Check out the latest and greatest gear from the third day of the 2014 Summer NAMM show.
Out of Northern Cali, Codella Guitars debuted its all-American Chaser line with three models at Summer NAMM. The Surfchaser (left) has three Lace Hot Gold pickups, the Stormchaser (middle) has an EMG SA/SA/85 configuration, and the Dreamchaser (right) has DiMarzio Gravity Storms. Bonus: a magnetic tremolo plate!
Experience the pinnacle of Taylor playing comfort and tone with the Builderās Edition 514ce, 514ce Kona Burst, and 524ce. These models feature solid Shamel ash back and sides, uniquely voiced V-Class bracing, Gotoh 510 tuners, ES2 electronics, and a Deluxe Hardshell Case.
The Builderās Edition 514ce, 514ce Kona Burst and 524ce join our acclaimed Builderās Edition Collection, giving you more ways to experience the pinnacle of Taylor playing comfort and tone.
Each model boasts a gloss-finish cutaway Grand Auditorium body with solid Shamel ash back and sides, an artfully applied Kona burst on the back, sides and neck, uniquely voiced V-Class interior bracing, Gotoh 510 antique chrome tuners, ES2 electronics, and a Deluxe Hardshell Case.
Refined, comfort-enhancing features include a beveled armrest and cutaway, chamfered body edges and a smoothly contoured Curve Wing bridge. Italian acrylic āCompassā inlays and a vibrant firestripe pickguard add tasteful aesthetic accents.
Responsibly sourced from cities in Southern California, Shamel ash is given a second life as a tonewood in our premium-class guitars. It yields a focused, fundamental-strong voice with midrange power and balance comparable to Honduran mahogany.
Models:
- Builder's Edition 514ce - $3,399 - Featuring a natural Sitka spruce top paired with solid Shamel ash back and sides, the Builderās Edition 514ce delivers warmth, depth and musical versatility for any style or genre.
- Builder's Edition 514ce Kona Burst - $3,499 - Showcasing a vintage aesthetic flair, this solid Shamel ash/Sitka spruce model features a Tobacco Kona burst top.
- Builder's Edition 524ce - $3,499 - This model pairs solid Shamel ash back and sides with a mahogany topāalso featuring a Tobacco Kona burstāthat adds a bit of natural compression to help create incredible tonal balance across the frequency spectrum.
For more information, please visit taylorguitars.com.
AI, which generated this image in seconds, can obviously do amazing things. But can it actually replace human creativity?
Technology has always disrupted the music biz, but weāve never seen anything like this.
AI has me deeply thinking: Is guitar (or any instrument) still valid? Are musicians still valid? I donāt think the answer is as obvious as Iād like it to be.
As a professional musician, Iāve spent the vast majority of my days immersed in the tones of tube amps, the resistance of steel strings under my fingers, and the endless pursuit of musical expression. Each day, I strive to tap into the Source, channel something new into the world (however small), and share it. Yet, lately, a new presence has entered the roomāartificial intelligence. It is an interloper unlike any Iāve ever encountered. If youāre thinking that AI is something off in the ānot-too-distant future,ā youāre exponentially wrong. So, this month Iām going to ask that we sit and meditate on this technology, and hopefully gain some insight into how we are just beginning to use it.
AI: Friend or Foe?
In the last 12 months, Iāve heard quite a bit of AI-generated music. Algorithms can now ācompose,ā āperformā (with vocals of your choosing), and āproduceā entire songs in minutes, with prompts as flippant as, āWrite a song about__in the style of__.ā AI never misses a note and can mimic the finer details of almost any genre with unnerving precision. For those who are merely curious about music, or those easily distracted by novelty, this might seem exciting ⦠a shortcut to creating āprofessionalā sounding music without years of practice. But for those of us who are deeply passionate about music, it raises some profound existential questions.
When you play an instrument, you engage in something deeply human. Each musician carries their life experiences into their playing. The pain of heartbreak, the joy of new beginnings, or the struggle to find a voice in an increasingly noisy and artificial online world dominated by algorithms. Sweat, tears, and callouses develop from your efforts and repetition. Your mistakes can lead to new creative vistas and shape the evolution of your style.
Emotions shape the music we create. While an algorithm can only infer and assign a āvalueā to the vast variety of our experience, it is ruthlessly proficient at analyzing and recording the entire corpus of human existence, and further, cataloging every known human behavioral action and response in mere fractions of a second.
Pardon the Disruption
Technology has always disrupted the music industry. The invention of musical notation provided unprecedented access to compositions. The advent of records allowed performances of music to be captured and shared. When radio brought music into every home, there was fear that no one would buy records. Television added visual spectacle, sparking fears that it would kill live performance. MIDI revolutionized music production but raised concerns about replacing human players. The internet, paired with the MP3 format, democratized music distribution, shattered traditional revenue models, and shifted power from labels to artists. Each of these innovations was met with resistance and uncertainty, but ultimately, they expanded the ways music could be created, shared, and experienced.
Every revolution in art and technology forces us to rediscover what is uniquely human about creativity. To me, though, this is different. AI isnāt a tool that requires a significant amount of human input in order to work. Itās already analyzed the minutia of all of humanityās greatest creationsāfrom the most esoteric to the ubiquitous, and it is wholly capable of creating entire works of art that are as commercially competitive as anything youāve ever heard. This will force us to recalibrate our definition of art and push us to dig deeper into our personal truths.
āIn an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener canāt tell the difference?ā
Advantage: Humans
What if we donāt want to, though? In an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener canāt tell the difference?
Of course, the answer is still emphatically āYes!ā But caveat emptor. I believe that the value of the tool depends entirely on the way in which it is usedāand this one in particular is a very, very powerful tool. We all need to read the manual and handle with care.
AI cannot replicate the experience of creating music in the moment. It cannot capture the energy of a living room jam session with friends or the adrenaline of playing a less-than-perfect set in front of a crowd who cheers because they feel your passion. It cannot replace the personal journey you take each time you push through frustration to master a riff that once seemed impossible. So, my fellow musicians, I say this: Your music is valid. Your guitar is valid. What you create with your hands and heart will always stand apart from what an algorithm can generate.
Our audience, on the other hand, is quite a different matter. And thatās the subject for next monthās Dojo. Until then, namaste.
Our columnistās bass, built by Anders Mattisson.
Would your instrumental preconceptions hold up if you don a blindfold and take them for a test drive?
I used to think that stereotypes and preconceived notions about what is right and wrong when it comes to bass were things that other people dealt withānot me. I was past all that. Unfazed by opinion, immune to classification. Or so I thought, tucked away in my jazz-hermit-like existence.
That belief was shattered the day Ian Martin Allison handed me a Fender Coronado while I was blindfolded in his basement. (Donāt askāitās a long story and an even longer YouTube video if you have time to kill.) For years, I had been a single-cut, 5-string, high-C-string player. That was my world. So, you can imagine my shock when I connected almost instantly with something that felt like it was orbiting a different solar system.
Less than 5 minutes with the instrument, and it was all over. The bass stayed in Ianās basement. (I did not.) I returned home to Los Angeles, but I couldnāt stop thinking about it. I kept playing my beloved semi-chambered single-cut 5-string, but I sent its builder, Anders Mattisson, a message about my recent discovery. I asked if there was any way we could create something with the essence of a Coronado while still suiting my playing and my music.
Thatās when everything I thought I knew about bassāand the personal boundaries I had set for myselfācame crashing down.
When we started talking about building a bass with a fully chambered body, much like the Coronado, I was adamant about two things: It needed to have active electronics, and I would never play a headless bass.
Fast-forward three months to the winterNAMM show in California. Anders arrived for dinner at my house, along with a group of incredible bass players, includingHenrik Linder. I was literally in a chefās apron, trying to get course after course of food on the table, when Henrik said, āHey, letās bring the new bass in.ā
He came down the stairs carrying something that looked suspiciously like a guitar caseānot a bass case. I figured there had been some kind of mistake or maybe even a prank. When I finally got a break from the chaos in the kitchen, I sat down with the new bass for the first time. And, of course, it was both headless and passive.
I should mention that even though I had made my requests clearāno headless bass, active electronicsāI had also told Anders that I trusted him completely. And Iām so glad I did. He disintegrated my assumptions about what a bass āhas toā or āshouldā be, and in doing so, changed my life as a musician in an instant. The weight reduction from the fully chambered body made it essential for the instrument to be headless to maintain perfect balance. And the passive nature of the pickups gave me the most honest representation of my sound that Iāve ever heard in over 30 years of playing bass.
Iām 46 years old. It took me this long to let go of certain fundamental beliefs about my instrument and allow them to evolve naturally, without interference. Updating my understanding of what works for me as a bass player required perspective, whereas some of my most deeply held beliefs about the instrument were based on perception. I donāt want to disregard my experiences or instincts, but I do want to make sure Iām always open to the bigger pictureāto other peopleās insights and expertise.
Trusting my bass builderās vision opened musical doors that would have otherwise stayed bolted shut for years to come. The more I improve my awareness of where the line between perception and perspective falls, the more I can apply it to all aspects of my world of bass.
Maybe this month, itās playing an instrument I never would have previously considered. Next month, it might be incorporating MIDI into my pedalboard, or transcribing bass lines from spaghetti Westerns.
No matter what challenges or evolutions I take on in my music and bass playing, I want to remain openāopen to change, open to new ideas, and open to being proven wrong. Because sometimes, the instrument you never thought youād play ends up being the one that changes everything.
Genuine, dynamic Vox sound and feel. Plenty of different tone-sweetening applications. Receives other pedals as nicely as a real amp.
Can get icy quick. Preamp tube presents risk for damage.
$299
Tubesteader Roy
tubesteader.com
The Roy is an exceedingly faithful Vox box that brings genuine tube dynamics to your pedalboard.
This is an interesting moment for amp-in-a-box pedals. It used to be novel to have a little box that approximated the tone signature of an iconic amp. Nowadays, though, modeling pedals and profilers can give you many digital emulations in one package. Nevertheless, there are still worlds of possibility in pedals that copy amp topology in discrete formāparticularly when you add a real preamp tube to that mix.
Thatās what Montreal builder Tubesteader did with the Roy, their entry in the Vox-Top-Boost-AC30-in-a-box race. The Roy is a 2-channel preamp and overdrive built around a 12AX7 vacuum tubeāa design gambit that is relatively uncommon if not totally unique. The tube makes the Roy look much more vintage in spirit at a time when sleek, black Helixes and Fractals are overtaking stages. In some ways, it looks like an antique. It can sound like one in the best way too.
Riding the Tube
āThe Roy comes in a handsome brownish-red enclosure, with an unsurprising control layout. The rightmost footswitch turns the pedal on and off, and the one at left switches between the identical channels. Each channel has an output volume and gain knob; the controls on the right are assigned to the default channel, and when you tap the left footswitch, you engage the left-side control tandem. The treble and bass controls between the two volume and gain knobs are shared by the two channels, but a post-EQ master tone cut control, which rolls off additional treble frequencies, is mounted on the crown of the pedal beside the power input. The input and output jacks occupy the left and right sides, along with a 3.5 mm jack for external operation. The Roy runs at 12 volts and draws 350 mA, and the included power supply can be reconfigured easily for a range of international outlets.
Tubesteaderās literature says the pedalās tones are generated via a high-voltage transistor in the first gain stage coupled with the 12AX7, which operates at 260 volts. That preamp tube is nested at the top of the enclosureās face, underneath a protective metal āroll barā. Trusty as it looks, when there is a glass element on the exterior of a pedalās housing, thereās an element of vulnerability, and transporting and using the Roy probably requires a more conscientious approach than a standard stompbox.
Royal Tones
Compared to the Vox's own Mystic Edge, an AC30-in-a-box from Vox powered by Korgās NuTube vacuum fluorescent display technology, the Roy feels warmer, and more dynamic, proving that the 12AX7 isnāt just there for looks. The Mystic Edge could sound positively icy compared to the Royās smooth, even breakup. The Roy is very happy at aggressive settings, and in my estimation, it sounds best with output volumes driving an amp hard and the pedalās gain around 3 oāclock. That recipe sounds good with single-coil guitars, but with a P-90-loaded Les Paul Junior, it achieves roaring classic-rock greatness. Iāve always felt Voxes, rather than Marshalls, are better vehicles for dirty punk chording. The Roy did nothing to dissuade me from that belief. And the pedals' midrange punch and bark in power-chord contexts lent authority and balance that makes such chords hit extra hard.
Though the Roy creates many of its own tasty drive tones, it really comes to life when pushed by a boost or overdrive, much like a real amp. When I punched it with a Fish Circuits Model One overdrive, the Roy was smoother and less spiky than a cranked AC30, yet there was plenty of note definition, attack, and the harmonic riches youād turn to an AC for in the first place. A JFET SuperCool Caffeine Boost also brought additional depth and color to the output and broadened the pedalās voice.
If youāre most comfortable with a real Vox amp, the Roy is a reliable and familiar-feeling stand-in when managing a different backline amp. In at least one way, though, the Roy is, perhaps, a bit toofaithful to its influenceās design: Thereās a lot of treble on tap, and itās easy to cook up tinnitus-inducing frequencies if you get too aggressive with the treble control. Noon positions on the cut/boost tone knobs sound pretty neutral. But I found it difficult to push the treble much past 2 oāclock without wincingāeven with the tone cut control set at its darkest. (This quality, of course, may make the Roy a good match for squishier Fender-style designs). The relationship between the Royās treble and bass controls also takes time to master. The two donāt just add or boost their respective frequencies, but also add or subtract midrange, which can result in intense and sudden gain-response changes. As a general guideline, a light touch goes a long way when fine tuning these frequencies.The Verdict
The Roy isnāt exactly a bargain at $299. Then again, this Vox-in-a-box can stand in for real-deal Top Boost tones and the 2-channel design means you can move between an ACās chimey cleans and ripping cranked sounds in a flash. If youāre squarely in the Vox amp camp, youād be hard-pressed to find a more authentic means of achieving that range of clean-to-crunchy sounds.