Xotic (xotic.us) is a brand highly known for its boost pedals and its overdrives in the forefront of which we find the BB Preamp which pursues an endless career on many pedals around the world. The Xotic Soul Driven is a signature overdrive pedal designed for the musician Allen Hinds. Xotic Soul Driven signature Allen Hinds
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The Martin 000-15SM that you will discover in this review is my personal guitar which I acquired to return to playing the steel string acoustic guitar to regain the taste of pure sound without artifice. At C.F. Martin, the reference 000 designates the shape of the body, the figure 15 indicates that the guitar is
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Guitar review – Sorcerer 62 MJS Guitars – Luthier Godefroy Maruejouls
Friday, 08 September 2017
Godefroy Maruejouls is a French luthier who has been building high quality guitars, acoustic or electric. Last time we reviewed one of his acoustic instrument, this time this is an electric guitar called the Sorcerer 62. MJS Sorcerer 62 review Audio version of the review For those into audio, here's the podcast version of the
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In order to change from the usual format of guitar review, here's a new idea: you will find below the audio recording of a guitar reviewed on The Guitar Channel, the goal is to guess which guitar or at least which kind of guitar it is!
Review setup
Path: guitar > jack > Kelt V-Twin amp > Shure SM-58 > Tascam DR-70D
No equalization applied or reverv or anythyng: just the dry signal coming from the SM-58
The settings on the amp were the sam throughout the review
Any idea about the guitar?
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The Mag Mic system from Seymour Duncan is a solution that is seen more and more often in the instruments of pro musicians. So recently Adam Miller came to the Backstage showroom for a Guitar in Hand interview with his guitar made by the luthier Jeff Traugott which is equipped with this system, same for Shai
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Pedal Review Strymon Sunset, double overdrive/boost Swiss army knife
Friday, 02 June 2017
Here's the Sunset, the latest effort from Strymon to attack the analog kingdom of overdrive and boost pedals. After the Riverside also reviewed on The Guitar Channel, this new double pedal propose another angle with 6 types of overdrive and boost, 3 per sides of the pedal, that you can combine. In fact you can have A going into B, B going into A or both running in parallel.
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A nice shred machine in video review with this Soul Renegade built by the French luthier Benoît Guilbert.
Soul Renegade video review
Until the next interview, keep on playing the guitar!
Pierre.
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The compressor is an effect that is always a bit intimidating because of the number of parameters often: attack time, release time, compression ratio, output volume, etc. That's why Alexandre Ernandez, the designer of Anasounds, made the choice with this Lazy Comp pedal to propose a compressor with ... one button!
The parameter controlled by this single button is the percentage of mixing between direct sound and compressed sound.
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Here is in review a new exceptional guitar, the Unicorn Classic model built in the Finnish luthier Juha Ruokangas workshop. It is an instrument that was kindly lent me by a backstager (thank you David!). Given the very small number of guitars made by Juha and his team, it was an unexpected opportunity to test a guitar of this caliber.
We are indeed here in the super high-end realm. The price of this model with the options included in this specific instrument (superb table, gold hardware, etc.) requires a budget of about 9 500 €.
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Joe Walsh Double Classic from Analog Alien review: overdrive/compressor
Wednesday, 03 May 2017
Analog Alien (www.analogalien.com) is an American brand of boutique pedal that offers a range of products with a very original look and a beautiful palette of sounds. After the Rumble Seat (reviewed in this article) The Guitar Channel offers you to discover another cool pedal built by the Napoli brothers, the Joe Walsh Double Classic.
As its name implies it was developed for the legendary guitar player from The Eagles: Joe Walsh.
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Telecaster pickups shootout – Lollar Pickups vs Dreamsongs Pickups
Tuesday, 04 April 2017
Here is shootout of two sets of Telecaster pickups, one from Dreamsongs Pickups (www.dreamsongspickups.com) with the Classic Blues-Rock reference from Italy and one from Lollar Pickups (www.lollarguitars.com) from the US with the 52 T reference.
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Francisco Rodriguez is a Spanish luthier The Guitar Channel interviewed during the Holy Grail Guitar Show.
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Pedal Review – Rumble Seat from Analog Alien: overdrive/delay/reverb in 1 unit!
Friday, 17 March 2017
Analog Alien (www.analogalien.com) is an American brand of boutique pedal that offers a range of products with a very original look and a beautiful palette of sounds.
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Mojo Classic Ruokangas Guitars review – A Telecaster coming from Finland
Wednesday, 15 March 2017
Juha Ruokangas is a Finnish luthier well known on The Guitar Channel since he has been the subject of several interviews and has also animated a series of luthier chronicles. Juha (pronounced Yu-A) manufactures with a small team of luthiers instruments of very high quality entirely by hand, without the help of CNC (ie without Computer Numeric Control machine).
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Riverside Strymon overdrive pedal review – Powerhouse tone machine
Wednesday, 08 March 2017
Until now Strymon proposed mainly pedals in the delay and modulation field, with the Riverside they are now getting in the overdrive business.
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"The Burst" is a guitar made by the luthier Mikaël Springer as a tribute to the mythical Les Paul Standard 1959 by Gibson.
Finally a Jazz guitar reviewed on The Guitar Channel! Yes, everything happens. Here is the D'Angelico model EX-SS in a very standard configuration: archtop type guitar with two humbuckers.
D'Angelico EX-SS video review
Audio version of the video available in the podcast:
Photo album
What I enjoyed the most
The sounds
The built quality
The confort of playing
What I enjoyed the least
Too much gold hardware!
Conclusion
For a budget of around $1,500, the EX-SS offers a very good guitar that should delight the fans of Jazz and Blues.
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One of the important announcements of NAMM 2017 was the release of a new John Mayer 100W all tube amp by PRS. As a media The Guitar Channel was invited to the press conference. Usually I am not very fan of the exercise of the press conference as it is usually limited to basically reading a press release or pretty much so.
Feedback from Joris, a backstager who reviewed
the Bellwether Walrus Audio delay pedal
during a Backstage Gear Tour
Hello fellow guitar players,
Thanks to a Backstage Gear Tour, I had the pleasure to test at home the Bellwether, a delay pedal from the American boutique builder Walrus Audio (reviewed by The Guitar Channel in this article). Here's a video which will hopefully inspire you to test this pedal.
Joris video review
My feedback
Overall, the sound is very warm with a slight dark side on my gear. The Tone setting is well thought out to adjust the tone of the effect.
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As promised in the article documenting the installation of the Häussel Pickups in my PRS McCarty, here's the pickup shootout between the stock PRS McCarty pickups and the set of 59 pickups from Häussel Pickups.
Pickup Shootout: PRS McCarty vs Häussel 59
I tried as much as possible to cover the same kind of guitar playing throughout the test: with the fingers only, with a pick, light and heavy riffing, etc.
Conditions of the test
Guitar: 2005 PRS McCarty
Strings: no change of strings to keep this parameter the same between both recordings
Sound: Universal Audio Apollo Twin interface
Types
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Häussel Pickups installation in a PRS McCarty
Saturday, 26 November 2016
The German pickups Häussel Pickups equip many high-end European luthiers, Nik Huber, Ruokangas and Springer to name only those three. It was necessary that The Guitar Channel studied more on those pickups.
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Walrus Audio Bellwether – An excellent delay pedal full of possibilities
Monday, 21 November 2016
Walrus Audio offers, with the Bellwether, a very complete analog sound delay pedal offering a delay with many possible settings. In addition to the conventional time, level and tone settings, you can activate and set a modulation and decide the subdivision in time, not to mention the tap tempo button (to determine the delay time) and the possibilities with external connections.
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The XTomp Hotone pedal is a brand new pedal that has recently come on the market with an innovative concept: the ability to load an effect (or a couple of effects) on the pedal to make it sound like a reverb / delay, Chorus / reverb, overdrive, etc. The proposed catalog is very extensive and contains just about all the great classics of the analog pedal you can think of.
The effects are loaded on the pedal using an iOS / Android app that communicates in Bluetooth with the pedal.
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In 2014 I had the opportunity to meet Harry Häussel (Haussel Pickups - www.haeussel.com) at the Holy Grail Guitar Show (see interview below). Harry is a renowned manufacturer of electric guitar pickups whose products are used by Ruokangas, Nik Huber and Springer.
At each major guitar event like the Musikmesse or the Holy Grail, Harry was present and we always took time to discuss.
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MJS acoustic guitar J-78 built by luthier Godefroy Maruejouls
Sunday, 23 October 2016
Here's a first on the show with a video review of an acoustic guitar, and one built by a luthier!
Anasounds (www.anasounds.com) is a French boutique pedal builder with already a wide range of products from overdrive to delay, the company is now launching a new pedal, the Bitoun Fuzz. It was developed with the musician and journalist Julien Bitoun, a Fuzz connoisseur, who wanted something special. And something special they created with this Bitoun Fuzz.
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The offer for the soft guitar cases did a lot of progress lately. Gone are the days of ugly cases which do not really protect our beloved instruments. We now have a wide range of cases including ones manufactured by Mono (monocreators.com) and Gator (gatorcases.com).
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Trescab, Shimverb, Ana Echo, Micro Looper Mooer pedals review
Wednesday, 07 September 2016
Here's a foursome review of Mooer pedals with the Trescab (cab simulator), Shimverb (reverb), Ana Echo (analog echo), Micro Looper (you guessed it, a looper).
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What's more enjoyable than playing guitar outside in a nice weather or just during a business trip or vacation? For acoustic guitar, nothing more simple since, as per definition, the amplification system is integrated with the instrument.
For electric guitars, it is different because our dear electrified instruments need at least an amp to operate. Here's an overview of possible solutions for playing guitar in mobility:
Mini-Amp
Headphones
Hybrid system
Update: 9/5/16
Mini-amp solution
There are many electric guitar amplifiers which combine the advantage of being very compact and battery operated.
Walrus Audio is an american builder of pedals. They propose a wide range of products. Here's a video review of the Iron Horse distorsion pedal. Get ready for some big and fat saturated tones with this gain machine!
www.walrusaudio.com
Walrus Audio Iron Horse distorsion pedal review
Review setup
Guitar used : Spartan Springer with a single P90 pickup (Haussel)
Sound : the base clean sound used throughout the review is provided by an Apollo Twin Universal Audio interface in which the guitar is plugged directly.
