Music »

OK. I’m as geeky as the next guitar nerd and, like you all, I love looking at videos of guitarists’ rigs. I love seeing their seventy stage guitars and their two full height racks full of esoteric effects with flashing LEDs and their wall of stacks and that special plectrum they use that’s made from a shark’s tooth. I love that crap.
Still though, I can’t help feeling that this look at Buddy Guy’s rig is a breath of fresh air. Deep down, I’m a traditionalist and, no matter how much …

Featured, Workshop »

Gah! Broken strings. Who needs ’em?
I remember learning to play guitar as a poor teenager and seeking out music stores who sold single strings as I couldn’t afford to replace a whole set.  I remember winding extra turns unto my tuners and, when a string broke, carefully tying its ball-end onto the slack in the string so I could avoid having to buy even another single string.
While all of that may have been character-forming, it wasn’t much fun.  If only I’d known then about a relatively simple method of reducing the …

Accessories, Featured »

I think most of us have, at one time or another, considered customising our guitars. Maybe a few stickers, maybe some tape in a poor-man’s EVH, maybe even a new paint job.
The thing that holds many of us back is the irreversibility of it all. Once you’ve painted PUNK in large pink letters on your guitar, it’s there for the foreseeable future, maybe even after you’ve moved on from your punk phase and can’t get a gig in a mellow, jazz trio because you’ve got PUNK scrawled on your guitar.
Thermonetix …

Featured, News »

Something for any Hank Marvin and/or Shadows fans out there.
Celebrating The Shadows is a concert of tribute acts to raise money for the Children In Need charity.  The concert is on 20th of November in Rushey Way in Reading and includes four Shadows tribute bands.
It also includes an auction for two electric guitars – a Fender 50’s Classic Stratocaster in Fiesta Red and a Burns Marquee in white.
Each has been signed by Hank and the Shadows (Bruce Welch and Brian Bennet) as well as ‘Sir’ Cliff Richard.
They’ll be auctioned off …

How To, Workshop »

You’re a millionaire playboy guitarist with a vintage Fender or you’re just someone with one of many current or past Fender originals and reissues.
Whatever the case, you’re finding that those big blues bends that you love doing are buzzing or, worse still, choking-out completely and dying. Your guitar plays fine and buzz-free the rest of the time but as soon as you go for a nice, soulful, bent note, it buzzes or chokes.
Annoying.
Possibly more annoying is when I tell you that there’s a good chance it’s just a limitation …

Accessories »

You know the story – you’re mid solo and about to move the audience to tears of awe and emotion with some poignant vibrato action.  You reach for your trem and… nothing.  It’s not where you left it.  The damn thing’s flapped all over the place during your last number and is now pointing backwards.  Your fumbling about for it ruins the moment.  The audience is lost.  They start to throw pint-pots and Pringles tubes – eeeeuuuuww, original flavour.
There is a solution to loose and flappy whammy bars.  Meet the …

News »

Fender News have a short interview with former Deep Purple and Rainbow rocker – now medieval troubadour – Ritchie Blackmore.  The man in tights answers questions about his current Renaissance renaissance as well as discussing some Purple/Rainbow stuff.
Blackmore also talks briefly about the inspiration for the scalloped fingerboard on his signature Stratocaster:
“I had a classical guitar way back when I was 19 or 20. It had a pitted fingerboard, worn out from excessive use so the wood in between the frets was almost concave. It felt right. Then when I …

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 …