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Its been buzzing on the Guitarist magazine forums of late, due to a post concerning the new distribution arrangements of Gibson guitars. One posting was even taken down in whole by the moderators on there, so its clear that even the bods at Future publishing are scared of offending the US behemoth.

Gibsons mighty name had been in the shit in the 1980’s when basically a decline in quality coupled with them being out of fashion meant that flash bolt on neck widdle machines by the likes of Charvel/Jackson/Ibanez/Kramer ruled the roost. In the early 1980’s a Les Paul was as desirable as Herpes and not quite as freely available. I remember no one really stocking new ones in the 1980’s, especially outside of big cities.

But what goes around comes around & since the arrival of Slash on the guitar scene in 1987 and the arrival of new owner Henry Juszkiewicz at Gibson in 1988. Gibsons decline in fortunes since the 1980’s has been reversed in some style. Like Fender they are a mighty global concern owning and eating up their once nemisis’ of the 80’s Kramer, Steinberger, and Valley Arts

However unlike Fender who had brought in new managers and efficient Japanese style quality control to their American factorys. I’d say Gibson were just lucky that they came back into fashion and had to do nothing Quality Control wise and like all good global companies they have expanded their range of brands at every price point.

However from April longstanding UK distributor Rosetti will no longer be handling Gibson’s brands. Instead this falls unto the hands of Gibson Europe. The biggest change is how they supply guitars to stores and from what I can gather they’ve imposed a few restrictions that may contravene EU competiton laws as well as pretty much write off the chance of any smaller retailers selling Gibson guitars in general. According to a very nice chap on the Guitarist forums the following rules will now apply:

1:In order for a chain store to continue selling Gibsons they have to have £75,000 worth of Gibsons in each shop at all times.

2: This must make up 50% of their wall space.

As an example if Soundcontrol with 25 stores wanted to sell Gibson brand guitars, the total MINIMUM stock of Gibson product they must have at all times is £1,000,000 worth!

3: Gibson products must represent 20% of their turnover!!!

The numbers are scary, but I also imagine this will make Gibsons own highly unrealistic and excessive “Manafacturers Suggested Retail Price” a grim reality once and for all.
For the last 6 years the dealers have managed to give us the sub £1000 Les Paul Classic, wheras the MSRP is £1749 last time I looked, and we’ve got used to a Les Paul Standard being nearer £1500 rather than the £2000 it is on Rosetti’s books.

However I suspect those days are now gone, which will be a big blow to the bulk buyers such as Coda Music and Peter Cook’s guitar world who’ve always managed to price guitars way below some of the loftier chain stores.

However I suspect Gibsons own tactics to generate sales on their terms will backfire on them in the long run. The biggest winners will be people selling used Gibsons, but also the grey import market will thrive and once it does its impossible for the manafacturer to control,however they scare the retailers.

For example, despite a forced ban by Fender on sales of their Japanese made guitars to retail customers outside Japan (they even have a warning label on the Ishibashi website). A quick study of Ebay today found 52 new stock Japanese Fenders available & all at sensible prices. In addition there are numerous grey importers on the web who will furnish you with your J-Craft fender at an excellent price. Some are even keeping larger stocks of the more desirable models such as the Japanese Clapton Strat and Yngwie Malmsteen guitars.

In addition, with the global credit crunch looming, who are Gibson trying to kid? The Dad who wants to buy his kid the £380 Epiphone Les Paul, will probably baulk at it being £500 all of a sudden and simply go for one of the excellent Trev Wilkinson ‘Vintage’ brand guitars or god forbid a Korean Tokai. Which will all doubtless be better made and really all this scary stuff is about that at the end of the day.

Given that they now have a disclaimer on the back pages of their catalogs proclaiming that as Gibson guitars are handmade, their will be production inconsistencies from model to model. Perhaps Henry Juszkiewicz, the investment banker who owns Gibson ought to cease this madness & pull his fucking finger out and just make better guitars!

If the modern Les Paul was as consistent and as well made as the Yamaha SG1000 I recently bought perhaps I wouldnt haver sold my Les Paul in the first place, after all theres no cop out on the back of their catalog about production inconsistancies eh Henry ???

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

Well well

Finally, and although a year behind schedule, today see’s the release of my bands debut album Comfort in Fear. Recorded in 2006, this album was originally planned to hit the shelves in April 2007, but a few label issues has meant it coming out nearly a year later.

Its a sigh of relief for the guys and myself to see it on iTunes at last, but also a sign of how hard it is to be an independant musician now.

In December last year we sent out our promo copies to the media via a respected PR agent. We’ve had some good reviews (Rock Sound) and some indifferent (The Fly). Buts whats interesting is by giving journalists a sneak peak of the record, it leaked onto the internet several weeks before its release date. Mainly on Russian MP3 sites.

Looking on Last FM, I can see that we have gained many new listeners through file sharing. In a way its a bonus and something that previously never would have happened.

For that I’m grateful, but at the same time I wonder how all these people with 400GB of music on their hard drives actually take in the music? Does it stay with them longer than a week, or is it merely a brief entertainment for a have now generation, who will soon revert to collective attention deficit disorder and be downloading the next new thing tomorrow.

Time will tell, so far the amount of London gigs has doubled over last year and we’ve had some pretty impressive support slots offered. Meanwhile we have the itch to create new music and to also play it live, whilst still trying to remain enthusiastic about 11 songs that we wrote and recorded ages ago.

Its a tightrope alright. But despite the difficulties its our album and thinking back to my past life 10 years ago, when I’d pretty much given up playing the guitar and never imagined recording or playing in a band again. It feels like a pretty substancial milestone and within that I feel a sense of personal victory.

BBC Radio 2 have gone and made an excellent documentary about one of my all time guitar heroes. Former Magazine/Banshees/PIL guitarist John McGeoch.

McGeoch was the credible gunslinger of post punk and his influence can be heard in the playing of guitarists as diverse as Steve Stevens/John Frusciante/The Edge/Jonny Marr etc etc. He
influenced much of my own style with his work on Magazines The Correct use of Soap and the Banshees Ju Ju Albums.

His main instrument of Choice was the ultra Modernist Yamaha SG1000, combined with Marshall JCM & Roland combos, he also loved kicking in an MXR Flanger and digital delay from time to time.

McGeoch died in 2004, his widow and daughter survive him.

It is ironic that now only years after his death he is being celebrated

Listen to it here

I was reading one of those free “Reverb” magazines that you get from Soundcontrol on a train today. When my eye was cast towards the Myspace/PRS guitars advertising campaign.

For those of you who havent seen this. In the United Kingdom PRS are asking guitarists to send in their pics and their bands myspace urls, the best of which will be put in PRS adverts across music media throughout 2007 and into 2008. From the looks of it lots of guitarists have responded to this.

Now you could argue that this is a good thing, PRS giving exposure to new bands/players etc… however I’m afraid its worked in reverse for me.

When I look at that ad, I see 2 types of guitarist

1: Young Lad in a metal band about 14 with his SE Tremonti or Santana pulling his best lead guitarists face, photo taken by mum/dad/care giver. Awwwww Bless him…..at least he’s not out on street corners kicking working class fathers to death.

2: The other sort of contender is older…wiser and erm…. what I’d call…er…theres no easy way to say this….

Muso Wanker!

Yes thats right, you know, the sort of guy who comes in with his band at your local 3-4 band indie night, tries to intimidate every other guitarist on the bill. Has top notch gear and at least 2 PRS guitars (one for spare right?). One of the band members will work in a music shop and the singer will be barechested onstage, the singer and bassist are usually the ones that have long hair, I dont know why…..it just is. They always take years to soundcheck too.

He will scoff at your guitar and remind you that he’s carrying 4 grands plus woth of guitars with him, he will not share amps or cabs and try and maintain a disctinct sense of superiority to any guitarist on the bill, even if they are better than him. He may walk up to your pedalboard…and sniff at it in a dismissive fashion. If he owns a distortion pedal it will always be a Keeley modified one.

Sounding familiar yet?????

The band will have usually managed a decent following, and can usually play, but musically will always be the kind of derivative sub Reef/Stereophonics type “Classic Rock”. Y’know that sort of crap that almost became fashionable after the Darkness first got famous. For this reason alone, they will never become bigger than local heroes to their mates in the local bars and usually struggle on the wider toilet circuit. They will also be angry at promoters as they usually bring a crowd and feel they are not respected and cast aside by the promoter giving attention to more….esoteric fayre.

These guys….theres one in every town, the PRS ad actually confirms that for us. Theres actually 2 or 3 in my town. I’ve seen their bands and….well…..its not pretty. PRS guitars are very very expensive in the UK, people used to call them “Dentists guitars” as it was only the well heeled middle class hobby player who could afford them. Now this advert doesnt have any of those guys in, instead we get much worse.

In a way this ad campaign has put me off PRS guitars. After my dissapointment at my Gibson Les Pauls performance. I’d been impressed with my nephews CE22 and then missing a set neck guitar with a pretty maple top. I was seriously considering a McCarty as a potential purchase in late 2008. However I feel that if I turned up at a gig with a PRS….people might think I’m y’know……one of them!

Back to the drawing board I’m afraid. Ooooooh the power of advertising!