Guitar Noize - guitar news, crazy guitar designs and cool guitar videos

You may not have realised due to the magic of the interweb but I have been on holiday in New Zealand for a couple of weeks and while I was away I received a disturbing press release from Orange Amplifiers. Apparently 141 Tiny Terror Combo Amps with a combined value of £60,000 that were part of the first shipment of this highly anticipated combo amp were stolen from a temperature controlled, sealed forty foot container! As this was part of the first delivery into the UK, only 121 units had been shipped into music shops, so this is still a highly sought after amp with very limited availability.

The Police have launched a major investigation and informed all relevant port and home authorities. Orange Amplifiers are putting up a reward of £5000 for information that will lead to a successful conviction and recovery of these amplifiers.  If you have any information please contact the local Police force on 0845-3300222, quoting Crime Number J1/08/3588. The company have the serial numbers of all the products stolen which is available on it’s website at http://www.orangeamps.com

 
http://www.orangeamps.com/
Tel: +44 208 905 2828
Fax: +44 208 905 2868

It’s that time of year again and this time 2 time world champion Dainoji has been dethroned by American Craig ‘Hot Lixx Hulahan’ Billmeier this past weekend in Oulu, Finland. If you watch the video I think you will see why, he is pretty funny and entertaining and certainly has plenty of energy! If only he put that energy into actually playing a guitar… ok I’m not going there or this will end up with me on soap box bitching about Guitar Hero and Air Guitar! Enjoy!

Last week I posted about some of the great guitar blogs that I read, well I received an email from Zack from Guitar Vibe (I told you I was bound to miss someone!) and he reminded me about his gig review section. I have had Guitar Vibe in my rss reader for some time, it is a great blog with nice in-depth posts, interviews etc. One of the things that make this blog different from the other guitar blogs is the Gigs category. Zack obviously loves seeing bands and documents the gigs he goes to with his trust Canon. There’s plenty of reviews with youtube videos and photo slideshow so make sure you check it out.

GuitarVibe.com

How is this for a good idea, String Dog Tone Rocket strings come with an extra E and B string in every pack, lets face it how often do you break your A string? Never, how often do you break your top E? Well if you are lazy like me and don’t change strings for ages then it will happen and its annoying having to break open a new pack just for one string! Having said that if you have had the strings on for a long time you really would be better off changing the whole set but its still nice to have spares!

What is even nicer is the price, for a box of 10 pack it only costs $39.99 if you buy direct from the StringDog.net website.

I haven’t tried these strings yet but the site says the strings are Nickel plated wrap over a tempered steel core for a great all purpose string.

“The tone is well balanced… chimey highs, clear but not overbearing midrange, and chunky lows.
And high quality plating means they stay great sounding longer.

The strings have excellent flexibility, so bend away! But no worries… the precision winding and premium materials add up for excellent tuning stability and long life.“

These strings do only come in 10 packs but there is a 60 day free trial, they sound pretty confident that you will buy the 10 pack and at $40 they are worth a try.

I don’t normally post on a sunday but I saw this and had to comment. Steve Vai has always been one of my biggest guitar heros and a constant inspiration so I’m always interested when I see he has a new product out. Now the Ibanez Jemini has been out a while in fact it was announced at winter NAMM 2008, see the post here, but Mr Vai just posted a video up on his YouTube channel of erm, well Steve Vai and Steve Vai doing a demo of the 2 channel distortion pedal (You’ll see what I mean!). Not only does it show the 2 different distortion channels it is also pretty entertaining to watch, Steve has a good sense of humour and abuses himself throughout which is funny. Aside from the humour you also get to see Steve not only playing a couple of solos but you get to see what would happen if Steve Vai could clone himself! Enjoy!

A little while ago I was reading about the Edgar Winter band, now it seems I am just a little too young to have known about the band when they released the classic ‘Frankenstein‘ and was interested to read that Edgar is younger brother of guitar legend Johnny Winter. Anyway I was reading about their guitarist Doug Rappoport who is a British born guitarist has been playing professionally since age 15. I was interested to hear his new solo album ‘Bionic’ so I contacted him in order to get hold of a copy, in fact it was so hot off the press that the CD covers hadn’t even been printed yet so I got an advance copy! I presumed it would be a bluesy jazzy album as I don’t know much of the Edgar Winter discography (yet!) but then I saw the album artwork and realised that this wasn’t going to be what I expected at all!

Bionic opens with a track called, ahem… ‘Camel Toe Rodeo‘, yes really. Anyway aside from the bizarre vocal interludes, which personally I would have preferred without but I guess that is Doug’s sense of humour coming through, this is a rocking track. Great heavy riff and melodic rock soloing that reminded me of Andy Timmons very fluid and effortless sounding with a few fusion licks thrown in some nice octave unison lead lines.

‘Bionic Warz‘ is one of my favourite tracks on the album, again blending rock guitar with fusion elements but not so much that you would ever say it was jazzy this is some heavy shit going on! I would put this track more in the John Petrucci style of music, lots of fast picking, crazy arpeggios and super heavy backing riffs.

The third track on the album is called ‘Chopper‘ which Doug wrote after watching the awesome Eric Bana film of the same name based on the life of legendary criminal Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. I don’t know if it is Doug singing on the track? Doug if you are reading this please leave a comment and let us know, if it is he has a great rock voice kinda like Zakk Wylde. This track shows that Doug is more than just a shredder and can write melodic songs too. In fact there is also a rock ballad called “Dyin’ 2 Live“ also featuring vocals but I wasn’t a fan of this, sorry Doug, I prefer the heavier stuff.

UPDATE (22/10/08): It seems I was a little hasty in my review because I can’t get “Chopper” out of my head I’ve listened to the song 4 times today!

There is also a cover of Jimi’s ‘Voodoo Chile - Slight Return‘ and the guitar playing is very impressive, Doug has a wide vibrato that sounds like he is shaking the neck of his guitar. It is very hard to do a cover of any Hendrix track and not get criticised so fair play to Doug for just doing his thing. It is basically a heavy rocked up version which takes elements from the original but Doug puts his own stamp on it.

The last track on the album took me completely by surprise! ‘When I Wish Upon a Star‘ which shows off Doug’s Jazz chops on both electric and acoustic guitar. I expect to hear this on a Tommy Emmanuel record not a rock album like Bionic! Very impressive playing with plenty of harmonics a la Tommy and nice counterpoint bass lines.

If you like guitarists like Andy Timmons, John Petrucci etc. you will like Doug Rappoport and if you like the Edgar Winter Band, Doug apparently does an 8 minute guitar solo during the set! Check out Doug’s myspace page for some audio clips which also has more info on how to purchase his album ‘Bionic‘.

I discovered Alex Ehrsam recently while scouring YouTube for some lesser known talent to add to my Guitar Noize YouTube favourites. I say lesser known in comparison to the Joe Satriani’s and Steve Vai’s of this world I’m sure he is known in Jazz circles because he is an amazing guitar player. I recently contacted Alex and he was kind enough to send me a copy of his album, ‘djaz_dtox‘ available through guitar9.com. Alex sights Greg Howe and Scott Henderson as influences for this album and he recently entered the Greg Howe ‘Play for me’ contest, check out his entry here.

Alex picked up the guitar at the age of 15, his love of jazz music such as Coltrane and Miles Davis mixed with his rock shredding style have blended over the years into what he calls Progressive Fusion. He is capable of the Rock style of playing as demonstrated on the opening track of the album, ‘Scab Co-Worker‘ with overdriven guitar lead lines and pinch harmonics but also incredible fluidity with endless legato lines that meander around the jazz style progressions, nice bit of wah on this backing track too!

‘Snappy Response‘ is a similar ‘Greg Howe’ style track with overdriven guitars and legato playing at blistering speed although this track felt a bit more like an improvisation over a chord progression, personally I would have liked a bit more variation.

‘Out U Go‘ has a crazy opening riff that seems to defy time signatures, I think the drums are programmed if not the drummer certainly wouldn’t be thanking Alex having to learn something as complicated as this! Actually any decent drummer would probably relish the challenge. Once again in this track the Wah Wah comes out to show Alex’s funk side with some nice slap bass accompaniment. Oh and I said the opening riff was crazy but really the timing throughout is enough to make the most seasoned professional sweat!

‘Elevator Shaft‘ opens with a Saxaphone melody over what I would describe as a Drum & Bass beat with ethereal synth chord backing, but the track suddenly takes an entirely different direction half way through dropping the tempo to a half-time beat and overdriven guitars take over with a ballad like melody that occasionally deviates with lightning fast licks. The track then returns to the introductory them and original tempo with the guitars taking the Sax’s place.

‘Standard Procedure‘ is another rock fusion track with some bluesy pentatonic licks mixed in with more traditional jazz scales similar to the way Scott Henderson mixes it up. There is some fierce technical soloing in this track with tapping and arpeggios that are just plain scary!

‘Fix‘ has one of the more memorable melodic hooks on the album as the main riff, mind you I’m not talking a straight pentatonic riff, it seems to pass through about 3 keys in 1 bar! Maybe I’m exaggerating but its a very cool riff and one I intend to learn just to analyse exactly what is going on.

‘Cold Chill‘ is a really nice departure from the rock fusion which starts to take its toll on your ears after a while. The track opens with a solitary nylon string acoustic guitar and then a second guitar is introduced playing a melodic solo. It has a kind of spanish feel throughout and around the halfway switches to a more Gypsy Jazz feel mixed with modern harmony. It highlights how precise Alex’s playing is.

‘Decoy Unseen‘ is back to the Greg Howe-esque insane legato and speed picking that seems to cross the entire fretboard and back every bar, Alex’s knowledge of the fretboard is amazing. It has a funky feel with some modern jazz lines.

The final track ‘Malpractice‘ is the only track on the album to not feature soloing guitar all the way through and has a more relaxed fusion style with laid back drum beats, synth pads and Sax melody. Kind of cheesy to non Jazz fans but easy to listen to.

If you are not a Jazz fan you might find it hard to listen to all the way through but you might like the tracks individually so don’t rule it out. If you like Greg Howe, Prashant Aswani or Scott Henderson you will like Alex’s playing he is l’extraordinaire guitariste! If you want to try before you buy go to Alex’s website, or MySpace page to hear tracks from the album. Merci once again to Alex for sending me the CD.

We all know that in order to produce cheap instruments many guitar companies choose to outsource part or all of the construction of their instruments to Asian powerhouses who happily churn out guitars cheaply and efficiently albeit at the cost of quality but that is the price you have to pay for mass consumption. Meanwhile custom guitar shops happily charge upwards of $3-4000 for their standard instrument model due to the high level of build quality and materials used. However Gadow guitars are trying to change the trend of only offering high end models by introducing the Gadow Guitars American Series, hand built guitars from North Carolina for under a grand, pay an extra $300 and you could be the lucky owner of the American Deluxe pictured above. So what do you get for your money? Well with the standard model you get a Poplar body, Maple neck, Indian Rosewood fingerboard, dual action truss rod, Tone Pros bridge, Sperzel Tuners and a pair of GFS ‘59 pickups or P90’s. But add a few hundred dollars onto your budget and you get a Mahogany body with a Figured Maple top and Gadow custom wound pickups, gadow hand wound pickups which has more information about their pickups. Personally I think it is worth the extra for the Maple top and sunburst finish.

Of course if you are looking for something a little bit special and you have cash to burn you can always check out their Custom Set Neck with its Mother of pearl crown inlays and Ebony veneer applied to the front of headstock and Carbon fiber reinforced African mahogany set neck which will set you back $3500.