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Archive for the ‘Guitars’ Category

Sometimes You Just Have to Go For It!

Posted in Guitars on March 4, 2012| 4 Comments »

At service this evening, though we didn’t have the full complement of players and singers, and our only percussion was a tambourine and shaker, there was something special about it. The band just felt tight. Unlike other weeks, we didn’t have all that much rehearsal time before Mass started, but despite that, like I said, I just felt we were tight. It was real crowded as well, as it doubled as a special service for kids coming up in the church; there were lots of folks that were not regular attendees. But we must’ve been doing something right because they got as into the music as we did.

Inspired, on the last song, we did Matt Maher’s “Your Grace Is Enough” and near the end of the song, I hit the switch on my EWS Little Brute Drive and started playing lead lines, then ended with kind of a long solo. But it felt and sounded so good with my Les Paul wailing, I kind of lost track of time. 🙂 After Mass, I just laughed and said, “Rock and roll!”

After I looked back on it afterwards, I realized that I really had a breakthrough this evening in that sometimes you just have to go for it. Doing that long lead was something I had never done. Oh, I’d play lead lines in the middle of a song, but to close out the service with a solo was something that I just never did before tonight. Mind you, it’s not something that is going to be part of the formula for me from now on, but the point is that if it truly feels right in the moment, just go for it. The other guys in the bad were with me, and they went along on my little journey. I could literally feel the great energy of the moment, though they did cut me off because I admitted went on a little long – I think I did a 32 bar solo.

But no matter, those moments don’t come often, and when they do, like I said before, you just have to go for it.

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RIP: Ronnie Montrose 1947-2012

Posted in Guitars, tagged on March 4, 2012| 2 Comments »

It is with great sadness that I report that Ronnie Montrose passed away yesterday, March 3, 2012. He had been battling cancer for years, and it is believed he finally succumbed to the disease. My friend, Jeff Aragaki called me this morning to report the news. He and Ronnie had formed both a business and personal friendship last year, as Ronnie was going to be using Aracom Amps (he was introduced to them through “Mean” Gene Baker of Baker Guitars, with whom Jeff is good friends. He even had Jeff build him a prototype pre-amp to take with him on the road to plug into back-line amps so he could take his tone with him.

According to Jeff, Ronnie was one of the most down-to-earth people he’d ever met. None of this rock star ego, Ronnie was easy to talk to and very humble, considering his contribution to rock and roll.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ronnie Montrose, his group was Sammy Hagar’s first big gig. Ronnie wrote classic songs (which Sammy made popular), such as “Rock Candy” and “Bad Motor Scooter.” His guitar playing was phenomenal and his tone was unique.

A few years ago, listened to an interview Ronnie did with Greg Kihn, where Ronnie was remarking on Greg’s comment about him having a very distinctive tone. He talked about sitting in a studio with Santana, and messing around with Santana’s guitar, and how even with Santana’s gear, he sounded like Ronnie Montrose. Apparently, Santana was pretty impressed. But Ronnie was just a humble and unassuming dude and took the praise in stride.

I was hoping to tag along with Jeff when Ronnie was to play next at a local club in a couple of weeks in hopes of doing an interview for this blog. Sadly, that’s not going to happen. Though he never made huge after the 70’s, his had a huge influence on rock and roll, and he will without doubt be missed by those who knew and knew of him. Rest in peace, Ronnie!

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Having the Guts to Be a Great… whatever…

Posted in Guitars, tagged on March 2, 2012| 3 Comments »

I was reading what was a ostensibly a big ad on learning to be a great singer, when I read the following words:

“Singers are only singers because they have the guts to be one! What about natural talent? You may have heard that if you were not born with it, you won’t have the natural ability to sing. It’s simply not true! If you apply yourself with the passion and discipline it takes, you too can become a great singer.”

I thought about that, and thought about my own progression as a performer. I’ve been working the same weekly gig at a local restaurant going on 12 years now. It’s a solo acoustic gig where I play both guitar and piano, and of course, sing. In that gig, I cover all sorts of songs ranging from opera, show tunes, rock and country ballads to classic rock. It’s a great gig where I get to play a lot of different genres. The first couple of years, I was really low-key about doing the gig, happy to get my hourly gig wage, and if I got tips, that was great. I’d do the covers as faithful to the original as I could and things were good. But the problem was that I started to get bored. Real bored.

So I decided one day to “own” the songs; still perform them according to what I felt was the original vision of the songs, but add my own feeling to them. When I was just thinking about doing this, I was admittedly a little nervous. What if people didn’t like what I was doing. It wasn’t as if I’d be performing the music so completely different that it wouldn’t be recognizable, but it would be my own interpretation of the music.

So one day, I just decided to go for it. I was nervous as hell. But I went for it in spite of my fears. It was the best decision I ever made. People seemed to like what I was doing, and they rewarded me in kind with some pretty nice tips.  But irrespective of the tips, I learned something very important as a performer since building up the courage to “own” the songs I play: What separates a good performance from a mediocre performance is literally having the courage to put yourself into the song; all your passion, all your love, all your pain, all your joy. Everything you are.

Whether you’re playing an original or a cover makes no difference. One might argue that if you’re doing covers you want to stay as close to the original as possible. I disagree. If all you’re just doing is copying, then you’ll just be an imitator. I’ve seen lots of cover bands in my day, and the best I’ve seen are the ones that don’t follow the covers note-for-note. That said, if you’re doing a tribute band, then note-by-note precision is probably important, but for dance/bar bands, I think capturing the general spirit of the song is good enough and note-for-note precision should take a back seat to really playing and expressing yourself.

Of course, “owning” a piece can backfire. But that’s the risk you take when you do own a song. It takes guts to do it, but in the end, I fully believe that when you’re expressing YOU in the music you play, you’ll have a much greater impact on your audience than when you just play the song.

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The Venerable Gibson ES-175

Posted in Guitars, tagged , on February 29, 2012| 3 Comments »

I was in Guitar Center last week, trading in my Gibson Nighthawk for my wonderful DV Mark Little 40. While I was talking to Nick , the trade-in guy, a gentleman walked asking if he could play an ES-175 that was hanging on the wall. This particular one was a vintage 1952 ES-175, and it was gorgeous. After the guy was done playing it, since Nick was trying to get an appraisal, he placed the guitar on the padded desk in front of me. Of course, I couldn’t help myself. I picked it up and started playing it. It was A LOT lighter than I expected – much like an acoustic, and the action was fantastic! I didn’t get a chance to plug it in, but it had a nice, natural voice from what I could hear from the dude that was playing it before me.

I didn’t think I’d like an archtop, but I was really digging playing that guitar. There was a certain vibe about the guitar, and being that it was 60 years old, really added to its charm. It was in truly great condition! In any case, it had a super fat, gorgeous sound. If I had the $4k to buy one of these gems, I’d jump at the chance.

Here’s a great example of the sound of an ES-175:

By the way, the guitar being played above is a two-pickup version that didn’t come out until 1953. The one I played was a 1952 with a single P-90. Here’s a history of the ES-175.

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Tuesday Meanderings…

Posted in Guitars on February 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I read an interview with Antonio Gallardi, “The Wine Advocate” magazine’s new California critic in which he responded in the comments section following the interview, “A pro has to be able to tune out everything and focus just on what is in the glass. I have had several instances where wines showed better in my office than they did at the properties.”Mr. Gallari was speaking in reference to a question that was asked him about maintaining his objectivity when he tastes wine at an estate.

Since I write about both wine and guitar gear, objectivity has always been an important factor for me. I started writing about gear primarily because I felt that the mainstream gear rags seemed to be beholden to their advertisers; giving more than favorable ratings to gear that my own personal tests didn’t favor as much. With wine, though I don’t feel as if – at least for the ones I regularly read – wine critics don’t fall into this trap. But even when reviewing wine, whether at home or at a winery, having no predisposition towards a wine is absolutely important to me. For instance, I went to a local winery near my home this past weekend, and ended up tasting with a friend who just happened to be there at the same time. He and his wife are wine club members, and they were looking to get a bottle. Though the winery’s Cabernets were popular, and something they mildly pushed, I wasn’t all that impressed with them, so instead recommended the Tempranillo, Terolgego, and their lower price, non-library Zinfandel purely based upon the merits of the wines’ characteristics which appealed to me.

Congruently, with gear, I’ve spoken to lots of manufacturers over the five years I’ve run this blog. Many send me gear to review, but you’ll notice that while there are lots of reviews here, there aren’t nearly as many as I’ve actually reviewed. The reason is that I like to play nice, and I’ll never publish a review that’s less than 4 Tone Bones. When I do review something that I don’t like, I notify the manufacturer, give them feedback, and make suggestions on what could be better. I’m also absolutely honest with them when I talk to them the first time and communicate my process. I do realize that I can get pretty excited in my reviews, but I only publish what I consider to be the best gear.

The point to all this is that objectivity goes a long way. Especially with gear, you hear and read about so much hype that it’s difficult to maintain your objectivity. I know I’ve succumbed to the hype several times, and I have a lot of gear that I just don’t use or have sold off. Luckily I never went so far as to sell everything to get a Dumble amp. Though it is truly impressive (and I know my videos didn’t really capture the sonic and dynamic magic of the amp), my own amps and several others I’ve tested come close enough to those dynamics that there’s no reason to spend over $40k.

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Gig Report: DV Mark Little 40 L34

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , on February 26, 2012| 9 Comments »

Had a great time with the Little 40 this evening at my weekly church gig. I set the amp to full clean-headroom on the Continuous Power Control, cranked the master, then set the gain to a little before the edge of breakup so that a normal, light strum would still be fairly clean with the volume knobs on my R8 both set to halfway. Of course, at that setting, I had to use my attenuator because while it would work just fine in a club, it would be way too loud for church. But that’s okay because the amp retained all of its dynamics and tone.

Also, with the way I set up the amp, I could strum lightly or play fingerstyle and be clean, then get a nice overdrive by digging into the strings a bit. Then I could get into overdrive completely by rolling on either of the volume knobs on my guitar. Then for leads, I used a footswitch to activate the boost which saturates the power tubes by hitting the amp with 10dB of gain. Like my Aracom amps (and vintage Marshalls, for that matter), when the power tubes saturate, lots of sonic goodness occurs. The signal compresses – with the Little 40, it’s not too much, but the sound definitely “feels” a bit beefier – but more importantly, you get very nice sustain and these subtle harmonics and overtones get added into the signal that are total ear candy!

Once I set up the amp, I didn’t have to do any tweaking. My guitar was my control center, which is how I like it. But it does require that an amp be extremely responsive to dynamics, both from a playing perspective and from volume knob adjustments. It delivered all that in spades!

Here’s another extremely important tidbit that I hadn’t mentioned yet: The amp weighs just under 16 pounds! Dammit! That’s lighter than my attenuator! This is something that Marco De Virgiliis (DV Mark’s designer/owner) is known for in the bass world. For instance, my bassist uses a Mark Bass Little Mark II as his go-to bass amp head. That amp produces BIG sound, and it weighs less than 6 1/2 pounds! The Little 40 and its smaller and larger brethren follow the same pattern.

To top all that off, the amp looked so damn cool as DV Mark installed orange LEDs on the board that you can see through the amp grille-work. I tend to be fairly utilitarian about gear, not really putting too much stock on looks, but not only does this amp sound and play killer, it looks great on stage!

And speaking of stage, I actually did two gigs with the Little 40 today. The first gig was a mother-daughter church service at a local high school. Since there were lots of people attending, the service was held in the performing arts center, so I was up on stage. Before the gig, I had to run home really quick to pick up some sheet music that I left in my printer. When I returned, I looked at the amp on stage from the back of the theatre, and just smiled when I saw the extremely cool orange glow emanating from the amp. It was TOTALLY SICK!!! For that gig, I played all clean: Max headroom, Master full-on, then Gain set to pretty low. I controlled volume with my Gretsch’s master volume. The difference with that gig was that since we were doing a few different styles of songs, I adjusted the EQ to fit the songs. This is yet another area where the amp shines. You can dial up all sorts of different tones with the very-usable EQ! Nice!

Finally, if you happen to do some research on the Little 40 or other DV Mark amps, you’ll notice that it has just a single pre-amp tube (ECC83), which indicates that there are  solid state components in the amp. There are. You can see them; plus everything’s mounted on a PCB board. But who the f$%k cares when the amp sounds this good and performs so well? Besides, he does list the other ECC83 in the power section – which I totally missed at first. The important thing to note is that while there are solid state components being used, the important parts involved in the amplification are valves.

But solid state components? I know, we all suffer from cork-sniffing; especially with tube amps. But I’ve gotten over it. As JKeith Urban’s guitar tech said in an interview, “If it sounds cool, then it is right…” Especially with the DV Mark Little 40, I’m getting the level of performance and sound quality that I get out of my Aracom Amps, and like my Aracom gear, I paid less than half the price for the features I got with the amp compared to other boutique gear manufacturers’ wares. The Little 40 retails at $799.

So what about my Aracom Amps? Well, I will definitely still be using them. The DV Mark has a completely different tone than my Aracoms, which are based upon vintage Marshall amps; specifically the Plexi style, Blues Breaker amps. While I most probably will use the DV Mark the most on stage because of its flexibility, my other amps will still get lots of use in the studio, though the VRX22 will also get lots of stage time because it too is extremely flexible. As for the other amps, no other amp does creamy-smooth overdrive like my PLX18. When I need high-end bite, which I like to have for funky rhythm lines, I can’t think of any better amp to give me this than my VRX18. And thus far, none of these amps is collecting any dust as I’ve been using them all this past week to complete the demos for my new album.

Damn! It just occurred to me that I’m really trying to justify why I have all this freakin’ gear… 🙂 Or maybe I’m just rehearsing what I’ll be saying next to the wife when she queries me about my gear. Ha! ROCK ON!

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The DVMark Little 40 ROCKS!

Posted in Guitars on February 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

No, this is not one of those excited-puppy-dog-with-a-new-toy types of posts, though with the way I’m feeling about the Little 40, it could very well be. But excitement aside, I did another test of the amp early this morning. I’m not a big believer in doing demo clips for demo clips’ sake. I do them because people ask for the raw sound, but when I started GuitarGear.org, I did it with intent of evaluating gear within the context of its application; specifically, how I might apply it to my own rig. My thinking has always been that unless you’re actually using the gear, you never really know how it performs.

So this next test was done to get a feel for the dynamics of the amp within the context of a song. I recently finished demo production of a song I wrote several months back called “I’m in Love with You Lord,” but hadn’t gotten around to create a finished recording until this past week. The one thing about that song is that it has a gradual build-up in feel and intensity as it progresses, and the electric guitar track plays an important role in this as it is the instrument – besides my vocals – that drives the emotion of the song. And my personal requirement was that I needed to do the entire electric guitar part in a single take, which means the amp has to be ultra-dynamic.

Originally, I recorded this with my Aracom VRX18, which performed flawlessly. But I wanted to try out the DV Mark with the song to see if I could achieve the same level of dynamics that the VRX18 had. Not only did it deliver, I’m probably going to use it as I love the snarling dog growl it delivers. 🙂 Here’s the song:

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DV Mark Little 40 L34 – First Test Clips

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , , on February 25, 2012| 3 Comments »

Wow! Is all I can say… This is simply a killer amp!

In my announcement that I made today about getting this lil’ bad boy, I promised some sound clips. So once got done with my gig this evening, I headed right to my studio to play around with the amp. For this first test, I didn’t want do the standard, here’s-how-it-sounds -clean or -dirty. What I wanted to test was the amp’s dynamics and expressiveness. So I did two tests that demonstrate a couple of different aspects of the Little 40.

One thing that I will mention before I get into the tests is that for a single-channel amp, the Little 40 has TONS of tonal options. Every knob has an affect on the tone, especially the very usable EQ’s. Plus if you hook up a mono foot switch, you can get a 10dB gain boost, so if you set up the amp properly, that boost can act like a second channel.

Dynamics

With this first clip, what I wanted to test was how the amp reacted to pick attack. So I set the amp to the edge of breakup. Master was set wide open, with the gain at about 10am. I set the EQ’s on the brighter side with the Treble cranked, Mid about 2pm and Bass at 11am. I also had the Continuous Power Control open all the way for maximum headroom. The clip is in three parts: First, I start on the “clean” side of the overdrive point. Then I dig in a little harder to get it past that point, then I engage the boost, which gets the amp into some serious crunch, and loads of sonic content (besides being dirty, with boost engaged, the amp grows some serious balls – even set to bright. I’m playing my R8 Les Paul with both pickups engaged and the volumes are both set to 5.

Continuous Power Control

A lot of the magic of this amp comes from the Continuous Power Control. This knob provides an output power sweep from 1 Watt all the way up to 40 Watts, allowing you to adjust the clean headroom of amp. This is an absolutely killer feature!

With this next clip, the amp is set clean, with the Master all the way up, the Gain at about 9am. EQ and Presence are all set at noon. I’m playing my R8 with both volume knobs at five. Again, the clip is in three parts. The first part is clean, bluesy riff. In the second part, I turn the CPC to noon (~20 Watts), and play the same riff. Finally, I engage the boost to demonstrate how over-the-top you can get with this amp. 🙂

Admittedly, I have a lot of dialing-in to do. The tonal possibilities with this amp are immense. Looks like I’ll be spending lots of time getting to know it. 🙂

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New Amp Day!!! Finally Got My DV Mark Little 40 L34!!!

Posted in Guitars, tagged , , on February 24, 2012| 5 Comments »

I can still recall the first time I ever saw and played this amp at my local Guitar Center. It sounded so damn good, and the price was absolutely excellent that I knew that getting it would be a no-brainer. Then after I got home that day, I looked the amp up on the DV Mark web site, and was astonished at the features for a sub-$800 amp! I’ve written about this amp before, and the two features that sold me on the amp (besides the great tone) were the Continuous Power Control (CPC) and the automatic and continuous biasing of the power tubes.

The auto-bias was a HUGE factor in my decision. As long as you get tubes that are matched within 20% of each other, the amp will automatically bias them to the optimal operating settings. Imagine not having to bias power tubes. Just get a matched set, plug them in, and you’re good to go! And you can use any socket-compatible tubes like 6L6’s and even 6V6’s as long as they can take the plate voltage. Freakin’ awesome!

The CPC was also a kicker for me in that I could lower the power output of the amp to control when I get breakup. But unlike other variable power controls I’ve heard or played with, there was little discernible difference in tone, whether I had the CPC all way up for maximum clean headroom, or dialed all the way back.

I know, I don’t have sound samples – yet. But they’re on their way. I just don’t have enough time before my gig this evening to get clips.

As far as dynamics are concerned, this amp is extremely expressive and super-responsive to pick attack and guitar gain. One thing I noticed when I had the master cranked, and the gain just past 2pm, when doing leads, this amp absolutely sings. I noticed some very very cool high-frequency artifacts that really added some complexity to the tone. I could’ve played this amp for hours, but alas, I had to turn it off so I could release this article and then get ready for my gig.

Check back to hear clips this weekend!

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You Learn Something New Every Day

Posted in Guitars, tagged , on February 24, 2012| 1 Comment »

Coil Splitting vs. Coil Tapping

My good buddy Phil sent me a link to an article that discussed coil splitting vs. coil tapping. For years, I thought they meant the exact same thing. But according to the article, which was written by a Fender tech, they’re completely different animals. Coil splitting is usually associated with humbuckers where a switch is used to turn off one of the coils. On the other hand, coil tapping “means taking the signal from somewhere within the coil of wire rather than from the end of it, thus reducing pickup output (more windings means higher output).” I never knew that.

Taming that Sonic Boom

After I read the article above, I perused other “Tech Talk” articles, and found one that discussed an issue that has been a real issue with my Hot Rod Deluxe: Low-end boom. The article stated that that boom is called floor coupling and is caused by an amp being close to a reflective surface such as a floor or a wall. The reactance can cause a 3dB boost to the low-end. The solutions to this are actually quite simple: Either elevate the amp, or tilt it back. Some Fender cabs, such as the VibroKing come with retractable legs to allow you to lean the amp back. I always thought it was meant to be able to hear your amp. I never realized that there was an actual purpose for this other than being able to hear your amp while the band is blasting. 🙂

 

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