Based in Denver, Colorado, Viktorian Guitars was founded by composite-materials expert Diego Grinfeld, who was lucky enough to have as his mentor an illustrious luthier by the name of Boaz Elkayam. And though you wouldn’t know it by looking at the Grace Status reviewed here, Elkayam is about as old-school as a luthier gets. Hailing from a family of violin makers, Elkayam began crafting guitars before he hit his teens, and since then he has travelled to some relatively far-flung corners of the globe to study the art. Along the way, he picked up lutherie chops from some of the most resourceful instrument makers in the world. The ability of those luthiers to work with the materials on hand—and by hand, sometimes using nothing but a knife—probably had a lot to do with Elkayam’s minimalist approach to construction. This unlikely pairing between high-tech and tradition helped Grinfeld lay the foundations for Viktorian Guitars.
Sought primarily by materials engineers for its high strength-to-weight ratio, carbon fiber typically finds its way into things like tent-poles, space shuttles, and speedboats. Because carbon fiber can handle the considerable loads from string tension and take a serious beating, too, it also makes for an extraordinarily resilient guitar-building material. And in the hands of a highly skilled luthier like Elkayam, carbon fiber can also possess a unique singing resonance and excellent responsiveness. Those properties are the soul of Viktorian’s hollow Grace Status.
Of a Piece
The Grace is cast in a single mold and is,
thus, entirely a one-piece instrument—a
nearly seamless guitar from headstock to
endpin. Once you get past the marvel
of the unibody construction, one of the
first details you notice is that the 22-fret neck has no truss rod. So how would
you intonate this thing? Well, according
to Viktorian, you probably won’t have
to—aside from minor adjustments on
the chrome Tune-o-matic-style bridge.
Needless to say, necks made of wood
are subject to all sorts of temperamental
changes due to humidity, temperature,
etc., and anyone who’s flown with a guitar
knows how frustrating it can be to
land and have to perform with slip-shod
intonation before a show. Theoretically,
the Grace sidesteps this hassle via sheer,
unshakable structural rigidity. When it
came my turn to test this premise, true to
form, the Status rang with perfect intonation
right out of the box, despite zigzagging
across the U.S. on its way to me and
spending who knows how many hours on
a delivery truck.
Aesthetically, the Grace Status is bold, to say the least, with a sunset orange, micro-sparkle finish. An exposed carbon fiber racing stripe runs the length of the guitar, revealing the fascinatingly attractive weave of the material. The body shape is modern and a bit irreverent and unconcerned with tradition, with hints of Telecaster and some of Guild’s more oddball designs from the ’70s.
Sporting dual Viktorian Modern Classic humbuckers, the Grace has a 5-way pickup selector that doubles as a coil tap at the second and fourth positions—a highly dynamic configuration that also lets you blend the ’buckers in the middle position. Interior electronics include new-old-stock paper-in-oil capacitors, Bourns Pro Audio pots, and cloth-covered wiring. A brass alloy nut caps the C-shaped neck, and the headstock—which looks like a mix of PRS and Rickenbacker elements—are adorned with tuners of Viktorian design.
Hollowbody at Heart
When you pick up a Grace, you immediately
notice how readily it conforms
to your body. The sharp, lower-body cut
rests comfortably on your leg if you’re a
sit-and-strum guy, but throwing a strap on
and slinging it over your shoulder reveals
more about how incredibly well balanced
this guitar is—and it’ll stay on an even keel
whether you’re holding the neck or not.
The Grace also weighs a little under 5.5
pounds, which borders on feather light for
any guitar, but especially for an electric.
Even before plugging the Grace into an amplifier, I noticed an extraordinary amount of resonance and sustain when playing chords or single notes. But these qualities are exponentially enhanced when you plug into a nice, clean amp like the silverface Fender Bassman used for this test. With this setup, first-position chords rang with a rather amazing, crystal-clear sustain.
Ratings
Pros:
Highly diverse range of tones. Extremely durable
construction with minimal maintenance required.
Cons:
Likely expensive to fix major damages due to
1-piece design.
Tones:
Playability/Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$3,279
Company
viktorian.com
The Viktorian Modern Classic humbuckers are responsive to control input and interact with the body to generate beautifully uniform string-to-string output. The top end has plenty of bite, but there isn’t a trace of harshness whether you’re in humbucker or coil-tapped mode. It makes the Grace wonderfully responsive to a soft touch—this guitar will delight fingerpickers with how well it translates picking nuance.
Interestingly, the hollowbody-and-carbon-fiber combination is a sweet recipe for slide work. Dropped into open D tuning, the neck pickup whistled with potency and sustain of the sort that Ry Cooder would love. And a ceramic slide created a lonesome drawl that exceeded the sustain of just about everything short of an organ with its keys taped down.
The Grace handled the high-gain tones of an Orange OR50 very well, too. The pickups are hot but not at all screechy, and they exhibited great clarity through extreme tube saturation. That said, fans of the heaviest metal styles may find the Grace a little light on bottom-end girth—galloping palm mutes on the low E aren’t quite as weighty as what get from, say, a Les Paul. What it might lack in grunt, though, the Grace makes up for in versatility, especially given the extra tones you get via the coil taps. Rolling off the volume and splitting the neck pickup delivers a cool, Telecaster-like honk but with an almost Epiphone Casino-style resonance. The fourth position also delivers a killer snapping tone with a cut in the treble range that’s perfect for country or rockabilly picking on cleaner amplification.
The Verdict
At $3,279 street, the Viktorian Grace Status
is a bit pricey for many of us. Heck, with
that kind of money you could easily buy
three pretty nice guitars. But, if you’re looking for just one to cover a ton of ground, the Grace is a marvel. The construction
and attention to detail is top notch, and
the 1-piece, carbon-fiber design is not only
bulletproof and nearly maintenance free (how much is that peace of mind worth to you on the road?), and it all adds up to
an uncommonly responsive guitar with a
massive tonal scope. Players with strictly
old-school tastes probably need not apply,
but forward-looking players who appreciate
how the guitar can still evolve as an
instrument will thrill to this convergence of
design and performance.
EBS BassIQ Blue Label Triple Envelope Filter Pedal
The EBS BassIQ produces sounds ranging from classic auto-wah effects to spaced-out "Funkadelic" and synth-bass sounds. It is for everyone looking for a fun, fat-sounding, and responsive envelope filter that reacts to how you play in a musical way.
Overall, they encompass the historic arc of stompbox technology from fuzz and overdrives, to loopers and samplers, to tools that warp the audio end of the space-time continuum. Click on each one to get the full review as well as audio and video demos.
DigiTech JamMan Solo HD Review
Maybe every guitarist’s first pedal should be a looper. There are few more engaging ways to learn than playing along to your own ideas—or programmed rhythms, for that matter, which are a component of the new DigiTech JamMan Solo HD’s makeup. Beyond practicing, though, the Solo HD facilitates creation and fuels the rush that comes from instant composition and arrangement or jamming with a very like-minded partner in a two-man band.
Click here to read the review.
Warm Audio Warm Bender Review
In his excellent videoFuzz Detective, my former Premier Guitar colleague and pedal designer Joe Gore put forth the proposition that theSola Sound Tone Bender MkII marked the birth of metal. TakeWarm Audio’s Warm Bender for a spin and it’s easy to hear what he means. It’s nasty and it’s heavy—electrically awake with the high-mid buzz you associate with mid-’60s psych-punk, but supported with bottom-end ballast that can knock you flat (which may be where the metal bit comes in).
Click here to read the review.
Walrus Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo Review
Among fellow psychedelic music-making chums in the ’90s, few tools were quite as essential as a Boss PN-2 Tremolo Pan. Few of us had two amplifiers with which we could make use of one. But if you could borrow an amp, you could make even the lamest riff sound mind-bending.
Click here to read the review.
MXR Layers Review
It’s unclear whether the unfortunate term “shoegaze” was coined to describe a certain English indie subculture’s proclivity for staring at pedals, or their sometimes embarrassed-at-performing demeanor. The MXR Layers will, no doubt, find favor among players that might make up this sect, as well as other ambience-oriented stylists. But it will probably leave players of all stripes staring floorward, too, at least while they learn the ropes with this addictive mashup of delay, modulation, harmonizer, and sustain effects.
Click here to read the review.
Wampler Mofetta Review
Wampler’s new Mofetta is a riff on Ibanez’s MT10 Mostortion, a long-ago discontinued pedal that’s now an in-demand cult classic. If you look at online listings for the MT10, you’ll see that asking prices have climbed up to $1k in extreme cases.
Click here to read the review.
Catalinbread StarCrash Fuzz Review
Although inspired by the classic Fuzz Face, this stomp brings more to the hair-growth game with wide-ranging bias and low-cut controls.
Red Panda Radius Review
Intrepid knob-tweakers can blend between ring mod and frequency shifting and shoot for the stars.
Electro-Harmonix LPB-3 Linear Power Booster and EQ Review
Descended from the first Electro-Harmonix pedal ever released, the LPB-1 Linear Power Booster, the new LPB-3 has come a long way from the simple, one-knob unit in a folded-metal enclosure that plugged straight into your amplifier. Now living in Electro-Harmonix’s compact Nano chassis, the LPB-3 Linear Power Booster and EQ boasts six control knobs, two switches, and more gain than ever before.
JFX Pedals Deluxe Modulation Ensemble Review
This four-in-one effects box is a one-stop shop for Frusciante fans, but it’s also loaded with classic-rock swagger.
Origin Effects Cali76 FET Review
The latest version of this popular boutique pedal adds improved metering and increased headroom for a more organic sound.
JAM Fuzz Phrase Si Review
Everyone has records and artists they indelibly associate with a specific stompbox. But if the subject is the silicon Fuzz Face, my first thought is always of David Gilmour and the Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii film. What you hear in Live at Pompeii is probably shaped by a little studio sweetening. Even still, the fuzz you hear in “Echoes” and “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”—well, that is how a fuzz blaring through a wall of WEM cabinets in an ancient amphitheater should sound, like the sky shredded by the wail of banshees.
Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay Review
As someone who was primarily an acoustic guitarist for the first 16 out of 17 years that I’ve been playing, I’m relatively new to the pedal game. That’s not saying I’m new to effects—I’ve employed a squadron of them generously on acoustic tracks in post-production, but rarely in performance. But I’m discovering that a pedalboard, particularly for my acoustic, offers the amenities and comforts of the hobbit hole I dream of architecting for myself one day in the distant future.
RJM Full English Programmable Overdrive Review
Programmability and preset storage aren’t generally concerns for the average overdrive user. But if expansive digital control for true analog drive pedals becomes commonplace, it will be because pedals like the Full English Programmable Overdrive from RJM Music Technology make it fun and musically satisfying.
Strymon BigSky MX Review
Strymon calls the BigSky MX pedal “one reverb to rule them all.” Yep, that’s a riff on something we’ve heard before, but in this case it might be hard to argue. In updating what was already one of the market’s most comprehensive and versatile reverbs, Strymon has created a reverb pedal that will take some players a lifetime to fully explore. That process is likely to be tons of fun, too.
JHS Hard Drive Review
JHS makes many great and varied overdrive stomps. Their Pack Rat is a staple on one of my boards, and I can personally attest to the quality of their builds. The new Hard Drive has been in the works since as far back as 2016, when Josh Scott and his staff were finishing off workdays by jamming on ’90s hard rock riffs.
Keeley I Get Around Review
A highly controllable, mid-priced rotary speaker simulator inspired by the Beach Boys that nails the essential character of a Leslie—in stereo.
Cusack Project 34 Selenium Rectifier Pre/Drive
The term “selenium rectifier” might be Greek to most guitarists, but if it rings a bell with any vintage-amp enthusiasts that’s likely because you pulled one of these green, sugar-cube-sized components out of your amp’s tube-biasing network to replace it with a silicon diode.
Vox Real McCoy VRM-1 Review
Some pedals are more fun than others. And on the fun spectrum, a new Vox wah is like getting a bike for Christmas. There’s gleaming chrome. It comes in a cool vinyl pouch that’s hipper than a stocking. Put the pedal on the floor and you feel the freedom of a marauding BMX delinquent off the leash, or a funk dandy cool-stepping through the hot New York City summertime. It’s musical motion. It’s one of the most stylish effects ever built. A good one will be among the coolest-sounding, too.
Or you can check out the Reverend Billy Corgan Drop Z. At a glance, the Drop Z may not look like much of a cure for the 6-string doldrums. But pick it up and you’ll feel the difference fast. The Drop Z is built around a 26 1/4" scale and a 24-fret neck that makes this Reverend feel like a very different instrument. Designed and optimized for use with drop tunings, it opens the doors to whole palace ballrooms full of new musical possibilities.
Beastly Blue and Easy To Use
If the feel of the Drop Z alone doesn’t dislodge you from a guitar rut, there’s a good chance that its pretty profile would compel you to pick it up and play. It’s a handsome instrument. The conservatively chambered alder body (it’s routed at the bass and treble horns) is clad in a very pretty twilight-blue-meets-ocean-turquoise glossy finish, which is complimented perfectly by the brushed-aluminum pickguard. The chambered body definitely helps with the weight; the Drop Z is a little less than eight pounds. It also helps the guitar feel very balanced. There’s not a hint of neck dive. And if it weren’t for the discernibly longer stretch you make to reach the first fret, it would feel as familiar and comfortable as a nice Stratocaster.
The medium-oval neck, which is satin-finished maple with a maple fretboard, is a pleasure. It feels substantial and fast, and getting around its expanse is facilitated by a perfect setup. The 12" fretboard radius and jumbo frets also add to the Drop Z’s easy-breezy feel. Big bends require little more effort than they would on a normal scale, and I never felt the urge to squeeze a note to compensate for the weird intonation issues big frets and long scales can cause. From first fret to 24th, playing the Drop Z is an easy glide.
The Drop-Z pickups are a modified version of the Railhammer Billy Corgan Z-One pickups in his other Billy Corgan signature Reverends. The pickups’ impedance is rated at 14.5 ohms, which suggests a pretty hot unit. In this incarnation, the Z-One pickups are tuned for even more output and smoother treble. That’s a good idea for a pickup designed with heavy musical settings in mind.
Fangs on Cue, but Mellon Collie, Too
Though the Drop Z is easy to play in a getting-around-the-fretboard sense, plugging and turning up may take adjustments in approach and attitude. As the pickups’ impedance rating suggests, the Railhammer Z-Ones have a lot of hop, and as the expansive lengths of string resonate impressively, you’ll hear a lot of very present treble overtones. I spent most of my time with the instrument in a C# modal tuning or C–G–D–G–B–B, and in each tuning the Drop Z rumbled impressively (particularly through a late-’60s Fender Bassman head, which is a beautiful, burly match for this instrument). But unless I wanted to linger among the peaky resonances of the highest two strings (and I often did), I needed to attenuate both tone controls.
The good thing is that each of these controls has a very nice range. And while the guitar can start to feel stripped of its essence with too much tone or volume attenuation, there is wiggle room for softening transients and taming unwanted overtone blooms. These pronounced peaks are easy to hear in both the neck and bridge pickup, depending on your approach. I worked a lot more with open strings and drones than Billy Corgan might on songs like “Zero,” which the guitar was tailored for. But for those keen to explore the mellower side of the Drop Z’s personality, the combined pickup setting is a magic bullet. It’s airy, open, and makes it easy and rewarding to navigate slow-moving chord changes with strong bass foundations. It’s also fun to take advantage of the fretboard’s whole expanse in this setting—darting and dashing from toppy treble-note clusters to growling bass harmony notes—and enjoying the detail and string-to-string balance. By the way, the Drop Z, as you might guess, sounds positively massive with distortion, though you should be careful to choose your gain device carefully. The pickup’s midrange emphasis will make a similarly mid-heavy distortion sound harsh. A Sovtek-style Big Muff, with its scooped midrange and round low-end resonance, is an ideal fit if you want to get extra large.
The Verdict
The Korea-made Drop Z is a beautifully crafted instrument and a silky, easy, balanced player that will make you forget, in moments, about the expansive fretboard and extra scale length. It feels completely natural and effortless. How you relate to the tones here will depend on your musical mission. The hot pickups make it a perfect fit for outsized, aggressive tones. I, for one, would prefer to explore the wealth of overtones this well-constructed instrument generates via less aggressive pickups. But players like me will still find much to love in the combined pickup settings and the pickups’ impressive capacity for detail, which, depending on the tuning you use, can highlight harmonic interplay between notes and chords that would be much less prominent and less fun to explore in a more conventional guitar.
Reverend Billy Corgan Drop Z Signature Electric Guitar - Pearl White
Loopers can be complex enough to make beginners cry. They are fun if you have time to venture for whole weeks down a rabbit hole. But a looper that bridges the functionality and ease-of-use gap between the simplest and most maniacal ones can be a sweet spot for newbies and seasoned performers both. The JamMan Solo HD lives squarely in that zone. It also offers super-high sound quality and storage options, and capacity that would fit the needs of most pros—all in a stomp just millimeters larger than a Boss pedal.
Fast Out of the Blocks
Assuming you’ve used some kind of rudimentary looper before, there’s pretty decent odds you’ll sort out the basic functionality of this one with a couple of exploratory clicks of the footswitch. That’s unless you’ve failed to turn down the rhythm-level knob, in which case you’ll be scrambling for the quick start guide to figure out why there is a drum machine blaring from your amp. The Solo HD comes loaded with rhythm tracks that are actually really fun to use and invaluable for practice. In the course of casually exploring these, I found them engaging and vibey enough to be lured into crafting expansive dub reggae jams, thrashing punk riffs, and lo-fi cumbias. Removing these tracks from a given loop is just a matter of turning the rhythm volume to zero. You can also create your own guide rhythms with various percussion sounds.
Backing tracks aside, creating loops on the Solo HD involves a common single-click-to-record, double-click-to-stop footswitch sequence. Recording an overdub takes another single click, and you hold the footswitch down to erase a loop. Storing a loop requires a simple press-and-hold of the store switch. The sizable latching footswitch, which looks and feels quite like those on Boss pedals, is forgiving and accurate. This has always been a strength of JamMan loopers, and though I’m not completely certain why, it means I screw up the timing of my loops a lot less.
Many players will be satisfied with how easy this functionality is and explore little more of the Solo HD’s capabilities. And why not? The storage capacity—up to 35 minutes of loops and 10 minutes for individual loops—is enough that you can craft a minor prog-rock suite from these humble beginnings. Depending on how economical your loops are, you can use all or most of the 200 available memory locations built into the Solo HD. But you can also add another 200 with an SD/SDHC card.Deeper into Dubs
Loopers have always been more than performance and practice tools for me. I have old multitrack demos that still live in the memory banks of my oldest loopers. And just as with any demos, the sounds you create with the Solo HD may be tough to top or duplicate, which can mean a loop becomes the foundation of a whole recorded song. The Solo HD’s tempo and reverse features, which can completely mutate a loop, make this situation even more likely. The tempo function raises or lowers the BPM without changing the pitch of the loop. As a practice tool, this is invaluable for learning a solo at a slower clip. But drastically altered tempos can also help create entirely new moods for a musical passage without altering a favorite key to sing or play in. Some of these alterations reveal riffs and hooks within riffs and hooks, from which I would happily build a whole finished work. The reverse function is similarly inspiring and a source of unusual textures that can be the foundation for a more complex piece.
HD, of course, stands for high definition. And the Solo HD’s capacity for accurate, dense, and detail-rich stacks of loops means you can build complex musical weaves highlighting the interaction between overtones or timbre differences among other effects in your chain. I can’t remember the last time I felt like a looper’s audio resolution was really lacking. But the improved quality here lends itself to using the Solo HD as a song-arranging tool—and, again, as a recording asset, if you want a looped idea to form the backbone of a recording.
The Verdict
With a looper, smooth workflow is everything. And though it takes practice and some concentration in the early going to extract the most from the Solo HD’s substantial feature set, it is, ultimately, a very intuitive instrument that will not just smooth the use of loops in performance, but extend and enhance its ability as a right-brain-oriented driver of composition and creation.
