex demo stock at knock down prices the week after the show.

Some stands got it right. Marshall had everything on display and gave out goodiebags and stickers and posters and allsorts. I saw Victoria Marshall manning the stands and that bloke who does the factory tour on the Merch stand. God bless em, I remember Jim Marshall signing me a poster 20 years ago and you know, if I add it up, I’ve probably spent £5 grand with them over the years. They had my brand loyalty sorted before I could even afford to buy one, all for the price of a few posters and the fact I could twiddle the knobs of a Jubilee 2558.

 But shame on you Fender,shame on you Gibson. You are starting to come across like nasty corporate types and for me that will mean that I’ll be less likely to by new guitars in future and just seek out Fender Japan grey imports and used Gibsons, or even maybe a PRS.

To be fair PRS got it right too. You could play most of the guitars and they only stopped you touching stuff they’d sold or the really silly priced items, which is fair enough. The Singlecut trem Satin I played was mighty resonant and quite yummy. The smaller firms also let you get hands on with their kit which was ironic as I bet the likes of Martyn Booth’s margins are a lot smaller than Gibson and the like.

But I’m not convinced by the London Guitar Show and less convinced by the antics of the big two. Fender were on their knees in 1985 because they forgot who the customer was….it could easily happen again. Take heed.

 Going down………………..

Anyone who’s been with this blog since its inception in September 2006 will have remembered an article on Vintage and Rare and about my abject shock of the stupid prices being asked for late 1970’s Fender Strats.

Well it seems that some people are finally seeing sense, after having a quick look on Vintage and Rare’s website today (I’m on standby at work and I’m bored). I notice their 79′ Antigua Strat has now dropped down from £1395.00 to £1295.00…. thats -£100 in the last 6 months. Not exactly a great advert for 70’s Fenders as investments eh? Guitarist Magazine did a Vintage suppliment a couple of months ago where various Denmark Street characters collectively said prices were gonna keep on going up and up and…..Funny that. I wonder if house prices will follow suit?

But lets face it, they might be able to bullshit a few Floppy haired careerist indie kids who went to music school on a ‘Vocational rock guitarist NVQ level 4′ or whatever rubbish it is called these days. These poor souls are in the shop because African Film studies with Politics was full at Bournemouth, and know no better. But any guitarist either over 30 or worth his salt will spot these guitars as the potential pieces of firewood they are, or if wanting 70’s retro looks will just buy a Japanese reissue, or even one of the new Highway 1′ series Strats

My other shock looking at their site is how little the stock has changed in the last 6 months since my last posting. I’m aware a large amount of their business will be with known private collectors & Rockstars/roadies and probably done by word of mouth or telephone call. But surely having large amounts of the same guitars sitting in your shop for 6 whole months at a time, hardly sends out a sign that business is good. It also sends out the sign that there are less new people coming to the market as potential collectors, if thats not a sign of impending recession, then I don’t know what is!