It's Fender time..

Tasty, mmm!!

So will we ever get to see this mighty hollow mahogany body Fender Stratocaster? Double cream binding, bound fingerboard with block inlays, cream plastic ware, very cool and all the way from our Fender friends and the Kandashoki Company in Japan.

On further investigation.

Parker guitars are soon to feature Auto-Tune

I thought the Peavey/Antares guitar seemed a little higher tech than what it actually is. Firstly, I got it wrong big time when I suggested the D2A's and the A2D's would need to be pretty happening. Having a look on the Antares web site and watching some videos I see there are no A2D's or D2A's. The guitar in fact has piezo bridge saddles as used by Line6 in their Variax. With the little Peavey had to say about the Antares system I was thinking (incorrectly) that there was analog to digital and back to analog circuitry utilizing the magnetic pickups where in fact it is using pickup modeling. This would seem somewhat disguised in their literature and on the guitar itself with just a simple pull-up pot to switch between passive (the mag pickups) and the auto tune (piezo modeling) system. The "m" word is never mentioned. Having said that and knowing now that the basis of the tech is instrument modeling, the auto-tuning side of things 'seems' to be pretty cool. If you think of it as having six auto-tunes, one for each string and able to pull each and every note into tune on the fly then that could only be a good thing for getting around the idiosyncrasies of the fretboard. The demo vids on the Antares web site show a guy using a Strat with a Roland-style hex pickup but I suppose as long as the six strings are separated into individual signals, piezo or hex, it doesn't really matter. Also Antares do show it's modelling capabilities so maybe this is available through midi and software?
Also if you're wondering about the green Parker Fly guitar, Parker are also partnering Antares and will soon have some form of the Antares auto-tune guitar system in one of their MaxxFly guitars. Read all about the Antares Auto-Tune For Guitar here !!

Peavey inovation.

Hot or not?

There is no doubting Peavey is an innovative company who have made some revolutionary and main-stay products over the years such as the Valve King amplifier series and the Classic 30 which has been around for yonks and still remains a huge seller. Peavey however do have rather a captured market in the massive Worship followers of the faith in the US and I think this is what keeps them at the forefront. Not that this is a bad thing and never over look such a tappable market, just ask George Bush.

Where there's a Will..

I won, I won..

Ryan Hunter-Reay has clinched the 2012 IndyCar title after a thrilling season finale at Auto Club Speedway, Fontana today. Points leader, our Will Powers stacked it finishing his chances at the title at the final race of the series. Ironically it was Will's (attempted) pass on Hunter-Reay that put him in the fence, Oh well, there is always next year.

A Guitar Maker Aims to Stay Plugged In

Workers build Fender guitars in a factory in Corona, Calif., east of Los Angeles.

By JANET MORRISSEY (NYT)
Published: September 29, 2012

(Story ripped off from The New York Times - Dave)

IN 1948, a radio repairman named Leo Fender took a piece of ash, bolted on a length of maple and attached an electronic transducer.

You know the rest, even if you don’t know you know the rest.