Martin OMC-LJ Pro Laurence Juber Custom Artist Edition Acoustic Guitar Review
We talk with Laurence about the guitar, and let you know what you can expect from this high-end acoustic.
Download Example 1 Standard tuning, flatpicked | |
Download Example 2 DADGAD, fingerstyle | |
Download Example 3 DADGAD, capo V, flatpicked | |
All clips recorded with an sE3 small diaphragm condenser mic, direct to RME Fireface into Samlitude V8 |
Regular readers of my reviews may be aware of my near-obsession with the way guitars smell. Let’s face it, women smell better than men (okay, okay, we’re generally more sensitive to smells than men are). However you say it, it is almost always the first thing I notice about a guitar. I bring this up because the LJ Pro smells completely different than most guitars. It’s almost after-shavey, and not in an “Old Spice” way. There’s a gingery sweetness/sharpness that is soothing, intoxicating and energizing; in fact, that could be said for it’s tone as well.
I’m sure the smell of the guitar was the least of Laurence Juber’s intentions; in fact, in our wide ranging conversation about guitars, the smell of them never came up once. But we did talk about wood.
Adirondack Top
“When you go back to the ‘30s and earlier,” he explains, “you’re dealing with Brazilian rosewood, or mahogany, and you’re dealing with Adirondack spruce tops, so that’s the vintage sound, and that’s the sound that’s always appealed to me. The Adirondack top has significantly more of everything than Sitka spruce. Every piece of wood has a little different character, but typically, Adirondack gives you another octave of low end compared with Sitka. You just hear more bottom out of it, which isn’t to everybody’s taste, but I like having a lot of low end activity, especially if it’s controllable.” He continued, “It’s also got a little bit more of a megaphonic sound to it, which is again the kind of sound you associate with a vintage guitar. There’s just more presence in the sound.”
The Adirondack top has that rich, golden color that looks like sunshine captured in wood. The silky-smooth finish is the perfect accent, and the top almost feels warm to the touch even when it’s not. The blondness of the guitar is set off perfectly by the ebony fingerboard, bridge and headplate. The fingerboard is wonderfully naked and fingerstyle-friendly with 1 3/4" nut. The two-piece neck is Eastern hard maple, and smooth as a baby’s behind. The LJ Pro is outstandingly playable, and once you start, it’s nearly impossible to stop (in fact, the day it arrived at the PG offices, Editor in Chief Chris Burgess emailed begging me to come pick it up so he could get some work done).
Maple Back and Sides
I was very curious about Juber’s choice of maple for a guitar. Although it’s certainly not unheard of, maple acoustics are on the rare side. It’s hard to make a really great sounding maple acoustic, because many times the more brittle tendencies seem to overwhelm the tone. Juber said it was a string section that really got him thinking about it. “I was on a movie session some time ago, and I’m looking at the strings thinking, Okay, they’re all maple, maple necks, maple bodies with spruce tops and there has to be a reason for that. These are instruments that get played with a bow and the string tension is really high, but they have a lot of presence, a lot of focus in the sound. Some of those instruments are 300 years old, they’ve been around for a long time. There must be a reason why maple is so valuable in that kind of instrument. So I thought, I know what an OM sounds like with an Adirondack top, let’s see what maple does.”
For the record, what maple does to this particular guitar is to give it incredible power, drive and sustain, with lean but warm bass and plenty of sparkle. You put your hands on it and it starts to sing, and gives up its tone effortlessly. I still haven’t found a way to overdrive it and make it sound fuzzy or distorted or in any way wrong.
Juber concurs; “I was very pleasantly surprised in the results. Maple has a lower velocity of sound; the wood itself doesn’t vibrate as much as mahogany or rosewood, so what’s happening is the sound is getting kicked straight out and you’re not dealing with this kind of undertone as it were, so all the character, the dynamic, and the articulations all speak more clearly with maple. From my point of view it’s something that’s really quite desirable. It doesn’t give you that bed, that area of frequency activity that you have to work to cut through. Using maple is almost like turning the bass control on a Fender amp down to 3, and turning the presence up a bit.”
String it Along
Juber likes some serious tension on that Adirondack top. “I re-string these guitars with GHS brand strings, my signature set, and I use .013, .017, .024, .032, .042, .056, so the top two and the bottom strings are meaty and then the others are light, so when I’m in DADGAD the tension is more like a regular medium set, and then when I’m in standard I have that extra meat. I like having the weight, I think that guitars just sound better with heavier strings, especially Adirondack tops; they really like it.”
Plug it In
“But what I didn’t realize was that it would make such a great stage guitar, too,” he continued, “because it’s light [at 3.5 pounds], because frequency-wise there’s less going on in the low end, and it amplifies really nicely. For the first time in the seven or eight years we’ve been doing my signature models, this is the first one that comes with a pickup and a strap button. We’re calling it the LJ Pro, because I think of it as something that’s really oriented to the professional player, to somebody who spends a lot of time on the stage.”
The pickup is the D-TAR Wavelength, which requires no modifications to the guitar other than a small hole in the saddle for the Wavelength to slip through. Juber wanted to capture the pure guitar sound. “There are no holes cut in the side, no knobs; it’s simply a pickup because I’m in favor of doing any sonic manipulation stuff outboard, not onboard. It’s not anything that can get in the way of the natural acoustic sound.” On stage, Juber pairs the Wavelength with an Audix microphone, and is a great believer in blending a pickup signal with a mic signal to really capture all the warmth and breathiness of the guitar.
Juber concludes, “I’ve found in 6 months of playing this prototype, there’s a burnished quality that comes into the sound. And if you play older maple guitars, whether it’s an old [Gibson] J200 or whether it’s an old [Gibson] L5, they really they have a wonderful, wonderful quality to them.”
Our Assessment
After spending a full week of evenings cuddling up with this guitar on the couch, my assessment is yowza. This guitar rocks. Or whispers. You can make it sing like an angel or bark like a dog. You can play fingerstyle, you can flatpick. It loves open tunings, but sounds awesome in standard (or “missionary tuning” to quote Laurence Juber). Blues, jazz, folk, jigs and reels, fingerstyle madness or strummy songs, it’s right there.
Lucky for me (and you, reader-friend), master luthier Tom Ribbecke [Ribbecke Halfling Pin Bridge review, Oct. 2008] happened to be passing through town while I was reviewing the LJ Pro, so I was able put it in his hands for a couple minutes one morning. “This is a remarkable guitar,” he said, playing some cool jazz riffs and grinning the Ribbecke grin. He, too, was very impressed with the tone and bass response, and slipping a finger inside the soundhole, stated that the X-brace was much wider than was conventional.
It’s beautifully made, and very simple. I love the wide fretboard, clear of any ornamentation, and the simple herringbone binding and rosette, giving the guitar a real vintage vibe. The glossy finish is velvety smooth, and it plays and feels great. The tuners are the vintage-style open-back mini-tuners, which I am not partial to. I do a lot of shifting between tunings, so I like a bigger, more fluid-feeling tuner—but that’s just a preference and not a knock on the guitar.
I played it a whole week before I even remembered to plug it in. I once had a Wavelength pickup in one of my Indian rosewood guitars, and I remember it was a lovely dark sound, very lush and sort of “glossy.” I was curious about what that darkness would do with this brilliant sounding guitar. The bass response is quite remarkable, but not surprisingly it’s very clear and crisp. The Wavelength pickups are seriously hot, so there was headroom to burn, and it was very well balanced and clean. Nothing unexpected here, simply a terrific pickup in a terrific guitar.
The Final Mojo
All of the Juber-model Martins that I have seen or played have been wonderful guitars, and this one is wonderful-plus. I love the size, the shape, the feel, the tone, the smell, the simplicity and the vibe of this sunshine-yellow guitar. It’s a powerhouse, and a completely professional guitar that will do anything and everything a fingerstylist could want, plus it handles flatpicking chores flawlessly. You won’t go wrong with this one in the arsenal.
Buy if...
you are looking for a fingerstyle-leaning yet multi-purpose, completely professional, workhorse/powerhouse axe.
Skip if...
flatpicking is your main gig, or you like a narrower fingerboard.
Rating...
List $5499 - C. F. Martin Guitar Co. - martinguitar.com |
“Practice Loud”! How Duane Denison Preps for a New Jesus Lizard Record
After 26 years, the seminal noisy rockers return to the studio to create Rack, a master class of pummeling, machine-like grooves, raving vocals, and knotty, dissonant, and incisive guitar mayhem.
The last time the Jesus Lizard released an album, the world was different. The year was 1998: Most people counted themselves lucky to have a cell phone, Seinfeld finished its final season, Total Request Live was just hitting MTV, and among the year’s No. 1 albums were Dave Matthews Band’s Before These Crowded Streets, Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Korn’s Follow the Leader, and the Armageddonsoundtrack. These were the early days of mp3 culture—Napster didn’t come along until 1999—so if you wanted to hear those albums, you’d have to go to the store and buy a copy.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
PG contributor Tom Butwin takes a deep dive into LR Baggs' HiFi Duet system.
LR Baggs HiFi Duet High-fidelity Pickup and Microphone Mixing System
HiFi Duet Mic/Pickup System"When a guitar is “the one,” you know it. It feels right in your hands and delivers the sounds you hear in your head. It becomes your faithful companion, musical soulmate, and muse. It helps you express your artistic vision. We designed the Les Paul Studio to be precisely the type of guitar: the perfect musical companion, the guitar you won’t be able to put down. The one guitar you’ll be able to rely on every time and will find yourself reaching for again and again. For years, the Les Paul Studio has been the choice of countless guitarists who appreciate the combination of the essential Les Paul features–humbucking pickups, a glued-in, set neck, and a mahogany body with a maple cap–at an accessible price and without some of the flashier and more costly cosmetic features of higher-end Les Paul models."
Now, the Les Paul Studio has been reimagined. It features an Ultra-Modern weight-relieved mahogany body, making it lighter and more comfortable to play, no matter how long the gig or jam session runs. The carved, plain maple cap adds brightness and definition to the overall tone and combines perfectly with the warmth and midrange punch from the mahogany body for that legendary Les Paul sound that has been featured on countless hit recordings and on concert stages worldwide. The glued-in mahogany neck provides rock-solid coupling between the neck and body for increased resonance and sustain. The neck features a traditional heel and a fast-playing SlimTaper profile, and it is capped with an abound rosewood fretboard that is equipped with acrylic trapezoid inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets. The 12” fretboard radius makes both rhythm chording and lead string bending equally effortless, andyou’re going to love how this instrument feels in your hands. The Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons add to the guitar’s classic visual appeal, and together with the fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece, andGraph Tech® nut, help to keep the tuning stability nice and solid so you can spend more time playing and less time tuning. The Gibson Les Paul Studio is offered in an Ebony, BlueberryBurst, Wine Red, and CherrySunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes and arrives with an included soft-shell guitar case.
It packs a pair of Gibson’s Burstbucker Pro pickups and a three-way pickup selector switch that allows you to use either pickup individually or run them together. Each of the two pickups is wired to its own volume control, so you can blend the sound from the pickups together in any amount you choose. Each volume control is equipped with a push/pull switch for coil tapping, giving you two different sounds from each pickup, and each pickup also has its own individual tone control for even more sonic options. The endless tonal possibilities, exceptional sustain, resonance, and comfortable playability make the Les Paul Studio the one guitar you can rely on for any musical genre or scenario.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Introducing the Reimagined Gibson Les Paul Studio - YouTube
The two pedals mark the debut of the company’s new Street Series, aimed at bringing boutique tone to the gigging musician at affordable prices.
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.