Giggage!

Looking forward to a dep gig with Teannaich tonight . Been a while so should be great to get up onstage and play again.

The new pedalboard will be gigged for the first time tonight so until I can sort out sound hum issues I decided to put batteries in the three Boss pedals. Powering these using a daisy chain from the TU-2 creates far too much noise, I assume due to ground loop probs. I found an interesting article which has shed some light on the subject and so will be checking out the Voodoo Lab Pedal Power II, if it can fit on my pedal board , for future powering needs.

New Freak Kitchen CD

Freak Kitchen, that fabulous band featuring Mattias ‘IA’ Eklundh, have a long awaited new CD coming out soon, entitled ‘Organic’ .

No UK release date has been released yet, BUT, I did see that the Swedish release date is the 20th April!

Not long now!

IGF Edinburgh Guthrie Govan Workshop

Yesterday myself and Mr McCrone attended Guthrie Govan’s Creative Modern Rock workshop at Stevenson College in Edinburgh as part of IGF’s Edinburgh Guitar Festival.

I had never been to any IGF workshops before and so wasn’t sure what to expect. I decided to take the soldano not knowing if any amps would be available and was glad to see others there who had the same idea.

Mr Govan’s workshop was quite popular with around 15 - 20 of us squeezed into the ‘Drama Room’, each with our very own music stands. It was like being at GIT or something .

The workshop itself concentrated on theory related chat and demonstration before lunch and technique and a ‘open forum’ feel after lunch. Much of the material covered was similar to the topics found in Guthrie Govan’s superb Creative Guitar books. The highlights for me were the discussion on Hybrid Picking, playing ‘outside’ as well as demos of some of Guthrie Govan’s tapping licks. Mr Govan himself was very amiable, informative, inspirational and full of good humour, gladly answering anyone’s queries as well as usual being on stunning form playing wise. His explanation of certain points in a musical context using the Boomerang Phrase sampler was excellent. I *need* one. No really.

Though there was a wide range of experience in the class I think all of us got something from the course and have some new cool ideas to kick start their musical creativity.

GAS: New amp, Soldano Astroverb 16

I’d been looking for a smallish practice/jam amp for a while. Something that would be easy to transport, unlike the 62 lb Legacy!, and have a great valve sound. Not too easy as most amps in this category are usually modellers or solid state. After mulling over several candidates I was lucky to discover one that fitted my needs perfectly though it was hard to find and priced in the boutique range. As if deemed by the fates themselves I then found that an ex-demo model was for sale at a price more favourable to my budget.

Buybuybuy!

So now I am the very happy owner of a Soldano Astroverb 16

This little beauty is built like a tank, 20W, fitted with a 1×12 speaker, featuring 5 x 12AX7A/ECC83 ( 2 for reverb ) preamp valves and 2 x EL84 power valves. Valve goodness, oh yes. Simple control layout of Preamp volume, Master volume, Presence with usual EQ on a single channel and knobs that got up to 11!

The amp itself is amazingly crisp sounding, no hiding sloppy technique behind gain here, and gives that desirable ‘glassy’ clean with volume rolled back on the guitar. A simple tweak of the EQ alters the tone quite a bit, so a great range of sounds available.

A top class amp .