Need a new Stompbox? Find your next effect in this month's Gear Finds!
VOX Valvenergy Pedals: Mystic Edge
Iconic amp sounds for your pedalboard. The Valvenergy series valve distortion pedals offer the warmth and harmonics of amp distortion in a compact pedal format. The all-analog signal path and Nutube allow for genuine overdrive and distortion tones with the feel of a real tube amp, while internally boosted voltage gives greater headroom and dynamics. Three output modes allow you to use this as a standard pedal, a line-level preamp, and a direct amp-sim using the built-in analog cabinet simulator.
See Video
Follow on Instagram
Acorn Amplifiers F#%k Face Fuzz
The F#%k Face is a triple gain stage fuzz with thick and meaty sustain that sounds huge in front of a slightly cranked tube amp. Baseball card collectors from the late 80ās will immediately recognize the infamous āerror cardā graphics of the same name. The circuit is based on the legendary Fuzz with a different Face, but with an additional silicon transistor gain stage and voiced to retain more useable and dynamic fuzz tones all along the sweep of the two controls. In the front of your pedal chain, the F#%k Face will add dynamic interactivity to the volume controls on your guitar which enable a sweep from slight grit to full ripping-velcro breakup.
See Video
Follow on Facebook
Blackstar Amplification Dept. 10 Pedals
Brought to you by Blackstarās R&D division responsible for blue-sky innovation and design, Dept. 10 are the most advanced valve pedals in the world. Meticulously designed and engineered by a team of musicians for musicians. At the heart of each Dept. 10 pedal is an ECC83 triode valve, running at more than 200V internally like a valve amp, which allows them to deliver organic tone, dynamics and break up. Dual Drive and Dual Distortion include Cab Rig, our next-generation DSP speaker simulator that reproduces the sound and feel of a micād up guitar cab in incredible detail. Deep-dive using our free software and capture the incredible tones via low latency USB, XLR D.I. out or headphones. Choose from Boost, Dual Drive or Dual Distortion to help you craft your perfect tone.
See Video
Follow on Instagram
Nobels ODR-mini
The ODR-mini delivers creamy, natural overdrive ā Everything from pushed clean amp tones to gain filled stacks! It has the same tones as its legendary brother ā the ODR-1. Youāll love the warm mid-gain tones for rock and blues, and the screaming hard rock sounds from the ODR-1 Mini. Plus the mini features true-bypass switching, the SPECTRUM pot with mid-click, fluorescent pointers on the āGitDā ā knobs (Glow-in-the-Dark). Guaranteed to be a BIG part of your sound while a small part of your pedal board.
Effect-Type: Overdrive
Analog
Mono/Stereo: Mono In, Mono Out
Control: Drive, Tone, Level
Bypass Modus: True Bypass
9-18 Volt, center negative
Consumption 25 mA
Dimensions (WxLxH / mm): 42 x 93 x 50
Weight: 175 gr
Country of origin: China
Solid metal housing
Low current consumption
Requires stabilized power supply 9-18 Volt DC, with min 100 mA, 2.1 mm plug, center negative, (not included)
Hear Audio
See Video
Follow on Instagram
Darkglass Electronics Alpha Omega Photon
Versatility, empowerment, limitless options, and ever-demanding tools at the disposal of every musician and composer are today on demand. A call for inventive devices continues to make musicians more inspired, clever and connected. The AlphaĀ·Omega Photon combines Darkglass' signature AlphaĀ·Omega parallel distortion with the versatile format of the Aggressively Distorting Advanced Machine. In addition to powerful distortion and studio-quality compression, the AlphaĀ·Omega Photon is capable as an audio interface via USB-C or an amp replacement using cab sim IRs and XLR DI output.
See Video
Follow on Instagram
George L's Effects Cable Kits
Enhance the tone and clarity of your pedalboard with award winning sound.
The George Lās effects kit.
The kit comes with 10ā of cable, 10 right angle plugs and 10 stress relief jackets.
Available in black, vintage red and purple.
As easy as 1, 2, 3 no soldering!
Cut, poke and screw your way to 47 years of sound excellence.
SurfyBear Metal Reverb Unit
The Holy Grail of guitar reverb effects, the FenderĀ®-style spring reverb, has been finally revisited with modern features!
Try it and discover why most surf guitarists and the truly reverb addicted are turning to SurfyBear.
ā
exclusive SurfyPan type-4 spring reverb pan by AccutronicsĀ® and Surfy Industries
ā
aluminium body with removable feet on the bottom side for better positioning on pedalboards
ā
clean boost to adjust the volume when the effect is on
ā
innovative dual-LED on/off button
ā
true bypass functionality to keep your signal intact when the effect is off
ā
external footswitch possibility though the dedicated 1/4" jack (footswitch not included)
See Video
Follow On Instagram
NAMM 2023 Recap with Danish Pete HonorƩ
Get 10% off from StewMac when you visit stewmac.com/dippedintone
One of the best parts of NAMM is the industry community it assembles, and in the absence of the full-fledged convention the past few years, that sure has been missed. Danish Pete's puckish personality adds to the fun as the three guys get into other topics like Zounds Industries' acquirement of Marshall, various amp favorites, and the sea of purple guitars found at the convention. That's all after Pete shares that he no longer cries in the shower over the demands of his 25-year touring career (sometimes, he wishes he played more non-diatonic notes). Stay positive, Pete!
Bhattacharya invented the chaturangui in the mid ā90s to combine elements of the 6-string guitar with the Indian instruments the sarod and the sitar.
That experience of hearing Khan for the first time never left Bhattacharyaās memory, and he would hear the virtuosoās sarod on the radio constantly while growing up. Bhattacharya calls it soul-stirring music, crediting Khan with creating a sort of āmelodic kingdom. For me, my shelter, my bedroom of music, was Ustad [an honorific title meaning āmasterā] Ali Akbar Khanās music,ā says Bhattacharya.
āItās about how this music develops and connects your life: how your muscles, your mind, your spirit, your blood, and your tensions all are connected to your music.ā
In his 20s, seeking a closer relationship to Khanās mastery, Bhattacharya sought out Brij Bhushan Kabraāpioneer of Indian slide guitar and one of Khanās disciplesāand asked to study under him. He spent 10 years living with Kabra, his guru, learning his theory and approach to playing music. It was during that time that Bhattacharya met Khan, who asked Kabra to send Bhattacharya to his Calcutta residence to perform for him. For the next decade, Bhattacharya would visit Khan each year and stay with him for a month, absorbing his teachings.
Today, like his gurus, Bhattacharya has become a musical legend, with a career that spans nearly 50 years. Heās shared stages with jazz-fusion guitarist John McLaughlin, Derek Trucks, and Jerry Douglas, earned two Grammy nominations, and released over a score of full-length recordings. And this January, Bhattacharya has built upon that legacy with the release of The Sound of the Soul, a four-song, 66-minute album dedicated to Khan.
A Conversation with Pdt Debashish Bhattacharya on Indian Slide Guitar
āIn this performance, since it was fully improvised, it was like a dialogue, a dialogue between the melody and the rhythm.ā
Bhattacharya describes the creation of The Sound of the Soul as a pure, elemental experience, reminiscent of what he calls a sacred and total relationship with his gurus. āItās not learning note-for-note music,ā he says. āItās about how this music develops and connects your life: how your muscles, your mind, your spirit, your blood, and your tensions all are connected to your music. This cannot be passed on without a guru and disciple relationship.
ā[This release] doesnāt have any clicks or pops to please any ear, whether itās Eastern, Western, Southern, or Northern,ā he continues. āI just closed my eyes and I lost myself in the studio. When I finished, I woke up like, āWhat happened? What am I doing?ā I thought this album would be the humbly best thing I can offer. My soul is connected to [Khan].ā
In performance, Bhattacharya guides the music fluidly, focusing on the dialogue between melody and rhythm.
Unlike Khan, Bhattacharya doesnāt play sarod; his performance on The Sound of the Soul is entirely on the chaturangui, a hybrid slide guitar of his own design that mixes traditional Indian and Western guitar styles. The work is a celebration of his teacher, and also of cultural exchange, of borderless musical exploration.
On the album, Bhattacharya is accompanied only by percussionists Swapan Chaudhuri and Akhilesh Gundecha. The centerpiece of the release is the 39-minute saga āTo His Lotus Feet.ā Its title epitomizes Bhattacharyaās devotion to Khan. In the piece, the trio takes listeners on an odyssey as they glide through movements and moods, from serene, nighttime soundscapes to thrilling, up-tempo melodic sprints. Nothing was orchestrated ahead of time; the entire track is improvised. How does Bhattacharya know when the song is finished, when enough has been said?
āIf youāre a story writer or script writer for a film, you know where to stop, and you know where to end it. Itās under your control,ā he says. āYou can end three minutes later or five minutes earlier. Unless you are satisfied, you wonāt leave it. In this performance, since it was fully improvised, it was like a dialogue, a dialogue between the melody and the rhythm. I almost drowned in that raga. But when it ended, it ended.ā
That approach and everything else about Bhattacharyaās musical foundation can be traced back to Calcutta, his hometown. The sprawling West Bengal capital is home to scores of different cultures and traditionsāin particular an intense blend of European and Indian cultures, a result of British colonization.
The guitaristās latest release is dedicated to Ali Akbar Khan, under whom Bhattacharya studied.
Late at night, after local radio programs had gone quiet, syndicated shows from the BBC and other stations would come in faintly to Calcuttaās radios. When Bhattacharya was as young as two or three, these airwaves exposed him to European classical music and Hawaiian slide guitar, and the sounds lodged themselves in his brain alongside classical Hindustani ragas played on sarods and sitars. He came to realize that they complemented one another: the Hawaiian slide style paired strikingly well with the Hindustani traditionās melodies, which were characterized by seamless changes in pitch.
āI was almost dragged in this path. āI have to make this; I have to learn this.āā
When Bhattacharya was just 3 years old, his father bought him his first guitar. It was made of local plywood, with a small sound box and a 24" scale lengthāand Bhattacharya instinctively wanted to mix the Hawaiian and Hindustani musical traditions. From a young age, he learned not just Hindustani music and ragas, but also Western notation. His guitar teacher had learned how to play American slide guitar styles from a local European musician and passed this on to Bhattacharya. But the 6-string guitar, while useful for Hawaiian slide music, didnāt have the same range and power of traditional Indian instruments. The reverse was true of the sarod and sitar; they werenāt optimized for slide playing.
Still, Bhattacharya pursued a brave, brash mixing of the two sounds. His vision is revered now, but he says this wasnāt always so. āWestern guitarists thought I played good slide guitar, but I played Indian classical music,ā he says. āIndian classical music fraternity thought, āOkay, heās a very nice classical musician, but why is he playing slide guitar?āā Bhattacharya calls these feelings his ātriggersā: āI was almost dragged in this path. āI have to make this; I have to learn this.āā
Debashish Bhattacharya's Gear
When Bhattacharya was just a toddler, he listened to Hawaiian slide guitar and classical Hindustani ragas, both of which informed his musical vision.
Guitars
- Chaturangui
Mics
- Neumann KMR 81-i
Strings and Slides
- John Pearse strings
- John Pearse slide
- Diamond Bottlenecks crystal tone-bar
Through his 20s, he worked to develop what would become the chaturangui: an instrument which would capture the breadth of influence he carried within him. Early attempts included a jumbo body with a round soundhole, then an archtop-style with f-holes, but neither yielded the depth of sound Bhattacharya was chasing. During a trip to the U.S. in 1993, Mary Faith, the owner of John Pearse Strings, gifted him with a Weissenborn slide guitar, a rare hollow-neck model created by the luthier Hermann Weissenborn. Bhattacharya took it home, opened it up, and experimented with it, adding elements from the construction to his own guitar.
In 1994, after years of prototyping and trial-and-error, Bhattacharya completed his masterpiece. The chaturangui lap-steel guitar had a hollow neck and a normal 6-string configuration along with three extra sets of strings: two additional rhythm strings just past the high strings, two drone strings on the bass side of the neck, and 14 sympathetic stringsālike those on a sitarājust past the drones. (For those counting, that brings the chaturanguiās total to 24 strings.)
āArt is not the same everywhere ā¦ but if you look at everything in nature, itās connected. The same air you breathe, I breathe.ā
Today, the chaturangui is but one of Bhattacharyaās primary instruments (standing alongside his later slide-instrument inventions, the anandi, gandharvi, and most recently, the pushpa veena). In concert, he and his accompanists operate in a similar way to how he approached the improvisation of āTo His Lotus Feet.ā He and his daughter Anandi Bhattacharya, a vocalist, and his brother, tabla player Subhasis Bhattacharya, performed music from The Sound of the Soul for audiences at La Folle JournĆ©e, a classical music festival in Nantes, France. He says in a performance, as in the studio, the story of the song starts from one point, then slowly develops, involving more characters and building energy before reaching a narrative peak. It gently decrescendosāthe sound of āpeople going back home, leaving.ā
Bhattacharya performing live on the pushpa veena, a 25-string slide instrument built from a single piece of teak, plus goat skin, and a deer-horn bridge.
Bhattacharyaās goal with his music is not to be āthe best,ā or to satisfy some notion of what his music should be. It is simply to communicate and share what he has learned from his teachers, from his whole world of influence and openness. He laments that with music, weāre raised in small pockets of influence, without much access to other musical traditions and appreciations.
Music streaming services have allowed distinct cultures to spread and mingle around the world, but Bhattacharya says we still have a way to go in bridging music traditions. āArt is not the same everywhere ā¦ but if you look at everything in nature, itās connected,ā he explains. āThe same air you breathe, I breathe. The same water is flowing into the oceans, itās the same sunlight weāre receiving. Our cultures are only different because we were ignorant about each other.ā
But being raised in Calcutta taught Bhattacharya an important lesson: There is no such thing as bad music if it is created intentionally and caringly; all musical practices are connected. āEvery music is divine,ā he says. When we create music, we are interpreting and exploring the universe: mystery, beauty, fear, joy.
āWe are the divine pieces of gods and goddesses,ā Bhattacharya continues. āThat is why we should accept everything as beautiful, accept it and let it come in our door. That is what I have learned in my 40 years of traveling all over the world. Itās such a beautiful life we can make through accepting other cultures and finding the way in between.ā
Uttarpara Sangeet Chakra 2023 Father Son Duet | Raag Madhuvanti | Pdt Debashish Bhattacharya
With astounding virtuosity, Bhattacharya combines Indian classical music and Western slide guitar technique to create a singular, stirring sound.
The MONO M80 Vertigo Ultra Dreadnought Acoustic and Semi-Hollow Guitar Cases come complete with a range of game-changing design features, including the patent-pending attachable FREERIDE Wheel System, premium water-resistant and reflective materials, shockproof shell structure, and improved ergonomic features. These new models provide guitarists with even more options for gear protection and ease of transport.
The Vertigo Ultra Dreadnought Acoustic and Semi-Hollow Guitar Cases feature:
- Patent-pending Freeride Wheel System that allows for wheels to be attached on the case in no time, giving you the option to travel with it seamlessly
- Upgraded materials, including a water-resistant 1680D Ballistic Nylon outer shell, plush inner lining and new reflective trim for maximum backstage and night visibility
- Enhanced protection with a shockproof shell structure and heavy-duty water-resistant YKK zippers for protection from the elements
- Improved ergonomics and functionality including added back support and load-lifting detachable shoulder straps with side release buckles
- Flexible storage options with added space for touring essentials
Vertigo Ultra Acous Gig Bag
Both the MONO M80 Vertigo Ultra Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar Case and the MONO M80 Vertigo Ultra Semi-Hollow Guitar Case are shipping this April and are available at $349.99 (US MAP) online and via select dealers.
For more information, please visit monocreators.com.