We have all seen a variety of positions taken by people that any of the above made in one place are better than those made in another place. We have also seen arguments made that some folks will only buy products manufactured in their country of residence or citizenship. Ok, you all be yourselves.

But the pertinent question comes down to, does your whatever work for YOU? Yes or No? It’s a simple question.

I have been playing and collecting going on fifty years. I have instruments, amps, pedals and other stuff made from countries all over the world. Moreover most of the things that I own that howl “Made in FillInTheBlank” actually use components from other places. Rosewood fingerboards anyone? How about screws? Phil McKnight recently did an excellent, solely facts based piece answering a similar question about Made in the USA Fender products. He wasn’t slagging Fender and neither would I, but I do not believe for an instant that any Fender branded product is guaranteed to be better for my use if made in the United States over elsewhere. I have multiple Fenders, made in Japan that are superlative. I own several Squiers that are better to me, than a USA “made” guitar that cost six times the retail price of the one that I own and play regularly. So does it matter to me where the product is assembled?

Not to me it doesn’t. And when I look to what I call regular folks who buy these products, in the long run, they don’t care either. Look at Apple as an example. They don’t really “make” anything. In fact they say “Designed by Apple in California” and that’s it. The products are made predominantly in China, but no Apple buyer cares about that. Apple does a pretty good job of ensuring that when one of their very expensive products reaches a customer that it is going to be well built, perform to expectations and not be questionable in quality.

I cannot say it as consistently true for musical product makers. Perhaps instead of “made in”, the more accurate description would be “assembled in”, or like Apple, “designed in”. It is a sad reality that here in North America we actually “make”very little anymore, and it has been that way for a very long time.

Do I care if a screw is made in China, or a potentiometer is made in Indonesia? Not at all. All I care is that it delivers on its promise of quality. Are there crap parts made around the world? Absolutely, but that is less of a “made in” problem than the brand looking to use the cheapest possible components to increase margins than anything else. I get it. A business that is not profitable is a dead business all the socialist rhetoric spewed on the Internet notwithstanding. As the great author Robert A. Heinlein once stated, TANSTAFFL, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”. Sadly logic and reason are not ubiquitous.

So in the end does it really matter where a product is made, or is it more important that it delivers on your expectations in a fair exchange of values, ie you paid your money to own it? This is a question that each person answers for himself or herself.

Take care everyone.

I’m curious dear readers. Would you, in this day and age, spend more than the usual MSRP for a guitar that is fundamentally the same as the non-signature version for a signature / limited edition guitar? What do you see as the benefits to such a purchase? What about any downsides? When I was much younger, I bought into the concept, and own a couple of Eric Johnson Stratocasters, and do find them different from what was available from the factory at the time in terms of feel and playability, but I have also played others and don’t find them any different in practical use. For example, I have the first Gibson Jimmy Page Signature Les Paul. It is indeed a lovely guitar with a much deeper top than Mr. Page’s Number 1 or Number 2, and it does have push pulls for different sounds on all four pots and although I have printed out the listing for what they all do individually and in combination, I truthfully cannot remember what they all are and find I rarely use the functions at all unless I’m noodling.

I ask the question because to be blunt, I see next to no actual innovation from the big builders, not Gibson, not Fender, not PRS and not Ibanez. I’m sure other makers have signature versions, I confess to not really paying attention at all. For example, I played several of the Gibson Les Paul Greeny guitars. The one that I liked best weighed almost 12 pounds and the far from gloss finish didn’t align with my preferences in finish on such an expensive guitar. There was a difference in sound, as expected because of the pickup layout, but I did the same reversing on an old PRS Core that I have owned for nearly thirty years with pickups from Bare Knuckle and get that Greeny sound, without the giant price tag.

Even with these signature instruments, I’m still me. I don’t channel Mr. Page, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Setzer, Mr. Van Halen or Mr. Green in my playing, I still sound like me, however decent or depressing I may be on a given day, so what really do I get from a signature instrument? In normal mode, I don’t really hear a difference and as soon as any effects or overdrive happen, the sound is masked by those things almost entirely.

But that’s me. I want to hear from you about your experiences with owning a signature guitar of any kind at all. The good, the bad, the ugly, whatever you see, hear or feel.

Thanks a lot!

I understand that not everyone will choose to buy a guitar built in Asia and that’s a personal decision, but it’s past time to put to bed the presumption that all guitars built in Asia are crap. It’s an evolution of course. First, Japan was excluded from the presumption, then it was South Korea, then Indonesia, aided not insignificantly by the establishment of the dedicated Cort/PRS factory. Which as a generalization left China.

Let’s be honest with each other. Any manufacturing plant can produce instruments of questionable quality, and as examples I give you the Gibson and Fender output of about fifty years ago. There were some beauties but in general, those instruments did not live up to the promise of the brand.

And brand is a pretty decent indicator. While the no-name, logoed for anyone builds can be of dubious quality, we don’t see that level of issues with the Squiers or Epiphones or until recently the PRS SE Hollowbody guitars all manufactured in China. I have experienced or own examples of all three brands and found them to be excellent instruments, that are highly playable, great sounding and also a substantial cost savings over instruments made in North America.

Why is this? There are multiple reasons, but the most visible is labour cost. Wages in China for factory workers are considerably less than what is paid to makers in North America. That’s why many brands have factories in Mexico. Lower labour costs. It’s also perceived and sometimes even true that the components are of lesser quality. We’ll explore that shortly.

But lower labour cost does not immediately imply lower quality builds. For those companies who want to be able to retail instruments to fit a lower price point, the labour savings can be a strong contributor. Some say that there is a unit per hour limitation that negatively impacts quality, but let’s not kid ourselves, all manufacturing facilities measure throughput and none of our generally available instruments are truly hand built. Such creations exist but they are limited in volume and availability and also command a significantly higher price point.

At a component level we can look to woods and electronics. Since most electronic components are already manufactured primarily in the far east, this argument becomes spurious very quickly. And while it is true that guitars built in Asia may favour locally grown wood over imports, examination of the wood itself will reveal that in many cases, it is different but not of lesser quality. Spruce, true rosewood and true mahogany do have very specific sound qualities but that doesn’t mean that other woods are less valuable tonally. Taylor for example went to recovered wood and has been very successful. Those trees that were cut down were not natively North American, they actually originated in Australia. There is excellent wood grown in Asia, some of which is excellent for instruments.

But the potentiometers in Chinese built instruments are of lesser quality some say. Are they really. An electronic component must first satisfy its requirements. If the fit and finish are poor, we will feel it, but not hear it. Resistors and capacitors are measured for quality by their adherence to specifications. And science tells us that today’s such products are far less wide ranging in tolerance than what was used in the fifties through seventies. We don’t see resistors with plus or minus 20% ratings very much any longer but that was common when I started building projects back in the seventies. This lack of consistency may be why older components with the same specs as current sound different. In the case of pickups, we apparently ignore the impact of natural degaussing over decades when determining the “best” tone.

There is also the consideration to be taken of marketing. I’m not suggesting that marketing professionals lie to us, but to presume that there is no spin being applied would indicate a lack of grasp of reality. Pretty words can mask a lot of stuff and while the Chinese builders are learning, they do not yet match the marketing description skills of their North American peers.

So before you pooh-pooh an instrument made in Asia solely on the basis that it is made in China or wherever, perhaps play one or several. You will find that they play extremely well, sound excellent and let you keep more of your money. Yes, you may give up the cachet of the prominent brand silkscreened or stuck by decal on the headstock, but the logo does not impact the playability or tone of the instrument. It’s only value is in the ability to show it off, or to provide a better resale value because others will assume that the logo itself makes the instrument great.

It’s a failed assumption, but still very prevalent. Until next time, be well and play on.

Hello all. Before I jump into this, be certain that I understand that for some, the idea of using a virtual amp, cabinet and microphone are not in your plan. To this I say, be yourself and don’t kowtow to anyone else’s direction.

With that done, I wanted to take a quick look at the newish release from Universal Audio called Paradise Guitar Studio. This is a plugin that works (of course) in UA’s excellent LUNA DAW but also in other DAWs. For my evaluation I used both LUNA and Logic Pro. BTW you don’t have to record anything so long as software monitoring is active in the DAW so you can hear the impact of the plugin in your speakers or headphones. I will recommend that if you use headphones use the around the ear type for best sound. For speakers in this case, I used my KRK monitors and was quite happy.

Routing

It’s pretty simple really. Plug your guitar into the High Z input on your interface. I was using a Universal Audio Apollo Twin X connected to a Mac Studio but really any decent supported interface into any supporting OS will do. UA’s Spark subscription offers support for both Windows and macOS so that should cover most everyone. If you are a dedicated Linux person, I did not look into this at all.

In your DAW, enable the Paradise Guitar Studio plugin on a Line In track.

Set your interface input and output levels to high enough for decent sound without clipping and away you go.

Amplifiers

Paradise Guitar Studio draws heavily on UA’s existing amp plugins that are also found in their superb stompboxes. There is a 50’s era Fender tweed called the Woodrow. Think 5E3. There’s the ’63 Ruby which does, in my opinion, the best simulation of a VOX AC30. I find that most amp sims fail when trying to be an AC30. This one is as close as I have come. Then there is the ’65 Dream which is a fine sim of the Fender 1965 Blackface Deluxe Reverb. It also includes the recently released Showtime plugin that beautifully emulates a Fender Showman amplifier. For the heavier stuff, although it does a lovely clean, there is the Lion, which is a 1968. Marshall Super Lead simulation. This comes in Lead, Brown and Bass flavours. The final sim is UA’s ’82 Enigmatic, which covers a series of different Dumble amps. I’ve never played through a real Dumble, but I will say that this plugin produces a beautiful tone that is darn close to Dumbles that I have heard on record. There are four different Dumble flavours including Suede, Cream, Silver and Black iterations.

Cabinets

Typically in the real world we find amps with built in speakers in combos or separate heads and cabinets. Paradise Guitar Studio separates the amp portion from the speaker portion so you can pair any amp with any cabinet in the software’s repertoire that I found to be particularly interesting. Not all sound great to be sure, but some, like the Woodrow into a 4x12 do provide one with flexibility that would be hard to deliver in the real world without some engineering talent and connectivity skill. Provided are a selection of cabinets with single speakers, two speakers and four speakers in multiple cabinet / microphone variations. Each has its own tonal quality, so users will find something that suits.

Microphones

As Paradise Guitar Studio is built to be an all in one recording platform, it also includes a variety of different microphone emulations. I use the UA Hemispheres tool in the studio with the UA microphones and find that I get the sound and feel of different microphones easy to obtain with a high level of accuracy. Those microphones are also in Paradise Guitar Studio, so you also have the option to choose which microphone you will use to mike the cabinet. There is also a DI option that eliminates the cabinet and the microphone from the signal chain. Microphone sims include the SM57, Royer 121, Beyerdynamics 160, 414 Condenser, 421 Condenser and 67 Condenser. Do note that microphones are not individually selectable and are paired with cabinets in a microphone / cabinet selection capability. None are weird and all sound very good.

Effects

Given the all in one idea, there are a number of stompbox sims as part of the product. While not as many as in some other tools, these sound bang on and I will take quality over quantity every time. For copyright reasons UA cannot call the sims by the names of the pedals but it’s pretty easy to figure out which real world pedals these sims emulate.

Drive / Distortion

TS OD, Gold OD, Big Fuzz, RAW Distortion, Nashville OD, Vintage Fuzz

Modulation

Brigade Chorus, Orange Phaser, Blue Flanger, Multi-Chorus, Vintage Vibrato, Trem 65, Micropitch Shifter

Dynamics

Red Comp, 1176 Compressor

Delay

Analog Memory Delay, EP-III Tape Echo, Plate

Digital Delay

Pitch Shift Delay

Reverb

Spring 65 Reverb, Digital Reverb, Plate 140 Reverb, Reverb 224

Tone / Filter

10-Band Graphic EQ, Studio EQ, Volume

Wrapping Up

As Paradise Guitar Studio is a plugin, you have the option to have it active during recording, or you can record the guitar completely raw and then activate the plugin during the mix if you want to try different options as part of your total song. For recordists, this latter option may be preferable, to each his or her own. While I am not biased in favour of Universal Audio solutions, I have yet to find one that doesn’t deliver on its promise and while there may not be as many options as with other vendors, it is my perspective that what you get is superlative quality over quantity. Moreover, UA has revised their delivery and pricing model to create the Spark system which while being a subscription, does give you a ton of really fine plugins for a fixed monthly price. Moreover, nothing in Spark requires the presence of UA interfaces, which for the new user or anyone not wanting to pay the premium for UA’s in unit CPU interfaces, a lot more options. UA does have a full line of USB based interfaces without the internal UA CPUs. These interfaces cannot use the old UA plugins because they do not have the requisite internal CPUs. However as simple interfaces they work extremely well. The USB units are a lot less expensive than the Thunderbolt versions which will be a benefit to those on a budget.

I respect that Paradise Guitar Studio will not be for everyone, particularly those who prefer physical amps and effects. And yes it does require a computer and a DAW to be effective for recording and you can certainly use it for live play as well, taking the output from the interface and sending it to the house PA. From my perspective, I like it a lot. Superb sound, lots of choices but not so many as to induce option paralysis and backed up by the experts at Universal Audio. There are also introductions by James Santiago on the Universal Audio website at https://uaudio.com that are worth your time.

Thanks for reading and supporting my work.

However acoustic guitars are designed to be played acoustically where all the sound is coming from the guitar body itself. Unfortunately, when one gets to gigs of a certain size and with other instruments, the acoustic needs some form of amplification.

The way it was done for decades was a microphone pointed towards the end of the fretboard. This worked but because it was very dependent on the body resonance, took tweaking to prevent feedback at certain frequencies. It also locked the player in a particular position so makers started looking for ways to amplify a guitar via an internal pickup system that could feed an acoustic specific amplifier or go direct to a PA.

Different pickup methods had an impact on the potential for feedback, and this resulted in many companies going with very low output, DC powered pickups using the piezoelectric effect to capture the sound and provide a high impedance feed to the amplifying equipment.

Why Feedback Happens

Feedback occurs because an acoustic guitar is designed to amplify vibration acoustically. When amplified sound from a speaker re-enters the guitar body, especially at its natural resonant frequencies (often around 90–110 Hz for many dreadnoughts), a loop is created:

speaker → guitar top/air cavity → pickup → amplifier → speaker.

This loop quickly grows into audible feedback. This is a reality of physics, not a flaw in the guitar or the pickup per se. To address this, different types of pickups were tried, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Pickup Systems

Different pickup systems vary dramatically in how prone they are to feedback:

• Internal microphones produce the most natural sound but are highly sensitive to air movement and resonances inside the body. Think of a gooseneck condenser microphone inside the body.

• Soundboard transducers pick up vibrations from the top and are susceptible to resonant feedback. Think of contact pickup mounted to the top or bottom of the bridge plate.

• Under-saddle piezos are more resistant because they are mechanically isolated from airborne resonance. This is the most common deliverable because of incredibly low cost to make, that they are readily powered by a 9V battery but are very low output with poorer signal to noise ratios.

• Magnetic soundhole pickups are the least prone to feedback because they sense string vibration directly. Think of images that you have seen of pickups visibly clamped across the soundhole, evident in many photos of John Lennon’s preferred acoustic guitars.

The more a pickup “listens” to the guitar body or cavity, the more likely feedback becomes. Translated, the more accurate the pickup is relaying the true acoustic tone of the guitar, the more likely you are to get feedback. It’s one of those cases where inexpensive acoustics made of less resonant plywoods and with more simple piezos rarely feedback. It’s a good experience for many players, but some find the sound weak and nasally and are unhappy. The workaround is an external acoustic preamplifier device as I have written about before such as the excellent options from LR Baggs.

Stage Scenarios

In a stage setup, there are likely speakers to deliver sound to the audience. Less common with the advent of in-ear monitors are foldback or wedge stage monitors pointing at the musicians so they can hear themselves. Stage speakers and stage monitors particularly push the amplified sound back into the guitar body where it can be picked up again by the pickup and even vibrate the guitar top depending on stage volume. This is most prevalent where there is a live drummer or other amplified instruments.

Addressing the Problem

For years you would see a lot of work in stage setup to keep the speakers far from the amplified acoustic guitar, but smaller stages don’t allow for that. Also common was to see a thick rug rolled out for the acoustic player to stand on that extended in front of the player. This rug deadened audio reflections from the stage itself and worked quite well, but is a challenge for small bands or single instrumentalists to deal with.

An inexpensive and very effective solution is the soundhole plug. It’s basically a rubber plug that covers the soundhole and that prevents external sound from entering the guitar body. Tommy Emmanuel has used these to superb effect because his guitars use internal condenser microphones that are very susceptible to feedback.

Another option that is more expensive but is tweakable to different venues is an EQ pedal. The better ones also include a dedicated selector called a notch filter as well as a high impedance to low impedance converter. If you play live a lot, this is my recommended solution because it is the most flexible, although getting it nailed may take a few more minutes at soundcheck.

Using an Equalizer Pedal

Most better acoustic amplifiers have this function built in, although many don’t which makes them overpriced underpowered PAs. A pedal takes away any responsibility from the amp or the PA as most PAs don’t have decent equalization at all.

Feedback often emerges when certain frequency bands are boosted—especially:

• Low mids around 100 Hz (body resonance)

• Upper mids around 700–1.2 kHz (soundboard “honk”)

• High frequencies if internal mics are used (air resonance)

Improper EQ can excite resonances that would otherwise remain controlled. In this scenario EQ should always be subtractive not positive. Here are some suggested EQ settings that are excellent places to start. While graphic EQ pedals will work, my experience tells me that parametric EQ pedals are better because you can control the width (the “Q”) of the cut.

Cut the resonant low mids

• A narrow cut around 90–120 Hz often removes the primary feedback frequency.

Manage upper-mid “hot spots”

• Dips around 700–1,000 Hz can tame boxiness and suppress feedback.

Avoid unnecessary boosts

Flat EQ is often better than boosting “problem” frequencies for warmth or presence.

Some EQ pedals and the aforementioned acoustic amps and dedicated preamps will include a notch filter that seeks out feedback loops and makes an effort to suppress it once you set it in the feedback range.

If you are hearing rumble or find a loss of clarity, check to see if your pickup system or preamp or pedal offer phase inversion. This simple switch flips the phase of the output single. It won’t help feedback but can make a big difference with rumble or muddiness.

Recommendations

My personal recommendation for an EQ pedal is the EQ2 from Source Audio. I always use one when recording or when I very rarely play live. There are others, some less expensive but they lack the true parametric capability as well as the ability to store multiple EQ presets, important if you switch guitars in a set.

If you want a preamp that does impedance conversion with dual notch filters as well as a built in tuner and 5 band EQ, the LR Baggs Venue is what I recommend. It lacks the preset capability of the EQ2, but I find the impedance switching a critical function for live play as well as in the studio with long cable runs. And its preamp is the best in the business. As a generalization, I like an external preamp for acoustics even if the internal system is a really good one like Taylor’s Expression System/2 or the highly tweaked PRS/Fishman system in the PRS SE acoustics. The lower the quality of the guitar pickup, the more important an external preamp becomes. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I hope that you found this article informative and useful. Until next time.

Way back when I first started doing digital recording and production, there was really only one interface. It was called IEEE1394 or FireWire. Excellent bandwidth, no latency to speak of and great sound if the gear was good. It was also frighteningly expensive.

Then came the first USB interfaces. They were a lot less expensive, and depending on the preamps could sound great with a good microphone and were fine for analog signals from instruments. Many had a small number of concurrent inputs, not a problem if doing one or two instruments at a time, but not optimal for a more common studio layout.

Then came Thunderbolt. A much higher level of bandwidth, capable of handling multiple inputs and in some cases offloading processing of plugins to prevent killing the CPU of the computer running the DAW.

Then came faster USB interfaces with more control, more bandwidth and very good preamps for use with microphones and available with higher number of inputs and chainable to make even larger single studio instances.

It took Universal Audio some time to expand beyond their superb but oh so pricey Thunderbolt interfaces and they lost small to medium business to companies making multi-input USB interfaces for less than ⅓ the cost of the Thunderbolt interfaces and computers gained a lot of power so offloading plugin processing became less of a problem.

The Volt line was released and they were very good. A bit expensive compared to other USB offerings but having some popular functions built into the firmware. They sold and sell ok but best when the customer is informed. But if you wanted more inputs or to chain, they had nothing to offer.

Finally, they do. Sort of.

UA Volt 876

Universal Audio has introduced the Volt 876. It has 24 inputs and 28 outputs. Eight of the inputs are XLRs capable of handling professional microphones. It’s a 1U high unit and incorporates some plugins in firmware. It connects via USB and you can chain up to three units. Best of all, it is priced comparatively with the superb Scarlett 1U unit from Focusrite rather than at the stratospheric level of its Thunderbolt based brethren.

Given that it’s 2025 and I have been running a pair of the Scarletts for over two years using a MacBook Pro M1 as the DAW machine without issues, I am comfortable saying that USB based interfaces with lots of inputs are perfectly viable.

While the Volt 876 integrates directly with UA’s excellent LUNA DAW, it works with any DAW on either Macintosh or Windows operating systems. Like all interfaces for Windows, you need an ASIO driver, but in this case that is included in the UA Connect software so you don’t have to hunt for something and live with poor documentation and questionable support.

I also have UA Thunderbolt interfaces in my setup, 2 with two mic inputs and 1 with one. They work very well and are super reliable, but in all honesty, I don’t think that I’d buy another. I do have a number of UA plugins that require UA hardware, but with the advent of UA Spark, I also have them to run on any DAW with any interface, just like any other software plugins, and no UA plugin has ever let me down or choked a system, so for me an my work, it’s not an issue.

It’s fair to say that maybe you don’t need an 876 because you won’t use all those inputs simultaneously, but I have learned over time to overbuy, because I have yet to need fewer than I have and often need more inputs. At around $1400 CAD, the 876 is very well priced and UA is a professional grade company and I have never had a question or issue go unresolved. Sure, some of their support folks can be arrogant, but most are great and that is no different from other companies. Interfaces and plugins are UA’s bread and butter. They don’t slack so if you are considering a large input interface, do have a look at the Volt 876.

But here’s the sort of.

UA announced the 876 in October. I cannot speak for elsewhere but the Canadian distributor is quoting first availability at end of January 2026. If there is something that ticks me it’s product announcements where product availability is not coincident with announcement. I expect that from car makers and other manufacturers, not interface makers, but that’s my problem.

I hear that the music industry is in the throes of expiry. Some say it died some time back. Others say that innovation is anathema to the industry. Some say that there hasn’t been any good music since fill in the blank. Is it really so cut and dried? Or are things more subtle and having more depth?

If we consider guitars, and their associated products for a moment as a microcosm of the industry, we can think about this if willing. We’ve seen credible makers of fine products go under. We’ve seen prices for what are referred to as heritage manufacturers continue to climb into the stratosphere. We’ve seen the best quality and playability in gear from non-traditional building areas ever, with lower costs of acquistion than ever before. We’ve seen tons of “new” instruments from the big names and at the same time a reduction in new products from other big names. What does all of this actually mean?

It has very little to do with the products themselves and everything to do with money. Both Gibson and Fender know very well that they can release the same thing over and over a hundred times with the only difference a tag and a shot of paint and if they don’t overscrew the pricing make a lot of money. They make the money, not their dealers, with whom they have a love / murder relationship. Reducing in the flow expenses, inventory loading and version control is part of any successful manufacturer. Don’t make more than you can sell, build just in time to fulfill orders and create demand through marketing or at least the illusion of demand.

Sometimes, the instrument is even a joy to play, but that is the last item of concern based on a substantial review of what exists.

Another way to increase the maker’s margin is to change the area of mass building to one of lower labour and materials costs, particularly when the location of the buyers have no idea what the build costs actually are. Certainly continue to tout your “homegrown” builds, but not because they are the best, because are they really, but because by appealing to jingoistic fervour, you can convince buyers that they are supporting the local economy and their peers. It sounds beautiful but really how true is it?

Musicians are often content with having multiple instruments. They are less so inclined with larger and heavier pieces such as amplifiers. From an innovation perspective the only innovation in recent years has been the no amp answer, and many of these are indistinguishable to the average player from the so called “real thing”. But if your amp modeller can be 100s of amps and do a decent job, how many do you need? How much do you need to pay when the $500 unit for all lumps and warts sounds as decent as the $2500 unit once run through a PA? The marketplace has already answered. There’s a glut of expensive modellers holding down shelves while the low cost units keep showing up with regular software upgrades and fly directly from maker to buyer.

Certainly musicians need consumables like strings and despite some issues on some online storefronts with fraudulent products, you can get what you want from Amazon in a day or so, likely as inexpensively as in your local music store, presuming one still exists, and even then the music store makes less profit from the sale. So we see more and more really unnecessary crap in the market to encourage the “add-on” high margin sales. I get it. This is not a new idea. Car makers did it for years, then customers got angry at being nickeled and dimed so makers limited their add-ons, to “kits” and reduced the number of variants, while making even more money because the cost of the pieces in the kits were way below what they could sell them for. When you pay an extra $5000 for the Platinum package are you getting $5000 more value? Not in your lifetime.

I’ve also heard that the pedal market is dead. Certainly dead to me. I have way too many pedals on boards that frankly never get used. Yet there’s a new version of the same old pedal from a different maker every month or so. How many oil can delays does anyone actually need? Who is paying for this stuff? Live music doesn’t pay the way it used to. How much in the way of power supplies and switchers and programming do you need to keep all this stuff running and in the long run is it even adding anything to the music? Sure I’d still love a Miku, not because it is useful, but because it is just so damn stupid. I really think that MXR did a great job on their Rockman pedal. But seriously, if I am not in a seventies Boston cover band, how bad do I need one? In hindsight, nowhere near to what I paid for it.

Record labels are not creating new music by A&R, they are just running the copy machine at full tilt, churning out more of the same shit. In the Seventies, MUZAK was a thing that played annoying and tedious tunes in elevators so people didn’t have to talk to each other. Now anything that I hear that is “new” makes me miss MUZAK. And between the record companies and streaming services, only the musicians are getting reamed if they make something that doesn’t sound like humping bass, grade two lyricism and misogyny.

Is the music industry dead or dying? Without innovation, it’s well on the path, but I fear it’s worse. It’s become static, tedious and boring and fewer and fewer people give a shit at all.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

Funny story. I talk to lots of players and because I am curious I ask often about the use of control knobs on guitars and basses. Some players use the volume knob a lot, some very little and some say it’s wide open all the time. Tone controls however, appear to be the unloved hanger on, and while some players get a lot of use from them, the overall average skews heavily to “leave it at ten and forget about it”.

Which begs the question”why” question, and the most common answer is that the player doesn’t like what happens to their tone. Words, like muddy, crushed, no highs and dead are often used.

I do use tone controls on instruments, but like many, I don’t get a lot of joy from them, so let’s take some time to explore the design and delivery of the tone potentiometer and then consider how to make it more useful, or if it can be more useful, or if we should all follow Edward Van Halen and remove it completely and deal with tone shaping elsewhere.

The Tone Potentiometer

We will start with the design behind what we know most often, the passive tone circuit. A potentiometer is a variable resistor. When turned all the way up (let’s call that at 10), in theory it has no effect at all on the signal moving through it. This is not always true, it really depends on the design and build quality of the potentiometer itself. A Tone pot has a capacitor soldered into the circuit. As the tone pot is turned down, high frequencies are reduced.

The micro farad rating of the capacitor has impact on how much the highs get rolled off and the capacitor is also working in conjunction with the resistance value of the pot itself.

In reality, the signal from the pickup goes to the volume potentiometer which in the simplest world then sends the output to the output jack, ie no tone pot. However the general design is that the signal goes from the pickup to the volume pot and then to the tone pot where the capacitor is wired on one side to the wiper (the part that varies the resistance in the tone pot) and the other side to ground.

When the tone pot is rolled off, more of the higher frequencies get dumped to ground and we hear a bassier, and warmer tone. A more accurate name for the instrument tone pot is a low pass filter, meaning it passes low frequencies and filters out higher frequencies. So far so good.

One other consideration can come into play and that relates to the taper type of the potentiometer. Most quality instruments use audio taper potentiometers where the pot changes on a logarithmic curve, but some makers use the less expensive and less useful linear taper potentiometers. I do not find that instrument makers describe what kind of taper that they use and in the overall context of signal path, particularly if you avoid the tone pot, it won’t matter. But for those who want to go deep, here’s a chart to show the difference.

What Frequencies Get Dumped?

Now that is the right question. The tone circuit is incredibly simple. In fact, determining exactly which frequencies are getting dumped and by how much is not well documented at all. A tone pot, being a simple design, is basically a sledgehammer. The more you turn it down, the more highs get dumped, but unlike in a stereo loudspeaker crossover circuit, the cutoff and rolloff rates are neither published nor clear.

This rather hippo in a fishbowl approach is why many players hate the effect of tone pots. Sure there is endless Internet chatter about which resistance in the pot is best and what capacitor is best and everyone can have their own opinion, but it’s still very much using a shotgun to kill an ant. A more precise model would be the notch filters on some acoustic instrument amplifiers that use the wiper to knock out a specific narrow frequency range to help deal with feedback. Yes that is oversimplified but it paints an understandable picture.

The following table, courtesy of the fine people at Amplified Parts shows the impedance of a common capacitor in use on a tone control at different frequences. The impedance references how the capacitor passes low end while cutting high end. Typical the higher the capacitor micro farad rating, the more aggressive the high cut is. The 0.022 capacitors are commonly used with single coil pickups and the 0.047 capacitors are commonly used with humbucking pickups. The 0.10 capacitors are most often found on old electric basses.

How Do I Know if my Tone Pot is Actually Cutting Nothing at 10?

In a well designed pot, when the pot is up to full, or 10 in our example, the wiper is effectively disengaged and none of the signal goes to the capacitor at all. Some vendors offer what they call No Load Tone Pots, which have a detectable notch that you can feel when the wiper is fully disengaged. Whether there is an audible difference, and having instruments with both, I cannot tell and cannot find any credible scientific documentation either way. If you are really worried, you could install No Load pots, but there are a ton of other places in the overall signal chain that can be eating higher frequencies, the most obvious being the native capacitance in instrument cables.

The EVH Model

Mr. Van Halen was certainly not the first player to remove the tone circuits from his instruments but is possibly the best known of those who did. The only impact on the signal level in this case is the volume potentiometer. However, if you want some control over the overall tone, it has to be done somewhere.

The Amplifier Tone Stack

With most amplifiers there is at least a two stage tone stack, one control each for treble and for bass. Each is still just a potentiometer so any setting other than wide open is sending some element of the signal to ground. It’s funny that many players will leave the tone pot on the instrument wide open, but set the amp tone controls to a mid-level by default. Some amplifiers will add a midrange pot, and some will even break those into high mid and low mid pots. The more tone controls, in theory, the more finite control you have over your tone. However at a fundamental level, amplifier tone stacks are also passive and only cut, they do not boost so the potential issue has just been moved to a different place.

Getting More Control - The Equalizer

Before we get into this, a couple of thoughts. While an equalizer can be used to deal with different volume levels for different frequencies, if that’s all you use it for, you are definitely leaving money on the table. The second and to my mind more important thought is that when looking at a graphic equalizer, your goal is not accomplished necessarily by a smooth and pretty curve. It’s an audio tool, not a visual thing.

Pedal style equalizers have been around for a long time, typically in the form of what we call the graphic equalizer. Each slider (just a different design in a variable resistor) works in a specific frequency band and in theory has no impact on other frequency bands. So one has much more control to tailor the sound of the instrument. The challenge is that as players use different instruments, or play different tunes, the EQ may need to be changed and that may work easily in the studio, it may be less easy playing on stage. There are now digital EQ pedals that can store multiple EQ presets to make life easier for the musicians who need different EQ settings for different songs or stage scenes. Is this better than amplifier or instrument controls? Certainly, but one must then also do the work to negate the impact of other tone controls elsewhere in the chain unless one likes their tonal soup to be incredibly complicated. Most pedal equalizers are active, meaning that they boost or cut and often have a master level control as well.

I have bought, used and sold a number of what I call these live EQ pedals. A pedal that only gives me one EQ simply is worth little to me, so I prefer the digital ones. But you also want the capability for live tweaking without needing ten inch long spider fingers and octopus arms.

A very sucessful pedal has been the Boss EQ-200. It has a large, easy to read display and four presets plus a fully manual setting. It’s a well built pedal and does a solid job without getting all foo foo.

A bit smaller on the board but with more flexibility if you use their control software to program it is the Source Audio EQ2. Like the Boss it does graphic equalization but adds the ability to set the Q for each range, effectively giving you a parametric capable EQ on your board. I like it very much, and use one consistently with amplified acoustic guitars, especially if there are Piezo pickups involved. I also use this when a guitar has both traditional pickups AND a piezo for “acoustic” tones. It takes a bit more work to learn, but in my opinion, the Source Audio EQ2 is my general go to.

Another potential pedal for consideration comes from Ibanez and is called the Pentatone EQ or PTEQ. While it looks like a graphic equalizer, it is in fact a true parametric equalizer only. Where the Boss is a great graphic EQ and the Source Audio is both a graphical and parametric equalizer, both with presets, the PTEQ is a parametric equalizer that has a simple to learn and use interface that reminds me of the superb SAE Parametric EQ rack unit, I lusted after in the late 1970s. The PTEQ is also included in the PTPRE which combines a preamp system and the EQ together and also adds a simple noise gate. The only downside from my perspective is the lack of preset options, so if you need different tonal landscapes, you either have more than one, or you tweak between songs when playing live.

So if you want an EQ pedal with presets, consider one of the two options I refer to. If presets are not needed, the Pentatone has a short learning curve and is really good sounding. They are all easy to use, have presets and are large enough that you can tweak the unit live if you need to.

In The Studio

When you are recording, you may not be using your pedals very much or at all. When I was apprenticing in the studio, I expected to see all these multiband graphic equalizers. I was wrong. What I found instead were multiband parametric equalizers. These devices would be set by the engineer and / or the producer to manage very specific frequencies, the width or Q of the frequency band and either the boost or the cut. Not passive devices, and requiring more skill to use well. Today as a recordist, I only use parametric equalizers in my DAWs, and I have a number of different ones, because they do actually impart different sound feelings from model to model. I find myself using Pultec equalizers most often, but it really depends on the sound outcome desired. Each track can have its own unique EQ setting, and then there may be (likely will) be final equalization and compression done in the mixdown and mastering phases. If you are not doing your own engineering and production, this may be a path you don’t worry about and choose to stick to instrument or amp or pedal eq work. However if you will be acting as a recordist, invest the time to learn how to use parametric eqs and take the rest out of the signal chain.

Wrapping Up

The Tone Pot does exactly what it was designed to do. Provide a simple, single knob that offered a quick way to cut treble, increase warmth, diminish the sound of pick attack, or fake out a deeper bodied more acoustic instrument. Yes it is a hammer, but if that’s the right tool, go forward. However if you are not thrilled with your tone, my advice is to turn all the tone controls on instruments and amps all the way up and use a digital EQ pedal with preset capability to get you the sounds that you actually want to hear.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

From time to time, someone will ask me to explain the science of loudspeaker efficiency and what it means in real life.

The outcome, although highly simplified, is that a more efficient speaker is louder at the same input level than a less efficient speaker. For those looking for the shortest possible answer, there you are and thanks for coming.

For the rest, let’s explore a bit of what brings this about, the benefits, detriments and if we should really be concerned.

Defining Speaker Efficiency

In its most basic form, speaker efficiency is the ratio of acoustic power output to electrical power input, expressed as a percentage:

Efficiency = Acoustic Power Output divided by Electrical Power Input times 100

Because speakers convert only a small portion of electrical energy into sound (the rest becomes heat), efficiency values are typically quite low — often less than 5%, and usually closer to 0.1–2% for most consumer loudspeakers.

Clear like mud right?

Let’s restate this in terms that may make more practical sense.

Measurement Standards: Sensitivity vs. Efficiency

While “efficiency” is technically the ratio above, in practical audio work, it’s more common to describe a speaker’s sensitivity, which is related but easier to measure.

Sensitivity Measurement

• Definition: The sound pressure level (SPL) produced by a speaker when driven with 1 watt of power and measured 1 meter away.

• Units: Decibels (dB), written as dB SPL @ 1W/1m.

• Typical range:

• • Low-efficiency speakers: 82–88 dB SPL @ 1W/1m

• • High-efficiency speakers: 92–100+ dB SPL @ 1W/1m

For example, a speaker rated at 87 dB produces a sound pressure level of 87 decibels when fed one watt and measured at one meter distance.

A 97 dB speaker will sound roughly twice as loud with the same power input (since every 10 dB increase represents about a doubling in perceived loudness).

What Impacts a Speaker’s Efficiency?

Several physical and design factors determine how efficiently a speaker can convert electrical energy into sound:

a. Driver Design

• Voice Coil & Magnet: Stronger magnetic fields (from larger or higher-grade magnets) improve motor efficiency, helping the cone move more easily and responsively.

• Cone Mass: Lighter cones require less energy to move, improving efficiency, but may reduce low-frequency extension and introduce coloration.

• Suspension Stiffness: A stiffer suspension resists motion (lower efficiency) but may control cone movement better, reducing distortion.

b. Enclosure Design

• Horn Loading: Horn speakers use an acoustic horn to couple the driver to the air more effectively, greatly increasing efficiency (often 100 dB or more).

However, they require large enclosures and careful design to avoid coloration.

• Sealed vs. Ported Boxes: Ported (bass-reflex) designs improve low-frequency output for a given input power, effectively increasing efficiency in that range.

c. Impedance and Electrical Design

• Lower impedance speakers (e.g., 4Ω vs. 8Ω) draw more current at the same voltage, which can slightly increase output, but only if the amplifier can handle it efficiently.

d. Frequency Range and Bandwidth

• A driver optimized for a narrow band (e.g., midrange horn) can be more efficient than one covering the full spectrum (e.g., a woofer), because energy is focused in one region.

Benefits of High-Efficiency Speakers

1. Require Less Amplifier Power:

• A more efficient speaker can reach the same volume with far less power.

Example:

• 87 dB speaker → needs 100 watts for a given loudness

• 97 dB speaker → needs only 10 watts for that same loudness

(Every 3 dB increase halves the required power.)

2. Better Dynamic Headroom:

• Since they require less power, amplifiers driving efficient speakers are less likely to clip, improving transient response and dynamics.

3. Ideal for Low-Power Amplifiers:

• Especially beneficial for tube amps and Class A designs, which often output lower wattage but deliver superior tonal quality.

4. Lower Distortion at High Volumes:

• Less electrical power means less heat buildup in voice coils, reducing thermal compression (where speakers lose efficiency as they warm up).

Drawbacks and Trade-Offs of High Efficiency

1. Physical Size and Design Complexity:

• Horns or large enclosures are often required to achieve high efficiency, making such systems bulky and expensive.

2. Limited Bass Extension:

• Efficient speakers often trade low-frequency response for sensitivity.

Deep bass requires large cone excursions, which typically reduce efficiency.

3. Coloration and Directivity:

• Horns, while efficient, can introduce coloration (resonances) and have highly directional dispersion, making placement and room acoustics critical.

4. Cost and Material Constraints:

• High-efficiency components (strong magnets, rigid light cones) are more expensive and harder to engineer for flat response.

Wrapping Up

Efficiency measures energy conversion (electrical → acoustic).

Sensitivity quantifies the resulting sound level for 1W at 1m.

Higher efficiency means louder sound with less power, but often larger size and design compromises.

The ideal efficiency depends on the application:

High-efficiency systems shine in live or tube-amp setups.

Low-to-moderate efficiency is acceptable in compact, full-range home or studio speakers where fidelity and size matter more than sheer output.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

If we tell the truth, many of us love instruments so much we end up with several. Several is a nice word because it doesn’t imply a specific number. Great instruments feel and play unique, but how often do we equate the sound with the guitar and not the amp?

It’s an interesting fact of audio physics that the sound that is most unique in our chain is the speaker and cabinet, with some impact from the output transformer where present as in most tube amplifiers, but not in solid state or DSP amps.

So if it really is the amp cabinet, why do so many of us think it is the guitar?

We can all agree that body style and pickups have a real impact of the output signal of the guitar. Some and I include myself believe that the body wood and construction have impact on the sound, although primarily in the acoustic resonance. Tone stacks change the signal and of course effects chains also impact the signal going into the power amp stage, but all those things that we love talking about and reminiscing about all contribute much less than the speaker and cabinet.

When we look at professional cabinet design, speaker placement, baffle style, internal volume, porting, open back, close back and then the speakers themselves in terms of their power agility, voice coil design, magnet type et. al. we cannot deny that this is where the real magic happens.

Let’s take three respected Fender amplifier designs as examples. Let’s pick the same year of manufacture and look at the Deluxe Reverb, the Twin Reverb and the Super Reverb.

In general players will align that they are all excellent amplifiers. However, they do sound different, everything in front of the input being identical. Some people prefer one over the other two. Others will want a different sound entirely and choose an alternate cabinet design and build. An older Marshall 4x12 sounds like itself, but is different from other similar 4x12s. We get this. Companies like Two Notes who build the widest selection and best sounding cabinet/speaker emulations understand this too, and that is why you will find different versions in the emulations of ostensibly the same amp, solely because the speakers are different. We also see this in amp pedals and cabinet options in tools from Universal Audio and others.

So far we are talking solely about the live sound experience, but when we get to recorded sound, it gets a lot more complicated. There are microphones involved, all with excellent frequency response but with subtly different response curves, that are further impacted by the preamp design in the recording desk and the settings therein from tonal mapping perspective. Then there is the recording medium itself, and of course the room where the recording takes place.

Let’s consider the person who says that they love the Rickenbacker guitar sound of the Beatles. Pick your play if the Beatles sound is not for you. The Rickenbacker contributes, but not as much as the VOX amp being used. And the sound of the VOX is further coloured by the studio space, the microphone(s) used, the console, the tape deck and the work of the engineer and producer. Since replicating anything after the amp is challenging, expensive and perhaps impossible, for most of us we can only go so far as the instrument and the amplifier.

And sometimes be chagrined because it doesn’t sound “right”. It actually sounds right, but without all the other factors that impact our audio interpretation and extremely unreliable audio memory.

So maybe, just maybe, we would be better served finding sounds that please us, instead of going bankrupt trying to get the exact sound of a record. The quickest route there is the right speaker and cabinet.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

We are all in the incredible place today where most any amp ever built is available to us from a tonal perspective through powerful and well done modelling. Yes, some modelling options suck and blow simultaneously but there are a many that are indistinguishable from the real thing on a recording, and if used playing live with all the other noise and clatter, no one in the audience will either know or care, other than the grumpy musician in the back who thinks that gear is more important that the player.

The Fender Showman

Fender’s Showman amplifier was an amazing tool in the 1960s. It was built to stay clean into enormous volume levels. As a factory release it delivered 85 watts of tube power into a 2x15 cabinet. The original blackface had tremolo (marked as vibrato) but no reverb. Later in its life as the Dual Showman (100 watts) a silverface version added Fender’s well respected reverb.

As an admitted lover of reverb, why would I be interested in such a powerful amp, that did not distort and have no reverb?

For the massive clean headroom, needed for some of the sixties music genres. The Showman and later the Dual Showman were used by such luminaries as the Beach Boys and the King of Surf Guitar, Dick Dale. In fact Mr. Dale continued to badger Leo Fender for more powerful and thus louder Showman amps because he needed huge amounts of clean volume for his shows, back when a PA was not around.

Vintage Showman amplifiers are scarce and very expensive. Fortunately we have options and the ever impressive James Santiago of Universal Audio worked on the UA Showtime plugin. Why call it the Showtime? Ask UA. I have guesses but they are really irrelevant in the context of the super sound that evokes the real thing, but in a volume controllable manner.

Universal Audio Showtime

In the graphic above, we see an aspect of the UA Showtime. A very simple layout, showing the piggyback design of the original Showman, a head on a separate cabinet. In this example, we see very simple controls. However a big difference from the same vintage Deluxe Reverb, is that the Showman didn’t really overdrive, could get massively loud, and had no reverb at all. It did however have a dedicated midrange tone circuit and that coupled with the dual huge 15” speakers made for a unique tonal palette. Yes, there’s not reverb. However if one is using a plugin for recording or live performance, there are zillions of superb reverb plugins. Some of my faves are EMT plate reverb plugins or the massively powerful, but with tangible learning curves, Lexicon reverbs.

If you know the Deluxe Reverb or Twin Reverb amplifiers well, the UA Showtime brings a very different tone. Potentially bright without being nasal, staying clean unless you push the midrange really hard and perfect for shimmery, jangly guitars. I like it particularly with lower output pickups like those in an old style Stratocaster or a Rickenbacker, but it also makes a fine jazz amp with a hollowbody guitar. In fact, it’s native cleanliness is a great vehicle to really hear the sound variations in different pickup designs.

Quick Samples

For these really short samples, I used four factory presets to give you a sense of the amplifer. The first is the default Showtime 64. The second is Vintage Clean. The third is Bright and Jangly and the fourth is Warm Jazz. I didn’t include any of the options with tremolo, because it’s not an effect that I sync with myself, entirely through lack of practice and that the pulsing gives me a headache. For those who like tremolo, or vibrato as Fender continues to call it, be assured it sounds like an old Fender tube vibrato.

Why Should You Try It?

I rarely meet a guitarist who would not love the options of yet another amplifier. And here’s the AWESOME News! Until October 31, 2025 go to https://uaudio.com and you can download the Showtime plugin in for FREE. When the promo is over, it will revert back to its regular price of $149 USD MAP. To use the plugin, you will need to download the FREE UA Connect software which will install and activate the plugin. You get VST, AU, and AAX builds so usable in most any DAW. The very worst thing that could happen is that you try it and don’t like it, but that’s a very low probability outcome and even if true, it has only cost you a bit of time.

I think it is brilliant and I am very pleased to have it in my virtual amp room. It includes three different microphone configurations and they all have their own distinctive sounds. So download it and try it out. What have you got to lose?

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

Hey friends. Over the years, I have worked with a large variety of instrument wireless systems. The best in my experience have been the very high end Shure systems, but a grand is a lot of money unless you are being paid well for performing.

I wanted the convenience of wireless without spending part of a mortgage payment, but I also did not want the horrible tonal loss and high end cut that I got with a number of ones that I bought with my own money and now hold down the bottom of one of those plastic storage boxes.

I tried and still own units from BOSS and Line6. Most of the stuff from Amazon was such utter shit, that it got packed up and returned the day of arrival. My recommendation on all of those (lots of different brand names, but the same guts in all of them) is DON’T.

I say nay to the Boss and Line6 offerings, although they were better than any of the Amazon stuff. Some offered a switch to give you the “sound”, more correctly the loss of sound that comes from cable capacitance, that is exacerbated by cheap-ass cables. To that point, if you are going to use a cable, only spend the money on cables designed for live stage use. They will have thick, non-kinking outer coverings, military grade connectors, strain reliefs and will not pick up electrical noise from whatever. I have a preference and have written about them in greater detail in another article. After too many noisy, kink-consistent and high murdering junk, I only use Pig Hog cables at this point. A bit more expensive, super reliable, lower capacitance and no directional electron travel bullshit.

Back to the no cable solution. On a day when I felt like smacking the credit card, I ordered the Spark Link system. For the lowest price of any brand name, my expectations were quite low. And I was pleasantly surprised.

They are rated for 70 feet of range and I have not gone that far, but I found that they handle walls and obstructions like furniture far better than other ones that use the oversaturated 2.4 GHz radio band. Why not the less crowded 5 GHz band? It has less range and is more susceptible to interference. Science!

They run for 6 hours taking 2 hours to bring the Lithium ion batteries from dead to full charge. The design has worked on every instrument that I own, including those having an output jack positioned by someone with no concept of decent placement. There are only four channels, which could be problematic if you have a stage full of musicians using them, but if you are at that level, you are going to be using a multi device consolidating wireless controller anyways.

They recharge over USB-C and the included cable charges both at the same time. They take up very little space and it would take a lot of work to turn them off or change channels inadvertently.

Most importantly I notice less tonal loss with these over any other systems that I have tried other than the Shure professional controller system.

Rest assured that while they are from Spark, you do not need to have other Spark equipment to use them. They of course do work with Spark amps, but also work with other amps as well. Also note that they ship as a pair, so if you buy more than one pair, don’t mix them up.

At a price of $179 CAD MAP, I don’t believe that there is a better system out there under $500. You may have found one and if so, please let me know. I’m really happy with my set.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

Hey folks. I get a lot of stories in my feeds pertaining to guitars, the music industry, trade trends and the like. I also closely follow the recording space in terms of gear and plugins and I’m starting to think that we are living in a time loop. I won’t attempt to follow that concept through quantum physics, because I am way out of date on current thinking, but the concept of being stuck in a loop is so obvious, you’d have to be blind.

Let’s talk about acoustic guitars. When you think acoustic guitar, what comes to mind? For me, it’s a Martin style dreadnought. A very fine guitar. And has been such for over eighty years. When Bob Taylor created his masterful neck joint, that was truly innovative and for a long time, Taylor did not even build dreadnought style bodies in their normal range. But when I look at the latest innovations in acoustic guitars, the only real changes are the woods used, commonly due to limitations or to keep prices the same while increasing profitability by using less expensive, but still great sounding woods. I know that for some a cutaway on an acoustic is akin to heresy, but for most of us, we care about sound and playability first. Manufacturers keep making the same types of guitars partly due to lack of innovation and partly because of the intransigent mentality of many buyers. Intransigence is fatal. I still hear that carbon fibre guitars are crap. When I ask if the person making the statement has ever played a quality example, the answer is invariably no. “If it’s not made of wood, it’s crap”. Nope, sorry, that’s not correct. You may not like it, but it is not crap. And I say that with full confidence because I own three of them. Fear and intransgience keep things this way.

If we move to electric guitars, it’s the same thing. Does it look like a Strat or does it look like a Les Paul? Some very fine examples of both and many excellent instruments that bear a stunning resemblance to these 65 plus year old designs. The default PRS body shape was initially shunned because it looked like neither and it’s an overnight success in only 35 years. Sixty plus years later we still have predominantly magnetic pickups in either single coil or humbucking variants. Both systems work great but in all that time, there hasn’t be a new idea? Probably, but buyers are intransigent.

When it comes to pedals, when did you last see something truly new, and not another version of a Klon, or Tube Screamer or something else? Pedals with multiple emulations of older pedals certainly exist but there has not been anything really new in a very long time, that didn’t sound like a sheep being turned inside out. That’s not innovation, that’s a failed experiment, but people buy based on the label, not always the effectiveness.

Don’t even get me started on recording. Most every microphone made these days of any kind of quality are reproductions of very old microphones. Are the repros decent? Certainly, but everything does not need to be recorded as if it’s still 1952, however good those old mics were. Plugins to the DAW have opened access to what used to be hardware based processors, that were expensive, temperamental, and markedly inconsistent. At a quick glance I found over twenty different plugs, all stating that they were the best implementation of a classic tube based compressor. I need not go into other examples. We are spoiled by the volume of excellent and well priced sound very alike options. I can not afford a real Teletronix LA-2, but I discovered that through plugin bundles I own about eight different “perfect” emulations. Honestly, not all are perfect, but there are a couple where I cannot tell the plugin from the hardware. Not a terrible thing, but where is there something new?

In fairness to you all, I do not count autotune, autotiming, autodrummers or any AI horseshit as innovation. I see them all as curses against true creatives. If you cannot pull off what you record live, without lipsyncing or backing tracks that you play against letting your audience assume that you are actually playing, please get stuffed and make room for real creatives. I own multiple autotune plugins, because I got them at no cost with something else. I personally choose not to use them or work with people who need them. My choice. You are completely free to do whatever you want. However as far as I am concerned it’s all phony baloney.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

I suppose there are a ton of videos and articles on how to do this simple yet highly beneficial work. So it’s perfectly fair for me to share my process with you.

What You Will Need

• Masking tape

• Murphy’s Oil Soap Spray (non concentrated)

• 0000 Steel Wool

• Set of Fretboard Guards (I like the Music Nomad ones with the longer handles, but there are similar alternatives)

• Fretboard Conditioner (I prefer Monty’s Instrument Food or the Taylor Fretboard Conditioner. Some people like lemon oil, but citric acid in lemon oil has a drying out effect. A quality furniture wax is also fine)

Process

If an electric guitar, cover the pickups with masking tape to prevent metal dust from sticking to the pickups. Mask off the point of the body at the end of the neck to protect the guitar if you slip with the steel wool.

Spray the Murphy’s Oil Soap liberally onto a cloth and scrub the fretboard and the frets. Rotate the cloth frequently so you are using a clean portion. Once you are no longer picking up dirt, switch to a clean cloth and scrub again. Repeat as necessary until there is no residue on the cloth from dirt or the oil soap.

Take a piece of steel wool and protecting the fretboard with the fretboard guard at each fret, polish each fret liberally in the same direction as the fret itself. Do this for each fret, using a fresh area of steel wool every few frets.

When you are done, spray your cleaning cloth again with Murphy’s Oil Soap and scrub again, then when you are not picking up detritus, switch to a clean cloth and buff dry.

If you are using Monty’s Instrument Food or a wax polish, rub a clean cloth into the polish for each fingerboard section and rub it into the fretboard. Some say not to do this to maple fretboards whether finished or unfinished, but there is no reason not to do so. The wax acts as a feed mechanism for unfinished wood as well as a surface protectant for all woods. It’s presence will make your next cleaning easier. If you use a more liquid polish, apply with a cloth and then rub in with your fingertip. Again, the fretboard wood does not matter.

Let the fretboard rest with your conditioner on the board for 5-10 minutes. Then take a clean cloth and buff everything. Support the neck so you can apply a good level of force to the buffing process.

Motorized Devices

I don’t recommend the use of motorized buffers or cotton wheels unless things are REALLY bad. I’ve done so when there is verdigris or corrosion on frets, but often in those cases a professional fret job is required. I have found that the oil soap alone with some human power will clean up most all fretboards with appropriate use and it does not heat the wood or damage the lacquer on lacquer finished fretboards. I’ve done deep cleaning on old maple board Telecasters using this simple method with excellent success, although doing so will reduce the accumulation of dirt, grime, sweat and cigarette smoke which will negatively impact that worn in look desired by some. Where the lacquer has worn through on maple boards and the dirt buildup is significant, it is unlikely that you will get it all clean and definitely do not use power tools on those boards.

In summary, if you have a Dremel tool and use it, put aside some money so a professional can fix what goes wrong.

Wrapping It Up

How often you do this is entirely up to you. As I have many guitars and only change strings when I feel that they are on their way to dead, I perform this quick process with every string change. If you are a professional gigging musician, working in hot locations, or perhaps where there is still smoke in the air, or you play outdoor venues that are super dusty or dry, you may choose to do this more often. Many people find the process therapeutic. You can get the Monty’s Fretboard products from Monty’s Guitars in London. It’s my preference, but you do you. Everything else is readily available on Amazon wherever you are.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

I think it is fair to say that most of us enjoy the sound of overdrive or distortion from time to time, and for some that’s all the time. Some get it from an overdriven amp, or one designed to give real amp distortion, some from pedals and more each day from modellers. However you choose to get that tone and you like it is the right answer for you.

There are some potential downsides to always using overdrive or distortion. Wait, put the pitchforks and torches down!

These tonal effects can act like masks for our playing. You might be ok with that, and if so, good on you and have a great day. However if your technique and accuracy are important to you as you improve in your craft of musicianship, the sound of a really clean amp hides nothing and is a great way to identify where any of us can do work and to improve.

Many professional and successful musicians use acoustic guitars to write their music and to build their hand and finger plans because they are so obvious, but not all players own acoustics or even if they do, they prefer the feel of the electric guitar. Fair enough.

What I propose is having some form of clean amp, even if the music that you play most is not heard clean. The old Unplugged series revealed how much of our playing can be masked by overdrive and distortion. Now I don’t know about you, but money is critical and it doesn’t fall from the sky so we all have to think about how we achieve this clean tone.

One route, and the oldest is to buy an amp that is clean at all volume levels. The Fender Twin Reverb is renowned for staying clean even when its volume is so loud, it hurts. The Twin is kind of unique in the Fender pantheon in that regard. My blackface Twin is a wonderful amp and stays clean, but can get too loud at home fairly quickly. Another wonderful clean amp is the JC-120 or smaller JC-40 from the Roland Jazz Chorus family. These are true analog solid state amplifiers that sound glorious and have no digital artefacts.

I have yet to find a “clean” pedal that does what it claims. If you have one or know of one, please post a comment to enlighten me.

The most recent option, and often the most inexpensive is in the form of a clean amp model. That can be a plugin for your DAW on your computer, or a selection in a modeller. We know of AXE FX and Kemper and Quad Cortex as excellent but frankly priced out of some folk’s budget. If you want to go on the frugal route because clean is not something that you spend a lot of time with, I recommend consideration of the TONEX ONE.

It is quite inexpensive and includes TONEX SE which has a pretty darn decent set of models included (250). It’s pictured above and as of this writing is about $170 USD during their sale. Please note, that I am not sponsored by IKmultimedia and receive no compensation for the recommendation. Hell they don’t know who I am.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

Hello all, Good to be back with you. This time I want to talk about an often heard and often unrecognized tool for guitarists, the slide, or bottleneck, or steel.

If you’ve ever listened to old blues from the American South, you have likely heard the sound of a slide on a guitar. Certainly blues and the slide go together like a redfish sandwich and cajun rice, but the use of a slide spans multiple genres and materials.

Origins

The first slides as we know them were called bottlenecks, literally the necks cut from bottles and then having their edges sanded so as not to cut the player’s fingers. The slide enabled playing the tones between the notes, a commonality in world music and other cultural influences that are not bound by a 12 note system and bypassing the natural limitations brought by fretting a string.

Historians propose that the idea of the slide came from slaves seized from Africa. There is still plenty of atonal music on the continent that supports this idea. Slaves and their progeny brought the slide into the blues with pioneering musicians such as Son House, Bukka White and Robert Johnson made it a hallmark of what we call Delta Blues and those recordings introduced the sound to non-black musicians and listeners. When the movement to Chicago started, musicians such as Muddy Waters brought the slide to electric blues and as we know, many guitar players, particularly in the United Kingdom were heavily influenced by the electric slide players. They then started using the slide in their own music, while some did some pretty obvious lifts from existing delta blues songs.

Playing with a Slide

Typically a slide is worn on the little or ring finger of the left hand and is used to glide along the strings, but not so hard that the slide hits the frets. To prevent this, many slide players set their instruments with higher actions. There are even accessories that ride on the existing nut to raise the action temporarily to prevent fret noise when playing slide. I use one of these on my own resonator guitar that allows me to play single notes without it and slide with it. The tone of slide is often associated with the human voice and as it moves in a portamento brings that forward. Couple this with vibrato and dynamics and you get what what Colin James refers to in his wonderful tune National Steel as “a crying moan”. If you have never heard this song, go to your streaming service and have a listen. It is everything you need to know about the emotional grip of a slide.

It is very common for the guitar to be tuned to an open tuning. Open D, open G and open E are very common choices but so too are chord based tuning such as C6 as we often find in country steel guitar. You can of course play slide in standard tuning but as the string tuning does not naturally create a harmonious tone, it requires greater care and technique to slide only the string or adjacent strings that you want.

Slide Materials

The first slides were made out of glass, coming as they were from bottle necks. A glass slide produces a warm and smooth tone, and synthetic slides can try to achieve the same thing. In my opinion, they don’t although I have a few old ones in my slide collection. I prefer glass to synthetics myself. Duane Allman created a whole mystique when he used a glass Coricidin medicine bottle as a slide and there are today, slides made in the shape of the Coricidin bottle. Does it sound better than other glass? Of course not, but musicians, like many people, can be superstitious and take on beliefs unsupported by facts.

Another option is to make the slide from metal. Steel slides and even steel bars from table style slide instruments are used. The sound is very bright and has long sustain. It sounds like slide but is less subtle and more forward than the sound of a glass slide. Some players, such as Ariel Posen, prefer a brass slide, finding the sound less harsh while retaining the brightness and sustain. Personally I generally prefer the sound of brass over steel, with the exception of when I play a lap steel and then I use a steel bar. You can hear the sound of a lap steel in the music of Larkin Poe.

Yet another option is ceramic material. Billy Gibbons is known for the ceramic slide called the Mud Slide. It’s a nice balance between a glass slide and a metal slide. I have one of those and like it for more Texas style blues while preferring glass for more classic blues and for rock guitar.

We also find slides made from minerals and rocks, as well as slides made from wood. There are lots of options and if you like slide, you’ll need a box to contain all the ones you end up buying. Trust me on this.

Where Can You Hear Slide

I’ve already mentioned the presence of slide in Delta, Chicago and Texas blues, but slide is used much more widely than that. The amazing Bonnie Raitt has played slide since she started and she is known not just for contemporary blues but also for ballads. We can find slide used widely in music from rock bands that were heavily influenced by the blues. Jimmy Page used a fair bit of slide in Led Zeppelin tunes, and the sound of slide is found often in songs by The Tragically Hip. I have already mentioned Larkin Poe as another group using slide tones in their music. Ry Cooder brought the sound of slide to roots and world music. Keith Richards was heavily influenced by the tuning and power of slide that his default tuning is now an open tuning with no low E string at all. Another superb example of slide excellence is Derek Trucks of The Tedeschi Trucks Band. I am not aware of slide in jazz or classical music but that is more to my lack of awareness than an inappropriate use of the tool.

Wrapping Up

The use of slide evokes emotional commotion in many people much more aggressively than playing chords and riffs in standard tuning. This is very true for me, partly because of my strong engagement with old Delta blues and because of the haunting quality of well played slide. It brings a level of depth and dimension you don’t get any other way. If you’ve never tried slide, get yourself a glass slide (because they are widely available and relatively inexpensive) and tune to open G and have at it. Remember you are just touching the strings as when playing a harmonic. It takes some practice but when you get it, you know it.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

Hello and welcome to the third and final for the moment review of Journey Instruments Travel Guitars. This time I am working with the electric six string version, although Journey Instruments does also make bass guitars. The OE990 family is available in three colours, a faded blue, a faded black and a dark cherry sunburst. The pricing is the same for all colours at $787.99 CAD MAP.

Overview

The guitar as you can see from the images provided, is a Single Cutaway shape with a poplar body and maple top. The neck is a U carve maple neck with either a rosewood or composite fingerboard and dual carbon reinforcement rods in addition to the adjustable truss rod. The body is beveled in the back, the arm and the cutaway for comfort and ease of playing into the upper frets. The finish is a high. gloss poly but matte on the back of the neck for smoothness and no stickiness. Scale length is 25 inches with 22 nickel / brass frets. The guitar weighs in quite light at 7.6 pounds. The tuners are Journey’s own 18:1 locking units. The electronics are a pair of humbuckers and a master volume and master tone control. A push pull enables the splitting of the humbuckers. The nut is bone and the bridge is a steel hardtail with string through body design. The factory strings are tens

As can be seen in the opening image, the neck uses Journey’s patented and capable system to release the neck for packing in the included travel case when moving the guitar around. This means that when folded and in the case the entire package is only 20.5” x 13.4” x 7.4” and total weight of 11.5 pounds. Unlike the acoustic models, the headstock is separate from the neck and it mounts via a pair of metal pins into holes in the end of the neck. When mounted and the neck attached to the body, the seams are not noticeable. You will also notice in the images above that this instrument features a zero fret which makes enormous sense seeing as the headstock is detached for travel in the provided case.

The case for this guitar is different from the ones for the acoustics. This should not be a surprise. Fit and finish are still very good, the difference being that the body and the headstock are in the rear compartment and the neck is stored in a slipcase inside the front compartment. There is still space for a laptop and room for your typical accessories such as tuner and strap. It’s really fitted out as a backpack and fits well, even if your body is larger.

Playability

As with the other two Journey Instrument guitars reviewed already, set up is a breeze as is takedown. To assemble the electric version, attach the headstock, then put the neck in the slot and connect the locking bolt and tighten it up. I take my time tightening the neck up and find that it goes easier than doing it quickly. Once you are sure the neck is locked in place, which is easily verified by the bolt and checking the action, tune the strings up. As with the other guitars, as they were all new, a string stretching was required initially. Once stretched in, the strings hold tune quite well. I believe that the factory strings are Elixir Nanos, not bad but certainly not my personal preference, but good enough to be going on with. With the neck attached, the factory action was excellent.

The U carve doesn’t feel as chunky as some U carves do and I found it quite comfortable. I personally prefer wood fretboards over composites but that is purely me as the carbon fibre fingerboard on the carbon fibre acoustic is great. I am not sure what composite means in this case, possibly something like the Richlite we see on so many other guitars. The fret work is very good with no rockers and the fret ends are not sharp. It is my personal preference to polish the frets on new guitars that I purchase. I did not do so in this case, because I wanted to maintain the experience of the new owner.

The volume knob is reasonably close to the bridge pickup although I would like it a bit closer because of my affection for volume swells and having shorter fingers. The pots are very smooth and the push push on the tone control is positive. It really is a push switch and locks in the down position for humbucking, press it and it releases to the up position for the coil split sound.. The three way pickup selector is a slotted style switch and worked well with no noise at all, more PRS than Gibson positioned. In actuality the body is more reminiscent to me of a PRS single cut to a Les Paul. The weight, the bevels and the design being very comfortable to play whether seated or standing. The strap lugs are decent, although I would add rubber lock on washers as is my personal choice as I always use a strap, lest I receive another demonstration on gravity and its impact on guitars without straps.

The colour has nothing to do with the playability. Journey Instruments calls the black one black, but I chose to call it a black fade as that is what it looks like to me. It certainly is not a solid deep black and in my opinion this colour gives more depth and reveals the look of the maple cap better. My personal favourite is the blue and looking about the studio, it’s clear I may have a bias down this road as the Journey is not alone in its colourway. The cherry sunburst is the colour of my evaluation instrument and it is as dark as it appears in the photograph, always a cherry red with no oranges or yellows as is often inferred by the phrase cherry sunburst. The photo also doesn’t do justice to the bright chrome finish of the pickup covers.

When I first played the guitar, unplugged as I usually do, I was honestly quite surprised by the volume and resonance of the acoustic tone.

The Pickups

The two humbucking pickups set up arrived with them very low and to my ear, very bassy. Warm but too dark, almost muddy. I raised them up as high as I could without impacting strings at the high frets then dropped the bass sides about a turn and a half to get a tone more pleasing to me. The single/humbucking switching took me a bit to get used to being most accustomed to push / pulls but once I became acclimated, it’s quite effective. My learning curve really related to doing a full push instead of a tap to actuate the switch.

In my first play test, I found the tone over bassy and somewhat muddy. Tone is super subjective and this is not the first time I have wanted more high end. Perhaps it is because I can still hear to 14Khz that I find something missing. When you kick in an overdrive pedal or use an overdriven amp, that becomes less of an issue for me, but I always test first unplugged, then into a very clean amp because it is my perspective that doing so tells the most accurate story of the pickups, even when they are wound for overdrive. Even in single coil configuration, the instrument is still quiet when not being played. As one would expect, the output drops when you switch to single coil mode.

That changed when i switched to the Universal Audio Amplifier pedals. Then the pickups sounded, in my opinion, really good. The combination of the pickups and the world’s best, again my opinion, amplifier emulation was superb.

Recorded Examples

To make the recorded examples, I used Universal Audio amplifier emulators. The Dream 65 was used for a clean tone, the Lion 68 for a classic rock tone, and the Knuckles 92 for those desiring a metal tone. My opinion is that the guitar as it comes can work for any genre once you have your full signal chain in place. I chose these amplifier emulators because I know them well and I use them in the studio a lot, certainly more often than miking a physical amp or using an amplifier plugin. You do what works best for you. I recorded directly into Logic Pro and resisted the temptation to add plugins that might take away from the real sound of the guitar.

For those unfamiliar with Universal Audio Amplifer pedals, the Dream 65 emulates a 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb, the Lion 68 emulates a 1968 Marshall Super Lead and the Knuckles 92 emulates a 1992 Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier.

The sample has three sections, one for each amplifier. Each amplifier has two sections, but the High Gain Knuckles has a third. The first is just an A chord played three times in the humbucker setting for each switch setting, bridge, middle, neck, then repeated with the guitar in single coil mode. This is followed by a very basic chord riff. In the Dream 65, the pickups were in humbucker mode, the switch in the middle position. For both the Lion 68 and the Knuckles 92 the pickups were in humbucker mode and the switch in the bridge position. The third section of the Knuckles is just a really short note riff to give a sense of metal amp sustain.

Wrapping Up

In my review of the wood bodied acoustic, I posited that placing the guitar in the travel guitar box may be doing it a disservice. Certainly this and the others are built for travel, but having spent time with all of them now, I would not relegate them to travel only as a general thing. The wood bodied acoustic could easily be your only guitar but some might find the carbon fibre version a bit quiet. I am less comfortable making such a statement about the electric version not because it fails at anything, but because in terms of return on spend, its real standout feature is its travel capability in reduced space. From a playability and sound perspective, I did not find it superior to less expensive electric offerings such as those from Yamaha or Squier. While the data suggests that travel instruments are more often acoustic because acoustic players are more comfortable taking just a guitar with them than electric players, I would be perfectly happy travelling with the electric version and a copy of TONEX on my iPad along with the simple IKMultimedia interface. You can also just play it acoustically if you are ok without amps and effects. I am, and always do my first play test on any electric with it not plugged in. An electric that sounds dead without an amp is always louder but still dead when plugged in.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

We all have heard the phrase, practice makes perfect, but it’s not actually true. The actual phrase must always be PROPER practice makes improvement. What the hell is perfect anyway? Perfect is very subject for an instrumentalist and so many approaches and levels exist that the idea of perfect is frankly quite dumb. Consider the number of players we find on YouTube whose technique is incredible and their playing of known tunes is perfectly spot on. Yet we come away feeling, ok cool but I’m not inspired. I feel meh. Yet I watch a video of B.B. King and am blown away. He had the technique for what he wanted to play but he brought the “feels”, the emotional commotion, that turned is playing into something with incredible force.

So the first question that I ask about your practice, which is the one I berate myself with regularly when practicing or playing for my own pleasure is “am I practicing correctly?” Am I getting the right notes with clarity? Am I blurring anything? Is my timing correct? Any of us will have discovered that even in 4/4 we may tend to speed up or slow down subtly, and given my personal love of Alex Lifeson’s work, 4/4 is an irregularity, not a common thing and I discovered I was playing stuff for years thinking it was correct only to discover that I was dropping notes, or slurring when there should be clarity. I’ve never claimed to be a great player, but I know when I’m having a good day and when it’s not happening. And you know the same thing about yourself.

Live Lessons

Live lessons can be a wonderful thing. When I was young, a very long time ago, I took lessons from a great guy called Brian Wilson (not the one you may think of) in Etobicoke Ontario. Brian was patient and not only brought the songs that I wanted to learn but brought stuff I had never heard of. Take Five by Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck is something that I still play today, and that I can get through it is thanks solely to Mr. Wilson.

Songbooks and Records

I stopped taking lessons after a while, not because Mr. Wilson wasn’t helping but because my head was elsewhere. I learned from printed songbooks which gave the basic stuff and abused vinyl records to learn solos. Not an unusual approach for the time. But did I get better? Whatever better meant in that context? Sometimes, but the lack of a reference in the form of a great teacher allowed me to make mistakes and then replicate them ad nauseum. I still screw up Over the Hills and Far Away because I messed it up so badly at first. I learned to read music and can do so at about the level of a grade two English reader but never devoted the time. I found tablature useful, but mostly mechanical and while it gave the notes, it didn’t give the flow the way of a live lesson would.

Software Tools

Later on, I tried some of the computer based learning tools, basically recordings with onscreen tablature. I was not successful. Playing while sitting in front of a screen trying to follow tab is not a skill that I ever developed. In speaking with other players, the responses varied widely between its awesome and I’d rather have my teeth drilled. For those that these tools benefit, they are superb, but if the tool doesn’t work for you, move on.

Back to Live Lessons

As my daughter became an adult, I tried live lessons again. I will say that my assigned teachers had lots of skill and were very patient, and while the music theory portions that I requested were helpful, I was not trying to learn songs but to understand what the creator of the music was intending and to try to think like the composer in the hope that I might “get it”. You will have heard that hope is not a strategy, and it is an absolutely true statement. I came away from my lessons wondering whether I was getting value for my money. The lessons were close by, the teachers were solid, but it wasn’t working for me.

Online Songs

I have to admit that I have difficulty naming anything recorded in the last twenty years that makes me excited to play. I know that there is new music, but none of it creates enthusiasm in me. I blame myself first but i’m not alone in this feeling. Add in autotune and all the digital stuff and for me, there is no magical feel. I play a tune featuring Tim Henson, and while his technique is amazing, I get bored within a minute and turn it off. So when looking into online song training, I’m looking at stuff composed and recorded mostly in the seventies and eighties. I recently got what I call the Boston Box from MXR and playing those old Boston tunes again has been a blast, but it does put me back in 1976.

Online How-To

Like most of us, we are busy. I don’t play video games or watch TV. I read a lot and have other pastimes that keep me busy when I am not working. Thus my guitar time is still limited. At the advice of Keith Williams of Five Watt World, I tried Truefire. While I have the full package, I know that I am not getting the full value because by the time I get to sit with my guitar, I’m often pretty tired and my brain is not in knowledge gathering mode. However, I do find that their lesson curricula is excellent and the teachers are really great. Because I can control the flow, stopping, rewinding, it’s almost like being with Brian Wilson again, but I can do it when I want, how often that I want, and the cost is incredibly reasonable considering the deliverable. I’m not sponsored by Truefire, although if they wanted to do so, I’d be very happy because I like their platform and I recommend it highly. I find it specifically valuable to any player who wants to work on his or her own terms, at his or her own pace. Some have said it’s designed for older people. While I do qualify as older, I don’t buy into that position. I spend time in guitar shops and while I do tend to have more conversations with adults than young people, I have yet to find a young person who is committed to his or her instrument who was not a pleasure to speak with, regardless of any genre preferences that the individual may have.

It used to be, that a successful guitar shop had a great set of teachers for lessons. Music lessons are still a good business, generating far more profit percentage than the sale of a brand name instrument. It’s also what we in business call recurring revenue, and that is a very critical thing because that revenue can sustain a small shop through the dead months. I don’t take anything away from the value potential of live lessons, but for me, at this point, they don’t add value, so I go with Truefire. If interested you can find out more at Truefire

Wrapping Up

A lesson can help break a rut, or a stop. It can change your head space. However you approach learning something new, do it. That new guitar, pedal, amp or whatever might be fun, but in and of itself, it’s just a tool and if you aren’t leveraging the tool, you aren’t getting ahead.

If you like what I do here for you, please become a supporter on Patreon. Your monthly contribution makes an enormous difference and helps me keep things going. To become a Patreon Patron, just click the link or the button below. Always feel comfortable to send in a question or to post a comment. I read them all and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support of my work. I’m Ross Chevalier and I look forward to sharing with you again soon.

UPDATE : I used the wrong images at first, these are the correct ones. I also said pau ferro but the OF422C uses rosewood. My apologies for my error.

NOTE : Some of the text in this review is identical to text in the review of the Journey OF660M for information purposes as not all readers read all the reviews

Hey folks, this is the second of three reviews of Journey Instruments Travel Guitars.

The OF422C is a travel guitar that comes in an overhead ready nicely padded case, where the guitar is made of a solid sitka spruce top over a solid rosewood back and laminated rosewood sides.

A Travel Guitar

A travel guitar is always going to be a collection of benefits and compromises. It’s going to be compact and transportable, but the offset to that is that it will not be as loud or perhaps as rich in the bottom end. That’s not a materials thing, it’s an acoustics thing. A travel guitar must be built to be able to get small, and that means some engineering to make that happen. Sometimes it means a shorter scale size, particularly since the maximum length of an overhead on an aircraft is already shorter than a common instrument scale length. This can be achieved with a short body, sort of, but then there is a comfort and playability compromise.

Most travel guitars are pickup based because body depth can be another problem relating to both sound and the viability of the neck joint. So some smart engineering is needed there as well if the thing is going to be reliable.

If the neck comes apart as part of the design, when reconnected, it must go back to the same action, string tension and usability every time, It also must provide for rapid tool free assembly and compaction. While these things may sound simple, they really aren’t simple at all.

Thus choosing to build a travel guitar is a decision fraught with challenges that are above and beyond building a compact guitar. And that requires innovation, engineering and attention to detail.

Or Is It Really Just a Travel Guitar?

More to come on that idea…

About Journey Instruments

Journey is a US company based in Texas with a building shop located in China. The team is small, but built of folks with massive expertise in their fields. They bring experience in carbon fibre weaves, engineering and hundreds of hours of research specifically focused on travel guitars. For this and the other two reviews, I will be looking at the Overhead Series, although there is a Puddlejumper Series which is collapsible and the Comfort Series which is not.

Travelling

I find it very annoying that what the instrument media refer to as travel guitars really aren’t. They are either ¾ body or small body, short scale options that will engender hostility at the gate at most airports. Having spent more than 3 million miles in the air. I have seen every size and shape of whatever attempt to be stuffed into the overhead bins on everything from full size aircraft to regional turboprops. Clearly many people have not figured out that you cannot fit 9 cubic feet of luggage into 4 cubic feet of constrained space. Most of what I see marketed as travel guitars will take up more space than typically allowed in an overhead and certainly would not fit under an airplane seat. Now if you take air travel out of the travel potential entirely that’s a different conversation, but the Journey Instruments were designed with air travel in mind. And as air travel continually degrades into a bovine boxcar experience with narrower seats, less legroom and less overhead space, those so called travel instruments could end up in the hold. We’ll call that sub-optimal and leave it at that. The Overhead series being reviewed here is built to go in the overhead compartment and not suck up so much space that you end up in a fist fight with a Karen.

The OF422C

The OF422C is part of the Overhead series and is the closest thing to a traditional wood acoustic guitar. This model uses a solid sitka spruce top, with rosewood sides and back. The back is solid and the sides are laminates and as discussed many times, there is no significant downside, but an upside in stability in the face of temperature and humidity variances.

The top is finished in a beautiful high gloss. The sides and back are done in a smooth matte finish. The back of the neck is similarly smooth and never gets sticky or gooey. The nut width is between a steel string and a wide classical, so string spacing is very comfortable and even big fingers can get in there easily. The OF422C is a steel string guitar, but for those who want nylon strings there is a nylon string version available called the OC520. There are a variety of different wood combinations available in the line with different model numbers.

The body is a 00 size and layout and there is nice shoulder bevel on the upper rear. You find these on very expensive high end guitars and I know enough about luthiery to know just how much work they entail. To me, that bevel is a massive upgrade. Also this guitar has a regular scale length, missing in most travel guitars. You can also see the fantastic cutaway relief in the upper lower bout, but the beautiful gloss is not shown in the image. You’ll pay a lot for that higher fretboard access in other guitars. It just works.

Unlike the carbon fibre OF660M, the soundhole is centered in the body as in a traditional acoustic guitar,

The frets are polished medium brass, the bridge is a high angle rosewood and the saddle and nut are bone. The fretboard is rosewood over a solid mahogany neck that is carbon fibre reinforced. The tuners are Journey branded locking 18:1 tuners that are smooth and without lash. The factory installed strings are Elixirs.

This guitar includes a three contact sensor passive piezo pickup system that looks a lot like a K&K Pure Mini to me, but is most likely a clone of the well established K&K. Passive means no battery, but you will then want some way to control the output gain, either with a strap mounted preamp, or a volume pedal on the floor. To record, I ran the guitar directly into a Clarett 8+Pre and then chose a channel strip that I liked to deal with any piezo issues, The output uses a standard mono guitar cable.

The Overhead case is built specifically to hold the guitar when disassembled and is nicely padded and semi rigid, It has space for the guitar, some accessories like a tuner and capo as well as cables. There is a built in laptop sleeve that will hold a 14” laptop.

Assembly and Disassembly

The photo of the OF422C in the case shows that the strings don’t come off for travel. You detune the strings and follow the simple steps to remove the neck before putting it in the case. When you are ready to reassembly you reverse the process. The first time I did it, it took me about two minutes. Now that I know what I am doing, it is quicker. You don’t need all kinds of strength, endurance or agility but do make sure the strings are detuned to make the job easier.

Journey includes a printed Quick Start Guide page, and I have reproduced it here.

If the QSG makes it look incredibly easy, that’s because it is incredibly easy. What I really appreciate is that if you follow the instructions and tighten up the neck bolt, the action is nice and low and there is no fretting out. The truss rod is fully adjustable although I like carbon fibre because it is so darn stable.

While wood is more sensitive to temperature and humidity than carbon fibre, that the neck is carbon fibre reinforced, has a dual action truss rod and the sides are laminated, reduces my concerns with the guitar suffering due to changes in temperature or humidity. As with any guitar, when you go through changes like that leave the guitar in its case to acclimate to the new situation.

As the rear strap pin is also the output jack you run into the same problem as you find with all these things. My solution is an adapter from Music Nomad called the Acousti-Lok. I’ve written about them here. You remove the factory end cap and replace it with the Acousti-Lok. Now you have an endpin jack that is separate from a standard sized strap lug. Do you have to do this? No. But I always do, because I always use a strap.

Playability

As this is my second Journey, I arrived with some expectations based on the Carbon Fiber version. I tightened up the neck lock and then did the leg brace thing as in the document and got some more turns on the neck lock. This resulted in an action of about 2.2mm on the low E at the 12th. No rocking frets, and consistency in action between takedowns and reassembly.

One of my core tests of factory setup is whether it is simple to play an F barre chord at first position without massive hand strength. Piece of cake. I’ve watched more beginners find this to be a stop sign to playing than most anything else.

I expected the smaller body and narrower depth to be missing low end and to sound thin. In fact it is even louder and warmer than the carbon fibre version, and for my personal preference, while I think that the Carbon version is incredible for the investment, I preferred the sound of this guitar.. I got a nice wide range of tones from bright to deep and warm. The factory Elixirs are decent strings and while I would change them out if it were my guitar, the instrument is ready to play as it arrives.

The built in pickups sound just fine and as the contacts are place in body and not just under the saddle, the tonal range is quite good. Being not a lover of piezos, I would use an external preamp, or decent acoustic amp if needed, or run into an interface and use a channel strip but I can be a bit picky and believe that saner folks would be happy just the way the guitar comes.

I neglected to mention for the OF660M what is true for this one. At first tuning stability seems to be not there. However, after leaving the guitar fully assembled for a few hours and a couple of passes with my string stretcher, that “problem” proved not to be a problem at all.

Example Sounds

To get some quick samples of the sound of the guitar, I used its built in pickup system direct into a Clarett+ 8 Pre which feeds Logic Pro. I recorded the guitar completely dry, using the input level control on the Clarett to set my recording level. Once I had the basic track down, I then tried versions using different channel strips to determine what I liked best. In my preparation, I plugged the guitar directly into a LANEY A Series DUO and a AER Compact 60. Both have their own preamps and as usual, I prefer a preamp used with any piezo based acoustic guitar.

I played the progression and as noted recorded it raw. That’s the first pass. The second uses an Abbey Road TG12345 Channel Strip and a Fairchild 670 compressor. The third uses a UA LA-6176 Channel Strip. All are finalized with a Brainworx Masterdesk.

It is my contention that this small, massively portable guitar sounds great and will serve any person looking for a great playing, great sounding, easy to travel guitar. And perhaps more.

As noted for the OF660M, I have played other acoustic travel guitars. My first experience was with Martin’s Backpacker. The Backpacker looks more like a stick than a guitar but when it came out, it was the one to choose, although I never liked the sound. I found it lacking in the low mids and having no bass and did not like the neck. It felt to me then, and still does, like a low end guitar with a very expensive decal.

I own a Baby Taylor that I won at a Taylor event. I gave it to my daughter because it suits her playing activity and space considerations better. It would be tough to stuff it in an overhead compartment and while it is quite a bit less expensive than the Journey wood acoustics, is not a joy to play and the visible wood screws that hold the neck on from the front just cheapen the look and the feel.

Thus for me, the Journey is a far superior choice. It sounds like a proper wood guitar, fits well and it is a far better playing experience than anything else that I have had the opportunity to try.

The Or Is It Question

I’ve had a pretty serious health issue and so am moving a lot more slowly while I am recovering, which means that I am spending less time in the meat of the review playing, and that has caused me to ask a question. Can a travel guitar also be your main guitar?

For myself, perhaps not, because guitars are works of art to me (or the ones I keep are) and each has its own identity. But as any who know me will say, I’m not normal. For a lot of us, we love the playing experience, we love the joy that we get and the positivity that comes from playing a song that we like in a manner that sounds good to ourselves. We may also like just pulling a guitar out with friends, to play and sing, and contrary to popular photographic marketing that doesn’t always have to be around a campfire. My friend Ryan from The Arts Music Store hosts a monthly play along. It’s always packed with folks of all kinds of different skill levels. They show for the fun and camaraderie, not to show off their gear or their chops.

So can a travel guitar also be your main guitar? I think that is a personal question, but in my opinion as I work my way through the excellent Journey Instruments products that the answer could very well be yes. The OF422C is not folded up in its terrific little case. It’s sitting leaning on a rack beside the chair where I must spend more time than I would normally like. I sit down, look over and just pick it up. And I play. For 5 minutes, or 50 minutes. Does it have the sound and build of an $8000 Boucher? Of course not, but it’s not some plywood piece of crap from Amazon either. It’s small, lightweight, plays great, sounds great and brings with it no stress at all. I can plug it in and record some ideas and if I just want to be loud, I can push it through one of my acoustic amps.

Thus, while the choice is yours, I’m going to say that this is not an either or question, but more probably a yes to all question. And to be really blunt, I never expected to go here.

Wrapping Up

Journey guitars are available from select retailers and also online directly. Advertised prices are the same everywhere. The Journey Canada store shows the OF422C complete with case for $1196.99 CAD which considering that the top and back are solid wood, the price is quite reasonable considering that it not only sounds great and plays great but is also easily transported. Do I recommend it? Heck yes. So far we are two for two in travel guitars from Journey Instruments. Next up is the solid body electric.

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