Gibson Lifestyle has put together a good article that provides a brief overview of ten different types of guitar effects pedals. They provide a little background info on what the pedal does and the songs or guitarists made them famous. Here is an excerpt about delay pedals:
The original delay units were tape-driven, like the Echo-Plex used by Jimi Hendrix (“House Burning Down”) and David Gilmore (Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”) in the ’60s and ’70s. But in the mid-’80s, as digital effects came into use, the delay and early delay/sampler pedals came into vogue. While many effect connoisseurs frown on digital stomp boxes, the plusses of digital delay and sampling over tape are obvious. Primarily, there’s no tape to snarl, wear out or sputter. Today’s delay pedals can also get effects that were once produced by reverb tanks, like authentic-sounding rockabilly slap-back, and hearing The Edge play arpeggios through a delay pedal on “Where the Streets Have No Name” is a sublime listening experience.
We had Peter Vogl shoot a video awhile back running through his effects rig. It gets more indepth than the Gibson article and gives you the sights and sounds to go along with the commentary. Add both pieces together and you should have a pretty good idea on which pedals you may be interested in.
Gibson has a pretty detailed article chronicling Pete Townshend’s guitar sound for the iconic Who’s Next album. Here is an excerpt about his sound leading up to the album:
For most of the half-decade before Who’s Next, his sound was based on Gibson SG Specials built from 1966 to 1970 with P-90 pickups pushed hard through Hiwatt amp stacks – especially live, where the sky was the limit on volume. Typically, he slammed his guitars so hard that their standard-issue Vibrola tailpieces had to be replaced with a more stable anchor, and he then achieved whammy-like effects by simply shaking their necks or pulling back on the headstock during an immense, sustaining power chord.
The Chicago Music Exchange has a good post explaining what TV Yellow is. The black and white cameras of the 1950′s had trouble shooting white objects that were over exposed by the studio lights. So things like Doctor’s jackets were actually made a shade of yellow that appeared to be white on a black and white television. Gibson used that same idea and made some special guitars for television performances.
On screen the color appeared as a soft white, off screen the color is a sort of transparent lime color which allows the wood grain to show through. Gibson gave its TV Yellow treatment to a number of guitars in the late 1950′s and the early 1960′s. The guitars that commonly adorned this finish were the Les Paul Juniors and Specials.
The three studio yellow guitars the Chicago Music Exchange currently have for sale range from $10-19,000.
In response to the recent flooding of Nashville, Gibson has stepped up in a charity effort by getting residents of Austin and vistors to Nashville to donate money…
“Gibson Guitar banks” created from guitar cases will be set up at popular sites and participating venues all over town for visitors to make donations. The banks are currently being set up, but the 18th will mark a “final push” for donations.”
Read the article here and learn more from Gibson here
- Over at guitarforums.com there is a discussion over whether you should practice sitting down or standing up. Like many of these questions, the answer depends on your goals as a guitarist. If you intend to play live a lot, it would probably serve you well to also have frequent practice playing your guitar in the standing position. For more tips, our own Peter Vogl has free videos on the seated guitar position and standing position
- Trying to decide between the real deal and a knock off? Take a look at this post on Gibson Les Pauls vs. a copy. Take a look especially at dspellman’s comments:
IMHO, Gibson doesn’t start making a really good Les Paul type guitar until you get to the $3000 mark. Even at that price point, there are guitars that are far less expensive that easily compete with Gibsons in terms of playability and build quality.
At the low end, Rondo Music’s Agile AL3000 series (AL3XXX, actually, since there are 3000M and 3100′s) are real contenders, and normally run about $389 – $599 (if you want a 3/4″ solid maple top). The pickups in these are Alnico V’s that actually sound and respond very much like Gibson’s ’57′s. The controls in these are serviceable, but it would certainly be cheap to shake these out and replace them with the best availalbe. But these guitars come with multi-layer binding around the body and headstock, single-layer binding on the fretboard. They have ebony fretboards and real abalone inlays. The fretboards have a 13.7″ radius (Gibsons are 12″, the frets are hand-dressed, the necks are a bit thinner than Gibson’s ’60 series (you can also get necks that are wider and thinner) and very comfortable. The bodies are SOLID mahogany (I think there’s one series that has chambered bodies available) and the result is a guitar that measures up very well against what Gibson tosses out there in the sub-$3000 range.
- And finally we have a thread debating Rosewood vs. Maple fretboards. Two arguments come into play. Does the type of wood that the fretboard is made from make a difference? And if it does what are the differences.
