Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 129 i Australian Guitar

Jerry Cantrell has always been Alice In Chains’ not-so-secret ingredient. Sure, his riffage and massive guitar tones are integral to the band’s sound. But from the very first album, Facelift, Cantrell’s vocals have also been an important presence in the band, from the lines sung in-between Layne Staley’s words in “Man In The Box” to the intricate harmonies in the chorus of “Them Bones”. As much as his guitar sound has defined Alice In Chains, so has his voice. This is why, when Alice In Chains reformed with William DuVall on vocals after the passing of Staley, the band still sounded like themselves. Their latest album, Rainier Fog, is the band’s third with DuVall and sixth overall, and it finds Alice In Chains staying true to their signature sound while…

MARKUS MILLER SIGNATURE MARKBASS COMBOS RRP: $1,050 to $2,795 • cmcmusic.com.au With three-by-ten-inch custom designed speakers and a specially chosen one-inch voice coil driven horn, at 500-watts, the Marcus Miller CMD 103 delivers the kind of bottom end and dynamics that Marcus demands, and is unique amongst bass combos. Its six-ohm configuration means the cab is pulling 30 percent more power from the head than other combos in the Markbass range. It also tilts back in monitor wedge format for more convenience in a live setting. There are also two super compact two-by-ten-inch combos in the Marcus range. Thanks to the position of the head in the cabinet and the combo’s wedge-style kickback option, these 250-watt and 500-watt combos use a very small footprint when performed with. With Markbass’ proprietary…

What would you prefer: a guitar string that sounds great, or a guitar string that lasts a long time? In an ideal world, the perfect answer would be, “Both, please” and we’d all go about our business. But that’s not really the way it is. Guitar strings usually sound great in that magic zone where they’ve been played in for a few hours (long enough to be stretched in) but there’s usually a gradual drop-off in clarity, playability and tuning stability. Over the years, many string companies have attempted different methods of prolonging the life of the string. One popular method involves a polymer coating, which definitely maintains treble brilliance over long periods, but also results in fraying as the string comes to the end of its natural life. Australia’s…

Yamaha just doesn’t make bad gear. Their quality control is famously consistent, to the point of generating envy among most other guitar companies. The TRBX605 is, of course, part of the long line of TRB basses – a series which began in the late ‘80s as a six-string bass with a low B and high C, at a time when such instruments were rare. The line has remained one of the bass world’s most desired and reliable, and since those glory days of the late ‘80s, the TRB has been continually refined and reimagined, not only in its original six-string configuration, but also as four-and five-string instruments (the one we’re looking at today is a five-string bass). LOW-END LOWDOWN The TRBX605 has a sculpted alder and maple laminated body with…

Every now and then, a piece of kit comes along that looks fabulous, has loads of buttons, knobs and lights, and claims to solve all your tone issues along with world peace, climate change, and the odd endangered species. Fishman’s Platinum Pro EQ is such a device, and it may well do all that (except for those last few things). The Pro EQ is an “always on” preamp designed for acoustic guitar, electric bass and acoustic bass (assignable). It has a four-band tone set, a built-in tuner (with various tuning modes available), plus boost and compression functions. SO! MANY! CHOICES! For interfacing, it has instrument in and instrument out (both jack sockets), separate effects send and returns sockets (also jacks), an XLR out (assignable pre- or post-EQ, with a ground…

This October will mark the 20th anniversary of an Australian rock classic: the self-titled debut album from punkabilly rebels and 27-time ARIA nominees (five-time winners) The Living End. I have a strong bias towards my relationship with that album, because it was the first one – at the ripe old age of two – that I ever properly liked. My dad would blast the shit out of it, “Prisoner Of Society” ringing through the hallway as I mindlessly bashed my Lego blocks around. There’s home video footage of me as a toddler, struggling to stand, belting along to “All Torn Down” – with terribly misinterpreted lyrics, obviously – while family members roared with laughter in the background. And today, at age 21, my official day job involves sitting with the…

“And it wasn’t long before this yearly custom became an annual tradition.” It’s one of the great overlooked lines from The Simpsons, but it also describes how quickly the Melbourne Guitar Show has established itself as a given. Now in its fourth year, the event has really found its feet with the right mix of electric and acoustic, performance and presentation, and retail and exhibition. It’s like a mini NAMM where you can buy everything you can see. This year’s event was headlined by the great Albert Lee, and played host to the national premiere of Fender’s new Diesel signature Stratocaster. I, your humble narrator, was pulling triple duty at this year’s show: hosting live discussion sessions with bassists and acoustic guitarists on the Saturday, and a Q&A with Baby…

An overdrive pedal is one of the fundamentals of a pedalboard, with almost every electric guitarist needing a bit of crunch now and then. The 21st century’s explosion of boutique guitar culture has seen so many variations on this humble stompbox that it’s hard for manufacturers to stand out from the crowd. One tried-and-true method is to pitch yourself at the top of the heap – beautiful presentation and an expensive asking price will signal to punters that you’re a premium product, and what’s inside must be the goods. Vemuram started in Tokyo, Japan in 1998. They're on a self-described quest, seeking the “Guitar player’s Holy Grail of overdrive pedals.” They have an interesting aesthetic: classy, yet quite odd. Vemuram pedals are made of brass, come folded in brown paper,…

HELLIONS Rue UNFD It was never going to be easy for Hellions to follow their 2016 magnum opus, Opera Oblivia. The dramacore debonairs reached a peak with the rich and ravaging theatricality of LP3, and their sudden rise to global stardom reflected that. So rather than strive to reproduce its anomalous spark, the Sydney crew have taken a well-deserved leap in a new direction with Rue. Bright, bouncy guitar lines and emphatically chanted gang vocals pillar the record at large, the group leaping hiccup-free between hot and heavy dancefloor anthems (“Odyssey”, “X”) and operatic scenes of songwriting bravado (“The Lotus”, “Rue”). There’s an amplified sense of energy that vocalist Dre Faivre revels in – you can almost hear the smile he undoubtedly had pasted on his face when ripping through…

With seemingly half the professional guitar world using some form of digital processor for their live tone these days, we’re seeing more and more products on the market which seek to let guitarists have that flexible digital tone generation, while also providing something of a familiar playing experience in terms of things like feedback, sustain and good ol’ fashioned ‘hearing yourself’. There are more than a few companies with this in mind right now: Seymour Duncan has the PowerStage 700 rack-mounted preamp, designed to plug your processor into a guitar cabinet. Line 6 has a series of powered cabs designed for this very purpose, but with some extra tricks thrown in. And now, ISP Technologies has entered the fray with their Vector FS8 system. and floor monitor. It’s a super…

One of the biggest challenges facing the guitar industry is retention: how do we encourage people to not only buy guitars, but become lifelong players? Fender’s research has shown that for every 100 people who buy a guitar for the first time, only 10 of them tend to stick with it beyond the first year. Obviously, a guitar company has a vested interest in converting more of those players into lifetime customers, but there’s more to it than that – and from talking to some of the people behind Fender Play, it really seems that there’s something more personal at play here: Fender wants more people to make more music on more guitars, because music is awesome, and we all benefit from it. OFF TO SCHOOL So that’s where Fender…

As it turns out, those ultra-posi ‘making of’ docos where your favourite band race into the studio, crack a few beers and jam away until suddenly, a masterpiece appears… Well, they’re total horseshit. Great albums are built on a foundation of blood, sweat and tears, and oftentimes, it’s not until a band member feels like punching their drummer in the throat that creative genius is truly sparked. In the case of UK trio Muncie Girls, their latest set of shred – the unforgivingly upfront and menacingly melodic Fixed Ideals – wound up sending frontwoman Lande Hekt to the hospital with a crushing spell of stress-induced exhaustion. Though 11 cuts dot the tracklist of their sophomore effort, the band skirmished to record a colossal 19 (a handful of which, Hekt says,…

Seldom does a day go by that Melbourne’s cluttered city streets aren’t awash in the quirky beats of a beatnik busker. No word of a lie, some of the world’s most soul-melting shoegaze and heart-thumping hip-hop are borne of the no-names that call the pavement home with a setup of secondhand kit – most often of the bootleg ilk. But – and unjustly so – those local little legends rarely find their feet outside of the public arena. That top-hatted teen you saw tearing through the most beautiful “Hey There Delilah” cover you’d ever seen this side of an FG100? His future awaits in accounting, most likely. The harmonica-donning soul goddess that spends Sundays ripping through their melancholy won’t find herself on the mainstage at Bluesfest, and that mulleted maniac…

Touchscreen and tablet technology has forever changed the world of mixing equipment. Venues, artists and manufacturers have embraced designs that assume and necessitate ownership of an iPad or similar device. This is not a terrible thing at all, but it does present its own set of problems. What do you do if your iPad breaks or can’t communicate with your hardware? What about those situations where a touchscreen just doesn’t feel as good as a real pot or fader? LESS IS MORE... The TouchMix-16 by QSC is an attempt to answer these questions without curtailing the flexibility of a digital mixer by a tablet. It’s easy to see that competing product lines like Soundcraft’s Ui, Mackie’s DL and Behringer’s X Series are all quite similar – your preference just depends…

The Les Paul Standard is the flagship of Gibson’s storied and diverse family of guitars – the pinnacle of Gibson USA’s historically revered (for good reason) guitar craft. Gibson knows that if you want a ’59-style Standard, you’re probably going to be shopping in its Gibson Custom range, so instead it treats the Gibson USA Standard as a way of reflecting what they see as the standard right now, not the standard as it was meant to be interpreted as a concept in the ‘50s. So what you get here is not a recreation of those iconic ‘bursts – if that’s what you’re in the market for, the Les Paul Traditional is much closer to that concept. Rather, this is a guitar with classic Gibson tone but modern playability. WELCOME…

For decades now, the entry point to the Fender brand was the Standard line made in Mexico. These have been very reliable instruments that give you the essence of the Fender experience. But Fender has decided that it’s time to change the way it does things at the entry point to the brand: the Standard is no more, simultaneously upgraded to and replaced by the new Player Series, which addresses some of the things that the Standard Series did in a certain way that gave Fender room to upgrade you later on to a higher series. That includes things like pickup magnets, neck feel and bridge type. And on top of all that, they’ve revamped the colour offerings of the line. So essentially, Fender has discontinued the Standard, made a…

Marcus Miller, consummate player, composer and producer, is a legend, plain and simple. His superb playing and extraordinary musicality has contributed to such a variety of artistic styles that a mere discography doesn’t do him justice. He hasn’t just played the dots, he’s helped make those records as special as they are. From Chaka Khan to Eric Clapton to Herbie Hancock to Elton John to the great George Benson and even the queen of soul herself, Aretha Franklin, Miller has created an unmistakably musical presence in their tracks. Grammy Awards and platinum albums aside, Miller is known in the playing community for tone and groove. It makes perfect sense for him to partner with Marko De Virgiliis, the leader in bass amplification, to create a signature range that focuses on…