Dip a toe in the jazz-blues pool with these simple chord subs.
Grant Green was a luminary in the realm of jazz guitar and crafted a distinctive style that seamlessly blended bebop, blues, and soul. His approach to the instrument was characterized by an unparalleled sense of groove, melodic inventiveness, and a deep understanding of harmony.
Green possessed a remarkable ability to spin intricate melodic lines with a fluidity that seemed almost effortless, often favoring single-note runs and phrasing that displayed his innate sense of swing. He understood the power of leaving room within his solos, allowing his notes to breathe and resonate, thereby enhancing the emotional impact of his playing.
In this lesson we are focusing on his approach to a jazz-blues progression—which was a hallmark of Green’s style. Learning to create lines based around chord tones will ensure that your playing will not only follow the changes, but also be more melodic.
All 9V blocks are not created equal. Here's what to look for to avoid hiss, hum, and crackle.
(Originally published April 22, 2020)
At the dawn of the guitar-effects age, powering pedals was relatively simple. If an effects pedal didn't take a standard 9V battery like your AM transistor radio, it plugged into the wall like your avocado-green toaster. Forever dissatisfied, guitar players eventually grew weary of changing batteries, and plugging stuff into the wall was kind of a drag, too.
As the industry was looking to eliminate its batteries and Edison plugs, the effects purveyor Boss went a long way to standardizing pedal power by putting a 2.1 mm coaxial power jack on all their pedals, and while their market dominance made the 1/8" jack on certain Ibanez and Pro Co pedals outliers, even they couldn't stick to one standard for long as they transitioned from 12V ACA spec pedals to 9V PSA spec pedals.
Once that growing pain subsided, it was relatively peaceful on the pedal-powering front for many years, and the standardization allowed companies to produce power supplies that let players power all their pedals simultaneously and without harming a single battery. Some supplies had a single output with daisy chains to fan out power to multiple pedals. Some were isolated, offering an individual power port for each pedal and eliminating daisy-chaining all pedals in a parallel fashion. Isolated supplies were a huge development in pedal-powering history, so let's dig in there before wading further into the power morass of today.
In this context, isolated power supplies are those supplies that are essentially a series of separate power sources in one enclosure. Each supply stands on its own with no direct connection to any of the other supplies, and, as such, the effects they power have no direct connection to one another through their respective power ports.
There are several reasons power supply isolation can be anything from favorable to crucial. First, some pedals have a positive-ground scheme, where the audio ground of the effect is connected to the positive terminal of the battery, usually due to the type of transistors used in the pedal's circuit.
Isolated power supplies are those supplies that are essentially a series of separate power sources in one enclosure.
While fuzz pedals are often set up this way, most pedals have a more conventional negative-ground scheme. If you parallel connect the power of a positive-ground pedal to a negative-ground pedal, and then connect their audio grounds together with a patch cable, you'll cause a power supply short, and neither pedal will get power. The power source will complain, too! Isolated supplies mimic a battery as each device gets its very own power source to use independently of any other device.
Crosstalk is another reason for isolation. Some pedals don't play well with others when powered in parallel. Like so many playground bullies, tremolos and vibratos can tick and pop while overdrives and DSP effects with switch-mode supplies and high-speed processors can whine, and they can torment their boardmates with their glitches. These deficiencies might not bother the offending pedal, but the trash they put on their power supply ports gets leaked to other connected devices that may not be able to reject the noise quite as well. Isolation breaks the link and prevents such crosstalk.
The last reason for isolation we'll list here is ground loops. In general, for guitar rigs, it's best practice to have just one ground path. Typically, that one path should be the ground connections of all of your patch cables extending in a line from guitar's output to amp's input. Daisy-chaining power creates other ground paths that make closed loops from one section of your signal flow to another. These ground loops can make your rig more susceptible to hum pickup in the presence of electro-magnetic fields. If you have daisy-chained pedals both in front of an amp and in its FX loop, and dozens of feet of cable between them, the associated ground loops can become very large and produce a great deal of noise. Using an isolated supply disconnects the links that make the loop, and the induced hum can no longer be sustained.
With isolation addressed, power supplies remained relatively unchanged for many years. Then, digital-signal processing became cost-feasible for common use in guitar-pedal effects. We'll dig further into their high-current demands and how they've complicated the power supply marketplace in my next column.
A somewhat rare 6-string puts the groovy and gonzo guitar design aesthetic of 1960s Japan on full display.
Does size matter? Well, according to yours truly, size does matter—especially when it comes to guitars. Being an extra-large dude, I've often gravitated to guitars that are, well, extra large. I love my big Gretsch Tennessee Rose and old Harmony Rocket because they just feel right in my hands and strapped up. I've owned plenty of “tiny" guitars, but I've never really bonded with any of them. Even a Telecaster seems a little small to me! So, I'd like to talk about one of the biggest of the vintage made-in-Japan electrics: the Marlin PA-25.
For comparison, my Gibson ES-125 measures 16" across at the middle. The Harmony Rocket is a little smaller at 15" and change, and my Tennessee Rose is about 16". These are the guitars that feel really good to me. The Marlin, however, measures across the body at over 17". That's a lot of guitar and I frickin' love it! What's more is that it follows the late-'60s Japanese design aesthetic of guitar making, with gonzo and extreme front of mind.
The Marlin PA-25 was designed by the short-lived Idol Company in Japan and featured in the same lineup as the PB-26 bass I wrote about in April 2020 [“This Bass Might Be Responsible for the Pointy Headstocks of the '80s"]. The PA-25 was probably the most extreme 6-string offering in the catalog, but sales were limited to the Japanese market. An unknown importer did bring these guitars to the U.S. for a short time, so you can actually find them in the states, but it is akin to finding Teisco Spectrum 5s or Guyatone Telstars. They're rare, but totally fun to track down.
Idol was one of three Japanese companies—along with Firstman and Honey—to sprout from the Teisco Gen Gakki factory outside of Matsumoto. When Teisco was bought by Kawai in 1967, they shifted their guitar manufacturing to Hamamatsu. The old Teisco factory was left dormant for a short time, but production soon started again in earnest in the late '60s. Idol and Honey were shuttered within a few years, but all three brands featured similar construction and interesting designs, and left us with some rather crazy guitars from the time period. These days, the factory now makes a rather good Japanese beer.
Photo 2
This big boy has a multi-bound neck and body, along with some super-rad UFO-shaped domed knobs. The bridge and tremolo are standard fare for the time, but both actually work well. The bridge is pinned to the body and the guitar always feels stable and stays in tune. I especially love the body cutouts and pickguard, which really add to the flow of the design. The same goes for the horns, which are slightly asymmetrical and just scream Pac-Man at first glance.
The body itself is rather thin (1 3/4") and has absolutely no arch on the front or back, which is something I seldom see with hollowbody guitars. This sort of build does put a bit more stress at the bridge, but they generally hold up over the years. Unfortunately, the finishes do not. I've owned two of these guitars and they both suffered from long checking lines in the lacquer. Still, it's a small price to pay for looking so cool!
Photo 3
Sonically, these guitars pack some punch. The two single-coils (Photo 2) are super bright and make me want to play with the loudest slapback delay I can muster. The PA-25s are also kind of percussive in a way I adore.
As for the Marlin headstock badge (Photo 3), apparently the logos were applied with some sort of gel or raised plastic that never lasts. Every Marlin guitar I've seen has been left with a ghostly image of what was probably once a cool-looking logo.
After writing this, I'm feeling the need to go downstairs and give my PA-25 a little love in the form of playing the heck out of it. And I think I'll go with Howlin' Wolf's "Built for Comfort."
1968 Idol PA-25 Guitar Demo
Mike Dugan runs from clean to filthy as he plays this 1968 Marlin PA-25—with a little assist from John, Paul, George, and Ringo.