Articles in the Featured Category
Acoustic, Factory Tours, Featured »
It’s the weekend and most of you have a little time on your hands. You might, therefore, like to spend twenty minutes touring the Yamaha guitar factory.
I’ve a bundle of these tours bookmarked and I thought I’d share them with you as, if you’re interested in guitars (and why else would you be here), you’ll likely enjoy watching how the things get made.
This is one of my favourites. Pay attention now…
Amps, Featured, News »
Ahhh, sweet, low-wattage valve tones.
Paul Reed Smith’s efforts to take over the world continue apace with this, the Sweet 16.
We’re talking a 16 watt head powered by 6V6 valves. It’s a master volume amp with a full treble/middle/bass stack and a built in reverb. The amps are handwired (albeit to printed circuit boards) in the US.
All pots, switches, jacks, and power tube sockets are chassis-mounted which bodes well for reliability.
Tube-wise, the 6V6s are cathode biased, in push-pull, to near class A. The preamp tubes are a little unusual. There are …
Accessories, Bass, Featured »
Not content with more guitars than he can eat and a shed-load of new amps (more later, perhaps), Paul Reed Smith is now offering cables.
The PRS ‘Signature’ Series cables are manufactured to Reed Smith’s specifications by Van Damme (UK-based maker of top cables).
The PRS Cables range includes microphone, speaker and, of course, instrument cables.
Let’s face it, cable specs are not the most interesting things in the world. Suffice it to say that these cables are very well shielded, ultra-low capacitance, and are fitted with proper, gold-plated NEUTRIK connectors.
They come with …
CDs and DVDs, Featured, News »
Frankly, we don’t have a problem plugging Waits’ new album on Guitarless. Waits’ albums contain guitar sounds and styles that run the gamut from mellow and understated to freaky, mentalist baboons, ripping apart guitars with their teeth while defecating on them with their giant red arses. Waits can do very little wrong in the opinion of Guitarless.
If you weren’t lucky enough to catch the man doing his crazy thing on the Glitter And Doom tour (I can crow because I got to see him) last year, you’ll be eager to …
Featured »
Take a look at this. Anything look familiar?
Yep, this stunningly beautiful archtop bears the marks of Ken Parker. Ken, founder of Parker Guitars and the man who brought us the Parker Fly builds astonishingly good-looking archtop guitars as Ken Parker Archtops.
There are currently five different models. All are made with absolute top-grade timbers and are beautifully designed and worked. Each bears familial resemblance to its siblings but the choice of different tonewoods and subtly different designs gives each plenty of individuality.
This particular model is the Olive Branch. It has a …
Featured »
Epiphone have rocked up the original Emperor-II and produced this, the Emperor Swingster. The Emperor-II had a jazzy connection with Joe Pass but Epiphone want this baby to have a more rock-a-billy vibe.
So, lets see then… We’re gonna need a Bigsby. Oh yeah. There it is. Check. It’s actually a Bigsby B30 and it has the nice wire-style handle. We prefer the look of these to be honest. From the Bigbsy, the strings travel over a tune-o-matic equipped with roller saddles so tuning should be improved (at least a little). …
Accessories, Featured »
If you’ve got an iPhone, you may be familiar with Agile Partners who previously gave us the, very handy, Guitar Toolkit. It’s also worth knowing, however, that Agile also have an iPhone tablature application that does some very clever things.
TabToolkit (iTunes Store link), which works on the iPhone and iPod Touch allows you to view tabs in Power Tab and Guitar Pro formats as well as text and PDF tab files. If you’re using Power Tab or Guitar Pro, TabToolkit will display the information in both tab and standard musical …
Featured »
What’s wrong with this picture? Something’s off.
Oh wait, it’s backwards. It’s for the lefties.
You’re looking at the Classic. It’s one of quite a few models available from Gaskell Guitars, an Australian company that only make left-handed guitars. That’s right (ha!), only guitars for the sinister guitarists. All of us norms can take a hike.
And quite right too. For far too often lefties have been forgotten about by major manufacturers. Many guitar makers either don’t make left-handed models or add an additional charge for them. They’re penalising people for being left-handed. …
Featured, News »
PRS have had a pretty long run with Carlos Santana and it’s a relationship that has produced some nice guitars. Here’s the latest.
The Abraxas or, to give it its proper name, the Carlos Santana SE One Abraxas is, in PRS’ words ‘in celebration of Santana’s long history with PRS’.
It’s a guitar that harkens nicely back to the Les Paul Junior models. A fixed, wraparound, stoptail and a single P90-style pickup in a nice, single-cut piece of mahogany is a recipe that promises sweet tone.
The hardware is nickel and it’s got …
Featured, News »
Want to win one of these, rather spiffy-looking, Michael Kelly guitars?
Well Thirty Seconds To Mars, in association with Mr. Kelly are giving away a guitar a day for 30 days. They started on 6th of October so a few have already gone. Plenty left though.
All you need to do is use your Twitter to tweet a message. That’s it. Well, that and be drawn out of the virtual hat.
Ok, so you’ll effectively be prostituting yourself to advertise something that you may not even care about but look – shiny new …
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