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GALLERY: Summer NAMM 2015 Day 2

Everything from retro-style axes to interstellar effects and insanely powerful amps caught our eye in Nashville.

Source Audio's new modulators—the Mercury flanger, Lunar phaser, and Gemini chorus—all feature deceptively simple interfaces that facilitate both plug-and-play gratification and deep-dive tweaking. Each has four knobs, a 3-position voice switch, and continuous controller input, yet each can be edited in exponentially greater ways—including for bass- or guitar-optimized frequency response— via a slick, powerful mobile app and/or computer software.

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) today announces the launch of the Player II Modified — a bold expansion of its Player II series. Featuring select electric guitar and bass models enhanced with performance-driven upgrades, Player II Modified offers modern players refined tone, performance, and style straight out of the box. As an extension of the best-selling guitar series in Fender’s nearly 80-year history, Player II Modified builds on this legacy with expanded tonal versatility, elevated playability, and modern enhancements that meet the needs of a new generation of players.

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In this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re talking all things surf rock, from reverb to tremolo picking and much more. And while “Misirlou” is undisputedly his most influential work, maybe Dale’s best records didn’t come until a few decades later.

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Analog modulation guided by a digital brain willing to get weird.

Fun, fluid operation. Capable of vintage-thick textures at heavier gain settings. High headroom for accommodating other effects.

MIDI required to access more than one preset—which you’ll probably long for, given the breadth of voices.

$369

Kernom Elipse

kernom.com

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If you love modulation—and lots of it—you can eat up a lot of pedalboard space fast. Modulation effects can be super-idiosyncratic and specialized, which leads to keeping many around, particularly if you favor the analog domain. TheKernom Elipse multi-modulator is pretty big and, at a glance, might not seem the best solution for real estate scarcity. Yet the Elipse is only about 1 1/4" wider than two standard-sized Boss pedals side by side. And by combining an analog signal path with digital control, it makes impressive, efficient use of its size—stuffing fine-sounding harmonic tremolo, phaser, rotary-style, chorus, vibrato, flanger, and Uni-Vibe-style effects into a single hefty enclosure. Many of the effects can also be blended and morphed into one another using a rotary control aptly called “mood.” The Elipse, most certainly, has many of those.

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Fabulous neck with just-right fatness. Distinctive tone profile. Smooth, stable vibrato. Ice blue metallic and aluminum look delish together.

Higher output pickups could turn off Fender-geared traditionalists.

$939

Eastman FullerTone DC’62

eastmanguitars.com

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An affordable version of Eastman’s U.S.-made solidbody rolls with unique, well-executed features—at a price and quality level that rivals very tough competition.

Eastman’s instruments regularly impress in terms ofquality and performance. A few left my PG colleagues downright smitten. But if Eastman isn’t a household name among guitarists, it might be a case of consumer psychology: Relative to most instruments built in China, Eastmans are expensive. So, if you spend your life longing for a Gibson 335 and a comparable (if superficially fancier) Eastman costs just 20 percent less than the least expensive version of the real deal, why not save up for a bit longer and get the guitar of your dreams?

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