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GALLERY: Healdsburg Guitar Festival 2011

Beautiful instruments from some of the world''s finest luthiers.

"The Zephyr Florentine (EZC-F) features a Ryan-style armrest bevel, рPogodaс-style slotted headstock, an upper bout soundport, and a Florentine-style cutaway. This particular guitar is constructed with bubinga back and sides, cocobolo body trim, and has an Alaskan AAAA red cedar top."

The finish on this 2019 PRS Custom 24-08 is called “Angry Larry,” but stare long enough and you’ll realize it’s not so angry, and has much more of a deep, mesmerizing kind of vibe. (And Larry? He’s not so angry either.)

Photos by Madison Thorn

This 2019 PRS Custom 24-08 has a 10-top, making it one of the company’s most elite models, and it longs to be played.

I recently borrowed a guitar from a friend and accidentally got his whammy bar mixed up with the one from my PRS. Midway through my apology and explanation, I realized my friend was staring at me. “I just didn't think you’d have a PRS,” he said, baffled.

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“Sometimes, I’d like very much for my guitar to sound exactly like a supa cobra.”

Luthier Creston Lea tells us about his favorite dirt pedal—an Athens, Georgia-made stomp that lets his guitar be a hero.

Let’s face it: Nobody can tell what overdrive pedal you’re using. Whether you’re in a carpeted suburban basement accompanying the hired clown at your nephew’s fifth birthday party or standing on the spot-lit monitor at Wembley, not one person knows whether the pedal at your feet cost $17 or $700, has true bypass, or has an internal DIP switch. Nobody leaning against the barn-dance corncrib or staunching a nosebleed up in the stadium’s cheap seats is thinking, “Heavens yes!! THAT is the sound of a silicone diode!”

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A dual-channel tube preamp and overdrive pedal inspired by the Top Boost channel of vintage VOX amps.

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The compact offspring of the Roland SDE-3000 rack unit is simple, flexible, and capable of a few cool new tricks of its own.

Tonalities bridge analog and digital characteristics. Cool polyrhythmic textures and easy-to-access, more-common echo subdivisions. Useful panning and stereo-routing options.

Interactivity among controls can yield some chaos and difficult-to-duplicate sounds.

$219

Boss SDE-3 Dual Digital Delay
boss.info

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Though my affection for analog echo dwarfs my sentiments for digital delay, I don’t get doctrinaire about it. If the sound works, I’ll use it. Boss digital delays have been instructive in this way to me before: I used a Boss DD-5 in a A/B amp rig with an Echoplex for a long time, blending the slur and stretch of the reverse echo with the hazy, wobbly tape delay. It was delicious, deep, and complex. And the DD-5 still lives here just in case I get the urge to revisit that place.

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