Guaranteed to Blow Your Mind
With two knobs, an LED, and a footswitch, the Neo Mistress appears exceedingly simple. But like so many Electro- Harmonix stompboxes, there’s more going on than meets the eye. Rate and Feedback controls enable adjustments of speed and intensity, but there’s also a Filter Matrix Mode, similar to that found in the Electric Mistress, that enables you to create more unusual tones outside the realm of typical flanging.
With the Neo Mistress between my Gibson SG and a vintage Fender Bassman, I set both controls to 12 o’clock. The first thing I noticed was the slowly changing color of the status LED. At the lowest point in the flange sweep, the LED glows green. It then blends from orange to red at the highest point in the flange sweep. This handy feature gives you visual feedback on the pedal’s rate. With both controls at noon, the flange effect is quite slow, evoking the sci-fi image of my guitar being scanned by some sort of ominous robot eye in the sky. A full cycle of the flange wave takes about six seconds at this setting.
Turning the Feedback control up to about 3 o’clock increases the intensity of the wave and lends a more focused, resonant, and metallic tone, while adding a sinister touch to the sound. Setting the Rate knob at about 2 o’clock shortens the scan cycle to about once every second. With the Rate nearly maxed, the sweeps flutter with almost imperceptible speed that sound like convulsions of your consciousness as it’s assimilated into the fabric of space and time. Yes, the Neo Mistress can sound very weird, as well as musical.
Filter Matrix Mode
counterclockwise from this position, the pedal enters its Filter Matrix Mode (a function that’s activated with a switch on the Deluxe Electric Mistress). In this setting, you can effectively freeze the position of the flange at a fixed point on the wave, and then use the Feedback control to increase the resonance. Depending on where you set the Feedback, you can get chiming but metallic-tinged tones that sound almost synth-like. With my Fender Stratocaster and a high Feedback setting, the Neo Mistress transformed the brighter tones of the Fender single-coils into something like a steel drum. But careful tweaking of the Feedback knob will also bring out more natural-sounding frequencies that can make your tone more distinctive for breaks and solos.
The Verdict
For some players, one of the real drawbacks of the Electric Mistress and Deluxe Electric Mistress is their large footprint. The Neo Mistress addresses that concern in a major way by fitting much of the modulation horsepower of the original Mistress and Deluxe into a box the size of an MXR pedal. You sacrifice some of the tone coloration potential you get from a Deluxe’s Color control, for instance, but with the onboard Filter Matrix Mode, the Neo is still a great tool for staking out some very distinctive—and unusual— sonic ground in a band mix.
Buy if...
you’re looking for a compact, yet versatile and cool-sounding flange.
Skip if...
you need stereo functionality or require more tone-shaping control.
Rating...
Street $89 - Electro-Harmoix - ehx.com |
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Fender Jack White Triplecaster Telecaster Electric Guitar - Black
Fender Limited-edition Jack White Triplesonic Acoustasonic Telecaster - Blacktop Arctic White
There are very few guitars that can claim to be as instantly recognizable and iconic as Jimmy Page’s 1969 EDS-1275 Doubleneck. The photos of him playing it on stage with Led Zeppelin are indelible to rock ’n’ roll history. While Gibson has been making doubleneck electric guitars since 1958, Jimmy was the player who defined the EDS-1275 from the day it was delivered to him. Introducing the Jimmy Page EDS-1275 Doubleneck VOS, now part of the Gibson Custom core lineup and built to the exact specifications of Jimmy’s iconic EDS-1275 Doubleneck.
The Jimmy Page EDS-1275 features a double-cutaway one-piece mahogany body that provides exceptional access to the full length of both the12-string and six-string mahogany necks. Both necks have long tenons and are hide glue fit, and the neck profiles are recreated from 3D scans of the necks on the original guitar. The necks are both capped with bound Indian rosewood fretboards. Each fretboard is equipped with 20 authentic medium jumbo frets and adorned with aged cellulose nitrate parallelogram inlays. The fretboards of both necks have a 12” radius, which is perfect for both playing chords as well as for string bending while soloing. The 18 tuners are Kluson double line, double ring style, just like those found on the original guitar, and even the headstocks feature the correct 17-degree angle and specific logo stylization found on Jimmy’s EDS-1275. The electronics are just as authentic and deliver all of the sonic character of Jimmy’s legendary EDS-1275. Two uncovered Jimmy Page EDS-1275 Custombuckers with double black bobbins and Alnico 5 magnets are used for the two six-string pickups, while a covered pair is installed on the 12-string neck. Of course, the two volume and two tone controls use CTS potentiometers and period-correct ceramic disc capacitors, and the pickup select switch, neck select switch, and output jack are all from Switchcraft.
Here is your opportunity to own a clone of Jimmy Page’s famous EDS-1275, identical to how it appeared on the day that Jimmy first received the guitar. A Gibson Custom hardshell case is included, along with a vintage leather strap, and a certificate of authenticity with a photo from famed photographer Barrie Wentzell.
Jimmy Page EDS-1275 Doubleneck VOS '69 Cherry
Recreation of the EDS-1275 used by Jimmy Page made using 3D scans of the original guitar, one piece mahogany body, mahogany six and 12-string necks with custom Jimmy Page profiles, Indian rosewood fretboards, Jimmy Page Custombucker pickups with Alnico 5 magnets and double black bobbins, Gibson Custom hardshell case
Reader: Daniel Switkin
Hometown: Oakland, California
Guitar: Doublecaster
I've been using a multitrack looper with a guitar and an octave pedal, which was okay for simple bass parts, but didn’t give me thick strings and I couldn’t slap with it. So I decided to build a double-neck prototype specifically for looping, with a 6-string guitar and a 4-string bass.
Since building the necks would be the hardest part, I looked around for instruments with bolt-on necks I could reuse. Squier makes an Affinity Stratocaster and a Mini Precision Bass which were affordable and had matching fretboards, so I bought those. It was also cheaper to reuse the electronics and hardware that came with them, rather than buying everything separately.
Using two precut instrument bodies saved the burden of having to route cavities for the electronics.
My plan was to design my own body from scratch. As I debated which neck should go on top, how far apart they should be, and whether to line up the nuts or the saddles, I realized there was actually enough wood there to make a double neck body, which saved me the work of recreating the neck pockets, etc. Putting the guitar on top made barre chords much more comfortable, and the 28.6" bass scale meant I could still reach the first fret easily.
After stripping the paint with a heat gun, I ran both bodies through a table saw, glued them together, and thinned them to 1 3/8". Then I created an offset body shape, a new arm bevel, and reshaped the three cutaways. The pickguards are both original, with the guitar side cut down to make a yin and yang shape. The controls are volume and tone for each neck, using the original knobs. I moved the jack to the back and upgraded it to stereo so the guitar and bass signals can run through separate effects chains.
Note the location of the jack on the back of the extended-shape body. It’s unconventional but practical.
My top concerns were weight and ergonomics. Many doublenecks are around 12 to 13 pounds and 18" wide. I knew I would never play something that big, no matter how good it sounded. To that end, I saved weight everywhere and tracked everything to the gram in a spreadsheet. (That’s also the reason I chose a fixed bridge instead of a vibrato.) I ultimately used a wipe-on gel stain to keep the weight down further. Stripping the paint from the factory saved 5 ounces! The final playable weight is 9 pounds, 5 ounces, and 15 1/4" wide at the lower bout. This has been pretty manageable, however, there is some neck dive because of the tuners. I’m taking everything I’ve learned from this prototype and designing a new doubleneck, which will be headless. I believe I can shed another pound and eliminate the neck dive that way. You can watch my entire build on YouTube.