Orange TH30 Review

"I'd rather send you a TH30 head. And I dare you not to love it."

That was an email I received from Alex Auxier, Global Marketing Coordinator and US Artist Relations for Orange Amplifiers. We had been discussing the possibility of me reviewing the Tiny Terror combo, but the opportunity to review this was too good to pass up. That, and I love challenges.

The Orange TH30 is a solidly built, 30-watt head powered by four EL84s and two ECC83 in the preamp section and one ECC81 for the effects loop, with two channels and a full/half power switch that lowers the wattage from 30 to 15 watts and if that isn't low enough, you can also set it up to run at 7 watts by bypassing two of the power tubes.

It has that classic Orange look and feels like it could withstand multiple shelling attacks far better than your puny human body can and when it comes to gigging, what more could you ask for in build quality?

Alex was completely right when he suggested I would love it. The amp brought out the best in all of my guitars. The bass response was great, the high end wasn't shrill, and it sounded THICK. I used a Parker Fly, a Flatline Delta 90 and a Gretsch 6118T to try this amp out and with ever guitar it was like the amp brought out all the attributes that made the guitar special.

The best pairing though was with my Gretsch. TV Jones Classics aren't exactly hot pickups and as a result, sometimes they lack some punch when you use them with a lot of gain but this amp did nothing short but turn my guitar into a tonal dictator. You could back off the volume and it'll clean up a bit and you can start working on a blues rhythm and then turn up and melt faces and with pickups that were fashioned after the early Filter Trons of Gretsch's history, this is a big thing.

It's the kind of thing, in fact, that leaves a smile on your face. Playing this was less of a task to test limits and push boundaries for documenting purposes and it was just FUN. When your guitars sound great and your tone sounds great you can't help but get lost in the music you're making and that's when everything starts to flow.

Adjusting everything on this amp couldn't be much easier. It features two channels, both with three knobs. The clean side feature bass, treble and volume and the dirty side feature volume, shape and gain. This means that if you want the non-master volume tone of a cranked Orange, you can have it on the clean side, but if you want something either easier to handle volume-wise or more high-gain, the dirty channel is there to help.

The shape knob doesn't have much written about it on Orange's site, but it's described with the following: "The shape control is an EQ control facilitating a variety of tones from classic rock through to scooped metal with all variations in between."

I'd have to agree. In the end you don't have to know the specifics of it, you can call it a magic knob if you like, you just twist it until you find the right tone and then adjust your volume and gain.

Just how heavy can this amp get? It can get ridiculously heavy and still maintain definition. It doesn't get fuzzy, just more distorted and metal heads - particularly metal heads that prefer a more classic metal tone like early Metallica or Megadeth are going to LOVE this amp. Fans of more modern metal, you'll just need to start tuning down your guitars to get closer to the tones of today but chances are your guitars are already tuned down so it's a non-issue. Music Radar even quoted an Orange employee saying that this amp features the "dirtiest channel on any amp we have." This amp can help scratch that metal itch and any levels of gain shy of it (I particularly liked using a tone that was just a bit beyond what I would classify as a classic gain setting and mixing power chords and big open chords a la the Living End).

The TH30 is a great club amp and the half-power switch would definitely come in handy if you're looking for some earlier break up on the clean channel, but honestly, that's the only situation I could see using it in. The amp sounds so good at lower volumes and higher volumes on both channels and if you're looking for a low-volume bluesy kind of breakup, you can use the dirty channel and set your gain to a low setting. My point is that unless you demand the non-master volume tones, the half power switch will barely get touched.

Though that isn't to say that the fans of NMV amps won't adore this addition to the amp.

The pros of the TH30 are the amazing tones and great variety of them on supply, the solid build, the ease of use and the great looks. There's no mistaking an Orange visually.

The price isn't bad either. You can get it from Shanghai Music for $1,199.00 which isn't bad at all for an amp packed with these tones! I was a big fan of the Rocker 30, but this amp offers all the tones the Rocker does and more and as a result, this amp causes some serious Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

I also recorded a lengthy sound sample for everyone. I used a Parker Fly, mostly in the bridge position switching to the neck for "Paper Moon" and then to both pickups for the hybrid picking. While recording, the bass was fine but it didn't record with the same bass emphasis so in the end I wish I had used both pickups for the first half, but unfortunately, I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to record the different guitars and really focus on putting out the BEST sample possible. I sincerely apologize. If I ever buy the head (a possibility because I REALLY like it and was sad to see it go), I promise I will re-record and give you readers the product you deserve or at least to the best of my ability.

I tried to record extremes so you can see that anything in between would be possible as well.

Orange TH-30 Through Parker Fly by Fifth Fret

For more information, click HERE.

-Pappy

Parker Pt. 4: Ahead of the Times

This is part 4 in a 6 part series. Here are the links to the other parts:

Part One: My History

Part Two: Parker's History

Part Three: Guitar Art

Part Five: The Sound

Part Six: Epilogue

The Parker I have in the house came in a box, and was packed in the most luxurious gig bag I’ve ever laid eyes on in person. Padded to the extreme is a little bit of an understatement with this guitar and I would personally feel safe lugging it around back and forth to gigs so long as nothing heavy was going to be on top of it. Inside the bag was a strap from XoX (who make a carbon fiber guitar called the Handle) and IT is the most luxurious strap I’ve ever seen too. Smooth and comfortable padded (on the interior of the strap) leather and it just… it, combined with the weight of the Parker make playing a piece of cake on the shoulder. It’s a very decadent strap.

Anyway, as I pulled the Parker out of the gig bag my wife (who doesn’t like the looks of the guitar) asked what was so special about this guitar.

I just smiled and started to regale her with just what makes this Parker so awesome.

Parker Guitars have been ahead of their time from the beginning and we’re seeing more and more companies either re-invent the innovations or adopt similar items into their own catalog.

See, Ken Parker said in an ad that has been ingrained my memory something along the lines of taking all the lessons he’s learned over years of building, modifying and repairing musicians’ instruments and made a guitar that is the next step. An innovation if you will.

And when you look at the guitar compared to a run of the mill guitar you’ll see the differences. The neck carve is conical so it feels just as good chording on one end of the neck as it does doing solos on the other, the fretboard is glass and carbon fiber which means slick, clean and comfortable playing with zero drag, the frets are hardened stainless steel which last two eternities back to back (and don’t seem to wear out normal strings – I’m pretty sure that’s a myth or builders like Tom Anderson, EVH and Parker wouldn’t use SS frets) and because the fretboard is part glass, the frets are glued on using a super strong glue because if Parker attempted to actually inlay the frets like you would a normal guitar, it would have damaged the structural integrity of the fretboard. Cutting a slot for a fret is something that could be done (providing you’re OK with losing the strength of the carbon/glass fingerboard) but only is you used either nickel or steel frets because with hardened stainless steel, there’s no way to make them with a tang for traditional installation.

There are those that might be scared about a fret that’s glued on, but in my limited experience with the brand, I would say that it’s not really something to be scared about.

Another feature is the incredible light weight. The guitar doesn’t feature a normal truss rod but a piano wire which weighs eighteen times less than what other guitar companies use. The weight of the guitar is also attributed to the incredibly thin body. This body causes a lot of hesitation on a player’s part because it feels fragile at first until you get used to it and then you realize it’s just as strong as any other guitar (indeed, stronger than most). The reason it’s so strong is because the back and back of the neck is wrapped in carbon fiber which is incredibly strong and this stabilizes the guitar so once you get over the weight it feels SOLID.

In addition to all that, the guitar features specifically made DiMarzio pickups and this is both pro and con. The pro is that the pickups are great and work well. The con is that changing pickups is borderline impossible because the guitar doesn’t feature pickup rings and the body isn’t deep enough to accommodate most pickups so the classic “change the pickups” mentality is pretty much dead from the start. Again, I don’t think the pickups are bad, so it’s kind of a non-issue to me, but I know there are a ton of tinkerers in the guitar community who will look at this in a negative light. To these people there are tempting reports of both DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan offering a service where they rewind the bobbins to match any of their other pickups. This is an unconfirmed report but it’s said that at the very least they USED to offer this service. Perhaps they still do. That should make the pickup swappers more accepting or at least a little more hopeful.

Past the pickups we come to the bridge and this is probably my favorite part (besides the steel frets which I love). The bridge is the exact radius of the neck so the distance from fretboard to string is the same with every string. This may not sound like a big deal but believe me, it’s a huge difference in playing. EVERY guitar benefits from this kind of detail. Once I changed the bridge on my Gretsch to one that had the same radius as the neck, playing became much easier and more fun and I was now able to lower the bridge as far as I wanted without the middle strings touching the fretboard.

The bridge’s wonder doesn’t stop there. It’s also a tremolo and operates in three ways that are all up to the player. Using the exposed wheel and a switch on the back of the guitar it can be either a stop-tail with no trem movement at all, or a downward only trem, or a free floating trem and while the range isn’t as crazy as a Floyd, it’s pretty nuts and certainly has more range than my Gretsch’s Bigsby tailpiece! And it looks good. AND it doesn’t have screws or wheels that fine-tune the strings that can easily be turned while palm muting and playing. In addition to ALL that, the trem doesn’t even require a locking nut, nor cutting the balls off of strings to restring or a twenty-minute string changing process (put it in stop tail mode and change the strings like you would any other through-body guitar). All the ease of stringing up a Tele, almost all the freedom a Floyd provides (and you don’t’ need to change guitars to do a song that features a lot of trem wanking and a song that features a lot of steel-guitar-ish bends, just a turn of the wheel and a flick of the switch!).

So the bridge is pretty awesome, right? And all with no off-the-shelf parts too.

BUT WAIT!

THERE’S MORE!

I know, it’s crazy, but this is the last huge bonus of the bridge: it features Piezo pickups.

For those NOT familiar with Piezo pickups they aren’t magnetic like normal pickups and make your electric guitar sound like an acoustic guitar (or very similar, anyway). The joy of the Parker’s layout is that you can have EITHER the magnetic Dimarzio pickups or the Piezo pickups or you can blend the two if you prefer.

The guitar features four/five knobs (one of the knobs is a two-tiered knob, hence the four OR five description) the first knob being a master volume effecting both the magnetic and Piezo pickups (which makes volume swells while both engaged possible). The knobs that follow are a magnetic pickup volume, a magnetic pickup tone, and the last being a Piezo volume/tone (again, it’s stacked so there are two knobs in one). It’s a pretty easy setup to learn and before you know it you’re blending pickups, shaping your tone and doing volume swells with the best of them.

Ken Parker also didn’t take away all the joy of modifying your guitar. The trem bar, made out of 3/16" stainless steel is hexagon shaped and malleable. This means that if you have an angle that you really like your trem bar to be at, you can bend (or have a tech bend) the bar and bend it to your specifications and make it the most comfortable trem bar you’ve ever used (it’s not made of hardened stainless steel like the frets which is why it’s bendable).

That’s a pretty sweet idea.

Additionally, on the SIDE of the guitar there’s a battery box (required for the Piezo), the output jack and a red button.

A red button?

Yes, a red button. This magical red button makes the guitar able to be played in either mono (through one amp) or stereo (through two amps).

So what does this mean to you? If you’re at a gig and you know that you use a clean/acoustic sound often or enough to worry about lugging an acoustic or changing either amps or channels on amps to accommodate this need, life just got a LITTLE bit easier. You can bring two amps and set one up with whatever gain setting you like (say, bass-heavy nu-metal goodness) and another amp with the best clean tone you have at your disposal. You get a Y cable and plug into both amps and push the button and when you mess with the Piezo switch you can operate one amp at a time or both at the same time. Now you can play a song with acoustic verses and bone-crushing choruses and you don’t have to worry about finding the pedal that changes channels on your amp nor do you have to rely on your amp having both amazing distortion AND clean tones! You can even play both at the same time filling up your sound and possibly replacing a second guitarist (especially if you mirror your playing parts relying on a difference in tone ONLY to craft your band’s sound). Don‘t think it’s limited to this night and day scenario either. Feel free to adjust as you see fit tweaking gain, amp settings, etc. The Parker is truly an instrument designed to let the voice of the player come out as easily as possible and the tonal possibilities are out of this world.

So, after telling my wife all this, she still looked unimpressed but then again, she’s not a guitar player. But YOU are (presumably) so you’re probably at the very least MILDLY impressed with all of these features packed into a guitar that still features clean lines, minimal knobs and switches, a non-confusing layout and strength and durability, right?

-Pappy

Shallow?

Let’s be shallow here for a little while and talk about looks.

JUST looks. This isn’t a tone discussion.

Wow, thinking about that for a second, that makes this blog REALLY stand out in the guitar world.

OK, my question to you, the audience is how important is looks to you? Be honest, now.

I think that for all the constant talk, blogs, podcasts, Twitter posts, Facebook updates, and boutique builders’ websites, you would think that tone is the be all end all of guitar playing, but I don’t think it is.

I don’t think that’s even CLOSE.

Sure, some gear has come out that featured amazing tone and less-than-amazing looks. Some are “subtle” and some are just plain boring and I understand this may be a trick of appearance in and of itself. Think about how easy of a sell it would be to a potential buyer to have him look at your pedal long enough to see everything it offers aesthetically (not long) and you slyly lean over the table and say something like “Of COURSE it looks boring! I don’t NEED to put fancy stickers or paint jobs on it when the TONE speaks for itself. It’s the TONE that sells these little beasts!”

They’re talking about compensation but if you think about it, their lack of visual impact is itself a visual impact and the end goal is the same: they want you to be enticed and they want your money.

I don’t blame them or their backward visual appeal to their audience, but I am getting a little bored with the ho-hum looks of a lot of pedals.

I’ve seen some pretty awesome looking pedals through the years and they don’t always feature crazy graphics like in companies like Pro Tone’s case, sometimes they just feature crazy colors (like Tavo Vega’s Brain pre-amps) and even though it seems like the short-term goal is to get your attention, the long-term perk can be an easier time finding it on your pedal board.

Anyway, my point is that to ME, the visual impact is indeed important. If it wasn’t there, I would always have my attention equally distributed among every builder (or none at all).

Also, I think that we as consumers should voice our feedback to pedal builders if they’re taking the time to make their pedals stand out and let them know what you think. I have a feeling that if you went to a builder and didn’t even MENTION tone and just commented on how awesome their pedal or guitar LOOKS they would appreciate it. The looks are deliberate after all and you won’t look any more shallow for not mentioning tone and just commenting on something that 1) I’m sure they spent a lot of time, thought and money figuring out and 2) they don’t get many comments about.

But this is all just me. What do YOU think?

-Pappy

X-Mas

Did you catch that Futurama reference?

Man, do I love Futurama.

MERRY X-MAS everyone! I hope you have a great day tomorrow and I hope you wind up with a lot of cool gear. Just remember to say thank you and perhaps you can even play a song or two for your guests/hosts!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND, EVERYONE! Your regularly scheduled 5th Fret posts will resume next week!

-Pappy

Parker Pt. 3: Guitar Art

This is part 3 in a 6 part series. Here are the links to the other sections:

Part One: My History

Part Two: Parker's History

Part Four: Ahead of the Times

Part Five: The Sound

Part Six: Epilogue

Part of what makes Parker such a stunning instrument is the looks. I would wager and say that a LARGE part of what made Parker so popular was the look of it. It didn’t look like any other guitar out there with sharp angles, thin bodies and, of course, the exposed wheel.

There are some that say it’s not very appealing visually to which I counter that it certainly doesn’t look like your average Stratocaster or Les Paul. I think with the guitar world there are more people that are excited about what they already know and what they’re comfortable with than there are people excited about new things.

But that’s the guitar. The guitar is the best example of art I can think of. It is art in many ways. You can blend visual art with colors and visual art with shapes and sonic art with tone and then another artist can PLAY this art and MAKE more art to entertain the masses. It’s one great big ball of art. So of course it’s subjective and of course you’ll find people that like this look and don’t like this look. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) take away from the company just because someone doesn’t like the guitar’s looks or tones so when someone says a Parker isn’t their thing (or even to go so far as to say it’s ugly) I don’t get upset. The shape isn’t for everyone (I myself am not a fan of the Dragonfly body style) but it IS for me.

Unfortunately, the upper horn does dig in to my chest quite a bit when I play sitting down and it is very uncomfortable but it still looks great, and when you play it standing up it’s so light that it feels like it’s not even there and the horn issue goes away immediately. After playing it for about a week straight, the horn issue has become less of an issue because I’ve adjusted myself to accommodate it. Now instead of playing in a sitting position on my couch I relax, lie down and pull the strap tighter so the guitar is much higher on my body and the guitar is more or less flat against my stomach/chest and playing is much easier (not only because it ceases to be uncomfortable but because playing guitar when it’s higher on your body is generally an easier thing to do).

And let’s talk about the colors that Parker offers! Parker offers some of the craziest colors in the guitar world from translucent colors used to showcase the top wood’s detail (the back of the guitar and neck is covered in carbon fiber before getting painted to add more strength and durability to the design), solid colors, sparkle colors, insane blends that start with silver and then have other colors added to it (Adrian Belew’s guitar starts out this way) and I’m pretty sure their lime gold uses the same process and in the end you have a guitar that not only features a unique body and headstock shape (probably the most unique body shape I’ve ever seen) but the color ON it is also stunning (on the models with different colors, the usual black and white are about as stunning as black and white can be which isn’t much).

But looks will only get you so far. We’ll talk about what makes the Parker stand apart from a crowd in ways other than looks next time.

-Pappy

Ramblings

As the year starts to wind down I've noticed the daily hits are going down as well. I figure this is either because

A) The giveaway is done and you have no more use for me.

Or

B) You're just spending time studying for or doing your finals, spending time with your family, jamming with bands or enjoying the festivities of the season including shopping, deliciously flavored coffees that are mysteriously not around the rest of the year or possibly drinking yourself into a stupor with egg nog laced with potent alcohol.

For my ego's sake, I'll assume it's the latter.

I'll also assume that the hits aren't going away permanently and that eventually you'll warm back up to the world of the Internet and my impeccably scheduled ramblings and possibly even go back and read the posts that you missed while you were out doing something else.

Lately I've been living with one guitar, my trusty Squier Affinity Series Telecaster. Sometimes I think about changing things out on it to make it better than it is, but honestly, it's a pretty awesome little guitar.

I most definitely am going to get new frets though. Steel ones. The nickel ones are great, but low and they've become quite dinged in the many trips that guitar has gone on.

But other than that, the only thing I'd really like to change out is the control plate so it has a toggle switch instead of the blade switch. This Tele sounds best in most cases in the middle position and the tall top-hat switch and my right hand just don't go together very well.

Or, looking at it alternatively, they go together far too well because most of the time I can't separate them. It gets annoying after a while, especially when you're recording.

Speaking of Telecasters, I'm excited to get home and spend more time with my new Flatline Delta 90! I need to raise the action just a bit to get rid of some buzz but the tone from that guitar is amazing! Like a Tele only fatter and more mean. It's pitched as a blues guitar but it's so much more than that and once the buzz is gone, I'm sure I'll start using it as one of my main recording guitars for any sound clips that may need to be brought up for reviews or whatnot.

I'm also excited to spend more time with Larry's Parker Fly. I'm pretty sure it's obvious by now (what with the fact that the review is going to be six parts long) that I'm a big fan of the guitar. Not to spoil it for you or anything, but I think it's a guitar in a class all it's own. I think that it and the classic guitars, your Strats, Teles, Gretsches, etc. etc. can live together in harmony because the Parker doesn't really specialize in classic tones because it's a progressive instrument. So I still like Teles, still like Les Pauls, but when a guitar company is releasing something that's "cutting edge" or meant to further the guitar and improve upon it somehow, I don't know, I just don't see how you can take it further with as much grace as Ken Parker already has.

And come on, we're guitarists. Like we're EVER going to say that we can get by with just ONE guitar. We all know there's room for everybody at this table of Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

In other news, I've been reading a lot of the web comic Questionable Content who's protagonist, Marten plays guitar. Right now I'm just catching up on the strips, but it looks like he's a one-guitar kind of guy (a Telecaster) and he's just starting a band. This isn't a strip for guitarists per se, but music fans will probably like it. It's like a funny soap-opera with hipster references and the occasional guitar post. I really enjoy it and I think everyone should give it a shot and check it out. Just be sure to give it more than one strip because it IS written like a soap-opera where the true sampling is an arc long.

I especially like the care that the artist puts into drawing instruments when they do make their appearances. He draws a pretty convincing Tele and look at this V. And hey, I hear Clint Searcy of Searcy String Works has a lovely wife who just bought him a Gibson SG that looks an awful lot like this one! And then jeez-louise, the very next strip shows Strats, Eclipses and PRS'!

Anyway, I guess this is me being lazy and not thinking of a real topic for today's post but I figure once in a while, this might be a good thing. Perhaps it will give you some insight into the real Pappy and maybe you like it. Who knows? I know it's fun to write posts like this sometimes.

So anyhoo, the year's not done, the posts aren't done, there's still a lot more crammed into 2010 before we kiss it off and welcome 2011 and wish, as the confetti falls and light is reflected off of shiny pointy hats and people everywhere are kissing their loved ones or some stranger after you've both been chemically fortified, that 2011 will be an even better year for all of us.

Take care and be safe.

-Pappy

Mark Tremonti: The Sound And The Story

Have you ever watched an instructional video recorded by the artist who made the style or songs famous and thought "this is great, I just wish there was a little more"?

Fret 12 knows how you feel and has released two DVDs in their series "The Sound and the Story," one for Mark Tremonti and one for Leslie West.

Today we'll be talking about the Mark Tremonti DVD.

First off, it isn't an instructional DVD as we've seen them done for decades now. This is a new take that features both a HEAVY dose of instruction from Tremonti but also features instruction from guitarists that Tremonti works with or is inspired by - his guitar playing buds, if you will. These include Myles Kennedy, Michael Angelo Batio, Troy Stetina, Rusty Cooley, and Bill Peck.

If that sounds like a lot of instruction, that's because it is. This DVD will not leave you thinking you wasted your $39.95 because it is packed to the gills with stuff to learn and not JUST having Tremonti teach it makes it feel even better because it feels like you're getting more for your money by having different instructors teach you. There's more variety so in the end if you don't want to learn from one of the instructors, no problem, just go to a different section and learn from a different one. It's not like you're really limited in what any teacher can teach you because there are over 40+ exercises stretched over 3 hours of footage.

And we'll come back to the DVD length in a bit, don't worry.

The instruction from Tremonti is a little fast-paced and the included TAB book really helps out in this regard but he does break down eight complete solos from Alter Bridge's Blackbird album and makes it possible to learn, especially with the help of the TAB book and your DVD player's rewind button. He breaks down the solos into sections and tackles them both slowed down and at speed. This DVD isn't really for beginners and can be pretty intimidating at times, but the intermediate and advanced players will love the instruction and everyone can find something in this to benefit their playing (and if you're a stubborn beginner, you can learn this too, it will just take a lot of determination and viewings, but you'll walk away a much better guitarist).

The DVD's three hour length isn't spent solely on instruction though and I think this is my favorite part of the thinking that went on behind the scenes. Sometimes while watching an instructional DVD, the artist will talk a little bit about his sound and I always wish there was more and wondered why there couldn't be. Apparently Fret 12 has been asking the same question because there's a mini-documentary on the disc that covers Tremonti's playing history, and walks you through every part of his gear both in the studio and on the road. It features interviews with Tremonti and those around him and shows him warming up (Mark Tremonti apparently has a guitar in his hand for most of the day and both interviews and footage back this up - the only time Tremonti's NOT warming up is when he's on stage) and the whole documentary is dedicated to guitarists. The walk through of his gear in particular is something every guitarist will enjoy seeing. Tremonti explains the origin of his signature model and pulls out PRS after PRS out of his rack and explains what he uses that particular one for and what its history is.

Speaking of PRS, the DVD comes with a PRS pick (which looks like it's the same kind Myles Kennedy uses because Tremonti uses a Jazz III) and inside the TAB book is an advertisement for the Tremonti models from PRS. The DVD also features a foreword from Paul Reed Smith himself talking about Mark Tremonti.

If PRS put up financial backing for this DVD they were smart to do so because the PRS lust was in high gear when I got done watching this DVD. Tremonti is always pulling out yet another PRS in yet another beautiful finish and demonstrating the amazing tones you can get from them and honestly if you AREN'T lusting for one or at the very least intrigued by them by the end of the DVD, you've been watching it blindfolded and with ear plugs in.

I walked away thinking that it's a good thing PRS doesn't offer the Tremonti SE in a translucent color with bird inlays because I would be in the hole for one.

Fret 12, apparently owners of a guitar player's crystal ball also saw this coming and offers what has to be one of the coolest stores attached to an instructional setting. They sell T-shirts, they sell accessories, they have video responses from famous guitarists to questions asked by YOU the audience. They also (here's the best part) offer Mark Tremonti's signature gear.

So if you're watching the DVD and thinking to yourself that you REALLY like the sound of his signature Morley Wah, you can go to Fret 12's site and buy it. You can even peek into the future yourself and figure you may want that wah once you start watching the DVD and order the wah/DVD bundle. You can do the same thing with his signature phaser.

AND you can do the same thing with his signature guitars. I've written about it in the past, but they offer two packages, one with the SE model in your choice of black or natural with the DVD for $512.00 (cheaper than most places for the guitar and you're getting a free DVD) and the other package featuring his American signature guitar in charcoal burst, a signed postcard and a used set of strings from Mark Tremonti's own guitar from a tour, and the DVD (all for $2,550.00).

Honestly, if you're a hardcore Mark Tremonti fan, you're going to like this DVD and you're going to LOVE the store. Even if you buy the DVD alone it comes with a hand-signed letter from Tremonti so there's something for the Tremonti fan to gush over regardless of how much money you're putting up.

And honestly, I think that the coolness of Fret 12's site and the packages that come with the DVD kind of make the DVD seem less cool than it really is just based on the fun of buying a new pedal or guitar. That's a shame at first because the DVD is top notch and a highly recommended "buy" from me and I'm sure once the folks who bought a bundle settle down and pop the DVD in, they'll realize just how great it is too (but now they'll have a new toy to play with AND learn new music with).

Who would like this DVD? Pretty much everyone. It's got everything a guitarist could like and the variety of instructors add a huge level to this particular DVD that makes it stand out from others. It's worth more than the $40.00 Fret 12 is charging, hands down.

Do you not believe me? Wish you could see a little more to make sure this DVD is right for you?

No problem.

You can pick up your copy here.

-Pappy

Parker Pt. 2: Parker's History

This is part 2 in a 6 part series. Here is the link to the other parts:

Part One: My History

Part Three: Guitar Art

Part Four: Ahead of the Times

Part Five: The Sound

Part Six: Epilogue

First, I have to give a huge thank you to the ToneQuest Report for the bulk (if not all) of the information in this post. The interview they did with Ken Parker is a semi-lazy researcher's dream come true.

Ken Parker was there when music was making some huge changes. When the Beatles arrived, when R&B was shaking things up and when the music he liked bore little resemblance to the popular music of the previous generation.

He started out in garage bands as so many do, but he started out on the piano until at the age of 13 he decided to make his own guitar. He fashioned it out of cardboard and wood but says it had strings. He would go to his grandfather's house and was able to spend time in his shop where his grandfather was a craftsman in wood and sheet metal.

After a while he went to college and signed up in a furniture-making class and became even more acquainted with the tools of the trade and when his brother, in need of a bass guitar that was better than the short scale junker he currently had, asked Ken to make him a new one, Ken did.

And he was so stoked about the process that he couldn't keep his head focused on academia and began an apprenticeship in Rochester, NY with a furniture maker and that lasted for about five years until the furniture store closed.

Undeterred, Ken descended to his basement and started making solid body guitars only to realize he didn't have complete control over the tools.

Did he just suck it up and learn to deal with it?

No.

He became a tool maker.

When he went to places that specialized in making tools he was laughed out with the owners saying he had to go to school for years to start the process but Ken wasn't having any of it and lucked into a job making incredibly complicated grandfather clock movements. He worked under a great teacher for two years before deciding to go back into furniture-making and worked in a business of two (Ken and the owner) and during his tenure here he started doing repairs on people's instruments and met a guy named Robert Meadow who made lutes. They left Rochester and set up shop, Robert making lutes and Ken making archtop guitars.

Robert eventually left to teach in New Jersey and Ken bounced around New York until settling into a music store doing repairs and occasionally making custom solid body guitars. He had the skills necessary to open a shop, but didn't want to risk the high fees associated with opening a one-man shop in Manhattan, especially considering Ken was a tinkerer - and experimenter. There's always a gamble with people who experiment and if you're rolling the bones like that, it's preferable to do so in a place where the cost of living is a little lower.

So he packed up and moved to Connecticut to live with his grandfather while he was developing the guitar that people would identify him most with:

The Fly.

He had talked to thousands of guitarists over the years, always asking them what made their guitars great and what areas needed improvements. He was mentally compiling the information in his head while simultaneously looking elsewhere. It's easy to get caught in a box after all and if you're a guitar maker who's going to make guitars and you've been interviewing guitarists, where else do you really need to go and what else do you need to look at? You've got it all, right?

Well, maybe. But that didn't stop Ken from thinking about other instruments. Pianos, violins, violas, etc. He learned how to "listen to the wood" and looked at making his own guitar as a challenge to put in the most efficiency possible and offer a fix for all the complaints he had heard in the past. He looked at the headstock and realized you didn't NEED all that wood and as a result, you have the famous Parker headstock.

He also thought electric guitars didn't sit right on your lap saying that "the Strat wants to fall one way and the Les Paul wants to fall another." He thought acoustic instruments sit well on your lap so why not electrics?

In addition he also looked to the instruments of old - particularly the lute and nature itself and saw that you can add strength to the whole instrument by adding strength to just the skin (like a lobster). Lutes were wrapped in a wood like ebony that increased the strength of the neck and he decided to use a basswood neck which isn't very strong and cover it in a composite material.

OK, let's take a breather here and talk about composite materials. A lot of people think it means carbon fiber. Not so.

Parker explains: A composite material is "made of two or more things that that has better mechanical properties than either of the two materials alone."

His example?

Paper mache; stronger than paper or flour alone.

Ken Parker's paper mache? "Epoxy resin, glass and carbon fibers."

After that he decided to use stainless steel frets after doing thousands of fret jobs and seeing issues with the whole process, from the slots in the neck being in inaccurate places and not evenly cut, to the frets being made softer and softer to ensure less time being worked on at the shop. He decided to use a steel wire that's D shaped and glue it to the fingerboard.

He also hooked up with Larry Fishman who helped make his guitars some of the most versatile in the world.

All of these things and more came from little revelations Ken's had through his whole career, be it as a guitar player, furniture maker, tool builder, guitar builder, repairman, etc. One of the things that truly sets him apart is that he's willing to look beyond the guitar to see what can make a guitar great or improved and in 1993 he unveiled Parker Guitars and through the years and different models always claimed that the Fly was the best, the "baby."

And now that you know a little more about the man, how about we delve into the guitar more? It's coming up in Parker Pt. 3: Guitar Art.

-Pappy

Steve Vai is Yoda

Thanks to Josh at Guitar Lifestyle for posting this. I think Steve Vai's music is, for the most part, out of my range of appreciation (other than saying his playing is so much more amazing than mine it would make me want to hang up the guitar if I had any interest in sounding like him) but it turns out that he's sort of a better-speaking, axe-wielding Yoda of guitar players and I honestly feel a little more inspired having seen this.

I especially like his comment about not working on your weaknesses. After all, we've been told so often by so many people to focus on our weaknesses in an effort to equal out our abilities (both in playing and in life) that I haven't even considered doing anything different! And I bet I'm not the only one. But now... Now it seems so crazy it just might work.

Of course, this also seems directed more toward a person who's been playing for a little while and has stumbled on what they're good at.

But if you think about it, it kind of makes sense.

In an interview on Six String Bliss (I forget which one and with whom, I apologize) the interviewee said that you should want to learn something new specifically for a song, not just to have it in your toolbox because there's more motivation to learn and retain it.

I think the two theories can be tied together very easily. You're really good at chunky power chord riffing yet you're writing a song and you know there needs to be something to set this one section apart - nothing CRAZY, mind you, something small but something nonetheless - and then you think it would sound cool to use an octave chord so you're forced to learn how to mute the middle string and still move around and you became a better guitarist, all while doing something you love and improving your song-writing ability because you used the technique in a practical setting. After all, how many tricks or licks have you learned and haven't been able to work into your own playing?

This is good stuff! I'm definitely going to favorite this on YouTube!

Thanks again, Josh!

-Pappy

Gig FX VOD Winner Announced!

Hey 8oris, congratulations on winning your very own Gig FX VOD pedal. I'm sure you're going to love it!

____________________________

Hey everyone else (including 8oris), don't worry about not winning this. Yes, the VOD IS an amazing pedal - so amazing it's going to hurt to ship it off to 8oris - and I STRONGLY recommend it to each and every one of you as an addition to your pedal board. It's cheap enough to afford but packed with such high quality you may feel like you actually stole it from these engineering geniuses.

And take heart folks! One more company has told me that after I get done reviewing a certain red pedal that I'll be giving THAT away too so buck up and keep your eyes peeled for the next give away! "Like" on FaceBook, follow on Twitter and subscribe to the blog to keep up on the times and be first in the know when this next contest drops!

Take care everyone!

-Pappy

New Contest from Muzicosphere!

Hey guys and gals, check out Muzicosphere's new contest where you can win a Line 6 Pod HD500! I like how he set up the contest too, having pictures included to make your entry valid (it's fun as a blogger to see what the audience is using and it's fun for the audience to show off their gear, even if's just a lack of it). Perhaps I may acquire that submission rule later on in a future giveaway!

Seriously folks, go sign up. Here's your chance to win a seriously cool piece of gear!

-Pappy

Hearty Sponsor Recommendations

This is a page dedicated to the sponsors who help make the Fifth Fret possible. I hand pick any and all sponsors based on quality of gear, customer service, or sheer awesomeness of their wares. Please visit their sites and check out their stuff because there’s a reason I’ve picked them and I’d like you to see what is so cool about each of them.

Shanghai Music & Sound

A small guitar shop in Ponca City, OK, but they’re able to order you anything from the companies they stock with popular names like Ibanez, Orange, Vox and others. They’re more known for their great Gretsch prices and offering the customer modified budget Gretsch guitars that are upgraded to reflect specs closer to the ones that cost close to $2,000.00 and up. They are also the sole manufacturer of the Shanghai 64/1, a modified Princeton Reverb clone that is built completely in-house, with point to point wiring and a truly awesome tone. You can see my review of the Shanghai 64/1 here and some videos of the amp being demonstrated here.

Benford Guitars

Benford Guitars offers something unique to the playing world. Where a lot of custom guitar companies offer high quality, high priced guitars, Benford offers three tiers of instruments, all hand-made in the US with high quality standards but different levels of pricing from the Standard Series which has a ton of options to choose from at LOW prices, to the 1/2 Custom which features a pre-made neck and a custom body to the full-blown custom guitar where your imagination is the limit. Check Benford Guitars out next time you're looking for a guitar and see what he can do for you.

Castiv Media Inc.

Castive is a great company that makes a very worthwhile product called the Guitar Sidekick. It attaches your smart device (PSP, iPhones, iPod Touch etc) to your headstock by clamping on the strings. This makes practicing with your device a ton easier with no need to hold perfectly still as you balance your device on your knee, no losing track of chords or TABs because you put your device on the floor and now can't read it and no worrying about awkward viewing angles.

If you practice with a device, you need this. It will help out a lot. Be sure to check out the review here.

Mod Kits DIY

Mod Kits DIY achieved what I believed to be the impossible: They made me confident that I could build anything provided I had a kit with all the correct parts and a great set of instructions. After butchering an amp kit from another company and spending far more than you should be able to justify for a home-built 5 watt amp only to have it fail twice for different reasons, then get taken to a tech only to come back sounding awful, I thought I was done with building.

Mod Kits DIY sent me a boost to build though and it came out wonderfully. A little ugly on the inside but that's just my inexperience showing. They're also incredibly affordable. Check out my review here.

Flatline Guitars

Flatline Guitars offer a classy twist on the classics, offering three shapes that are familiar to the eyes but packed with more tone and power than most. They're amazingly easy to play, amazingly versatile and are awe-inspiring guitars. You can read more about the company and my feelings on them and the Flatline Vistaglide Custom HERE. Check it out. You'll be glad you did!

New George Harrison Gretsch

Seems like Gretsch is having no problem finding artists of astounding quality to base tribute models on! This is pretty cool, I'd say, and I don't even like the Beatles.

Here's the site complete with teaser video.

-Pappy

AmpliTube 3 Review

Welcome to the days of good amplifier simulation! It’s crazy to think that just a few short years ago amplifier purists were saying that modeling amps wouldn’t last, that they didn’t sound good and no one would buy them. Then it seemed like you couldn’t open a guitar magazine without reading that someone had recorded their latest album using Pro Tools, a digital recording platform. Still, purists and some outspoken musicians said that the tone was cold and lifeless - a practical zombie of guitar recording. Still the digital world refused to be smacked into submission and as a result we have a wealth of fairly affordable (if not completely free) recording platforms and amplifier simulation software that makes studios questionable and spare bedrooms and basements filled with gear more of a luxury than a necessity when you demand variety in tone.

But when it comes to recording on your own you’re looking for three basic things:

1) Either as much variety as possible or your favorite sound nailed perfectly in a digital world.

2) Affordability.

3) Ease of use.

IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube 3 introduces more amps than most studios have in the wings, and more complete set-ups that are ready to go if you’re in a hurry, or waiting to serve as a jumping-off point to find your tone.

And some of these tones are absolutely amazing. Especially the clean tones. Normally I go in to amp sims thinking that I’ll have to tweak this or that to get it to where I like it, but with AmpliTube’s clean sounds I found that all the tweaking I may need lay not in the software but merely changing which pickup I was using. The setting “Rockabilly & Swing” in particular really stands out because with a Telecaster in the middle position, even a beat-up Squier like mine that’s seen better days both in looks and tone, I was able to NAIL a Cliff Gallup tone. The delay and reverb that came with the setting was dialed in perfectly and the only thing I needed to tweak in the software was the volume.

Oh, and it was FUN. Playing in this setting I was seeing right away that your tone is a big part of song writing. I used to think you can write anything on anything and that may be true, but it’s a WHOLE lot easier to write a rockabilly song when you have a rockabilly sound in your ears when you’re writing.

Speaking of your ears, that’s another huge plus to this software: it won’t kill your ears. You can get a Twin-ish amp cranked up to 10, something that would make faces melt like in Raiders of the Lost Ark screaming “It hurts so much, but the TONE IS AWESOME!” but with a dead audience, it’s not like you’ll see many repeat patrons at your show (if you survive yourself). But with this you can set the volume that’s coming through your speakers/headphones and it’s even helped out more when you have a recording interface that has an output or monitor level.

There are so many things you can do, and so many tones you can achieve that you can literally spend days going through and finding the ones you like the most. Personally, I thought that the software excelled when there was no gain involved all the way up to an 80’s kind of gain. There are more extreme settings that tackle sounds like nu-metal or thrash, but as a setting template they don’t shine as much as the other settings.

But people familiar with amp sims will probably say that there’s no ONE program that can do everything and do it all perfectly and there are programs where certain tones are truly nailed at the expense of having a ton of different virtual amps to choose from. Some are better at high gain stuff, some are better at clean and some just plain attack one specific line of amps and get the closest approximation to the natural tones that they can (for example, Fender AmpliTube).

Of course this isn’t to say that you can’t tweak it to where you like your heavy sounds to be and I’m not really insulting IK for their interpretations of the heavier sounds of the late 90’s, especially when SO MANY other sounds offered are spot on and completely usable with little or no tweaking on your end. And there's a VERY important thing to remember here: I'm just reviewing the actual software and the included presets. You can tweak any amp, add any effect, mics, etc. etc. and spend hours if not DAYS finding the exact tone you like (and then saving it). Because of this, you can probably tweak your way to happiness with little or no problem, but there's no way I can review what YOU would do as a player.

The numbers for AmpliTube are staggering. Check it out:

51 stompbox effects

31 amp models

46 cabinet emulations

15 studio microphone models

17 rack effects

A high-precision tuner

And a slew of other stuff like the ability to move the microphone to different areas of the cab, room ambience, drag and drop functionality, a search function (which comes in handy with this many pieces of gear) and the ability to be expanded on with packages like AmpliTube Fender and Ampeg SVX.

So we can say that, provided you’re interested in either versatility or spot-on settings of clean to 80’s dirty tones, Number One of the magical shopping list is complete and good to go.

Moving on to two, the complete version of AmpliTube 3 costs $278.95 on Amazon.com and while it’s a little tough to look at a box that size and say “$300.00? Let’s do it!” consider what you’re getting. If only ONE sim sound nails what you’re looking for, you’ve probably saved a ton of money. For instance, I really like the sounds of the amp that looks suspiciously Marshall-ish and if that was the only amp I liked and used I would have saved WELL over a thousand bucks. That’s enough to justify the software AND the computer it runs on!

But yes, $300.00 is a little expensive but it isn’t out of the realm of affordability and even a teen with a job should be able to save up enough to buy this software with little difficulty.

So can we say Number Two is a success?

Well, then we move on to Number Three. Here’s where things get a little disappointing.

IK offers technical advice and seems to have their customers in mind when they make their products and are more than willing to help out should anything go wrong, but their user area seems to be devoid of one thing: A user forum. I found most of my helpful advice on the forum for my interface which isn’t made by IK, and some other tips on YouTube.

EDIT: IK Multimedia has just put out a User's Forum, so this complaint is now negated.

Actually setting it up to record and use my new interface (the interface was a tricky piece of equipment, especially for how simple it looks) and the software into GarageBand was a bit difficult but I will say once you learn it, it’s not like more problems come up. It’s just that initial familiarization that’s a bit of a pain but they always say that anything good is worth a bit of heartache and in the end, I learned how to use a piece of software that boasts more stuff inside it than can fit inside a guitar store and now that I’ve gone through that initial pain, it’s all right there at my fingertips, just waiting for me.

I wouldn’t normally complain about a learning period like this either if the company offered a tutorial or an online forum, but IK doesn’t. In a dream world, what I would like to see is the first time you use the software after registration, it takes you through the program giving you a quick tour of the ins and outs, helping make sure you know how to connect properly, select amps, stomboxes, move mics, record, etc. etc. This is something that you find in the beginning of a lot of video games and something that could be considered EXTREMELY valuable with programs of this depth.

In the end I’m incredibly pleased with the tone and price of the software. The tones are great and the price could be considered a steal when you even consider for a second the amount of great work you’re getting and the amount of great tones you’ll be able to use. The learning period is a bit rough, but any software that can do this amount of stuff is bound to have a similar familiarization process. In high school there was a full semester class on how to use Microsoft Word for crying out loud and I guarantee you, nothing nearly as cool came out of THAT program compared to AmpliTube 3.

So who should buy it?

Well, if you have a computer, are inclined to record yourself without lugging your stuff to a studio and paying out the nose, and are willing to spend some time learning the ins and outs of the program, I really can’t recommend it enough.

Consider this, after all: Say you want to learn something. Wouldn’t it be easier to learn it if you were able to hear yourself play with a close approximation of the tone of your learning material? And like I said, it’s easier to WRITE when you have the tone in your head actually coming into your ears.

Overall this software is a huge win and if you have the technical capacity and patience you’ll walk away with a wealth of great tones in your computer ready to go where you are.

-Pappy