When I started Guitar Noize way way back in… erm June, I had one purpose in mind which was to help populate my new website GuitarLead.net which takes RSS feeds from various sites and aggregates them into one convenient Guitar News site. Well a couple of things changed within the first month of these sites being live. Firstly I really enjoyed posting new blog entries on Guitar Noize and secondly it started becoming quite popular. To date GuitarLead.net has only had a couple of thousand visitors which really suprised me because I use the site everyday to get updates on all the latest guitar news. But compare that figure to Guitar Noize which has had over 10,000 unique visitors since June 18th and you will see what I mean.

Anyway the point of this post is not to brag about my stats! Guitar Noize was set up in haste and I decided to use Blogger to publish posts as I have used this previously on another one of my sites Freaksauce however it has some serious limitations and it wasn’t long until I had realised that I had made an error in using Blogger. It offers very little in the way of customisation, and I don’t mean html/css I mean having custom server code in the templates. So I had to choose a new blogging platform and decided to give Expression Engine a go seeing as I already use their PHP Framework CodeIgniter for major application development. Now Expression Engine is great and was just the thing I needed to make a major Guitar Noize upgrade, front and back end. I now have pagination, something I can’t believe Blogger doesn’t have (at least in classic templates which you have to use if you publish to your own server via ftp) and Categories which I had been fudging in Blogger using labels. I also have integrated search instead of using a google search which is much cleaner. There are a million other enhancements which I can take full advantage of over time but for now I just want Guitar Noize up and running on the new platform.

The only problem is, and this is no fault of EE, my old url’s to posts are now going to be redundant as Expression Engine uses different urls to include categories and sub-categories. So for now I have left these old pages on my server with a url to the new page (in most cases) or to the new homepage. Also I have lost all the comments that had previously been made on the old site which sucks… Sorry for any inconvenience this causes but the drop in google rankings that I will no doubt experience in the short term is worth the long term benefits for the site.

Who would have thought that my strange infatuation with crazy guitar designs would become so popular!

I just saw this post on GuitarMX about Business Week’s article on the affect of the revived Heavy Metal popularity on the guitar industry. I found this interesting in particular because the guitar makers that are benefitting well are those who offer something a little unique. This explains why my Crazy Guitar Designs category gets so many visits!

I had never heard of Halo Guitars before but they have an impressive array of guitars for the discerning metal shredmonster. The guitar pictured left is from their custom shop but they also have a standard product range and don’t worry they haven’t just created a cheap range of black strats, check out the GVK series!

Not technically a guitar I know but I had to post this today as this incredible Banjo Flying V was made by Moon guitars! Yes I’ve shamelessly trawled the web for lunar references today and I’m not too proud to admit it, and I’m not ashamed of my crap puns either so there!

This custom Banjo was built for Babydaddy from the Scissor Sisters and has the band’s logo set into the headstock! There are a couple more photos here, just scroll down a bit.

Oh come on! Surely I’m allowed to make a cheesy pun the day after a total lunar eclipse?!

Now I know that Luna Guitars has recently had a lot of praise from the very talented Lori Linstruth but I thought seeing as there was a tenuous link with the lunar eclipse it was worth showcasing these amazing Henna painted acoustic guitars.

The artwork was created by UK artist Alex Morgan and the model pictured left has Solid spruce top, quilted maple back & sides, mahogany neck, rosewood fingerboard and state-of-the-art laser etched henna design on front, back and headstock! Oh and seeing as I’m trying to tie this in with the Lunar eclipse, Inlaid mother-of-pearl crescent moon logo on the headstock and moon phase fretboard markers inlaid in mother-of-pearl.

I’m not going to pretend I understand this T-Shirt because I don’t, is that supposed to be tadpoles coming out of the smashed strat? Who knows but if you like t-shirts of girls smashing frog impregnated strats this is the one for you!

This custom acoustic from Schenk Guitars ss Serial Number 001 of the new Killer Paint Series there appear to be 3 at the moment one of which you would have to be a very patriotic US Citizen to buy!

“This guitar is constructed of Mastergrade East Indian Rosewood back and sides and a Western Red Cedar soundboard.”

I think this particular design would appeal to people who ride bikes like this or maybe Harry Potter fans?. Whoever it is better have a bit of money put aside because this guitar will set you back over US$9000!

Full gallery of this instrument here

I’m not sure how long this site has been up but Parkwood Guitars now have a seperate microsite for the Parkwood Hybrid guitar. Apart from the Greg Howe video clip demonstrating the guitar they also have the tech specs and a model I’ve never seen, the PWH2 (pictured left) which looks fantastic in gloss black. The difference between the PWH2 and PWH4 is that the PWH2 has a solid maple top whereas the PWH4 has Australian Blackwood. Also the PWH4 has Seymour Duncan pickups fitted.

You’ve got to love Japanese TV! Admittedly this video is not as entertaining as Human Tetris but that has nothing to do with guitars! I’m not sure whether this was a one off or a regular show but the idea seems to be that you get 3 guitarists, in this case Paul Gilbert, Marty Friedman and Rolly? (Sorry I don’t know who he is) then you name a band, the next person has to name the guitarist/s in the band and the other person has to play one of their songs. Paul Gilbert seems to be playing through a $10 amp and has the nastiest guitar sound ever but it is pretty funny. Warning, shred alert! Don’t even attempt to watch this unless you are prepared for a lot of pointless widdling!

Oh and Paul and Marty seem to be pretty handy speaking Japanese too!

I don’t care what anyone says this is very cool! Paul Gilbert showing off his amazing technical skills with a helping hand from an unkown person providing a dynamic capo! Check out his changing fashion section on his website, it’s pretty entertaining!

This looks like the most confusing guitar I’ve ever seen but apparently if you put the output through a Leslie Cabinet it’s hard pick the organ sounds from a real tonewheel Hammond! There’s a plethora of rotary knobs and switches of which I have no idea what they do but I read somewhere that you can add and subtract percussion and tremolo but I’m not sure if this refers to the guitar sounds, the organ sound or both? I did find this little tidbit though:

“...frets were wired to tone generators and string contact completed the ‘circuit’, creating the organ sound.”

There are some great photos of this unique guitar here.