CREEM’S 4th ANNUAL GUITAR BREAK

[Before you get into CREEMs Fourth Annual Guitar Break, aka our Guide to Musical Instruments, let us take the time to give a tip of our hat to the writers involved; the good old boys who run Strings “n Things down in Memphis, Tennessee, supplier to the stars. These guys not only buy and sell everything you could possibly want to conjure music out of, but most of them are bona fide musicians; hep cats whove given up the Holiday Inn and Masonic hall circuit to settle down and provide their bro' musicians with all the necessities. We have the electric guitar section, courtesy of Chris Lovell, Bill Parsley, Nick Chatal. Tom Keckler and Tom Stenson. Yes, all of them. AHen Hester and Bud Chitton turned out the acoustic guitars section. Charlie Lowing will tell you all about bass guitars, and Big Dave Patrick has all the dope on drums. Boy Howdy, boys Ed. ]

Once again CREEM rallies to the plight of the downtrodden masses, this time to advise and thus protect the often unwitting consumer of musical merchandise from that scourge of free enterprise, The Shaft. As is the case in other arenas, the smiling demons of retail sales will risk the gauntlet to woo an uncommitted buyer, shooting him so full of technical jargon and offhand reference to Famous Rock Stars that the poor guy Ts ashamed not to waste his money. This should come as no surprise to anyone into used cars or Reverend Ike, but for those of you who have managed thus far to avoid the somber realities of profit and loss vhere are a few words which may make your next trip to the music store more rewarding.

First of all, try to know as much as you can about a product before you go in to make your purchase. There are many catalogues, brochures and spec, sheets available on request from the factory as well as from your retailer. Of course the most obvious way to learn is to ask questions, and any sales person worth his salt should have the answers; in fact, sales people should generally know more about the equipment than the musicians who use it. Keep trying stores until you find someone willing to deal with an earnest question, no matter how ill-formed it may seem to them. Establishing a personal relationship with a dealer who backs up his merchandise is the best way to go in the long run, rather than trying to get the rock-bottom warehouse price on the front end, because many problems can be solved by a sympathetic dealer (and there are still a few of those around).

Choosing equipment requires a clear definition of your specific needs. Dont go eighty fathoms deep for a P. A. system to use twice a week at the V.F.W.; be realistic about what and where you play and purchase what will best serve you. Keep expansion in mind, but build a solid foundation first. Staying with name-brand equipment and keeping that equipment healthy will insure maximum resale or trade-in value.

If youre just beginning to play guitar you dont need the fancy flashy ones that your favorite groups demolish on stage—stick with something inexpensive until you are really ready for a high quality instrument. The most important factors in choosing the first instrument concern function, not cosmetics. Check the necki Is it straight? Does it fret true in' the higher registers? Does it feel smooth and comfortable to you? The action should be neither too high nor too low, and the frets should be smooth on top and flush with the fretboard along the sides. If there is more than one pickup, there should be a balance of volume between the two.

With respect to acoustic guitars, the same things mentioned above apply to the neck. Next,

look inside the sound hole. If the braces are light, numerous and well-finished, and if there is little or no trace of glue along the inner rims, chances are its okay. Look across the top with the guitar at .eye level: if there are any peaks or valleys in the top, move on. Look closely at the wood: ideally it should be close-grained with few, if any, blemishes in the grain. Beware of guitars with a very deep lustrous finish; in many cases too much lacquer will arrest the resonant properties of the wood itself. In short, dont let the handshake and the smile fool ya—Look at the guitar!!

ELECTRIC GUITARS

GIBSON(Norlin, Inc., 7373 N, Cicero Ave., Lincolnwood, Ill. 60646). All praise to Gibson for taking giant steps this year to improve their Les Paul models. One major improvement in the new Les Paul Deluxe, standard and custom models, is a maple neck With rosewood fretboard instead of the traditional mahogany neck. The harder maple sustains longer and has a cleaner brighter tone, as well as having less chance of neck warpage or breakage. The new tune-o-matic bridge (made for Gibson by Schaller) is far more stable and more precise with respect to intonation adjustment than the old tuner. The new fretting technique leaves the fret longer on each end, thus providing more playing area.

The Les Paul Custom now comes from the factory with the large wide frets which are preferred by the largest percentage of guitar players from jazz to rock to ozone and beyond. The Custom is now available with three humbucking pickups instead of two.

Along with these improvements in the current electric solid body models, Gibson is reintroducing the Flying "V" and the Explorer (previously manufactured in 58 and 59) and the Firebird electric guitar and matching Thunderbird bass, both introduced in 63 and discontinued in 65. By using original blueprints, Gibson has recreated these classic models to be exactly like the original Explorers, Firebirds and T-birds used by Eric Clapton, J ohnny Winter, Lynyrd Skynyrd, 77^ Top, J . Geils and Kiss.

TRAVIS BEAN (11671 Sheldon St., Unit "E", Sun Valley, Ca. 91352). Travis Bean has put the winning combination together; a beautiful work of art that performs better than any solid body electric has ever done. It constitutes the first major change In basic' electric guitar design since 1952. Its construction includes a one-piece asMOSSMAN (Route 3, Strothers Field, Winfield, Kansas 67156). For the discriminating player who really appreciates quality and doesnt mind paying for it, Mossman guitars are a dream come true. Standard features on all models (there are only nine in all, seven 6-string and two 12string models) include the finest sitka spruce tops, Honduras mahogany necks, African ebony fretboards, Ivory bridge saddle and nut and Grover rotomaties!! Only the least expensive model, the Tennessee Flat Top, has mahogany back and sides; all other models have some of the finest Rosewood weve seen in any new guitar. Furthermore, the Washburn vine and Rainbow vine inlay in the Great Plains Custom and the Golden Era are exemplary of the most exacting master craftsmanship. The Tennessee Flat Top has the same quarter-sawn sitka spruce as the Golden Era and is well worth the money at $695.00. Other models are pastorally dubbed Flint Hills, Timber Creek, Winter Wheat and South Wind, and are, As they say, "Sho nuff good!!!"

sembly of headstock, neck, bridge and pickups, all of Reynolds aircraft aluminum. This forms a perfect anchor for each end of the string, allowing it to sustain without precious string vibration being absorbed. Subsequently, it will sustain at low volumes, and maintains a remarkably silken tone even at high volume, without compromising its characteristic t6ne to overdrive and feedback.

Nils uses a Stratocaster most of the time, because he likes "a clean sound." He uses a Gibson when he wants a smooth, mellow sound. But also: "All Slratocasters have three pickups. Some 06 the old ones are set up so that you can get them caught —stuck between the two pickups—near the switch. Instead of fust one, two, three positions you get it anight between the two positions and it sort of adds a bite or quack that's unique only to a Stratocaster. In relation to the way I play, it's a sound I really like.

"TheStratocaster I use isa '61 or *62.1 have an old Les Paul that I use, q *59, the old gold sunburst finish. The Gibson's, they're just too delicate a guitar. The Fender, you can be more physical with it, it fights you. It's just not as smooth and slinky and mellow. It's a little bit more physical. You've got to work at it."

The body is Hawaiian Koa, an extremely dense and beautiful wood. The mass of the body only serves to reinforce the great sustaining properties of this machine. For those of us wilh a tin ear, the Bean is a dream too—and holds rts tune, since the aluminum is unaffected by temperature changes.

The models now in production are the TB1000 Standard, the TB1000 Artist, and the TB3000, (all with two double-coil pickups), the TB500 with dual single-coil, Fenderesque pickups, and the TB2000 and 4000 basses. The necks are available in two widths, and a variety of colors. Prices range from $495.00 to $1295.00, and in case youre the cautious type, Travis Beans are now being used by the Rolling Stones, Jerry Garcia and Ronnie Montrose (to name but a few).

HAGSTROM SWEDE (The Ampeg Co., feox 310, Elkhart, In. 46514) . A good, versatile axe for the money. The Swede features the

"Guitars are like women; you've got to have one for every mood." For each and every one of Ronnie's moods: A Gibson Sunburst, Gibson Flying V, Gibson double neck. Fender Stratocaster and a Travis Bean.

standard three-position toggle switch, plus a three-position boost switch, which boosts the treble, midrange or bass in any pickup position. A superior truss rail design makes neck adjustments more precise. Also worth mentioning is a Swede specially wired for use with synthesizers. The fingerboard is wired for electronic impulses, comes with a unit called Patch 2000, and readily adapts to any synthesizer. It sells for thousands of dollars less than other guitar synthesizers on the market.

IBANEZ (Eiger Co., P.O. Box 469, Cornwells Heights, Pa. 19020). One of the best imported electric guitars in the market. Ibanez offers excellent copies of most major brand guitar models and even better, theyre reasonably priced. They also make a line of duplicated "vin-

.. and give Gretsch and Mosrtte a go, too. These are great guitars, generally overlooked 'cause they're not groovy at the moment, but they'll come back into popularity one day. I have a Guild which I use on stage, and to my mind it's fust as good as Gibson and the action seems to be slightly better, i say all this because although there's a bias toward Gibson and Fender, there are so many other good guitars around."'—From Reflections Of A Rock Star, by Ian Hunter, Flash Books, 1976.

tage model guitars. (You know, the ones that look like Gibsons Firebirds & Flying Vs.) Anyone who calls himself a Kiss fan has urn doubtedly noticed the Ibanez Destroyer model. They also feature a line of fine acoustic guitars.

GRETSCH (1801 Gilbert Avenue, Cincinnati. Ohio 45202). Practice does make perfect and Gretsch has been producing an ever popular line of guitars for years, including the Dorado, the Chet Atkins, the Super Chet, and the really classic White Falcon. The Falcon, a semi-acoustic hollow body electric, carries a nice price tag, but those parts are real gold, friend. \ FENDER (1300 E. Valencia, Fullerton, Ca. 92631). What can you say? You would be hard pressed to find many bands (from rock to polka) who dont have at least one member slamming his riffs out on a Fender guitar. If youve been reading this supplementfor the past four years (or even if you've been hiding out in a cave in Thailand) you know that Fenders Telecaster and Stratocaster models are the rave guitars of the pros and that Fenders Mustang, Bronco and Music master are the favorites of beginners throughout the world. New for the Bicentennial is the Starcaster, a semi-hollow body doublecutaway thinline with two double Coil Humbucking pick-Ups.

Frod "Sonic" Smith/load guitarist/Sonic's Rendezvous Band [Sonic was guitarist for tho lato fomented MC5, and perhaps the grandpappy of Kiss, often appearing onstage In greOnface or whatever complemented his "sonic" guitar playing—Ed.] "I use a Rickenbacker on-stage ... there aren't too many around anymore. It's a guitar I bought when the MC5 were recording Back In The U.5.A. It was originally a twelve-string, believe it or not. 1 just bought it for a couple of songs on the album we were doing and I really liked it. I started messin' with it and discovered that it was kind of a convertible model so I turned it into a six-string to see what that would be like, and it seemed real nice. I took it to Herb David's up in Ann Arbor and had a lot of things reworked. It has a real nice neck, original Let Paul Humbucking pickups, a tune-o-matic bridge and all the wiring has been redone. It's a solid body... I don't know what the model number would be but it's a real nice piece of wood."

ACOUSTIC GUITARS

"I use a Stratocaster 1960 model; for bottleneck guitar I use a Telecaster with Strat pickups and wiring (to enable it to go out of phase). Also, a National steelbodied acoustic guitar, a Martin D-38 and some odds and ends.

Don't you have a SI Ivor tone? (Laughs) "Yeah, I got it for $15. Sometimes with an expensive guitar you get an expensive sound; when you want a cheap sound you need a cheap guitar. You get a rough tone with them :.. I played it on "Tattoo" and "Cradle Rock." My Fenders—I like the sound; it's not as fat a sound as other guitars. But it's a question of what people get used to.

"I've been using my Stratocaster since '62 or '63; so it's gotten pretty old. I restring it every second night—I've got a lot of salt in my blood and that and the sweat kind of messes them up.

"As for amps, I use Fender Bassman amps—four 10" speakers; sometimes I link it up with Fender T wins.

"Recently I had a tone control put into my treble pickup; normally a Stratocaster has only two [controls], not on the treble. That's the only strange thing I've done.

What, no wah wah? "No, all I have is a tone boost around the amp, to overdrive it. I twist the volume controls for a kind of wah effect."

Practice? "I've been getting back into it —it's important to do scales, even if they're not orthodox scales, keeping the right hand flexible is important, doing mandolin runs so when you play normally you're more flexible."

MARTIN (Box 329, Nazareth, Pa. 18064). Many a picker has been faithfully served by Martin Flat Tops sirice the company was established in 1833, and its no wonder when you consider their unique design features and attention to detail. Martins are still entirely handmade of carefully selected and seasoned woods but its whats happening inside the guitar that really makes it a perennial favorite. Very light, well-finished "X" bracing is used abundantly underneath a smooth thinly-carved top. In time, the bracing becomes a part of the soundboard as the fibre of the wood settles in place, thereby allowing the top to vibrate to the maximum. Absence of an adjustable truss rod is an unmatched show of confidence in construction, which is just one of the things that make Martin guitars the standard by which others are measured. Popular models in the line are D-18, D-28 and D-35; new this year is a Bicentennial model (sorry, Sgt. Rocks autograph not included). Ya cant miss, soldier!!

GUILD (225 West Grand St., Elizabeth, New Jersey 07202). Guild offers a wide selection of Dreadnought and Florentine body flat-tops in a variety of woods and finishes. The D-25 ($340.00, available now with mahogany finished spruce top as well as cherry) features an arched back, which is unusual for a guitar in this price range. The F-50 sup'er double-throwdown deluxe jumbo offers hard rock maple back and sides, ebony fretboard, mother of pearl and abalone shell inlay (very clean), solid spruce top and gold Grover hardware. All the F-style Guilds are warm and responsive and thus well-suited to vocal accompaniment. The D-50 rosewood model is fast a-gainin in the bluegrass field and the oversized G-41 (17"x21") has been seen in the hands of The OP Pine Needle J unkie hisself; J ohn Denver. Best all around value for the money in an American made flat top, bar none.

"I use Mosrite guitars—a blue and a sunburst. I need two, because I break a string at least once every set. I bought the first one 'cause when I went to the store I only had fifty dollars and that was the cheapest guitar I could find (the blueonel. When I went back for the sunburst tne guy charged me two hundred dollars because he knew we had a lot of money 'cause we were buying amps too and he took advantage of us.

"I also have a white Fender Stratocaster which I use just for 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.' It gets a different sound. It's woaker and tinnier. Mosrite b in between a Fender and a Gibson. It has the tinniness of a Fender but the richness of a Gibson. I put a Gibson pickup on my sunburst so It sounds like a Gibson. The Mosrite pickup was no good. I always use my blue one; the Mosrite pickup on that one's OK. It squeals |ust a little. I used to have a red Mosrite but that one wasn't OK. I think when they made Mosrite they weren't made for the right amplification."

GIBSON (Norlin, Inc., 7373 N. Cicero Ave., Lincolnwood, Ill. 60646). From Kalamazoo to Timbuktu, the name Gibson is synonymous with performance and durability-. People speak in reverent tones about the J-50, the J-45, the Hummingbird and the Dove and have often been known to prostrate themselves at the mere utterance of the words "J-200."Of course we dont take it so seriously down South, but if anything derogatory were ever printed about the old Southern Jumbo, civil insurrection would be unavoidable? New in the line this year are the cherry finished Hummingbird and the all-black Dove, and the all maple arched-back gospel model, the celestial sweetness of which has caused elderly ladies to swoon. In fact, Otha Boggs of Fulton, Mississippi reports that ujaon resounding a rich and sonorous chord on his new Gibson the waters of nearby Pumpkin Creek parted, and for a moment, the fishes danced and sang with glee.

GIBSON MARK SERIES (Norlin, Inc., 7373 N. Cicero Ave., Lincolnwood, Ill. 60646). This is more than an experiment in guitar cosmetics; the design of this instrument was chosen only after careful research. This gyitar records well and is easy to mike on stage without a ton of equipment. Gibson designers have broken away from the traditional x-braced top, the neck joint has been altered, even the bridge is different—but all for good reason. The asymmetrical bridge tends to arrest the bass tones to an extent and emphasize the treble notes, thus creating an evenness of tone that is appreciated by recording engineers and sound men. Maybe this guitar is a forerunner of widespread design changes, but one must look past traditions to accept its concept.

CONN GUITARS (C.G. Conn Ltd., 616 Enterprise*,Drive, Oak Brook, Ill. 60521). A line of acoustic guitars priced from $109.50 to $499.50 featuring both classic and steel-string models. The higher priced model? have solid spruce tops and rosewood back and sides, and all models are adjusted stateside by American craftsmen.

VEGA GUITARS (C.F. Martin Organization, Nazareth, Pa. 18064). A pew line of steel-string guitars designed by Martin and built in The Netherlands. Vegas feature the Martin bracing pattern and quarter-sawn German spruce tops on all six of their models, one of which has a cutaway. Very competitively priced, these are quality instruments.

OVATION (Kaman Corp., Greenwoods Rd., New Hartford, Ct. 06057). A durable yet sensitive guitar. Ovations have an easily playable neck and the patented bowl-shaped fiberglass back, which besides being comfortable, enhances resonance and sustain. Both nylon and steel-string models are available with factory installed transducers and easy-to-reach volume control which helps "beaucoup" in live performance. Ovations newest addition, The Matrix, incorporates an aluminum neck into the standard body design. Highly recommended for anyone living near water, as they make excellent life preservers.

TAKAMINE (Sole U.S. distributor: C. Bruno & Co., 3443 E. Commerce St., San Antonio, Tx. 78294). Undoubtedly the finest sub-$300 acoustic guitar weve ever seen. These instruments are handmade, with many models featuring bookmatched rosewood back and sides. Other features include whale-bone nut and saddle, solid spruce top, and superb nickel-silver frets. This kind of quality would cost considerably more if it were made in the good old U.S.A. The Eagles are presently using them on stage.

YAMAHA (Yamaha International Corp., P.O. Box 6600, Buena Park, Ca. 90620) . Over the years, Yamaha has proven itself the workhorse of the market. What it offers is a full line of well-constructed acoustic guitars at quite affordable prices. The line features both steel and nylon string guitars ranging from $89.50 up.

HOHNER (Andrews Rd., Hieksville, N.Y. 11802). Hohners Limited Edition series of acoustic guitars are copies of renowned brands at a fraction of the price. This line includes classical, steel-string and 12-string models.