Pro Backstager announcement: HooVi Deeflexx
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Pro Backstager announcement: HooVi Deeflexx

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.

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Snapchat Guitar Directory: the list of the best accounts
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Snapchat Guitar Directory: the best accounts

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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Lars Rasmussen interview at the 2014 Holy Grail Guitar Show

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.

Guitares au Beffroi 2016 : an international guitar show right next to Paris

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.

Laguz The Special from Soultool Customized Guitars - Guitar review

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.

Pro Backstager announcement: luthier Maurice Dupont
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Pro Backstager announcement: luthier Maurice Dupont

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.

Guitar Snapchat The Guitar Channel: pierrejournel
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Guitar and Snapchat: why they work well together

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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Luthier Nic Delisle interview

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.

2016 Winter NAMM - The Guitar Channel
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Winter NAMM: the game plan for 2016

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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Leo Guitars: interview with the luthier Darko Milojevic

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.

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 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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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

  • 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
[caption id="attachment_7467" align="aligncenter" width="676"]Screenshots of the PDF with chords, scales and tips 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

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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! Guitar Playback 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
 
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Get a free Guitar Playback pack with your Backstage Pass!

You enjoyed this extract?
Get the Backstage Pass to watch all the exclusive videos and more!
Click here for more info on the Backstage Pass

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!

Sustainable Guitar Review: the Ethiq in bamboo by Alquier Guitar

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.

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.

Luthiers Discussion Panel - 2015 EGB Symposium - Holy Grail Guitar Show

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

Cerbersus overdrive and Utopia delay by @AnasoundsFr - Pedal Review

In a previous gear review, The Guitar Channel had you discover the excellent Phase Lag phaser from Anasounds, now here's a double test with two pedals of the same French manufacturer boutique shop: the Utopia delay and Cerberus overdrive pedals.

Anasounds website: www.anasounds.com
Cerbersus overdrive and Utopia delay - Video review

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Get the Backstage Pass to watch all the exclusive content and more
 More info on the Backstage Pass

 
Overview of Utopia
The Utopia offers a very well done analog delay simulation that works great from a slapback (an echo very short often used in Rockabilly), to a

The Holy Grail Guitar Show is not only the best luthier guitar show in the world (yes, I mean it) it's also a great opportunity to attend to a great selection of conferences.

In fact it is as if the 2nd edition of the Holy Grail Guitar Show (www.holygrailguitarshow.com) was organized especially for me. Indeed, you cannot help but notice that the visual part of this year is very oriented toward the psychedelic sixties which fit perfectly with my legendary floral shirts and my hair (usually) long!

Here I am last year in Berlin interviewing the legendary Ken Parker with...

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Presentation of the 2016 Gibson acoustic guitars in Paris

Yesterday I had the pleasure to spend the afternoon in the private showroom of Gibson France to discover the 2016 range of acoustic guitars from Gibson. For this event two people from the US Acoustic Division were present, Josh Taborski (General Manager) and Jeremy Morton (Product Specialist), see the interview below.
The 2016 guitars in a few photos
From left to right:

A J-45 Vintage (so with the thermally processed top)
A Hummingbird (same comment as above)
A J-200
A J-100

Some others models from the 2016 range:

The Bob Dylan J-200
The signature model is truly a magnificent instrument.

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Here's an interview with two luthiers Sébastien Gavet and Godefroy Maruejouls who collaborated to develop an electric guitar system with fast interchangeable pickup system. They came to show me the first prototype some time ago, this is the video where they explain everything.

The project continues to progress as they have recently introduced a new version of the guitar with an improved system to change the pickups:

What I think of the project
The guitar interchangeable pickup system that has been tried several times in the past.

J.S. Bach played on a Jazz Bass by Philippe Bussonnet (Magma)

Here's 2min of pure happiness with some J.S. Bach played on a Jazz Bass by Philippe Bussonnet, bass player for the mythical band Magma. It happened yesterday in The Guitar Channel studio right after we recorded an in-depth interview with Philippe.

Until the next interview, keep on playing the guitar or...

Phase Lag pedal by Anasounds, an awesome phaser - Pedal Review
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Phase Lag pedal by Anasounds, an awesome phaser

Anasounds is a French boutique pedal builder based in Nice in the South of France. They have a large range of pedals with fuzz, overdrive, distortion, delay and the Phase Lag pedal, a very cool phaser with some interesting hidden features.

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The Beauty of The Burst, a must for guitar lovers

I recently had the opportunity to play a real 1960 Sunburst Les Paul thanks to Matthieu Lucas, a French collector. It gave me the idea to read again The Beauty of the Burst, a book I received a while ago. My first reading was more concentrated on the great pictures of the book, you can really spend hours gazing at all those beauties.

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Here's a audio Jon Gomm interview. Jon is one of the current guitar players who is really pushing the enveloppe in the acoustic guitar world. His latest album "Live in the Acoustic Asylum" was recorded live as the title implies and his full of guitar and yet still avoids the default of being annoying because of pointless technical prowesses.

This interview with Jon is more than 45min long as he is very generous and detailed in his answers.

Here's the 13th episode of the Spartan Project video series.  You will see how the luthier Mikaël Springer will do his TV white color on the guitar paint. It's quite fascinating to see how it is done.
#13 Spartan Project with @SpringerGuitars: Guitar paint & finish

A few pics from the video

Previous episodes of the Spartan Project
The goal of the Spartan Project is to document the building of a guitar for me by luthier Mikaël Springer.

Here's the 12th episode of the Spartan Project video series. Mikaël works now on the neck/body ensemble. He finalizes the neck profile, does all the routing for the pickup and electronics and prepares the guitar for the final finish steps.
A few pics from the video

Previous episodes of the Spartan Project
As a reminder, the goal of the Spartan Project is to document the building of a guitar for me by luthier Mikaël Springer.

Here's the 11th episode of the Spartan Project video series. Watch Mikaël working on the neck of my next guitar. Check out how he works with a knife on the volute of the headstock and the heel: pretty amazing craftmanship.

Previous episodes of the Spartan Project
As a reminder, the goal of the Spartan Project is to document the building of a guitar for me by luthier Mikaël Springer.

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After several Musikmesse, a first NAMM show in January, the Holy Grail Guitar Show, and various others guitar shows in France, I am very pleased to announce that for the first time I will cover the Montreal Jazz Festival! So here I am in full swing to organize the ten days that I will spend there.

On my program

  • Interviews with musicians programmed on the festival
  • Meetings with local luthiers, and God knows there are some very very good ones!
  • Contact catches with professional guitar for business development
  • And of course concerts!
If you are on site and / or you have contacts to recommend me and / or you wish we meet, let me know it will be with great pleasure. Some of you know that I lived 11 years in Montreal so to return there with The Channel Guitar is a sort of homecoming for me. Can't wait to be back in Quebec!! Pierre. Update : list of the interviews done during the festival [s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level0)]
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The Guitar Channel will be in Montreal to cover the 2015 Montreal Jazz Festival