Kickstarter For Star Trek: TNG Concept Album
Guitarist Jason Kaye has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his prog rock concept album. Now, I’m always on the side of prog rock concept albums, but this one has an extra special angle: it’s inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation. Aah, this brings back memories of falling asleep to TNG after Letterman when I was in high school. I watched three quarters of so many episodes – I got to the end of more than a few, but I still have quite a lot to catch up on. Of course, then Deep Space Nine came along and I would regularly fall asleep after about five minutes instead of 45. Hehe. Anyway, here’s some info from Jason’s Kickstarter page: Continue reading
Seymour Duncan Sentient Out Now
It’s about time we seven and eight stringers had some more passive humbuckers designed just for us! There are relatively few ‘extra string’ pickups out there that aren’t based on existing models, but that’s starting to change now that the guitar world really seems to be accepting 7 and 8-strings as part of the musical landscape. Seymour Duncan has launched three 7/8 pickups this year, the Nazgul, the Pegasus and the Sentient. You can hear the Sentient (along with the Nazgul) in this video featuring Keith Merrow and Ola Englund: Continue reading
REVIEW: Line 6 Tyler Variax JTV-69
Line 6′s original Variax guitars were a great idea. They modelled various classic axes (electrics, acoustics, 12-strings and more) and they allowed you to recall various tunings with the touch of a button (actually the spin of a pot), but their look was a bit of an acquired taste. Their lack of pickups and the slinky undersized shape left them looking a little bit like a toy, and many players said they liked the idea but just couldn’t see themselves playing the guitar. We’re a conservative lot, it seems, despite the fact that we love to plug an electrical concoction of wood, wire and magnets into a different electrical concoction of wood, wire and magnets. Continue reading
REVIEW: Egnater Tweaker 112
I’ve reviewed a few Egnater Tweaker amps over the past few years. The 6L6-loaded Tweaker 40 was a fun little amp with plenty of switches for customising your tone, while the Tweaker 88 rocked a set of KT-88 power tubes for a different tonal character. The Tweaker 112 is a little more closely aligned with the Tweaker 40, but with 6V6 power tubes and its own thang going on. The Tweaker 112 is a 15 watt tube combo with a single 12″ speaker (a Celestion G12H-30) housed in a void-free birch ply cabinet. There’s only a single channel this time around, with controls for Bass, Middle and Treble as well as a Master Volume and a Gain control. But that’s not where the tone sculpting ends. Continue reading
The Ibanez Electric Guitar Book
Okay, you’re reading this site, so you know by now that I’m a huge Ibanez nerd. And I’m a big collector of music books too (see my article for Gibson on five music books you must own). So you can imagine my giddiness when I found out about The Ibanez Electric Guitar Book. I already have Ibanez: The Untold Story, which was released by the company itself a few years ago. But Tony Bacon is a legend among guitar book authors, and it’s always a pleasure to read his work. So get thee to Amazon and order The Ibanez Electric Guitar Book: A Complete History of Ibanez Electric Guitars
NEW GUITAR DAY: Ibanez Iron Label 8-String
It’s here! My new Ibanez RGIR28FE! I purchased it from Ibanez Guitar Centre after a few months of research into which model was right for me. So why 8-string? Well, I’ve been playing 7-string for about 10 years now and sometimes it just feels like my music wants to go lower than the 7 is capable of. I like to play basslines and melodies at the same time, and it’s a real bummer when you just can’t reach all the notes you hear in your head. The Iron Label series is designed specifically with metal in mind, with aggressive styling and active EMG pickups on most models (some have DiMarzios), but to be honest I’m probably not going to be playing a huge amount of death metal on mine. The eighth string seems to lend itself to lots of stoner rock and goth ideas, and the occasional Geezer Butler-style bassline, so I can imagine playing a lot of really earthy sounding stuff on this as I become more and more familiar with it. Continue reading
The Beatles ‘Help!’ Coming To Blu-Ray
My son is a huge Beatles fan. Dude is six years old and he loves them. Every now and then he’ll tell me how sad he is that ‘John Lemon’ is dead. And he loves Yellow Submarine. He’s already got (okay, I’ve already got) the previous release of Help! on DVD, but now that rather excellent film is about to be released on Blu-ray for the first time, with an hour of extra features. And I dunno about you, but this is definitely on my ‘Must own on Blu-ray as well’ list. Here’s the press release: Continue reading
Gibson Sully Erna Les Paul Studio
Now this is pretty neat: Gibson USA is releasing a Sully Erna Les Paul Studio with – get this – a built-in flanger. I love this rarely-seen-these-days idea, and I hope it’ll make its way into more guitars. In fact, I’m pretty amazed that a Tube Screamer-style overdrive circuit isn’t a standard feature in pretty much every guitar at this point. The Sully Erna model is very distinctively a Godsmack/Sully axe, with its huge pearlescent sun logo, double-star 12th-fret inlay and moon-and-star headstock inlay, so it’s probably only going to appeal to Godsmack fans, but if you happen to dig it on its own merits, I think it’s well worth checking out. Continue reading
RIP Trevor Bolder
Trevor Bolder – bass player for David Bowie’s Spiders From Mars and for Uriah Heep – has died of cancer aged 62. Man, glam just wouldn’t be the same without the image of Bolder, huge sideburns and Gibson EB-O bass, but more importantly, it wouldn’t sound the same. Just listen to his work on Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups. And Bolder remained active with Uriah Heep up until 2011′s awesome Into The Wild album. Here’s an official statement from Uriah Heep: Continue reading
COOL GEAR ALERT: Gibson Bill Kelliher Golden Axe
Well, I for one am surprised that the first signature axe of Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher isn’t a Silverburst Les Paul, but this is kinda better because it’s its own thing: the Gibson Bill Kelliher Golden Axe Explorer. Bill has loaded this baby up with all sorts of unique elements: LACE Nitro Hemi humbuckers, gold-plated hardware, a hot-stamped Golden Axe truss-rod cover, cream pickguard with hot-stamped Mastodon logo, cream binding, and Bill’s choice of Go-Gold Burst finish in high-gloss nitrocellulose lacquer. Wanna buy one? Here it is at Musicians Friend. Continue reading
Hi! I'm Peter Hodgson. I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), Blunt, Beat (including their weekly hard rock/metal column Crunch) and The Brag. And I'm Assistant Social Coordinator with Seymour Duncan.
I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18. I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week), a setup tech, a newspaper editor, and I've also dabbled in radio a little bit. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my hobbies include drinking way too much coffee, and eating way too much Mexican food.
You can check out my guitar playing at Bandcamp or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com