Just prior to visiting the Guitar Center I first went to this little store across the road – the West Hollywood Mesa/Boogie outlet. It’s a small corner store on West Sunset Boulevard, but it houses a ton of great gear. There are of course examples of every current Mesa/Boogie amp you can think of in all different configurations and finishes. There were some gorgeous hardwood combos, heads and cabs all on display – more than enough to make a self-professed Mesa fanboy such as me drool with lust. I can tick this off the ‘things I want to do, places I want to go’ list now.

Here’s another shitty phone camera whiteout experience for ya:

The walls of the store are lined with classy guitars. There are many Tom Andersons on display, plus a brand called Nash which has a bunch of distressed looking relics which would give Fender CS a decent run for their money apparently.

The store staff are friendly. The guy who served me resembled a young Michael Douglas but with long black hair. Turned out he was a wicked bass player – he was jamming away through the Walkabout Scouts while I browsed.

They also sell pedals – MXR, ZVex, Fulltone, and a brand under the name of Geoffrey Teese which makes RMCs – “Real McCoy Custom” wah pedals.  I did some back-to-backs with a Fulltone Clyde Standard and was very impressed with the RMC. I tried the RMC1, 2 and 3 models eventually settling for the 2, which has pots for Contour, Volume and Q. It’s a nice vocal wah and set me back $235 USD. All along, the Mesa staff were very generous in letting me try stuff and get stuff in and out of the effects cupboard.

After choosing this wah, I asked if I could try out the new Mesa Electrodyne amp which was announced along with the Mark V earlier this year. I enjoyed the vintage lo gain sounds of the amp and spent a fair amount of time playing it. Nice warm dirt and great sustain.

Other stuff I scored: red ‘Boogie’ emblazoned T-shirt. 2007 Mesa/Boogie catalogue (the latest full catalogue), 40th anniversary catalogue (Mark V and Electodyne brochure essentially), 2 x Mesa/Boogie branded pics, and this groovy photo of me, looking fat and dorkish in the store:

Just how big are the hands of our favourite guitar heroes? Yesterday I managed to get out to West Hollywood for an hour and went to the part where there are a couple of guitar stores.

The GC outlet there is the flagship store – the largest and best they say, of the 200+ outlets across the United States. I spent some time inside browsing around, mainly in the Platinum Room which contains PRS Private Stocks, fancy figured Gibsons and higher end Master Built Fender Custom shop guitars amongst other things.  I did see a nice Gibson EDS-1275 (the first time I’ve seen one in the flesh (uh, wood)) which had me mentally checking my bank account for a while, but alas it would have been tough for me to take home on the plane.

Anyway, GC West Hollywood also has the Rockwalk which has handprints of many of the most popular guitar heroes and contributors to the rock pantheon over the past 40 or 50 years. Below are some of the shitty phone camera pics I took with my (admittedly quite small) hand inside the print that allows you to see the relative sizes of some players to each other.

Joe Satriani’s hands:

Eddie Van Halen’s hands (he actually had his imprints in at least twice – by himself and with the rest of Van Halen elsewhere):

Jimmy Page’s hands. Not as big as I was expecting. His fingers look very long and delicate in those old Song Remains the Same vids. Maybe they shrank.

Slash’s hands. Quite thick fingers.

Eric Clapton’s Slow Hands below.

Billy Sheehan’s hands. Again, not as big as I was expecting – I thought he would have really massive strong hands. Note Vulcan salute, the Trekkie dork.

Yngwie Malmsteen’s very long fingers and huge palms that help him around his Stratocaster. Look at that little finger on the left hand.

Steve Vai’s enormous hands. Note extra finger on the left hand that enables him to do a B minor/Major7th #6/9 Aug b5 chord at the first fret. I think these were about the largest hands on the Rockwalk. Makes you wonder how he manages to play so accurately up at the high frets with such massive digits.

Zakk Wylde’s strong fingers.

Well, there’s not much to do in Downtown L.A. so after an early dinner I settled down with the guitar and tried to make the most of the free time I had before my jet lag kicked in.

Through TGP I found this great video with accompanying charts that homes in on learning some of the most useful chord shapes (48 shapes in all that would pretty much cover most of your regular) plus how to connect them with walking bass lines.

Spent about two hours getting some of the fingerings down.  You can find the original chord charts here courtesy of MattRod.

http://www.carlinoguitars.com/CarlinoImpulseAijaphotoshoot092509.html 

That’s actually a nice looking guitar. And, no – I don’t believe that is stooping low – it’s called ‘knowing what grabs attention’. And, yes – we may do something similar with our own product. : )

Visiting Seattle. Brought along my Lapstick for this trip Stateside (L.A. on Sunday) and managed to get a couple of hours of solid practice in before my jetlag kicked in last night. Worked on my tapping and some exercises in the latest Guitar Techniques (the final part in Martin Goulding’s series).  I think I’m getting quite good at it now and have moved beyond the exercises. I’ve applied some of the tapping licks over the opening chords of the first prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and am beginning to get it under my fingers.

Forgot to report, Pepijn from Lapstick called me up just a couple of days before my trip and offered to replace some of my hardware (specifically the tuning knobs) on the guitar with ones that they felt were better and had more grip than the ones already there. Awesome – I’m very happy with them as when changing strings and tuning up to pitch it was previously quite fiddly (and could make your fingers a little sore!) to do. Now it’s a dream – thanks Pepijn!

In other news, I picked up a copy of Premier Guitar magazine which I’ve never seen before. It’s a quality magazine and here’s hoping we get it in Singapore or I may have to subscribe. Hmmm… that means choosing it instead of Guitar Player which I get for only $5 SGD an issue… am I ready to do that?

Our Father, who art in Heaven

Will I ever be satisfied with the configuration of my frickin’ pedalboard?

Forgive those of us who spend recklessly on pointless shit…

Like that $26 bucks of cables I bought yesterday at TY Music Centre

Just so the lengths from the FX loop of my new Boogie

Would be just nice.

Amen

Kudos to Sweetwater. After I reported that the guitar they delivered to me had a broken switch tip, they Fedexed me one – original Fender part, free of charge. Great customer service throughout.

I don’t know about you other guitar players, but I feel constantly compelled to work on my technique and to learn fast flashy stuff that will impress the pants (or knickers) off people. So while I should be diligently learning the Cycle of 5ths (and 4ths) or mapping out the arpeggios of G7 or analyzing the notes of the 7th mode of the ascending Melodic Minor (the Super Locrian/Altered Scale) against the root of the current chord in the name of trying to learn to be musical, instead, I get easily distracted by yet another article on How to Shred (even though I can already shred) or how to do some outlandish tapping exercise, an example of which I succumbed to this week.

You see, flippin’ Guitar Techniques magazine is too frickin’ awesome. And its contributors are too frickin’ awesome. I bought last month’s issue (“Acoustic Issue!”) because I had dusted off my Baby Taylor, grown my fingernails a little and wanted to get down some Beatles fingerpickin’ licks. Instead, I’m confronted by an article by the superb (and now clean shaven) Martin Goulding on doing two-handed tapping ala Nuno Bettencourt on He-Man Woman Hater (Pornograffiti).

Anyway, I spent about an hour with a metronome practicing these licks and aside from some muting flubs where I can’t get the 3rd string to stop ringing (or I mute it too hard and too early resulting in a muffled note) and by the end of the practice session was getting prettttyyy good at it. I cheated though and tied a cloth round the neck to stop notes ringing.

Anyway, here’s a C major 7 that I ended up practicing. I think the notes are right, but I’m away from my guitar right now. The key new technique for me is the left hand tapping, i.e. ‘hammering on from nowhere’ as we ascend to start up each string ringing.  Slurs are not indicated, but obviously, there’s no picking – it’s all hammers, taps and pulls.

Beatles licks have still not yet been attempted as Shredding trumps Beatles fingerpicky parts any day in my book.

I’m the proud owner of an Yngwie Malmsteen Signature guitar cable, plus some other normal DiMarzio cables. I love them. I like the cloth braid instead of some nasty rubbber. Yes – I’m shallow – I’ll buy virtually anything with Yngwie’s name on it except the dumb DOD overdrive which I bet he doesn’t even use.   Anyway, being a fan of DiMarzio cables I went to the site to see what they had that I could get to connect some stuff to my Boogie’s effect loop.  Under the instruments section, I noticed that John5 has a new sig cable; cool. But Yngwie’s was no longer there. Further, he’s not under the Featured Players list (despite being the top proponent of the HS-3 pickup) and his name isn’t even in the full list of players.  Have Larry and Yng fallen out?

The boys went to bed early (good!) but they are light sleepers (bad!) so while I got a chance to sit down in front of my new Mesa Engineering Mark Five combo, I did so with it on rather quietly. It’s kinda hard to really appreciate the Electric Guitar and associated ampage at late night babies-asleep-in-the-next-room volume, but nevertheless I used this time to get more to grips with its features.

One feature I like is the EQ function which can be preset per channel, or use the slider positions. In addition, you can assign per channel again, EQ always on, always off, or by the footswitch control. This is great. Further (phew) you can set the preset depth per channel. All cool.  Another thing I like is the Mute button that turns off the speaker – I think this is a great addition.

Anyway, sounds wise, I spent a fair bit of time playing around Channel 3 and the Mark IV setting. One thing I noticed on this channel is that I can really get pinch harmonics to jump out. Even with my fat handed technique, these squealies sound awesome – fat rich and singing without being piercing. I did not notice a difference between full power and Variac mode however, but perhaps I would at higher volume next time.

Some of the Mark V sounds have a lot in common with my former Nomad I think, but with a greater degree of control.