Guitar

The latest hand-made amp to come out of the Gabriel Sound Garage is big on tone, but is quite the little baby. The 7 watt Gabriel Stinger continues the eye-catching bumblebee design of other family members and has been designed to recreate the vintage tones that helped shape rock 'n' roll using a combination of a single channel volume dial, one tone control, a master volume knob and some tube switching technology. Users can choose to dial in a sixties "Brit" sound or opt for home turf with the "Yank" option, or try a combination of both. The new amp will also let you up the volume but turn down the power output thanks to the inclusion of a variable voltage regulator.  Read More

Everything that went under the hammer at the recent sale of guitars and amps at Bonhams in aid of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Centre was sold, bringing in three times the amount expected. For the first time, the legendary musician offered amps and cabinets from his own collection, including a 1966 Fender Super Reverb. The sale also included instruments from Fender, Music Man, Gibson and Martin as well as memorabilia and collectibles, and attracted fans from all over the world, hoping to take home a piece of Clapton history.  Read More

My first encounter with the tremolo guitar effect was on the breathtaking sixties rock anthem I Had Too Much To Dream by the Electric Prunes. Most people will be familiar with the effect from Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones, or Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams for the more youthful among us. This rapid wobble to the groove has now been given a futuristic update with the release of the Tremvelope from Pigtronix. The new effects unit mixes up classic tremolo effects with envelope sensing to produce rotary effects that evolve and change based on what's being played.  Read More

One of the big criticisms leveled at rhythm-based guitar games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band was that they don’t actually teach you to play guitar. Ignoring the fact that this was never the intention of the games and not necessarily a bad thing ... it’s true. With the curtain recently brought down on the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, Ubisoft has stepped onto the stage with Rocksmith – the first videogame that lets players use any real guitar and is designed to teach them how to actually play it.  Read More

In the late seventies, Roland took the sonic palette available to keyboard players and opened it up to guitarists, with the introduction on the GR-500. It was quite simply a marvel, but is positively primitive when compared to the latest evolutionary leap taken by the company with the GR-55 guitar synthesizer. Featuring a pair of independent synthesizer sound engines and a Composite Object Sound Modeling (COSM) engine, the device makes hundreds of different sounds available to the player – anything from pianos to strings, drums to synths, various acoustic and electric guitar and bass emulations, as well as numerous amplifiers.  Read More

Personally, the most interesting part of the announcement of the new iPad on March 2 was GarageBand for iPad. Sure, the cool-looking drum kit and dynamic piano are worth a passing mention but my weapon of choice is the guitar. But rather than tap onto the touchscreen's virtual instrument I would prefer to plug in my own. The new JAM input from Apogee will allow me to do just that.  Read More

After you've spent a considerable time learning to play guitar or bass, you're then likely to want to find an individual tone. For most of us, this involves the never-ending search for an instrument that fits our personality, or taking what we can afford and switching out the pickups or, if you're brave, more advanced rewiring. With the aptly-named Game Changer from Ernie Ball's Music Man wing, you can hang up the soldering iron for good and still get access to millions of tonal variations in one guitar or bass.  Read More

With all consumer units of the limited edition Firebird X reportedly having been sold, Gibson is already looking to the future. The company has announced the forthcoming introduction of hundreds of thousands of guitars at various price points based on the new technology showcased in the somewhat controversial new model. To help this process along, the entire Firebird X system and its Pure-Analog Engine are to be opened up for third party application development.  Read More

When learning a popular song on a guitar, wouldn't it be great if guitarists like James Hetfield, Jerry Garcia or Ritchie Blackmore could teach you how to play their music? The first product from Los Angeles company The Way of H offers the next-best thing. Rock Prodigy is an interactive teaching app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad that offers a quick way to learn, brush up on or hone guitar skills using a real instrument and original recordings. The app uses the device's microphone to listen to your playing, and provides feedback to help quickly correct errors or improve technique.  Read More