WIN!
A Fender Duo-Sonic worth £495 P.42 Issue 427
december 2017
Tom Petty
An american rock original remembered
45
best-buy guitars a mp s a nd ef f e c t s inside!
Fender
gretsch
boss
patrick james eggle
PRS
Empress
supro strymon
victory
evh
martin taylor
Yamaha gibson
rivolta
radiohead
Sonic Innovator Ed O’Brien Shows us his new strat! P.58
robert plant
Led Zep Legend talks guitars & new band P.66
Issue 427
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Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk
Raising The Tone Another year and another tempting cavalcade of tone-tackle to GAS over… Did you buy any kit that revolutionised your playing? I hope so, because while the most important thing is (to paraphrase Zappa) to shut up and play your guitar, sometimes a new pedal or an acoustic will inspire a dozen songs all by itself, or unlock inspiring sounds that get the creative juices flowing. My personal purchase of the year was a little Marshall 1930 Popular combo picked up through the readers’ ads pages. It’s by no means perfect: it has to be running full tilt before it sounds really good and it’s quite noisy – few would claim it boasts the greatest circuitry Marshall ever designed because they’re known to conk out frequently, too. But it still has one crucial quality that keeps me coming back for more time and again: it’s exciting. Screaming its little Plexi heart out, it practically levitates off the floor and there’s something so raw and direct about it that it’s got me thinking about a year of cool little blues gigs around Bristol. Any piece of kit that has you daydreaming about your next recording or stage has got to be a good thing. As always, we’ve handpicked the gear that’s excited us the most and shared it with you here in one compendium of tone, so we hope you find your perfect match on page 75. Elsewhere in this packed issue we say goodbye to Tom Petty – another great musician gone too soon. American writer Jeff Slate spent a bit of time with Petty over the years and his look back at this understated but hugely influential hero of American rock (and a fine guitarist to boot) is full of insight. On a happier note, we were delighted to catch up with Robert Plant and the Sensational Shapeshifters guitarists Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson and Justin Adams. The pair rejoice in the most varied arsenal of stringed instruments we’ve seen in a while, which they use to conjure up the eclectic and the exotic as heard on Plant’s great new album Carry Fire. Enjoy the issue and here’s to more inspirational sounds all round in 2018.
Jamie Dickson Editor
Editor’s Highlights Ed O’Brien
Radiohead’s sonic innovator has a new instrument to show off and some unique perspectives on crafting music on guitar. Read all about it on p58
Damn The Torpedoes A shrewd, moving observer who wrote some of the greatest songs of our time, we honour the late Tom Petty and his contribution to guitar p52
Little Wonder
Revived American amp maker Supro is on a bit of a roll and their latest small retro combos squeeze in a surprising amount of innovation p20
December 2017 Guitarist
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Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk
Editorial Editor-In-Chief
Jamie Dickson
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Jason Sidwell
Daniel Griffiths daniel.griffiths@futurenet.com
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Contents
6
Guitarist DECEMber 2017
Contents ISSUE 427 DeceMber 2017
Regulars cover feature
2017’s top gear
75
We round up the cream of the crop of this year’s guitars, amps, pedals and more
003.......... Editor’s Welcome 027.......... The Lineup 032.......... Opinion 038.......... Perfect 10 040.......... Readers’ Letters 042.......... Win a Fender guitar! 044.......... Albums of the Year 046.......... One For The Road 108.......... Subscribe 126.......... Longterm Test 131.......... Gear Q&A 134.......... Next Month 136.......... Classic Gear 140.......... Old Gold 152.......... Reader Ads
Cover FEATURE cover photography by
Neil Godwin
075 . ........ Gear of the Year 2017 Solidbodies; prestige electrics; semi-acoustic electrics; acoustics; amp heads; amp combos; drive effects; delay, reverb and modulation; multi effects; innovation
FEATURES 052.......... Tribute: Tom Petty 058.......... Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien 066.......... Robert Plant and the Sensational Shapeshifters’ Justin Adams and Liam ‘Skin’ Tyson 120.......... Workshop: The GigRig
New Gear 010 . ........ G&L Legacy Tribute 014 . ........ ESP E-II Eclipse & Eclipse DB 020 . ........ S upro 1606 Super and Super Reverb 1605R combos 098 . ........ PRS Custom 24-08 110 . ........ Chase Bliss Brothers Analog Gainstage 112 . ........ Electro-Harmonix Blurst 114 . ........ LunaStone TrueOverDrive 1&2 118........... Line 6 Helix Native
TECHNIQUES 142 . ........ Jump Blues Bootcamp with Chris Corcoran 146.......... Blues Headlines with Richard Barrett
VIDEO & AUDIO To enjoy all of the video and audio content in this issue, type the following link into your browser and follow the instructions in the post entitled ‘Guitarist video and audio’: http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
DECEMBER 2017 Guitarist
7
f i r st p l ay
G&L LEGACY £1,899 WHAT IS IT? A Fullerton-built double-cut with a classic vibe but thoughtful refinements
Velvet Evolution
Oh no! Another Strat clone? Actually, there’s a lot to like about this refined and capable doublecut – and you can thank Leo Fender for that... Words Jamie Dickson Photograph Neil Godwin
B
uild a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door, the saying goes. In guitar terms, building the MkII mousetrap was precisely the job that Leo Fender set himself when he founded G&L in 1979. The father of the Strat and the Tele decided that, despite their obvious popularity, he could refine certain aspects of his early masterpieces – and maybe build them a little better, too, given that Fender (which he’d sold to CBS in 1965) was deep in the doldrums at that point. Fast forward to the present and G&L are still very much a going concern, still offering an alternative take on Leo’s earlier designs. The guitar we’ve got in front of us this issue is a G&L Legacy, a classic double-cut built in Fullerton, California at G&L’s de facto Custom Shop, though more affordable Tribute Series models are built in Indonesia. The interesting thing about G&L guitars is that at first all you see are the similarities to Fender instruments – then your eye gradually takes in the subtle differences, one by one. There’s that slender ‘have we met somewhere before?’ headstock, like a cross between a Tele
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Guitarist December 2017
Video Demo http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
G&L Legacy
first play
December 2017 Guitarist
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first play
G&L Legacy
1
2
1. The controls look familiar but conceal G&L’s versatile Passive Treble & Bass system 2. Pickups are clear-voiced CLF-100 Alnico V single coils designed by Paul Gagon and wound in the United States 3. The two-post DualFulcrum vibrato is stable and smooth. We like it
3
and a Strat, with its oddly attractive little notch. There’s that Dual-Fulcrum vibrato, a little chunkier than a traditional unit, pivoting on two purposeful-looking posts rather than six screws. The overall feel is similar to that of Suhr’s Classic Pro, which takes a traditional template and finesses it throughout. While the Legacy may not have quite the same boutique cachet as a Suhr it has the same refined and subtly progressive, contemporary vibe.
Feel & Sounds
Strapping on the Legacy reveals it to be neither leaden nor feathery – and the scales confirm that, with the guitar weighing in at just shy of 8lbs. All good. The body is two-piece alder with a neat centre join and a deep, two-tone burst that actually looks slightly Les Paul Juniorlike in the flesh. The ‘Gloss Vintage Tint’ finish is glowing, mirror-flat and feels as
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Guitarist December 2017
box-fresh as a new pair of trainers, which may put some retro-centric players off but is perfectly executed. The 22-fret maple neck is also rather modern in feel. The neck profile is a fast but fullsome C-shape and those girthy medium-jumbo frets feel like silver ingots under your fingers at first, especially if you’re coming straight from a vintage-spec Fender. Nonetheless, the frets are dressed and seated beautifully, easing you over any bumps in the road. The neck has a fast, positive feel in play with no fretting out anywhere upon its flattish 12-inch radius. We played Jimi solos on it all night and not even his wildest excursions made the G&L choke up. There’s also no skunk strip on the back of the neck. This means the fretboard is a cap of hard-rock maple glued onto a neck of the same material once the truss rod has been installed. We like the tidy look it gives the back of the neck and the join is only
“Those girthy medium-jumbo frets feel like silver ingots under your fingers at first”
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