Yes you can get Slash Guns N'Roses Paradise City sound (or at least get close to it) with the Apollo Twin Universal Audio interface with a couple of plugins and the Burst guitar from luthier Mikaël Springer.
Paradise City sound with the Universal Audio interface and a Springer guitar
It's always a challenge to try to get close to a legendary tone from a hit like Paradise City.
- Published in Gear
The Guitares au Beffroi 2016 festival just ended in Montrouge, just outside of Paris. It is time to make a summary of it. The Guitar Channel was an exhibitor at the guitar fair so this will be the main focus of the post.
Kudos to Armel Amiot, the guitar fair organizer (watch his interview here), who was able to organize an event in a difficult context.
Guitares au Beffroi website: www.guitaresaubeffroi.com
Snapchat stories of Guitares au Beffroi 2016
During the show I took a lot of short video clips with Snapchat. Those were compiled in Snapchat Story every day.
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Luthier Linda Manzer interview at the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show
Wednesday, 30 March 2016
Discover in this Linda Manzer interview at the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show one of the rare women who is very well known in the luthier world. Linda worked for musicians like Pat Metheny or Carlos Santana just to name those two.
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Bob Taylor full unedited interview – President of Taylor Guitars
Monday, 21 March 2016
While The Guitar Channel was in sunny California in January for the 2016 NAMM show, I took the opportunity to do an in-depth interview with Taylor Guitars president and co-founder.
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Here's the Adam Miller interview recorded during the 2016 Winter NAMM show. In 2014 I did an audio interview with Adam while he was in Paris, you can listen to it in this article.
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Guitar Review – Fastback Alquier “Codetalker” by Maurice Dupont
Wednesday, 09 March 2016
This Fastback Alquier model Codetalker built in the Maurice Dupont luthier workshop is a design by luthier Jean-Yves Alquier. It's still possible to get a custom Fastback entirely made by Jean-Yves but you now have the option to get a more affordable version with the same design and built by Maurice Dupont team in France.
Spoiler: this instrument is a great luthier guitar.
Fastback Alquier "Codetalker" by Maurice Dupont
Fastback Codetalker photos
Here are a couple of photos of this very elegant instrument.
Rig used for the review
Here's the pedalboard used for the review.
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Pedal Review – Drive Recovery Thrilltone overdrive Made in France
Saturday, 05 March 2016
It's not everyday that you get to review a French overdrive pedal based on a new fully analog technology. The Drive Recovery Thrilltone pedal is such a product. It's a double pedal with two stages.
Here's a Brian Wampler interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM show. It's always a pleasure to meet and interview Brian as he is very open about sharing information about his work in the pedal domain.
Wampler website: www.wamplerpedals.com
The 2016 NAMM Wampler booth
Brian Wampler interview
Add Brian Wampler (and me) on Snapchat
Brian Wampler is always ready to embrace new tools to engage with guitar aficionados. He is now on Snapchat, add him in your friend list, it's worth it.
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On this new Luthier Chronicle, I asked Nik Huber the shakespearian question: to relic, or not to relic?
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Comping Study for Jazz Blues in F by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Comping means “to accompany”. In our case, it implies that those chords can be used when accompanying a soloist who is improvising over a Jazz Blues chord progression.
Comping Study for Jazz Blues in F
Each diagram represents a full measure, except when slashes are written above the chord—in which case those slashes represent the number of beats for that particular chord. The circled dots are optional replacement bass notes.
All of the chords have the root in the bass, except for the diminished 7th chord used as a substitution for the D7 chord.
- Published in All, Improve your playing
Here's the Gear Evening debrief. On February 18th, the first Special Event of the year took place with the Gear Evening with Maurice Dupont (luthier), FX amps (guitar amps), Anasounds (boutique pedals) and Verspieren (insurance).
Gear Evening debrief video
Here's a video to give you an idea of this first Gear Evening of 2016. The first part of the video will show you the event while it is being setup and during. The second part of the video is composed of short interviews in French of people present for the event.
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Luthier Ted Astrand interview at the 2015 Holy Grail Guitar Show
Saturday, 20 February 2016
Here's a Ted Astrand interview done during the 2015 edition of the Holy Grail Guitar Show. Several luthier friends told me to check-out Ted during the show so I listened to their advice and went to meet Ted. His work is really stunning. The guitar presented in Berlin looks both gorgeous and elegant.
- Published in Interviews, News
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Dynacord Echocord Super 76: review of a real tape echo
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
Here's a review of a real tape echo and spring reverb studio effect, the Dynacord Echocord Super 76. One of the Backstage Pass subscriber, Philippe, who is very good at electronics repaired this nice piece of gear and lent it to me. It's quite something to experience for the first time ever to play with a real tape echo machine. I don't know if has to do with being able to see the tape move around, the quality of the sound itself or a mix of both but I was floored by the sound of this unit.
Here's the Paul Reed Smith interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM show. It's always with great pleasure that I meet and talk to Paul as he is one of the leader of the high-end guitar world. This encounter with the PRS Guitars founder was the 4th one.
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Here's Josh Smith interview during the 2016 Winter NAMM. I recently discovered this awesome musician by listening to the No Guitar Is Safe podcast by Jude Gold from the magazine Guitar Player.
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Here's a Mike Moreno interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM. It is thanks to my official Jazz advisor Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert that I contacted Mike.
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Here's Don Alder interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM show on the Seymour Duncan booth. It's always a pleasure to meet and interview such a gifted musician who plays equally well a harp-guitar, a baritone or a regular folk guitar. We talked about his latest news and projects.
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Here's an Andy Timmons interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM. The Guitar Channel has been looking for a way to do an interview for a while now and it happened at Anaheim thanks to the introduction made through Blue Mouth Promotions.
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Andy Powers interview – Taylor Guitars master builder – NAMM 2016
Monday, 25 January 2016
In this interview, meet Taylor Guitars master builder Andy Powers. Meeting and getting to talk with the luthier involved in the development of all the guitars at Taylor was very interesting to understand more how a huge player in the industry like Taylor operates. In fact Taylor builds around 600 guitars per day with an unsurpassed level of quality in the industry.
Taylor Guitars website: www.taylorguitars.com
Taylor master builder - Adam Powers interview
Here's the full interview with Adam Powers.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
- Published in Improve your playing
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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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.
- Published in Interviews, News
