Music Pro Media Anderson Guitars Review

I have found a kindred spirit in Music Pro Media owner Mark LeBlanc. See, Mr. LeBlanc is seemingly obsessed with gear - perhaps even more so than me! The evidence is the documentaries offered about manufacturers (currently limited to two: Tom Anderson Guitars and Dr. Z Amps) is incredibly in depth and completely amazing.

Tom Anderson walks you through his guitar-building plant, talks about woods, the tonal varieties of wood, the ease of working with it, the popularity of it (for instance, basswood has been gaining in popularity and its tonal characteristics is a very middle of the road kind of tone with no pronounced areas - great balance between highs, lows and mids), etc. Then he talks about necks, the woods offered again going into tonal characteristics. He walks you through EVERYTHING that has to do with his guitars in great detail and if you're a fan of the nuts and bolts of companies and/or guitars you'll LOVE this movie.

And laced between sections of Tom showing you the inner workings is amazingly made demos from artists that use Tom Anderson's guitars.

For all of my rants about how companies need to be more accessible it's REALLY nice to see a company open up and allow a documentarian to come in and go through extensive interviews both with the owner of the company and artists that use the products. I've never been super interested in Tom Anderson Guitars (besides their hollow T-style which combines two of my favorite things: Hollow guitars and Teles) but now I'm pretty interested in them. I love his crafty way to deal with bolt-on necks, which is pretty awesome (you see it and say "It seems so obvious now that I see someone do it!"), I'm wicked interested to check out this Buzz Feiten tuning system that Anderson uses, and I applaud the use of stainless steel frets on all of his guitars.

I do have a warning about this movie though: You have to be into gear, into the nuts and bolts, interested in what goes on behind the scenes. In the end it's a documentary and as with any documentary, if you're not genuinely interested in it, you'll get bored. But I tell you, I loved this. NINETY minutes of a personal guided tour with tons of explanations about the parts of guitars (though they only touched lightly on the Buzz Feiten system) and in the end I learned more about guitars than I ever have before. I feel more confident in my guitar knowledge having watched this.

So I say kudos to Music Pro Media for making this amazing movie (I also have the Dr. Z DVD and it is even longer and I am excited to watch that because if it's anything like this one I'll walk away with a much better knowledge of the inner workings of amplifiers) and if you're interested in them, you can check out the video samples at Music Pro Media's web site located here. I HIGHLY recommend it if you have any interest in the guitar that extends beyond purely technique. It's well worth the $39.95.

-Pappy