Guitar Noize

The original Eminence EJ-1250 was designed to offer a truly vintage sounding speaker using modern, readily available components. Eric wanted to make the speaker more versatile and more affordable for the end user so he and George Alessandro set about redesigning the speaker which in Johnson’s words “concentrates on achieving a balanced EQ spectrum so that this speaker will sound good for cleans tones, as well as semi-distorted and full for high gain lead tones.”

“Through a reformulated paper cone and optimized basket design, the 40 watt EJ-1240 offers vintage Alnico tone with tight, punchy lows, nice lower-mid growl, crisp upper-mids, and very controlled, articulate, and open highs”.

You can see the complete specs of the EJ-1240 here.

New for Ibanez in 2015 is this Limited Edition Ibanez PGM80P Premium model, a Paul Gilbert Signature model with natural finish, his signature painted f-holes, DiMarzio PAF Master humbuckers plus a signature Paul Gilbert DiMarzio PGM Single Coil in the middle position. New for this limited edition is a Wilkinson WV6-SB tremolo bridge instead of a hard tail bridge which Paul prefers. Finally the PGM80P-NT features a PGM Premium 5 piece Maple and Walnut neck with KTS TITANIUM rods, Ash body, Rosewood fretboard with White dot inlay and Narrow and Tall frets with Premium fret edge treatment.

For more info check out http://www.ibanez.com.

Schecter Custom Shop have announced a new set of high gain pickups called Apocalypse.

“A lethal convergence of aggressive looks and sound, the unique tri-field design of the Apocalypse pickups combine Alnico-V with dual flanking Ceramic-8s, thus yielding overwhelming power across the entire sonic range of your instrument. They can be extremely loud and robust, albeit without sacrificing clarity and definition. Coil split wiring allows for MAXIMUM range and versatility.”

“These pickups pack a punch not only sonically (maxing out at 15k ohms in the 6 strong version), but ALSO have the looks to match. Coming in both clear and black smoke bobbin covers, these pickups will be sure to turn heads and catch eyes.”

“The Apocalypse is true aggression without all the usual downsides of a high output pickup.”

APOCALYPSE-VI™ CALIBRATED SET CLR (TRAD)

APOCALYPSE-VII™ CALIBRATED SET CLR

APOCALYPSE-VIII™ CALIBRATED SET CLR

Earthquaker Devices, along with their Park Fuzz Sound pedal, are taking 3 new pedals to NAMM 2015.

Fuzz Master General Octave Fuzz Blaster
“The Fuzz Master General features a more accurate Fuzz control that delivers a much broader spectrum of dirt tones ranging from nearly clean through full buzz saw assault. We added a “Voice” toggle to further enhance your dirt desires and wrangle a more variable tone out of the classic circuit. This toggle selects between germanium, silicon and no diode clipping.”

EarthQuaker Devices Hummingbird Repeat Percussion Tremolo (V3)
The Hummingbird is a choppy, sawtooth tremolo modeled on the vintage “Repeat Percussion” unit and similar to those found in old Valco and Vox amplifiers. It is capable of producing everything from classic “50’s style” shimmering tremolo to a synthy, delay-like chop that turns your signal into a burst of short pings and on through to near ring modulation speeds.

EarthQuaker Devices Sea Machine Mega Chorus
“A hybrid of digital and analog circuitry with a slightly extended delay time allows it to really stand out and shimmer. The heart of the Sea Machine is a short digital delay line, which features controls for Animation, Dimension and Depth. The Animation allows control over the delay time, Dimension adjusts the amount of spatial regeneration and the Depth adjust the mix of the modulated wet signal against the dry analog signal.”

Randall Amplifiers have had a good year with their Mike Fortin designed Thrasher series of tube amps. Now for NAMM 2015 Randall are announcing a new 50 watt version of their flagship Thrasher 100 head called, unsurprisingly, the Thrasher 50.

Amp specs:
2 Channel /4 mode 50 Watt tube (4-12AX7/2-6L6) head with High & Low Frequency Gain controls, Full EQ on Channel 1, tone control for clean channel, global tube boost, Presence/Depth power amp voicing, Class A Discrete instrument level Loop, Heavy duty metal front/ rear grills, corners, footswitch included.

Head over to the Randall Amplifiers booth at NAMM 2015 to check out this new addition to the Thrasher series.

The Randall EOD88 is a Mike Fortin designed amp inspired by the sound of early Black Sabbath which features 3 gain modes, KT88 tubes and an built-in fuzz circuit. The EOD88 also features 12AX7 preamp tubes and outputs 88 watts.

If you are attending NAMM 2015 head over to the Randall booth and let me know what you think of the EOD88!

EarthQuaker Devices and the newly resurrected Park Amplifiers have joined forces to deliver a reissue of the vintage Park Fuzz Sound!

Press Release
The Park Fuzz Sound is a germanium fuzz from the Tone Bender family that produces a brighter, almost distortion-like tone compared to its Fuzz Face counterpart. The new Park Fuzz Sound remains faithful to the original in topology and tone but adds some additional functionality for the modern player. We increased the fuzz range, lowered the noise floor, hand match all the transistors for optimal performance, internally regulated the power and added a DC power jack to allow for use on all modern 9v power supplies, added an LED, crammed it all into a smaller enclosure and made it readily available for a small fraction of the cost of the nearly impossible to obtain original!

Check out this demo from Earthquaker Devices of the Park Fuzz Sound pedal:

Before Positive Grid released BIAS Desktop to the public they ran a beta program called the explorer program, now just ahead of Winter NAMM 2015 Positive Grid have announced a new beta program called the Explorer Program (Hardware Edition). Well this is an exciting prospect, I love BIAS and Positive Grid’s JamUp Pro and integrating their software into a rack or pedal device is an exciting prospect.

“The Explorer Program is now open for guitar players, engineers, producers and artists from all over the world. Guitar players who gig with guitar amps or guitar effects pedals and would like to join, are invited to sign up at http://www.positivegrid.com/beta-signup/“.

In exchange, explorers will:

• Have exclusive access to early development of groundbreaking hardware products from one of the fastest growing music technology companies.
• Participate actively with Positive Grid’s engineering and product team, provide input and be in the front row of the hardware development process.
• Get exclusive beta and pre-order access.

Only 50 slots will be available.

Don’t forget you can still enter to win one of 4 iOS codes for a Positive Grid app in our competition, click here to enter!

Immortal Randy Rhoads – The Ultimate Tribute is a collection of 11 classic Rhoads co-written songs performed by twenty top contemporary artists, including old friends and performing partners Rudy Sarzo and Frankie Banali, his brother Kelle Rhoads and more designated musicians like Serj Tankian, Tom Morello, Vinny Appice, Tim “Ripper” Owens, Chuck Billy, Alexi Laiho, George Lynch, Gus G., Bruce Kulick, Doug Aldrich, Dweezil Zappa and others.

The album was produced and compiled by the Grammy-award winning guitarist and producer Bob Kulick of KISS fame at his own studio. Immortal Randy Rhoads – The Ultimate Tribute will also contain a bonus DVD available in the digipack version, including interesting interviews with some of the involved artists, hosted by Bob Kulick and a feature on the Musonia School of Music, a teaching school on North Hollywood, California, set up by Randy’s mother and run by his brother Kelle Rhoads.

For more info including the tracklisting visit http://udr-music.com/index.php/randyrhoads-info.

As part of Positive Grid’s Recording Month promotion you can get their fantastic iOS apps at a bargain price, however 4 lucky Guitar Noize readers will get one of their apps for free! All you have to do is enter below to be in the running to get a promo code for one of the following fantastic app prizes:

JamUp Pro
BIAS iPad
BIAS iPhone
Final Touch

If you haven’t tried JamUp Pro you can check out a demo I recorded way back in 2012, this was using a pretty basic audio interface, the tech for iPhone/iPad audio interfaces have improved a lot since then and therefore these apps sound even better now! In fact check out my iPad BIAS demo or even better Mark Holcomb from Periphery’s BIAS demo.

If you haven’t heard of Final Touch this is Positive Grid’s Mastering App for iOS Combining a Maximizer, Pre and Post Equalizers, 4-Band Dynamics, Stereo Imager, Reverb and Dithering to help you create polished, professional final mixes.

So to be in the running for one of these great apps all you have to do is enter your name and email below, you have until Jan 21 to enter and the winners will be picked at random and emailed the promo codes to redeem from the iTunes store. Good luck!

This competition has now closed