Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
Highlights and High Jinks from the inaugural Norwich Fret Fest / Sweat Fest - at St Mary's Works
At one stage there was a 50/50 chance as to whether I would make the show - as there were significant disruptions on the Liverpool Street to Norwich line - which meant a bus replacement service between Colchester and Ipswich. Some of the journey times quoted were up to 4 and a 1/2 hours each way! In the end the door-to-door was closer to 3 hours in total! The journey up including the coach was actually more fun that the journey back via Cambridge. Cambridge has obviously sinned grievously as ...
US-Hawaiian Corporate Entity Wages a War of Attrition on the entire Electric Guitar Industry and against its own best interests!
There’s been quite a lot of nonsense spouted and written about this recent legal skirmish - which amounts to massive judicial and jurisdictional overreach by Fender’s European Lawyers Bird & Bird.
’Standing, Default Judgement and Jurisdiction’
Essentially Fender won a Regional Dusseldorf court case against a Chinese Importer of essentially Counterfeit Stratocaster Guitars. Said entity had no corporate assets in Europe, failed to turn up to court, and Fender was awarded a win by default ...
Inaugural Woking Boutique Guitar Show Highlights from Fiery Bird
Maybury Guitars - Jason
So here are the highlights from the very first Woking Boutique Guitar Show - which took place this past Saturday at the Fiery Bird venue - just 5 minutes walk from the train station / town centre.
The show was organised by my good friend Jason Snelling of Maybury Guitars, alongside John Smith of JAS Guitars. The venue was perfectly centrally located, and was spacious - with a lot of natural light - which did make some of the photography somewhat...
Fender ramps up its Sanrio Hello Kitty Kawaii Collaboration - celebrating 50 years!
Who doesn’t like a bit of Japanese Cutesy Kawaii Culture. Fender certainly does - and has been onboard with Sanrio and Hello Kitty now for half a century.
This latest release obviously comes just in time for the Christmas season - in fact I would imagine a few princesses will be waking up to one of these guitars on Christmas Day. And Japanese princesses have even more to be excited about - as you can see in the overview video below - with some unique product available in Japan!
While ...
Alternative Guitar Show #2 Highlights - from Paper Dress Vintage in Hackney, London
It was quite the deliberation - deciding which image should be the cover shot for this feature - on balance I think I made there right decision by picking the very first photo of the day - where Hello Sailor Effects certainly delivers that Technicolour Rainbow which looks so appealing. Moreover I snagged a one-off pedal from that stand - a few minutes before the show was officially opened - but more of that later!
Rabea's Superb Signature Music Man Custom Sabre is finally fully available!
I say the Rabea Sabre is fully available - while noting that the Limited 30 Run Frenzied Flame Burst Edition sold out in just a couple of days or so. The Standard Vileblood Burst will be available at all Music Man Dealers, including at Andertons - where it’s priced @ £4,299 (Music Man = $3999).
My upper ceiling for guitar acquisitions is usually at £3.5K, but I would most definitely make an exception for this fantastic guitar. It’s designated as a Sabre Model - but there are so many cool ...
16 Cool Guitars from In and Around Winter NAMM 2024
These are simply the most attractive and appealing 16 Guitars that I came across through the NAMM guitar coverage.
I alas seem to mostly have expensive taste - as some of these models cost as much as $22,000, with the PRS SE Swamp Ash Special a somewhat lonely outlier @ $849. The majority here seem to be between $3,000 and $5,000.
I’m not sure I will even acquire any of these - while it’s of course nice to dream what you would do if / when your lottery numbers come through!
The ...
Boss Unleashes 2 Ingenious Bluetooth Enabled Devices - the EV-1-WL Wireless MIDI Expression Pedal, and the Revolutionary Eurus GS-1 Electronic Guitar
It’s tricky to know where to start when Boss springs this big a surprise on you! With literally last minute notice for two top secret projects that Boss has quite evidently been working on for a while.
The guitar is something rather more unusual for Boss - so perhaps I should start there. I’m not sure many of you recall Boss’s last foray into guitars back in 2017 - as a collaboration with Strandberg Guitars - for the Boss V Guitar - a heavily customised and evolved ...
Birmingham's The Guitar Show Highlights
For me, this turned out to be the best The Guitar Show yet - where I pretty much managed to round off all my pre-show goals - in terms of seeing what and whom I wanted to / needed - as per the following highlights. I caught 2 great lunchtime showcases - first by Mikey Demus of Skindred / Redbeard Effects fame and then Rabea Massaad of Andertons, Chapman, Dorje, Toska, etc. fame - and D’Addario as it turned out - albeit people were really just there to see Bea play.
I must have circled the ...
Islington UK Guitar Show Highlights via 9 Key Encounters
I spent the whole of yesterday at the Islington UK Guitar Show - which turned out to be quite a different experiences for me compared to last year’s somewhat haphazard inaugural event at Olympia - this was much better organised, and I really enjoyed attending the many breakout events at the show.
For Pedal fans it was really quite a simple show with relatively few Pedal purveyors - and with one stand having most of the action - i.e. the Audio Distribution Group - with 16 brands - Cioks, ...
