Jackson Demmelition King V Electric Guitar

Phil Demmel of Machine Head recently teamed with Jackson Guitars and integrated an element of masochism to conceive a dangerous new breed. Demmel’s legendary riffs smash us over the head like an annihilated sledgehammer, slaying our eardrums for a diabolic revelation, knocking out our teeth from an infuriated mosh pit…allowing us to stumble home with a grin plastered on our toothless bloodied face. Would it be sweet if you could abuse your audience like that? Guess what, you can. Read more

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Roger Mayer Octavia Harmonic Distortion

Roger Mayer is known as the guy who built pedals for Jimi Hendrix, and Octavia is the creation perhaps best associated with his name. There’s a gleeful chaos to the Octavia’s circuit that no well adjusted microchip can match. You can hear it prominently on Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” solo—a nasal, metallic tone that adds a harmonic one octave above the note played.

The Octavia is housed in a rocket shaped pedal of heavy cast metal. There are no identifying graphics or LED status light on the top surface, but a look at the bottom plate identifies the input and output jacks and volume and drive controls. Inside, the circuit board is small, simple and structurally isolated from the foot switch, jacks, and controls.

Playing the Octavia with a Strat through the Marshall, it was easy enough to call up the classic “Purple Haze” sound. But limiting yourself to this one trick would be a waste of the Octavia’s endowments. This pedal revels in the sound of a circuit in agony. With the drive maxed out, the Octavia approximates the cheesiest and most sought after fuzz boxes of the 60s, with a static ridden snarl that transforms wide, consonant intervals into a bottom heavy power chords and closer voicings into raspy maladjusted power tools. Decreasing the drive brings out the Octavia’s penchant for the dynamic exaggeration, a strong pick attack produces manic crackling blats while a softer touch elicits a muted mumble, all while resonating with the metallic clang of ring modulation.

I hesitate to criticize a pedal so gleefully psychotic, but while Mayer’s sci-fi housing will survive the war of the worlds, the flexible bottom plate, with its delicately threaded screws was rather lightweight. The addition of an LED would seem appropriate but then again if you can’t tell when this pedal is on seek counseling immediately.

The End Line - The Octavia’s classic harmonic distortion guarantees a hallucinatory ride. So hang on!

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Orange OR50 Amplifier Review

Orange Amplifiers are frequently referred to as Britain’s first boutique amp manufacture. The company’s respective trade name Orange is known as a classic blend of Brit-type midrange punch and tight detailed top end. For a brief time in the Seventies, Orange amplifiers were among the most popular, however, the company didn’t keep up with consumer’s demand… until recently. Read more

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Electro Harmonix Q-Tron vs Mu-Tron III Envelope

Way back in the early Seventies, a company called MuTron made waves in the guitarworld with the introduction of the Mu-Tron III, the world’s first envelope follower pedal. This ingenious device provides automatic wah effects, using the dynamics of the input signal to control frequency and resonance so the tone varies in relation to how hoard the strings are struck. Although the Mu-Tron III can emulate a wah-wah pedal quite convincingly, its real strength is its synth-like swells, drippy clicks and duck-like quacks.

Funk players like Parliament bassist Bootsy Collins flocked to this pedal in droves as they no longer had to worry about balancing their stacked platform soles on a rickety wah-wah pedal to get expressive, vocal-like tones. The Mu-Tron III also was a crucial element of Jerry Garcia’s and Frank Zappa’s sounds, and it even found flavor with keyboardists such as Stevie Wonder, who used a Mu-Tron III on his hit “Higher Ground.”

Unfortunetly, the Mu-Tron company folded as the Seventies came to a close. Engineer Mike Beigel, who designed the original Mu-Tron III, dropped out of the musical instrument business for years, but in the late 90’s joined forces with Electro-Harmonix’s Mike Matthews to resurrect a new and improved version of this desired effect.

The Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron offers many of the same features and functions as the Mu-Tron III, plus a few improvements. Like the original, the Q-Tron has a drive switch with up and down settings, a hi/lo range switch and variable gain and peak controls. The Q-Tron differs from its predecessor in that it includes a boost switch, an overload indicator and the addition of a mix setting to the mod selector, which also offers band-pass, low-pass and high-pass filter settings. The effect is housed in a sturdy stainless steel case similar to those used for E-H’s Deluxe Electric Mistress and Deluxe Memory Man.

But the biggest differences in the Q-Tron’s vastly improved sound and responsiveness. We compared the Q-Tron side-by-side with an original late Seventies Mu-Tron III, and it only took a few minutes to determine that the Q-Tron is superior. The Q-Tron can accurately duplicate the Mu-Tron’s most desirable sounds, but it can be tweaked even further to provide fatter bass, more cutting highs and ominous, floor-shaking swells. The pedal is especially responsive to picking dynamics, making it easy to generate expressive effects. Within minutes, even the most mild-mannered players were transformed into fire-breathing funk monsters.

The End Line

George Clinton once said, “You can’t fake the funk,” but thanks to the Q-Tron it’s easier than ever to get nasty, booty-shakin’ tones. Exceptionally responsive and dripping with attitude, this pedal provides some of the juiciest envelope follower sounds in existence.

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Kustom Double Cross Guitar Amp Head

Kustom got metal? Remember back in the day when you might recall those kind-of-weird yet kind-of-cool colorful car seat-like padded tuck-and-roll jobs? You know, the colorful /sparkly padded amps Creedence Clearwater Revival were known to use back in the late Sixties and early Seventies… Read more

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Gibson Dark Fire Electric Guitar

Gibson’s self-tuning Robot guitar had a limited run; the legendary guitar innovator had a much more insane second stage Robot already blueprinted and hidden up their sleeves. Of course, the mad scientists of Gibson Guitar’s don’t stop there, G-V readers, meet Gibson’s Dark Fire Les Paul digital guitar! Gibson continues to bring us more scientific achievements of our time. Read more

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Upright Acoustic Bass - Family of Violin

Even though fretted electric bass guitars have been around for almost 60 years, a lot of bassists are still compelled by the classic sounds of the acoustic upright bass. Traditional jazz and be-bop bass players will hardly play anything other than an acoustic upright and rock-a-billy lovers swear by the percussive slap and deep boom that the instrument provides. However, the upright bass isn’t just for nostalgia-minded musicians—it’s a key element of Reprazent’s funky drum ‘n’ bass and Soul Coughing’s hip-hop influenced slacker jazz. The instrument is often found in the hands of players like Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Primus’ Les Claypool and Sublime’s Eric Wilson

So, while bassists may be in love with the upright’s unique sound, they are not thrilled about its enormous size and the inconveniences involved with amplifying the instrument. One of the bulkiest instruments around, the upright isn’t exactly “portable”, and anyone who’s attempted to take one on an airplane or struggled to fit one into a small car can testify. And due to its deep, resonant body, it is highly vulnerable to feedback when amplified. Add in the bulkiness of the amplifying system needed to reproduce the upright’s subtleties, and then it’ll come apparent to you why so many upright bass players take out their aggression by slapping the instrument around like a drug pusher in a 1970s-era movie.
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There are also the physical consequences of playing an upright bass unit. Musicians that are familiar with the fretted electric solidbody bass quickly discover that playing an upright is like learning to walk all over again. The typical electric bass is a guitar, while the acoustic upright bass is directly within the violin family, so, of course, a different set of rules applies. The instrument’s large vertical orientation and unmarked, fretless neck are only part of the challenge. There is also an issue with the body’s massive size, which can be a significant hindrance for many shorter musicians, and, as mentioned earlier, the issue of limited mobility. This greatly impedes freedom of movement on stage, although players like the Reverend Horton Heat’s Jimbo and Stray Cats’ Lee Rocker seem to have overcome this limitation by climbing and humping their instruments.

Due to all of these fore mentioned vast differences, the acoustic upright and electric solidbody bass have existed in virtually separate worlds. But within the last decade some innovative instrument builders have made impressive progress in developing a bass that combines the most attractive features to create a hybrid of both instruments. In another article, we will talk about these developed instruments from Ovation, Rob Allen, and Citron that shows that you no longer need to haul around an axe the size of a Chicago bachelor apartment.

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Strange Guitar Effect Pedals - DigiTech Talker

Guitarists have an insatiable desire to make our instruments sound like they’re talking, maybe because so many of us are such lousy singers. Over the years, this has led to the development of some rather unusual effects, like Kustom Electronics’ The Bag, a strange bagpipe-like device shaped like a wine bota and covered in psychedelic material that would even make Austin Powers blush, and the Heil Talk Box, which requires users to gag themselves with a plastic tube to make their guitar sound like someone vomiting through a Big Muff.

One of the most sophisticated and effective “talking instrument” effects is the vocoder, but most of these devise are either geared exclusively towards keyboardists or are complicated rack-mounted units that are difficult to use in live performance. But DigiTech’s Talker pedal is an easy-to-use product geared towards guitarists, providing outstanding vocoder and talk box sounds as well as some unique effects of its own.

The unit is surprisingly simple, with instrument (1/4-inch) and microphone (XLR) outputs, a push-button +4/-10dB input pad, a three-position switch for routing the effected signal to an amp, P.A. or both, a P.A. level control. Other features include a bypass footswitch (which is hardwired to provide true bypass), indicators for mic and instrument clipping and bypass and a footswitch that allows you scroll through the Talker’s six preset effects.

To use the Talker, you simply plug a microphone and instrument into the inputs, set the effects routing switch depending on your setup and adjust the input and output levels. The six presets make the Talker extremely easy to use. Instead of forcing you to mess around with a bunch of complicated controls, the presets are already tweaked for optimum performance. The NuVo (a robot-like vocoder sound, Talk Box (which simulates classic talk box tones) and Alien (a pitch-shifted vocoder) effects can only be heard when you are speaking or singing into the microphone and playing the guitar at the same time. NuWah (an auto wah effect ) works with the guitar alone; TazMania (a wild, distorted vocal effect) works with either mic alone or with both the mic and instrument; and AutoTalk preset senses when no signal is coming through the mic to automatically switch from vocoder effect to a straight guitar tone.

The Talker offers immense creative possibilities. It’s pefect for giving guitar solos some extra personality and expressiveness, and it can greatly beef up the sound of your band’s backup vocals. Unlike other talk boxes and vocoders on the market, the Talker is easy to incorporate into any setup, and it even sounds great when plugged directly into a guitar amp.

The End Line

The Talker is one of the most unique effects pedals to come and go in a long time. It’s surprisingly useful for on stage and recording applications, and it provides endless hours of creative and experimental fun. If you’ve ever wanted to make your guitar talk, the Talker is the next best thing to transplanting vocal cords into your axe.

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Brownsville Choirboy and Thug Electric Guitars

The Brownsville Choirboy and Thug are one-of-a-kind hollowbody guitars that are classically designed, low noise, single-coil pickups. Both guitars feature a slim, hard maple neck with 24-3/4 scale length and a fast rosewood fingerboard. Read more

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Crate GT-80 – DSP QuadraDrive

If your material shifts around from metal to regae to flannel-shirt grunge, you have about two choices as far as amplification: spend 10 grand on four amps and a full rack of studio effects, or go pick up the two-channel Crate GT-80 DSP for about $100 bones used. Two-channel amps don’t usually make headlines, but crate added tube and solid-state preamps to the GT-80DSP for four possible tone combinations (Crate calls this “QuadraDrive”).

Each option (Tube Lead, Solid-State Lead, Tube Rhythm, Solid-State Rhythm) has its own gain control. Both channels have independent three-band “cut and boost” eq’s and master-level controls, and there are plenty pf status LED’s to tell you what’s active. With the GT-80DSP, jumping mid-song from bluesy dirt to solid-state clean, or warm-tube crunch to solid-state lead, is as easy as stomping on a footswitch. But that’s only part of the story. Recorded guitars are usually processed with all kinds of reverbs, squeezers, stretchers and tone benders to get them to sound thick, rich and exciting. To capture these effects, the GT-80DSP comes equipped with a 32-mode digital signal processor that electronically reproduces different acoustic spaces and cool engineer’s trick.

The DSP is organized around six families of effects: small area reverbs (small rooms with bright or dark characteristics); large area reverbs (clubs, concert halls and stadiums with bright or dark characteristics); special reverbs (gated, plate and “vintage” spring styles); delays (slapback); delays with regeneration (echo); and a special reverb section with infinite, thickener, multi-tap and reverse effects. To assign a particular effect to a specific channel, simply turn on the DSP and dial up the effect. The amp automatically “remembers” which effect you’ve chosen for each of the four channel/preamp combinations. Add a reverb footswitch and you can program each combination with two mode settings. With descriptions like “50000-seat concert hall,” “hard back wall,” and “carpeted rehearsal hall with draped walls and up to 30 people,” you’ll be able to match almost any recorded sound once you’ve learned the licks.

Toss in a 12-inch heavy-duty Crate speaker, and effects loop for even more processing options, then wrap everything in black Tolex, and you’ve got one tough little 80-watt Mosfet hybrid combo.

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