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

I came across this guitar whilst browsing the excellent online version of Premier Guitar magazine unfortunately I have never seen the actual print version in the shops in Australia so this is a good alternative for me. Anyway as I was flicking through the pages I came across an ad for this Eric Clapton Custom Shop strat which Fender are making 100 of exclusively for Sam Ash. As the title suggests this guitar is being made for the 10th Anniversary of the Crossroads Centre in Antigua which was founded by Eric Clapton after his own personal troubles to help people with drug and alcohol addiction.

Residential treatment provides a unique opportunity for individuals suffering from alcohol and drug addiction to immerse themselves in an intensive therapeutic and supportive environment. Away from the daily distractions of everyday life, our physical environment is one of peace and tranquility which offers our clients a safe place to begin the process of recovery.

I just checked out the photo slideshow, it almost made me want to start drinking!

Anyway, on to the specs. This guitar has a unique finish called an Antigua Burst which covers the Alder body. The neck is a 1 piece Maple soft V shape with a satin finish and has 22 vintage style frets. The pickups are vintage noiseless single coils controlled by a 5 position blade a Master volume, Master TBX tone control and a tone control with master active mid boost. It has a “Blocked” American vintage synchronized Tremolo and Fender/Gotoh vintage style tuners. Each guitar has Eric’s signature on the back of the headstock and comes with a vintage black case.

The Rock House Blog, which is the blog of the excellent Rock House Method Instructional DVD courses have just released information about a NAMM 2009 event in association with Peavey called Wim-Bash which is taking place in the Pulse Lounge (Hilton Hotel) in Annaheim, California on 16th January. Wim-Bash as you can probably guess is Doug Wimbish and friends, Doug is a legendary bass player who made his mark with Living Colour and has played with just about everyone including a stint as Joe Satriani’s bass player. Aside from his musical collaborations Doug is also an instructor for Rock House Method hence the post from them!

Confirmed for the show are Devin Townsend, Rusty Cooley, Rob Balducci, Kiko Loureiro w/Doug Wimbish and Will Calhoun, John McCarthy, Gary Hoey, Alex Skolnick, Doug Wimbish and Will Calhoun, Head>>>Fake.

I recently contacted Stringdog.net regarding their Armor Gold Cable which I became very interested in after seeing that it came top of Guitar Player Magazine’s test of 49 different cables across different price points, including a $229 Alessandro Series Three cable (The Armor Gold Cable costs $35 direct from Stringdog.net). I’m no audiophile so I would never be able to construct a review like Guitar Player’s experts but they described their favourite cable like this:

The StringDog Armor Gold has a mellow top end, sweet upper mids, and nice overall balance. This cord dishes out a slightly smoky flavor, which is great for rockers seeking more buttery tones.

That description reminded me of wine buffs who talk about the hint of cadbury’s creme egg with overtones of steak and kidney pie in their Barossa Shiraz. So here it is in my simple guitar player’s terms. First of all this guitar lead is built like a tank, hence the Armor in the title. It has what Stringdog call an “Industrial Mesh Outer Layer… which prevents damage from stretching, pinching, bending, slicing, kinking and other common hazards of continuous stage use”. They say it is a high tech polymer mesh commonly used in industrial applications and I can see why! Not only does it feel like it would withstand a nuclear holocaust it looks cool too! I don’t know much about the technical side of guitar signals so here is some more techy stuff:

20 Gauge, 41 Strand Oxygen Free Copper Conductor - 20 gauge thickness achieves the perfect blend of flexibility, strength and medium-low capacitance. High strand count increases flexibility, preventing breakage due to repeated bending. Oxygen free copper delivers a purer signal.

95% Spiral Wound Copper Shield - Provides protection against outside interference, but maintains flexibility.

Resin Injected Connections - After soldering, resin is injected between the hot and ground connections preventing them from contacting each other and shorting out

Stringdog.net also have a lifetime warranty on all Armor Gold Cables against defective materials and/or workmanship AND they offer a 60 day trial so if you are not convinced for some bizarre reason you can get a full refund… they offer this for a reason though, you are not going to want to give this cable back! I’ve used it at home and at rehearsals and I can’t fault it, it sounds great.

If you have ever wondered if good quality cables really make a difference there is a simple answer, yes they do. What is the point investing in a good guitar and amp and then buy a cheap noisy cable that is going to break within a few months to complete the signal chain? The Armor Gold Cable is not only reasonably priced at $35 but it will last forever so it is a really great investment.

Stringdog.net were also kind enough to send me some of their Black Snappers picks which are great, they are Delrin matte finish picks which make them very grippy. I have been using the Heavy 1.0mm picks for the last couple of weeks and they are every bit as good as the Dunlop Tortex picks I used to use. I’m thinking of buying a bag of these picks because they are only $19.99 for a bag of 100! I don’t think I’d need to buy another bag for 10 years!!

Back in October I posted about a new guitar blog called iheartguitar coming out of Melbourne, Australia. Peter has been pumping out news, interviews and product info ever since the launch that has put this blog top of the pile for me, I’m addicted! The reason I wanted to mention iheartguitar again was because of some excellent articles Peter recently published. I don’t know how he does it… actually I do, he is a professional guitar journalist and an excellent guitar player to boot that’s how!

Check out these excellent articles:

A beginner’s guide to pickups
Tone Vs. Sound

And my favourite, How to buy an amp, this article has some really great information for players thinking of going from Transistor to Tube amp. All too often I see on guitar forums that guitarists have gone out and bought a 100 watt tube amp thinking they needed it for gigs and then realised that really they only needed 30 watts and now they can’t play at home without purchasing an attenuator! Even I had to buy one for my 30 watter!

Happy New Year, Guitar Noize is back for ‘09 and ready for all the NAMM news coming in the next couple of weeks so I will be sure to update you as it happens!

Regular Guitar Noize readers will know that the Vox Classic Rock amPlug was on my christmas wishlist so it wasn’t exactly a complete surprise to find one tucked under the Christmas tree! I’d like to start by saying good on you Vox for supplying batteries with it so that I was able to plug ‘n play without having to drive to the nearest open petrol station and cross my fingers that they still had a pack of AAA’s in stock after the massive surge of parents who forgot to stock up before the big day! Just a note though, they supply you with Zinc-Carbon batteries which will only last 5 hours in comparison to Alkaline batteries which last up to 15 hours so it is enough to get you through the day until you can stock up on some more.

So onto the sound, I have previously reviewed the AC30 amPlug on Guitar Noize and I was a little disappointed by the lack of gain, it had a fantastic clean sound but I wanted more rock. That is why I wanted the Classic Rock model, I had heard that the Metal version wasn’t very inspiring unless you just wanted to play Chimaira riffs all day and night. The Classic Rock has 3 controls, Gain, Tone and Volume nice and simple, with the gain set to 1 the tone to 5 I flicked my Ibanez JS1000 to the front pickup in single coil mode and the high pass filter engaged with the guitar volume rolled back to about half I managed to get a great clean sound which would benefit from a little Reverb but for the size and convenience of this product I’m happy to miss out. One quick point, I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to plug the amPlug into my JS1000 as it has a recessed input but it plugged in with no problem at all and doesn’t contact with the body at all. Also I haven’t got a lead yet to run my ipod into the amPlug to jam along to tracks but I’m told by a friend who has done this with theirs that it is a great feature. Anyway back to the sound. I dirtied up the clean tone a little with some extra gain and rolled up the volume on my guitar still in single coil mode and managed to get a great spanking blues tone which warmed up nicely when I switched off the split coil. With the gain up to about 7 or 8 and the tone around half way on the bridge humbucker I managed to get a nice Angus Young style sound which had me playing Back in Black in its entirety! With the gain up full it is a little fizzy but certainly produces a good rock sound, with the tone up full the sound is too harsh and brittle so you need to keep that in check and be careful with the volume, its pretty loud so make sure you don’t have it set to high when you put your headphones in.

I have to say for the price and the clever design these little headphone amps are absolutely brilliant. Previously if I had wanted to play with my headphones on I would have to plug in my old Vox amp (I’m still waiting on the shipment of my headphone solution for my Genz Benz Black Pearl more info coming soon), plug my guitar lead from guitar to amp, and tether myself to the electric socket! Now I can plug a small plastic box directly into my guitar, plug in my headphones and play my guitar anywhere I like, I’m not restricted to a certain room of my house! The sound is not as good as an expensive tube amp but if it did there would be a lot of very worried amplifier manufacturers wouldn’t there!

Ok so these would have been a good addition to my Christmas gift ideas list but I’m too late for that so why not wait for the January sales to order one! I was flicking through Musoscorner.com.au the other day, an excellent Australian online guitar store, when I found a few interesting looking guitar cables and had to share them with you. Now forgive me if these are old news but I’ve never seen them before and I thought they were hilarious.

First up and over to the left you can see the Bullet Cable Pistol Cable which is very James Bond and features white stars on the black cable. Next in Bullet Cable’s line up is the Grenade Cable, the very metal Skull Cable and every Rev-heads dream, the Spark Plug Instrument Cable!

By the way just in case you want to know, these cables feature 99.99% oxygen-free copper conductors and dual-shielded construction with a single end termination for strikingly fuller tone and drastic noise reduction, quality-molded connectors with corrosion-resistant 24K gold-plated tips to preserve signal strength, and flexible symbol-printed jackets.

Check out Bullet Cable’s MySpace page for more info.

Merry Christmas everybody thank you for all your support this year GN will be taking a short break but don’t worry not for long and NAMM 2009 is just around the corner so lots of new guitar products on the way!

I’m sure many of you reading Guitar Noize right now have done something at some point to one of their guitars that you just can’t fix with some double sided sticky tape, no hang on that was Blue Peter.. I meant Gaffer tape! I remember for instance when my brother dropped his old Ibanez RG and took a chunk out of it which we thought was beyond repair, but someone fixed it up good as new. That is probably going to the extreme, sometimes you just want to find someone who can replace some pickups, fix up some dodgy wiring or just set the guitar up properly. Well there is a new site called repairmyguitar.com which aims to make things a little easier by creating an online guitar repair directory. Currently the site has service providers from the US, Canada, & UK, the UK was added recently so expect this site to possibly grow beyond these 3 areas… I’m thinking Australia by the way, hint hint!

To find a local shop that can help you out simply type in your Zip/Post code, City or State and a distance in Miles for the reach of your search and you will be returned a Google Map with all the shops in your area, on the right hand side the shops are listed with their contact details, website address and any ratings or reviews submitted by users. A nice feature at the bottom of the page is that you can choose to email all the shops and using a simple form let them know what you need done in order to get a quote, so you can find the cheapest deal or just go with someone who has a good user review.

I tried it with the old faithful 90210 because its the only Zip code I know and found 6 shops in a 10 mile radius, I had to increase the distance to 20 miles when I tried my old UK address as there aren’t quite as many shops on board just yet, but still within 20 miles of Dudley, it’s not like I typed in London! (by the way if you do type in London you will see there are quite a few). Very nice mashup and use of Google maps to help locate shops, repairmyguitar.com is a simple, easy to use and what’s more useful website!

I was sent a link to Burriss Amps recently by regular Guitar Noize reader Richard G, Richard is always on the lookout for interesting Guitar products and knew that I would like this one! So who are Burriss Amps, well there isn’t a lot of background information on their site but I can tell you that they produce hand wired tube Amplifiers, hand wired foot pedals and custom effects pedals. After looking through their selection of Amplifiers I was immediately drawn to the Royal Bluesman which is a hand wired, 18 Watt Class A amp with a tube rectifier made in the USA. The tone is generated by 3 Mullard 12AX7 preamp tubes, 2 EL84 output tubes and an EZ81 tube rectifier. It looks like a very versatile little package, it has a line level input parallel with the guitar channel which allows you to run external music through your amp while playing along, this is great for bedroom practice or solo performances. It is also capable of two line level inputs using the “send” jack which means you could run 2 guitars through the amp! The Royal Bluesman also has onboard Reverb and Vibrato effects the latter which can be controlled by a separate foot pedal.

Check out the Royal Bluesman homepage for some audio examples, configuration examples and if you want to know even more technical info a download of the instruction manual.

Christmas is almost upon us and if you haven’t already put your request in to Santa/Wife/Husband/Girlfriend/Boyfriend/Parents (delete as appropriate) why not try your luck with a vintage guitar? I found this site recently and was not only impressed with the clean and simple layout and great photos but also by the array of vintage Fender and Gibson guitars. Aside from guitars Pete’s Rare Guitars do also offer a nice range of amplifiers from Fender, Ulbrick and Moody. Pete’s Rare Guitars are based in Melbourne, Australia which is what really caught my attention because I see so many sites from shops and dealers based in the US, it is nice to find something closer to home. So the question is what to go for? Maybe a 1960 Olympic White Fender Stratocaster with original wire assembly, original parts, Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard with original clay dots and original frets, all for $69,950 which according to my friend in the know from England is a pretty reasonable price! Or maybe you are more of a Gibson fan? How about a 1961 Gibson ES-330 Dot Cherry with a pair of P90’s.

Now don’t worry if you are not based in Australia Pete’s Rare Guitars are quite happy to ship to virtually any address in the world and depending on the current exchange rate from your country you might just snap yourself up a bargain!