Guitar Noize

Suhr announced a myriad of new products prior to their open house and factory party that takes place at the same time as NAMM including the Thornbucker. Pete Thorn has been working with Suhr for a long time on his signature Suhr PT-100 Amp he has also been a long time user of Suhr guitars, in fact his video from 2008 on how to play eruption inspired me to go with a Chrome humbucker in my Suhr S4. Pete plays a lot of vintage style pickups so he wanted to capture the essence of great 50’s PAF humbuckers that would work both with an overdriven amp and a clean amp.

“Thornbucker pickups are born out of a desire to give guitarists a humbucking pickup set that has all of the best attributes of the coveted 50’s PAF pickups with none of the downsides. We have also included a few modern touches: four conductor wiring, a variety of spacings, and the consistency and quality that Suhr is known for.”

THORNBUCKER SPECIFICATIONS:

NECK
Magnet: Alnico V
DC Resistance: 7.3KΩ
Wire: Plain Enamel
Hook Up Wire: 4-Conductor

BRIDGE
Magnet: Alnico IV
DC Resistance: 8.4KΩ
Wire: Plain Enamel
Hook Up Wire: 4-Conductor

Color Options: Black, White, Parchment, Zebra, Reversed Zebra and White

Compressor pedals are not an easy effect to sell to guitarists until you really understand what they do and how you can use them, I have to say this Seymour Duncan demo does a great job of showing exactly how the new Seymour Duncan Vise Grip Compressor pedal can be used to create sustaining squashed rhythm tones, even out volume peaks and troughs with clean guitar passages such as the tapping section in the video below and also for country spank.

“The Seymour Duncan Vise Grip Compressor is a studio-grade soft-knee compressor designed for guitarists who want to take control of the dynamics of their sound, from a subtle smoothing-out of peaks and valleys to the most squished and pinched extremes and everywhere in between. The Blend knob lets you add as much or as little of the original signal as you like to the compressed sound, while the Mid/Full/High lets you choose the character of the blended signal by deciding what frequency range of the dry signal is blended in with the wet. The Sustain knob determines how long your notes will ring out and the Attack control regulates how quickly the compressor reacts to your initial pick attack. Higher settings give you a late attack that lets your picking dynamics come through before the compression kicks in. And the Volume control does more than just let you match the output with your bypassed sound: you can also use it as a boost while taking advantage of the Blend and Mid/Full/High controls.”

Check out the demo below:

For more info including a some suggested settings head over to the Seymour Duncan Vise Grip product page.

Now I don’t know about you but I’m totally confused about the whole Carvin/Kiesel thing and this new signature guitar for the amazing Greg Howe further confuses the issue in my opinion. According to Jeff Kiesel all custom Carvin guitars will now have the Kiesel logo on the headstock and he has personally worked with Greg Howe on the his new signature model and yet Carvin is the logo on the headstock?!

Anyway aside from the name confusion the guitar will be available from February 1st and it is a sweet looking 24 fret, bolt-on superstrat with a chambered Alder body, Birds Eye Maple fret board with a 20″ radius and comes in a California burst flame top. The guitar will feature a Kiesel Greg Howe signature humbucker in the bridge and the Carvin twin blade pickup in the neck position.

Skip to 1:26 to see Jeff Kiesel talk about the new Greg Howe signature model, or just watch the whole vid to see the Jason Becker tribute guitar:

For more info there are a few places to follow, first up it makes most sense to go to http://www.greghowe.com/, you could also try Carvin’s website and you could try Kiesel Guitars facebook page, I’m sure one of those will eventually settle the confusion.

PRS Guitars and Periphery guitarist Mark Holcomb have just announced Mark’s limited edition signature guitar, featuring Mark’s very own Seymour Duncan Alpha and Omega humbucking pickups. Mark came to visit us for a few days to develop these pickups with Keith Merrow, and they’ll be available separately soon. Watch the video above for more information from Mark himself.

It’s hard to believe considering what an amazing and long successful career Steve Lukather has had but the Toneconcepts ‘The Luke’ is his first ever custom signature effect pedal. Luke had been impressed by Toneconcepts ‘The Distillery’ pedal to the point where it had become an integral part of his setup and tone so he went to them to create an enhanced custom version for himself which became his new signature pedal called ‘The Luke’.

“‘The Luke’ is an innovative and musical tone-shaping preamp boost with unparalleled power, transparency and tonal flexibility that takes any guitar and amp combination to the next level of musical bliss.” - Toneconcepts

Check out the new pedal over at the Toneconcepts website where you can purchase one of the limited edition (only 100 produced) pedals for $269.00.

These are a pretty cool new update to the Dean Guitars lineup, the Colt Series which is a hollowbody guitar which they have added 2 outputs to, one to run the Piezo pickups to a seperate acoustic amp for realistic acoustic tones. There are 3 models, the Colt Flame Top, the Colt Flame Top 12 String and the slightly cheaper but in my opinion coolest of the 3, the matte black Colt BKS.

For more info check out the Dean Guitars website.

“The Silver Jubilee Series was created in 1987 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of Marshall Amplification and the 50th year of Jim Marshall being in the music business. The limited edition, all-valve Silver Jubilee amplifiers looked stunning in silver vinyl covering with chrome-plated control panel.”

Based on JCM800 2203 and 2204 Master Volume models, the Jubilee amplifiers were the first Marshall products with Pentode/Triode switching, which halves power output. The Jubilee Series featured an innovative preamp circuit which had three gain modes: Clean, Rhythm Clip, and footswitchable Lead Channel. The Bass, Middle, Treble & Presence controls, although shared between channels, were re-designed and offered more tonal variation than any other Marshall product had before.

Check out the Marshall product demonstration of the 2555x Silver Jubilee Reissue:

Here’s another video from Premier Guitar taken at NAMM just to give you a few more tone examples.

For more information head over to the Marshall 2555x Silver Jubilee Reissue product page.

I’ll admit I have no idea who Servio Vallin is (apparently he is in Mexican quartet Maná the world’s biggest Latin rock band) but I think this is a very interesting signature Fender model as it seems more based on a pawn shop model than most signature models. In fact this is an all new body shape which is sort of an offset Stratocaster. The wood combination is classic Fender with an Alder body, Maple neck and Rosewood fretboard, but the controls and trem definitely have a unique look with a chrome plate under the trem with Sergio’s signature engraved into it.

Check out the full specs of the Fender Sergio Vallin Signature model here.

Press Release
El Capitan is Blackbird Guitar’s latest model which debuts at the 2015 NAMM Show built on the concept shown last year. The small jumbo model has the tone and vibe of a vintage wood instrument, but is actually crafted of Ekoa®. The natural fiber composite is mostly made of low-density linen that rivals the tone of the best wood with stiffness in two directions rather than the simply one. Ekoa® is not only more tonally responsive but also exceptionally durable as well as humidity and temperature stable. El Capitan is the first guitar constructed of the new high-performance, ecological composite and a major step forward in premium acoustic materials from the industry standard old growth wood.

El Capitan’s enhanced resonance is driven by the Ekoa® double top soundboard as well as Blackbird’s celebrated hollow neck, unibody construction. In 2013, after years of research, Blackbird introduced their first Ekoa® built instrument Clara. The game-changing ukulele is widely considered the most powerful concert ukulele available. Building on this success, San Francisco-built El Capitan is a next generation guitar with unmatched dynamic response, old-school feel and a worry-free playing experience. This ground-breaking instrument will be available February 2015 complete with ergonomically sculpted slothead, truss rod and deluxe soft case. Street pricing starts at $2995.

Ekoa® materials are produced by San Francisco-based sister company Lingrove and are poised to revolutionize the music industry as a superior alternative diminishing wood stocks.

https://www.blackbirdguitar.com/

I’ve been a massive Joe Satriani fan since I picked up the electric guitar in 1988 and immediately wanted an Ibanez JS the moment they were released in 1990, it wasn’t actually until 2008 that I bought one, a black pearl JS1000. It was a great guitar, sounded fantastic, but as G.A.S. took hold of me (as it does regularly) I ended up selling it to fund my Suhr S4. Hey at least I finally followed through on my plan to buy one.

So just to make me and everyone else who started playing guitar around that time it is the 25th Anniversary this year of the Ibanez JS Series and there have been some fantastic models over the years and they continue to evolve to meet Joe’s demanding requirements. One of the coolest pair of guitars I ever saw played live were Satch’s Black Dog and Donnie (a JS3 painted by Donnie Hunt) and I thought the hand painted and scribbled graphics were fantastic so it is very fitting that for the anniversary Ibanez invited Joe to draw custom graphics on a load of bodies that would be sold as limited edition models, I’ve read that 50 guitars will be produced and it appears they will follow the more recent JS2400 model with 24 frets and single coil sized Satch Track humbucker. I guess that’s just based on what Joe plays now but personally if I was going to be able to stump up the $8000 needed to buy one of these limited edition guitars I would want the original 22 fret 2 humbucker JS Model. Anyway check out this awesome video below to see Joe Satriani and a set of Sharpies customising the JS bodies.

Here is a great photo of one of the completed guitars: