I bought the DiMarzio Area Set (Area 58, Area 61, and Area 67) while looking for new single coils to go in the neck and middle positions of my Silhouette Special. There are lots of reviews of the DiMarzio Area pickups out there but I don't think nobody has ever directly compared all three in the same pickup position. This may the first!
Posts published in “Opinion and Reviews”
Question on a forum: "Let's focus lower on the totem pole around those under $10k. How do you feel about these as a player? Do you think modern production more than makes up for old wood? Would you pay the asking price if you intended to play it, rather than resell it? If you found one at a yard sale, would you flip it and buy a reissue instead?"
Yesterday I saw a press release via the Premier Guitar Twitter feed announcing Dean Markley Blue Steel instrument cables. Promising all kinds of magical tonal benefits due to the cable receiving a brief blast of liquid nitrogen. I say it's pseudo-scientific nonsense. Dean Markley say that's just my opinion. Well, this is how I, a guitarist and physics PhD, arrived at my opinion...
At any one time 1/3 to a 1/2 of my students are children and I am frequently approached by parents looking for a guitar teacher for their child. However, as a general rule, the youngest I am willing to teach is about 10 years-old. In this post I explain why guitar poses difficulties for younger children and what I recommend to parents when young children want to play the guitar.
As a reference resource, I have collected the treble bleed capacitor and resistor combinations recommended by many major guitar pickup manufacturers (and some guitar makers too). I am reproducing that list here. Below the list I have also included notes and additional information based on my research and experience. I hope you find it useful. Feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions.
In response to a recent twitter conversation (I wish Karen was getting paid)...
As a musician I see it all the time - "I can't pay you but you'll get a credit". I'm sure every professional (or want-to-be professional) musician, sound engineer, video editor, actor, model, photographer, painter, journalist, graphic designer, translator, web designer, and toilet cleaner has heard it a million times.
Any left-handed player who has ever stepped into a guitar store will have discovered a distinct lack of left-handed instruments. The situation is even worse when we are looking for quality 3/4 or 1/2 size instruments for children. Consequently I'm often asked if it's really necessary for left-handed beginners to learn to play left-handed guitar. I don't think it is, and this is why...
Early this year Ernie Ball released a unique line of electric guitar and bass strings. Known as Cobalt Slinkys. The proprietary cobalt steel wrap on the wound strings is said to be provide a "stronger magnetic relationship between the strings and the pickups", resulting in higher output, more sustain, and richer harmonics. The initial response was so strong that Ernie Ball were left scrambling to keep pace with the demand. I recently got my hands on a set and put them through their paces.
After much posturing and wailing and childish "why are they picking on us?" from CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson have agreed to a criminal sanction with the U.S. Government over imports of illegal ebony from Madagascar to the US in 2008 and 2009. Gibson's statement on the matter still tries to make it look like they are treated unfairly but when we look at the facts as presented by the U.S. Department of Justice, a very different picture emerges.
TC Electronic's "PolyTune" first hit the stores back in 2010 and caused quite a stir. Its ability to 'tune' all guitar six strings at once is indeed a neat trick. While there were many magazine and web reviews, most just copied-and-pasted the same marketing blurb and didn't tell us how well the PolyTune really performs in every day use. I've been using one for 18 months, for stage, studio, and tech work. Oddly enough, I think PolyTune's best feature is the one most people don't use...
This is important. This is something that everybody needs to watch. It doesn't matter if you know anything about guitars. WATCH THIS and LEARN.
Many of us have seen the recent online petition asking for a change in the way airlines deal with musicians and instruments.
http://www.change.org/petitions/fair-treatment-for-musicians-traveling-on-planes-with-their-instruments
I've decided not to sign the petition. Here's why.
It's not often that I read something that makes me giggle and laugh with excitement but Music Man have managed to do exactly that with the new Game Changer. It was first announced last year as a system for re-wiring your guitar's pickup selector any way you want it, in real time, right from your computer screen and yet maintaining an all-analogue signal path. On a guitar with 5 coils (e.g. HSH) and piezo, all the various combinations of series/parallel and in/out-of-phase leads to, quite literally (and I'm not kidding you) millions of tonal possibilities.