Mojo Classic Ruokangas Guitars review: a Telecaster coming from Finland

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).

Peter Holmsröm interview, guitar player from the Dandy Warhols

The Dandy Warhols were in Paris for a concert, a perfect opportunity to record this video interview with their guitar player Peter Holmström.

Andy Timmons interview: Theme From A Perfect World, his new album

During the 2017 NAMM there was no time to record an interview with the one and only Andy Timmons even though we met during the great X-Jamm concert so a couple of weeks later we organized this Skype interview to catch up.

2017 Guitares au Beffroi festival / Salon de la Belle Guitare: organizer interview

The 2017 Guitares au Beffroi (www.guitaresaubeffroi.com) festival and its guitar show the Salon de la Belle Guitare will have its 5th edition from Friday March 24th until Sunday March 26th in Montrouge, right next to Paris. There will be luthiers coming from more than 10 countries, check-out the full list on the festival website. Interview with Armel Amiot

An interview to know all you need to know about Reverb.com

What better than to ask all the questions we have to one of the guy in charge at Reverb.com in order to understand better how this marketplace works?

Alteratio Tocxic Instruments - Guitar Review

Here's an unusual instrument for a review, the Alteratio model from Tocxic Instruments. It's designed and built in France by a small team of passionate people. This might as well be the Explorer type guitar that Mad Max would use.

Maneli Jamal interview - Fingerpicking rising star
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Maneli Jamal interview – Fingerpicking rising star

Here's a Maneli Jamal (www.manelijamal.com) interview done Guitar in Hand with the iranian born musician now living in Toronto after an epic and long journey. it is through Shaï Sebbag that The Guitar Channel heard about Maneli as they had met during a guitar festival in Mexico. They hit it off so well that Shaï decided to help Maneli organizing a tour in France. It was during Maneli's stay in France that we did this 30min video interview at the worldwide intergalactic headquarters of the show (meaning, my home).

Ivano Icardi interview: a new album So Far Away
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Ivano Icardi interview: a new album So Far Away

Here's Ivano Icardi Guitare in Hand interview in video this time. Last time we spoke with the italian musician, it was in 2013 to talk about Walking With Giants.

Graham Maby interview - Joe Jackson legendary bass player
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Graham Maby interview – Joe Jackson legendary bass player

At the Montreal Jazz Festival 2016, The Guitar Channel was able to get in touch via guitarist Teddy Kumpel with legendary bassist Joe Jackson: Graham Maby! Yes, bass guitar is in the spotlight again, and it's a very good thing.

Häussel Pickups: the upcoming projects with Harry

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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Simon Ghnassia reviews his Did Telecaster guitars

Simon Ghnassia is a guitar player who ordered not one, not two but three Telecaster type guitars from the same luthier Didier Duboscq (Eden Lutherie).

Joe Jackson guitar player Teddy Kumpel pedalboard demo

Joe Jackson and his band were part of the official indoor schedule of the 2016 edition of the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Charlie Hunter interview during the 2016 Montreal Jazz festival

Discovered in the excellent podcast No Guitar Is Safe produced by Jude Gold, The Guitar Channel is very happy to present you with an interview with Charlie Hunter, a 7-string guitar player. This Guitar in Hand interview took place during the 2016 Montreal Jazz Festival before his concert. Charlie plays an electric guitar built by luthier John Traugott with 3 strings from a bass guitar and 4 string from a regular guitar.

This instrument allows Charlie to sounds like two musicians playing when there's only him.

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Ana Popovic interview about her triple album Trilogy

Here's Ana Popovic interview done in Paris to talk about her triple album called Trilogy. You have to admit that it takes a lot of courage to release a triple album nowadays. Ana proposes three different moods in those three CDs: Blues, Funk and Jazz. It's the second time I meet Ana, last time was in 2013 in audio, this time we did it in video.

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Honk Machine IT-11 Audio: a vocal overdrive pedal

The Honk Machine overdrive pedal from IT-11 Audio is a very vocal overdrive pedal with its specific Honk setting which allows to increase or decrease a 700Hz frequency bump right in the middle of the human voice.

Honk Machine IT-11 Audio: a very vocal overdrive pedal

This video is accessible to all because IT-11 Audio
owns a Pro Backstage Pass on The Guitar Channel

What I enjoyed the most on this pedal

The overall sounds
The possibilities given by the Honk setting
The look

What I enjoyed the least

The changing colours of the LED is kind of distracting

Conclusion
Frankly the market

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Teddy Kumpel: guitar player for Joe Jackson

Here's Teddy Kumpel interview. He was in Paris touring with Joe Jackson so we took the opportunity to record this video the morning after the concert. I met Teddy at the 2016 NAMM show through Julie Cord from Blue Mouth Promotions (thanks Julie!).

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Sungha Jung interview at the 2016 Musikmesse

Here's Sungha Jung interview done during the latest Musikmesse in Frankfurt. Sungha was there on the Lakewood booth to promote his signature model and play a couple of shows in Germany.

During the NAMM I was intrigued by theDV Mark Micro 50 amp. It's super small and quite powerful with 50W. DV Mark is a brand more established in the bass amp market but big players like Greg Howe or Frank Gambale are using their guitar amps so it says something about what they propose.

Here's Toni Götz interview done during the Guitares au Beffroi festival in 2016, a perfect opportunity to hear the whole Maybach Guitars story. This brand is proposing a full range of high quality Vintage inspired instruments with an excellent price/quality ratio.

Maybach is a guitar brand launched a few years ago with a line of instruments manufactured in Prague, Czech Republic with German pickups.

Johnny Beane interview

During the 2016 Winter NAMM I had the pleasure to finally meet a long time Twitter friend, Johnny Beane (@johnnybeane). Of course I met him in front of the EVH guitars as he is well known for his love for Edward Van Valen guitar playing. Here's the Johnny Beane interview in audio, recorded in sunny California.

Johnny Beane website : www.johnnybeane.com
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Van Halen Rising: interview with the author Greg Renoff

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.

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Guitar podcast directory – Selection

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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Bryan Beller interview: one of the caballeros with the Aristocrats
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Bryan Beller interview: one of the caballeros with the Aristocrats

Here's an audio Bryan Beller interview.

Paul Marchand interview: director of the Jaco Pastorius documentary

Here's an audio interview with Paul Marchand, the director of the Jaco Pastorius documentary.

In the Discovery Interview series, I am happy to present you with an interview I did a while ago with Mitch Laddie (www.mitchladdie.com), an excellent guitar player and singer. He has some strong influences from SRV, Hendrix and Eric Johnson but he has developed a style of his own which you can listen throughout the excellent album Burning Bridges.

Extracts of Burning Bridges before the interview

Would You
Mr.

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I discovered Antti Paranko through the luthier Juha Ruokangas, also from Finland. In fact Antti is endorsed by Juha and has worked with him to compose some music specifically for his brand. After hearing this music (which you can hear at the beginning of every Luthier Chronicle with Juha) I decided I wanted to hear more.

Maybe you don't know it (yet) but on vibrato equipped guitar, the metal block below where the strings attached has a very important role in your tone. I heard about the FU Tone product through the years and I thought it would be interesting to have the guy behind the product to talk about it. So here I am presenting you with an interview with Adam Reiver from FU Tone.

Here's below the block Adam sent me to try on my Ernie Ball Music Man EVH model. I will try it and report here on the website my findings.

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Here's an unreleased audio interview with Oz Noy that I did back in 2013. There's no good reason why I waited so long to release it as I really dig the Twisted Blues Vol. 1 album so here it is now for your listening pleasure.

My attention was brought to Oz by a friend of mine who is also a pro guitar player, Jean-Michel Kajdan (merci Jean-Mi !).

When I used to live in Montreal I had the great pleasure to see Sonny Landreth live a couple of times during the Jazz Festival (where I will be next week for the first time officially for The Guitar Channel), it was always a blast to see him play so I jumped on the opportunity to interview him for the release of his latest album Bound by the Blues.

Until the next podcast, keep on playing the guitar,

Pierre.

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