
Slinky playability, snappy sounds, and elegant, comfortable proportions distinguish an affordable 0-bodied flattop.
Satisfying, slinky playability. Nice string-to-string balance. Beautiful, comfortable proportions.
Cocobolo-patterned HPL back looks plasticky.
$699
Martin 0-X2E
martinguitar.com
Embracing the idea of an acoustic flattop made with anything other than wood can, understandably, be tricky stuff. There’s a lot of precedent for excellent-sounding acoustics built with alternative materials, though. Carbon-fiber flattops can sound amazing and I’ve been hooked by the sound and playability of Ovation and Adamas instruments many times.
High-pressure laminate, which is paper and resin pressed and covered by the image of wood grain, is another widely used alternative material. It certainly doesn’t sound glamorous. But as a construction material, it’s consistent and enables guitar companies to build more affordable instruments. It also minimizes the cost to the Earth’s forests—particularly where exotic hardwoods are concerned.
On the Mexico-made $699 Martin 0-X2E, the HPL back-and-sides are newly styled to look like cocobolo. But the big news is that the 0-X2E body uses a solid spruce top in place of the HPL tops on previous 0-X models. I can’t say I’ve been over the moon for most HPL- guitars I’ve played. But most of those have been dreadnoughts and didn’t have wood tops. Spending time with the 0-X2E made me a lot more enthusiastic about HPL as a back and sides material. It also made me wonder if a small-bodied guitar like a Martin 0 is better suited for the material. It sounded lively and felt fast, fun, and comfortable
Hybrid Evolution
The 0-X2E’s satin spruce top makes the guitar sound much cooler, but it also looks organic, understated, and pretty. That’s a good thing because the HPL representation of cocobolo looks pretty plasticky up close. Real cocobolo backs can be aesthetically polarizing, even in their most expensive incarnations. But the complexity, depth, and contrast of the real thing is rendered very two-dimensional here.
The “select hardwood” neck, bridge, and fretboard look a lot like sapele on our review guitar, but could also be utile or cedar, depending on what Martin has on hand in quantity at the time of manufacture. Like the spruce top, they lend a businesslike but pretty simplicity to the already lovely proportions of the 0-sized body. The guitar is conventionally braced on the back (should the use of HPL leave anyone wondering), uses scalloped X braces on the top, and save for the first and second frets, which could stand a little more shaping at the edges, fit and finish are very nice.Get with the Compact Act
While this may not be a universal sentiment, it would be hard to find a flattop body profile more comfortable than a Martin 0. It’s easy to imagine players that primarily play electric gravitating to the 0-X2E’s diminutive dimensions. But it’s also the kind of guitar that makes most playing—and fingerstyle in particular—a lot less fatiguing. Spending long hours working on technique or songwriting is a lot more effortless and inviting. The 0-X2E is a nice player, too, and would qualify as such in a higher price category. Fingerstylists will also enjoy the wider string spacing afforded by the 1 3/4" nut width.
“It’s easy to imagine players that primarily play electric gravitating to its diminutive dimensions.”
Sonically speaking, the 0-X2E is heavy on the midrange, and there are some bright overtones that verge on strident when you strum hard. That said, the guitar never sounds like it’s swimming in a mud of sloppy overtones. String-to-string volume is pretty even and it makes the guitar feel balanced, dynamic in terms of quiet-to-loud range, and detailed at the bass and treble side of the spectrum. And while the 0-X2E is not what the average player would call rich with bass, the 6th string has ample resonance, which underscores the guitar’s surprising and pleasing sustain. That encourages more spacious phrasing (if you’re into that sort of thing) and makes the 0-X2E a cool vehicle for lower alternate tunings.
The Verdict
Martin’s 0-sized, X-series guitars have, to date, each cost around 500 bucks. Is the spruce top, hardwood neck, fretboard, and bridge worth the extra $200? In a purely sonic sense, I would say yes. The 0-X2E has real character and is a pleasure to play. Plus, you get a pretty nice electronics package in the form of the Martin E1, a system that includes a tone control and a very convenient and clever tuner with a readout mounted inconspicuously just inside the soundhole, with an easy-to-read display that faces up toward the player.
There are a number of small guitar alternatives in the affordable sphere. Many of these are “mini” guitars of one kind or another, or inexpensive parlors. There aren’t a lot of inexpensive 0-bodied guitars out there in the strictest sense, though, and even solid-wood versions made in Asia often push past the $1K mark. It’s hard to match the elegant proportions and tone magic that happens in a Martin 0-body, and the 0-X2E serves up a fair bit of that. Whether you’re willing to pay almost 700 bucks for an 0-bodied instrument with a back that looks less-than-authentically wood-like will be a very personal aesthetic decision. But if you let your ears be the guide, the snappy, super-playable, and ultra-comfortable 0-X2E may well surprise.
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Lollar Pickups introduces the Deluxe Foil humbucker, a medium-output pickup with a bright, punchy tone and wide frequency range. Featuring a unique retro design and 4-conductor lead wires for versatile wiring options, the Deluxe Foil is a drop-in replacement for Wide Range Humbuckers.
Based on Lollar’s popular single-coil Gold Foil design, the new Deluxe Foil has the same footprint as Lollar’s Regal humbucker - as well as the Fender Wide Range Humbucker – and it’s a drop-in replacement for any guitar routed for Wide Range Humbuckers such as the Telecaster Deluxe/Custom, ’72-style Tele Thinline and Starcaster.
Lollar’s Deluxe Foil is a medium-output humbucker that delivers a bright and punchy tone, with a glassy top end, plenty of shimmer, rich harmonic content, and expressive dynamic touch-sensitivity. Its larger dual-coil design allows the Deluxe Foil to capture a wider frequency range than many other pickup types, giving the pickup a full yet well-balanced voice with plenty of clarity and articulation.
The pickup comes with 4-conductor lead wires, so you can utilize split-coil wiring in addition to humbucker configuration. Its split-coil sound is a true representation of Lollar’s single-coil Gold Foil, giving players a huge variety of inspiring and musical sounds.
The Deluxe Foil’s great tone is mirrored by its evocative retro look: the cover design is based around mirror images of the “L” in the Lollar logo. Since the gold foil pickup design doesn’t require visible polepieces, Lollartook advantage of the opportunity to create a humbucker that looks as memorable as it sounds.
Deluxe Foil humbucker features include:
- 4-conductor lead wire for maximum flexibility in wiring/switching
- Medium output suited to a vast range of music styles
- Average DC resistance: Bridge 11.9k, Neck 10.5k
- Recommended Potentiometers: 500k
- Recommended Capacitor: 0.022μF
The Lollar Deluxe Foil is available for bridge and neck positions, in nickel, chrome, or gold cover finishes. Pricing is $225 per pickup ($235 for gold cover option).
For more information visit lollarguitars.com.
A 6L6 power section, tube-driven spring reverb, and a versatile array of line outs make this 1x10 combo an appealing and unique 15-watt alternative.
Supro Montauk 15-watt 1 x 10-inch Tube Combo Amplifier - Blue Rhino Hide Tolex with Silver Grille
Montauk 110 ReverbThe two-in-one “sonic refractor” takes tremolo and wavefolding to radical new depths.
Pros: Huge range of usable sounds. Delicious distortion tones. Broadens your conception of what guitar can be.
Build quirks will turn some users off.
$279
Cosmodio Gravity Well
cosmod.io
Know what a wavefolder does to your guitar signal? If you don’t, that’s okay. I didn’t either until I started messing around with the all-analog Cosmodio Instruments Gravity Well. It’s a dual-effect pedal with a tremolo and wavefolder, the latter more widely used in synthesis that , at a certain threshold, shifts or inverts the direction the wave is traveling—in essence, folding it upon itself. Used together here, they make up what Cosmodio calls a sonic refractor.
Two Plus One
Gravity Well’s design and control set make it a charm to use. Two footswitches engage tremolo and wavefolder independently, and one of three toggle switches swaps the order of the effects. The two 3-way switches toggle different tone and voice options, from darker and thicker to brighter and more aggressive. (Mixing and matching with these two toggles yields great results.)
The wavefolder, which has an all-analog signal path bit a digitally controlled LFO, is controlled by knobs for both gain and volume, which provide enormous dynamic range. The LFO tremolo gets three knobs: speed, depth, and waveform. The first two are self-explanatory, but the latter offers switching between eight different tremolo waveforms. You’ll find standard sawtooth, triangle, square, and sine waves, but Cosmodio also included some wacko shapes: asymmetric swoop, ramp, sample and hold, and random. These weirder forms force truly weird relationships with the pedal, forcing your playing into increasingly unpredictable and bizarre territories.
This is all housed in a trippy, beautifully decorated Hammond 1590BB-sized enclosure, with in/out, expression pedal, and power jacks. I had concerns about the durability of the expression jack because it’s not sealed to its opening with an outer nut and washer, making it feel more susceptible to damage if a cable gets stepped on or jostled near the connection, as well as from moisture. After a look at the interior, though, the build seems sturdy as any I’ve seen.
Splatterhouse Audio
Cosmodio’s claim that the refractor is a “first-of-its-kind” modulation effect is pretty grand, but they have a point in that the wavefolder is rare-ish in the guitar domain and pairing it with tremolo creates some pretty foreign sounds. Barton McGuire, the Massachusetts-based builder behind Cosmodio, released a few videos that demonstrate, visually, how a wavefolder impacts your guitar’s signal—I highly suggest checking them out to understand some of the principles behind the effect (and to see an ’80s Muppet Babies-branded keyboard in action.)
By folding a waveform back on itself, rather than clipping it as a conventional distortion would, the wavefolder section produces colliding, reflecting overtones and harmonics. The resulting distortion is unique: It can sound lo-fi and broken in the low- to mid-gain range, or synthy and extraterrestrial when the gain is dimed. Add in the tremolo, and you’ve got a lot of sonic variables to play with.
Used independently, the tremolo effect is great, but the wavefolder is where the real fun is. With the gain at 12 o’clock, it mimics a vintage 1x10 tube amp cranked to the breaking point by a splatty germanium OD. A soft touch cleans up the signal really nicely, while maintaining the weirdness the wavefolder imparts to its signal. With forceful pick strokes at high gain, it functions like a unique fuzz-distortion hybrid with bizarre alien artifacts punching through the synthy goop.
One forum commenter suggested that the Gravity Well effect is often in charge as much the guitar itself, and that’s spot on at the pedal's extremes. Whatever you expect from your usual playing techniques tends to go out the window —generating instead crumbling, sputtering bursts of blubbering sound. Learning to respond to the pedal in these environments can redefine the guitar as an instrument, and that’s a big part of Gravity Well’s magic.
The Verdict
Gravity Well is the most fun I’ve had with a modulation pedal in a while. It strikes a brilliant balance between adventurous and useful, with a broad range of LFO modulations and a totally excellent oddball distortion. The combination of the two effects yields some of the coolest sounds I’ve heard from an electric guitar, and at $279, it’s a very reasonably priced journey to deeply inspiring corners you probably never expected your 6-string (or bass, or drums, or Muppet Babies Casio EP-10) to lead you to.
Kemper and Zilla announce the immediate availability of Zilla 2x12“ guitar cabs loaded with the acclaimed Kemper Kone speaker.
Zilla offers a variety of customization to the customers. On the dedicated Website, customers can choose material, color/tolex, size, and much more.
The sensation and joy of playing a guitar cabinet
Sometimes, when there’s no PA, there’s just a drumkit and a bass amp. When the creative juices flow and the riffs have to bounce back off the wall - that’s the moment when you long for a powerful guitar cabinet.
A guitar cabinet that provides „that“ well-known feel and gives you that kick-in-the-back experience. Because guitar cabinets can move some serious air. But these days cabinets also have to be comprehensive and modern in terms of being capable of delivering the dynamic and tonal nuances of the KEMPER PROFILER. So here it is: The ZILLA 2 x 12“ upright slant KONE cabinet.
These cabinets are designed in cooperation with the KEMPER sound designers and the great people from Zilla. Beauty is created out of decades of experience in building the finest guitar cabinets for the biggest guitar masters in the UK and the world over, combined with the digital guitar tone wizardry from the KEMPER labs. Loaded with the exquisit Kemper Kone speakers.
Now Kemper and Zilla bring this beautiful and powerful dream team for playing, rehearsing, and performing to the guitar players!
ABOUT THE KEMPER KONE SPEAKERS
The Kemper Kone is a 12“ full range speaker which is exclusively designed by Celestion for KEMPER. By simply activating the PROFILER’s well-known Monitor CabOff function the KEMPER Kone is switched from full-range mode to the Speaker Imprint Mode, which then exactly mimics one of 19 classic guitar speakers.
Since the intelligence of the speaker lies in the DSP of the PROFILER, you will be able to switch individual speaker imprints along with your favorite rigs, without needing to do extensive editing.
The Zilla KEMPER KONE loaded 2x12“ cabinets can be custom designed and ordered for an EU price of £675,- UK price of £775,- and US price of £800,- - all including shipping (excluding taxes outside of the UK).
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com or zillacabs.com.