Sweeping Yamaha away

This is official: Frank Gambale has parted ways with Yamaha. I was actually anticipating this occurrence, not that I have a major dissent for the brand name, as Mr. Gambale himself disclosed (over at his home page), further workings on his subsequent signature model had been stalled till late 2010. It's reflective of how things are between the endorser & the company, look at what entails...

The pic above had been generating active discussions as to which subsequent brand name Frank Gambale would embrace. If you were present at last night's show (Frank Gambale Electric Trio @ *SCAPE), you'd hear the official word that he's now with Carvin. In fact, last night's red semi-hollow Carvin guitar was his prototype.

I had the opportunity to ask him what effect units & amps are in his current favour, as his pedal line-up last night was evidently sparse, considering he has something going on with BOSS. Mr. Gambale duly replied, he still prefers his (TC Electronics) G-Major which was sitting on top of a Marshall half-stack. So is he getting along with Marshall as well? Negative. He is working with the guitar department of Mark Bass for a new guitar amp.

I had to leave immediately after the encore (missed the autograph session)- nose bled...

Mikro bass

If your are tired of wrestling with the regular-scaled bass because you are predominantly a guitar player who weilds the bass on occasions, Ibanez makes the popular SR bass in a shorter scale version (28.6") but limited to its GIO range. The GSRM20 would appease those of us who favour a shorter scaled bass not because we can't play a regular model, but we are more comfortable with one. Ignore the 'MIKRO' label, it's not that small after all.

Hey, dad! (Part 29)

Hey, dad! Since pickups are magnetic, it'll stick to the front gate, yes? Ta-da!

The curious case of damage inspection

So I was at the guitar store yesterday & it was unusually crowded, there were customers who handled guitars off the rack just to get a closer look before parting with cash, even if there's a promotion going on. There was an incident of a customer, while returning a guitar to its rack hanger, accidentally knocked the instrument's headstock against the strap button of the guitar hanging above it.

The sales person who saw this quickly inspected the strap button for damages.

If you were there, it's rather elementary as to which item deserves damage inspection- the guitar's headstock (wood) vs the strap button (metal). Sometimes, we have this urge to tell people they are stupid but human emotions tend to get in the way. I should have recorded this incident, really...

Darkthrone: Circle the Wagons

The world, according to the Darkthrone gospel, is a jaded living space, currently plagued by pretentious heavy metal musicians who got it all wrong in trying to manifest the music- there is a need to be raw sounding & move away from the digital realm. This is the perfect reason for one to be engaged in introversion & shutting out life's occurrences because there is no life. If there is any hope for us black metal fans to relive the band's glorious days of A Blaze in the Northern Sky et al, this remains to be just hopes. The entitiy known as Darkthrone is now firming its metamorphosis into a punk-esque establishment employing liberal doses of the music genre they once used to champion.

Circle the Wagons is a release in this understanding of which the 'metalpunk' label is currently used to understand the music. Predictability is the order of the day where the numbers here do not differ from its other prior cross-over releases, FOAD & Dark Thrones & Black Flags. What Circle the Wagons lack are defining moments to further bolster their current engagements; These Shores are Damned & Blacksmith of the North did favours to the aforementioned predecessor albums, such compositions are evidently lacking this time round.

Dean: Spider

Another shredder joins the Dean camp, this time it's Chris Impellitteri. His signature instrument features a maple body & non-locking hardware. The pickup combo gets my thumbs up- a single coil + humbucker paring. I always hear more definition in neck single coils; it's the reason why I have coil splitting options for my dual humbucking guitars. This particular body outline reminds me of a certain Kramer model of the '80s... Hmmm... Like Vinnie Moore & Michael Angelo (among others), Mr. Impellitteri had Dean to conceive his pickups rather than having popular brand name models in there.