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Back in September 2007 I reviewed a documentary called Strat Masters which as the title suggested focussed on Leo Fender’s Stratocaster and the players that have used them over the years. Well it doesn’t take a genius to work out what ‘Leo Fender’s Telecaster – The Original Twang’ is about, this 2 DVD documentary talks to some of the greatest guitar players in history about arguably the greatest guitar in history. Everyone from Keith Richards to G E Smith to Jeff Beck to James Burton and even pickup designing legend Seymour Duncan talk in depth about their love for this versatile guitar that has hardly changed since its inception back in the 1940’s. There are a load of live performances from players such as G E Smith, James Burton as well as never seen before footage of the Fender production line in the early 1950’s as well as tours of the current Fender facilities including interviews with Leo’s former business partner the late Don Randall. One guy who I didn’t really know much about was Redd Volkaert who features heavily in the film but he is one amazing guitar player and he plays a number of examples to show the versatility of the Telecaster. Oh and I now want a Blue-burst Telecaster with gold hardware and a birdseye Maple fretboard thanks to Jerry Donahue’s appearance and performance.

The film tracks the 60 year history of The Broadcaster / Esquire / No-Caster and Telecaster from it’s humble beginnings in the orange groves of Fullerton, to the latest production at the fabulous Fender factory and custom shop in Corona, California.

...filmed in the UK, Eastern Europe, New York and California, to interview some of the true legends of music

As well as some of the legends of yesterday there are also some of the Telecaster new blood included in this documentary such as Richie Kotzen and John 5 who not only shows his exhaustive collection of Telecasters but also demos his signature model with a few country and metal crossover licks. There is also an interview with Norman Harris of Norm’s Rare Guitars in Hollywood who shows some of the finest Teles in his collection. There is also a great interview with Fender Custom Shop master builder John Cruz who explains how the Jeff Beck reissue Telecaster which is an accurate reproduction of an incredibly worn Esquire, every detail has been copied including the pickguard wear and pickup and bridge erosion, John explains the whole process.

I can’t see how any guitar player wouldn’t find this film interesting as it is the definitive film on the the most important guitar in history, the catalyst for everything that has come since and it has renewed my G.A.S. for a Tele as if I didn’t need encouragement!

If you want to purchase this double DVD head over to http://www.stratmasters.com/.

MI Effects (sister company to MI Amplification) are boutique effects manufacturer based in Sydney, Australia and they’re effects are popular all over the world due to their range of top quality overdrive and distortion pedals such as the Tube Zone, Crunch Box and Neo Fuzz. Now MI Effects are launching their latest pedal the MI Effects Compressor. This is probably the hardest product demo I have ever recorded because first of all I am uploading to YouTube which will add its own compression to the sound but also because this is a very versatile and beautifully transparent Compressor. You don’t necessarily notice a compressor when you hear a recording as it may be used as a subtle enhancement to make your guitar more punchy, the MI Compressor certainly did a great job of making my Black Pearl amp sound a lot tighter especially overdriven.

I have recorded a few examples using the compressor’s built in Noise Gate, something I have personally never seen on a Compressor before and a really great idea as Compressor’s amplify any background noise along with your guitar signal so if you are using a distortion pedal you could place this after it in the chain and use it to control your noise as well as tighten up your tone.

Compressors are really great for chicken pickin’ leads and articulated chords on clean but I also really liked how much character the MI Compressor added to my tone when I had the amp set to overdriven, basically what you are hearing is my Genz Benz Black Pearl 30 combo with the Volume and Boost up full, the EQ voicing set to natural, treble, middle and Bass set to 12 O’Clock and Top set to 1 O’clock. This setting creates a nice crunchy overdrive but it’s a bit flubby so the MI Compressor tightened it up nicely as if I had the master volume pushed up to half way rather than a quarter.

If you are looking for a Compressor that is transparent, versatile and includes features you don’t find on other Compressors like the Noise Gate and ability to run at 25v then check out the MI Effects Compressor. Head over to the MI Effects Dealers section to find out where you can go and give the pedal a test drive.

MI Effects website.

“This is my third guitar instrumental album. It nearly drove me crazy on many occasions. Do you hear all those notes? First I had to find them, And then I had to put them all together in the right order. It literally took me Months. What a job. But I love notes, so I’m happy to show up for work. Now, let’s talk about the universe.” - From the sleeve notes of Fuzz Universe

I still find it hard to believe this is only Paul’s 3rd fully instrumental guitar album considering how long Paul has been around and I’m sure I read somewhere after “Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar” that he wouldn’t make another instrumental, luckily for Paul Gilbert fans this was either false information or he changed his mind because ‘Fuzz Universe’ is brilliant.

Fuzz Universe is quite different to ‘Get Out Of My Yard’ & ‘Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar’ and it took me a couple of listens to really appreciate it. The opening track ‘Fuzz Universe’ is what I consider “typical” Paul Gilbert, it has his signature arpeggiated and fast alternate picked licks that despite being terrifyingly difficult to play are also melodic and catchy. The rhythm has a bit of an 80’s rock feel to it, a bit of flashback to Racer X. Most of the tracks including ‘Fuzz Universe’ and the following track ‘Olympic’ have a live sound due to Paul playing a single guitar track throughout so he alternates between the rhythm and melody/solo parts. Paul uses a lot of effects on this album and pulls out the Octave pedal for this track which sounds really nice with his already crunchy tones coming from an array of Ibanez Fireman models, he recently told Premier Guitar magazine they are loaded with DiMarzio hum-cancelling single-coils - “I used them for most of the album… I’m not sure what they are called yet, but they sound killer”.

‘Count Juan Chutrifo’ has that 70’s funk rock feel similar to Bronx 1971 from ‘Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar’ including Hammond Organ and a subtle Wah on the guitar throughout.

Paul is a fan of arranging classical music for electric guitar with ‘Haydn Symphony No. 88 Finale’ on ‘Get Out Of My Yard’ and on ‘Fuzz Universe’ he arranges a ‘Bach Partita in Dm’. I’m not personally much of a fan of distorted guitars playing actual classical music and always skip the Haydn track on GOOMY but this Bach Partita is pretty good.

‘Blue Orpheus’ is a cover of a crazy Todd Rundgren song (check the original here) and Paul recreates the vocal harmony intro with layered guitars that actually end up sounding like the intro to a Queen song! This track had me scratching my head for ages until I read that it was an old Todd Rundgren track in Paul’s Premier Guitar interview, I couldn’t work out where this was coming from. The melodies are certainly nothing I would normally associate with Paul and it has this kind of cheesy yet infectious rhythm guitar part and a lead tone that is straight out of an 80’s film like Rocky (you know the bit in Rocky IV where he is driving at night in his Lamborghini). It also has a guitar rhythm track similar to ‘The Echo Song’ from GOOMY which works really well as an accompaniment.

‘Will My Screen Door Stop Neptune’ is my favourite track on the album at the moment, again the intro chords are not what I would normally associate with Paul Gilbert but apparently they are inspired by The Beatles. Wonderful funky crunchy tones on this track with a halftime drum track that gives the guitar plenty of room to breath and the solo is crazy, insanely fluid and apparently it was the first take?!

I’m not sure where the influence for ‘Propeller’ came from but it is definitely leaning toward the jazzy side of Paul Gilbert, the Octave pedal (Whammy maybe?) creates a unique whistling melody tone and there is a nice Hammond Organ solo followed by a Bass solo and it is another track with a single guitar throughout which gives it a live feel even though it is obviously not a single take as each guitar has a different tone.

‘Don’t Rain on My Firewood’ is another funky track with plenty of Wah throughout! Think ‘Rusty Boat’ or ‘Bultaco Saturno’ but with more Wah.

‘Plastic Dracula’ is another typical Paul Gilbert style track with the 80’s influenced riffs but with Paul’s unique stamp on it and maybe a bit of Hendrix thrown the mix too.

‘Blowtorch’ is a pretty cool track with a tricky sounding open string pull off main riff and a great breakdown that builds back up slowly for over 2 minutes and in doing so actually becomes the majority of the track which I thought was interesting.

‘Mantra The Lawn’ is probably my least favourite track on the album, I don’t really like the melody. I do like the breakdown in the middle mind you as it has a kind of Hendrixy vibe.

The final track ‘Batter Up’ is like a Beach Boys kind of Surf style track and Paul says in the PG interview that he wants to play the drums for this track live and teach his drummer the guitar parts so that he can do the drum solos! I’d like to see that.

On the whole, and it seems to ridiculous to say this about someone held in such high esteem as Paul Gilbert, this album sounds more mature both in terms of tone and composition… well, definitely in terms of tone, I’d say this album has some of Paul’s best guitar sounds to date steering away from the fizzy thin distortion of ‘Get Out Of My Yard’ (I still love the album, just not a massive fan of the guitar tone). If you liked ‘Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar’ you are going to love ‘Fuzz Universe’.

John Norum was born on February 23rd 1964 in Vardö, northern Norway, and grew up in the Swedish capitol of Stockholm and is one of the co-founders of the band Europe, yes THAT Europe. I can’t say I’m a fan of Europe but I did actually see them live once as a support act for Bon Jovi at the Milton Keynes Bowl back in 1989 along with Vixen and Skid Row, who by the way were awesome, but John had temporarily left the band and was playing with Don Dokken, he had been replaced by Kee Marcello. Anyway there is no mistaking even from Europe’s biggest hit “The Final Countdown” that John has long been a formidable guitarist so I was interested to hear what his solo record would be like.

I didn’t really know what to expect with this album as I’ve never heard any of John Norum’s previous 6 solo albums but as soon as I saw the cover I was intrigued and did a quick Wikipedia lookup and realised that the boy on the cover is John’s only child Jake who was born in 2004, I also found out that 4 years later John’s wife died. This album is dedicated to the memory of his wife Michelle Meldrum Norum (founder and lead guitarist of Swedish metal band Meldrum). Due to this sad turn of events and the album title “Play Yard Blues” I expected this album to be a deep and tormented journey dealing with John’s painful 2 years that followed. In fact this album is nothing like what I had expected, there is a lot of positivity in the lyrics on this bluesy rock record such as “When Darkness Falls” which is a pretty straight up rock track with some funky overdriven Wah playing and like “Let It Shine” seems to talk about his personal healing. Incidentally the intro to “Let It Shine”, the album opener, has a very similar tone and funky feel to the intro of Guthrie Govan’s Sevens, although that is the only similarity it takes on more of a Hendrix style when John starts singing, it also has a great Wah drenched solo. There are moments when this album kind of sounds like a mixture of Cream and Santana, like the track “Red Light Green High” and “Over And Done”, John’s vocals sometimes sound like Jack Bruce and the guitars have that 60’s feel with the Vibe and Wah. There are a couple of tracks that depart from the Blues-Rock style and just hammer the rhythm home, “Born Again” is a good example which is the kind of track you can imagine in one of those films about pimped Nissan Skyline’s racing each other through the streets of Tokyo!

There is really only one actual Blues track which is the album title “Play Yard Blues” which has some great playing and lovely blues guitar tones and is the only instrumental track on the album. My Catalinbread Pareidolia does a great job of creating this type of swirly guitar effect.

If you are a fan of 70’s style rock with big beats and blues-inspired funky guitar riffs then check this album out, you can hear streaming versions of all of the tracks on John’s site - http://www.johnnorum.se so you can try before you buy!

One of my favourite pastimes is scouring YouTube for gear demos and one of my favourite channels is fearedse, run by a guitarist called Ola Englund from Stockholm in Sweden. Ola’s gear demos are not your traditional videos that show every knob and switch, instead Ola lays down brutal multitrack guitars over his own compositions. Ola demonstrates high gain amps as he is in a couple of very heavy metal bands, Feared and Scarpoint. I saw on his recent demo video above which is a track called “Daddy’s girl” from the Feared debut album which is available in the iTunes Store, I thought it sounded pretty fierce so I bought it!

Now as you will hear above if you don’t like gruff vocals and punishing metal riffs then you will probably want to stop reading now, this album doesn’t pull any punches. The album includes 9 tracks of fire-breathing Metal which the Scandinavians are well known for but Ola is a very talented rhythm guitar player as well as technical solo guitar player which is what makes the album so enjoyable to listen to. The guitars sound massive, as you can hear in Ola’s demo’s he manages to get the most out of any amp whether it be a Peavey 5150, Mesa Boogie Road King or Diezel Einstein. More recently Ola has also started using a Fractal Audio Axe-FX, check out his demo here.

Some of the highlights on the album for me are the opening track “Fall Of Man” which really sets the pace well for the rest of the album with a deceptively soft intro leading into a ferocious intro riff before the main verse riff comes in which, as with everything on this album, is an incredibly tight and accurate rapid fire rhythmic riff. The next 2 tracks “Breaking The Cycle” and “Antisocial” also keep the sonic assault blasting through your speakers with the same driving intensity of the opener. You can already hear “Daddy’s Girl” in the demo video above, another great track that shows how tight the band can play and that will give you a good idea of the rest of the album from a songwriting and production point of view. “Bullied” has quite a different feel to the preceeding tracks, almost a different genre, much slower from the rest of the songs I wonder if this would have been better in the middle of the album to create more of a contrast especially as the final song “A Regret” is a ballad with Acoustic guitars arpeggating chords throughout, this track is also quite a surprise after the 8 tracks that have melted your ears before it!

If you like bands such as Chimaira and Lamb Of God you will love this album, it has technical guitar playing by the bucketload with infectious grooves and a solid rhythm section backing up the riffs. The gruff vocals may not be to everyone’s taste but listen to the demo above and if you like it search for Feared - Feared in the iTunes Store or click on the Amazon link below.

UPDATE: There is also a 5 track EP available which features some newer material and having just listened to it I can tell you that is every bit as good as the album so you may want to look that one up too (I’ll include a link to Amazon below).

http://www.myspace.com/fearedband

You can win this Electro-harmonix Big Muff Pi With Tone Wicker as part of the Blue Noize solo contest!

This is a first for me as I’m demoing 2 pedals at once, well ok one of them isn’t actually a pedal, maybe that should have been 2 products at once… there that’s better. So first up is the Electro-harmonix Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker for some crazy retro fuzz action and the second is the Sanyo Pedal Juice which I mentioned a little while ago on Guitar Noize and it is a rechargeable 9v power supply.

The Sanyo Pedal Juice is a clever invention because not only do you reap the benefits of using your pedals without the potential hum and noise from a mains power supply but you can daisy chain both of your DC outputs meaning you can power multiple medals at once. First thing I had to do was charge the Pedal Juice, this literally means just plugging it in to the mains with the supplied power cord and leaving it until the little LED goes from Red to Orange to Green and finally goes off, that means you are 100% charged and ready to go (roughly 3 hours). Ok so once you have it charged it is very simple to use, just plug in the attached cords and plug them into your pedal and switch the pedal juice on. If you are using a single Ananlog effect you will get about 50 hours from a charge, if like me you have a mixture of digital and analog effects on your board that draw all up hundreds of milliamps(mA) then you might only squeeze a couple of hours out of it between charges, but that is still plenty of time if you are gigging!

The Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker is basically a hot rodded version of the original Big Muff Pi, I incorrectly assumed in my demo above that to create the sound of the original you flick both the Tone and the Wicker switches off, apologies I’ve never used an original, in fact you need the Tone switch On. The Wicker switch opens up three high frequency filters to add more clarity and crispness to the distortion. Switching off the Tone completely bypasses the Tone circuit altogether so make sure you check your volume first because it gives the output a massive volume boost compared to with the Tone circuit on. I have tried to show as many tonal possibilities as I could in the demo above so I hope you enjoy my fuzzing riffs!

Electro-harmonix website
Sanyo Pedal Juice