Effects, Featured, The Month In Guitar »

Lovepedal has released a new line of mini-pedals.  These are a range of diminutive little die-cast aluminium stomp boxes that should be possible to squeeze into even the most crowded pedalboard.
First up is the AMP 50.  It’s a compact version of Lovepedal’s Church Of Tone series but its been modified for cleaner tonnes at the lower gain levels and dirtier at higher levels.  In this way it can function as a clean or dirty boost as well as an overdrive or even a fuzz-box depending on guitar, amp and settings. …

Featured, The Month In Guitar »

Although there seems to be some argument over whether Gibson’s first ever electric guitar, the E-150 shipped in October or November of 1935, since this is November, I’m going to hang my hat on that month (purely for the lazy purposes of including it in this article).
Heavily influenced by Rickenbacker’s ‘Frying Pan’ which was released in 1932, the E-150 was at least somewhat guitar-shaped.  Riding on the Hawaiian wave, the E-150 had a cast-aluminium body and ebony fingerboard (although that pictured is unusual with a rosewood board) with white fret …

The Month In Guitar »

A couple of notable anniversaries for October.
The Big Two of guitar makers both have something worth celebrating this month:

Although officially announced in April (and included on the cover of Fender’s April price list), full-scale production of the Fender Stratocaster really only began in October 1954.  Initial production – from April until October – was really quite slow, consisting mainly of marketing models.  These were used to demonstrate the radically new instrument to dealers and players (and at that summer’s NAMM).  Only after the dealers had gotten sufficiently used to …