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October 25, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Guitar World is the #1 guitar magazine in the world created for all guitar players - from professionals, amateurs, hobbyists and fans of the guitar world. Each issue covers music ranging from rock and heavy metal to jazz and blues. You’ll find in-depth interviews, private guitar lessons, song transcriptions, product reviews, record reviews, articles written for the guitar player and much more. If you love the guitar, you’ll love Guitar World.
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Fostex DMT-8VL Review
From the tiny Korg D8 that we reviewed, I moved on to the substantially large Fostex DMT-8VL, another great eight-track recorder Read more
Van Halen’s Third Peavey Wolfgang Special
September 14, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
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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Judas Priest Screaming For Vengeance
September 13, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Judas Priest Screaming For Vengeance
(Columbia, 1982) Read more
A LETTER FROM THE FRONT…, RE: THIRTYSECONDSTOMARS / EMI (THE LAWSUIT)
August 20, 2008 by Chazders · 2 Comments
Follow up letter from Jared Leto (30 Seconds to Mars)
To our Friends and Fans,
Despite rumors to the contrary, 30 Seconds to Mars is NOT calling it quits. We are incredibly happy, healthy and very much together here, in Los Angeles, recording our new record. Besides this ridiculously overblown lawsuit (courtesy of Virgin/EMI), we are having one of the most inspiring, wonderful and exciting times that we’ve experienced to date. (More on that later…)
Beyond this distraction, we are so incredibly grateful to all of you around the world that have supported us so passionately. We would never consider stopping this just yet. These past few phenomenal years have been beyond imaginable and we owe every single bit of it to you. Thank you all for that!
So, as you may have heard we are being sued by our former record company for the ridiculously oversized, totally unrealistic and pretty silly (but slightly clever) sum of $30,000,000. Insane? Yea that’s what we said too.
A little history…
We had been signed to our record contract for 9 years. Basically, under California law, where we live and signed our deal, one cannot be bound to a contract for more than 7 years. This is widely known by all the record companies and has been for years. In fact, so aware of it are they that they desperately try to make deals outside of California whenever possible. It is a law that protects people from lengthy, unfair, career-spanning contracts. This law also gave us the legal right to explore other possible opportunities.
Yes we have been sued by EMI. But NOT for failing to deliver music or for ‘quitting’. We have been sued by the corporation quite simply because roughly 45 days ago we exercised our legal right to terminate our old, out of date contract, which, according to the law is null and void.
We terminated for a number of reasons, which we won’t go into here (we’d rather not air any dirty laundry) but basically our representatives could not get EMI to agree to make a fair and reasonable deal.
A few things to note…
If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren’t they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier. That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn’t a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records? Or, at the very least, break even? We think so.
That, and other issues, like the new regime at EMI firing most of the people we know and love, wanting to place advertisements on our website, EMI owning 100 percent of the masters of our record…forever, and basically having a revolving door of regimes at the company made it easy to not want to continue as is.
As the result of this takeover - and the firing of over 2000 employees - we have lost many of the people that were near and dear to us at Virgin/EMI and crucial to the success of 30 Seconds to Mars. A few of the great ones are still there, but it is hardly the same company we have known. After more than 5 regime changes in 9 years you’d think we would be used to the inconsistency, but the team that took the journey together for A Beautiful Lie was a very very special group of people and it’s a huge loss that so many of them are gone. (Quick fact: There is not a single employee at Virgin records who was working at the company when we signed.)
FYI Virgin/EMI was not required to make this lawsuit public or to list such an egregiously and stupendously large amount of mullah. In fact, they were not required to set any price even close to this. We did not want to take this public, but we felt it best to explain our point of view to you, our
friends and fans, in hope that you can better understand our point of view.
We would always do our best to avoid a fight, but sometimes it’s important to stand up for what you believe in. We hope that by doing what’s right we can help to change things for the better, for ourselves and possibly others.
P.S. We will always remain grateful to the people at Virgin/EMI who were so integral to our success. And we hope that, above all, we can find a resolution to this in as civil and kind a way as possible.
There are certainly more important things out there in the world to spend time and energy on.
To be continued…
Jared Leto
30 Seconds to Mars
http://thirtysecondstomars.forumsunlimited.com/index.php?showtopic=312534
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30 Seconds To Mars Sued For $30 Million By Virgin Records
You may not want to piss your boss off, especially if they work at Virgin Records, it may cost you $30 million. Rocker band, 30 Seconds to Mars, is facing a $30 million lawsuit after allegedly failing to produce an agreed number of albums.
The Gibson Holy V Guitar - Only 1000 Being Made
July 26, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Having come up with such guitars as the Les Paul and Flying V, among others, Gibson is known for innovation, creativity and spirit. The Gibson Holy-V is a representation of this continuing ingenuity, with its unique body and headstock. Like most Gibson guitars of the month, January 2009—is Gibson’s latest testament to their imagination. Production is quite limited—just 1,000 of these are being made, making it both a collector’s item and a good guitar for both the amateur and the pro guitarist.
The Main Features
One of the most noticeable things about the Holy V is the holes (vented openings) that are found in the V-shaped body and headstock of the guitar. These holes are carefully carved into the body and the headstock, so as to make the guitar the lightest Gibson to date and gives an intense aesthetic effect. Indeed, the guitar has the same tonal sound quality of a traditional Gibson Flying V, while it’s said that the vented cavities provide for more sustain, we should all agree that the light weight creativity is a unique feature in itself.
Another thing people will notice about the guitar is the gearless tuners. There are no tuning pegs on the headstock, which gives the headstock a very distinctive look. Every Holy V is fitted with Steinberger Gearless Tuners which are noted for their smooth tuning action and accuracy and are said to prevent string slippage.
The Gibson Holy V also features a 24-fret ebony fingerboard, making it ideal for guitarists who need the extra two frets for soloing. While the Flying V is usually considered to be a guitar appropriate for metal/hard rock guitarists, the Holy V can handle many types of music. So if you’re a classic rock or modern rock guitarist, you’ll still find something to like about this guitar.
Among the Holy V’s other features are the beautiful split diamond inlays, a mahogany set-neck construction (for better sustain), solid mahogany body with a Tune-O-Matic bridge and a ‘57 classic pickup, supplying the classic Gibson PAF crunch and power.
While the Holy-V is an expensive guitar, for all that it features and uniqueness; is worth it?
MSRP $2799 but can be found as low as $1839. The Gibson Holy-V will not be available until January 2009. However some music stores will allow you to pre-order.
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Gibson ES-135 Limited Edition Guitar Review
July 22, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
With its single cutaway and slightly deeper body (2.125 inches at the edge), the ES-135 comes a little closer to a jazz axe than its 335-based brothers. Read more
What’s Tremolo and how does it work?
July 22, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Tremolo suffers from an acute identity crisis. Thanks to various descriptive errors made in the Fifties, tremolo is frequently mistaken for vibrato. For the record, tremolo is a rhythmic pulse produced by a change in volume over a set clock rate; Read more
Story of the Instruments Strings
July 21, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
The very utterance of the word ‘guitar’ conjures a series of varying and fleeting images in one’s mind. Though mostly associated with the long haired, head banging rock stars, guitar also conveys or signifies various other connotative meanings as well, mostly above all the Freedom of Expression. Despite the fact that this string instrument in the modern times is perceived as a symbol of articulation of free thoughts, it has been now confirmed that guitar has its history and origin sometime in the first century in the Roman Civilizations.
In spite of its germination in first century, it was not until around 1200 AD that this instrument started resembling its present day counterpart in terms of the shape, appearance and functioning, for the first time and this feat is generally credited to the Hispanics, Moors and the Norse. The saga of the modern day guitar more or less starts with Gaetano Vinaccia, a resident of Naples who lived in the mid 18th and early 19th century. Another set of important names that have been historically associated with vintage guitars are those of Antonio Torres Jurado and Louis Panormo, both having significant contributions in the make or construction of the instrument. All these were howbeit, facts related to the traditional, classical acoustic guitar. It was George Beauchamp of Texas, USA along with Adolph Rickenbacher of Switzerland who jointly founded the guitar manufacturing company “Rickenbacher” and patented Electric guitars; though the mass production was first started by “Danelectro”.
The chronicles of vintage electric guitars witnessed an era of emergence and development of various new ideas in terms of style, design, etc. in and around the time of the Second World War. One of the pioneering names from this period is that of American jazz guitarist and inventor Les Paul. Among his groundbreaking contributions are those of striking the correct balance with a pickup, bridge and neck of a guitar leading to the solutions of problems involving the sustaining and feedback of sound. He also experimented with the effects such as phaser and delay and made important innovations which were to be popularized by musicians in decades to come. His model of guitar, manufactured by Gibson Guitar Corporation became known as the “Gibson Les Paul” and went on to become one of the most familiar instruments in different genres like jazz, blues, rock, metal and have been associated with figures like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, Slash, Adrian Smith and Ted Nugent among others.
The only other name that appears in the same row as Les Paul in the story of vintage guitars is that of Leo Fender of USA. His model of “Esquire” and “Broadcaster” (later changed to “Telecaster”) was nearly synonymous with early popular music like boogie woogie, R&B, swing, honky tonk, etc. It was however with “Stratocaster”, launched in the early 1950s, that he struck gold. With its solid body and bolt-on neck joint, the very name invoke names of its eminent users including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray to mention a few.
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