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

A while ago after posting about Hybrid Guitars I received an email from Guitar Noize reader, Australian guitarist/singer/songwriter Tarun Stevenson who asked me if I had tried the Crafter SA Series. Well I admit I had spotted one in Downtown Music in Sydney’s Inner West but hadn’t had a chance to play it so Tarun recorded an excellent and very thorough 3 part YouTube review, check it out on the left, the links to Part 2 and 3 are below.

And I wanted to share a little about Tarun also as he has been working hard for some great causes for years:

Inspired by a wide range of singer songwriters including Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Ben Harper, his music shows a great love for melody, diverse rhythms and songs that have something to say. Tarun recorded his first EP more than 10 years ago with the Brisbane heavy metal grunge band Revelation. In the mid-90s, he toured extensively with the Sydney-based funk rock band Four. And in 1998 he scored a place as a solo artist on the US music sampler, 105 best bands you’ve never heard.

Since 2005, Tarun has been touring throughout Australia, New Zealand and SE Asia singing and speaking everywhere from coffee houses, churches, youth groups, homeless shelters, orphanages, festivals to fundraisers and “…anywhere else that will have me…”.

His first full-length album, “Psalms for the Broken”, is packed with strong, engaging songs with special relevance to all of us who struggle at different times in our lives. “The main goal of my music is to connect with people, especially at their points of pain or struggle,” Tarun says. “Hopefully through sharing my own experiences, I can offer a message of hope.”
Tarun’s long awaited second album “Something Old Something New” was released on July 18th and will see Tarun hitting the road for most of 2008 – 2009 as he promotes the new album with a series of tours right across Australia and Asia. Dates to be announced

Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xevzmuxJZYk
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJhtiGbg1CY

I thought I had Hybrid guitars pretty much covered until a comment on the latest hybrid into an ever growing choice by legendary guitar designer Jol Dantzig made me realise I had been overlooking a guitar that has been around for a very long time! It also made me realise I have only featured one Hamer guitar here on Guitar Noize which is absurd. So I give you the Hamer DuoTone Custom. This guitar was the first workable hybrid electric-acoustic created by Jol in 1991!! Now was he ahead of his time with this one or what!

“The acoustic pickup utilizes a kynar cable sensor feeding into an onboard preamp with fully adjustable threeband equalizer. The magnetic pickups are time-tested Duncan humbuckers selected for this application, and together with the rosewood bridge, provide a truly warm electric sound. A full duplex output allows you to rout each signal to a separate discrete sound system, or to join them together.“

The DuoTone is a really great looking guitar due to its archtop spruce top complete with traditional f-hole and sunburst finish and lets you switch between or combine electric and acoustic sounds at the flick of a switch. Now the other hybrids don’t seem quite so groundbreaking do they?

Can I start by saying that this guitar has the most ridiculously long product code ever, the MSC750NT, phew thats a bit of a mouthful. Well this guitar is probably no suprise I mean how long did you think Ibanez would wait before getting a share of the hybrid market? So how many is that now? Well check out my Hybrid Guitar category. There’s the Ovation VXT, Taylor’s T5, the Michael Kelly Hybrid and the incredibly popular according to my stats Parkwood Hybrid! There is obviously a market for these guitars!

So what have Ibanez done differently? Well for a start the guitar has a few different modes from pure acoustic using the Piezo pickup to a clean electric using the magnetic pickup and a blend of both but it also has onboard DSP for distortion, chorus and reverb as well as phase canceling, dual notch filter and tuner. The tuner I have to say is a very useful addition, I have a built in tuner on my Takamine which I find invaluable.

So what does it sound like? Well why not check out Larry Mitchell demonstrating the various features. It certainly seems pretty versatile but I’m not sure it has the finesse of the Parkwood or the Taylor and I don’t think that these guitars are in any way a substitute for an electric but if you regularly have to switch between acoustic and electric mid set… well maybe you have a case for adding one of these to your arsenal.

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

No I’m not talking about Carbon Emissions, Michael Kelly Guitars has an offer on for the month of June where you receive a free 16-Watt Michael Kelly PureCoustic Acoustic Amplifier if you buy the Hybrid, part Acoustic, part Electric guitar (think Taylor T5 & Ovation VXT).

Hot on the heels of Taylor’s T5 comes Ovation’s VXT which apart from the dedicated microsite also has its own MySpace page and YouTube Profile with loads of demo videos showing that it’s not just for fingerpickers there’s some serious shredding going on!