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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!

My apologies for not posting recently, however I have been busy gigging around the UK this month. Normally I would gig about once a month rather than 5 times. I’ve enjoyed the experience nonetheless & if anything it has improved both my playing and that of the band. Generally the gigs have gone well, the highlights and lowlights include:

• Watching the drummer and bassist  perform an “audit” of the quantities of booze (mainly cheap Polish Lager) in the tour van.
• Seeing the huge amount of kids walking around with big scary dogs in Brixton
• Playing an entire gig without being able to hear the echo going through the FX loop.
• Playing an entire set where the singers guitar rig was either inaudible or the loudest thing on stage.

This increased schedule has forced me to upgrade some basic peices of my rig.

First off is the pedalboard: In recent years this has been a sheet of plywood covered in gaffa tape, with the pedals bonded down with cable ties. However my pedals have been taking somewhat of a battering in recent times, so I was on the lookout for a decent flightcase style board with room for expansion, as I’m planning an extra delay unit as well as a Digitech Whammy & possibly a decent universal power supply when funds allow.

After some digging around I came across the rather excellent RockCase series by Warwick. This beast cost about £60 via mail order and although I had to suffer DHL loosing it for over a week, the unit itself is fabulously made and the supplied velcro pads hold the pedals down nicely.

Second up was cables, I bought a new set for the guitar to amp etc as well as patch leads, plus a speaker cable, all from Planet Waves. These feature secure 8 compression springs on the jack to allow a firm bond to the socket for a super firm fit and the audio quality seems to have improved no end.

Lastly I decided to upgrade my Distortion device. I have been using a Boss SD-1 for about the last 6 years and used it to boost the crunch channel of the Marshall TSL60.

While it works well in a Classic Rock kinda way,I was still struggling to get a nice lift above the rest of the band during solo’s, so I decided to use it through the cean channel. I got the jump in volume but needed something with a more full bodied gain and bite. After several unsuccsessful attempts to buy an old mark 1 Marshall Guv’nor, I popped into Fould’s in Derby and had a peruse at their pedal selection. Their Guitar manager Dan did me a deal on a Pro Co RAT 2. These evergreen classics are used by such artists as varied as Graham Coxon and Dave Gilmour and I must say its improved my soloing tone.

Back in 1990, I was a young whippersnapper playing about 25+ gigs a year in a rather godawful 80′s influenced band. Plying our then outdated 80′s influenced pop/rock (think Duran Duran/INXS) across the UK toilet circuit. At this rather fragile time in my youth I encountered eating Kebabs for breakfast, breakdowns on the A61 & the kind of sexual practices worthy of the privatised bus industry, either they all came at once or nothing for days, weeks even I also learnt that ladies toilets are generally in a better state than the mens, the importance of hairspray and the use of physical violence as a negotiation strategy.

Along the way, my main guitar was a lipstick metallic red Ibanez RG560, very similar to the guitar in the photo,apart from mine was a later RG and had a colour matched headstock. I had bought it in 1990 as a belated 21st birthday present from my mother. I originally wanted a black one, but instead had this beauty. The guitar and I both had some interesting experiences in the coming years.

Ibanez were a big but medium range guitar maker back in the early 80′s. One of the Japanese ’big three’ along with Yamaha & Aria. They made high quality guitars at affordable prices, but in the desirability stakes American guitars were still king.

However they took a leap of faith in 1987 when they went all upmarket with the RG range, originally comprising the 7 series with Di Marzio designed ‘IBZ’ pickups and sharktooth inlays, then the scaled down 5 series, dot inlays, ordinary ‘stock’ pickups.

The other two numbers in the model denoted pickup combinations, the 550 had HSH with a scratchplate the 60 SSH ala a superstrat and the 70 HSH without a scratchplate. There was also the USRG, a range of Custom shop instruments assembled in LA from Japanese parts.Later on there were RG2XX & 4XX madein  Korea. Then by the late 90′s Ibanez went all crazy with the numberings and only the ‘Prestige’ guitars were built in Japan.

Despite previous guitars from Jackson/Charvel, Kramer & the like. Ibanez’s Rich Lasner managed to court a young Steve Vai and produce the JEM series guitars just as he had broken through into the mainstream playing guitar for Dave Lee Roth. This sharp move coupled with Ibanez really going after the emerging late 80′s Rock Guitarists, who as endorsers were low on riffs,but high on speed and dexterity(Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Vinnie Moore etc) ensured massive sales and a new found desirability that other Japanese guitar makers desperately tried to emulate.

Essentially the RG is an ultra upspecked high performance Stratocaster,with extended cutaways and an ultra fast wide thin ‘Wizard’ neck. The 24 ultra jumbo frets meant that the neck was built for widdling & pretty soon they became the pre eminant guitar of the late 80′s rock/metal fraternity. Usurping their American Rivals, the headstock design and that logo, were probably the first time from an asthetic standpoint that a Superstrat design really came into its own as a guitar identity.

My ownership experience of the Ibanez was very good. Tonally the Basswood body (lightweight, cheap and easy to apply mad paintjobs too) meant it was never going to challenge a Strat or Tele for tonal richness, but it was built like a tank, very versatile, and, as I remember never went out of tune. The Edge tremelo is probably the best of the Floyd Rose derivatives out there and the snap in arm assembly was hassle free. I reckon I played around 100+ gigs with mine and although well maintained, it never let me down. I bought a second RG560 in 1993, but sold it on to a guy in a thrash band a year later. The 80′s band soon fell apart and I moved on, and so did music, Grunge killed not only the poodle rockers but their tools as well. Sales of RG’s nosedived until the advent of Nu Metal as guitarists sold them on to buy more traditional fayre.

But fashion is a fickle thing…

In a wave of Nostalgia I notice Ibanez have just announced the RG550MXX 20th anniversary reissue.

Priced at about $900 in the US. These guitars made me chuckle and go all warm & rosy inside. The Desert Sun Yellow and Flame Red finishes are back.

However beyond Ibanez’s marketing hype its worth noting that these guitars are not strict reproductions of the original 80′s Classics. My RG had a one peice rock maple neck with a scarf jointed headstock, not a 5 peice laminate!!! also the Edge tremelo is one of the flashier new ones.

Personally I grew to find my original RG too garish and had it stripped to a natrual blue stain with a clear finish, at the time I wanted it to look a bit like a Tom Anderson, but instead it looked naff. I sold this guitar on Ebay several years ago, having grown out of it both in feel, tone and looks.

However sometimes I miss it. I cut my teeth as a gigging guitarist and performer on an RG. I imagine this is the case for a fair amount of players no hitting their late 30′s. So maybe this reissue is well timed.

So if a wave of nostalgia has taken you and you don’t fancy shelling out. There are plenty of originals on Ebay. Your main worry with this type of guitar is hardware. All the allen key screws on the locking nut & trem system, if they are locked too tightly they break. There are also a few RG’s that have had various ill advised user modifications that could well have destroyed other areas. The downtuning craze of the early 2000′s may have hit some of these instruments hard as there owners restrung them with stupidly heavy strings and forgot too adjust the truss rod/bridge in the process.

I’ve also seen hardware worn away or chewed up to the point that you need to replace every peice of it and that will be costly, so please buyer beware. Always try out the guitar if you can etc etc.

Theres also the Ibanez talk forum , JEMSite and countless discussion forums, to further whet your appetite. 

Just don’t forget your hairspray now

Buy an Ibanez RG550 Reissue from zZounds.com!

Buy the Marshall JVM410 Head at zZounds.com – click here

Well I’ve finally tried a JVM410 head so here goes….

Overall the construction is the usual Marshall….birch ply cab, steel chassis, black tolex. Marshall have abandoned the slimline plastic vents and gone back to the JCM800/900 style top vent.

The back panel has both a serial & parrallel FX loops, the parrallel has a level control and the speaker connectors actually have a guide to how to connect regarding ohm..age and the like, so the chances of blowing up the head through misconnection are pretty much nil.

The controls are remisniscent of a TSL100, however the mode buttons do look a bit plasticy & naff, other than that minor point, it looks like it means business.

The big plus of this 4 channel multi mode head, is its user interface. Someone at Marshall has clearly realised that although theres a generation who’ve grown up on multi FX and line 6 pods, many guitarists will be intimidated by an amp head with 28 controls on its front panel.So everything is very simple to use. The fact its programmable means it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be

By pressing the 1st button on the 6 function footswitch you can access channel ones clean sound, tap it again and it goes to amber mode, which provides a nice tight clean which was almost Fender twinish, tap again and in red mode theirs a nice almost breaking up type clean. Kinda country ish. Its possible to go through the first four buttons this way and access each channel and each mode, as well as solo boost and reverb.
The test guitar, a burstbucker equipped Les Paul gave all the right noises on the Crunch channel. The usual ‘Classic’ Rock type sounds are all there, But if anything I thought they were a bit subdued.

OD1 is probably the best channel as far as distortion goes, using the modes I was able to get some pretty good sounds, it was like a TSL only slightly more refined as regarding the articulation of individual notes, especially at the lower end. Big riffs sounded big and well defined. Amber mode on OD1 was superb. A big modern hi gain crunch with plenty of low end definition. All the Tool/Deftones type sounds are here.

OD2 Would be good for soloing, personally I found it way over gained for riffing, but I imagine if Metal’s your thing then you’d spend all day on this channel. But tonally it was more kinda Randall-ish, more transistorised sounding. I guess if your into Hatebreed/Pantera et al this channel is for you.

The footswitch interacts with all the front panel controls, so its possible to set them up anyway you wish, in addition the dual master volumes are a godsend, beside solo boosts I think the ability to raise your channel volume mid song at a gig a realistic benefit for sure. The footswitch’s functionality means you could have the whole gig programmed up on it. Or if you’ve rack mounted FX or a midi compatible multi effect. You could really go to town, it would be like having a JMP-1 in a power amp. The other big plus is by using a 1/4″ jack cable to link the footswitch to the amp, if it does fail its quickly replaceable. As someone who’s had a few failiures with the TSL’s 5 way switch, this feature is long overdue.

Instead of the JCM2000′s scoop and deep switches we get the mosfet powered resonance control from the Mode 4, using this and the prescence controls along with each channels 3 band EQ, I was able to get a fairly wide range of tones. No it doesn’t sound like a Boogie, but the whole point is that it sounds like a Marshall.

The accutronics reverb of earlier Marshalls has been replaced by a digital plate. This is actually sensible as it reduced weight and does not make a rattling noise when the amp is in the back of a car/van. I also imagine it assists in keeping the retail price down as well.

My overall impression is of a good solid working mans valve head, essentially this is a refined TSL. My only criticism is the front panel, its too busy, I think if Marshall had gone for one set of global programmable gain-bass-mid-treble-channel volume controls like the H & K Switchblade, then this amp would only have around half the control knobs and retain all of the functions. Somehow too many buttons don’t go with a Marshall in my humble opinion.

However the price is the real Killer, the RRP of £899 translates to £750-879 in the real world. The only amp that comes anywhere close in specification at this price is the H&K switchblade although thats not as good for ‘Classic rock’ type tones and won’t hold its residual value quite as well.

Overall this is an impressive package, the tones alone are good, but the way the JVM interacts with the user is worth the price of admission alone.

Buy the Marshall JVM410 Head at zZounds.com - click here