clicking here - Echoparkguitars.com

Transcription

INSIDE
Mountainview Publishing, LLC
the
Mothers
of
Invention!
The Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone
Frank had it right…
Yes, we could
use more humor
in the music biz,
and especially in the
Quest for tone
2
Introducing
Echopark
Guitars…
Our interview
with founder
Gabriel Currie
6
The Echopark Downtowner
Deluxe
Review
8
Introducing
Andrews Amp Labs
$15.00 US, June 2012/Vol.13 NO.8
Report
TM
Mothers of Invention
“The beginning of genius is being scared shitless.” –Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Well, howdy gang. Here we are together again trippin’ through another edition of the Quest in
celebration of those who bother to, in the words of Jackson Browne, “get up and do it again.”
It’s the earnest and industrious folk among us that truly do make their mark on the world, and this
month and in issues to come you will be introduced to a new pack of wily and innovative tonehounds with a knack for creating freaky-good ear candy. Who better than the late Frank Vincent
Zappa to serve literally and figuratively as our gonzo poster boy for creative energy and the
ritual avoidance of crass commercial dreck? Some of you would argue that point, but what can’t
be argued is that Frank always brought a ripe sense of humor to the party.
Why Jeff Andrews’
amps really rock
12
Our review of the Andrews
A-22
&
Para-Dyne 20
14
Chris KroenLein and
V-Line Texola
15
The Worst Kept
Secret in Nashville…
16
Ron Ellis’
magic
Telecaster pickups
18
Return
of the Horse –
Shaken and Stirred
19
Cheap thrills –
a lagniappe
Remembering
the Seymour Duncan
pickup booster
In Frank’s world, sardonic humor exponentially expanded his ability to go where no one else
dared to tread, and the joke was always on us… Consider for a moment Zappa’s 1967 landmark
rip on the establishment, “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” (quit school, why fake it, be a jerk, go to
work, shine yer shoes and cut your hair, life’s a ball, TV tonight!) As distasteful as the prospect
of cutting your hair and getting a job was for many in 1967, at least Frank could help us laugh
about it, overwhelming pain and angst being the most potent precursor to all great belly-laughs.
The music business certainly could benefit from more self-effacing humor, as perhaps could we all
in the ongoing pursuit of the most elegantly formed note. Come to think of it, where is the Zappa
www.tonequest.com
cover story
signature Suzy Creamcheese SG and the Lumpy Gravy Strat
complete with point & squeeze truck stop condiment dispenser filled with Frank’s secret fretboard luv sauce? Come on,
boys! Call Dweezil or whoever holds the keys to the Zappa
estate and cut a deal. Freak Out in Nashville! Freak Out
in Corona! Freak out players everywhere! And how about
cracking an easy smile the next time you unload a tasty riff
instead of grimacing as if you’re passing a kidney stone? You
know what happens when you stop having fun? Kurt Cobain.
What we’re suggesting here is that taking
the Quest for tone
too seriously with
the wrong emotional
ju-ju diminishes the
capacity to take risks,
as if every contemplative move carries
the permanency of
a mortal sin with no chance to hit the escape key or receive
absolution. Fear is indeed a highly effective motivator, but
you don’t want to be hunting tone as Céline put it, “scared
shitless.” Not that we are immune to a little foot-dragging
ourselves from time to time… Just last night we found a
1962 blonde Fender Twin on eBay minutes after it had been
listed. The circuit and components were completely original with the exception of a master volume that could have
been easily removed, housed in what was clearly described
as a non-original blonde cabinet with older, non-original
Jensen C12Ns. The
seller was asking $1,850.00. On
another day we
might have hit ‘Buy
It Now’ immediately,
confident that the
Twin would inspire
good reading and
rare tones, perhaps mounted in a new reproduction cabinet
crafted by Gregg Hopkins. But we hesitated long enough to
send a few pictures of the chassis to Jeff Bakos, and an hour
later the Twin was gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a blonde Twin
is 100 watts of arena rock in a 5 watt coffee house world,
but dammit, you and I both know how good it would have
sounded, and in hindsight, we should have bought it when
we had the chance. Likewise, no matter how persuasively we
may tempt you with a new guitar, amp or effect, it’s up to you
to make a personal leap of faith. What’s the worst that can
happen? You sell what you bought at a modest loss (or gain)
and chalk it up to a tuition fee paid in the interest of your
ongoing education. Yes, you might could lose $200 re-selling
a guitar or an amp, but the cost of doing nothing is far greater. Do nothing, and you effectively end any opportunities for
meaningful discovery, eh? We’ll freely admit to being hypermotivated by the need to produce a new issue every month,
but in the end, it’s still down to you to step up and Quest
forth. And should you swing and miss occasionally, do what
we do – unload and move on. There is no shame in failure,
only in failing to try.
Alright, then. Let’s get down to meeting a few contemporary
mothers of invention. It is our pleasure to introduce you to
Gabriel Currie of Los Angeles, California, land of swimmin’
pools… movie stars… Patrón Añejo tequila… Stone Roses
Calexico Especiale mota… and Echopark guitars. Enjoy…
Scoring In Echo Park
What’s in a
name? A lot.
And guitar
players in
particular
find it hard
to resist a
catchy name.
Just look at
the pedal business. For those of you unfamiliar with Echo
Park, it has enjoyed a long and colorful history as a green and
undulating urban melting pot northwest of downtown L.A.,
home at various times in the past century to political activists,
artists, authors, film makers, actors, musicians, gang-bangers,
junkies and homeless dogs mingling with (careful Fido)
immigrant Chinese, Latino, Philippino, Greek and AfricanAmerican families that have increasingly been squeezed out
as Echo Park attracts more affluent young ‘professionals’ and
upscale storefronts. You may have seen the same thing happen
to old neighborhoods in your town, where colorful and diverse
cultures blended together to create the spicy human gumbo
that once defined America’s inner cities. When developers
descend to renovate and make properties more appealing to
the upwardly mobile yippy class, the old residents who made
the place what it was are often priced out in favor of hipster
pretenders and tatted up anorexic baby mommas who can’t
cross the street
without clutching
a $6 skinny fat
carmelita doppio
as if it were their
last dime bag of
Mexican brown. At
least they would be
more interesting
zoned out on a load
-continued-
2
TONEQUEST REPORT V.13 N.8 June 2012
interview
of smack – less nervous
and talkative in that grating
way young fashionistas
have of ending every
statement as a question?
Here comes Frank again…
“Plastic people, oh Baby
now you’re such a drag…”
And have you also noticed
how ‘sort of ’ has become
the new ‘you know?’ When
is anything ‘sort of’ what
it is? The misuse of language is the first clue that a culture
is sort of hitting the skids. Thankfully, true artists still live
and work in Echo Park – artists who endeavor to avoid vague
equivocation in their lives, and most of them are far too busy
being artists to be seen much out on the street trying to sort of
look like artists. These people are the real holdouts and steadfast pioneers in our culture. They are blessed with healthy
obsessions, and no, they would never mistakenly guess that
Michael Bloomfield is a hot new hairdresser in Beverly Hills.
Among them you’ll find Gabriel Currie – an artist, craftsman
and musician artfully building guitars in the same building
that once housed silent film maker Mack Sennett’s studio.
He’s here with us right now, and you’re in for a treat…
TQR: How did you first become involved with playing,
repairing and building guitars, Gabriel?
My first introduction to the
guitar world was the Doors’
“Riders on the Storm.” I
remember being just old
enough to see over the stove
top and I thought the words
were “riders on the stove.”
I was only 4 or 5 years
old, but that guitar riff changed me. Shortly after that my
uncle turned me onto Elvis. Scotty Moore was his main man
then, it was the mid seventies and it wasn’t too long before I
discovered all the greats – Hendrix, Cream, the Beatles and
the Stones through my parents’ records. Aerosmith, Kiss and
AC/DC followed, and around 1978 a friend of the family put
a 1960 Fender Musicmaster in my hands, taught me three
chords, gave me a tweed Champ and I was off to the races…
About a year later my mom took me to her salon to show
me a shop she had found across the street called The Guitar
Doctor. It was Mike Lipe’s Shop in Burbank. I can remember
peering into the window and watching him dismantle a guitar,
and there were guitar parts everywhere. When I poked my
head inside I could smell the solder and rosewood dust, and
at that moment I fell in love. I went home that day and broke
into my dad’s tools, found a piece of plywood and drew a
Les Paul shape. I cut it out with a jigsaw, added some drawer
pulls for pickups and glued on some knobs, spray painted it
white and went around showing it off. I think I was 11 at the
time. Throughout junior high and high school my passion
for guitars bloomed and I became the go-to-guy for putting
humbuckers in Strats, custom wiring, installing Floyds, and I
played in bands as well. It was all just fascinating to me.
TQR: How did things progress, and did you find any
mentors in L.A.?
All through my high school years
my interest grew and I developed
an aptitude for working on guitars.
Living in Los Angeles, there were
a few shops that were key in giving me tips and the opportunity
for an informal apprenticeship,
like Dick Charles at Charles Music in Glendale, Pedrini Music in
Glendale, and Nadine’s in Hollywood. There were a few other shops around my neighborhood
in Highland Park, too, and all of them had guys working in
the back during the day, so I would ditch school and go hang
out there most of the time. I learned a ton just watching them
all and talking. Then I’d volunteer to fix or modify a friend’s
guitar or I would acquire a new one and dismantle it and put it
back together and sell it.
After high school I wanted
to apprentice for a local
luthier that I had shown a
lot of my work to – an old
man named Mr. D’Tempo.
He made classical guitars,
but he was retiring, so
he called a friend of his
named Dale Hyatt at G&L
in downtown Fullerton and
helped me get an interview.
I went to that interview not
really even knowing who I was going to be talking to. Took
the bus at 6 a.m. and got there by 8 a.m. I read a product pamphlet for G&L that Mr. D’Tempo gave me on the bus to get a
little familiar with the model names, and I also brought a ‘bolt
on’ creation of mine to show them. It had a cherry top with a
chambered birch body and humbuckers. I met Dale Hyatt and
George Fullerton that day during the interview, met my supervisor, Ed Sebest, and as everything was wrapping up George
Fullerton took me to meet Leo. I almost peed my pants.
I hadn’t quite put everything together, really. He had just
recovered from a stroke and couldn’t really speak very well,
but the look in his eyes said so much. That man still had the
fire. He shook my hand and welcomed me aboard, and after
three months there I was running the pin routers and the body
-continued-
3
interview
department. I learned every inch of that shop and every procedure, every setup, every tool. I worked there until Leo Fender
passed in ‘91, when I went to work for Mr.Takashi Hosono.
He had a mail order and custom guitar business in Glendale,
and he built instruments for Ibanez, Rodger Sadowski, worked
on designs with Mike Tobias, and had his own custom order
catalog. Mr. Hosono taught me a whole new world! I was
making all the neck-through Ibanez and USA custom models
and Sadowski bass necks within the first month I was there. I
was hand shaping necks, learning the art of sanding, fretting,
slotting, book matching, neck-through construction, lamination methods, selecting wood, types of glue, types of frets and
on and on. Mr. Hosono was and is a true craftsman. The Japanese luthiers pride themselves on a high skill level and man,
I’ll tell you – he turned my world around! I also hooked up
again with Mike Lipe at that time because he was building for
Ibanez, too. From there I went to Taylor for a bit, then a small
shop in San Diego, then out on my own for a while. In 2000 I
decided I wanted a break to play music and do the whole band
thing, and I’m still playing. I realized that I really needed that
connection to music.
In 2001 I was offered a job as a
carpenter making a lot of money
doing “historic restorations.” That
experience was invaluable as it
opened my eyes to the fact that old
mahogany was everywhere for the
taking. I still did repairs and built
a few Strats and Teles for friends
or old contacts while I was doing
carpentry, and I began thinking
about building guitars again after
my daughter was born in 2006.
Again, I crossed paths with Mike Lipe, told him I wanted
to build again and he pulled me into his shop to help me get
started with Echopark Guitars. It’s a very small world, and
Mike is still my mentor.
TQR: What are some of the most unique features in your
guitars that distinguish them from others?
I prefer to use old wood – quarter
sawn mahogany, koa and maple – as
much as I can find, and I found a lot
during my restoration days. I know a
handful of wood suppliers here in Los
Angeles and up the coast, and me and
my dad are wood hoarders. I use the
old stash just for the neck construction on my set neck models. To me,
the neck is the most vital part of the
instrument – 60% of my time on a
piece is spent on the neck build, and
because all the mahogany timbers from the last 15years are
pretty green, I’ve found that using timbers from the 1960s
and earlier really makes a huge tonal difference. One of the
other things I do is to increase the mass of the neck tenon on
the set neck models. When I was a kid my bread and butter
repairs were SG’s. I saw just how small that tenon was. That is
the tonal birth canal for a guitar, so why have a 1 inch by 3/4”
by 2 1/2 tenon there? I don’t think they thought about that
back then, so it’s a full block tenon that I use – 2 1/4” by 1
1/2 by 3 1/8” all the way to the back
end of the pickup rout for the neck
position. All my builds are also slab
bodies. That’s where the marriage of
a large tenon really shines so you get
two pieces working together (fewer
glue joints = more vibration = more
tone). Neck pitch and headstock
pitch is also important. I like the
tension of a 13 degree headstock as
opposed to a 17 degree, with a 2.65
degree neck pitch for my set necks
– more like a ’59 double cut Junior
so that the bridge still has some adjustment, unlike most of
the ‘55-‘57-single cut Juniors that are bottomed out. To me,
the ’59 Junior, the Supro Dual Tone and the Tele are perfect
guitars as far as design and concept. My bolt-ons feature a
truss design that employs a brass collar and rings like a bell.
The head stock sits a little lower than an F style, and it creates
a better tension across the nut, so I don’t need to use string
trees. They just cause tuning issues any way. The aesthetics,
the flow, and comfortable fit and finish make a considerable
difference as well. I only finish with nitro. I use Cardinal
lacquers, and my finisher Rick Fusco and myself get real into
the finishes. He is such a talent – an antique restoration pro
by trade. When I think of a classic color scheme or a burst,
he just nails it. I love vintage American guitars. I’m taking a
step back and just building a great, simple guitar. I like basic,
do-the-job-tools. That’s what I build – music making tools. I
just focus on construction improvements and use all high-end
American components like Glendale, Callaham, Tonepros,
Amalfitano and Tom Short pickups, Switchcraft, CTS, nickel
shielding – military grade – not copper. I use only paper in oil
caps and pull back cloth covered wire.
TQR: How do you approach wiring and pickup specs
(and tone) specifically? Do you prefer using specific brands of pickups, and what are your preferences
for tone caps and wiring schemes?
I do ‘50s Junior wiring on all the models. It just works! I don’t
do phase switches or coil taps or push pull pots or multi-tap /
tone selectors or active electronics. I really like a simple set
up. There are a ton of builders doing all the fancy stuff so I
don’t need to go there. I like vintage Astron .033 and .022
-continued-
4
interview
600v caps and I use them, but I also have a stash of ‘50s
bumble bees at .022/.047 and .033 that I will use if a client
wants to pay for ‘em. I also like the old Russian military caps.
They are paper in oil and the values are very consistent and
they sound just as good as any vintage American cap. Believe
me, I’ve gone through a mountain of caps!
I found Jerry Amalfitano through Mike Lipe, and Billy Asher
turned me on to Tom Short. These two pickup builders are all
I need. I put a set of Jerry’s Barybucker PAF pickups in the
Downtowner koa custom I made for Brad Whitford, and they
sing. It’s his go-to guitar now. Jack Douglas told me that he
insists on Brad recording with it. I use Tom Short’s dog-ear
P90 and his neck position Firebird in the Mark Ford model.
They just sounds like a tree. The Jonny2Bags model comes
with Tom Short’s custom wound dog-ear. I’m designing a custom pickup with Tom Short for Doug Pettibone’s custom build
now. I took a huge box of pickups over to the shop and spent a
week A/B’ing all of ‘em
TQR: How picky are you in sourcing wood and how do
you deal with the random nature of wood used for
musical instruments?
I have been at this guitar thing
for a minute, I’m a complete
tone freak, and it all starts
with getting the right wood.
I prefer the aged stuff for
my necks, but for bolt-ons
I do like to source it from a
few local yards. Most of the
maple is eastern hard rock or
big leaf, and I am constantly
looking for the treasures of
old furniture and historic
architectural elements made
out of mahogany for necks. I have a pretty good list of lumber
suppliers here in Los Angeles and up the coast. I go through
pallets or I have the supplier tell me what is in or on order.
Most of the time though I just drive down and go through
it all. I like to use slabs for bodies, African mahogany and
swamp ash. It’s not cheap, but again, it’s a tone thing. I don’t
settle for randomness in dealing with small commercial
lumber suppliers. I’m planning on doing a series of guitars in
white limba (korina) next.
TQR: In your opinion, do bigger necks equal better resonance and tone?
That is very subjective, but in my humble opinion, yes – more
wood equals more tone. But there is the matter of material
cut. A flat sawn neck is not the same as a quarter sawn neck.
A heart cut is not the same as an outer cut. A laminated, multi
piece neck is not the same as a one
piece. There are a lot of variables.
It all depends on the wood, too,
and the truss rod.
TQR: Let’s review your favorite
options available (fingerboard
radius, neck shapes, finishes, fret
wire, nut material, pickups, wood
types, etc).
My favorite and most popular
neck build is a hybrid. It’s on the Downtowner Deluxe and
the Jonny2Baggs models – .089-.092-.094. and 1 11/16 at the
nut, 2 1/4 at the 22nd fret, an 11” radius, late ‘30s soft V to a
’59 C shape, Jescar 6105 wire with rounded fret board edges.
I think my fret work is as good as you’ll find in any $5,000
instrument although I don’t necessarily define the value of
an instrument merely by its cost. I use only unbleached bone
and I soak the material in a solution that I developed that
impregnates the bone and lubricates it permanently. I like the
tone of a mahogany body with a quarter sawn koa neck with
humbuckers, and a Honduran mahogany neck with African
mahogany body for P90s. Any single-coil type will sound
great with swamp ash and a maple neck. And I gotta say – a
white limba (korina) neck on an African mahogany body just
sounds perfect to me with any pickup configuration. My goal
is to always get the sound of the wood from the guitar.
TQR: A lot of players still seem to be obsessed with
weight, or a lack of it in guitars. Your thoughts?
Again, it’s subjective. I like a
little anchor, but that’s me. I try
to keep ‘em at 7.5 - 8.5 pounds,
but the lightest I’ll go without
chambering is 6.5 pounds.
Light guitars sound good for
certain things. If you’re playing
big, open chords and use a capo
or open tunings and cleaner
tones with low wattage amps,
yes, light is good. If you’re
palm muting and doing a lot of
arpeggio stuff with a lot of gain, a little more weight is better
for definition and decay. It definitely depends on the application as far as weight is concerned.
TQR: What are some of the most unusual or unique guitars you have built?
I’m not into funky shapes or spiky, modern asymmetrical
stuff at all. Back in the early ‘90s I built a couple of Gibson
Moderne replicas, some Vs and early on I built a Mick Marz
-continued-
5
reviews
star thing. All the Ibanez USA
custom models were multi-laminate bodies and neck-through
designs. Pretty cool builds and
amazing quality, but I didn’t
like their tone. It was too dense,
and you can’t get real sustain
when you laminate more than
two piece necks or bodies. I
have found that every glue joint
is like a barrier for the transmission of vibrations. I like the
idea of the Gibson RD Artist
and I love Firebirds, but I’m
not a fan of the neck-through
design or the big, clunky headstock. So I took the ideas of
both – the 3 on-a-side headstock and the set neck of the RD
with the body shape of a T-bird and made what I lovingly refer
to as the Ghetto Bird. I made one with an amazing koa top
and a one piece Honduran body with a koa neck. It’s a custom
order only model that I can have a lot of fun with. Joe Perry
just bought #1.
TQR: What are the most significant challenges facing
independent builders today, and what do you wish
to accomplish in the future?
As I look around I see that there are
plenty of resources, plenty of great
raw materials, plenty of great players,
and a lot of very talented luthiers
working today. The most significant
challenge is staying true to your own
vision in the face of mass media
that steers all of us into accepting
what we read. Also, there is a lack
of real craftsmanship and quality in
general because of mass marketing to
consumers. But the most significant
challenge for the independent builder
is finding an audience!
From the beginning of Echopark I set out to build a tool to
make music, and
I also had a specific musician
in mind for most
of the models. I
wanted to build
a simple, basic,
high-quality tool
– one in which
all the features
are useful and
nothing gets in the way of creating, expressing, and speaking
the language of song while having fun playing and discovering new tones. My goal for the future is to continue making
individual hand crafted American instruments that will do exactly what you need them to do, and then some. I’m focused
on crafting first quality classic electric guitars in the tradition
of the ‘50s and ‘60s but with a higher and more consistent
build quality and the best quality components. During the
next year I will introduce three new models – a takeoff on a
’63 Wilshire, a takeoff on a ‘59 Coronet and a hollowbody
model. I am just starting out, not looking to expand or go
global. I just love to build guitars, and they aren’t for the
masses. I may get to a point where I have to take on a helper,
but I’ll make that decision when the time comes. Right now
I’m having fun and I am so excited to have my work in the
hands of some of most influential, iconic and amazing artists.
It is a blessing and at least in my humble opinion, a real privilege to create these tools.
Echopark Downtowner
We’ve said this before – often, in
fact. It takes a special set of skills
to build guitars that carry your
name. More important, however, is
the passion that drives someone to
ignore the improbability of successfully building guitars for a living in
2012. As the saying goes, “Many
are called, few are chosen.” With
so many different designs having
already been successfully exploited
in the past, how does an unknown
builder create instruments that are
uniquely appealing without venturing too far from the familiar in an
effort to be different? A lot of builders have found success
in creating their own take on Stratocasters and Telecasters.
Bolt-on solidbodies are far easier to assemble from readymade bodies and necks, obviously, while more attention
can be paid to finish and fret work, neck profiles, custom
hardware and pickups. Those who choose to build their own
set-neck guitars face an entirely different set of challenges.
More complex design and woodworking skills are required,
and when you make the leap to creating your own designs,
the pressure is on. This is not a sure or easy path, which is
why so few ever take it. Just ask Jason Lollar – an exceptionally talented guitar builder for whom pickup winding
became a far more rewarding and straightforward proposition (not that he planned it that way). Sure, we could have
simply waded into our review of Gabriel Currie’s Downtowner here, but the independent builders that serve the
music industry must be recognized both for their work and
their passion if we want them to survive and thrive.
-continued-
6
reviews
In Gabriel’s case, it seems to us that
he has more than just talent, skill and
dedication working in his favor… He
has grown up in and continues to live
and work in L.A. – fertile territory for
would-be guitar builders. He has also
wisely continued to accept repair and
restoration work – selectively, perhaps,
but again, L.A. is a good place to be if
you know your way around guitars. And
most important, his vision is unmistakably and vividly evident in his work,
defining the difference between just
another guitar, and the builder’s art.
Such was our first impression as we cracked open the case
holding the Downtowner – an experience not unlike the feeling you get driving by a tidy craftsman’s bungalow where
form and function meet to create an impression of carefully
considered and executed perfection. While guitars produced
in a factory can, at best, convey a sense of care and consistent competency, those created by a single soul often reveal
the mind’s eye of the builder in remarkable detail. When
considering the Downtowner, many visual clues collectively
speak to the temperament and taste of the builder. Yes, Currie
is a guitar player… The perfect shape and feel of the soft V
shaped korina neck fretted with jumbo .110/.652 Pyramid
wire assures it. The subtle touch of the straight grain peeking through the thin nitro finish on the back of the neck is
deliberate. Here, less is more. The rich cocoa hue of the South
American rosewood fingerboard and perfectly rounded edges
are no accident, contrasting beautifully with 7 mm mother of
pearl dot inlays, delicate bamboo position markers, polished,
unbleached bone nut, koa truss rod cover, deep red-stained
mahogany head plate and aged ‘pre war’ 16:1 nickel open
back Grover tuners. Exceptional quality, yes, but more than
that. The sum of the parts creates the visual and tactile impression of a timeless classic – quite a feat for a ‘new’ guitar.
The thick slab of iridescent ribboned African mahogany carved
for the body also suggests the
builder’s keen appreciation of
the solidbody form and its special ability to double as a sonic
sledgehammer. Wound strings
can be felt rumbling deep within
the heart of the mahogany,
finished in a rich, dark sunburst
that appears as old as the wood
beneath.
The pickguard is carved from
solid mahogany.
A fully intonatable Tone Pros AVT 2 wrap-around bridge
with aged steel bushings and studs assures resonance, sustain
and precise tuning. The alnico II 7.2K Amalfitano soapbar
neck P90 is mated with a Tom Short ‘Jonny 2 Bags’ signature
unpotted alnico II bridge dog ear measuring 8.4K. Neither
will ever be compromised by wayward RF due to the presence
of mil-spec nickel shielding in the control and pickup cavities.
What, me worry? CTS 500K long shaft pots, cloth-covered
wire and a Switchcraft 3-way toggle are frosted with a vintage
1958 .033mf Sprague Bumble Bee tone cap.
Tone
The influence of different pickups on the sound of an
electric guitar can’t be over-estimated. We could make a
cogent argument that you would be well-served to consider
experimenting with different types of strings and string
gauges as well, but would you? Briefly, you can dramatically alter the tone of your electric guitars with pure nickel
or steel strings. Yes, there is a difference, and big changes
can be heard between light gauge .010-.046 strings and, say,
an .011-.050 set. We get the impression that a lot of players
basically use ‘.010s’ and leave it at that. Think harder. The
Echo Park Downtowner screamed for .011s, and that’s what
we used for a bigger, bolder, deeper tone. If you play as
little as several hours a week you’ll get used to them within
a month, although the aural gratification you experience is
instantaneous. We’re just sayin’…
We assume most of you
are familiar with the P90
pickup design that provided
the basis for Seth Lover’s
original ‘PAF’ humbucker.
Jerry Amalfitano’s neck P90
mounted in the Downtowner
takes no prisoners, but it remains bright on the top with
lots of presence and snap,
while the wound strings
can send speaker cones
into a woozy frenzy. That’s
cranked, but the Downtowner can also be played
clean with the kind of clarity that creates images of wide open
spaces filled with a deep baritone voice that is haunting and
unforgettable played with tremolo, reverb or delay. If you’re
the bluesy type, the neck pickup on this slab of mahogany will
have your audience ordering shots by the third song – for you.
Please don’t call and ask if it’s really that good. You’ve probably spent a lot more money working with a whole lot less
information, and yes, it’s that good.
Now, we’re guessing that some of you may not be familiar
-continued-
7
amps
with the Tom Short ‘Jonny 2 Bags’
signature unpotted alnico II bridge
P90. That’s OK, we weren’t either.
Jonny 2 Bags is famously famous
for playing double cut Juniors in
Social Distortion, which means absolutely nothing relative to the tone
of the Downtowner. In the bridge
position this guitar sounds old. For
whatever reason (Gabriel claims it’s
the 4 3/8 x 1 1/2 inch mortise neck
joint design), it also sustains on the
wound strings like a grand piano.
Played clean the bridge pickup
stops short of sounding sharp and
trebly, with all six strings blending
to create a soundstage that is as deep as it is wide. – part P90
and part Firebird, both bright and heavy all at once, and that
sustain on the wound strings… Just went back and played it
for another 30 minutes, and we can feel the thick African body
vibrating deep within beneath the pickups. This is a sound,
voice and vibe you will not find at Guitar Center.
The combined voice of both pickups really threw us. At first
we thought the pickups were out of phase, in fact, we called
Gabriel for confirmation, and he began to laugh. “No, they
are in phase, it’s just that those two pickups mixed together
create a really wild sound, don’t they?” They do. Imagine the
gutbucket tone of a bridge pickup shunted through a single
6V6 amp with an 8 inch speaker, yet boosted with the percussive treble presence of an under-saddle piezo. Bizarre, and
we have no explanation for it. To confirm Gabriel’s assurance
that the pickups were in phase, we held a Tele pickup over the
polepieces in each P90, and the magnetic attraction to the Tele
polepieces was consistently strong on both. In phase alright,
and yes, they do sound really wild together.
Turning the ‘64 Princeton Reverb up
to 6, the bridge P90 does a stone cold
version of Neil Young’s Old Black –
not the howling feedback from the
Crazy Horse records, but the stringy,
overdriven chords that slice through
the air with the sound of a mongrel
mixed breed Telesbird. A huge, jangly
single coil sound … Aim your pick
just in front of the tailpiece and the
Blackguard vibe jumps up – heavier
and thicker than that, really, and
hardly a traditional 6-string guitar
sound – more of a sacred steel piano
kinda thing that we have never heard
before. Daniel Lanois. Tone… better, bigger, more mysterious, interesting and deep than anything else in the room. A
serious and very weighty step up for those who are worthy…
As described here, the Downtowner Deluxe is $3,300. In our
world you’re barely two cheap guitars or a guitar and amp you
don’t play away from owning your own piece of Echo Park.
Other models and variations are available and priced accordingly. Think of it as buying stock in Gabriel Currie’s art –
stock that will pay dividends you can’t yet imagine for the rest
of your life. If we were you, we would order one of Currie’s
guitars, and make plans to pick it up personally in Echo Park.
Call it a guitarcation. What could possibly be better than that? TQ
www.echoparkguitars.com, 626-536-3317
REVIEW
Andrews Amplifiers
In no small way
we feel great
sympathy for
prospective amp
hunters these
days. Oh, sure,
most of the
familiar vintage
amps are just
that – comfortably familiar
– but the vast
assortment of
contemporary guitar amps being built by a vast assortment
of contemporary amp builders large, medium, small and tiny
is impossible for one person to digest and comprehend. The
amorphous group of modern amp builders working today
has grown so much, that if someone were bold enough to
attempt to assemble every ‘custom’ example in one place, by
the time they finished there would be even more new builders that would have to be added to the original list. In other
words, the shape-shifting nature of this industry cannot be
fully grasped in one snapshot in time. Good for people like us
that write about amplifiers and tone, but bewildering for you.
We were talking to an industry pal the other day, who told us
that someone had told him that the problem with TQR is that
we love everything. We replied that, yeah, we generally find
something to admire in everything we review, because when
we try something that we feel doesn’t deserve your consideration, we don’t review it. Why waste a couple of pages and
your time slamming something we wouldn’t recommend? Who
does that help? Like you, we try all kinds of gear with an
open mind, always hopeful. Sometimes we search things out,
and at other times they find us. Such was the case when Jeff
-continued-
8
amps
Andrews contacted us about developing a review of his A-22
and Para-Dyne 20 amplifiers. To our surprise, we discovered
that Jeff was building amps and operating a thriving repair
business just 20 minutes away in the northeast Atlanta suburb
of Dunwoody. Best of all, we also learned that Andrews’ amplifiers absolutely rock. So here’s Jeff’s story, followed by our
review of the A-22 and Para-Dyne 20…
TQR:
How did you initially become interested in electronics and amplification, Jeff?
One of my grandfathers was a technical corporal in the army
in Europe in WWII. His job was keeping the telegraph lines
working while the Germans were trying to make sure they
were cut. As a kid, I loved to go to visit him and see all the
old electrical things he had rigged up around the house. There
were transformers and wires and those old glass insulators
that were used on telephone poles in those days. He had buzzers and bells hooked up so he would know if someone was at
the door when he was working in the basement, and he had
installed a radio speaker in an old wooden wall phone in the
kitchen. This stuff fascinated me and I asked
a lot of questions about
how it worked. My other
grandfather knew about
my interest and allowed
me to “fix” a few
radios and a small TV.
Of course this resulted
in their total destruction,
but I did start learning
to identify some of the
parts and how things
were put together. I was
probably about 7 to 10
years old then. Around that same time, my father and I built a
crystal radio together and he installed a long antenna around
the eaves of our house in Memphis. I thought that was the
coolest thing, picking up radio with just wires and a diode.
I grew up in a musical family and while all this was going on,
I was developing an interest in music. My father went to college on a music scholarship playing the sax and my mother
played piano. I was encouraged to take piano lessons and
then to play sax in the school band. Then I heard Jimi Hendrix. When
he died in
1970 I was
ten years old.
You know
how it is
when a fa-
mous musician dies…
Their music
is played
constantly
on the
radio for a
while, and that’s when I really started to notice his music. It
took a few years for me to transition from sax to guitar, but
when I did at around age 14, I started by trying to emulate
Jimi’s sound. My first amp was a little Kay solid state stack
which I soon modified by upgrading the speakers. Then I
got a Sound City 120 and built a 4 X 12 cabinet for it in
shop class and bought a Sound City cabinet to stack on top.
Finally, I got the amp I was really wanting, a Marshall Super
Lead that I set on the two cabs just like Jimi. As I reached
the middle years of high school, my parents started asking
what I was going to do after I graduated. I told them that I
was going to be a famous musician, but they suggested that
I have something to fall back on just in case things don’t
work out with music. Going to electronics school seemed
like a good idea, since I liked electronics and it seemed like
it might be helpful in my musical career. It just so happened
that the local college was still teaching tubes! After finishing
those classes, I quickly found that I could survive as a tech
and I wasn’t making anything playing music. I kept playing
in bands while working on TVs and stereos and maintaining the amps for the bands I was in. As a tech, I eventually
moved into high tech consumer electronics and became a
factory rep and technical trainer for Pioneer Electronics for
several years until I started working full time at my amp
shop in 2004.
TQR:
How did your initial interest evolve? Were there
any mentors that helped you acquire a better understanding of electronics and amplification?
I learned a lot
about electronics and troubleshooting during my years
of repairing
various equipment, teaching
and supporting a repair
network over
Jim Marshall with Randall Aiken
those twenty
something years before opening my amp shop. It seemed like
I was often on the cutting edge of technology during most of
those years as new products came to market, so I was always
going to training sessions that were taught by the engineers
that designed the products. During the ‘80s, I started winding
-continued-
9
amps
down the idea of making it big in music, so I sold the big
Marshall rig and bought some smaller combo amps. There
was a Carvin 1x12 and a couple of Fender silverface combos
during those years. I loved the new sounds and the portability of the amps, but sometimes I missed the Marshall tones. I
started modifying some of my little amps to make them sound
more like what I wanted and that kept me involved in amps
and tube technology. When I started thinking about building
my first amp, I read a lot of stuff by Randall Aiken and Kevin
O’Conner about amp design. I have a lot respect for both of
those guys and learned a lot from them. Even though I’ve
never met either of them, some of their knowledge has found
its way into my designs.
TQR:
In addition to building your own amps, you also
operate a repair and restoration service. Can you
describe some of the most popular services you
offer in terms of repairs and modifications? We
noted that you are very specific about replacing
caps in older amps, improving their function (such
as increasing the intensity of the tremolo in a
Princeton Reverb), and many improvements for the
Fender Hot Rod Series...
Yes, a lot
of older
amps, I
mean the
ones built
before
around
1985 or
so are
probably not
working
as well as they once did. Sometimes the tone degradation happens so slowly that it isn’t noticeable until it’s brought back
to full performance. There will be a lot of capacitors and a
few resistors and of course some tubes that have deteriorated
over the years. Finding and replacing the culprits makes a big
difference in the sound and feel of the amp. It often really
surprises people when they get their amp back and plug it
in because they forget how good it used to sound. I call that
“tone resurrection” and it’s a popular service at the shop. The
electrolytic capacitors are a related issue and I try to educate
people on the importance of replacing them before they go
info full failure mode.They are filled with a electrolyte paste
that dries up over the years and causes all kinds of problems.
The symptoms vary depending on which ones go bad and how
they fail. It could be a bit of hum, blowing fuses, overheating
tubes and transformers, loss of volume, failure of tremolo or
reverb. The electrolytic caps are found in two areas of most
amps. There are filter caps in the power supplies and smaller
“bypass” caps
in the audio
circuit. A lot
of amps come
into the shop
with a few
electrolytic
caps replaced
and a handful
of old original ones still in place. Some techs tend to replace
each one as it starts to fail, but in my experience, once they
start to fail, the rest will soon follow, so it makes sense to replace all of them at the first sign of any going bad (on vintage
amps). On some newer models, we sometimes find a couple
of bad caps due to a manufacturing batch defect. In that case,
I suggest replacing all the identical ones and leave the rest to
live out their natural lives.
As for mods, I do a lot of fine tuning on the Fender Hot Rod
series and the Blues Jr., which are both very popular amps. A
lot of production amps seem to me to be tweaked by the manufacturers to sound impressive at the music store instead of on
stage or in the studio. Bias current will be too high (causing
tube failures and damage to the tube sockets and PC board),
high gain channels will be too bright and volume controls will
be too sensitive in the low numbers. A lot of the mods I do are
really about fine tuning and improving the designs rather than
re-inventing something. Some of the recent Marshalls benefit
from taking a bit of piercing treble out of the lead channels.
Installing standby switches for small amps are popular, too.
Other than that, we see a lot of routine troubleshooting and
repair work on all makes and models of tube amps and a few
solid state ones mixed in.
TQR:
You also install replacement speakers.. What are
the most popular speakers you install?
I could go on
for a long time
about speakers,
but to answer
your question,
I would say
that speaker
popularity
changes over
time. Currently
the Warehouse Guitar
Speakers
(WGS) G12C/S is getting popular for most blackface and
silverface Fender amps, but the Jensen C8R remains popular for Champs. The Eminence Legend 1258 finds it’s way
into a lot of newer American amps since it’s essentially the
-continued-
10
amps
same as many
OEM speakers.
For British amps,
it’s a mixed bag.
Speaker mixing is
popular now so a
lot of people are
putting in a couple
of different kinds
of speakers in the
same cabinet. The
WGS Veteran 30
is a popular replacement for Celestion Vintage 30s since it’s
smoother sounding, more affordable and made in the USA.
Celestion “Blues” remain the top choice for a lot of Vox
amps. Then there are the “in-between” speakers such as the
Eminence Private Jack and the WGS Reaper. They are a little
more aggressive than the American style speakers but not as
extreme as the V30 types. They are popular and work well
in amps from both sides of the pond when you want a little
more volume projection in the mix. The Eminence Ramrod is
the 10" speaker that fits in that category.
TQR:
What are your favorite tube brands by type and why?
I like JJ preamp tubes because they tend to be as reliable as
anything else. Background noise and microphonics are low
and the price is reasonable. I also like their EL84s pretty well
because they can handle high voltages and they have a nice
punchy bottom end. For EL34s, I keep trying to find a good
low cost option but everything other than Winged C seems to
have high failure rates and a short lifespan, so I’m stocking
only Winged C now. For 6L6, I offer the Winged C and the
Sovtek 5881WXT which are both good tubes. The Winged
C is bright with an authentic vintage sound while the Sovtek
has reduced treble harmonics and a bigger, looser bottom and
a lower price. I usually suggest one or the other based on the
tonal requirements of the amp and the customer. Most of the
other brands have QC problems in my experience. For 6V6s,
I stock JJ and Electro-Harmonix. The JJs are more crunchy
with a bit more midrange while the EH’s are smoother with a
more authentic vintage vibe.
TQR:
Most amp builders seem to develop an idea of what
they want to build as a result of working on various
other models over the years. How has your experience in working on well-known vintage amps influenced and shaped your own designs?
It’s been a huge advantage to have worked on so many makes
and models that span a period from the ‘30s till the present.
The vintage models are truly the basis for all the different tube
amps that have come since then. After seeing how all the old
amps are designed and built and knowing what kind of tones
and
response
I like, it
follows
that
certain
vintage
design
concepts
find
their way into my designs. For example, there are things like
welded steel chassis, thick tag boards, pots and sockets that
are mounted to the chassis instead of the circuit board. These
are things you’ll find in amps that are still working great
after 40 years. Then there are vintage concepts related to tone
that are worth repeating – things like having just the right
transformer specs, specific phase inverter configurations, tone
stack circuits, tried and true tube types, etc. Then there is the
experience with some of the not-so-great things in the old designs that are to be avoided – things like improper grounding
schemes, insufficient power supply filtering, carbon composition resistors where they don’t belong and poor choices of
tag board materials. A lot of new boutique amp designs copy
some of the old design flaws either because there is an idea
among builders that it is somehow wrong to mess with classic designs, or, sometimes I believe the designer just doesn’t
know any better.
The preamp is the place where
I like to make my mark. That’s
where I can spend hundreds of
hours listening and tweaking
and fine tuning the voice of
the amp. If the output and
power supply circuits are solid
and stable and have the right
transformers, most of the attention can be focused on the
preamp.
TQR:
Among all the amps you have worked on other than
your own, what are your favorite models and why?
There will
always be
a place in
my heart
for the
Fender
Deluxe
Reverb, Super Reverb and Twin Reverb and the Marshall
Super Lead. I feel that they define the era of music that I grew
up with and still love to this day. I also like that they are well
designed for long life and easy service.
-continued-
11
amps
TQR:
Let’s talk about your own designs... What inspired
you to begin building your own amplifiers? Were
you pursuing a specific niche or a certain sound
you were hearing in your head?
Well, I just couldn’t find a 20 to 30 watt combo that sounded
like my old Super Lead, so I decided to build one. I had
some great Fenders, but no matter what pedal I tried, I
couldn’t quite get that British tone when I wanted it, so I
decided to build what I wanted. When it became time to get
started, I bought an old Traynor YGM-3 for $300, gutted it
and built my first amp on that chassis, which was based on
the Super Lead circuit but it ran on EL84s and produced
about 25 watts of output power. That amp became the basic
concept for the A-22 which I still build although it has been
refined over the years.
The
Para-Dyne
models have
a different
lineage. The
Original
Para-Dyne
20 was a
custom
build for a
customer
request. It
was tube rectified and had two channels, each with a separate
input jack. Channel one had an EF86 first preamp stage and
a six-position “depth” switch. Channel two ran on a 12AX7
with a standard tone stack. The output circuit was from the
A-22 and ran on EL84’s in class AB mode. We had beautiful
bird’s eye and walnut cabinets of my design built for it. It was
a bit like a Matchless HC-30 with a different output circuit.
Only one of that version was built. When I decided to come
up with a new model based on that amp, I decided to do away
with the EF86 because I had so much trouble finding good
ones. I’ve managed to get what I wanted out of a 12AX7 for
the clean channel now. I also switched from EL84s to 6V6 on
the 20 watt models since they are a bit smoother. I still offer
them with EL84s too which have a little more thump on the
bottom end. The Para-Dyne 50s come standard with EL34s,
but again, I offer them with 6L6s for a deeper bottom at the
expense of being a bit sharper in the treble. So, I guess you
could say the inspiration for Para-Dyne models was to add to
the tonal palette of the Andrews model lineup.
I have
very
specific
ways I
want all
the parts
to fit
together
for
stability, low
noise and reliability. So, although it’s more expensive, I use
a lot of custom parts. I draw out the chassis and turret boards
in AutoCAD and have them custom built. They’re welded at
the corners for strength and then ground smooth before being
plated. Most of the transformers are custom built to my specs,
so I can get just what I want for the designs. I believe that
metal film resistors are best for most positions in the preamps.
They provide lower noise and higher reliability that other
types. However, if you look inside any Andrews amp, you’ll
see a few carbon composition resistors in places where they
should be to sweeten the tone without adding noise. I’ve also
been customizing pot tapers lately by changing to different
pot values and adding resistors across them. Sometimes the
off-the-shelf pots just don’t have the tapers I want. I use extra
thick epoxy turret boards and mount the transformers on spacers so they don’t rattle at high volume. There are a few other
secret little tricks, but I’ll keep those to myself.
As for the sound, I’m building two distinct types that translate
into quite a few different models if you count all the different
cabinet configurations and output power levels. The A series
amps are inspired by vintage Marshalls but they have one
balanced channel instead of one that’s too bright and one that’s
too dark. I’ve brought the power down to 22 watts and added
a post phase inverter master volume so those great tones don’t
have to be at paint cracking volumes. The gain can be customized by the user with a tube change for different situations.
The Para-Dynes are named for their two channels of dynamic
tone and are not based on any particular other amp. The clean
channel is cleaner than the A series models and the overdrive
channel has more gain than the A-series. The overdrive channel is designed to be smooth and sustaining while maintaining
definition and dynamics. Overall, I consider both amps to be
unique while maintaining a familiar vibe. The A-series models
bring to mind a classic British sound while the Para-Dyne
models are a bit more modern.
TQR:
TQR:
Can you describe the design features and components that make your amps unique? What do you
do differently, how and why, and how would you
describe their unique sound?
What do you want to accomplish in the future in
terms of your own amp designs?
I’ve learned over the years that a lot of the songs and recordings I love were played on Fender Twin Reverbs and Marshall
Super Leads. Both of those amps are solid state rectified and
-continued-
12
reviews
have a very punchy and dynamic sound. I generally prefer that
type of response over the saggy and compressed sound and
feel of a lot of other amps, so I’ll probably stick to that format
for a while longer. The next step will be to add more features
for even more versatility. I’ve gone about as far as I can on the
small chassis we’re using since there isn’t room for any more
knobs, jacks or switches. The next series will be a bit bigger.
The most requested feature for the next model is reverb, so I’ll
probably add that. It really depends on how the market trends.
Building a high quality hand-wired amp with every feature
I would want will be very expensive. It remains to be seen if
there is a market for it in these days given the increasing variety of cheap imported amps. The direction of future designs
depends on the success of the current models. I’m currently
looking for dealers across the country to make the amps available for more people to try. Of course, I’m also looking for
some top level players to put the amps on big stages to help
spread the word.
A-22 & Para-Dyne 20 Review
Evaluating anything from a ‘new’ builder always adds
suspense and mystery to the process. With absolutely no
preconceptions formed from past experience, the reviewer
works with a blank canvas as the amplifier gradually paints
the picture that is ultimately described to the reader. And like
you, throughout the entire arduous process of digesting sound,
in the back of our mind we are asking, “How is this amplifier
unique from all the rest? What does it do best, and better than
most?” Well, let’s start there.
The voice of the 20 watt dual EL-84 A-22 gracefully ventures
into both 20 watt Marshall and 15 watt Vox territory, but with
superior clean tones, more headroom when needed, and a far
more versatile tone stack than typical vintage amps and reproductions. You can also expect (and we’re quoting from our
notes here), ‘an exceptionally wide range of volume and distortion levels between both input channels.’ That’s the gist of
this amp – high and low inputs with 9 db more gain in the high
input, a simple control layout consisting of Volume, Treble,
Bass, Cut
and Master
Volume, and
a pull switch
on the treble
control that
acts as a mid
boost. Even
the most
hardcore
plug & play
players can
embrace
that.
While most 20 watt amps new and old are by nature easily
overdriven to produce singing sustain and distortion, they
are also by nature void of usable clean tones at performance
volume. In this regard the A-22 offers a big leap forward with
outstanding clean headroom. You can get there by plugging
into the high gain Channel 1 input and leaving the Volume
set below 3 for an edgy clean tone with the Master Volume
cranked, or by using the Channel 2 Low input for a more pristine clean, again, with the Volume set low. You’ll never find
a low-power Marshall that can touch the A-22 for clean tones
that can also be set to produce a chimey, very Vox-like sparkle
on the top that can be effectively managed with the Cut and
Treble controls.
Increasing
Volume in
either
channel
introduces
the Marshall side of the A-22’s split personality. In the Low
input, increases in Volume gradually ramp up into a very realistic sound of moderate output tube distortion with the Master
advanced past 6-7. This is a good and righteous busted-up
tone for rhythms and blues. For a hotter, steadier and very
realistic ‘70s Marshall burn, move to the Channel 1 High
input. Unlike old 18 and 20 watt heaters, the Bass and Treble
controls on the A-22 really work to fatten or brighten up yer
tone, the Cut control adds more presence or perceived mids,
and for high Gain settings the pull/boost on the treble knob
throws more wood on the fire.
We should also
mention that for
you ‘bedroom’
players, Volume
can be cranked
with the Master
Volume turned
down for those
special 3 watt
ZZ Top moments in the
midnight hour.
It’s not a place we
habitually visit, but the welcome mat is out nonetheless, and
the A-22 does a fine job of producing intense sustain at low
volume. You’ll also like the big tone of the Warehouse Reaper
HP (high power) – full and rich with a little push in the upper
mids, musical but never piercing treble tones, and rated at 50
-continued-
13
guitars
watts. Recommended as an alternative for Vintage 30 fans.
The overall flavor of the A-22 is definitely British, but the enhanced versatility, clean tones and headroom must be credited
to Jeff Andrews’ design. The A-22 truly stands out as an extremely toneful and versatile hand-wired amp. The birch-ply
cabinet is rock solid in the style of an older Matchless, and in
all respects the A-22 is meticulously built. In our experience,
you couldn’t wish for more in a dual EL-84 combo or head,
pedals not required.
Para-Dyne 20
You’ll appreciate what
transpired as
we settled in
to evaluate and
take notes on
the Para-Dyne
20… After running through
various settings
in the Lead and
Clean channels
of this dual6V6 amp, we picked up our ‘57 Historic Goldtop loaded with
early ‘60s patent number sticker humbuckers, plugged into
the Lead Channel with the Gain and Master Volume set on 6,
and 30 minutes later we realized we hadn’t stopped playing
to take notes. That’s an endorsement. Like the A-22, the ParaDyne 20 has also been designed to deliver exceptionally lush
clean tones via the Clean Channel that are rarely present in
amps that also deliver roaring sustain. Utilizing a pair of 6V6
output tubes, the voice of the Para-Dyne is also rounder, fuller
and deeper – a sound we always seem to prefer in smaller
amps. Fans of both Fender and Marshall amps will love the
Para-Dyne 20 for its clean tones, thick and musical overdriven
intensity, and user-friendly (but plenty loud) 20 watts with
Master Volume.
Features
include
Hi and
Lo
inputs,
Volume
with
pull
switch
to access Clean Channel 1 when not using the supplied footswitch, 3-position bright toggle for the Clean Channel, Depth
for Channel 1, Gain for Channel 2, Treble, Middle, Bass,
Master Volume, and a pentode/triode toggle switch on the
back panel. We’re not
big fans of the triode/
pentode half power
switch – no news there,
but for a lower volume,
cranked vibe it does
that. We just prefer to
get there at full power,
so we usually ignore it.
What can’t be ignored
is the absolutely stellar
quality of sound produced by the Para-Dyne 20. It’s voice
and presence are huge for its size, equally nimble as a clean
machine or rendering an overdriven tone that, combined with
the Goldtop, produced a very authentic and Creamy Marshall
tone circa 1968 (that’s where we lost the 30 minutes), and all
at a perfectly stout 20 watts. The Warehouse ET65 ceramic
magnet speaker is a big bruiser, bold and balanced with solid
lows, smooth mids and sparkling treble. Very highly recommended. For tube hounds, Andrews has included a bias adjust
and test points on the back panel, along with a footswitch jack
included for channel switching, an extension speaker jack,
impedance selector switch, and an optional buffered serial
effects loop.
Both
of the
Andrews
amps
presented
here
impressed
us not
only for
their extraordinary tone, but also for the practical features that
make them so uncommonly versatile. We can’t recall having
played two better sounding 20 watt amplifiers that offer such
lush clean tones and headroom combined with uncompromised muscle, attitude and gain. TQ
www.andrewsamplab.com, 770-671-0485
REVIEW
K-Line Texola
“I don’t know if we can do any better than this.”
We made that comment to a friend when describing the
guitars featured in this issue, and we sincerely believe it to
be true. You may remember our June 2011 interview with the
founder of K-Line Guitars, Chris Kroenlein, who grew up listening to his uncles’ weekend jam sessions in his father’s auto
-continued-
14
guitars
body shop, where he also learned to spray DuPont custom
colors… We reviewed three of Chris’ outstanding guitars in
the June 2011 issue, but we missed the Texola. It’s here now,
and this is how Chris described one of his favorite custombuilt models:
“The idea for the Texola
came from the comfort of the
offset body with a familiar
pickup/bridge configuration. This body style is just
so comfortable and the extra
wood creates a slightly
bigger bass response. These
guitars are a bit harder to
choose the proper wood for,
since you have to balance
tone with weight. Many
guitar players are working
musicians that gig many
nights a week and for up to
four hours at a time. A ten
pound guitar tends to wear
a person out. The Texola was developed mainly from the various custom orders that I had built in the past – a customerinspired guitar that always held a special place for me.”
The no-fan who slammed us for “liking everything” wouldn’t
like to hear this, but we think the Texola is simply one of
the coolest guitars we have ever seen, played or reviewed.
Here’s a picture – whaddya think? It’s even better in color. As
we observed the first time we reviewed the K-Line guitars,
Chris Kroenlein absolutely nails our favorite bolt-on neck
shapes that Fender never seems to get right with rosewood
slab necks – a comfy medium U with a primo grade rosewood
fingerboard and medium tall and fat .095”x .047” fret wire.
Perfect. So what do we really
have here? An offset body style
that suggests another one of our
favorite classics, the Jazzmaster,
as well another one of our favorite contemporary guitars, the
RS Guitarworks Surfmaster. The
Texola embodies the coolest and
most comfortable body shape
you could ever imagine, and in
Daphne Blue (who was Daphne
anyway?) the Texola rocks. We
could also fall hard for a 3-tone
burst beater finish, or black…
Our review guitar was built with
an ash body, and despite its huge lower bout and shark fin
upper cutaway, balance is excellent at a total weight of just
7.2 pounds. As you can imagine, the Lollar mini-humbucker
rhythm pickup mates very well with the Special T bridge
mounted in a traditional vintage style Telecaster bridge plate
with brass saddles.
Like the
Echopark
Downtowner,
the Texola is
a deceptive
chameleon.
The Lollar minihumbucker
mounted
in that big
chunk of ash pours out a deep tone that immediately reminded
us of a vintage DeArmond single coil pickup in a Gretsch
6120. The semi-hollow vibe is all there, with big, low vowel
sounds coming off the wound strings while the treble tones
remain bright with a ton of tinsel and harmonic overtones.
The Lollar flatpole Special bridge also skirts the typical tone
of a Telecaster in the Texola. Low end is huge and Fendery,
but again, we heard shades of a vintage Gretsch, buoyed by
stronger mids and a less brittle top. The combined sound of
both pickups is equally sweet and complex. It isn’t easy to
describe sounds you probably haven’t heard before, but in its
own unique style the Texola seems bolder than a Stratocaster
and less wiry and thin than a Telecaster if that helps. Clean
tones with reverb or echo took us straight to the late ‘50s and
early ‘60s – Duane Eddy, Link Wray, and the Ventures, but the
Texola is also a nimble blaster played through an overdriven
amp. And we couldn’t help but rejoice in the fact that while
we were hearing these great classic tones, we were also making them on a bigger rosewood neck and frets that would have
never existed on a Fender or a Gretsch. What we mean to say
is that the Texola is a joy to play due to Chris Kroenlein’s
keen sense of what makes a perfect neck shape. Add signature
tones that can’t be conveniently categorized or pegged and
you have what we like to fondly call a ‘keeper.’ TQ
www.k-lineguitars.com, 314-276-7402
REVIEW
The Worst Kept Secret in Nashville
We don’t recall exactly when, but several months ago Lee Roy
Parnell got in touch to tell us that the Gibson Custom Shop
would be building a limited run of ‘LRP’ signature Les Pauls.
That’s recent history now – the guitars have been built and
shipped with rave reviews from owners, but what Lee Roy
wanted us to know was that we needed to contact a pickup
-continued-
15
amps
winder named Ron Ellis. Peter Stroud also
suggested we check
out Ellis’ work, so we
sent an e-mail to Ron
a couple of months
ago and we’ve had
several interesting
conversations since.
We hope to publish a
comprehensive cover
story on Ron that will
explore his fascinating background as an engineer and tonefreak in the near
future, but in the meantime we acquired a set of his Telecaster
pickups for review. In addition to supplying the humbucking
pickups for Lee Roy’s signature Les Paul, we learned that Ron
has been quietly winding pickups for players like Vince Gill,
John Fogerty, Audley Freed and others, while continuing to
work at his engineering job three days a week. In other words,
Ron has been back-ordered with pickup orders for months
while scrambling to fill the Gibson orders. When the time is
right, we’ll review his humbucking and Stratocaster pickups
along with an in-depth interview, but for now, we’re happy to
share our take on his excellent Telecaster set installed in our
‘07 Nocaster. But first, some perspective…
As we prepared to
install Ellis’ pickups, we
began to think about all
the different Telecaster
pickups we have reviewed and considered
over the years – Kinman, Harmonic Design,
Amalfitano, Lindy Fralin, Slider, Rolph, Lollar, Fender TexMex, Fender Custom Shop Nocaster, Fender ‘63 Tele, G&L,
Barden, Duncan Broadcaster, Fender Twisted Tele, Fred
Stuart, Don Mare, Will Boggs and whatever was in a Japanese
reissue Tele. Do we remember them all? Yes, we do, even the
ones that could best be described as sounding, well, less than
memorable. Frankly, the various Fender pickups that have
come stock in the Telecasters we’ve acquired for review are
the most difficult to recall only because they usually sound
more neutral and vanilla than those wound by custom builders. This is also why we have rarely re-installed the original
pickups in a Strat or Tele unless it was being sold. We’re not
suggesting that original Fender pickups aren’t good – they
are, but custom pickups usually offer a more distinctive sound
we seem to prefer, whether it’s a less sharp and brittle tone,
more distinct mids, fuller low end, better clarity, deeper harmonic overtones, or a more balanced tone across all frequencies. You could say that pickups made in a high-production
environment usually sound more generic, because they are.
As for the
‘best’ among
all the Telecaster pickups we have
evaluated, we
can only speak
for ourselves,
of course. For many, the Lollar Specials have become the
default Tele set for good reason, being neither too bright in
the bridge with a healthy dollop of upper mids and bass on
the wound strings, and an excellent neck pickup that does
what a traditional Telecaster neck pickup should, which is to
mimic the sound of a semi-hollow body with extreme clarity.
Fralins are a bit brighter (depending on what you order), yet
entirely representative of what most of us would consider to
be an utterly classic Tele
tone. The Amalfitano set
we had was more aggressive, with a rippin’ bridge
pickup that could really
light up an amp. Sliders
are exceptional and very
vintage sounding. His
hotter bridge coil wrapped in red rather than white twine is
the ultimate hard rockin’ Telecaster pickup. Entirely bad-ass.
Original Joe Bardens sound nothing like a Tele, but they do
sound awfully good – just hide the women and children. “Big
and threatening” is an understatement. Kinman’s noiseless
Tele pickups were awfully good played clean. Rolphs deliver
an exceptionally classic tone, as did Fred Stuart’s, Harmonic
Designs were outstanding, and we loved the white ‘stealth’
cover on the neck pickup mounted on a white guard. That is
just too cool! The Fender Twisted Tele neck pickup found on
the Baja Tele is a favorite, as is the ash Baja Tele painted in
Desert Sand – the best bargain Telecaster we or you will ever
play. Don Mare’s pickups did not raise Roy (or Nancy) from
the grave, and the Duncan Broadcaster Mark Johnson gave us
is the worst sounding Telecaster pickup we have ever heard.
Will Boggs showed signs of genius before he disappeared.
Here’s something you won’t read elsewhere: The challenges in discussing, describing and comparing the sound of
different pickups are almost too
complex and inherently flawed
to allow a meaningful discussion.
Will pickups mounted in our guitars sound the same in yours? Do
our guitars and amplifiers perhaps
encourage a more lush tone and
vivid harmonic depth and color
than the gear you’re working
with? Are you using .009s when
Baja Tele we’re using .011s? Obviously,
-continued-
16
pickups
we can’t eliminate such
variables when evaluating guitar pickups, but
since we’re ultimately
considering the sound
that you are hearing
from the speaker(s) in
your amps playing your
guitars, let’s not kid ourselves by pretending that
pickups alone are the
sole contributors to your
tone. Guitars, amps and pedal boards should all be optimized
to get the most from the entire rig. Here’s a brief and amusing
example of what we mean… A few weeks ago we pulled out
a Diaz Texas Ranger treble boost with germanium transistors that César had personally given us. We plugged straight
into it bypassing our pedal board, played for a while and it
sounded so good that we replaced one of the distortion pedals
in our pedal board with the Texas Ranger. A week or so later
we were busily evaluating speakers in our Princeton Reverb,
and nothing sounded good at all. In fact, the amp seemed to
have lost its magic altogether, sounding thin and narrow, as if
the speaker wires were reversed. Neutered. Disturbed and confused, we switched to our Deluxe Reverb, and it too sounded
thin and lame. Finally, we remembered that César’s pedals
were notorious for not getting along with other effects in a
pedal board, we yanked it, and all was well again. The point
is, if you use a pedal board, be sure the unaffected sound you
get by plugging your guitar straight into an amp isn’t being
significantly altered by your chain of effects.
Now, about Ron Ellis’ Tele pickups… We haven’t heard
anything so earthy, spatial, cosmic, musically deep, complex,
vocal
and heart
wrenchingly,
gloriously,
insanely
good
since our last dance with the Stills ‘57 Tele in the early ‘80s,
and prior to that we had never even imagined that such a huge
sound could exist in any guitar. Now we understand why
certain fellers who know what a truly great Telecaster sounds
like (remember, even the old ones aren’t all great) have
embraced Ron Ellis’ pickups.Skeptical? That’s fine. Some
people take great pride in their shrewd skepticism. We get it.
Comes in handy when you’re buying a used car, but we’re
talking about a set of guitar pickups here. Add up the money
you have invested in all your gear and ask yourself what it
would be worth to incrementally enhance your tone by a factor
of 2. That’s twice as good. Our latest ‘07 Nocaster was nothing
more than a couple of fine, fine, super-fine pieces of wood
before we got a hold of it. We tweaked it up as described last
month and made it all that it can be, which is saying a lot. The
wood bin gnomes were smiling on the day these two pieces
of ash and maple were grabbed in the Corona Custom Shop.
Ron Ellis’ pickups transformed it again. We experimented with
vintage .018mf and .04mf tone caps, and their effect seemed to
be amplified by the big gong tones of Ellis’ pickups. Both caps
sounded really good, but more accentuated with Ellis’ pickups,
like a wah pedal sweep almost. Interesting. Describing what
we’re hearing compared to other pickups is more difficult…
Single notes sound doubled, as if you could walk inside of
them, hanging and sustaining longer, painting the air with
deep, trembling harmonics that surround and expand the
fundamental.
We got stuck
in drop D one
day and began
playing a modal
solo on the B,
G and D strings
while allowSmithereens
ing the low D
to drone untouched. Jimmy Page meets James Calvin Wilsey
meets Pat DiNizio. Who? The Smithereens… The greatest
guitar-driven band of the ‘80s, hook, line and sinker. Screw
the Smashing Pumpkins, give me some smashing chords
–“Blood and Roses” and “A Girl Like You.” If you missed
those songs you missed too much. Cue them up on youtube,
ignore the Pit Bull ad and rediscover what great songs truly
are. They are not grunted out by a fat loser ass clown that
calls himself Pit Bull.
The clean Tele tones from Ron Ellis’ pickups will make you
weep with joy and sorrow – joy that you found them, and sorrow that you didn’t find them sooner. Crank them up with an
amp on the verge of coming and you’ll understand why we just
pointed you to the Smithereens. Do you play in a cover band?
At wedding receptions? Play “Blood
and Roses” and right
around the 2 minute
mark clothes will
come off. Move
straight into “A Girl
Like You” and the
mascara will start to
run. Suddenly, you’re
playing for a roomful
of barefoot, dancing,
bawling raccoons in
pretty pink dresses
somewhere in New
Jersey. Reel and rock the bridesmaids my brother.
-continued-
17
guitars
Ellis’ pickups are off the chain, dog. You will play your guitar
and wind up hearing music you would never ever have imagined without them. That’s exactly how it is for us. Every time
we pick up the Nocaster now we surpass our natural reach.
It’s called inspiration, and Ellis’ coils are inspired and inspiring. Believe it. You will have to wait a while. Wait, patiently
content in the knowledge that you have stepped away from
the ordinary with a great leap of faith to embrace the work
of another mother of invention. It’s the best move you could
possibly make. Now Quest forth…TQ
e-mail: [email protected]
also see Ron Ellis on Facebook
REVIEW
Return of the Horse
Over the years we
have received a lot of
questions about Riverhorse… Who is he?
Is he you? Well, no.
Riverhorse exists as
his own man, to put it
lightly. A friend and
a brother without the
familial baggage that
comes with the bond
of blood, we have made some magnificent and hilarious trips
together that have occasionally been described and recounted
here. For whatever reason such things happen, we share the
same twisted sense of humor in response to the absurdity of
life, the same disdain for bloated egos, charlatans and all
forms of unseemly hubris, and we share a deep and abiding
love for things created by those whose motives are pure –
especially things created to make beautiful sounds. What you
may not know is that Riverhorse has been writing for surf
mags for years. He has traveled the world seeking the perfect
wave, from South Africa to Baja, Asia and South America.
Brian Wilson nailed it –“Catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on
top of the world…” Riverhorse would agree, but with no
less enthusiasm for the blues classic “Sitting On Top of the
World” by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, founding
members of the Mississippi Sheiks. Damn, what a great name
for a band. Recently, Riverhorse has become hooked on fly
fishing, and since he is adept at awakening things in people
through words that would otherwise remain dormant, he is
now writing for a very well respected fly fishing journal with
the same passion he has devoted in the past to the guitar. So
we were particularly pleased and surprised to open an e-mail
and find the following piece written without request, accepted
with gratitude for your enjoyment.
18
Shaken & Stirred
“For every moment of triumph,
for every instance of beauty,
many souls must be trampled.”
– Hunter S. Thompson
I’ve put my hands on things
that were already cold long
before I danced with them.
Other things, well, they went
cold over time, and some of them took longer than others.
And once in a while, I have stumbled across something or
someone in full-bloom long before I came on the scene, and
knowing full well this was probably some fleeting moment,
I know to grab it and run, not let it get away. I call these
opportunities open doors. If you are asleep at the wheel or
remotely tentative and think too much instead of responding, you’ll be shit out of luck. Left in the dust. Dry-docked.
How do I know this is true? I owe it all to a cheap-ass plywood Gretsch.
I was living on an island in the
Atlantic and had saved up some cash
from a strange summer job at a liquor
store, but got fired early thanks to
following a mouthy customer out the
door with a sledge hammer. Oops.
That’s fine, I just loaded the truck
with a few surfboards, bedroll, and
cases of beer. I’m a fan of checking
in by checking out. Halfway to Baja
I stopped in Houston to see the gang.
Tucked back into the darkest hour of
the store among bizarre broken flotsam and Tijuana specials, I noticed a
wraptail single-cut tobacco sunburst Gretsch. Up to pitch and
thrown in open E, a strummed a chord and the guitar vibrated
itself around the top of the counter, literally rotating in a
semi-circle. This is mine. No need to plug it in, I just knew it.
Better yet, it was 130 bucks out the door.
I slid it underneath the mattress in the camper bed of the
truck, and it spent a few weeks riding shotgun and biding its
time for the
return home.
As for the
surf, I got
caught in a
20 minute
Mexican
machine gun
shootout
at an open
effects
air restaurant, had to drop bribes every day or so, flat tires,
fell off a cliff, and damn if I didn’t catch waves I’d dreamed
about for months leading up to it.
Home safe and unsound, I threw Pyramid 11’s on the
Gretsch, intonated and fired it up. Fabricated somewhere in
Long Duck Dong, the thought of it coming over in the dark
recesses of some tanker cargo ship covered in bubble wrap
and ending up with me seemed funny as hell. As expected,
the pots and pickup were crap, so I replaced them and then
called Lollar. There was a time in the good ol’ days when you
could get Jason on the phone, as he was just getting his game
on. I’ve heard his recent pickups and no doubt the recipe he
formulated is still going strong, but I’m a big believer that
the man had some serious voodoo back then, and all of the
pickups I got from that early era are incomparable and stellar. I still recall what Jason said to me after describing what I
needed in a dogear P-90: “Fine, I’ll just send you something
you can crank the absolute shit out of.” And he did.
Over the years following, there
was a vintage ’55 Jr. and also
a 2006 Historic Junior, both
hand-picked. The ’55 cost
about thirty times what the
Gretsch did, believe it or not,
but it was a sick guitar, and
a face-melter to boot. What
is bizarre is that the Gretsch
smoked the fancy Historic, no
matter – pickup swaps, cap
swaps, string swaps, you name
it. They’re both gone now,
but the plywood crusher and
gusher Gretsch remains. This thing sounds bigger than life.
I have secretly used this guitar any and every time I have
wanted to drop the hammer on someone. Through the ’59
GA-40 straight in with some tremolo and a chunky brass
slide, there has never been a single person who didn’t stop in
their tracks and go silent. Even the very snob who publishes
this rag first heard it while he was downstairs in the bathroom
taking a leak and drinking a beer before we took off in the
truck for a 900 mile
road trip, and grinned
from ear to ear.
I’m always astounded
by the number of people
who spend life stressed
out, freaked out, off the
tracks, puckered up and
unglued. What the hell
does any of this matter
50 years from now? Yes, the world is a fucking mess, but
there is still too much beauty to be found in simple places
and moments, and if you don’t pay attention to the details
and bust moves when you have the chance, you lose. The
G2101 is the strangest slugger of a cheapo guitar, and somehow they got it right over there thousands of miles away in a
Korean sweat lodge.
For all the dumb asses who think everything has to cost a
fortune to be good, I bet you do spend a fortune, but doubt
you find what you are looking for much. Yes, it is of the
utmost importance in life to seek quality, but know that
lo-fi can sometimes be more wide-glide than so much of the
bullshit out there they are feeding you at the trough of commerce and gloat. You just have to watch for it. Grab It. And
howl with joy for years after. Awooooooooooooo!
~Riverhorse
Cheap Thrills — a Lagniappe
With all the boost, overdrive and distortion pedals being made today, it’s
easy to forget the good
ones that came before.
In other words, you can’t
possibly keep track of all
the cool stuff that might
be worth considering because there is too much
of it to wrap your brain
around. That’s where we
come in… Do you remember the Seymour Duncan Pickup
Booster? It was originally hyped as capable of making your
guitars with single coil pickups (code: Stratocaster) sound
like a Les Paul. Not quite. What it really does very, very well
is boost up your single coils in a very similar fashion to the
boost circuit found in the Eric Clapton Signature Stratocaster,
and like the EC Strat circuit, the boost is gradually adjustable from +6 to +25db with no fizz. If you have heard EC in
the past 30 years or so, perhaps you’ll agree that it’s a very
righteous sound. The Fire Engine Red Duncan pickup booster
is now a part of pedal history, but you can find them used for
around $55.00. We pulled ours out and aside from the switch
needing a squirt of cleaner, this is one fine tool for those of
you who need a little more grease on your single coil pickups.
Your tone will not change, but you can dial in the power,
sustain and distortion of a humbucking pickup while retaining
the presence and penetrating character of a single coil. Cheap
and exceptionally good. True bypass, 9 volt battery or power
supply, housed in a sturdy steel case. TQ
19
Resource Directory
Don’t miss your opportunity to save 10%
on selected products offered by members
of your ToneQuest Resource Directory!
Look for exclusive ToneQuest discount
offers in gold and reference TQR when
placing your order.
TQR Directory News! Check out
Wampler Pedals and updates from Carr
Amplifiers, Visual Sound, Toneman Don
Butler and more!
AllParts: Top players and guitar builders
rely on Allparts for the right guitar and bass
parts they need, in stock and ready to ship.
AllParts offers a complete range of finished
and unfinished guitar bodies in a variety of
premium tone woods, including alder and
swamp ash, with optional highly figured
maple tops. Finishes include all of the most
popular vintage col8.5ors, including see–
through blonde! Premium necks are also
available with maple, rosewood, and ebony
fingerboards in a variety of neck shape
profiles, with or without binding. Custom
design your next guitar with AllParts,
including tailpieces, tuning keys, bridges,
nuts and saddles, pickups, pickguards (that
really fit), knobs, hardware, and electronics
for many popular models. Bass players and
lefties can also find the parts they need at
AllParts! You can also rely on Allparts for
hard to find parts, along with vacuum tubes
and amplifier hardware.
AllParts, Houston, TX
www.allparts.com 713–466–6414
Analogman TQR readers are invited to
save $25 on the Sunface NKT with Sundial
Fuzz, or receive free shipping on all handmade Analog Man brand pedals, Foxrox,
Teese wahs, and the PedalPower2: Mike
Piera is one of the premier guitar effects
dealers and manufacturers serving professional players worldwide. Analogman is
unique, since it manufactures, modifies,
buys, sells, and repairs vintage and new
guitar effects. Specializing in vintage and
high–end effects, you won’t find cheap
Taiwanese “ happy meal” style, toy effects
there. Analogman is dedicated to helping
you successfully pursue your quest for
tone, and every customer is treated as a
prospective friend. Analogman can meet
all your effects needs, including: Buying
and selling vintage, new, and custom built
effects, and modifying pedals to sound
and function better. A full repair service,
including referrals to specialists. Creating
the best new effects with vintage values,
schematics, and original owner’s manual
copies. FREE help with effects problems
by e–mail or in our Web
Forum, plus professional consultation
and technical services. Analogman specializes in pedal modifications for the
Ibanez and Maxon Tube Screamers and
several Boss pedals (SD–1, DS–1, BD–2,
DD5, etc). They also modify Fuzzfaces
to vintage germanium specs. Analogman
hand–built pedals include the Clone
chorus, Comprossors, and Sun Face
fuzz pedals. There are 3 versions of the
Comprossors available, based on the Ross
style and/or the Orange Squeezer style
of compression. Other hand–made pedals available from Analog Man include
the FOXROX Captain Coconut and TZF
flanger, Teese RMC wahs, Z Vex, Black
Cat, Tubester, Ultravibe, Pedaltrain and
George L cables. Jim Weider recently collaborated with Mike on the King Of Tone
overdrive pedal, which is being introduced
in December 2003! Please check the web
site for more information, and e–mail if
possible. If you must call, please mention
ToneQuest and they’ll make time to help
you.
Analog Man, Bethel, CT
www.analogman.com 203–778–6658
Callaham Vintage Guitars & Amps New
from Callaham! Check out the new billet
steel ABR-1 style ‘tune-o-matic’ bridge:
Bill Callaham is a builder of exceptional
electric guitars that exceed the original
quality, tone, and beauty of the vintage
models that inspire his work. “ Better
than vintage” is an apt description for the
Callaham “ S” and “ T” model electric guitars that feature premium lightweight ash
and alder bodies, custom hand–shaped rock
maple necks, and cryogenically treated
Lindy Fralin pickups specially wound to
Callaham’s specifications for true vintage
tone. Bill also offers cryogenically treated,
pre-wired vintage pick guards for Strat
style guitars, and his exclusive formula for
cold–rolled steel alloy tremolo blocks continue to delight players around the world
with improved resonance and sustain.
Callaham vintage saddles also improve
sustain while minimizing string fatigue and
breaks. Additional Strat parts include stainless steel trem arms, string ferrules, bridge
plates and mounting screws, and string
retainers. Attention Tele Players! Callaham
now offers a complete line of custom Tele
parts. Please visit their web site for information on pre–wired control plates with
premium pots, capacitors, and cloth–covered wire, specially wound and cryogeni-
cally treated Fralin vintage Tele pickups,
compensated brass bridge saddles, bridge
plates, knobs, jacks, tuners and string trees!
The only thing better than Callaham parts
is a Callaham guitar. We said that, and you
can take it to the bank.
Callaham Guitars, Winchester, VA
www.callahamguitars.com 540–678–4043
Carr Amplifiers Check out the ALL NEW
Carr Artemus! The is a single-channel
30-watt combo featuring a 15–watt setting, four EL-84 power tubes, three knobs
(Volume, Bass, Treble), two mini-toggle
switches (Mid, Edge), and an Eminence
Red, White, and Blues speaker.
The Artemus offers a wide range of tones
from the crunch of Classic AC style British
amps to the glassy mid-scooped blackface
sound. The asymmetrical, open-sided,
Howard Roark–inspired cabinet design
measures 24.25” wide by 17.75” tall by 9”
deep, top to bottom.
Carr Amplifiers is a small company located
in downtown Pittsboro, NC. With six
dedicated full-time craftsmen Carr Amps
kicks out some of the most well-made,
professional and dimensional-sounding
tools a guitarist can have, whether that
means onstage or in the bedroom. All Carr
models are:
1) hand-wired using true point-to-point
construction.
2) loaded with premium electronic components, i.e., Solen capacitors.
3) equipped with cabinets made from local
NC yellow pine using dove-tailed joints for
tank-like sturdiness.
4) issued a lifetime warranty for the original owner.
5) made by Americans at a fair wage.
Carr Amps is one of the few (if not the
only) amp manufacturer to make all its
cabinets in-house. The intense quality control afforded by this alone has not been lost
on the thousands of players who’ve bought
and kept their Carr amp over the years, as
well as those to come.
Do you want to stop buying amps that have
no tone? Do you want to stop worrying
about your tone altogether? Construction,
playability, portablility, lush tone, highquality customer service, lifetime warranty
for the original owner---Carr Amps has all
that taken care of for you.
Carr amps are professional tools and works
of art that will inspire you for a lifetime.
Check out the many stellar reviews and
dealer locations for Carr amps at their web
site, and contact the boys at Carr for more
-continued-
20
Resource Directory
information about which Carr model is
best for you.
Carr Amplifiers, Pittsboro,NC
www.carramps.com 919–545–0747
Celestion Ltd. Nobody knows more than
Celestion about guitar loudspeaker design
and manufacture. Think of your all-time
favourite guitar riffs and solos, chances are,
they were played through Celestion guitar
loudspeakers. For the last fifty years - since
the birth of the Celestion Blue (the first
ever purpose-built guitar loudspeaker) - our
magical mix of metal paper and magnets
has formed an essential part of the sound
of guitar music.
Some of the greatest speakers available
today are part of the Celestion Classic
Series. Over the years, we’ve applied our
design expertise to build a range of speakers that will give you classic Celestion
tone, no matter what style you play. The
Alnico Series and the Heritage Series, both
hand-built in Ipswich, England, are the
result of meticulous attention to detail, created for those who are absolutely dedicated
to the pursuit of true Vintage tone.
For high-volume OEMs, Celestion
Originals represent outstanding value for
money. We have the specialist experience
coupled with the most advanced, high-volume manufacturing techniques to deliver
Celestion tone, quality and brand appeal at
extremely competitive prices.
Celestion International Ltd
www.celestion.com
For OEM Enquiries, contact Andy Farrow
at Celestion America, 732-683-2356
Retail & distribution enquiries, contact
Group One Ltd 516-249-1399 www.g1limited.com
ClassicTone By Magnetic Components,
Inc.
Vintage Constructed Amplifier
Transformers
ClassicTone is a new line of vintage
constructed amplifier transformers by
Magnetic Components, Inc. ClassicTone is
the culmination of our decades of experience producing hundreds of thousands of
our fine custom amplifier transformers
for the amplifier industry. We have been
in business since 1943 in the Chicago
area and have a vast knowledge of qualizty transformer manufacturing for the
military and amplifier industry. For many
years now we have been producing our
transformers for many well-known amplifier OEM’s and resellers. Our new line of
ClassicTone transformers feature:
-Paper layer wound construction like the
vintage era originals!
-Made in USA by us at Magnetic
Components, Inc. with premium materials
-Proper raised mountings / No chassis
modification required on most models
-Made with pre-tinned “Topcoat” PVC
appliance wire for ease of soldering
RoHS Compliant
-High quality, yet economically priced
http://www.classictone.net/Index.html
Collings Guitars: Bill Collings’ story
provides a classic example of what can
be achieved with an engineer’s brain,
a machinists’ hand and an experienced
repairman’s eye. After dropping out of
medical school in Ohio to work in a
machine shop, ColliRDngs moved to Texas
in the mid 1970’s where the experience
he gained repairing and restoring guitars
guided his design of the first Collings
guitars. His understanding of the flaws and
shortcomings found in production instruments was instructive, and he set out to
eliminate those shortcomings with the very
first Collings guitars
Today, Collings has 50 full-time employees working in a new, 22,000 square foot,
state-of-the-art facility, and Bill Collings
remains hands-on, building all the tooling
used throughout the shop and personally
working on guitars at his bench whenever
time permits. As the business has grown
and processes refined, there is one thing
that has not changed…Bill Collings’ commitment to building the finest handmade
acoustic steel string instruments in the
world.
Collings instruments have grown to include
32 different acoustic guitar models including the famed dreadnought and OM models, seven award-winning mandolin models
in both lacquer and varnish finishes, three
archtop guitars, and a new line of seven
electric instruments crafted to inspire rock,
blues, jazz, country, and your music, too.
Bill Collings work is respected by professional and amateur musicians alike…
anyone on the quest for quality. Some of
these include artists: Keith Richards, Lyle
Lovett, Pete Townshend, Emmylou Harris,
Andy Summers, David Crosby, Chris
Hillman, Joni Mitchell, Don Felder, John
Sebastian, Lou Reed, John Fogerty, Tim
O’Brien, Pete Huttlinger, Kenny Smith,
Brian May, Joan Baez, John Prine, Nigel
Tufnel of Spinal Tap, and Steven Spielberg
to name a few. We invite you to play a
Collings today.
For more information on the complete line
of Collings instruments and dealer locations, please visit our web site.
Collings Guitars, Austin Texas
www.collingsguitars.com, 512-288-7776
Dave’s Guitar Shop: Dave’s Guitar Shop
offers guitars by Fender, Gibson, PRS,
National, Taylor, Gretsch, Ernie Ball,
Rickenbacker, Martin, Santa Cruz, Suhr,
Collings, Tom Anderson and many other
fine new and used instruments, plus new
and used amplifiers such as Fender, Line
6, Matchless, Victoria, Bad Cat, and Dr. Z,
plus hundreds of guitar effects, and aftermarket pickups from Joe Barden, Seymour
Duncan, and more. Due to their inventory
of over 1,000 guitars, amps, and accessories, Dave’s is an excellent resource for top
of the line Custom Shop and Historic reissues, to intermediate new and used gear.
Unlike some dealers’ out of date stock lists
on the web and in print, Dave’s inventory
is updated daily. The selection of new and
used instruments is truly exceptional, and
you can often select among several models
of the same new guitars to find that special
instrument that was meant for you. Dave’s
staff is friendly and extremely knowledgeable about the instruments and gear
that they sell, because they are players,
too. Please check the web site for current
inventory, and you are welcome to call for
more information or an accurate, in-hand
description.
Dave’s Guitar Shop, LaCrosse, WI
www.davesguitar.com 608–785–7704
Eastwood: Since 2001, Eastwood has
been creating some of the most exciting
Electric Guitars the world has ever seen.
Our RADICAL VINTAGE REMAKE
series feature a variety of models based
on popular sixties designs - from the classic Mosrites to our top-selling AIRLINE
- they capture the excitement and style of
the originals. Each year the prices of the
originals skyrocket - getting harder to find
and harder to play! Eastwood’s focus is to
make top quality replicas - that cost less
and play better - so the average musician
can experience the excitement of playing
one of these beautiful vintage guitars as
their every day player.
TONE & STYLE - All Eastwood Guitars
are fitted with high-quality modern components that offer an optimal playing experience that far exceeds their 1960’s original
counterparts. It is hard to find a guitar
these days that oozes more vintage style
than an Eastwood! All Eastwood Guitars
-continuedTONEQUEST REPORT V.13 N.8 June 2012
21
Resource Directory
are setup professionally before shipping to
our customers.
VALUE: All Eastwood Models are subjected to extensive research and development to continually raise the level of performance. At the same time, we are very
careful to maintain an affordability level
that our customers expect. These elements
combine to deliver peak performance and
higher quality than the originals at a much
lower price.
SERVICE: A product is only as good as
the people who stand behind it. Eastwood
Guitars service is second to none in the
industry because we simply treat customers
the same way we would expect to be treated. All guitars come with a 3 Year limited
Warranty. Guitars purchased directly from
us receive a no-questions-asked return policy. Or, if you are located near an Eastwood
Dealer, you can buy from them at the same
direct price we offer online.
THE FUTURE: We continue to bring new
models to the Eastwood line-up. Our goal
is to introduce 3-5 new models each year,
available in a wide variety of colors and
of course, including left-hand versions.
Please feel free to email us directly if you
have some suggestions for models that we
should consider developing in the future!
Eastwood Guitars, Toronto, Canada
www.eastwoodguitars.com, 416-294-6165
Eminence Eminence is proud to present
the Patriot and Redcoat series of guitar
speakers. Incorporating both British and
American cone technology into speakers
that we manufacture in the USA gives
us the ability to provide you with virtually any tone you desire. Be it British
or American, clean or dirty, big bass or
screaming highs, we have a speaker that
will allow you to “ Pick Your Sound.”
Choose from one of seventeen new models! Eminence has been building speakers
to custom specifications for nearly every
major manufacturer of guitar amplifier
and sound reinforcement products since
1967. Their new Legend Series of guitar speakers captures the essence of the
vintage American and British speaker
designs that are held in such high regard
today by so many discerning players. The
Legend Series includes classic British and
American designs for 6,” 8,” 10,” 12,” and
15” speakers utilizing ceramic and AlNiCo
magnets, British or American cones, and
Kapton polyamide voice coils for superior
heat dissipation and durability. Best of all,
because Eminence has been successfully
competing for years with other speaker
manufacturers as an OEM supplier, the
Legend Series speakers are priced far
below those of many other popular manufacturers of “ reissue” and custom speakers. The Eminence Legend Series delivers
all of the tone and durability you need, at a
lower price, with no compromises in quality. To locate genuine Eminence dealers in
your area, please visit their web site or call
Eminence Speakers.
Eminence Speaker LLC, Eminence, KY
www.eminence.com 502–845–5622
Contact: Chris Rose
Fishman: Widely recognized as the premier
designer and manufacturer of acoustic
amplification products, Fishman is committed to making acoustic musicians heard
while faithfully maintaining their own
natural tone, for the best possible sound.
The Fishman product line began with the
BP-100(tm) acoustic bass pickup, originally developed to meet founder and president
Larry Fishman’s own jazz performance
needs. With a track record of quality engineering, reliability, functional simplicity
and - most importantly - the natural tone it
enables, Fishman firmly established a reputation of excellence that consumers have
come to expect from the brand.
For acoustic guitar, Fishman offers the
flagship Acoustic Matrix(tm) Series active
pickup system, the Rare Earth(tm) Series
active magnetic soundhole pickups, and
the Neo-D(tm) magnetic soundhole pickup,
as well as passive undersaddle, classical,
archtop, and resophonic guitar pickups.
Fishman’s new Ellipse(tm) series combines
the Acoustic Matrix(tm) pickup with our
industry leading preamp design. Designed to
fit in the guitar’s soundhole, the Ellipse(tm)
system provides volume and tone control at
your fingertips and easily installs without
any modification to your instrument.
Fishman pickups are also available for
banjo, mandolin, harp/piano, violin, viola,
cello and acoustic bass. In addition, the
Concertmaster(tm) amplification system
for violin and the Full Circle(tm) upright
bass pickup offer two elegant and cuttingedge string amplification solutions.
Utilizing cutting-edge Acoustic Sound
Imaging(tm) technology, Aura(tm) features
the most innovative acoustic amplification
technology available today. This stompboxsized unit captures your instrument’s
true acoustic sound with stunning, studio
microphone quality. Anytime, anywhere.
Aura(tm) eliminates the boundaries of conventional acoustic amplification and gives
the most natural, realistic amplified acoustic
instrument sound available - both on stage
and in the studio.
Joining the award-winning Loudbox(tm)
and Loudbox Pro(tm) acoustic instrument amplifiers, the new Loudbox
Performer(tm) completes Fishman’s popular, highly-acclaimed family of acoustic
amplifiers and represents the size, power
and features that musicians demand.
Setting a new standard in acoustic amplifiers, the Loudbox(tm) series feature a
powerful tri-amped system that delivers
sweet highs and undistorted lows-even at
tremendous volumes.
As Fishman celebrates its 25th year as the
leader in acoustic amplification, the company continues to redefine the benchmark
of acoustic sound. For more information,
please visit www.fishman.com.
Fishman Transducers Inc.
Wilmington, MA
www.fishman.com 978–988–9199
Germino Amplification: Greg Germino’s
passion is in recreating and optimizing the
sound of Plexi-era amplifiers using the
highest quality components and attention
to detail born from decades of experience
as an amp tech and guitarist. Germino
amplifiers are designed and built to enable
guitarists to acquire the classic sound
of the Plexi amps again, while avoiding
the significant inconsistencies and reliability issues found in expensive, vintage
examples.
Models include:
The Classic 45 – A finely tuned, faithful replica of the JTM-45 using a custom
wound version of the Radio Spares output
transformer. Works well with 6L6GC/5881
tube types and KT-66s, or EL-34s after rebiasing. Rated at 35 watts, the Classic 45
can also be fitted with 6V6s when using a
5Y3 or 5U4 rectifier.
The Club 40 reprises the early sound of the
JTM-50 and JMP-50 Bass 50 watt heads.
A GZ-34 rectifier and solid state rectifier
are selectable by a switch allowing for the
softer rounder feel of a JTM-50, or the
quicker pick attack and response of a JMP50 Bass head.
Lead 55 & Lead 55LV – The Lead 55
models use a classic dual EL-34 output
section and ‘lead’ circuit values. Both
models are voiced the same with the only
difference being the power transformer in
the LV model supplies lower voltage at the
output stage. Additionally, the LV model
is delivered stock with optional tube/solid
state rectifier switching.
Monterey 100 – Based on the original
‘Super Amplifier’ from 1966, also known
as the JTM-45/100, the Monterey is a
faithful re-creation of the JTM-45/100 in
-continued-
22
Resource Directory
every way with extreme attention to detail
in both build quality, parts used and the
incredible sound.
selected a stainless steel alloy that provides
the best combination of fret life and installation ease.
Fillmore 100 – Lets roll back in time to
1967, the year that Marshall made the
switch from KT-66 tubes to EL-34’s with
new transformers for this tube type, and a
steel chassis All of these early amps used
a Bass circuit derived from the JTM-45.
Steel chassis made their debut in early in
67 as well.
Most fretwire is manufactured in coils for
ease of installation. Our FW39040 and
FW37053 are only offered in 24” straight
lengths to prevent twisting if coiled. Pricing
is based on orders of one pound minimum
quantity per size, plus shipping via UPS,
FedEx, or USPS. Gold colored EVO wire is
available on selected sizes only. Individual
frets cut to size, straight cut or cut and
notched tangs, are available upon request.
Minimum order quantity for pre-cut frets is
2000 pieces.
Headroom 100 – The Headroom 100 specifically emulates the sound and construction of the very early ‘68 100 watt plexi
panel Super Lead and Super Bass amplifiers to exact detail. Available with either
a “Super Lead” circuit for the ultimate in
singing sustain or, Super Bass circuit values
for those wanting a cleaner amp with a
more rounded tone.
For more information on Germino amplifiers, cabinet options, dealers and prices,
please visit our web site.
Germino Amplification
Graham, NC
www.germinoamps.com, 336-376-8354
Jescar Fretwire Securely pressed into the
fingerboard, the fret wire is the gateway
between the musician and the instrument.
It is one of the most critical components
in the playing quality of the guitar. The
interaction between the strings and frets
determines the feel of the neck as much as
the neck contour, fingerboard material, or
finish.
There are many different fret wire profiles
available, from small to large, low to high,
narrow to wide, oval to round to triangular,
all affecting the playing characteristics
and feel of the instrument. Brass frets
from days past have given way to today’s
standard material, 18% nickel silver, also
called “German Silver.”Our highly refined
nickel silver consists of 62% copper, 18%
nickel and 20% zinc. But even with 18%
nickel silver, there are differences in hardness, tensile strength, surface quality, grain
size, and other metallurgical properties
that influence a fret’s quality, performance
and feel.
Beyond 18% nickel silver, new alloys have
been employed in the production of modern fret wire that dramatically improves the
performance and aesthetics of the guitar.
Our stainless steel, with its greater hardness and tighter grain structure has much
higher wear resistance for greater fret
life. In addition, string bending is much
smoother without the friction or grinding
felt with traditional fret material. We have
CAUTION: Jescar Fretwire will improve
the tone and playability of your guitar.
www.jescar.com 877-453-7227
Just Strings.com: Now more than ever,
guitarists are reaping the benefits of technical innovations in string making that have
led to the widest selection of guitar strings
ever available. JustStrings.com is dedicated
to providing guitarists with the largest
selection of acoustic, roundwound, and
flatwound strings, complimented by exceptional personalized service and outstanding
value. Trying different types of strings often
results in amazing new discoveries that not
only improve the sound of your instrument,
but dramatically enhance your playing
enjoyment. From traditional hand–crafted
strings to high–tech exotics, JustStrings.com
exists to help you get the most out of your
instrument. Try a new set today, or order
your favorite acoustic or electric sets and
SAVE! Juststrings.com offers the best prices
on all of the major and specialty brands,
promptly delivered to your door. Shop
online at JustStrings.com, or place your
order by fax at 603–889–7026 or telephone
at 603–889–2664..
JustStrings.com, Nashua, NH
www.juststrings.com [email protected]
Keeley Electronics – Check out the new
Keeley Katana Preamp! ToneQuest subscribers receive 10% off on all pedal mods
and the Keeley Comp, Java Boost and Time
Machine boost: Keeley Electronics recently
won a Guitar Player Reader’s Choice
Award and Keeley is now the exclusive
distributor for Framptone! Robert Keeley’s
Time Machine Boost, Keeley Compressor,
and his custom, state–of–the–art modifications for vintage pedals continue to
receive rave reviews from guitarists around
the world. Keeley pedals are used by
Aerosmith, Abbey Road Studios, Steve
Vai, legendary producer Bob Rock, George
Lynch, Peter Frampton, James Burton, and
many, many more guitarists and music pros
around the world. The Time Machine Boost
is a versatile 2 channel, 3 mode pre–amplifier designed to drive your amplifiers into
overdrive or saturation. The two channels
are labeled “ Vintage,” and “ Modern,” with
the “ Vintage” side inspired by rare germanium boosts like the Dallas Rangemaster.
The “ Modern” channel is a new +23dB
gain, dual JFET transparent signal amplifier. The Keeley Compressor is a superb
audiophile and studio grade compressor
with true bypass switching and premium
metal film resistors and capacitors for the
cleanest Ross clone compressor ever available. Available with a standard Ibanez/Boss
style adapter jack and/or battery power,
you can say goodbye to that old red Dyna
Comp!
Robert Keeley pedal mods include 2 versions for TS9’s – the TS808 mod, and the “
Baked TS9” for searing hot Tube Screamer
tone. Keeley uses the original TI RC4558P
chip that appeared in the early TS808’s,
while increasing the bass response and
overdrive range. The result is a perfectly
voiced 808 that’s cleaner when turned
down and produces twice the drive/gain
when turned up, with all of the stock 808
character in the middle. The Keeley modded BD–2 is not a fuzz pedal but has the
best characteristics of a fuzz pedal, and it’s
much smoother and more realistic sounding. Other exclusive Keeley modifications
include the Boss Blues Driver BD–2 Tube
Mod, the PHAT Switch BD–2 Mod, Rat
Mods, Boss DS–1 Seeing Eye Mod, Boss
SD–1, and Boss Chorus CE–2. For detailed
specs, user comments, dealer information,
sound clips, and ordering information,
please visit the Keeley Electronics website.
Keeley Electronics, Edmond, OK
405–260–1385, www.robertkeeley.com
Lollar Custom Guitars & Pickups:
According to Jason, he never really set out
to become a custom pickup designer and
builder. Jason Lollar is a guitar builder on
Vashon Island, Washington (near Seattle)
who originally began building pickups for
his own guitars and a few friends when
he couldn’t find the tone he was after. The
word spread, and now Jason custom builds
over 30 different pickups, including Strat,
Tele, humbuckers, P90’s, custom steels
and Charlie Christian–style pickups, all
persoanlly designed and wound by Jason.
He is especially well known for his P90,
Imperial Humbucker and Tele replacement
pickups, but he has also designed pickups
for many unusual applications…
Recently, Jason was acknowledged by
23
Resource Directory
gonzo pedal steel player Robert Randolph
for having wound the pickups in his two
custom Fessenden pedal steels. And the
list doesn’t end there – Jason has wound
pickups for guitar greats such as Billy F
Gibbons, Peter Stroud, Kevin Russel, Rick
Vito, Elliot Easton, Duke Robillard, and
the Beasty Boys, among others.
Jason is always happy to personally consult with his clients via phone and e–mail
to determine the pickups that are right
for each player, and TQR recommends
Lollar pickups without exception. His
Lollar Special Strat pickups are standard
equipment in our custom built ToneQuest
guitars.
Call Jason or check out all the options
available on his web site.
www.lollarguitars.com, 206–463–9838
Mercury Magnetics: The basis of every
tube amp’s characteristic sound is the
unique design of its transformers. Mercury
transformers are legendary for their stunning tonal superiority, build quality, consistency, and reliability. We believe in oldworld customer service and single-minded
focus. Transformers are our only business,
allowing us to concentrate on providing
you with the best-sounding guitar amplifier
trannies in the world.
If your amp is suffering from bland and
unexciting tone, then it’s time for a transformer upgrade or repair. Here are your
options:
ToneClone™: Best-of-Breed Series
Transformers: Behind every great-sounding
vintage guitar amp is a piece of transformer
history. Within any amp line there are usually a large number of transformer variations,
inconsistencies and just plain ol’ building
errors that affect their sound (good or bad).
At Mercury, we seek out, study, blueprint
and replicate only the best-of-breed transformer designs (including their all-important
anomalies) and add these discoveries to
our catalog. And we make these incredible
tonal selections available to you through our
ToneClone™ line.
Axiom® Series Next-Gen Transformers:
Next-generation guitar amplifier transformers. The Axiom series are in a class
by themselves. We’ve taken our advanced
knowledge of modern transformer design
and mated it with historically best-sounding designs of the past. Axiom trannys are
hybrids that take vintage tone to the next
level! More bloom, more overtone color,
and awesome tonal depth. If you ever
needed convincing as to how outstanding
transformers affect your sound, Axiom
trannys will astonish you.
Mercury Vintage™ Transformer Service:
Most vintage transformers have already
outlived or are nearing the end of their
life expectancies. That’s the bad news –
now for the good… Mercury will restore,
rebuild or rewind your valuable original
transformers. Or, we can clone your originals so that you can continue to play your
old amp without fear of further “wear and
tear.”
caps and potentiometers, hardware, tuners, bridges and tremolos, fret wire, knobs,
nuts, switches and more...
Free Transformer Testing And Evaluation
Service: Do you think there might be
something wrong with your transformer?
Send it to us. We’ll test it in our lab and
report back to you. Our evaluation procedures are thorough, complete and reliable,
and always free. The only transformers
that come with a 10-year Manufacturer’s
Warrantee and a Money-Back Tonal
Guarantee. Made entirely in the U.S.A.
ToneQuest readers receive an exclusive
10% discount on all Mojo products! Just
reference the “ MojoQuest” discount code
when placing your order.
Mercury Magnetics
www.MercuryMagnetics.com
[email protected]
818-998-7791 404–325–0515
Mojo Musical Supply is your essential
source for vintage amplifier and guitar
parts, specializing in vintage pre-1980
reproduction cabinets and replacement
components. Whether you are restoring
an older amp or building your own design
or a vintage reproduction, we offer a full
professional range of combo and speaker
cabinets, speakers, grill cloth, baffleboards,
chassis, transformers, components, tubes
and hardware. The in-house cabinet shop
at Mojo specializes in building authentic
Fender and Marshall reproduction amplifier cabinets, custom cabinets from your
own design, as well as expert cabinet repair
and re-covering. Mojo stocks over fifty
different amp coverings and grill cloths to
insure that vintage enthusiasts and custom
amp creators have a large palette to choose
from. For restoration projects we also stock
vintage-correct replacement faceplates,
knobs, hardware, back panels and reverb
parts. Mojo has also become one of the
largest vacuum tube importers in the world,
stocking over 20,000 tubes. Because we
buy tubes in such large volumes, our prices
are always very competitive. We also stock
professional amplifier test equipment for
the home or commercial bench.
NEW! We now offer pedal repair parts and
complete kits, plus René Martinez’ “Texas
Guitar Whiz” Signal Splitter.
For guitarists, builders and pro techs, Mojo
has expanded our line of premium guitar
components and parts to include bodies
and necks, a full line of custom-wound
single coil and humbucking pickups and
parts, pickup covers, wiring harnesses,
Most importantly, you can depend on our
knowledgeable and experienced staff here
in Burgaw, North Carolina to help you
make the right choice the first time! Be
sure to access our online Knowledge Base,
videos and blog at mojoshout.com.
Mojo Musical Supply
Burgaw, NC
www.mojotone.com
1–800–927–MOJO
PLEK: The brand name PLEK stands for
a technology which allows the best fret
dress and setup work, based on a computer
controlled scan.
The Plek is a computerized tool that scans
an instrument strung to pitch, generating
graphic views of the fret plane, fret heights,
fret shape and placement, fingerboard relief
radius, humps and bumps — basically
everything that luthiers and repair pros have
wanted to see well but couldn’t, until now.
Besides having measurement and dressing
capabilities many times more accurate than
the human eye allows, the PLEK has two
particularly great advantages over manual
fretwork
.
First, it scans and dresses a guitar while
it is tuned to pitch. This is a major breakthrough, since necks are subjected to
approximately 100 pounds of string tension. This string tension invariably affects
the shape of the fret plane, creating curves
and humps that change when the strings
are removed for a fret dress. The PLEK
identifies precisely what needs to be done
for perfect results when the instrument is
re-strung, whereas even the most skilled
luthier or repair professional must guess
about how to compensate for the effect of
string tension when dressing the neck with
the tension released.
Secondly, the PLEK applies very sophisticated formulas for optimum neck curve
or relief, adjusting the calculations for
the actual string height and individual
string gauge from the treble side of the
fingerboard to the bass. Achieving these
same results by hand would be lucky and
extremely rare at best!
The Plek is now in use by some of the top
repair and restoration experts worldwide.
We invite you to contact the Plek repair
-continued-
24
Resource Directory
shop nearest you, or learn more about Plek
technology at
www.plek.com
Plek, Berlin/Germany
+49 30 5369–6339, [email protected]
Joe Glaser, Nashville/TN
(615) 298–1139, [email protected]
Gary Brawer, San Francisco/CA
FretTek, Los Angeles/CA
Philtone, Baltimore/MD
Peekamoose Guitars, New York, NY
(212) 869-2396, www.peekamoose.com
Suhr Guitars, Lake Elsinore/CA
(951) 471–2334, johnsuhr@suhrguitars.
com
Charlie Chandler’s Guitar Experience
London, UK +44 20 8973–1441
[email protected]
GuitarLabs Scandinavia, Stockholm,
Sweden
Phone: +46 8 644–9480, [email protected]
RS Guitarworks: You can depend on RS
Guitarworks as your source for the finest
custom guitars, expert guitar finishing,
refinishing and aging, complete guitar
assembly and repair, custom electronic
upgrade kits, pickups, pickup covers, hardto-find hardware, and more.
Located in Winchester, Kentucky, RS
Guitarworks began as a small repair and
shop in 1994. As the word spread among
guitarists, business rapidly grew for RS,
and today they receive guitars from around
the world for restoration, finishing, aging
and custom voicing with specialty components and exclusive pickups wound to RS
specs by Lindy Fralin.
RS’s Old Friend, SolarFlair, Stepside and
custom guitars can be seen in the hands of
many top players, and offer build quality
and hardware second to none. Every guitar
RS Guitarworks builds is meticulously
crafted with wood personally selected
by RS,finished in nitrocellulose lacquer,
assembled with premium components, and
individually voiced in final assembly as a
true custom instrument.
RS Guitarworks also offers many hard-tofind aged, vintage replica parts and other
specialty accessories for vintage Fender,
Gibson and many other guitars that in
many cases are exclusive to RS.
The RS Guitarworks Premium Wiring
Kits offer a dramatic improvement over
the factory electronics found in even the
most expensive guitars. During extensive
research and development in creating RS
Premium kits, they tested over 20 different tone capacitors and nearly every type
of potentiometer made before developing
the RS SuperPot™. All the RS upgrade
kits feature measured RS SuperPots™,
that have a 5% tolerance for volumes, and
CTS™ audio pots within 10% of their
specified value for tone controls. Also in
the RS kits are a wide variety of tone caps
for single coil and humbucking pickups
made by Jensen and vintage-correct replica
caps by Luxe. RS Guitarworks™ also
feature caps made here in the USA exclusively for RS called
GuitarCaps™. RS Guitarworks wiring
upgrade kits impart a fuller, clearer tone
than standard factory components, with a
smoother, more even and responsive taper
from each pot. Additionally, each potentiometer is tested on a digital meter, checked
for the proper sweep pattern, sorted and
labeled as a neck/volume, neck/tone,
bridge/volume or bridge/tone control.
Wiring Upgrade Kits are available in
Vintage, Modern and Reissue styles for
various Les Paul type guitars, as well
as 335/345/355, Telecaster, Stratocaster,
PRS guitars, and Explorer and Flying V
types in both kit and pre-wired versions.
Custom wiring and nearly any other configuration can also be built by calling RS
Guitarworks™ directly at (859) 737-5300.
Please call or visit the RS Guitarworks web
site for complete information on finishing,
refinishing, restoration and aging of new
and used guitars custom wiring kits, vintage repro parts, pickups and repairs.
RS Guitarworks
859-737-5300, www.rsguitarworks.net
Stewart MacDonald: Stewart-MacDonald
offers a complete line of hard–to–find
tools, parts, accessories, instructional videos and books for building, repairing, setting up, and optimizing the playability and
tone of stringed instruments. Whether you
are just getting started or you’re a seasoned
luthier, you’ll find everything you need in
the Stew–Mac catalog, including: fret wire,
finishing supplies, glues and adhesives,
wood, bodies, necks, binding, tuners, nuts
and saddles, inlay, bridges, tailpieces,
electronics, pickups, and free information sheets and professional advice! Their
friendly customer service and technical
support staff are trained to help you make
the best product choices, and they also
offer an Unconditional Return Guarantee.
If you’re not satisfied with an item for any
reason, simply return it.
Stew-Mac is the leading supplier of inno-
vative products for guitarists and repair
pros, and every thing they make is guaranteed to work well, because every product
is tested by the professional luthiers at
Stewart MacDonald first! The master
builders and repairmen on staff include
Dan Erlewine – well–known author of
guitar repair books and magazine articles,
member of the ToneQuest Report advisory
board, and a regular contributor to TQR.
Dan and all of the experienced luthiers
at Stew–Mac personally develop and test
every product the company offers, and
they are also dedicated to education. The
Stewart MacDonald catalog is packed with
helpful tips, and the company produces an
extensive series of training videos at their
facility in Athens, Ohio.
For more information on the entire range
of products available, please visit the
Stewart MacDonald web site. In addition
to their free online help service, your telephone call is also always welcome.
Stewart MacDonald
www.stewmac.com,
1–800–848–2273
Swart Amplification: Long before the first
Swart amp ever appeared, Michael Swart
had been playing through vintage amps for
decades at live gigs and recording sessions
as both a guitarist and recording engineer in
Wilmington, NC.
Despite his access to countless vintage
Fender, Vox, and Ampeg amps, Swart
always felt the quintessential small recording/home use amp had yet to be built,
thus begin the quest for the best tone via a
small, manageable package. After a slew of
suitcase amp wannabees, emerged the original Space Tone 6V6se, a Class A, 5 watt,
Single-Ended, tube rectified beast with an
über simple circuit revolving around the
soulful 6V6. The amp delivered big sound
with unmatched musicality along with
amazing distortion. The 18w Atomic Space
Tone soon followed to wide acclaim, and
Swart amplifiers were quickly embraced
by working pros and guitarists who shared
Swart’s appreciation for truly exceptional
guitar tone.
Today, six different Swart models are
hand-built to serve the needs of guitarists
for live performance and recording:
Space Tone 6V6se - The amp that started
it all. 5w, Class A, Single-Ended, Tube
Rectified, 8” Weber, finger-jointed, lacquered tweed pine cab. Amazing
STR-Tweed - Another BIG Class A,
Single-Ended 5w w/extra stage, Swart
reverb, and 12” speaker.
Atomic Space Tone - Perhaps the amp
25
Resource Directory
that REALLY put Swart on the map.
Considered one of the finest made. 18w
6V6 or 6L6 with tube reverb & tremolo
AST Pro: AST circuit w/slightly larger cab,
recessed knobs, 12” of choice
AST Head MKII - AST in a head w/defeatable master volume and choice of cabinets
Super Space Tone 30 Head (SST-30) 30w
of soulful 6V6/6L6/EL-34 mother of tone
beauty. Richer than chocolate. Matching,
custom tweed 2 x 12 Space Tone Cabinet
Head to Swart Online for the latest news,
rants, photos, raves, artists, events, and dealer
locations. Michael answers every call. Kelly
responds to every mail. Personal service is
#1 priority.
Swart Amplifier Co., Wilmington, NC
www.swartamps.com, 910-620-2512
Toneman: Veteran working guitarist
Don Butler is an experienced tech who
specializes in servicing, restoring JMIera and modding Korg era Vox Amps to
vintage specs. These, of course would be
valve (tube) amps. As well as servicing &
upgrading any `62-`89 era valve Marshall
amps. He also services most other Golden
era British valves amps like HiWatt,
Selmer, Orange , Laney’s and Sound City
’s. Also included are Tweed , Blonde,
Brown and Blackface era Fender Amps.
Don offers a number of standard mods for
reissue Vox, Fender and Marshall amps
to bring them into “Vintage Spec” and
achieve that original tone/sound that reissues sadly lack. These have earned him a
solid reputation throughout the country for
dramatically improved, authentic Vintage
Tone from reissue amplifiers. Don has used
the hand-made Mercury Magnetics Axiom/
Tone Clone transformers for over 20 years
along with vintage spec Sozo Premium
caps (both the Iskra/”mustard caps” replicas and Blue Molded Fender types) and
Carbon Comp resistors in the signal path
to bring reissue amps to Vintage specs.
We also mod reissue Vox and Cry Baby
Wah Wah’s to original 1967 specs, Ibanez
TS-9’s and Upgrade Vox “Valve Tone”
pedals.
Don is equally at home working on Gibson
Historics and Standard Production guitars, Fender guitars, Rickenbacker, and of
course, Gretsch Guitars. This applies to
both Vintage models and current production guitars, electric and acoustic. Anything
from re-frets & fret dressing, rewiring, etc.
to simple set-ups and adjustments.
Don was also the first dealer for German
made Pyramid Strings, starting in 1995.
Don does attends the NAMM Show and
the Frankfurt Musikmesse for Pyramid.
Providing his input, Pyramid has reintroduced the Round Core, pure nickel
flatwound “Pyramid Golds” and the exceptional Round core/round wound “Nickel
Classics” . All Pyramids use a silver plated
core of German Steel and pure nickel wire
wrap. All plain strings are pure silver plated
German Steel.
Also available now are the Bronze Wound/
Round Core Acoustic “Pyramid Western
Folk”. These strings are reminiscent of
the strings from the `50’s & `60’s before
most manufacturers went to Hex cores and
smaller wrap wires. Strings can be ordered
securely online through the website!
Toneman is open 10 am to 6 pm (Pacific
Time), Tuesday thru Saturday!
661-259-4544, [email protected],
www.tone-man.com
TonePros Sound Labs & Marquis
Distribution: Since our first published
review article, The ToneQuest Report has
enthusiastically recommended the patented
TonePros system of guitar components.
TonePros tailpieces feature a patented locking design. For years, guitars with stop
tailpieces and wrap-around bridges have
been cursed by “lean” or tilt on their stud
mounts. Since string tension was all that
held tailpieces on, the only contact area
was just a bit of the edge of the bottom
flange, just a bit of the lip of the stud top,
and often just as little contact with the intonation screws. TonePros® Locking Studs
provide 100% of the contact area of the
bottom flange, 100% of the contact area
of the stud top, no lean, and dramatically
improved sustain, resonance and tone.
TonePros bridge and saddle components
feature the “patented pinch” - the lateral
pressure that is applied from the strategically placed “tone screws” that greatly
reduce the play or wiggle of the bridge
posts in their inserts. The posts are frozen
in place, resulting in a solid connection
between the strings, bridge, and guitar
top, transferring more string vibration and
resonance to the guitar body, resulting in
an audibly stronger, sweeter, woodier type
of resonance and sustain. And once your
guitar is set up, it’s locked. Bridge height
and intonation settings remain intact and
exact, even after re-stringing. TonePros®
System II Components are found on the
worlds best guitars, played by the world’s
best artists.
TonePros Sound Labs International,
www.tonepros.com
www.guitarpartsdepot.com
818–735–7944
Marquis Distribution: At Marquis
Distribution, we offer the highest quality
guitar parts to fit your needs. We specialize
in guitar replacement parts, and hard to find,
vintage-inspired and vintage replica parts,
including aged TonePros and TonePros
Kluson parts, emphasizing your desire to
achieve a vintage look and tone at an exceptionally high level of performance. Whether
you need to replace one part on your guitar
or outfit many guitars with whole new
setups, our focus remains on the individual
customer and your unique needs. Be sure to
request the 10% ToneQuest Discount when
ordering!
www.marquisdistribution.com
209-845-9579
Visual Sound: Founded in 1995 by guitarist
Bob Weil, Visual Sound continues to grow
it business and expand its product line,
while remaining true to their core commitment of “real tone for real people”.
At this year’s Winter NAMM show in
January, Visual Sound unveiled three new
products for 2012: the Visual Sound Tap
Delay pedal (following on the heels of last
year’s big hit debut of the Dual Tap Delay),
the Time Bandit click track converter and
BPM generator for delay pedals – both of
which will be available later this summer.
In addition, Visual Sound has brought back
the Pure Tone Buffer, which is available
now through their Custom Shop.
The Dual Tap Delay pedal, which made its
debut in last fall, continues to receive rave
reviews and robust sales!
Visual Sound’s previous release of the
GarageTone series of effects pedals continues to “wow” players of all stripes.
No longer does a musician on a budget
have to sacrifice tone and reliability. The
GarageTone series of pedals have been
designed to have boutique quality sounds
and superior construction at amazingly
low prices. Each circuit was designed by
Weil and chief engineer R.G. Keen with
all the time and care that players have
come to expect from Visual Sound. The
pedals include: the Oil Can (Phaser), the
Drivetrain (Overdrive), the GarageTone
Tremolo, the Axle Grease (Delay) and the
Chainsaw (Distortion).
We’re also happy to say that we’ve recently gotten excellent reviews from Guitar
Player, Guitar World, Premier Guitar, and
Vintage Guitar magazines.
The GarageTone series joins the already
critically-acclaimed V2 Series of pedals:
Jekyll & Hyde, Route 66, H2O, Double
Trouble, Son of Hyde, Liquid Chorus,
-continued-
26
Resource Directory
Route 808, Angry Fuzz, as well as the 10th
Anniversary edition of the Visual Volume
pedal (now in its 7th year of ‘raising the
roof’).
Finally, Visual Sound will once again
be a Tour sponsor for the Van’s Warped
Tour, which will feature the Van’s Warped
Distortion pedal in over all 40-plus dates.
This will be the fourth year in a row that
Van’s and Visual Sound have partnered in
this ever-popular summertime series.
To find out more about all of the pedals
and 1SPOT power supplies, and for more
information about Visual Sound, sound
samples, videos, artist endorsers and product information, please visit the Visual
Sound web site, new Facebook page,
Twitter, or contact Bob Weil personally.
Visual Sound
www.visualsound.net
www.facebook.com/visualsoundpedals
931-487-9001
Wampler Pedals: There are a lot of pedal
makers around that are just very ordinary.
An overdrive, a distortion, maybe a fuzz
thrown in, but nothing that really stands
apart from the rest of the gear world. Maybe
there’s nothing terrible about being ordinary.
Ordinary is safe and ordinary is comfortable,
but the cost of being ordinary is living inside
a box with all the other ordinary companies
and builders who are doing the same old
ordinary things and selling you the same old
ordinary tones. But who wants to be ordinary? More importantly, who wants to sound
ordinary?
Wampler Pedals makes effect pedals that
are anything but ordinary. Guitarists like
Wampler Pedals because they want to
sound extraordinary. They want something
that inspires them… to play better, create
music better, and sound better.
While other builders play it safe selling products they’ve been making for
decades, some of them reissuing designs
that deserve the label “antique,” Wampler
has constantly pushed the envelope with
new and exciting products designed to
inspire guitarists to break out of the safety
of the ordinary and into true excellence.
Providing extremely high quality components and genuinely forward-thinking
designs at prices that compete very well
with anybody in the boutique industry,
Wampler Pedals has a product to fit virtually every need.
Brian Wampler didn’t invent the distortion
pedal, but anyone who has used a few of
his products can tell you he has done at
least as much as anyone to make sure that
the sound in your head can come out of
your speakers. Best of all, it doesn’t stop
with what’s available. With Brian Wampler
continuing to wield the soldering iron like
an artist’s paint brush, the future has some
serious tone in store. Wampler Pedals
rocks today, and will rock tomorrow as
new tonal options continue to be made
available: definitely affordable, certainly
competitive, and tonefully extraordinary.
Wampler Pedals
www.wamplerpedals.com
Brian Wampler
[email protected]
Warehouse Guitar Speakers® LLC: is an
Internet-based retail speaker supplier and
manufacturer based in Paducah, KY – an
area of the country with a long history in
speaker manufacturing that includes the
original CTS company, Credence Speakers,
Voice Communication Coil, and Hawley
Products – the oldest cone manufacturer in
the world. When an OEM speaker manufacturer needed to clear warehouse space
in 2006, WGS was born and began manufacturing and selling American-assembled
guitar speakers to the public.
Today we build a wide range of high-quality and reasonably priced 10 and 12-inch
Alnico and Ceramic magnet guitars speakers that celebrate and reprise the golden era
of speaker manufacturing in the USA and
England during the ‘60s and ‘70s, including the 15 watt Alnico Black & BlueTM,
50 watt Alnico BlackHawkTM,60 watt
Veteran 30TM, 25 watt Green BeretTM, 80
watt British LeadTM, 65 watt ET65TM, 30
watt ReaperTM, and 75 watt Retro 30TM,
among others. WGS also builds high-power
bass and PA speakers, and we are constantly
developing and adding new speaker models
to meet the demands of today’s guitarists.
Why should you consider buying WGS
speakers? At a time when speaker manufacturers have moved production to Asia, compromising quality and reliability while prices
continue to increase, our speakers are proudly
assembled in the USA by a team with decades
of speaker design and building experience, at
a reasonable price. Our employees take pride
in building the very best speakers available
anywhere. Selling direct via the Web enables
us to keep prices low without compromising
quality. You buy direct from the manufacturer,
and we proudly stand behind our products
with fast shipping and exceptional customer
service. For information on the entire range
of WGS guitar and bass speakers, please visit
our web site today.
Warehouse Guitar Speakers
www.WarehouseSpeakers.com
270-217-0740
WD Music Products: As a special offer
WD® Music Products, Inc. is offering a
10% off coupon to Tonequest readers…
Visit us at www.wdmusic.com and enter
coupon code TQWD at checkout. Pleazse
note: Coupon good for wdmusic.com web
orders only, offer not valid on wdbiz.com
orders.
For the past thirty years WD® Music
Products has been providing quality service and parts to satisfied working musicians, discriminating builders and OEMs.
WD® pioneered the field of aftermarket
pickguards and continues to lead the way
in the niche we created in 1978. We have
manufactured thousands of pickguards and
if you need a replacement or something
you envision yourself we can make it happen. For many years WD® Music has also
carried a full line of replacement parts for
just about any stringed instrument.
WD® Music is proud to continue the legacy of Kluson® tuning machines, one of
the most respected OEM and replacement
tuners for decades. Replace or restore your
vintage instrument with genuine Kluson®
tuning machines from WD® Music. We
stock Kent Armstrong® pickups, L.R.
Baggs® acoustic gear, Q-Parts® custom
knobs and accessories, Bigsby® tailpieces,
Graph Tech® products, Wilkinson®
bridges, Grover® tuners and accessories,
Big Bends® maintenance supplies, Guitar
Facelifts, effects and much more.
History is repeating itself with genuine
Kluson® tuners, continuing with WD®’s
customer service, and…Stromberg® Jazz
Guitars. No one can attempt or claim to
reproduce the prestige of the original archtop Stromberg® guitars. But with history
in mind WD® is also proud to distribute
Stromberg® Jazz Guitars. With six models
to satisfy everyone from the serious working jazz musician to the rockabilly king
Stromberg® offers an affordable, quality
instrument for almost any taste or style.
Stromberg® jazz Guitars is a small, limited
production archtop guitar company whose
main goals are quality, playability and
affordability. Play one and see.
WD® Music Products. Thirty years
of knowledge, service, quality parts
and accessories waiting to serve you.
Everything from pickguards, tuning
machines, pickups, electronics, necks, bodies, bridges, prewired assemblies and hard
to find hardware—if your guitar or bass
needs it, chances are WD® Music has it.
Old fashioned customer service, genuine
Kluson® tuners, classic Stromberg® Jazz
Guitars, and so much more.
877-WDMUSIC
www.WDmusic.com
27
OVERFLOW
XX
ToneQuest
Report
the
PO Box 717 Decatur, GA. 30031-0717
PERIODICAL POSTAGE
PAID AT
DECATUR,GA
AND ADDITIONAL
MAILING OFFICES
TM
the
ToneQuest
ToneQuest
Report
TM
Editor/Publisher David Wilson
Associate Publisher Liz Medley
Graphic Design Rick Johnson
EDITORIAL BOARD
Acquire Your Personal Copy
of the 1999-2011 TQR Archives
NOW ON SALE!
Imagine having a PDF file of every issue
of TQR on DVD, including a searchable issue-by-issue index for your future
reference and enjoyment. Acquiring the
ToneQuest Archives is now more affordable than ever, priced at just $299.00 when
you order by July 1, 2012. Order today and
you’ll also receive a free ToneQuest guitar
strapwith your DVD. Order your personal
copy of the ToneQuest Archives today by
clicking the Order Back Issues selection
on the main menu at www.tonequest.com,
or call us toll-free at 1-877-MAX-TONE
(629-8663). Don’t delay - order your
DVD archive today!
Analogman
Peter Frampton
Albert Lee
Tom Anderson
Greg Germino
Germino Amplification
Adrian Legg
Tom Anderson GuitarWorks
Mark Baier
Billy F. Gibbons
Victoria Amplifiers
ZZ Top
Jeff Bakos
Joe Glaser
Bakos AmpWorks
Glaser Instruments
Dick Boak
Tom Guerra
CF Martin & Co.
Mambo Sons
Joe Bonamassa
John Harrison
Phil Brown
Dan Butler
Butler Custom Sound
Don Butler
The Toneman
Steve Carr
Carr Amplifiers
A Brown Soun
Johnny Hiland
Gregg Hopkins
Vintage Amp Restoration
Mark Johnson
Delta Moon
Phil Jones
Dave Malone
The Radiators
Jimbo Mathus
Shane Nicholas
Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitar Amplifers
René Martinez
The Guitar Whiz
Greg Martin
The Kentucky Headhunters
Richard McDonald
VP Mktg, Fender Musical Instruments
Justin Norvell
Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitars
James Pennebaker
Gruhn Guitars
Riverhorse
KORG/Marshall/VOX USA
K&M Analog Designs
Tommy Shannon
Larry Cragg
Mark Karan
Neil Young
Bob Weir & Ratdog
Jol Dantzig
Robert Keeley
Hamer Guitars
Robert Keeley Electronics
Ronnie Earl
Gordon Kennedy
Dan Erlewine
Ernest King
Stewart-MacDonald
Gibson Custom Shop
Larry Fishman
Chris Kinman
Fishman Transducers
Kinman AVn Pickups
Bill Finnegan
Mike Kropotkin
Klon Centaur
KCA NOS Tubes
Lindy Fralin
Sonny Landreth
Mitch Colby
Double Trouble
Todd Sharp
Nashville Amp Service
Tim Shaw
Fender Musical Instruments Corp.
John Sprung
American Guitar Center
Peter Stroud
Buddy Whittington
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Greg V
Nashville
Lou Vito
Artist Relations, PRS Guitars
The ToneQuest Report™ (ISSN 1525-3392) is published monthly by Mountainview Publishing LLC, P.O. Box 717 Decatur, GA. 30031-0717, 1-877-MAX-TONE,
email: [email protected]. Periodicals Postage Paid at Decatur, GA and At Additional Mailing Offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to:TheToneQuest
Report™, PO Box 717, Decatur, GA. 30031-0717.The annual subscription fee for The ToneQuest Report™ is $89 per year for 10 issues. International subscribers please add US $40. Please remit payment in U.S. funds only. VISA, MasterCard and American Express accepted. The ToneQuest Report™ is published solely
for the benefit of its subscribers. Copyright © 2012 by Mountainview Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced in
any form or incorporated into any information retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright holder. Please forward all subscription requests,
comments, questions and other inquiries to the above address or contact the publisher at [email protected]. Opinions expressed in The ToneQuest Report™
are not necessarily those of this publication.Mention of specific products, services or technical advice does not constitute an endorsement. Readers are advised
to exercise extreme caution in handling electronic devices and musical instruments.
28

clicking here - Echoparkguitars.com

Transcription

Similar documents

El Mirage - Tao Guitars

Downloadable Brochure - Kevin Michael by McPherson Guitars

Thanks for your interest in Rio Grande Pickups. We are reaching out

Vintage Guitar Magazine Ad

Read review - Rahbek Guitars

the tonequest report

ROCKSHOP SPECIALS APRIL 2012

Christmas Sale - best in music education center

MICHAEL ANGELO BATIO

Info - Comins Guitars