The Seagull S6 Original Q1: A Working Musician's Friend

http://bit.ly/ofJ47u If you are looking for a quality acoustic-electric that won't destroy your budget, look no further than the latest offering from Seagull Guitars. A couple of years ago, Seagull began to improve and supplement their already excellent line-up with re-designed guitars that featured compound curved tops and re-designed precision neck angles. The S6 Original Q1 represents the newest member of the Original Series.

With a solid cedar top and wild cherry sides and back, this guitar sounds vibrant, deeply warm, and altogether crisp. These woods are finished with a semi-gloss lacquer coat. The silver leaf maple neck has a rosewood fretboard, which looks great and reduces finger fatigue. The strings sit on a tusq nut and compensated saddle, and they run into machine heads that are in the in-line configuration that is characteristic of all Seagull guitars.

Electric Guitar Technology

http://bit.ly/mQZLNZ Axeman have always had an up-and-down relationship with the concept of high technology. Maybe it is due to the elemental nature of our instrument, extremely in its acoustic guitar form, or maybe it is because of the raw and sometimes emotional approach taken by many of the creators and ongoing purveyors of rock, blues, country, and different types of songs. Regardless of the case, there will at all times be my giant a part of the electric guitar neighborhood that likes to maintain things easy and will get it finished with my fairly conventional guitar, a tube amplifier, and a few pedals. This is a technique that has labored for most players, given up excellent sounds, and been a part of my entire bunch of songs that are on my complete bunch of iPods all over the world.

It is not, although, the only strategy to fly. There's my small however visible minority in our scene of guitarists for who simple is just not enough. There consist of pickers out there who just hear issues in a totally different approach than the rest of american. They’re interested in effects processing, looping, MIDI, guitar synthesis, and other ways to get guitars to do things not ever imagined by Leo, Orville, and Epi. People like Adrian Belew, The Edge, and Matthew Bellamy of the band Muse have built guitar technology and processing a constructing block of their tones and make songs that has little to do with the historic ‘valves, tweed, and custom’ approach of doing things.

The query earlier than american at the moment, gentle readers, is how do you, the readers of Gear Vault, feel about big-tech electric guitar performing? There are most improvements, gadgets, and pieces of equipment that are doing their best to change the state of the guitar farther ahead than it at the moment is, not less than as practiced by the vast majority of artists out there. One of many most seen (and most rapidly rejected by the market) items of electric guitar tech is the now-infamous Gibson Robot Guitar that strings and tunes with automated technology. The ‘Robotic’ concept was immediately beat to death on-line and in print by the lions’ share of the guitar world for being, nicely, ridiculous. There are many other bits of tech that guitarists can dabble in, ought to they select to. One of many many obvious and ‘conventional’ is the Fender Roland-Ready Stratocaster, which is my electric guitar-primarily based MIDI controller that makes it easy for my electric guitar guitar player to edge into the type of machine control often left to keyboardists. Fender also introduced the VG Stratocaster that packs digital modeling expertise onboard and permits one guitar to cop the tones of many totally different axes, tunings, and the like. These are modern musical instruments, to be sure, however are back a little methods from the cutting edge of the tech thing and could be understood and played by many of artists with out too much of my studying curve.

Then again, most really new input thinking about the guitar might be evidenced in the string-much less, contact pad guitar being prototyped by Misa Digital. This plank has 24 frets, my multi-function contact pad on the body, and is answered to emulate guitar tones and to supply what Misa calls a ‘perfect signal.’ That sound can then be digitally morphed into anything it must signal like and even allows different effects to be utilized on a be aware-by-observe basis. This is said to eradicate the necessity for any type of external effects and processing gear in an effort to make guitar playing more ‘efficient.’ This is the type of guitar that is certainly not for everyone and would most likely take my fair bit of time to get my deal with on and discover my voice with.

The thing we at Gear Vault want to recognize is whether the sort of electric guitar tech is attractive to all of you out there in Guitar Town and what you would do with it in your personal playing and rig. Some individuals received’t have an interest in this at all and stay staunch traditionalists. Most, although, will see this stuff and feel like they simply pulled the sword from the stone, southernto speak. The place does every of you fall on this curve? Inquiring minds wish to recognize. In case you are, indeed, my big tech visionary, ship us some hyperlinks so.we will see what you do. Bear in mind: all of the stuff we see as old college now was cutting edge trendy in its day. If you happen to consist of advancing the electric guitar in some manner or simply have robust feelings about the whole thought, drop us a line and get the dialogue originated. Watch this space for the best stuff we get. Until it starts rolling into the house workplace, however, I am going to go fire like crazy a coal-burning Telecaster and plug it into a mule-driven amplifier for my fast blast thru 2112. Any individual has to maintain it real… @evernote @facebook @hi5 @jaiku @myspace @orkut @picasa @plerb @smugmug @soundcloud @sugarsync @tinypic @wordpress @zooomr electric guitars guitar tech education instruments

Egnater Rebel-30 Guitar Amplifier Review

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Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Egnater grew up learning guitar with the music of the local bands of his era, including Alice Cooper, Grand Funk Railroad and Bob Seger. His frustration at not being able to find an amp that did what he wanted it to led to Bruce designing and building one of the first cascaded gain lead channel guitar amps.

Ever since then, for three and a half decades, he's run his own custom amplification shop and worked with some of the world's top players, including Kirk Hammett, Steve Vai and Dimebag Darrell, as well as Randall and Rocktron.

Besides licensing his modular concept to Randall for the MTS series, Egnater hand-builds his own custom amps in Berkeley, Michigan and also has a range of Chinese-made products – including the Rebel 30 head and 1x12 combo.

It may be a Rebel, but it's a smartly dressed one, with a suit of two-tone cream and black vinyl that's much thicker than we're used to seeing on Chinese products. The Rebel 30's cabinet is compact and deeper than you'd expect, making it very nearly a cube, but is easy to carry single-handed.

The electronics are contained inside a tough 'L'-shaped steel chassis, mostly on two large high quality printed circuit boards, one mounted vertically for the preamp stuff and one mounted horizontally for the output stage. These hold nearly everything, including the valve bases – the output valves hang upside down from the bottom of the chassis, while the four preamp valves are mounted horizontally and accessed through a removable grille, nearer to the top of the cabinet.

The colour scheme carries on to the control panel, where the Egnater's boutique guitar amplifier heritage becomes clear. Channel one, the clean channel, features volume, bass and treble; channel two handles overdrive with a familiar layout of gain, master volume and three-band EQ.

Both channels feature sub-miniature toggle switches to operate Egnater's 'bright' and 'tight' functions, making it easy to add a little extra snap to a Les Paul or girth to the low-end of a Stratocaster or Telecaster.

Now for the cool stuff: both channels have separate attenuator controls, varying the amp's output from a maximum of 30 watts down to just one watt. The Rebel 30's trick output stage features a pair of EL84s and a pair of 6V6s, which are linked to a front panel detented mix control that lets you fade from one pair to the other, with both pairs on in the centre position.

At either extreme you get about 20 watts, going up to around 30 with all four valves working. "I came up with the idea for that while I was stuck in an airport waiting for a flight," explains Egnater over a crackly trans-Atlantic phone line. "There are lots of amps with more than one type of output valve and I wanted to do that, but in a different way. As far as I know nobody else has that mix control, and the cool thing is it really works – you can really hear the change as you fade from the EL84s to the 6V6s and back again".

Next to the mix control is the standby switch, which has a third position for silent recording. This mutes the custom Celestion Egnater Elite 80 loudspeaker, but leaves the rear panel recording output active. This is balanced and speaker compensated, for an authentic straight-to-tape (or disk) amplified tone.

Other rear panel features include external speaker jacks, a socket for the two-button footswitch, switchable impedance and mains voltage (carefully protected under a screw-down cover) and separate channel level controls for the Rebel 30's digital reverb.

One minor annoyance: the reverb controls are laid out the opposite way round to the channels. If you lean over the front of the amp to adjust them, the reverb level knob for channel one is nearest the panel controls for channel two, and vice versa.

But that's pretty much the only thing we could find to grumble about here. The Rebel 30 has excellent build quality, tantalising features and plenty of that very rare commodity the Americans can do so well: style. As if to make sure we get the point, there's also a padded cover embroidered with the Egnater logo and a well-written informative manual printed on luxury paper.

"If you go to a Chinese factory and tell them you want something quick and cheap, you'll often get what you deserve," says Bruce. "We've worked tirelessly with our partners in China to raise the bar for quality. We're on the phone talking to them every day and make frequent visits to the factory to keep on top of things. I'm very proud of what we've achieved and I think the results speak for themselves".

Sounds

We tried the Rebel out with our two regular test guitars: a Strat fitted with regular output Duncan Alnico Pro II single-coils, and a vintage Paul Reed Smith CE bolt-on loaded with HFS and Vintage humbuckers.

The Egnater's clean channel is rich, responsive and warm, with an extended glassy treble and nicely contoured lows that are easy to whip into shape with the bright and tight switches.

We never noticed the lack of a mid-range control – bass and treble interact smoothly and make it easy to get stunning clean sounds, enhanced by the smooth digital reverb, which tails off naturally as you switch between channels, despite level changes – something that Egnater calls 'spillover'.

As you turn up the volume a little more, the clean channel develops a subtle edge that's highly rewarding for big chords. The lead channel is quick and easy to dial-in and the gain control has plenty of mild overdrive range, with all the monster distortion happening in the last quarter of this knob's travel.

Egnater's signature hot lead tone is great fun, with a vocal sustain and harmonic squeals exploding off the attack of every note. "That edge on the clean channel is deliberate and something a lot of players like," says Bruce. "The lead channel has the classic Egnater tone – over the years I've learnt a lot of tricks and they help to define a character that folks will hopefully recognize."

At higher volume levels, the attenuator controls make it easy to add just the right amount of power amp drive, while being able to fade from the boxier mids of EL84s to the fatter bass and airy treble of the 6V6s is a revelation. There's so much colour to be had from these two features you may never get around to using the tone controls.

With the attenuator (on the guitar amplifiers) down on the one-watt setting you can get some pretty vicious distortion from the clean channel, but it works better the other way around – we had the lead channel's attenuator on about one quarter and the clean channel's all the way up.

At higher volume levels the Egnater Rebel 30 sounds much fatter and benefits from the purer tone of single-coils, while at low-to-medium volumes it's humbuckers that win. It's loud and easily copes with an unmic'd drum kit, with very little of the boxiness normally associated with small combos.

This is one of the best Chinese-made amps we've ever seen, with build quality, electronics, high-end design and sheer tone that far exceeds many Western-built products. It isn't the cheapest 'offshore' 30-watt amp you can buy, but you're getting what you pay for and then some, as there are many combos costing from $700- $1500 that can't touch the Egnater for tone and response.

The Rebel 30 is one of those rare amplifier designs that simply cannot be made to sound bad, no matter how hard you try. Easily portable, capable of turning out great results in the studio and small to medium gigs, it's already a major hit in the USA and we think that it's destined for great things over here too. If your bag includes rock, blues and fusion, then this amp probably has your name on it… as well as Bruce Egnater's, of course!

Verdict

One of the best small combos in its class - add the 1x12 extension cab and you've got a killer rig that's highly portable and versatile. @evernote @facebook @hi5 @jaiku @myspace @orkut @picasa @plerb @smugmug @soundcloud @sugarsync @tinypic @wordpress @zooomr Egnater Guitar Amplifiers

Epiphone Wilshire Phant-O-Matic Guitar Giveaway

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Musician`s Friend are giving away one of the My Chemical Romance`s Frank Iero`s signature Epiphone Wilshire Phant-O-Matic. A fantastic and brand new model in Epiphone catalogue which is sure to strike the right chord with all guitar enthusiasts. The poll can be entered at Musician`s Friend`s official web page. The propositions are that one person may enter once a day. It lasts until October the 31st. The lucky winner will be chosen around November the 4th.

Epiphone Wilshire Phant-O-Matic is codesigned with My Chemical Romance`s guitarist Frank Iero and aesthetically, this guitar delivers all the sweet vintage features which made Wilshire models iconic guitars in the history of rock music.

Epiphone guitars made this one a very special guitar with unsurpassed tonal versatility which comes in the shape of Varitone system. It uses a six position rotary switch which when turned to any position from two to six morphs the guitar tone accordingly to how far from position one it is. Position one is a total bypass of the Varitone system. two to four reshape the sound, but keep the clarity of the sound, but positions five and six turn the sound of the classical Alnico pickups into single coil sound, but without a usual single coil "quack". When combined with a three way toggle and a killswitch on the upper horn of the double cutaway it adds up to limitless tonal possibilities.

Epiphone Wilshire Phant-O-Matic comes with a solid double cutaway mahogany body combined with a glued neck. Epiphone guitar's own Lock-Tone variant of the Tune-O-Matic bridge with a stoptail is used for this beauty. It makes absolute stability a standard feature. Alnico Classic pickups in the bridge and neck position give it all from the sweet and mellow clean tones to lion roars and everything in between. Control department consists of a master volume knob, varitone switch and a killswitch. Pickup switch is a three way toggle standard. Mahogany glued neck has 1960s Slim Taper shape which makes it easy and very comfortable to play for hours without any feeling of fatigue. rosewood fingerboard features 22 medium jumbo frets and Mother-Of-Pearl Block inlays. Other features include: 24-3/4" scale, 12" fingerboard radius, 1-11/16" nut width, nickel hardware, Wilkindon tuners and a black pickguard. Available in Antique Ivory.

Epiphone Wilshire Phant-O-Matic is a true beauty and a hard worker as well. The tonal versatility blended with vintage features and looks make this one a killer. Check Epiphone Wilshire Phant-O-Matic at our detail page or at Musician`s friend official web page.

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Roland Jupiter-80 Synthesizer Review

http://bit.ly/noBA9o One of the hottest and most talked about products on the market today is the Roland Jupiter-80. This is not a re-creation of the ‘80s Jupiter-o, although it does pay homage to its predecessor with road-proven hardware and massive sound. This is a modern synth that features Roland’s SuperNATURAL synthesis engine. The SuperNATURAL engine is designed to re-create legendary vintage synth sounds and amazingly realistic organic acoustic sounds.

The Roland Jupiter-80 is an envelope-pushing synth with three separately programmable sound chains. Each sound chain has a filter, an oscillator, an LFO, and an amp, and you can combine up to nine sound chains for an amazing 27 oscillators – at once! Each oscillator can utilize one of seven vintage waveforms or one of over 350 PCM waveforms for unlimited tone-shaping combinations. The Jupiter-80 supports up to 256 polyphonic voices depending on the sound load. Also featured is an extremely powerful arpeggiator with 128 factory presets and another 128 presets that are user definable. And musicians will love that this board includes Roland’s famous SuperNATURAL pianos, brass, strings, and more.

The Jupiter-80 was designed and laid out for live performance. A large LCD screen makes navigating the functions of the Jupiter-80 a breeze. After you have designed your own patches, you can save them as “Live Sets.” A Live Set can stack up to four sounds, each with its own DSP, effects group, and level control!

There are a number of assignable knobs and buttons on the Jupiter-80, so you can create a custom layout. Roland’s D Beam controller can be assigned to control parameters for a more dynamic performance. Control volume, Leslie speed, modulation depth, and more, all with your hand.

The USB port built into the Jupiter-80 allows you to easily record your creative musical ideas. It can also be used to provide backing tracks to play along with. Plus, you can save your Jupiter-80 settings to a USB key for recall and backup. Plug the keyboard into your computer and record directly to your DAW via USB MIDI.

Roland’s Jupiter-80 features hundreds of amazing presets, a 76-key semi-weighted synth keyboard, stellar effects, cool arpeggiators, ultra-realistic SuperNATUAL instruments and sounds, and much more. Great in the studio or live onstage, the Roland Jupiter-80 is a force to be reckoned with. Source: Sweetwater @evernote @facebook @hi5 @jaiku @myspace @orkut @picasa @plerb @smugmug @soundcloud @sugarsync @tinypic @wordpress @zooomr instruments keyboard

GuitarGrip Guitar Hanger

http://bit.ly/q9DhyK Grip Studios produce a range of different hand-shaped guitar hangers from factory made models to elegantly hand-carved and hand-painted artist originals. I was sent their gorgeous ‘Grip Reaper’ design which features a glossy skeleton hand finish.

What’s In the Box?

Out of the box you are immediately struck by the detail in the model as all of the little lines and creases are present and accounted for and the hand features some impressive skeleton hand. I’m not sure what these are made from but there’s certainly a good weight behind them, they feel very solidly made and are certainly up to the task of holding up a guitar.

The hanger is fixed to the wall by a single long screw and has some black felt padding at the base of the screw to protect your wall from damage. I did find that there was some slight transfer of black dye onto my wall after I took the hand down, but nothing that won’t wash off. The part of the hanger which will come into contact with your guitar is covered in a very soft black rubber coating to prevent any damage to your guitar’s finish.

Did you also notice that the model is left handed? Grip Studios have also recently introduced right handed models if you would like a set.

Installation

Installation is ridiculously simple as all you really need to do is screw it into your wall. Because of the single screw design it is obviously preferable to find a stud in your wall to affix the hanger, but through the use of the proper wall anchors you could virtually attach this anywhere. The only tool you will need is a drill with a 3/16” bit to make the starter hole.

In Use

Once on the wall I gave the GuitarGrip hanger some fairly hefty abuse to make sure it would stand up to the job at hand – it wasn’t going anywhere, a good start! It almost seemed a shame to cover this up with a guitar as it really looks like a wicked piece of art on display.

The hand holds your guitar perfectly straight and a good 3-4 inches away from the wall. For guitars with a non-symmetrical headstock design it’s just a case of twisting the hanger until your guitar hangs straight. All of my guitars fit like a glove, however it’s probably worth noting that the 7-string guitars and classical were a fairly tight fit.

As expected, the only part of the guitar which comes into contact with the hanger is well protected by the rubber padding. It is also easy to insert and remove your guitar without hitting your neck against any of the unpadded fingers.

The Grip Studios hanger looks great on my wall and I can only imagine that having a whole team of them holding up all of my guitars would look the absolute business.

Conclusions

These went down a complete storm – all my friends are asking where to get them and my dad, who doesn’t even play guitar, is hell-bent on taking this one home to hang his coats on. It does the job perfectly and looks fantastic up on my wall – recommended! Get your guitars off the floor and into safe hands. @evernote @facebook @hi5 @jaiku @myspace @orkut @picasa @plerb @smugmug @soundcloud @sugarsync @tinypic @wordpress @zooomr accessories

http://bit.ly/nWmY2N Corey Taylor Releases Christmas Single, singin' “Merry Fucking Christmas”. The thought of Stone Sour/Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor doing a Christmas Song is 'bout enough to make everyone cringe. When the news came out that he was working on a dirty (explicit) Christmas single called “X-M@$,” hardcore metal purists had their palms primed and ready to smack their forehead in disgust.