Tone. At Home.
Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m going to do a rundown of what guitars I’ve had my hands on, and what I’ve learned from the experience.
This post covers guitars I play at home for fun. I’ll cover the guitars that I gig with on Thursday.
Continue reading “2019 Review: Guitars For Home Playing”This conversation was originally posted to my Twitter feed.
Good morning! If you’re here in the UK, I hope the terrible election result and biblical rain hasn’t dampened your weekend completely. I’ve got another #CoffeeAndKlon for you this morning, and I want to talk about the *other* graphic on the KTR today.
Continue reading “#CoffeeAndKlon 24: The Klon’s Buffer”This conversation was originally posted to my Twitter feed.
A couple of very interesting bits of new gear announced today.
This conversation was originally posted to my Twitter feed.
Good morning! I hope you’re all having a great weekend so far. I’m still buzzing from playing all those PRS Guitars over @astringsuk on Friday night. Or is it just the coffee? #CoffeeAndKlon
Continue reading “#CoffeeAndKlon 10: My Desert Island Guitar”PRS have done a limited run of SE range guitars with quilt tops and a faded satin gray finish. Chappers and The Captain have got their hands on them and boy do they sound good,
These are (almost?) the bottom of PRS’s product line, and that’s reflected in the little things that Chappers point out in the video. But don’t let that put you off.
Listen to the opening jam. That’s one of the best lead tones that Chappers has had on an Andertons video this year. And that’s carried through throughout the entire video.
Watch the video to hear how good they sound, and then head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment.
Shawn Tubbs has taken a look at the new PRS MT 15 amp. These were announced at NAMM, and look very interesting indeed.
This is Mark Tremonti’s new signature amp, featuring a Fender-style clean channel with 3 band EQ and a lead channel with melt-your-face levels of aggressive gain. It runs a pair of 6L6s in the power stage – very unusual in a 15 watt amp – and 5 preamp tubes.
Sadly, we don’t get to hear if it takes pedals well. That’s a shame, because this lunchbox head will launch in June for under 500 GBP. There’s nothing from Fender to compete at that price. Pair it with a Marshall Origin, and you could have a dual-amp pedal platform at an amazing price.
Watch the video for more details, and then head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment.
Andertons are back with a world exclusive! After PRS took a Fender Strat and stuck a PRS headstock on it, Fender are hitting back with new signature models from Slash and Carlos Santana. After all, if PRS can take an iconic guitar and slap a new headstock on it, why can’t Fender slap one of the most iconic headstocks of all time on a PRS guitar too?
This is an April Fools’ joke from Andertons, based on how the guitar community has reacted to the PRS Silver Sky. The two guitars in the video do exist, and are currently being auctioned on eBay for charity. Full links are in the video description on YouTube, so click through if you fancy bidding on either of these instruments!
The first batch of PRS Silver Sky guitars is out in the wild. Tim Pierce has borrowed one, and he’s posted a comparison of the Silver Sky vs an original Fender Stratocaster from 1965 – a guitar that costs about 10 times as much as the Silver Sky.
Have a listen.
I couldn’t hear a difference between the two guitars, not in the mix at any rate. And, honestly, I think that’s impressive.
Folks have been trying to recreate the fabled 59 Les Paul tone for decades, and so far no-one – including PRS – has managed to do so. We’ve ended up with some really good instruments to choose from if we don’t want a Gibson, but that hallowed tone has remained elusive. (In part because no-one can agree on what it is …). The PRS McCarty 594 is a fantastic guitar, but it does not sound like a Les Paul.
With the Silver Sky, it appears that PRS have managed to recreate that 60s Strat tone, and then improve on both the tone and the playing experience.
Once people get over the headstock, I’m sure this guitar is here to stay.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Tim’s video.
I promise that I’ll stop posting about the PRS Silver Sky soon. Before I do, I have to share with you John Mayer’s own thoughts on his new guitar.
He’s not pulling any punches here. He tackles the guitar’s Fender heritage, why he went to PRS for this guitar, what makes it different from a Fender Strat, and where the time went on designing the Silver Sky. If you want to understand how he sees this guitar, it’s compulsory viewing.
The key thing I took away from this is that this all started with tone. He wanted something that looked like a Strat, and played like a Strat, but that addressed some of the things he didn’t like about the Fender Strat sound. Paul Reed Smith is all about tone in a way that few other guitar builders are. And things evolved from there to become the Silver Sky that we’ve all been talking about.
Whether you like John Mayer or not, he deserves credit for putting out a video like this. It’s not some slick PR video. It’s just John talking into his phone on a livestream. How many other mega-artists would do this?
Sadly, he doesn’t post directly to YouTube, and I don’t know where the original video was posted. I couldn’t find it on Instagram or on Facebook.
Today, we have a different kind of demo from Peach Guitars. They’ve done a shootout between John Mayer’s current rig – PRS Silver Sky and JMOD amp – and his old, pre-PRS rig – Fender 63 Stratocaster and a Two-Rock amp.
The PRS Silver Sky continues to be the most talked about guitar of 2018. I still can’t figure why it’s generated the reaction that it has – including my own reaction.
The more I hear it though, the more I’m interested in trying one for myself. To my ears, it sounds like a lot has gone into tuning it to be a great guitar for completely clean tones. That’s where I used to live before moving onto Les Pauls. I’d love to find the right guitar to go back to that style one day.
Please head over to YouTube to leave a like and a supportive comment if you enjoyed Peach Guitars’ video.