While never reaching the heights of Zeppelin, Cream or Fleetwood Mac as a band and never being as revered as Page, Clapton, Green, Beck as a guitar player, Ten Years After and Alvin Lee played their part in the British blues rock invasion of America in the 1960s.

The highlight probably being their set at Woodstock in ’69, particularly the 11 minute version of the Lee penned “I’m Going Home” and it’s inclusion on the Woodstock film…

Ten Years After - I'm Going Home

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…and Lee’s speed on his hippy sticker plastered, customised Gibson ES-335 – extra single coil pickup in between the neck and bridge uncovered humbuckers.

Though having seen the Woodstock film I have to admit I came to know Lee’s stuff later on. He featured on the cover of a Guitarist magazine in the 80s, with that stickered Gibbo and then after featuring as part of the “Night of Guitars” concert line up. With Randy California, Robby Krieger, Leslie West, Wishbone Ash guys & Steve Howe. Playing a Gibbo with a Kahler trem.

Alvin Lee - Ain't Nothin' Shakin'

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Read more about Alvin Lee and Ten Years After at Classic Rock.

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Latest in Bill Ruppert’s Efectology series of videos. Here he takes the new Electro-Harmonix HOG2 – Harmonic Octave Generator – through it’s various paces.

Effectology explores the HOG2

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Bill Ruppert latest video in his Effectology run, where he shows how to get non-guitar sounds out of a guitar, plus some well used Electro-Harmonix effects pedals is out.

This time it’s showing how to get the Pink Floyd synthesizer sound heard on the 1975 classic recording “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” from the great album “Wish You Were Here”. The track is about their old mate and Floyd founding member, leader of the band, Syd Barrett, who bizarrely turned up at the recording where the other members of the band didn’t initially recognise him.

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You can see the settings Bill used for each pedal the EHX forum

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

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Bill Ruppert is let loose on Electro-Harmonix new pedal the “Superego Synth Engine”.

Now I have to admit I hadn’t actually heard of this new unit, never mind heard it and their site doesn’t have much info on it but I did find this at Dawsons.co.uk…

The Electro Harmonix Superego Synth Engine is an effect pedal that takes the technology from it’s own ‘Freeze’ pedal, but adds new, creative and inspirational features. The ‘freeze’ holds the guitar notes played giving them ‘infinite sustain’, lending the tone an ambient, otherworldly feel. Notes can also be layered, such that a note can be frozen, and other notes played and sustained over the top.

Unlike the original Freeze pedal, the Superego has a new Gliss control. This acts as like a portamento effect, such that one played note ‘slides’ in pitch, into the next note. The Gliss control adjusts the time it takes for one note to reach the other.

Another unique feature of the Superego is the effects loop. This allows the frozen output to be routed through additional effects, and mixed with the original signal. The pedal can be operated in Latch mode, where notes are frozen by momentarily pressing the pedal switch down, and auto mode, which sustains notes automatically. Dawsons.co.uk

So with that in mind here’s what Bill can do with it…

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As usual you can get Bill’s settings at the EHX forum.

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All those guitar players that came out of the coffee shops and clubs of Britain in the 50s and 60s in Britain pretty much have one thing in common Bert Weeden’s “Play In A Day” book.

Eric Clapton, John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Mark Knopfler, Brian May, Pete Townshend are amongst those that bought over 2 million copies since it was first published in 1957. It got ‘em all started on the road to guitar god stardom. As the man himself tells in a BBC documentary “Imagine – The Story of the Guitar Part 1 – In the Beginning” – about five minutes in you just have to get past the interminably smug get Yentob.

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That’s not to say the book is all Bert did, after getting his first guitar down Petticoat Lane market for 15 bob (15 shillings old money which translates now as 75 pence but in reality was far more than that). He was one of the first and only rock and roll guitarists in the country so was the in-demand session musician, playing with the early stars of the rock and roll boom on this side of the Atlantic including the likes of Cliff Richard, Adam Faith, Billy Fury, Tommy Steele and Marty Wilde. After performing with various big bands and orchestras, including those of Ted Heath and Mantovani, before he joined the BBC Show Band in the 1950s, when he began to be featured as a soloist.

Then in 1959 with “Guitar Boogie Shuffle” he was the first guitarist to have a British top 10 hit with a guitar instrumental.

I never did by “Play In A Day”, maybe I should have, who knows where it could have lead…

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Where would rock and or roll be if Jim Marshall hadn’t morphed the Fender Bassman in the JTM 45?…

It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved founder and leader for the past 50 years, Jim Marshall. While mourning the Guv’nor though, we also salute a legendary man who led a full and truly remarkable life.
Jim’s ascent into the history books as ‘the Father of Loud’ and the man responsible for ‘the Sound of Rock’ is a true rags-to-riches tale. Cruelly robbed of his youth by tubercular bones, Jim rose to become one of the four forefathers responsible for creating the tools that allowed rock guitar as we know and love it today to be born. The ground breaking quartet also includes the late, great trio of Leo Fender, Les Paul and Seth Lover – together with Jim, they truly are the cornerstones of all things rock.

In addition to the creation of the amps chosen by countless guitar heroes and game changing bands, Jim was also an incredibly humble and generous man who, over the past several decades, has quietly donated many millions of pounds to worthy causes.

While the entire Marshall Amplification family mourns Jim’s passing and will miss him tremendously, we all feel richer for having known him and are happy in the knowledge that he is now in a much better place which has just got a whole lot louder!

Rest in Peace & thank you Jim.

Your memory; the music and joy your amps have brought to countless millions for the past five decades; and that world-famous, omnipresent script logo that proudly bears your name will always live on. JimMarshall.com

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A couple pieces of rock and or roll history up for sale on teh interweb this last week. Both of which I’d really rather like to have but doubt I can justify the expense but then that describes pretty much every bit of GAS a guitar player gets.

First up is Eddie Van Halen’s 1982 Kramer Frankenstrat, which was used as one of his main touring guitar during the 1982-83 “Hide Your Sheep Tour” in support of their ’82 album Diver Down. And then went on to be used in the recording of the last album with the original line up “1984″.

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Does it look like the Frankie that Eddie used on the South American dates of the Diver tour as seen in the video below from Brazil in ’83?

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Next up follows on from that final album with the original Van Halen line up as Dave left after “1984″ and hired one of the only people around who could carry the mantle of being Dave’s axeman after Eddie. Steve Vai.

And Mr. Vai’s Marshall JMP amp he used to record Roth’s first solo album “Eat ‘Em And Smile” and the subsequent tour.

For sale: Steve Vai’s Marshall 100 watt 4 input JMP Plexi & matching “white face” 4×12 cabinets used on David Lee Roth’s “Eat Em and Smile” record and the 1986-1988 David Lee Roth tour.

The 100 watt Marshall JMP was given to Ted Templeman by Steve Stevens during the NYC recording sessions for “Eat Em and Smile.” The amp was then modded to Steve’s liking by Lee Jackson, famous for performing sought after custom modifications to Marshall amplifiers for top artists in the 1980′s and 1990′s. It was Steve’s main amp for the “Eat Em and Smile”sessions and used on the entire David Lee Roth tour. The 100 watt plexi head features an extra gain stage, frequency adjust control, effects loop & master volume. The head has been well maintained in Los Angeles and features matching Drake transformers, KT88 quad-matched power tubes & hand-selected pre-amp tubes to Steve’s liking. eBay blurb

Now it says ’88 in there as well. Do wonder if it was used on the tour for the follow up album “Skyscraper” because I saw them on that tour and Steve rocked that night.

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It was announced yesterday, March 3rd, that Ronnie Montrose had died after a five-year battle with prostate cancer, aged 64.

The first Montrose album is one of my favourites. It a classic hard rock album. A must have. Which took me an age to get my hands on. Being a huge fan of Van Halen I’d heard about this blueprint for their ’78 début album. Singer, axe-slinger, bass & drums produced by Ted Templeman recorded a few years earlier.

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And after Sammy Hagar who was the singer on that album joined Van Halen I searched out his back catalogue, got a number of his solo records, including a single of his solo track “This Planet’s On Fire (Burn In Hell)” on which the B-side was a live version of “Space Station #5″ – first pick you see in the video on the right. Then picked up a 45 single of Montrose’s “Bad Motor Scooter” – which was backed by the track “I Don’t Want It”. I wanted that album. But as it was recorded in 1973 and this was the late 80s and getting old rock albums wasn’t an easy thing. No interweb, just second hand record shops and record fairs.

Then one lucky Sunday I stumped up at a record fair, a few miles away, and started flicking through the first box of vinyl I came to and there it was. Think it cost me about two quid, maybe three fifty, whatever it was it made trip really worth it.

“Rock the Nation”, “Bad Motor Scooter”, “Space Station #5″, “I Don’t Want It”, “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, “Rock Candy”, “One Thing on My Mind”, “Make It Last”. They all rocked and still do. Ronnie was a hell of a guitar player. Little later it came in 4th on the “Kerrang! 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums Of All Time“, behind Van Halen’s début which came second.

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Played the hell out of that album and of course my search started for the follow up “Paper Money”. Unfortunately they’d changed direction. It didn’t rock. It disappointed. Only decent track was “I Got The Fire” – which I heard previously covered by Iron Maiden as a single B-side, giving me false hope on the album.

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OK so I’ve glossed over the rest of Ronnie’s career from Van Morrison and Edgar Winter through his post Hagar solo work, Gamma and all the session work. But that’s only because that first Montrose album was.. is so damn good it’s what should be remembered on a sad occasion.

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Bill Ruppert has a new video in his Effectology run, where he shows how to get non-guitar sounds out of a guitar, plus some well used Electro-Harmonix effects pedals. No keyboards, samplers or midi pickups were used.

This time round it’s the turn of the Vangelis penned theme to Ridley Scott’s classic 1982 sci-fi noir “Blade Runner”…

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You can get the settings for each of the effects Bill used at the EHX forum

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Kept forgetting since I read on his website on Monday about his death to post something about Ed Roman.

One of those controversial figures out there in the guitar based interweb world. Lot of people didn’t take to Ed. But as I found out on a number of occasions, when getting into little heated online exchanges, a lot of the times those slagging him off hand’t actually met him or had anything personally to do with him. Second, third, fourth hand info. Of course it had to start from somewhere and a number have had dealings with Ed and just didn’t like the little fella.

Well any road up, I met Ed a couple of times during the mid 1990s, before his move to Las Vegas, when he was based at the East Coast Music Mall in Danbury, after repeatedly seeing the ads they used to run in magazines like Guitar For The Practising Musician. And well I got on all right with the bloke, he gave me a pretty good tour round things at the shop. Other guys at the shop were nice as well, Barry Lipman and young lady I can’t remember the name of.

Man those walls in Danbury were just full of guitars. Along with pics of Ed with rather famous guitar pickers. Pretty sure I’ve still got their poster of the guitar packed picture they used in the ads.

And of course I ended up buying some stuff. Was initially going to get a Hamer guitar but noticed a couple of bodies in a display case one amber and one blue. I had to have the blue one. A two piece solid – no veneer or just eighth inch top – quilted maple Strat shaped body, cut for two humbuckers and a Wilkinson trem, with a wicked All Access Neck Joint (see pic on right), it was pretty much a Pearlcaster body. It coast not much over $200, which seemed a snip. Just needed a neck, trem and some pickups. The neck I already had a Wilkinson trem for another project, dealt with later but I also picked up a couple of PRS ‘buckers with gold pole pieces – Vintage Bass for the neck and HFS (Hot, Fat, and Screams) for the bridge – at the shop for well less than they go for now. All in all a great, possibly one off, guitar for around $500.

That guitar, Toxic I, is probably my go to axe and so I’ve been playing said guitar for the last few days as a tribute to Ed.

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