INTERVIEW: Cold Chisel’s Ian Moss
Cold Chisel are one of a kind. Their music is equally likely to appeal to the guitar nerd down the street as it is to the guy who fixes the hole in the roof, the lady who makes your coffee, your doctor. Yet somehow the band never seemed to make it big outside of Australia. Maybe it was just a case of wrong time, wrong place. But perhaps the democratisation of music will open new doors for the reformed band. Perhaps new album No Plans will be their big chance to show the rest of the world what they’re capable of: soul and blues-tinged rock with the powerful vocals of Jimmy Barnes and the brilliant guitar work of Ian Moss. Produced by Kevin Shirley, No Plans must be a difficult album for the band. It’s their first in 14 years, and the first without drummer Steve Prestwich, who died in January 2011. One of his compositions, “I Got Things To Do,” is on the album, along with some new tracks played on the band’s record-breaking Light the Nitro tour of 2011. “In late 2009 the five of us made plans to record together again and do a tour,” As Barnes says. “After lots of twists and turns that’s exactly what we’ve ended up doing but due to Steve’s passing those plans changed a lot along the way. The last two years have reminded all of us that sometimes life deals up things you don’t expect. You can’t take anything or anyone for granted. Sometimes it’s best to have no plans.”
I Heart Guitar: No Plans is a pretty diverse album. It goes through a lot of different moods. Was that the plan?
Ian Moss: I guess it’s hard to be objective. I was kind of hoping it’d seem like more of a unified record, so it’s interesting to hear that there are lots of different styles. I guess over and above, we were trying to achieve raw power.
Well the title track, which starts the album, definitely does that. It kicks off very strongly.
Yeah! The distinctive tones of Barnes. The first thing you hear is Barnes. And hopefully that edge. Because there were really no overdubs. We went for it. We’re all in it together here and we played til we got it right. That gave it a bit of oomph.
RIP Dr Jim Marshall OBE
It’s a very sad day for guitarists. Dr Jim Marshall OBE, founder of Marshall Amplification, has died. I’ll always remember how proud I felt bringing home my Marshall amplifier. And Jim’s introductions to Marshall manuals always felt like you were being welcomed into a special club. One that I’ll always be proud to be a part of. Rest in peace, Dr Marshall, and thank you.
Marshall Amplification has posted the following:
Jim Marshall. While mourning the Guv’nor though, we also salute a legendary man who led a full and truly remarkable life.
Jim’s ascent into the history books as ‘the Father of Loud’ and the man responsible for ‘the Sound of Rock’ is a true rags-to-riches tale. Cruelly robbed of his youth by tubercular bones, Jim rose to become one of the four forefathers responsible for creating the tools that allowed rock guitar as we know and love it today to be born. The ground breaking quartet also included the late, great trio of Leo Fender, Les Paul and Seth Lover – together with Jim, they truly are the cornerstones of all things rock.
MUSIKMESSE 2012: Marshall Joe Satriani JVM410HJS
It’s here! The long-awaited Marshall Joe Satriani amp, the JVM410HJS, was officially unveiled at Musikmesse in Germany and my buddies at Andertons have the scoop and they’re taking orders now! It’s based on Marshall’s flagship JVM series of amplifiers but it replaces the four reverb controls with four noise gates (one for each channel) – after all, Joe has plenty of cool effects such as his Vox Time Machine Delay when he wants some ambience – and they’ve changed the voicing of the channels to Joe’s personal preferences. There’s also a new Mid-Shift control to switch between a more typical JVM sound and Joe’s voicings. The amp is available in standard black, but a limited special edition (only 500 worldwide) blue half stack will be available for a short time.
Here’s some info from Marshall!
Marshall’s R&D engineers set out to work incredibly closely with Satriani, the latter having a very clear idea of how his own Marshall should sound. After various trials and experiments which even involved Satch using prototypes during recording and touring, the final version of the JVM410HJS was signed off and the wheels for UK production put in place.
At a first glance, the JVM410JS may look familiar. Taking a more detailed look (and listen) though, will make you realise just how different this amp is from its stock counterpart. So. how is the JVM41OJS different from the JVM410H-
Firstly, and probably most notable is the fact that the four reverb pots from the original JVM410 have now been replaced with noise gates; four noise gates no less, one for each channel and each with their own threshold. Another visible change to the front panel is the addition of a ‘Mid Shift’ button that can be used for both ODI and OD2 channels, shifting the mid character of the sound to that of Joe’s specification. Tone wise, the amplifier is very different: The Clean channel is based on the aforementioned 6100 when on the green mode, with the orange and red modes being hotter variations of that tone too. The crunch channel takes the original JVM410 crunch and adds some of the popular Marshall AFD’ circuit to it. and the OD channels are now both voiced identically, based on the JVM410 ODI but with the gain scaled back slightly and a smoother transition between modes. The mid shift button determines the difference m mid character between the original JVM410 ODI and OD2 tone, moving the mids from around 650khz (Mid Shift off) to around 500kliz (Mid Shift on).
The rest of the JVM41 OJS plays out in familiar territory: the amp is still powered by EL34 valves, there are two master volumes the supplied footswitch enables you to switch between channels, modes, 2 master. FX loop and now also the Noise Gates and Mid Shift too. There’s also full MIDI implementation on the unit.
MUSIKMESSE 2012: The Marshall Fridge
As Marshall says, “The coolest icon in music just got cooler.” That’s right, the humble kitchen fridge just became the bombastic and kickass MARSHALL FRIDGE. Just look at this thing. LOOK AT IT!
Steve Vai’s DLR-era Marshall stack is for sale!
If you were thinking of buying Eddie Van Halen’s Diver Down/1984 Kramer Frankenstrat but were holding off until you could find just the right amp to pair it with, look no further: Steve Vai is auctioning his Marshall 100 watt Plexi modified by the legendary Lee Jackson and used on David Lee Roth’s Eat ‘Em And Smile album, with some of the proceeds going to his Make-a-noise foundation.
There’s plenty of info at GuitarTV and on the eBay auction page itself, but here’s a snippet:
“The 100 watt Marshall JMP was given to Ted Templeman by Steve Stevens during the NYC recording sessions for “Eat Em and Smile.” The amp was then modded to Steve’s liking by Lee Jackson, famous for performing sought after custom modifications to Marshall amplifiers for top artists in the 1980′s and 1990′s. It was Steve’s main amp for the “Eat Em and Smile”sessions and used on the entire David Lee Roth tour. The 100 watt plexi head features an extra gain stage, frequency adjust control, effects loop & master volume. The head has been well maintained in Los Angeles and features matching Drake transformers, KT88 quad-matched power tubes & hand-selected pre-amp tubes to Steve’s liking.”
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), guitarworld.com, Tone Deaf, 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 Reverbnation or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com