The Light Pick!

I just saw this post over at stratoblogster about the company 'Santa Cruz Light Wells' and thought it was a good point to post my first YouTube video on Guitar Noize featuring the pick in action!

Labels: Accessories

posted by Jon at 09:14 Permalink

1 Comments

New Threadless Guitar-shirt

Threadless just released this new T-Shirt & Hoodie, "Living in Harmony". I think it works better as a Hoodie as the zip seperates the two halves and personally I think they should have gone all out with the electric and used a flying vee and what's with the classical guitar? Ok I'll stop whinging now.

posted by Jon at 08:58 Permalink

0 Comments

Babicz & Martin collaborate!

The new C.F. Martin OMCRE is a new 6 string acoustic constructed using Martin's OM body shape with a cutaway but also has the Babicz ‘Continually Adjustable Neck’ technology which means you can adjust the action using an allen key and switch between a slide action and fiatpicking action in seconds, check out the exactly how the system works here or watch the video of the neck adjustment in "action" here.

posted by Jon at 22:12 Permalink

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Peavey's new online guitar builder

Peavey have just launched a Beta version (how very web 2.0!) of their new online custom shop guitar builder, mind you the design is more web 0.3... anyway the difference seems to be that you can now add custom graphics to the guitar by uploading a photo on the website, there doesn't seem to be any indication to users about what the resolution of the image should be in order to be printed successfully on the guitar without the photo degrading which is a bit dodgy, some people are going to end up with very pixelated images! Nothing happened when I clicked on buy so maybe isn't possible to really buy through this tool yet, after all it is a beta version. It doesn't have the finesse or the design quality of the First Act online custom shop tool but it does the job, gives you a summary and a price and most importantly it is a lot of fun being able to apply your own graphics. Check out my Tay Zonday special (left), "Chocolate Rain".

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 15:09 Permalink

0 Comments

New RSS feed address

Hi everyone, I've finally gotten around to using feedburner for my RSS feeds so that I can get some stats and see if anyone actually subscribes to my RSS feed! The new feed address is http://feeds.feedburner.com/GuitarNoize.

posted by Jon at 12:47 Permalink

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Rick Nielsen's "Bettie"

Rick Nielsen is famous for his exotic guitar collection so I wasn't all that suprised when I saw this 6 lipstick pickup FirstAct guitar named "Bettie".

How annoying would it be messing with 6 volume controls, 6 tone controls and 6 pickup switches (how many configurations??!!), I'd be interested to hear some of the tonal variations to come from this guitar though, you would need to put plenty of time aside to figure it all out!

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 16:12 Permalink

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GuitarLog - Unleash your inner shredder

I just came across this app for OS X called GuitarLog, I haven't tried it yet but it looks pretty cool. The idea is that you structure practice sessions by using stored exercises. Each take remembers the "state" of your performance of an exercise and increments the BPM each time unless you specify otherwise.

"If you haven't practiced an exercise for a while and don't want to waste time listening to mistakes, you should rate all of your takes. It only takes a simple keystroke to set a rating, but can provide you with so much information as you review your practice sessions. It can also be used from the Statistics view to quickly recall the fastest tempo you've achieved in a particular exercise."

You can also track which guitars were used on specific takes and see statistical graphs of your improvements. So far it is heavily geared toward reaching maximum tempo per exercise but apparently this application is still evolving so maybe it will analyse precision in the future? That would be very useful, say you had an mp3 of a riff and it checked your version against theirs at different tempos?

Anyway I can't really tell how useful it is until I try it, so that is my plan for this weekend!

posted by Jon at 09:40 Permalink

0 Comments

Shark Attack Guitars

I'm not sure about the name Shark Attack Guitars it kind of implies that all your range might look like the Tiger (shark) Standard pictured left top. In fact most of the guitars are this shark fin model, although "The Great White" is slightly more curvy and the model on the site has a nice maple body. Each guitar uses a different wood for the body to give it a unique look, for instance the Tiger pictured left top uses Zebrano to give it that nice striped grain finish.

Not all the guitars are shark fin shaped however, "The Raven" pictured left bottom is a bizarre bit of carving, not sure who would request such a guitar and there is also "The Rattle and Hum" which has a rattlesnake carved into where the shark fin would normally be, again very detailed but utterly bizarre. The other main guitar is the "Barracuda" which although loosely based around a Gibson SG looks a bit odd, like the dimensions are a bit out? Anyway see for your self at www.sharkattackguitars.co.uk/.

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 09:12 Permalink

1 Comments

Dreamcast guitar

Now I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that this guitar would sound like shit but it made me laugh and so I thought I would add it to my ever growing collection of crazy guitar designs. I particularly like the fact that not only has Flooky incorporated the main Dreamcast console but also a controller too which houses the neck pickup, very creative! I'm off to scour the web for the N64 and Playstation 1 guitar! I already found a Sega Megadrive guitar courtesy of the Brazillian band Megadriver, check out the guitar here.

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 22:00 Permalink

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Smoker's delight

I'm not sure how I keep finding these weird guitars but this is definitely one of the craziest so far! The cannibis leaf shaped guitar is by guitar manufacturer Basone Guitars and is made from bookmatched quilted western maple, a flame maple neck a Koa headstock veneer and ebony fretboard with a "joint" abalone inlay at the 12th fret. I imagine the person who buys this will spend more time staring at it giggling than actually playing it but I challenge anyone to actually play this sitting down!

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 20:08 Permalink

2 Comments

Parkwood Hybrid

A new hybrid on the block this time for Parkwood Guitars and comes with an endorsement from Greg Howe. Strangely enough the guitar isn't actuallly mentioned on the Parkwood website yet but you can see a demonstration of the Hybrid on his site here. This is the fourth hybrid of I've seen on the market recently, see my previous posts about the Taylor T5, Ovation VXT and the Michael Kelly Hybrids. They all sound and look great so I think you would really need to try them all out and see which feels the best for your needs.

via The Guitar Channel

posted by Jon at 13:01 Permalink

6 Comments

First Act Guitar Configurator

I just saw a comment posted on my Killer Customs post about First Act's custom shop so I went to the website to check it out. First of all I have to say this is one of the better guitar manufacturer websites that I have come across, nice clean design, nice use of flash for the promo panel on the homepage and a very nice custom shop page which is the reason for this post. I had to try out the guitar builder application. I've used quite a few of these flash configurators in the past for various things, being a web developer I'm always interested to see how good the user experience is. This one really delivers! Really simple to use, it is very clear how you use it and simple to change options such as humbucker configuration and wood choice for the body and neck. There are a lot of custom options and it didn't take me long to rack up a $3000 guitar!! (see left) It's great fun until you see the cost, but then what do you expect it is a custom!

posted by Jon at 09:10 Permalink

2 Comments

$150,000 Martin Guitar?

Damn this is one ugly looking guitar, especially with that price tag, you should see the back check it out here, yuck! I don't want a mother of pearl 747 on my guitar thanks very much! And that rocket inlay, oh come on...

This guitar is the "History of Flight Custom Shop Guitar" with custom inlay work of famous moments in aviation history. There will be just one and it is only available through Guitar Center. The lucky purchaser will be flown in the Guitar Center jet to Nazareth, PA where C.F. Martin himself will take the lucky purchaser on a personal tour of Martin Guitars. Following the tour the guitar will be presented to the new owner, who will probably mugged 30 seconds later in the car park and later notice a very similar looking guitar appear on ebay for a few grand. Well it serves you right, it's not like it it's Blackie! Nobody has ever touched this guitar. Imagine the price if Robert Johnson had owned it!

Labels: Really expensive guitars

posted by Jon at 17:42 Permalink

1 Comments

Cheap (and probably nasty) guitars from KMate

I just came across a site that is based here in Australia called KMate that is an online factory outlet and one of the things they seem to specialise in is cheap acoustic and electric guitars by Karerra which I think is a Japanese company that makes cheap replicas. The funny thing is though that they seem to cater for a rather specific market with their crazy guitar designs. The image to the left is their "Triryche" guitar which is obviously based on this custom ESP guitar which was made for Queensryche I think back in the late 80's (Operation:Mindcrime was it?). The Karrera Triryche is only AUD$235 or USD$202, bargain!. Other guitars include the Axe style guitar and M-16 guitar which looks very plastic and cheap! But your kids are going to love it...

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 09:51 Permalink

3 Comments

Is this the ultimate travel guitar?

After a recent comment thread on my Shredneck post I have been looking at alternatives for this device such as travel guitars, after all it would seem that the idea is to have a guitar or guitar substitute that can be carried around easily. At first I found the Traveler guitar which look great but are still pretty big, then I found the Soloette again, looks great especially with all the add-ons to make it a fully shaped guitar but still a bit on the large side to carry around. The same goes for the Martin Backpacker Acoustic.

Well today I came across another guitar that is not only revolutionary in its design but at its smallest, is only the length of the neck. The DeVillian Centrefold Guitar actually has a neck that unlocks and folds back onto the body, the strings are wound around the rotating bridge and apparently tuning is not affected during this whole process. Make sure you click on the continue button on the homepage and then the "Fold/Unfold the guitar" link which is rather stupidly hidden away thanks to the web designers deciding stupid javascript effects were more necessary than usability. If you don't manage to find the link click on this link to go to the press room photos.

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 12:48 Permalink

2 Comments

How "Green" is your guitar?

I think this is worthy of its own post rather than tacking it on to the last one. Gibson produced 25 exclusive environmentally-friendly acoustic guitars based on the J-45 using rainforest friendly, FSC-certified mahogany. The guitars will be auctioned off on eBay to raise additional funds for the Alliance for Climate Protection.

"Gibson Guitar, and its philanthropic arm, Gibson Foundation, are dedicated to supporting the cause for climate protection and the creation of these environmentally friendly guitars.” - Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar.

posted by Jon at 23:36 Permalink

0 Comments

How "Green" is your pick?

Apparently the Live Earth events tried to make sure that the concerts were as "green" as possible, by using bio-diesel to run generators etc. I just found out that Wheatware, who make bio-resin products donated 3,240 compostable guitar picks.

"The Wheatware™ compostable guitar picks offer an alternative to the millions of plastic picks manufactured each year -- without sacrificing performance.

Far from being fragile, Wheatware™ music products can withstand a musicians' beating. And both products are ultra-functional: the picks come in an easy-to-grip design".

posted by Jon at 22:35 Permalink

1 Comments

Shredneck - the ultimate warm up device!?

Really? Is it? I think its pretty funny myself, now The Gripmaster is a simple portable device to strengthen your fingers and I get that... but the Shredneck is supposed to be for warming up (presumably backstage) and yet it's almost the size of a full size guitar! Why not just take your guitar backstage, oh sorry they must be all set up on stage ready and waiting... if they are, you're obviously pretty successful and therefore you can afford another one to keep backstage!!! What is even funnier is that there is an artists page with custom paint jobs for people like Jimi Bell where they expertly paint a cross on the headstock. Oh and it comes with a gig bag and a tuner... erm. ok.

Does anyone acutally use one of these? Answers on a postcard...

Labels: Accessories

posted by Jon at 12:11 Permalink

4 Comments

UK Fender competition!

Finally a competition that isn't US only! ;)

Fender are giving you the chance to win a Strat© signed by Reuben. You do have to sign up for the bi-annual frontline magazine from Fender in order to enter but thats no big deal, it's free!

posted by Jon at 08:17 Permalink

1 Comments

Killer customs

Ok so when I first saw the ESP Custom sword guitar I thought it was pretty weird (and a potential self-impaling accident in waiting) but that was until I saw this... erm well kind of disturbing guitar. It's an AK-47 "Instrument of destruction". No doubt it would be popular with the Metal crowd but I cant see BB King christening this one "Lucille 2" any day soon!

Labels: Crazy Guitar Designs

posted by Jon at 10:47 Permalink

2 Comments