| Rockbeare Guitars |

Got two more visitors passing through for a bit of setup work – a rare ’70 rosewood Tele and a late 50’s Vox AC15.

Tele

The first rosewood Teles from ~’68 (like the one George Harrison made famous in The Beatles) were solid and weigh a ton. Realising their mistake, Fender soon added chambers in the body to take out weight. This one from early ’70 is therefore quite comfortable.

It plays well, though it’s not the best playing Tele I’ve come across. The neck profile is typical for the period, but because it’s rosewood it fells slightly fatter. The wood figuring on the neck is expecially lovely and of course the ‘skunk stripe’ is pale maple.

It currently has Bare Knuckle pickups dropped in and they sound fine, but I’ll be reinstalling the originals soon.

AC15

Quite big and heavy, but a great amp. Two input channels with separate volume control, one normal on for the onboard foot switchable vibrato and them, and a master tone.

With an A/B switch, you could set this amp up for rhythm and lead with fx. Incredible facilities for an amp that’s almost 60 years old.

And the sound! Clean and transparent until it breaks up,when it goes soooo smooth. And it loves pedals – a Klon Centaur or Rockett Archer just extends the smooth drive, whereas a nastier pedal add more hair and bite. The speaker is a Goodmans Audiom.

Set with vibrato and breakup, this is the perfect amp for the solo from ‘Old Brown Shoe’. I’ll be taking a lot more interest in old Vox amps from now on…

Friend N’s ’68 Thinline was in for a setup. Pictured here with my used but fab ’72 blonde/rosewood. Both play extremely well for Teles from a troubled period. The neck profile of the Thinline has the slightest ‘v’ about it, whereas my ’72 blonde is quite skinny.

The Thinline’s neck pickup is gorgeous and warm, the bridge’s slightly harsh, both slightly more extreme than my solid body’s. A versatile guitar and sooooo cool looking too!

From left, ’59 ES335; ’54 Goldtomp & ’58 Sunburst, all in Cali Girl cases with canvas overcases. Yup.

Novamusicians confirmed as a scam.

I thought this Jakarta, Indonesia-based dealer was too good to be true but tested the water by pursuing a small exploratory purchase to be sure.

It’s well-executed to the point of having a scam shipping service with tracking, but ultimately shows through as fake all the way through.

Further research throws up only a scant few advisories, hence my posting this as widely as possible to help others avoid getting caught.

Amazing the enormous lengths some people will go to to earn tiny amounts of money. I guess their hope is that someone will go for the ’57 Strat!

AVOID…

A 2008 Tokai FB40, a copy of a Gibson Firebird 1, but with several differences.

The body is almost the right shape, but the lower horn is wider and the whole body is thicker.  It has a set neck and the body is actually five laths of wood, beautifully joined on the diagonal.

The body is a ’63-65 -style reverse style and the headstock is also reversed, but is the later ’65-69 style with no contouring and regular right angle tuners, not the straight through banjo tuners of the earlier models. The neck and headstock angles are like early ‘birds, but the scale length is Fender (25 1/2″).

The pickup is very hot but also quite microphonic, and the surround is oversized black plastic rather than a chromed plate.  Control knobs are ‘speed’ style as opposed to ‘reflectors’, and it needs a strap button on its heel for better balance. The bridge anchors needed a little attention but are securely seated now.

And it plays and sounds absolutely great – a great standby guitar for jams and gigs. Quick and dirty video of it in action here.

The arrival of the latest Fractal Audio email update reminded me to express a view I’ve harboured for some time.

I sometimes act as brand ambassador/demonstrator/adviser to a leading UK audio/tech company, and was a fairly early adopter of an Axe-Fx Ultra.  I gigged happily with it through a Mesa Fifty/Fifty power amp and vintage EV12L speakers for several years and became quite familiar with its workings. I controlled it then and now with my trusty original DMC (pre-Voodoolab, small footprint) Ground Control and two Boss expression pedals.

But I was disappointed that Fractal’s firmware updates of the Standard and Ultra models came to an abrupt stop when the Axe-Fx II was launched.  As good as customer service and updates had been up to that point, I really felt a bit abandoned. I would have thought that periodic if less frequent updates for legacy products informed by the ongoing update programme for the II would have been in order.

By that time, however, I was moving back to working with smaller, boutique amps so I never acquired a II, but much later I was intrigued by and acquired Kemper’s Profiler rackmount.

If I’m using rack gear and/or recording, I now use the Kemper as my preferred sound source, and the Axe-Fx Ultra as the processor. It also sees use as the wet in my wet/dry/wet setup around my wonderful Ceriatone D-style and 633 Engineering amps.

I know there is much heated, even religious, debate about the respective merits and that it is not entirely fair or me to contrast an Axe-Fx that is several years old and for example predates IR tech with a Kemper with is more recent, but I find the latter’s profiles more convincing and much easier to edit.

The Axe-Fx turns the tables as processor, but I still feel rather abandoned by the abruptness of the cessation of updates.

There, I’ve finally come out with it and ‘look forward’ to the hate mail…..

I got together with a few chums and a barn full of kit yesterday. On the rack were :

Combos : Lazy J 20w; Divided by 13 EDT 13/29; Matchless 30/15, Swart Atomic Space Tone

Heads : 633 custom 36w; Ceriatone 50w Overtone Special; Two Rock Matt Schofield signature 50;

Speakers : Vintage EV12L in Thiele-ported cab; Celestion G12/65, Eminence Red Guv’nor; Two Rock 2×12 with Celestion Blue & G12/65

Stomps (this is where it gets silly) : Klon Centaur silver; Rockett Archer; Vemuram Jan Ray x2; 633 Chipotle; Barber Small Fry; Mad Professor Simble; Hermida Dover Drive; Ika-modded Joyo Ultimate Drive; Okko Diablo; Mojo Hand Iron Bell; Digitech Screamin’ Blues; Tanabe Dumkudo/Zenkudo custom. We could have brought yet more, like Ethos, Freekish Blues, Hermida Zendrive, Rothwell Hellbenders, Providence SOV-2………

Guitars : ’55 Junior; ’73 Tele; ’62 Strats (2!); Huber Orca; SVL Strat; Dave King custom lefty Tele; Gibson ES 356N; Ibanez Artist. Again, we could have brought dozens more…!

We had a switching system so we could quickly compare all amp/speaker combinations and stomps side by side too. The possibilities were endless, but a few key takeouts :

Runaway best value prize : the Joyo Ultimate Drive continues to hold its own against stomps costing many times more. Granted, it improves with modding but it’s still astonishing. The other cheap pedal, the Digitech Screamin’ Blues didn’t do quite as well, though I wish we’d had yet another cheapie, their Bad Monkey, to hand as I’ve heard it sound terrific.

You can still hear a subtle difference between a Klon and a Rockett Archer if you listen very carefully and A/B them side by side as we did. But in real conditions and or with studio EQ, you couldn’t tell. Given the price and size difference, the Rockett is therefore the much-awaited Klon killer.

The prototype 633 Chipotle also sounded excellent against the reference Small Fry – slightly towards rock which is likely good for its market.

It’s taken me a while but I’ve been getting some good sounds from the Simble recently, but it didn’t stand out in this session.

As you’d expect (and hope) at this level, every amp and speaker combination was a winner, delivering different things to different ears. Deep, lustrous cleans, chimey jangles (Matchless excelled) and singing overdrives aplenty with lots of dynamics. There was a definite preference for combinations of speakers (eg the Two Rock cab or pairs of 1×12’s) with the blending and phase advantages on offer. The Swart charmed everybody with its lush detail and tube trem.

The pedals divided into those stronger at creating drive themselves, and those which preferred to push the amps further into breakup. The audience tended along similar lines, cleaner players tending to prefer the former, drive players the latter. Though to be fair, you’d have been happy playing a gig with the worst combination! The Dover Drive drew comment for combining higher drive without losing articulation and detail.

We also had very pleasant mid-session break to rest our ears, and played a selection of high-end acoustics. Yet more candy.

For my part, I was very happy to audition my Ceriatone and 633 amps side by side and switch speakers too. Both fantastic and complementary. I can’t imagine needing another amp (though it probably won’t stop me buying the odd one, like maybe a Swart, another 633 or a 20w version of my Ceriatone).

Sincere thanks to M for hosting a really great day!

It arrived yesterday so I put it against a Klon and several other pedals.

I wanted not to like the Klon but was won over by its transparency. The Archer is very close indeed. A/B/A+Bing with both set not to colour the sound show both to be equally transparent.

Adding drive is actually easier on the Archer as its controls are set so that their ranges has more useful range than the Klon’s.

Neither does particularly good ‘pedal drive’, and both overdrive nice amps near breakup beautifully as does the Gravy Train from SJ Effects who make the London Guitar Club’s ‘The One Pedal’.

By contrast, the Jan Ray and Rothwell Hellbender do suffering small amp really well and the Barber Burn Unit, Dum/Zenkudo, Alpha Drive, Ultimate Drive, HBE Power Screamer drive amps quite nicely and do drive into clean as well and the Dover Drive is higher gain, almost fuzz so different. The Providence SOV-2 may be favoured by some but is outclassed by all these to my ear. It’s just a bit brutal, but I’ll persist for while yet.

Is the Klon’s drive ever so slightly more open than the Archer’s? – I really couldn’t say, they’re that close. A remarkable pedal for £149 in a really neat small housing that actually fits on a board.  I’d buy one if I were you, but then I already have one. Ha.

Looks beautiful and sounds even better.  Headroom AND breakup to die for, either at once or separately using the headroom control.  There different voices – ‘vox’, ‘tweed’ and ‘blackface’ – great simple tone controls, pre- and/or switchable power-amp drive, hi-cut to sweeten and a reverb which can reduce when boost is on.

The matching cab houses an Eminence Red Guvnor which matches the amp really well.  Also tried a Celestion G12-65, too muddy but good with other amps.  You can’t see from the pic but the logos on both amp and cab illuminate.  Sosexy.

Hats off to Cliff brown at 633 Engineering – one magnificent amp.

This is a One Stromp, designed by a friend and custom built for him by S J Effects. It contains a really good drive section, reverb and delay with modulation.

it’s intended to be the only pedal you need for jams, where you get given a (usually shitty) amp and there’s no setup time. So you just set the amp loud and clean with no fx and let this box do the rest.

It’s only a prototype, so I’m told there will be some slight modifications before a very limited run is produced, but right down to the quick release battery-drawer, it’s a great design and sounds fantastic.