Now iPhone and the previously released Rig Manager iPad offer wireless control of the PROFILER Stage, PROFILER Head, and PROFILER Rack. This adds another dimension of parameter editing and fine-tuning of your guitar tone at home, in the studio, at rehearsal, and on stage.
You can add, swap and modify effects using the intuitive graphical user interface. You only need one hand to optimize your PROFILER performance while the other one is holding that power chord. It has never been easier to get the best tones out of the PROFILER.
KEMPER PROFILER - Rig Manager for iPhone released (Stage)
For more information, please visit kemper-amps.com.
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Introducing the Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 and 1964 SJ-200 Collector’s Edition from Gibson.
Made in close collaboration and with significant input from Jimmy Page, only 50 of the 1964 SJ-200 Collector’s Edition and 100 of the Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 will be available worldwide in this extraordinary limited run via authorized Gibson dealers and online at Gibson.com.
Jimmy Page SJ-200
Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 from Gibson Custom.
This special recreation features highly flamed AAA maple for the back and sides, along with AAA Sitka spruce for the top. The Super Jumbo body has multi-ply binding on the top and back and is slightly deeper than a standard SJ-200 at the neck joint, contributing to its unique sound.
The highly-figured maple motif continues with the 3-piece highly flamed maple neck, which features a comfortable Round profile, a bound rosewood fretboard with 20 standard frets, and mother-of-pearl Graduated Crown inlays. The 60s-style, solid rosewood Moustache bridge plate is also adorned with 60s-style mother-of-pearl hourglass and teardrop inlays and is equipped with a gold Tune-O-Matic bridge with nylon saddles, which also contributes to the unique sound ofthis beautiful Artist model. The bound headstock has gold Kluson Waffleback tuners withKeystone buttons that add to the guitar’s vintage appeal, and Jimmy Page has personally hand-signed the soundhole label of each Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 guitar.
Jimmy Page SJ-200 Collector's Edition
Jimmy Page 1964 SJ-200 Collector’s Edition from Gibson Custom.
The Gibson Custom Shop’s famed Murphy Lab artfully used their light aging techniques customized for this specific model to aid in recreating the original guitar honoring both the guitar and the legendary guitarist who made it famous, Jimmy Page.Jimmy Page has personally hand-signed the rear of the headstock of each Jimmy Page 1964SJ-200 Collector’s Edition guitar, which has been made in close collaboration and with significant input from Jimmy Page on everything from the sonic character and wear to the playability andeven the vivid Cherry Tea sunburst finish.
This very special recreation features highly flamedAAA maple for the back and sides, along with AAA Sitka spruce for the top. The Super Jumbo body has multi-ply binding on the top and back and is slightly deeper than a standard SJ-200at the neck joint, contributing to its unique sound that’s not quite like any other SJ-200.The stunning, highly-figured maple motif continues with the 3-piece highly flamed maple neck, which features a comfortable Round profile, a bound rosewood fretboard with 20 standard frets, and mother-of-pearl Graduated Crown inlays. The 60s-style, solid rosewood Moustache bridgeplate is also adorned with 60s-style mother-of-pearl hourglass and teardrop inlays and is equipped with a gold Tune-O-Matic bridge with nylon saddles, which also contributes to the unique sound of this Collector’s Edition model. The bound headstock has gold Kluson Waffleback tuners with Keystone buttons that add to the guitar’s vintage appeal.
Explore more at Gibson.com.
When Peter found this vintage 12-string, it was a busted-up mess—making it an easy $75 streetside bargain.
When our columnist stumbled upon this 12-string hanging streetside in NYC, he knew he’d struck gold.
In the pre-internet age, guitar hunting was a “shoe leather” pursuit, requiring continuously scouring music stores, pawnshops, junk stores, small ads, and flea markets. Late one Sunday back in the mid 1990s, I had scorelessly scoped the fleas and antique dealers around 26th St. and 6th Ave. in Manhattan before idly heading west to the usually barren “junk” fields that cropped up on 7th Ave.
Suddenly, hanging from a wire fence, this 12-string loomed into sight, but what a sorry sight it was. The detached back and several braces were stuffed into a shopping bag. The bridge was splintered, the top a nest of cracks, and all covered with a veneer of grime. The sad-looking wreck, tagged at $100, had been there all day. After a quick perusal (while silently calculating luthier bills), I proffered the classic end-of-the-day “50 bucks on that?” I got the dealer’s weary side-eye, but quickly accepted his predictable $75 counter. Later showing off my find to guitar friends, the general opinion was it had been better left hanging!
And yet, luthier Bill Merchant was willing to undertake the project. He sealed the many cracks in the top and reattached the badly shrunken back, adding extra center strips to fit it to the rim. He also reset the neck and crafted an exact replica bridge and bridge plate. Recently, after decades under tension, the top was beginning to fold up around the soundhole—so luthier Amy Mills added diagonal wing braces on either side to stabilize it. We left the extensive playwear (including missing pieces of the inlaid pickguard) unaltered, as it befits this battered but beautiful survivor of a unique time and place in New York musical history.
This guitar was made within walking distance of where I found it, on Kenmare St. in Manhattan. What’s left of the label reads “A. Galiano, fabbricante di Chitarre e Mandolini.” There was no “A. Galiano”; the name was a sort of generic brand shared by several small NYC Italian-American music shops from the 1910s into the Depression. The term “Italian Guild” has been applied to them, but there was no organized guild, just sometimes interrelated-but-independent immigrant luthiers working in New York’s bustling Italian community.
“Suddenly, hanging from a wire fence, this 12-string loomed into sight, but what a sorry sight it was.”
One such luthier was Raphael Ciani, often remembered as John D’Angelico’s uncle and mentor. A few Galianos also have “Ciani” on the label; identical features allow others to be attributed to him. Ciani appeared in New York dealing musical goods by 1904. By 1913, he had settled his shop at 57 Kenmare St., a block from where D’Angelico would set up in 1932. John was born in 1905; by around age 9, he was already apprenticing in Ciani’s shop.
Raphael died in 1923 at the young age of 44, leaving the 18-year-old D’Angelico in charge of the shop. Ciani/Galiano instruments of the 1920s were built under John’s supervision, if not by his own hand. Survivors include different styles of mandolins and rare 6- and 12-string maple-bodied flattops like this one, a distinctive shop specialty in the 1920s. Before f-hole archtops existed, these steel-string Galianos were intended for ensemble use, built to compete with accordions and violins and to cut through the din in cafes, restaurants and vaudeville theaters. Mostly associated with Piedmont blues players or Mexican performers like Lydia Mendoza, 1910–’20s 12-string guitars were cited at the time for supposedly offering the greatest possible volume.
This is a large guitar for the period, 16 1/8" wide and 4 1/2" deep, with a 26" scale. It has solid maple back and sides and a spruce top bordered with colored-wood marquetry and bound in rosewood. The mandolin-style celluloid pickguard with inset pearl is inlaid into the top. The swooping “mustache” bridge sits over a wide, flat bridge plate and ladder bracing. The one-piece, soft-V mahogany neck has a bound “ebonized” fretboard with a common New York-shaped pearl inlay pattern. The initials “JV” are inlaid in pearl on the bound headstock. Such Ciani/Galianos can rarely be dated exactly, but a similar 6-string guitar exists with “July 15 ’22” on the label.
Only a handful of these deluxe maple Ciani/Galianos are still in existence. The National Music Museum in South Dakota has an even more ornate 12-string. Country pioneer Ernest Stoneman played a similar jumbo 6-string that lacked the inlaid pickguard and personalized headstock. He likely obtained it during 1925–’26 New York recording trips. Before his Gibson endorsement, Nick Lucas’ 1922 Pathé Actuelle recordings “Teasing the Frets” and “Picking the Guitar” (the first recorded flatpicked guitar instrumentals) were almost certainly waxed with a Ciani/Galiano. In a 1970s interview, Lucas related buying the guitar in New York for $35 in the early ’20s.
About a century along, this Galiano 12-string remains a fully playable instrument, offering a powerful, bright-but-still-mellow sound and plenty of volume. If relegated to historical footnotes now, the best Ciani/Galiano instruments were not only beautiful but advanced for their time. Raphael Ciani did not live to see it, but his protégé would build on what they accomplished in the next decade, becoming the defining master of the archtop guitar.
Our columnist’s beloved Fender Super Reverb head goes under the knife.
Vintage Fenders are some of the best-sounding amplifiers around, but from time to time, they need a bit of love to give up the goods. Here are the top issues you’ll encounter with your black- and silver-panel Fender amps, and how to fix them.
Trouble and worrying are part of a vintage tube amp owner’s life. In this article, I will try to teach some basic troubleshooting for vintage Fender amps. It will only require a little practice, patience, and, most importantly, curiosity, which to me is the single most important skill in life—we can accomplish great things by reading, seeking advice, trying, failing, and not giving up. So, let’s start!
As usual, I will refer to the silver- and black-panel Fender amps, but everything is applicable to earlier amps as well. I will often refer to tubes: On a Deluxe Reverb, for example, the tubes are referred to from V1 to V9. Always consult your amplifier’s schematic to confirm these placements.
No Reverb
The reverb tank is the most delicate component of these amps. The springs, wires, and soldering joints are thin and weak, and the reverb cables and plugs are also easily damaged, as they are exposed on the backside of the chassis.
First, check the plugs on both the amp and reverb tank. Unplug and switch the input and output to see if the previous player made a mistake. Often, the plugs are damaged and not conducting current, or the inner wire or outer insulation are broken. I recommend replacing old cables with new, vintage-correct ones if you suspect the slightest cable or plug issue.
“Trouble and worrying are part of a vintage-tube-amp owner’s life.”
A bad V3 or V4 preamp tube may also cause reverb loss. If replacing tubes or reverb cables does not help, you should try hooking up another amp’s reverb tank to verify whether you have an amp or reverb tank issue. The reverb springs may also have jumped out of position and need to be re-attached. I recommend refreshing soldering joints here.
No Vibrato
First, the footswitch must be plugged in for the vibrato to work. If you don’t have one or suspect that it’s malfunctioning, you can either buy or make yourself an “always-on” phono plug that is shorted internally with solder. A bad vibrato-driver tube may also cause vibrato loss, which is fixed easily by replacing the V5 with another 12AX7. If none of this helps, a tech should open the amp and inspect the vibrato tube circuitry, and/or replace the opto-oscillator component.
Blown Fuse
Pull all the tubes before replacing a blown fuse. If the fuse blows repeatedly without any tubes installed, a tech should be involved for inspecting the filter caps/resistors, power transformer, and the high-wattage resistors on the power-tube socket pins.
If the pilot lamp light is on when all tubes are pulled out, start inserting tubes one by one from the V1 rectifier tube. Turn power/standby on. If the fuse blows, the rectifier tube is bad. Then, insert both power tubes and turn power/standby on. If the fuse blows, you need new power tubes, and possibly new screen and plate resistors. Continue this procedure for each of the preamp tubes until you identify corrupted tubes that draw too much current.
Weak Tone
Check speaker cable(s) and speaker terminals. I find it useful to connect to a second amp’s speakers to determine if it’s the speakers or an amp that is the problem. (Remember to turn off or set the amp in standby whenever speakers are disconnected.)
Then, verify that the tubes are working by following the previous “blown fuse” procedure. Look for loose power-tube sockets causing bad connections by gently pushing them around in the socket. If speakers, tubes, and sockets are working fine, a tech should further inspect the amp.
Distortion, Reduced Volume, or Weak Bass
When playing powerful 40-watt amps at low volume, it can be difficult to hear if only one tube is working. If one of the power tubes is malfunctioning, you will experience distortion and farty bass. Non-matching power tubes can also result in distortion and reduced clean headroom, which is detected by measuring with a bias meter.
Preamp tubes in wrong positions may also affect volume response and cause an amp to distort too early or too late. Check all tubes and replace them one by one with fresh ones as you listen for tone changes. Sometimes we prefer the wrong tubes because we like more distortion. (My tube strategy is to replace tubes only when they fail entirely. I don’t mind weaker power, rectifier, or phase-inverter tubes since these amps are more than loud enough.)
Rattling Noise
Loose screws and nuts can cause rattling noise and should be inspected and tightened regularly, including on the chassis, baffle board, tilt-back legs, speaker, handle, and anywhere else. If the baffle board is warped and worn so that the screws are not tight, I never hesitate to install a new, solid-pine baffle. This usually improves tone and robustness compared to old, warped MDF baffles
Dakota Dave Hull plays a cozy set in Japan with Takasi Hamada on his right, and Xavier Ohmura on his left.
A chance glance at a Stefan Grossman LP led our columnist to discover the acoustic connections between the U.S. and Japan.
When acoustic guitarists like myself hear an album that just sounds so good, we might fuss less about gear and home in more on performance and atmosphere. Indeed, those were the things that blew me away on country-blues guru Stefan Grossman’s album from the late ’70s, Acoustic Guitar. Dynamic playing with a healthy big-room sound, the production was a far cry from a lot of Grossman’s late-’60s output, some of which was recorded in closets on budget reel-to-reel decks.
The back cover of this particular LP offers some important clues, including one that turned out to be the jumping-off point for this column: Acoustic Guitar appeared on Japanese EMI subsidiary East World, and was recorded at the EMI studios in Toshiba, Japan, by an entirely Japanese crew. Stefan reveals some more details to help me understand why I found the sound of this record so striking:
“At EMI at the time, the big thing for audiophiles was direct-to-disc recording, which is funny, because that’s the way that all the old records from the 1920s were recorded. You would have to do a non-stop performance, while the masters were cut in real time. It was like a concert. Play a song, wait 3-5 seconds before playing the next song. You couldn’t stop. You would do two sets right through, one for each side. Then you would do it twice more, because the masters for direct-to-disc were then only good for a certain number of copies. If the label sold out of the first pressing, they couldn’t go back to the first master, they would go to the second, then the third. So, each set was ever so slightly different: the same music, but different changes and licks.”
I’ve discovered that in the world of fingerpicking acoustic guitar, there has been a long and fruitful exchange of ideas and experiences between players from the U.S. and Japan. I spoke to several amazing guitarists from these countries, and one name that came up often was Tokio Uchida.
As it happens, Uchida got turned on to fingerstyle guitar when he read about Grossman during one of Grossman’s earliest tours of Japan in the late ’70s. Uchida became a student of Grossman through correspondence and study, visiting the U.S. for the first time in 1987. Uchida’s playing impressed Grossman, and he appeared on stage with his hero at a concert in California. The two became fast friends. Uchida later appeared at a festival marking Robert Johnson’s 100th birthday in Greenwood, Mississippi, and recorded a duet album with Grossman. Back in Japan, Uchida has followed in the footsteps of his mentor, writing his own original music and also starting the TAB Guitar School, which offers instructional materials for acoustic styles. Uchida has also promoted concerts and tours for many fingerpicking heavyweights, including Duck Baker, Ernie Hawkins, Pat Donahue, and Woody Mann.
“Every single venue owner that I’ve worked with over there knows how to run sound. They’re listening rooms, and everything works!”
One of the players that Uchida brought to Japan for their first visit was Minneapolis ragtime guitar legend Dakota Dave Hull. Hull has since toured Japan multiple times, and just this year did a five-week, 33-date run that resulted in his new CD, Live in Japan. Hull offers some insights on differences between the American and Japanese acoustic scenes: “A lot of the venues are tiny. It’s pretty insular, not a lot of crossover between old time, bluegrass, blues, trad jazz. We end up playing in small rooms; some might be as small as a dozen people! But these rooms are built around the idea of live music; the stage and the sound system went in first. Every single venue owner that I’ve worked with over there knows how to run sound. They’re listening rooms, and everything works!”
During an early tour of Japan, Hull was paired on bills with a humble ragtime guitar wizard named Takasi Hamada, and the two hit it off in a big way, collaborating on all of Hull’s Japanese excursions ever since. Hamada is, in my opinion, one of the finest ever purveyors of ragtime on the acoustic guitar. His playing is very sophisticated, but never sounds dusty or academic. It has a joyous bounce, and he makes turning 88 piano keys into 6 strings seem almost easy!
Hamada’s signature sound is a combination of his amazing arranging and playing ability, but also a tuning that he devised himself. “I really wanted to arrange Tom Shea’s piano piece ‘Little Wabash Special’ for guitar, so I devised an irregular tuning based on C as C–Ab–C–F–C–Eb,” Hamada explains. “In 1995, I changed the 6th string to Eb so that I could play beautiful alternating bass: Eb–Ab–C–F–C–Eb. It seemed to suit me, and I later named it ‘Otarunay Tuning’ after the Ainu name of my hometown, Otaru.” Since to this day ragtime is predominantly played and taught on piano, its a testament to Hamada’s mastery of the form that he was one of the only guitar players invited to appear at the 2023 Scott Joplin International Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, Missouri.