NAMM: Washburn Brings Back The P4
The Washburn P4 was one of the coolest guitars of the late 90s. It was vaguely Les Paul-ish in general feel, but with a look all its own and really comfortable balance. Nuno Bettencourt was pictured with them a lot during his Schizophonic era. And now it’s back! It’s being built in Washburn’s USA Custom Shop, and it has some pretty serious hardware: Seymour Duncan ’59 humbuckers, Grover 18:1 chrome tuners, TonePros tune-o-matic-style bridge with Schaller fine-tune tailpiece… and of course it’s got the Buzz Feiten Tuning System for consistent intonation. And best of all: it looks cool.
Here’s the press release.
Chicago, January, 2013 – Washburn Guitars brings back an old friend with the re-release of the P4, one of Washburn’s popular models from the ’90s.
Built in the USA Custom Shop, the P4 features a solid mahogany body with a carved, bound maple top, and a mahogany neck with a bound ebony fingerboard and pearl teardrop inlays. The top shelf hardware includes a chrome TonePros® tune-o-matic style bridge with Schaller® fine tuning tailpiece. Premium Grover® 18:1 chrome tuners are utilized to ensure micro fine tuning stability. Seymour Duncan ’59 pickups are controlled by 1 volume and 1 tone knob and chosen with a 3-way toggle switch. The Buzz Feiten Tuning System® ensures accurate intonation all the way up the fingerboard.
The Custom Shop has gone to great lengths to make sure the current P4 is a faithful recreation of the original P4; producing thick, meaty tones ideal for classic rock, blues and jazz. The P4 is available in Tiffany Blue and Silver Sparkle.
NAMM 2012: LTD Buz-7 Buz McGrath signature model
Unearth’s Buz McGrath always had some of the freaking coolest custom Ibanez models. So many of us screamed bloody heresy when he switched to ESP. It’s not that ESP guitars are bad or anything – c’mon, they’re amazing – it’s just that Buz’s ideas always worked so well with Ibanii. Would his ideas translate over to the ESP aesthetic? Well get a load of this:
Ooooh yeah. That’s the LTD Buz-7 right there, my friend. I especially like the subtly angled trem cavity (it’s really like that, yeah? It’s not an optical illusion?), the black bound maple fretboard, the Snow White Sunburst finish and the reverse headstock. Other features: neck-through-body construction, maple neck, alder body, 25.5″ scale, Xtra Thin Flat neck contour, 24 extra jumbo frets, EMG 707 active pickups, Grover tuners, Floyd Rose 1000 series bridge. More info here.
COOL GEAR ALERT: Perri Ink. Guitars
What’s more fun than customising your axe with top-shelf components? Why, starting your own company and building guitars with all that neat stuff already built in, of course! Nick Perri, lead guitarist for Shinedown, Perry Farrell, Silvertide, Matt Sorum and now SINAI, has done just that with Perri Ink. Guitars. Check it out, and follow Perri Ink. Guitars on Twitter.
PRESS RELEASE
NICK PERRI UNVEILS NEW LINE OF INSTRUMENTS UNDER HIS PERRI INK. BRAND
ROCK GUITARIST AND ENTREPRENEUR WILL RELEASE TWO GUITAR MODELS THIS SPRING
MARCH 23, 2011 – PHILADELPHIA, PA — Nick Perri, the internationally recognized lead guitarist for such bands/artists as Shinedown, Perry Farrell, Silvertide, Matt Sorum, and his own recently assembled, SINAI, announced via his Twitter feed that as of today, his company, PERRI INK. LLC, will start selling boutique, handmade guitars under the brand name, Perri Ink. Guitars.
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