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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Mason Marangella interview – Vertex
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
Here's a Mason Marangella interview done via Skype. Mason is the mastermind behind Vertex, the boutique pedal builder. The interview was a good opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with Mason about his approach to pedal building.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
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Snapchat is a cool social network tool you can use to get some short video and photo update about things which matters to you such. Very important feature of Snapchat: all the content posted in the app disappear after 24h max. One of the limitation of the service is that there's no mechanism to discover relevant people inside the app. You have to find them one by one, there's no search engine, no hashtag, nothing.
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Frank Hartung interview, luthier at the Holy Grail Guitar Show
Saturday, 16 January 2016
Here's a Frank Hartung interview done during the 2014 Holy Grail Guitar Show. He was one of the German luthier exhibiting during the show.
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Lars Rasmussen interview, luthier for Rasmussen Guitars at the Holy Grail Guitar Show
Saturday, 16 January 2016
Here's a Lars Rasmussen interview done during the 2014 Holy Grail Guitar Show. Lars is a Swedish luthier who build high end acoustic guitar.
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Guitares au Beffroi 2016: an international guitar show right next to Paris
Friday, 15 January 2016
The fourth edition of the guitar fair during the Guitares au Beffroi 2016 festival is going to be even more international this time with luthiers from Europe and further. It will take place from 25 to 27 March 2016 in Montrouge, right next to Paris. Below are four examples of European craftsmen that you can meet at the show.
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Laguz The Special from Soultool Customized Guitars – Guitar review
Thursday, 14 January 2016
The Laguz The Special guitar from Soultool Customized Guitars is an instrument which was presented by the luthier Egon Rauscher (watch his interview in this article) during the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show.
Name : Maurice Dupont
Type : Luthier
Web : www.acoustic-guitars.com
Maurice Dupont is one of the great gentleman of the French lutherie. He manufactures guitars surrounded by a team in his workshop near Cognac in France. Well known for his type of gypsy guitar, his production covers a much wider spectrum from classical guitar to solid-body through its famous Manouche guitar or jazz oriented instruments.
You can find his guitars in his Paris store Dupont des Arts (3 Avenue Daumesnil, 75012 Paris France) right next to Bastille and Gare de Lyon.
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Snapchat was released in 2011. At the beginning it was mostly used by teenagers but not anymore. In fact as all the social networks its users have aged. Now grown ups are using it. So guitar Snapchat? Really? Yes. As the great online marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk advocates, Snapchat is an excellent tool because it allows you to get the attention of your followers.
What is cool about Snapchat also is that it allows to post super fast a short video content to engage with your community.
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Nic Delisle interview – Luthier for Island Manufacture Instrument
Wednesday, 06 January 2016
During my coverage of the 2015 Montreal Jazz Festival I had the pleasure to do a Nic Delisle interview. Nic is a luthier for Island Manufacture Instrument. He is installed in the Montreal island north of downtown in a co-working space with other luthiers. He has a special approach to guitar building with an unorthodox design which is very original.
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Mika Tyyskä is a very original guitar player with a very personal approach about his music. Not only he is writing and playing music but he also take care of all the visual aspect of his art with his alter ego Mr Fastfinger. His latest album Spirit Rising is shock full of cool music.
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For the second consecutive year, The Guitar Channel will be covering the Winter NAMM, held in Los Angeles in Anaheim next to Disney.
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Pedal Shootout – Wampler Plextortion, Celmo Pimento, Tanabe Dumkudo
Sunday, 27 December 2015
Here's a pedal shootout to make a comparison between the Wampler Plextortion, the Celmo Pimento and the Tanabe.tv Dumkudo. 3 very different pedals to add overdrive or distorsion (in the case of the Plextortion) to your pedalboard. Wampler comes from the US, Celmo is built in France and Tanabe.tv is built in Japan.
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Pedal Shootout: pedalboard
The cab simulation and power amp section is done by the Torpedo CAB Two-Notes.
How can we make our playing more colorful, more jazz-sounding? Let’s use some guitar Chromaticism!
Using Chromaticisms simply means adding extra notes to our melodies, our arpeggios, or our scales.
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It's a rare opportunity to do an interview with both the musician and his luthier at the same time. Here's below an interview with guitar player Mika Tyyskä (aka Mr Fastfinger) with his luthier Juha Ruokangas. It was done during the 2nd edition of the Holy Grail Guitar Show.
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The Heartbreaker model by luthier Christophe Grellier is a guitar with a very clean look but full of possibilities of sounds with its clever 6-position selector. Yes, there are six possibilities of sound on this selector that looks like a simple 3-position toggle switch. The 3 bottom positions are the combinations of pickups in humbucker
Here's an interview with luthier Darko Milojevic from Leo Guitars (www.leoguitars.com) during the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show. Darko has been building guitars for 7 years now so knows what he is talking about and the high quality of his instruments shows it. Reinterpreting the Les Paul theme is not that easy, especially when you want to bring your own special flavour to this timeless classic of the electric guitar.
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Creation of the Spanish luthier association: the CSGB, Contemporary Spanish Guitar Builders
Monday, 21 December 2015
I have recently received a mail from Francisco Rodriguez, luthier for FranFret Guitars, where he told me about the creation of the CSGB, a new association in Spain to gather all the guitar builders, similar to what the EGB (www.europeanguitarbuilders.com) is doing at the European level and the APLG (www.aplg.fr) in France. You can read the press release for the details.
I wish the this new association all the best for the future.
The CSGB can count on The Guitar Channel to be a strong partner for its upcoming projects and initiatives.
Pierre.
Press Release of the CSGB
The past April 4th 2015 a few
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Colin James interview guitar in hand on stage – 2015 Montreal Jazz Festival
Sunday, 20 December 2015
Colin James was part of the 2015 Montreal Jazz Festival to play several nights. We did this interview Guitar in Hand right on the stage of the Théatre du Nouveau Monde (www.tnm.qc.ca) right before the concert. It's always a lot of fun and much more interesting to do the interview Guitar in Hand. The concerts given by Colin James during the festival were excellent, the sound quality was really good and the band behind him was excellent.
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Seth Baccus interview, luthier for Baccus Guitars at the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show
Friday, 18 December 2015
Here's a Seth Baccus interview done during the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show. I was very impressed by the quality of the instrument brought by Seth in Berlin (see the photos below).
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In coordination with David Wallimann who created Guitar Playback, I am happy to announce that we are starting a collaboration with The Guitar Channel by offering a free backing track pack to all the Backstage Pass subscribers. I had the pleasure to do an audio interview 2 years ago with David to talk about his book about mode. You can listen to the full interview here.
Content of the pack
[caption id="attachment_7467" align="aligncenter" width="676"]
- 5 backing tracks in different styles
- Beck is Back
- Aelian Thoughts
- Blues in G
- Fusion Funky Vamp In G Dorian
- Fields Of Joy
- 5 PDF with details on what to play on each backing track
Screenshots of the PDF with chords, scales and tips[/caption] [s2If current_user_is(s2member_level1) OR current_user_is(administrator)]
Click here to download the 28MB Zip file
Thanks for checking out this sampler Guitar Playback backing track pack! These five jam tracks are meant to provide you with excellent quality musical beds to develop new musical ideas in various genres. Check out the included PDFs for scale diagrams and improvisation tips.Use promo code BACKSTAGE to get a 30% discount on all the products purchased on Guitar Playback
[/s2If] [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level0)]The download link is available for the Backstage Pass subscribers
Use promo code TGC to get a 20% discount on all the products purchased on Guitar Playback
[/s2If] I hope you enjoy these tracks and find them useful. Please check out www.guitarplayback.com for more! Stay tuned for more good stuff with David. Pierre. [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level0)]
You want to download the free pack? Get the Backstage Pass to watch all the exclusive videos and more! Click here for more info on the Backstage Pass[/s2If]Get a free Guitar Playback pack with your Backstage Pass!
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
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I love when it's possible to do an interview Guitar in Hand, so imagine when I had the opportunity to do one with a harp-guitar player, Muriel Anderson!
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Bamboo Ethiq Electric Alquier Guitars, a sustainable instrument built by a luthier
Friday, 11 December 2015
The guitar tested in this video is the electric model Ethiq range presented in Berlin during the 2nd edition of the Holy Grail Guitar Show by luthier Jean-Yves Alquier. The characteristic of this range is that it is made of bamboo from 65% to 100% as in the case of the guitar tested in this video. So this might be one of the first sustainable guitar from a luthier.
We clearly see in the photo below how the body of the guitar is composed.
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Adriano Sergio interview – Ergon Guitars – 2015 Holy Grail Guitar show
Thursday, 03 December 2015
Here's the interview done with Portuguese luthier Adriano Sergio from Ergon Guitars during the second edition of the Holy Grail Guitar Show. I was seduced by the organic shapes of Adriano's guitars and by the quality of the lutherie.
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JD Simo interview with a real 1960 vintage Gibson Les Paul in hand
Sunday, 29 November 2015
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JD from the power trio JD Simo was in Paris for the very first time for their first tour in Europe as a promotional tour for the release of their album Let Love Show The Way which will be released in January 2016.
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The 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show was held the weekend of October 31 and November 1, 2015 in Berlin. This second edition of the show presented a selection of 115 luthiers from around the world. There was a lot to please the eyes and ears. You only need to watch the 5min video zapping below to be convinced.
2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show video zapping
The list of luthiers interviewed on The Guitar Channel
Here're the luthiers I interviewed during the week-end in Berlin. The full video will be made available to the Backstage Pass owners as soon as they are edited.
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Luthiers Discussion Panel – 2015 EGB Symposium – Holy Grail Guitar Show
Friday, 20 November 2015
Here is a video document recorded during a panel of luthiers at the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show in Berlin in the presence of the following luthiers: Andy Manson A.J. Lucas Jean-Yves Alquier A lady from the Austrian Ministry of the Environment (from memory) Fred Pons Jacky Walraet Chris Larkin Video recording of the panel
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Interview guitar in hand with the Big, Bad and Beautiful Popa Chubby
Friday, 20 November 2015
It's always an experience to interview such a colorful musician like Popa Chubby, this time we did it Guitar in Hand.
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