Saint Blues Bluesmaster/Blindsider Price: $2,399 (Bluesmaster); $2,550 (Blindsider) Info: saintblues.com St. Blues’ history stretches back to the days when its founders customized guitars for the likes of Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons, and Duane Allman as their tours passed through Memphis. Today the company has a storefront just a few yards from the legendary Sun Studio, [...]
Overture JS-Session Price: $ 1,499. Info: overtureguitars.com When designing a new guitar, builders often face a quandary. Some go to extremes to be original, while others tend to “re-create” the same ol’ thing. The Overture Guitars JS-Session is a departure; not a simple reissue or copy, instead, its body contours and edges give it a [...]
Mike Lipe Virtuoso Price: $4,000 Contact: lipeguitars.com; phone (818) 352-6212 Mike Lipe has built guitars for top players and guitar companies (notably heading up the Ibanez Custom Shop in the ’90s). In 2000, he struck out on his own. His Virtuoso model is a solidbody that takes a familiar theme but lifts it up to [...]
Few punk-rock guitarists have made their mark like Tim Armstrong. Through his work with renowned punkers Rancid, Armstrong has torn it up on stages worldwide, and key to his presence is the fact he prefers hollowbody guitars. He recently teamed with Gretsch to design and build a new signature model. The G5191BK is the latest [...]
Roland Micro Cube Price: $130 (street) Info: www.rolandus.com. Every once in a while you have to pinch yourself and thank your lucky stars to be a guitarist in the 21st century. The Roland Micro Cube is a good illustration of this phenomenon; a dinky, portable amp that runs on AA batteries, it weighs just over [...]
When it comes iconic guitar tone – especially “British” tone – Vox and its flagship AC30 are at the top of most players’ list. After all, the Vox AC30 is one of the most widely recorded amps, used by countless artists in nearly every genre, on both sides of the pond. Vox recently partnered with [...]
Pigtronix Envelope Phaser II Price: $249 (street). Contact: Phone (631) 331-7447; Pigtronix.com. Pigtronix effects are known not only for their tones, but their sophistication. So it’s no surpise that the Envelope Phaser II has a potentially daunting array of control knobs and switches, some with familiar names (Sensitivity, Depth, Speed), others less common (Resonance, Staccato, [...]
For decades, guitar players have known the name Epiphone. Renowned for making great-sounding jazz boxes like the Zephyr and Emperor Regent, which have been seen in the hands of major artists, and models like the Texan and Casino were key to the sound of The Beatles. Even blues legends like John Lee Hooker flocked to [...]
Electro-Harmonix Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi Price: $133 (list)/$99.75 (street). Contact: ehx.com. The Big Muff Pi overdrive is the effect stompbox that put Electro-Harmonix on the map, and in the decades since its introduction, it has undergone changes both subtle and substantial. Today, the company’s lineup includes no fewer than 10 versions including the newest, [...]
Ibanez has always had two distinct personalities – first as a purveyor of shreddy solidbodies for the hard rock/metal crowd, but also as a maker of fine archtops, thanks to famous users like George Benson, Pat Metheny, and John Scofield. In the ’90s, the company started to brand many of its low-/mid-priced hollowbodies as the [...]
