Marc Bolan 1947 – 1977

On September 16, 1977, just after five in the morning, an Austin Mini carrying English rocker Mark Bolan and driven by Bolan’s girlfriend, Gloria Jones, swerved off a road in Barnes Common, England, and crashed into a tree. The 29-year-old Bolan, who had never learned to drive, was hurled from the passenger seat into the back of the car and killed instantly.

While he began his career as a trippy-hippy in an acoustic and bongo duo, Bolan is best remembered for his work fronting T.Rex, the electric-pop-boogie band that is often credited with giving birth to the British glam rock movement of the early Seventies.

On the strength of two classic albums,1971’s Electric Warrior and 1972’s The Slider, as well as a flurry of strong singles, among them “Bang a Gong (Get It On),” T.Rex enjoyed enormous success in England in the first two years of the leisure-suit decade, topping the charts repeatedly and inspiring millions of young teenyboppers to fits of frenzy unseen since the rise of the Beatles. Unfortunately, T.Rex, despite numerous attempts, were unable to repeat their success in the United States, and their popularity in the UK waned rapidly as the public grew tired of the band’s essentially stagnant musical formula.

Ironically, at the time of his fatal accident, Bolan was enjoying something of a comeback. His final album, Dandy in the Underworld, charted respectably and was proof positive that his creative juices were once again beginning to flow. At the same time, the diminutive rocker’s cred was given a huge boost when the leaders of England’s punk revolution, who had come of age at the height of T.Rex mania, frequently cited T.Rex as one of their most important influences, embracing Bolan as the “Godfather of Punk.”

After Bolan’s death, his body was cremated. His memorial plaque, along with those of the Who’s keith Moon, T.S. Elliot and Sigmund Freud, can be found at Golden’s Green Crematorium in London.

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Reverend Slingshot, Spy and Commando Guitars

Imagine a Fender Jaguar mating with a 1950s Formica diner table. Imagine their numerous love children, tiny guitars adopted by Leo Fender and raised in the Danelectro plant in Neptune, New Jersey. Fed on the finest pickups and hardware, these unlikely creatures establish their own religion and take on names like “Avenger,” “Rocco” and “Rumblefish.” Read more

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Van Halen’s Third Peavey Wolfgang Special

As Van Halen is such a mentored guitarist, it seems appropriate to review the third Edward Van Halen signature guitar (the second made by Peavey) a classic in the axe-mania public.

For those readers unfamiliar with the Eddie guitar saga, here is a brief recapitulation. In the early Nineties, the Van man teamed up with the Ernie Ball/Music Man company to create the Edward Van Halen Signature Model, an excellent—if extremely pricey—instrument that featured a uniquely contoured birdseye maple neck, a vaguely Telecaster-shaped, maple capped basswood body, a Floyd Rose tremolo and two specially designed DiMarzio pickups that were mounted directly to the guitar’s body to increase resonance and sustain.

Van Halen then parted ways with Music Man and struck a deal with Peavey, the Mississippi-based company that had already done him right with their 5150 line of signature amps. The alliance soon bore fruit in the form of the Wolfgang guitar, named after the guitarist’s son. This carved-top, more ergonomically contoured double-cut-away instrument sported similar materials and construction to the Music Man’s but featured new Peavey-designed pickups. This instrument, too, was pricey.

This brings us to the Wolfgang Special guitar, an extremely cool, lower-priced version of the aforementioned Wolfgang. While made in the same factory as the higher-ticket models, this instrument forgoes binding and a maple top in order to reduce costs, but otherwise features the same graphite-reinforced neck, and high-quality electronics and hardware as the other Wolfgang guitars. Ironically, the reasonably priced instrument, with its no-frills design, is probably closest in spirit and construction to Ed’s original Frankenstein axe, which was made entirely of parts that were heavy on the tone and light on the frills.

Thankfully, tone is what this guitar is all about. Each guitar’s body is constructed of basswood carefully selected to adhere to specific weight and grain tolerances. The two custom-wound Peavey pickups are mounted directly to the body, and the controls—a single master volume and a pickup selector mounted on the top bout—are kept to a bare minimum in order to reduce the amount of electric meandering the guitar’s signal has to travel through.

Run through a cranked 1973 Marshall Super Lead, the Wolfgang Special produced pure vintage Van Halen tone. Mucho ballsy, super chunky yet amazingly clear. The test model boasted a wonderfully musical top end and tight, well-defined lows. Rolling back the volume knob produced any range of tasty in-between tones that retain their integrity and definition even at the lowest whisper settings. Both of the guitar’s pickups seemed ideally voiced for their respective roles. The bridge had a midrangy toothiness reminiscent of the best old Gibson P.A.F.s; the neck was full and round, yet clear and open. Like a single-coil P-90 on steroids, it excels at clean tones and Hendrix-inspired whammy bar excesses.

And with this instrument’s rock-solid Floyd Rose-licensed tremolo. You can dive bomb all day without having to come up to tune. And thanks to an ingenious device of Ed’s invention, the low E string can be dropped a whole step to D simply by pulling a little lever that rests unobtrusively below the bridge’s fine tuners. It’s instant “Unchained” or Alice In Chains, depending on what your musical bag is.

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AXL Badwater Jacknife Guitar Review

Legendary guitarists like Randy Roads of Ozzy Osborne played V-shaped guitars; their extreme edge appearance brings the meaning ‘axe,’ which explains why so many metal guitarists prefer them. They’re unique looking, give a tight heavy sound and just look metal. The Badwater Jacknife guitar is yet another radical—V-shaped—guitar, but unlike many others, is geared toward guitarists on a budget, while giving more features than other economy V-shaped guitars. Most metal guitarists will enjoy this guitar’s unique, vintage-style design and groovy sound.

Main Features

The AXL Badwater Jacknife, priced at an affordable $359, features a solid alder body like many other guitars in this price range. Alder is considered to provide a broad spectrum of tone, tight swirling grain, and in this case, there is no exception. The Jacknife’s body features a uniquely distressed; “worn in, not worn out,” beatified look.

The Jacknife comes standard with two EMG-designed over wound P-90 pickups that provide maximum output and power that today’s rock and metal guitarists demand. Obviously, the guitar will not out-perform in every aspect of a more expensive flying V guitar, but the Jacknife holds its own against other guitars in this price range.

If you love the vintage-guitar look, then you’ll appreciate the Jacknife’s design, as it comes in three different Badwater-vintage style designs (black Mayhem and red Bloodsport series). All Jacknife guitars come with antiqued hardware, antiqued cream web pickguard, giving the guitar a very mature look, perfect for the vintage guitar enthusiast.

Even though the Jacknife is aimed at hard rock and metal guitarists, it can also give a sweet modern rock tone. So if you doubt the Jacknife’s flexibility and ability to handle other sounds, rest assured, with the proper tweaking, the guitar delivers… with style.

Among the other features that make the Jacknife noteworthy is the Tune-O-Matic Bridge, which provides a nice comfortable worn-in feel. The guitar’s Tailpiece is a string-through body, for added sustain. In addition to the ultra thin maple neck designed for fast, comfortable playing, the neck has a bubinga stripe, abalone dot inlays and an aged-look to the headstock

Given all of the features and the quality hardware in the guitar, it is quite surprising that AXL Guitars kept this guitar in such a small price range, which is all the more reason metal guitarists’ should take advantage of this sweet deal while the price is so low.

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Washburn HB-35 Hollowbody Electric Guitar Review

Washburn puts just enough spin on the HB-35 to make it both a strong contender for the Gibson ES-335 customer and a viable alternative to the ES-335 clonedom. The body’s cutaways are a shade wider and less like the “mouse ears” of standard ES-335s, and the extra handroom really does provide greater access to the upper frets. The body is covered front, sides and back with the deliciously tight-flamed sycamore (a close relative of maple) in a pale golden yellow natural finish (tobacco sunburst and whine red finishes are also available). The rosewood fingerboard, ornamented with variations on split block inlays, has an open grain which is sealed, leaving a surface that’s attractive and silky smooth. The gold hardware (including Grover Tuners and a Tune-O-Matic bridge) is an appropriately regal touch, making the Washburn the most handsomely appointed guitar of the batch.

The attention to detail extends to the workmanship and playability, too. The neck is a solid-maple affair, with a wide, mildly V-shaped contour. A scarf joint at the headstick is added for strength. The frets are medium-tall and somewhat triangular, and the sides of the fingerboard are slightly rounded for a friendly “played-in” feel.

The setup, with .011-.049 strings, including a wound G, was perhaps the best of all the guitars straight out of the case from our hollowbody review models. The action was boldly low, yet free of buzzes, and the heavier strings and triangular frets contributed to a firm and precise feel.

Clean amp settings unveiled a somewhat dark neck pickup and a refreshingly open bridge pickup that country players will love. The pickups work well as a pair, but I suspect a pickup swap would add some fresh air to the neck position. On the other hand, the pickup combination made perfect sense when sent through overdriven amp settings. The pickup growled on command, and the neck pickup had a smoky jazz tone that cleaned up well. The combo position retained its identity even as high-volume leads sent the responsive tope into resonant feedback.

The End Line

Looks great, feels great, sounds great. You could cover a lot of gigs on this axe. If it sold for close to two grand, I’d call it a great guitar. At a list price of $949, it’s a bargain to boot.

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Fernandes Native Elite Guitar Review

Although its body is reminiscent of a chubby Fender Jaguar; the Fernandes Native Elite is a decidedly modern guitar with a little hi-tech voodoo-namely Fernandes’ proprietary Sustainer technology, which offers virtually limitless sustain and rich, controlled freedback. Based on the company’s highly popular alder-bodied Native Standard, the Native Elite features a basswood body with a faux flame top in a black burst finish and a 25-1/2” scale maple bolt-on neck. The comfortably full, rosewood-capped neck is smoothly fretted and sports the locking nut portion of the Gotoh made, Floyd-licensed trem system. The generous pearloid pickguard houses the electronics, which include two humbuckers governed by a three-way switch, master tone and volume controls and the Sustainer system.

While the humbuckers crank out respectable clean and rock sounds, it’s the sustainer that promotes tongue-lolling astonishment. The Sustainer transducer is actually one half of the neck pickup and is activated by two small switches. When switched on, the system uses a battery-powered electromagnet to vibrate the strings, much like an E-Bow system does. The tone can be modified with the second switch, which has settings for standard, harmonic and mix. The first setting simply sustains the fretted note and works well for clean swells and chordal textures, while the second setting produces harmonics often an octave higher and excels at stratospheric, violin-like leads. The third setting mixes harmonics with the fundamental note for a rich, complex tone similar to controlled, harmonized feedback. A separate level control governs the effect’s overall intensity.

Far from sounding gimmicky, the Sustainer system sounds downright incredible. When used in conjunction with the tremolo system, it spit out a Scooby-Doo diving into the nearest potted plant. As a standard guitar, the Native Elite is a well-built, sexy piece of rock and roll. With the sustainer, it becomes a living, breathing demon that will put fire up the ass of all your old, lame riffs.

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Gary Kramer Turbulence FX

In 1970, Gary Kramer co-founded Kramer Guitars with his friend Dennis Berardi. Originally, Kramer started out making Aluminum neck guitars. By 1981 he abandoned the idea to follow Charvel’s trend with wooden neck guitars, which were also the first guitar company to offer Original Floyd Rose locking tremolo systems on their production guitars. Kramer began installing Seymour Duncan pickups in its guitars by late 1985, this was in favor over the more vintage-sounding Schaller pickups. Kramer became the best-selling guitar in 1985 and 1986.

Regardless of Kramer having big name endorsements by guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen and Richie Sambora, Kramer came into financial problems due to spending large amounts of money on advertising and endorsements, in addition to Floyd Rose and Kramer having a falling out in the late 80’s, Rose sued Kramer over royalties, Kramer Guitars came to an end in 1991. advertising and endorsements. However, Kramer is back up and running now, owned by Gibson and basically existing for reminiscence sake.

In 2005, Gary Kramer began working with Leo Scala to introduce a new line of guitars, Which will be manufactured under the name Gary Kramer Guitars. There is the unusual hash back to the 80’s with the USA Custom models as well as the Crusader Limited. Being a notorious and aggressive innovator, Gary Kramer has decided to take a bold step in guitar design and create something different. The Turbulence FX guitar isn’t only unique, it’s ergonomic with its imminent body shape, it also has a 6 point Bolt-on 7 string neck with 36 fretless frets while still maintaining a 25.5” scale. The “Delta Wing” body is Mahogany contoured surfaces and a detachable aluminum leg rest unit. The guitar also has a recessed Tunomatic, direct mounted Bridge Alnico humbucking pickup, with string through design. Innovating? Indeed!

Check out this YouTube video of the guitar in action

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Hot Girls and Sexy Guitars

Hot Girls and Sexy Guitars. Another photo for us to drool over.

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Girls & Guitars

Sexy guitars and beautiful women at Gear-Vault.com

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DIY Homebrew Mesa Boogie Dual Recto

This kid built his own DIY homemade Read more

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