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Phil Feser
Visual Sound’s Route 808, Visual Volume, and Comp 66
Sound and Vision
Visual Sound founder and president Bob Weil and chief engineer R.G. Keen have given their flagship combo pedals a face lift and introduced a new line of single pedals. These new V2 series effects are built on heavy duty die-cast aluminum chassis, replacing the steel housings on the old line, their in/out/power jacks are still…
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Phil Feser
Kustom’s ’36 Coupe
Ready to Rev
Kustom ’36 Coupe In the mid 1960s, Kustom amps were popular for their cool tuck-and-roll vinyl covering, and their solid tones. Today, most of the company’s new amplifiers are solidstate and devoid of tuck and roll covering. The exception is its line of tube combos, the ’36 Coupe and the ’72 Coupe, with all-tube circuits…
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Phil Feser
Gomez Amplification “G” Reverb
Wet, Hot, or Blue
As amp builders go, Dario G. Gomez is about as fresh as they come. Though he has been repairing tube amps for many years, he started offering his own amp designs only about a year ago. His is a modest one-man shop, and though he has yet to build amp #100, Gomez is wise enough…
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Phil Feser
Seymour Duncan P-Rails pickups
All-In-One Slam Dunc
Seymour Duncan’s new P-Rails pickup is a P-90 with a slim rail-style coil tucked in next to it, designed to fit into a standard humbucker ring. Coupled with a standard three-way mini on/off toggle switch, the P-Rails are designed to produce tones including traditional P-90, rail, single-coil, or humbucker – all in a single pickup.…
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Phil Feser
PRS 513
Axe of Many Colors
PRS 513. The latest addition to the model line at PRS Guitars is the discretely-named 513, an axe that carries all the family traits, like a carved figured-maple top, double-cutaway mahogany body, set mahogany neck, 10″-radius fretboard, vibrato, and low-mass locking tuners. In fact, at first glance the 513 could be mistaken for a Custom…
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Phil Feser
Martin D-18 1937 Authentic and OMC-1 Fingerstyle
Display Their Heritage
Martin D-18 1937 Authentic The first thing that catches your eye as you open the case of Martin’s D-18 1937 Authentic is the guitar’s unmistakable vintage vibe. Whether you’re drawn to the nickel-finished open-back Gotoh tuners, the tinted Adirondack red spruce top, or the cellulose tortoiseshell pickguard, you kind of feel like you just discovered…
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Phil Feser
Dunlop MXR Carbon Copy, ’74 Phase 90 and Buddy Guy Signature Wah
Legendary pedal builder MXR/Dunlop recently introduced a sweet trio of effects; something new from its Custom Shop in the form of the Carbon Copy analog delay, something old in the form of a nuts-on reissue of the ’74 script-logo Phase 90, and something with a legendary-artist twist in the form of the Buddy Guy signature…
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Phil Feser
Ampeg Dan Armstrong Plexi Guitar
New 'Glas Splash
If you were at the 1969 NAMM show in Chicago, perhaps you saw what was most regarded as that year’s show-stopping piece of gear – the Ampeg Dan Armstrong “see-through” guitar. While “see-through” guitars have never been commonplace, today they are offered by several manufacturers, including BC Rich, Dillon, and Ampeg. But when they were…
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Phil Feser
Danelectro Pro
Rockin' Funk
Since Danelectro started reissuing guitars and basses in the mid 1990s, the company has, for the most part, stuck to what it knows works; that means we’ve seen new versions of the trusty U1, U2, DC59, and the Longhorn bass to go with updated models like the U3 and Hodad. At last January’s NAMM show,…
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Phil Feser
Eastwood Airline Deluxe
Get Yer' Wings
The demand for vintage and retro-style axes has become so prevalent in today’s guitar-crazy culture that there’s hardly a brand, style, or color of guitar from the ’50s to the ’70s that hasn’t been resurrected in one form or another. From Danelectro to Hallmark to Univox, oddball guitars were the first instruments for many an…
