Here's the Adam Miller interview recorded during the 2016 Winter NAMM show. In 2014 I did an audio interview with Adam while he was in Paris, you can listen to it in this article.
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Guitar Review – Fastback Alquier “Codetalker” by Maurice Dupont
Wednesday, 09 March 2016
This Fastback Alquier model Codetalker built in the Maurice Dupont luthier workshop is a design by luthier Jean-Yves Alquier. It's still possible to get a custom Fastback entirely made by Jean-Yves but you now have the option to get a more affordable version with the same design and built by Maurice Dupont team in France.
Spoiler: this instrument is a great luthier guitar.
Fastback Alquier "Codetalker" by Maurice Dupont
Fastback Codetalker photos
Here are a couple of photos of this very elegant instrument.
Rig used for the review
Here's the pedalboard used for the review.
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Pedal Review – Drive Recovery Thrilltone overdrive Made in France
Saturday, 05 March 2016
It's not everyday that you get to review a French overdrive pedal based on a new fully analog technology. The Drive Recovery Thrilltone pedal is such a product. It's a double pedal with two stages.
Name : Dewitte Wired
Type : boutique builder of pedals and amps
Web : www.dewitte-wired.fr
Dewitte Wired is a French boutique builder composed of two people Nicolas Dewitte and Stéphane Pointeaux. They propose a nice range of overdrive, distorsion and booster pedals. Some tube amp heads are also in the works.
A couple of Dewitte Wired pedals
Interview (in French) of Nicolas Dewitte
Interested in the Pro Backstage Pass ?
The Pro Backstage Pass is tailored to help you grow your business and increase your visibility in the guitar community.
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Here's a Brian Wampler interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM show. It's always a pleasure to meet and interview Brian as he is very open about sharing information about his work in the pedal domain.
Wampler website: www.wamplerpedals.com
The 2016 NAMM Wampler booth
Brian Wampler interview
Add Brian Wampler (and me) on Snapchat
Brian Wampler is always ready to embrace new tools to engage with guitar aficionados. He is now on Snapchat, add him in your friend list, it's worth it.
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As a big fan of Van Halen I had to read this book about the early years of the band. While at the 2016 Winter NAMM I took the opportunity to interview Greg Renoff, the author of Van Halen Rising.
The book website: www.vanhalenrising.com
Book review
No need to be an ultra fan of Van Halen to enjoy reading the book.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
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On this new Luthier Chronicle, I asked Nik Huber the shakespearian question: to relic, or not to relic?
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Comping Study for Jazz Blues in F by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Comping means “to accompany”. In our case, it implies that those chords can be used when accompanying a soloist who is improvising over a Jazz Blues chord progression.
Comping Study for Jazz Blues in F
Each diagram represents a full measure, except when slashes are written above the chord—in which case those slashes represent the number of beats for that particular chord. The circled dots are optional replacement bass notes.
All of the chords have the root in the bass, except for the diminished 7th chord used as a substitution for the D7 chord.
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Guitares au Beffroi 2016: Interview with the guitar show organizer
Monday, 22 February 2016
The festival Guitares au Beffroi 2016 includes as previous years a guitar show called Le Salon de la Belle Guitare which means The Show of the Beautiful Guitar. Here's below a video interview with Armel Amiot, the guitar show organizer.
Guitares au Beffroi website: www.guitaresaubeffroi.com
Guitares au Beffroi 2016 - Interview with the guitar show organizer
As the guitar show organizer, Armel Amiot is the point of contact in case you are interested in being an exhibitors.
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Here's the Gear Evening debrief. On February 18th, the first Special Event of the year took place with the Gear Evening with Maurice Dupont (luthier), FX amps (guitar amps), Anasounds (boutique pedals) and Verspieren (insurance).
Gear Evening debrief video
Here's a video to give you an idea of this first Gear Evening of 2016. The first part of the video will show you the event while it is being setup and during. The second part of the video is composed of short interviews in French of people present for the event.
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Luthier Ted Astrand interview at the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show
Saturday, 20 February 2016
Here's a Ted Astrand interview done during the 2015 edition of the Holy Grail Guitar Show. Several luthier friends told me to check-out Ted during the show so I listened to their advice and went to meet Ted. His work is really stunning. The guitar presented in Berlin looks both gorgeous and elegant.
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In the Snapchat app you have to keep a finger on the red button to record so unless you are an alien with a 3rd arm or you have a buddy around to take the snap while you play, you can't do it.
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Dynacord Echocord Super 76: review of a real tape echo
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
Here's a review of a real tape echo and spring reverb studio effect, the Dynacord Echocord Super 76. One of the Backstage Pass subscriber, Philippe, who is very good at electronics repaired this nice piece of gear and lent it to me. It's quite something to experience for the first time ever to play with a real tape echo machine. I don't know if has to do with being able to see the tape move around, the quality of the sound itself or a mix of both but I was floored by the sound of this unit.
Name : Aquilina Basses
Type : Luthier
Web : www.aquilinabasses.com
Sébastien builds high-quality instrument with a very elegant design which provides a great balance. He exposes regularly at the NAMM and he sells his bass guitars all over the world. if you understand French, you can watch a video of interview of him during the 2016 NAMM in this article.
A couple of Aquilina Basses
The instrument presented during the 2016 Winter NAMM
Interested in the Pro Backstage Pass ?
The Pro Backstage Pass is tailored to help you grow your business and increase your visibility in the guitar community.
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The Guitar Channel has been active as a podcast since its launch in 2009. In fact everything started as an audio podcast to evolve to its current form of a full audio and video show. It seems that as of 2015 the podcast space has regain a bit of his past glory and I am not going to complain about that as there won't be ever such thing as too many podcasts. Here's a guitar podcast directory in the form of this list of the guitar related podcast I am aware of.
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Here's the Paul Reed Smith interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM show. It's always with great pleasure that I meet and talk to Paul as he is one of the leader of the high-end guitar world. This encounter with the PRS Guitars founder was the 4th one.
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Here's Josh Smith interview during the 2016 Winter NAMM. I recently discovered this awesome musician by listening to the No Guitar Is Safe podcast by Jude Gold from the magazine Guitar Player.
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On Saturday, I organized a Gear Afternoon to spend some quality time in a rehearsal studio with some fellow backstagers playing and testing each other's pieces of gear (guitars, pedals, amps, etc.). It was a lot of fun to have this Special Event in this unstructured format.
Album photo of this Gear Afternoon
Here are some photos taken during this afternoon.
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Here's a Mike Moreno interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM. It is thanks to my official Jazz advisor Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert that I contacted Mike.
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To start 2016 in the best way possible, The Guitar Channel invites you to come to the first Gear Evening of the year where you will be able to meet the luthier Maurice Dupont, the amps from Fx Amps, the boutique pedal builder Anasounds and Verspieren which proposes specialized products for musician to insure their instruments.
The concept of the Gear Evening is to meet and interact with a small selection of exhibitors and to try their gear in a real rehearsal studio.
The exhibitors for this Gear Evening
Guitars: the luthier Maurice Dupont
Amps: the French distributor for Fx Amps
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Name : HooVi
Type : Company
Web : www.hoovi.at
e-mail : info(a)hoovi.at
The Deeflexx Systems invented by HooVi solve the problem of the sound diffusion from guitar amps. The highly engineered Sound Deflection System is just to be placed in front of any guitar amp to enhance the sound and get rid of the shrill sound coming from the speaker cone.
Without the Deeflexx: the sound is not distributed evenly, shrill and dull zones
With the Deeflexx: spherical sound distribution, fat and clear sounding amp
The Deeflexx products
In the range of products proposed by HooVi, you will find 3 models.
Here's Don Alder interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM show on the Seymour Duncan booth. It's always a pleasure to meet and interview such a gifted musician who plays equally well a harp-guitar, a baritone or a regular folk guitar. We talked about his latest news and projects.
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Here's an Andy Timmons interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM. The Guitar Channel has been looking for a way to do an interview for a while now and it happened at Anaheim thanks to the introduction made through Blue Mouth Promotions.
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NAMM 2016 week-end: crazy Saturday and Sunday! The organization is announcing around 100 000 visitors for this year edition so you can imagine the week-end is crazy busy.
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Andy Powers interview – Taylor Guitars master builder – NAMM 2016
Monday, 25 January 2016
In this interview, meet Taylor Guitars master builder Andy Powers. Meeting and getting to talk with the luthier involved in the development of all the guitars at Taylor was very interesting to understand more how a huge player in the industry like Taylor operates. In fact Taylor builds around 600 guitars per day with an unsurpassed level of quality in the industry.
Taylor Guitars website: www.taylorguitars.com
Taylor master builder - Adam Powers interview
Here's the full interview with Adam Powers.
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The Hofner Zane Carney signature model was presented to Zane for the very first time during the NAMM 2016. Zane was super excited about the instrument during the interview. We took the opportunity to talk about his latest projects, his views on this NAMM, the upcoming album he is preparing and, of course, this brand new guitar. No doubt we will hear a lot about Zane during this year as he seems to be always working on several projects.
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NAMM 2016 Day 2: the big day! This is the key date for the show as it's the best time to do business before the Tsunami of people and decibels during the upcoming week-end.
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NAMM 2016 Day 1 – The Guitar Channel report
Friday, 22 January 2016
NAMM 2016 Day 1: go! The great annual show of the industry of music instruments and peripheral industries (sound system, wiring, interface, etc.) opened for its winter edition at the Anaheim Convention Center. Indeed the US NAMM comes in two flavors: the Winter NAMM who is held in Los Angeles and the Summer NAMM held in Nashville.
The NAMM is as big as last year, no big change on that part. Some booths are bigger from one year to the other and the opposite for others.
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