Happy New Year! And New Guitar!

Happy New Year, everyone. Hope all is well and that everyone had a fun and safe First Night celebration. All is well here.

A day or two before the turn of the decade (hard to believe, eh?) I picked up a stunner of a Paul Reed Smith (I know, I'm obsessed with these, aren't I?). This, to my knowledge, is one of the last Custom 22s to be produced. A 10-top in the an anniversary color, "Fire Red Burst". 5-way blade switch (!) and HFS Treble and Vintage Bass pickups. Quite the looker and sounds absolutely insane.




More to come as I recover from the craziness of the holiday season...

At Home: 57/08s have arrived!

As some of you may know, I recently sent out my Paul Reed Smith McCartyburst CE-22 to the PRS factory in Stevensville, MD to get a set of the much talked about and highly-desirable 1957-2008 humbuckers put into the guitar for free. They also set up the guitar for free and I paid them to install the 3-way with push-pull coil tap system (to replace my 5-way rotary).

But, I also asked them to wind the 5708s for me custom. Open coil, with zebra bobbins...



What can I say? Beautiful! And an excellently done setup to boot. This drastically and dynamically changed the sound of my guitar. I'd previously had the stock Dragon II Treble and Bass in the guitar. The change is insane. Even my co-workers are drooling. The covered versions I'd heard before were bright and clear and raunchy but didn't have as much attack and output as I'd hoped. But the uncovered ones in this guitar made up for that. Jaw-dropping vintage hot tones and mellow, cool cleans, awesome chimey split-coil tones for days.

Good going, guys!

Now hear this...PRS Craziness again.

Everyone knows that Paul Reed Smith Guitars are my big obsession (I own two, trying to get a third), so I can't help it when something really cool comes into our store. Among these things are the Paul Reed Smith Tonare Grande Acoustic and a pre-owned 513 (Brazilian) Rosewood in black cherry. :)

I played the Tonare Grande Acoustic a couple of times, and let me say...oh my! I had high hopes for the new line of PRS acoustics--and so far there are very, very few of them--and was totally blown away. With a price tag approaching $5,000 before tax, I was worried about diminishing returns. "After all, we have a Taylor 914CE, and that's pretty sweet..."

Right.

I've played a few private luthier acoustics before, including some $20k Japanese pieces and this absolutely blew my mind. Rich, full--but not boomy-bass response, and superlatively articulated note definition and highs. Even with pretty dead strings this guitar is incredible in sound and playability. It's generally kinda hard to impress me on acoustic playability--my electrics play the way I want them and I've yet to meet an acoustic that plays to that standard--so that definitely says something in my book.



You pull it out and flip over and see this.... Seriously, guys at PRS...what the hell? Trying to give me a heart attack? W0w.




The other goody that we picked up recently is this pre-owned Black Cherry Brazilian Rosewood neck 513 with an absolutely stunning top, 513 birds, and gold hardware....



I have a deep love of brazilian-necked guitars--namely my friend's Modern Eagle I--so when this came through our doors I was pretty excited. Haven't plugged it in but it's definitely a player as well as a work of handcrafted art.

Also, I have a new email. Contact me at k.inoue.gc@gmail.com if you want to chat about guitars or anything you see here. :)

New and Vintage Gibsons, Upcoming news, and Marshall!

Among my favorite guitars are Gibson USA and Custom Shop models. But some folks'll tell you it's gotta be old, and gotta have vibe. Well, these two have both. Dig this late '70s Gibson RD Artist:



All original (look at that crazy TP-6 Tailpiece!), including the Bob Moog designed electronics. These guitars were only produced for a few years, like a lot of the 'strange' ideas Gibson had in years past. Short-lived but very likely the first active-electronics electric solidbody. Similarly, from 1981, we have this incredible (and quite hefty) Gibson E/2 Explorer in worn cherry sunburst:

Same tailpiece. I'm seeing a theme here. :) The original series Dirty Fingers were removed by the owner and instead the guitar sports a Seymour Duncan Distortion in the bridge and Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck in the neck position. When I saw this guitar I went totally googly-eyed, as I'm a huge fan of Explorers, and the E/2 is certainly the king of Gibson Explorers.

In the new category, something we thought was pretty awesome was the new, very limited run "Triple-Stained Les Paul" model. Sporting a 5A flametop and gold hardware, this is a pretty striking version of the Les Paul Standard:





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Anyhow, enough of that. :) I may have some news to share once I know details, but we might, and I put emphasis on might have another PRS-related event sometime before the year's end. I'll be sure to let people know.

In other news I just played the new Marshall JVM205H, the 50-watt, 2-channel, smaller brother to the flagship Marshall JVM410H. I think that overall, with MIDI implimentation, a great foot controller, excellent digital reverb, and extremely authentic cleans and crunches, this is the new Marshall to look out for. With the JVM2-series, Marshall has hit the ball out of the park. Versatile and organic, the JVM205H has a lot of volume, great clean headroom, but brings in the balls early and fast. We test drove it with a Paul Reed Smith Modern Eagle I and it was just a dream. More to come on this front!

At Home: Marshall Cabinetry

So while at work the other day I picked up a nice Marshall 1960B 4x12 Speaker Cabinet to run with my Diezel Herbert head. Pretty wicked sounding! I'm pretty happy, having switched from using Mesa/Boogie Rectifier-series cabinets for years now (I still have an ancient, battle-scarred Recto 412 with C90s in my living room though). Who knows... this might be the start of a Marshall kick for me...especially since we got in a used JVM210H that looks incredibly tempting.




Tone report here.

Here's a pic of my new cab with all my other stuff:

A word from Experience 2009!

So my two co-workers who were sent on to Maryland this weekend for Paul Reed Smith's Experience PRS 2009 event have come back with a load of stories and ground-shaking news. I've heard only a teeny bit, but trust me...



It's HUGE. More to come.

What's new at work?

PRS is apparently what's new at work. We just got in our first of about a dozen new Paul Reed Smith Guitars that we had on order since the week before last. This one was listed to us as "Custom 22 - Special". Turns out it was a Custom 22 10-top with Starla pickups--that's right--and a matching flamed maple veneer headstock. Pretty rad!

Just check out that awesome bookmatched flame! The guitar is super light too. Almost as light as our Korina McCarty Soapbar. Here's the moneyshot on the headstock:



How about more of that top?



One of our customers was of the mind that "It doesn't sound like a Starla...but it doesn't sound like a Custom 22 either." (Speaking of Starla... there is supposedly, on its way, according to one of our guys, a Starla Stoptail to be showing up here soon...) Which is pretty neat. Why sound inside the box?