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

The 22 Caliber is a versatile 22-watt guitar head that fits in the palm of your hand. Just plug it into any 4-, 8- or 16-ohm speaker, and you’ll get a big, sweet musical sound.

Crank the 22 Caliber’s volume, and it’ll go into overdrive - like a vintage amp with a single volume control. Flip on the Bright switch to add some bite and definition.

It’s not just a guitar head; it’s a shrunken head, with all good voodoo.

Interesting product from Electro-Harmonix, all you need is an overdrive pedal to add a bit more gain and you’re all set!

For more info check out the Electro Harmonix site.

When I hear the name Eventide I immediately think of expensive pro rack effect units such as the H3000 made famous by players such as Steve Vai in the late 80’s which has now been replaced by the H8000FW. Anyway Eventide concentrated on their rack effects units for many years until recently unleashing a trio of stomp boxes, the TimeFactor (Delay effects), the ModFactor (Modulation effects such as chorus, flanger, phaser) and the newest addition the PitchFactor.

When I received the PitchFactor from Eventide I was very excited, I had never used an Eventide product before but had heard their effects on so many records. This pedal is what most people would have expected Eventide to release as their first stomp box as this is their Harmonizer in a pedal and it is very hard to categorize as you will see in my video demo. I have left out the most obvious effect which is the actual diatonic harmonizer effect which harmonizes your signal in whatever key you like, and is very easy to set by holding a button and strumming a chord the Eventide analyses and sets the key to harmonize to. There are a few good video demos on YouTube which show these features, I chose not to focus on this because I wanted to point out how many things this pedal actual does apart from this effect! incidentally they have also utilised this advanced pitch analysis to include a very accurate chromatic tuner which is a nice addition.

I also want to point out that I don’t own an expression pedal but if you do this expands the possibilities of the PitchFactor immensely as it can control the wet/dry mix of an effect or any combination of parameters, for example you can use it to create whammy pedal effects or change the attack of the HarPeggiator™ which as you will see has some crazy sounds. You can also control program changes and vary parameters continuously via MIDI which is beyond my comprehension but I’m sure some of the more technical guitarists out there will appreciate this feature. Another nice feature is that the PitchFactor supports instrument or line level inputs and outputs so you can use it in front of the amp or in an amp effects loop which to me is very important.

The PitchFactor is quite a large stomp box (4.8” (H) x 7.5” (W) x 2.12” (D)) due to all these extra features that is probably the width of 3 Boss pedals but if you were to put all 3 Eventide pedals on a board you probably have every effect you are ever going to use covered. It is also built to last with rugged cast metal construction, the second you pick it up you know this pedal is going to withstand a lifetime of gigs.

The PitchFactor has Tap tempo and MIDI clock sync and 100 factory presets which are unlimited through MIDI. The presets are easy to flick through and you can set up a range of presets to work with so that you don’t have to cycle through all 50 banks. Each bank has 2 presets which you can flick between at the press of a footswitch so if you wanted 10 presets for a gig you could say set Bank 45 - 50 each with your 2 presets which can contain any mixture of effect and then contain the banks to this 5 (very simple to do) so you only ever see these and can’t accidently go to Bank 10 for instance.

The effects are amazing and can be quite trance-inducing especially the HarPeggiator™ and Crystal™ but what surprised me the most was that I could also get a very nice Chorus effect and some great Delays (up to 1.5 seconds of stereo delay) which you can add modulation to in order to get a analog style tape echo, but you can also take it further by changing the pitch of the 2 delays in order to create interesting harmonized effects. The Octaver™ is also a lot of fun and you can add fuzz as one of the paramters for that Hendrix vibe. If you want to create your own presets it is very easy to dial in different sounds using the array of parameter knobs and don’t let the number of knobs scare you, it doesn’t take very long to familiarize yourself with the controls and if you get stuck the manual has plenty of information on how to get the best out of each effect as well as a quickstart guide.

But the best way to get an idea of what this pedal is capable of is to watch my YouTube demo, then check out the Tone Factor video demos too.

For more information on Eventide products check out www.eventide.com

MXR are well known for their classic 70’s Phaser pedal, the ‘74 Vintage Phase 90 which most people agree is far superior to their later block logo incarnations and now the MXR Custom Shop has recreated the highly sought-after CSP028 ‘76 Vintage Dyna Comp which uses the exact same circuitry from the original model.

here’s something inherently musical in the way it “tightens up” a guitar signal, raising the volume of quiet notes and leveling off peaks to create rich, full bodied sustain. From country twangers to metal monsters, guitarists have long relied on the MXR Dyna Comp to make their riffs stand tall in any live or studio mix. - JimDunlop.com

via MusicRadar

Wampler Pedals have just announced that their new ‘Build Your Own Pedal’ kits will be available this Wednesday 27th May from their new website www.toneclonepedals.com. With these kits you will be able to build clones of classic effects pedals, for instance the Retro Screamer which is a clone of the classic Tube Screamer and the Ratical Pedal which as you can guess is a clone of the Ratt distortion pedal. There are also kits to build some of Wampler’s own pedals such as the Wampler Plextortion and Wampler Plexi for classic Marshall tones.

You can get on the list for one of these kits by heading over to the products page and clicking on the “get on the list” link under the product you would like to order.

I love guitar gear walkthroughs. I love to know what other peeps are using to get awesome tones. Especially when it’s someone new. Some new talent that may have some fresh ideas and a new take on the whole guitar tone thing. This one with Andy Wood (winner of Guitarmaggedon and band member of Down From Up) particularly interested me as his setup his very similar to mine. Except… the lucky fella has a Diezel. Is it right to feel gear envy when you have the pretty much the same the setup?!?!

Anyway, as a big G-System fan I wanted you all to take a look!! And what a player Andy is… one to watch surely.

You may have heard the name Brian Wampler floating around, after all he has an excellent effects pedal line called Wampler Pedals with some great distortion pedals such as the Super Plextortion (Marshall JCM800 style) and Pinnacle (Eddie Van Halen brown sound) and the Johnny Hiland Signature overdrive, the “Bad Dog” distortion/overdrive. Wampler also offer a Compressor and Analog Delay pedal too and it doesn’t end there. Recently Brian joined forces with Rockett Pedals for a new series called the Masterbuilt Series which currently has 2 pedals available, the Afterburner and the Rockett Boost. Brian is an effects expert so it seems natural for Premier Guitar to use his knowledge for a How To column.

In this article “Electro-Harmonix Russian Big Muff Pi Pedal Mods” Brian explains in detail how to modify the pedal and includes hi-res downloads of the schematics for you to do it yourself if you are the kind of person who is happy to dabble with a soldering iron and actually understand what he is talking about. Personally I have no idea about this kind of thing and the schematic diagrams mean absolutely nothing to me, I’ll leave it to the experts I think, in fact I’m quite tempted by the Wampler Pinnacle!

My recent search for a pedal to take my Cornford to super-duper high gain heights led me back to a company I hadn’t really heard much about until fairly recently. I’m such a snob and admit I had never even tried the Black Star stuff out. Thankfully I have some good friends who forced me to take the pleasure of trying the teeny weeny little HT-5 valve amp out ( Black Star HT-5 ) and I have to say that for a few hundred notes it was absolutely incredible. The patent-applied-for ISF knob, which voices the amp from Brit to US valve amp sounds is pretty darn funky! I was lucky enough to try a Gibson Les Paul R9 through this thing at a nice power-valve-compressing volume and I gotta tell ya, for recording this amp is a done deal. Spectacular bit of kit at a ridiculously good price here in the UK. Especially when you consider that some boutique transistor “overdrive” boxes aren’t too far away from the price!

Anyway… as always, turns out I am wrong. There I was looking at all sorts of transistor distortion boxes for my high gain when all I wanted really was to have an extra ECC83 or two in front of the pre-amp. And Black Star have a whole range of extremely cool and very, very nicely voiced valve pedals. Enough gain and variety to suit everyone… surely?! And let me tell you, try one and you’ll want the whole set. Add to that UK prices so flamin’ good there really can’t be much competition and we can already see Black Star becoming a serious player in the market.

So please, no-one be an idiotic snob like me and ignore this range!! Fantastic sounding, well built and incredibly well priced.

Recently I’ve been looking for a new pedal to help push my amp to a higher gain level. I already have a whole bunch of stomps but I’ve been extremely fond of the Maxon OD-9 since I got it in 2k6. Now Maxon have done something I’ve kinda not seen before, they’ve done a version with a valve inside the stomp but you can mix both the valve and solid state distortion types. It’s kinda cool and has plenty of that nice fuzzy round warmth that I’m so fond of in the OD-9.

It’s not yet available here in the UK, although that could mean anything (!) and I’m not particularly aware of pricing but it’s likely quite expensive… maybe over £150 GPB. It’s well worth checking out the video below, which is linked from Maxon’s product page…

Now if only I could find one over here and get my dirty little hands on it!!

Here’s a fascinating video of Dweezil Zappa showing us an absolute monster of a guitar rig he’s using on the Zappa Plays Zappa tour. It’s a fantastic mix of vintage and modern gear. He then goes on to show us some of Frank’s old stuff too! I personally really enjoyed this video, I’m a huge fan of both Zappa’s.

Anyone unfamiliar with the ZPZ tour should take a look at the DVD released last year. It’s an utter joy watching Dweezil and Vai trading solos!

XOTiC Effects have just announced the release of the eagerly anticipated Andy Timmons signature model of their popular BB Preamp pedal.

The BBP-AT offers smoother, warmer and more compressed tone than the standard BB Preamp with richer even harmonics. Housed in a durable orange metallic paint, the tones are as beautiful as the pedal. However, not as beautiful Andy’s signature sound. Order yours today, as quantities are limited.

MSRP $210 including Andy Timmons’ “Live Resolution” DVD and Certification signed by Andy Timmons Limited edition. Only 1,000 quantity will be made.