Look closely.
See that?  That’s a rosewood bridge with an acoustic saddle on there.  But it looks like a Tele bridge.  If you’re going to make a hybrid-type guitar from a Tele, that’s a nice touch.
And that’s what this is.  The Acoustasonic Tele is fitted with a Fishman Aurasystem to allow realistic, acoustic tones from a Tele.  It’s also got a regular, magnetic neck pickup to give more traditional (electric) Tele sounds.
Cool, eh?

The magnetic pickup is a Custom Shop Twisted Tele single-coil.  Its controls are on the front plate as per …

Electro-Harmonix have introduced the Deluxe Memory Boy analogue delay pedal.  And it’s got a tap-tempo footswitch to allow more accurate sync with your songs.
There’s also an expression pedal input to allow fine-tuned external control and you’ve got a choice of five note divisions for metronomic variances.
A quick look at the specs from EHX reveals:

Tap Tempo
Tap Divide timing subdivisions
Expression pedal input for flexible control
Triangle and square wave modulation with adjustable rate and depth for superior chorus, vibratos and sweeps
Total analog bucket brigade design
Built in EFX loop
Total Analog bucket brigade design

Here, have a …

The world would be a very, very different place without Clarence Leonidas Fender. A very different place indeed.
It’s difficult to imagine a Stratless world.  Or a world with no electric bass guitar. Or a world without the myriad other innovations and improvements that Leo Fender birthed.  Perhaps these things would have come along some other way or perhaps they needed a tinkerer like Leo.
I think we’ll do a bit of a Leo Fender article in the near future but, for now, you can take a short trip around Leo’s laboratory.
This …

Epiphone, generous souls that they are, are giving away ten custom guitars in conjunction with AP Magazine.
The guitars have been customised with a special paint-job celebrating one of four bands:

Cartel
A Day To Remember
Third Eye Blind
Motion City Soundtrack.

To be in with a chance to win one of these, point your browsie-thing over here and fill in the relevant details.
That’s it (although I’m sure AP would appreciate it if you hung around and took a look at their site).

We mentioned the launch of the, rather handsome, Epiphone Thunderbird PRO bass a while back.
Did you see?  Did you want?
Well, if you did want one, now’s your chance to win one.
Just pop off to Epiphone’s competition site, pop your email address in the email address field and you might just win a T-Bird Pro.
Not too shabby.
Closing date is 31st of January, 2010.

Want to look like a Mammoth, Towering Colossus Of Rock?
You need the new, Marshall Dave Mustaine Megastack, then.
Park one of these in your backline and you will look monstrously huge on stage. Basically because, despite the mega name, this is essentially a microstack.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The Megastack comprises a 15-watt head with four channels (yep, four) just like Dave’s own JVM rigs.  You can choose from clean, crunch and a couple of overdrives named New Wave Of British Metal and Holy Solo.
Nice.
A three-way tone stack and …

Fancy a chance to see Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck perform in the O2 in London?  ‘Course you do.  You’re not mental, are you?
Well you can win one of two tickets to see Clapton and Beck as they play one of only two shows in London.  Enter the Lick Library competition and keep the 13th of February free just in case.
Wondering what body-part you’re going to have to lop off for this?  Actually, it’s far less gruesome (and a lot more fun).
To be in with a chance to win, all …

Seymour Duncan has announced a bundle of new pickup models for 2010 and some sound quite tasty.
Alnico II Pro Slash
This is modelled after the pickup in Slash’s main recording Les Paul.  Apparently Slash intends to use it to make his live guitars sound more like his favourite studio instrument. That sounds like a pretty good endorsement to us.
As the name suggests, this uses Alnico II magnets but it’s wound a little hotter to push a Les Paul that bit closer to Slash’s signature crunch and sustain.  Single conductor cable and …

OK, so it looks like we may have been fooled, last week, by the very geeky Danish engineer demonstrating the prototype polyphonic tuner.  Still though, we don’t mind too much when we now have the actual, real-deal, polyphonic tuner in easy-peasy, handy, pedal format.
Splendid.
“What’s it all about?” you ask.
Well, simply put, forget about staring at your tuner picking a single string at a time.  Instead, just strum all your strings – open – and the frightfully clever gubbins inside the TC Electonic PolyTune will show you a picture of each …

Orange have been keeping busy and have used NAMM to launch a number of new models.
First up, pictured left, is the new addition to the, very popular, Tiny Terror range.  We’ve always had a soft spot for the lunch-pail Tiny Terror.  Those of you who don’t have – or don’t want – extension cabs around the place however, can get your Tiny Terror in combo form.
This new addition to the Tiny Terror Combo range is even more tiny and comes loaded with a Celestion G10 Vintage speaker.  This unit sits …