Last night was Oscar night and one of the films up for a bunch of awards was Crazy Heart. It’s a story about Bad Blake, a minor country and western legend with a chain-smoking habit, penchant for heavy drinking and a streak of bad choices. The movie features a song called The Weary Kind that was written by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham and performed by Ryan Bingham.
Guitar amplifiers have come a long way since the early days of electric guitars. However, innovations in technology may not have made the impact on the industry that was expected. Vintage equipment such as tube amps still reign as the royalty of the industry. Tube amps still provide the warmest sound with the highest quality. These amps are the tried-and-true favorites of most electric guitar playing musicians on Earth today. However, solid-state technology has always come in as a close second in the contest of guitar tube amp vs. solid-state.
Looking to improve your chops, hang out with a famous guitarist and a host of other great musicians all in the beautiful setting of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York? Well Dweezilla just might be the ticket for you. Coming up this summer Dweezil Zappa and friends are hosting a boot camp for musicians at the Full Moon Resort.
Gibson has decided to get into the mobile app game and released their first effort with the “Gibson Guitar App“. The app features a tuner that can handle chromatic as well as open tunings, a metronome with tap tempo, chord charts and video lessons. After playing around with the app for a little while we’ve found it’s best feature to be it’s price - free.
GearPipe is holding their first ever exclusive gear giveaway (congrats!) and up for grabs is a set of Fervor Handwound Strat pickups. These pups feature sand-cast Alnico rod magnets similar to those found in 1950’s Strats, high-quality copper wire and nickel-plated eyelets. The outputs are rated at 5.8K for the neck, 5.6K for the middle and the bridge is wound to a hot 6.4K. This set of pups would normally set you back $225.
Bill Ruppert’s Effectology videos never cease to blow my mind. In this episode Bill recreates the beginning of Pink Floyd’s classic “Welcome to the Machine”. It’s important to note that no keyboards, samplers or MIDI guitar pickups are used in these videos. It’s just EHX pedals and mad genius Bill Ruppert. However he does use a Norelco shaver and an old dial tone from a phone…
Here’s something that seems pretty cool and handy for guitar players - a portable tab player that connects right to the headstock of your guitar. The i-tab allows users to download backing tracks and video cover lessons from a library of fully legal tabs, tracks and lessons on www.i-tab.com.
It has been a little while since we have had a new Bedroom Rockstar on Fretbase and we have decided it’s time. Since it has been a little while, I’ll remind you of the qualifications. A Bedroom Rockstar is a non-professional that turns on a video camera (preferably while seated on their bed), takes a classic song and broadcasts a version of that song where the bedroom rockstar really makes that song their own. A great example is these two guys playing Pearl Jam’s Elderly Woman Behind The Counter in a Small Town. But we have a new one we’re really taken with a remarkable version of the song Rocky Raccoon by The Beatles.
We were pretty excited earlier this year when Martin Guitar introduced the new Martin 000-15M all-solid mahogany acoustic guitar. Not only were we excited about the ability to get an all mahogany guitar again from Martin, but we were also impressed with all of the new appointments. But when we hear about a new guitar, the first thing we want to see is pictures. Martin posted a few on their site, but that wasn’t enough. We wanted more. And sometimes the answers to your dreams come from far away places.
Here’s a couple of videos of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck from the Madison Square Garden show in New York City on Feb 18th, 2010. Jeff Beck took the stage first and performed a set that featured songs off his upcoming April album. Clapton then followed with his own set that started off acoustic and then went electric and featured his classics. At the end of the show both players got on stage together to play. One song featured was Henry Mancini’s “Moon River”. Here’s a video of the band working on Moon River at sound check.
