INTERVIEW: Funeral For A Friend’s Gavin Burrough
Funeral For A Friend’s sixth and latest album is Conduit. It’s one of the heaviest records the band has ever done, yet as always the brutality is tempered by some rather complex, almost jazz-like chords. Okay, maybe ‘jazz’ is stretching it a bit but they’re certainly more intricate than the voicings employed by most heavy bands. “It’s funny how other people interpret it,” guitarist Gav Burrough says. “When you’re writing it, it’s organic and it just comes out. So what we try to do is to not think about it. Continue reading
It’s here! TC Electronic TonePrint Editor!
YES! You asked for it, you probably even dreamed about it, and now it’s here and it’s free: the TC Electronic TonePrint Editor. Get in there and create your own settings! Save them! Share them! Beam them around the world! And most importantly, make great music with them!
Here’s the press release:
Free TonePrint Editor Available Now
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Risskov, Denmark, April 5 2013) TC Electronic announces immediate availability of the much anticipated TonePrint Editor, the free software that allows guitarists and bassists to craft their own version of a TonePrint effect pedal. Following the massive success of TonePrint pedals and signature effects by the best in music today, the guitar community has been screaming for access to the TonePrint pedal parameters in order to create their own custom sounds. TC Electronic has not been deaf to the massive demands and is pleased to announce the TonePrint Editor as a completely free download at tcelectronic.com/toneprint-editor. Continue reading
NAMM: TC Electronic TonePrint Editor!
YES!!! Every single person I’ve ever spoken to about TC Electronic TonePrint pedals has said ‘love the idea but I wish I could create my own TonePrints.’
Well…
TC Electronic Announces Free TonePrint Editor
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Los Angeles, CA, 23 January 2013) TC Electronic announces the TonePrint Editor, the free software that allows guitarists and bassists to craft their own version of a TonePrint effect pedal. Following the massive success of TonePrint pedals and signature effects by the best in music today, the guitar community has been screaming for access to the TonePrint pedal parameters in order to create their own custom sounds. TC Electronic has not been deaf to the massive demands and is pleased to announce the TonePrint Editor as a completely free download at tcelectronic.com/toneprint-editor. The TonePrint Editor will be released March 23rd 2013. Continue reading
REVIEW: TC Electronic Flashback X4 Delay & Looper
TC Electronic’s TonePrint line of effects ignited a revolution in the way guitarists approach stopboxes. These compact but powerful little pedals give you all sorts of effect parameters which you can set by yourself, but they also reserve a separate memory slot for you to load presets designed by some of the greats, who have access to even more parameter control than the pedals themselves let you tweak. You can beam these presets to your pedal via an iPhone or with a USB cable, and sound like your favourite artist. The Flashback Delay is a very versatile little pedal with six seconds of delay time, multiple delay types and a handy toggle switch for varying between quarter, 16th or dotted 8th notes, but it’s a little too simplified for those with complex delay needs. Enter the new Flashback X4.
Continue reading
REVIEW: TC Electronic iB Modified G-System
The original TC Electronic G-System is pretty hard to top. An integrated effects and switching system, it’s been at the heart of the guitar rigs of some pretty influential artists, including Steve Vai, Peter Thorn and Bullet For My Valentine. Pro players love the way it brings together all the essential elements of their rig (more on that in a minute) along with some very high-quality effects. But TC Electronic knows good advice when they hear it, and the G-System iB Modified was born out of some helpful suggestions from a few industry insiders.
COOL GEAR ALERT: TC Electronic Flashback X4 Delay and Looper
Check out this video of Rob ‘Chappers’ Chapman explaining the new TC Electronic Flashback X4 Delay and Looper.
I’d love to hear what Matt Stephens would do with this pedal.
REVIEW: TC Electronic Spark Booster
Many years ago TC Electronic released the Booster + Line Driver & Distortion. This classic pedal did all sorts of things and was favoured by players from Allan Holdsworth to Anthrax’s Scott Ian to add some oomph to their tone. The Spark Booster is the next evolution of that pedal, and while on the surface it appears to offer some of the same features, inside it’s a different beast.
REVIEW: TC Electronic Röttweiler Distortion
TC Electronic is particularly known for their amazing reverbs and delays, but the company has quite a handle on gain-based effects as well. Case in point: their brilliant Nova Drive, a programmable, digitally-controllable analog drive unit. But not everybody wants to sift through digital presets and learn parameters and memory banks and the like. Some players just want to turn some knobs, dial in a killer tone and play. That’s where the Röttweiler Distortion comes in.
The Röttweiler Distortion is built using the same basic ‘hammerhead’ rugged die-cast aluminium chassis as TC’s excellent TonePrint pedals and the revolutionary PolyTune tuner, and purely from an aesthetic perspective it looks really cool. I like TC’s design sense. There are four control pots, Gain, Level, Bass and Treble, along with a two-way Voice switch which governs the midrange profile. There’s an input, an output, a True Bypass switch, a really quite bright red LED to indicate that the effect is on, and a 9v DC supply jack. Battery access is through a handy little turn screw on the bottom.
REVIEW: TC-Helicon VoiceLive Play GTX
Vocal effects and harmonies can really add to the professionalism of a live performance, but they’re hard to implement, especially for the singing guitarist. It’s difficult to get harmonies happening between band members sometimes: bad monitor mix, one or more vocalists having an off night – and that’s before you start to think about how this will all sound to the audience. Well just like on one of those infomercials that show someone struggling with some particularly mundane and cumbersome housework chore, TC-Helicon has taken the idea of the singing guitarist and simplified it so even a so-so singer like myself can make listenable music with it.
VoiceLive Play GTX is a multi-effects unit dedicated the singing guitarist, whether they play electric or acoustic guitar, solo or in a band or duo. It features professional-level TC-Helicon effects, including state-of-the-art harmony processing. And let’s not forget that TC-Helicon is associated with TC Electronic, one of the finest guitar effect makers in the business and the company behind legendary units like Stereo Chorus Flanger, TC 2290 Digital Delay and G-System. So Play GTX is also overflowing with guitar effects and amp simulations. It features more than 200 presets which include both a vocal and a guitar component, many of which are inspired by popular songs (with subtle and not-so-subtle preset names to hint at what songs they’re based on). And every preset can be enhanced with the dedicated HIT button, which adds additional vocal effects as you need them. For instance, if you only need a harmony in the chorus, or if you need a megaphone effect for three words in a verse, you can add those effects to your existing sound via the HIT button without having to dial in an entirely new preset. And you can store selected presets as ‘favorites’ to make setup easy.
REVIEW: TC Electronic Hall Of Fame Reverb
Okay, we all know that TC Electronic makes incredible effects. Their 2290 delay is legendary. Their G System, G Major and G Force: legendary. Their Nova series of pedals: legendary. But the TonePrint series of pedals is a unique opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something that’s going to become legendary. Because TonePrint pedals allow you to dial in your own sounds, sure, but they also give you access to finely tweaked effects designed by some of the best ears in the biz, including Dream Theater’s John Petrucci, Steve Stevens, Paul Gilbert, Bumblefoot and many, many more. The Hall Of Fame Reverb is but one pedal in the series. The others are the FlashBack Delay, Corona Chorus, Shaker Vibrato, Vortex Flanger, and the new John Petrucci signature modulation station, the Dreamscape.
The Hall of Fame Reverb’s controls include rotary pots for FX Type, FX Level, Decay and Tone, as well as a toggle switch for Short or Long pre-delay times. There are stereo inputs and stereo outputs, a handy unscrewable battery compartment, 9vDC power supply jack, True Bypass stomper switch, and the same basic case shape as the company’s instant-classic PolyTune tuner pedal.
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