For the last few months I’ve been working with Fishman on the documentation for TriplePlay, their long-awaited wireless MIDI guitar system, which will finally ship this quarter. I had a blast demoing TriplePlay at MacWorld a few weeks ago, and I’m looking forward to doing so again at Musikmesse in Frankfurt in April.
But at times, it’s been frustrating. I power up TriplePlay to study some feature, get all excited, and then have to turn it off and write about it instead of going off and playing it for six hours. This little demo was my first real chance to just fool around with the thing. Thoughts and details after the video.
Bartók: Smarter than math-rock — and way more violent.
My Bowie fandom is second to none. Yet I’ve always felt a vague sense of disappointment that the Spiders from Mars didn’t really sound much like spiders from Mars.
On the other hand, the fourth movement from Béla Bartók‘s Fourth String Quartet really does sound like Martian spiders — assuming the critters in question had been force-fed a diet of chord clusters, mathematics, Hungarian folk music, and some of the most astonishing counterpoint this side of J.S. Bach.
And dig it: This white-hot blast of dissonant modernism was composed in 1928!
And how does this string quartet music sound on guitars? Awesome, IMHO — largely because the movement is played entirely pizzicato (plucked, not bowed). Very few modifications were needed to adopt it for four electric guitars.
A homely clone cowers in the shadow of a ramshackle original.
Okay, here’s an old weirdo I’ve been meaning to write about for ages. The Systech Harmonic Energizer is an ultra-rare filter/distortion effect from the ’70s that takes the fuzz-wah formula in some interesting directions. Its signature is edgy, ultra-resonant filter sounds. You’re most likely to have heard it generating Frank Zappa’s nasal midrange squawk, but it does lots of other abrasive tricks too. I used this one on Tom Waits’s “All Stripped Down,” and on “Jets” by Action Plus.
The S.H.E. doesn’t do pretty. Most of its sounds are so strongly flavored, they’re hard to use as a primary tones. But it’s great for things like clanky percussive accents, or walloping low-frequency assaults.
Hey, I’m totally guilty of fostering simplistic analog vs. digital arguments. After all, I launched this blog over a year ago with an Amps vs. Models listening contest. (The prizes have long since been claimed, but you can still take the test.) But maybe we should spend a little less time arguing about how faithfully that amp model mimics the sound of an amp from 1965, and a little more time exploring the cool and meaningful musical applications of post-analog tone production?
You don't have to spend $6.706 to sound like a punk.
You don’t have to spend $6,706 to sound like a punk. And don’t ask what the six cents are for!
My pal Linda B. is a killer rock and roll drummer who also plays a pretty mean guitar. She’s decided to form an all-female Sex Pistols cover band, with her assuming the duties of guitarist Steve Jones.
An avid rock historian, Linda did her research, which quickly led her to Gibson’s limited edition Steve Jones signature model Les Paul Custom, a slavishly accurate replica of Steve’s iconic axe.
(The original, which had previously belonged to New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain, was not used on the Sex Pistols’ early singles or the Never Mind the Bollocks album, but was his main stage instrument.)
Just one problem: the $6,706 price tag.
So Linda bought a used white Epiphone Les Paul Custom for $299, ordered the same pickups that are in the original and the signature model (a Gibson 498T “Hot Alnico” humbucker in the bridge position, and a 496R “Hot Ceramic” humbucker at the neck), and found some sketchy online vendor who sells replicas of the original’s pinup-girl stickers, plus an even sketchier vendor who sells fake Gibson logos. We popped in the pickups, slapped on the stickers, and made a darn good replica for a bit over $500.
When you make DIY stompboxes powered by 9-volt batteries, your biggest fear is a solder burn (or dropping your drill on your iPad, but that’s another story). DIY amps are different: AC voltage can kill you, so a klutz like me approaches amp builds with caution.
Which brings me to one of the great things about Tube Depot’s Tweed Champ Vacuum Tube Amp Kit: the fantastic assembly manual. Other great things include the price ($499, roughly half the price of a non-kit Champ clone of comparable quality). The design (which follows the original circuit, but substitutes an intelligently designed circuit board layout for the original turret board). And most of all, the tone.
I’ve got lots more to say about the kit, the fun I had building it, the lore of the 5-watt ’58 Champ, and the pros and cons of Class A amps (the Champ is the only Fender classic that merits the classification). But first, have a listen!
You can probably get cool tones from any old crap with a tube in it, such as this ’60s PA amp.
You can probably get cool tones from any old crap with a tube in it, such as this ’60s PA amp.
There were lots of interesting replies to last week’s post on small amps. Thanks for all the tips about some of today’s best tiny terrors!
The discussion reminded me of a cool old amp that’s been gathering dust in my garage — and also of a notion of mine I call the “any old crap” theory. The idea is simple: Any funky old amp, including P.A. models never intended for guitar, usually has some compelling sounds in it. Plus, those old Newcomb, Masco, and Tapco amps are among the few remaining affordable vintage amps.
Case in point: This early-’60s Newcomb P.A. amp I picked up a few years ago at my local cool guitar shop. Actually, my pal/hero Tchad Blake spotted it and bought it for a hundred bucks or so. He was here in San Francisco working on Tracy Chapman’s Where You Live album. When we finished the project, he decided he had too much gear to schlep back to the UK, so I took it off his hands. I used it on Tom Waits’s Orphans album, and then promptly forgot about it till last week. So I fired it up and made a little video demo with an old cheap guitar that didn’t cost much more than amp:
In comments to a recent post on 3D-printed guitars, we were discussing the pros, cons, and general aesthetics of instruments molded from plastic. But this isn’t exactly a new idea.
Back in the 1950s, luthier Mario Maccaferri conceived a line of plastic guitars and ukuleles. (This was many years after Maccaferri designed the D-hole Selmer guitars that will forever be associated with the Gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt.) These plastic guitars were never very popular, and they’re not particularly valuable today.
I bought the one pictured here a few years ago at one of the music shops in London’s Denmark Street (I forget which one). I paid a couple of hundred bucks, and felt like a chump.
But I’ve grown attached to this guitar. It’s lovely to look at, and it plays great. The neck is substantial yet comfy, and it intonates well throughout its range. The tone isn’t warm, complex, or rich. But the Maccaferri has a cool, lo-fi character this sits well in a mix. I also like using it to double conventional acoustic guitars — the sharp, percussive tone adds a rough, aggressive edge.
Has any stompbox ever been as steeped in myth and legend as the Klon Centaur? Doubt it. Original Centaurs are extremely collectible, currently fetching around $1,500 on EBay. But for every player who drools over the prospect of obtaining this rare creature, there’s another who’s foaming at the mouth about idiots who’d pay four figures for a “glorified Tube Screamer.” When you Google “Klon Centaur,” one of the first items to appear is this memorable rant from the always entertaining Zachary of Zachary Guitars:
Here is a guitar pedal which has been around for about 10 years and stands for total Bull Shit in my opinion. The website, the presentation, the marketing, the hype, the price. Everything about it is why I hate the music business and the shockingly stupid guitar consumers. Its a mediocre and common pedal. Its your typical mild Tube Screamer- type of effect and sound. It really does not do much and is not very versatile. I found it stuffy and midrange sounding.In comparison to the great touch sensitivity, clarity, transparency and the wonderful independent Clean Boost section of the Zachary Pedal, well…there is absolutely no comparison.
Yow.
For a bit of perspective, how about we just listen to the thing? Here a little video demo, followed by a few observations.
I’ve never owned a Burns guitar, and I have only one with Burns pickups: a funky mid-’60s Baldwin Virginian I scored for $100 some 20 years ago. It’s a cheap plywood piece of crap — but it’s my piece of crap, and I’m quite attached to it.
James O. Burns founded Burns London Ltd. in 1960 and had success underselling expensive American imports. Burns users included Hank Marvin, pre-Zep Jimmy Page, and most famously, Brian May, who used Burns’s Tri-Sonic pickups in his iconic homemade guitar.
Cincinnati’s Baldwin company bought Burns in 1965 and quality suffered — much like the same year’s CBS/Fender debacle, only on a smaller scale. But the Baldwin/Burns marriage produced some interesting oddballs, notably the Baldwin Burns Buzzaround (a quirky fuzz pedal favored by Robert Fripp), plus a lot of weirdo guitars. Like this one.
When I was playing with PJ Harvey, I used the Virginian to play the songs she’d written in “Gary Glitter tuning”: AAAAAA, as heard on “Rock and Roll Part 2,” and on this 1995 PJ Harvey clip from The White Room, a great British live music TV show of the era. (As on the UK’s long-running Later with Jools Holland show, bands would set up on multiple stages facing each other across a large room. Also performing the night we tracked this: Oasis, Paul Weller, and Bobby Womack.)
Here’s how the same guitar and guitarist sound 17 years later. Listen and weep:
