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Strymon Flint stereo reverb and tremolo pedal review

In this Strymon Flint review, don't be fooled by the analog appearance of this pedal as there're only buttons and switches, no display. It actually hides a powerful digital processor that produces some very cool sounds.

It has 3 types of effects for tremolo and reverb as well as the usual adjustment knobs. Note that the pedal is full of dual functions for example to change the order tremolo into reverb or the opposite, you can also choose if there is a boost when you activate the effect, etc.

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Doug Redler interview: guitar tech of the stars

Doug Redler is one of the top guitar tech, he has toured behind countless musicians. From Brian Ferry to K.D. Lang to the Black Crowes. He is currently working with Rich Robinson from the Crowes.

He wrote a great book to share his experience on the road.

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On the interview above Judge Fredd presents the Money For Nothing pedal he has developed with JMB Experience to obtain the famous Mark Knopfler sound on the Dire Straits song Money For Nothing and more.

Last year Fredd introduced also with JMB a great overdrive pedal called the Riff Shooter, the Money For Nothing has some great potential to produce not only the trademark tone but also plenty of other cool tones.

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Watch all the gear reviews

Here's a YouTube Playlist with all the gear reviews produced for the show.

Enjoy,

Pierre.
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Sardine Can compressor (and the best deal to get it) - Pedal Review
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Pedal Review – Sardine Can compressor

The Sardine Can compressor from Celmo is a high quality pedal built in France. It sounds very musical whatever the settings you use on the pedal (watch the demo video to judge by yourself). On top of the standard compressor settings which are the compression rate and volume you can change the tone of the compressor with a three position input filter (again, watch the video to hear the different tones).

It also has a Rectifier mode which adds a touch of drive to your sound if you desire so.

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Toshihiko Tanabe from tanabe.tv builds boutique pedal for famous musicians like Robben Ford or Larry Carlton. You can read an interview with him in this article. In this Dumkudo review in video it's one of his overdrive pedal.

In July 2014 Premier Guitar released a cool Rig Rundown of Larry Carlton gear shot in his studio. The video is cool despite the fact that we don't get to hear Larry play except at the very beginning. Anyway, it's in this video (see below) that I first heard about the Zenkudo overdive pedal from tanabe.tv.

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The AMPLIFi line is the latest offering from Line6 regarding guitar amps.

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Spartan guitar from Springer Guitars: an awesome Junior!

I love P90 pickups, that's a fact. When Mikaël Springer posted some pics of his Spartan guitar, his Les Paul Junior inspired beauty, on his personal Facebook profile, I immediately said I would love to review it. A couple of weeks later I received the guitar at home to spend some quality time with this awesome instrument.
Spartan guitar in video

Specifications
We are in the specifications realm of the Les Paul Junior, a mahogany body, a P90, a volume and tone.

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When Derek Trucks was in town for the Tedeschi Trucs Band at the Olympia Hall, I had the opportunity to go on stage and take pics of all the stage gear.

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Here's a review of a great distortion pedal built by LNA Effects in France for the great French guitar player Patrick Rondat.

 The pedalboard used for the review
The LNA pedal was inserted on my regular pedalboard for the review.

Pierre-Marie Châteauneuf, luthier for PMC, is a great guitar builder from Montpellier in France. I am reviewing here a new creation of his with the Thelonious model.
The guitar
With PMC, we are in the high class guitar area. Starting from the choice of woods to the attention to details and quality of the building, the guitar is a great job and it sounds awesome as you can judge for yourself in the video.

The look of the beauty is beautiful, simple and elegant.

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UE Boom speakers as a guitar amp

UE Boom guitar amp - Nowadays you can't enter an electronic store without seeing a plethora of Bluetooth speakers. Last month I was invited to a presentation of the UE Boom from Ultimate Ears, the speakers sounds really great especially seeing the relatively small size. I wondered how it would sound to plug a guitar in one and see if it can be used as a guitar amp.
UE Boom guitar amp video

Unpacking the UE Boom
If you are familiar with the Apple unpacking experience, you won't be disappointed with the UE Boom one.

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Setup of a PT-2 @Pedaltrain pedalboard

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The trend is more than ever to host our beloved pedals in pedalboard.

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Frankenstrat Project – End of part 1

One day in June I went to see my luthier Patrick Querleux to get the guitar finished of the Frankenstrat Project. It was almost finished.

In order to wait until the full soundseeing, here's a video teaser of the Riff Shooter pedal that Judge Fredd conceived in collaboration with JMB Experience. I only had the time to play with it for a short while but I can assure you it sounds awesome. I can't wait to get a unit to review it.

As the name Riff Shooter kind of implies, this pedal is an overdrive. The possibility to voice the sounds is pretty big yet it remains very easy to operate. The "Shoot" switch allows to turn on and off the pedal.

Here's an update on the Frankenstrat Project as I received some pics from the Patrick Querleux who has just finished the preparation on the body and the varnish on the neck.

Pedaltrain makes some excellent pedalboards (see my review of the PT-2 here), they sent me a Mini model and a Volto battery pack to review. The Volto can power up to 9 pedals and is charged either straight from a wall wart plug or from a USB connector.

As you can see it allows you to have a pedalboard without any wire attached to an outside power source which can be very useful.
Review of the Pedaltrain Volto

What I liked about

The compact format
The ability to power a full pedalboard
The integration with the Pedaltrain products

What I did

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Here're some pics taken at Patrick Querleux's workshop last time I went to check on the Frankenstrat Project guitar he is building for me.

One of the new guitar technology I really want to check out at the MusikMesse 2013 is the True Temperament fret system invented by Anders Thidell and played by guitar greats like Alan Holdsworth, Steve Vai, Mattias Eklundh and many more.

I had the great pleasure to chat with Anders for 15 minutes, here's the interview :

Mattias IA Eklundh Caparison Apple Horn with the True Temperament frerboard :

 

Enjoy,

Pierre.

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Video setup to record gear reviews

This is the setup I use to make video soundseeings for the show. The MOTU Ultralite mk3 interface plays the lead role since it serves both as a preamp for Shure SM58 for vocals for comments and as a mixer for the output of Torpedo CAB Two-Notes.

Note that the camera used is a Lumix GH2 with a 14-42 lens. This camera has a stereo mic stereo input required to make a good sounding video.

Be careful though as this input is very sensitive and is quickly saturated if you are not careful.

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Here is a series of pictures documenting the evolution of the Frankenstrat Project at the moment where I have the neck and body supplied by EG Solidbody and vibrato provided by Hantug.

I read a long time ago somewhere on a guitar forum that a test to do to check the quality of the couple body / neck was to see if the body would hold to the neck without any screw.

Test result: it holds as you can see in the picture below.

Patrick Querleux, luthier of project inspecting the 3 elements that I brought him.

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Frankenstrat Project – The body

In the previous article dedicated to Frankenstrat Project, I showed you some pictures where you could see the boards that were to be used by Denis from EG Solidbody to machine the body.

Here are the following steps until the final body and neck.

As a reminder, the purpose of the project is to build a replica as accurate as possible (except for the famous black and white stripes) of the Edward Van Halen guitar that can be seen on the cover of their first album.

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Frankenstrat Project – The body (well, almost)

Hello,

First update after the launch of Project Frankenstrat with the first pictures of body manufactured by EG Solidbody.

There is a lot of information on the Internet about the wood used on the Frankenstrat. The problem is that all this information does not agree!

However there seem to be a general agreement toward Ash.

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Here is a video soundseeing of my beautiful Rittenhouse Telecaster (www.rittenhouseguitars.com).

Direct link to the m4v file: LCG-111-20110702.m4v

The whole Rittenhouse Telecaster Story of this guitar is there in 5 parts:

Part 5
Part 4
Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

If you want sone more there is another video in french here and also an audio only episode with a soundseeing of the same guitar here.

Enjoy,

Pierre.

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Telecaster pickups shootout: Lollar Pickups versus Dreamsongs Pickups

On a glorious 2011 january morning, here it was, the parcel coming from Florida with the precious Rittenhouse Telecaster inside!

First impressions:

The guitar is very light, I need to weight it precisely but I am pretty sure it is the lightest guitar I have
The relicing job is very well done. It looks and feels old.

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Telecaster pickups shootout: Lollar Pickups versus Dreamsongs Pickups

Well, it seems that my Rittenhouse (rittenhouseguitars.com) Telecaster is finished!

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Telecaster pickups shootout: Lollar Pickups versus Dreamsongs Pickups

Do you remember Part 2 of my Rittenhouse Telecaster story ? Here how the body was looking before Abe started the relicing process:

Here goes another picture update with the relicing job finished:

 
It looks cool he?

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Telecaster pickups shootout: Lollar Pickups versus Dreamsongs Pickups

Here is a picture update on the Telecaster I won back in December 2009 and that Abe is building for me at Rittenhouse:

 
As per Abe e-mail, the body is fully cured and ready for the relicing process.

Can't wait to see the next stage!

Pierre.

Note: here is the link to The Rittenhouse Telecaster Story - Part 1

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Telecaster pickups shootout: Lollar Pickups versus Dreamsongs Pickups

All this story began with a post on Muzicosphere about a giveaway for a Rittenhouse guitar...
Then one morning, on December 24th 2009, barely awake as I was checking my iPhone I see this Boxcar popup with this tweet:

I had WON!!! I checked, double-checked, triple-checked but it was for real I had won a free guitar. On Christmas Eve, how cool is that, he??! 🙂

As The Guitar Channel is about...

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