Analog modulation guided by a digital brain willing to get weird.
Fun, fluid operation. Capable of vintage-thick textures at heavier gain settings. High headroom for accommodating other effects.
MIDI required to access more than one preset—which you’ll probably long for, given the breadth of voices.
$369
Kernom Elipse
If you love modulation—and lots of it—you can eat up a lot of pedalboard space fast. Modulation effects can be super-idiosyncratic and specialized, which leads to keeping many around, particularly if you favor the analog domain. TheKernom Elipse multi-modulator is pretty big and, at a glance, might not seem the best solution for real estate scarcity. Yet the Elipse is only about 1 1/4" wider than two standard-sized Boss pedals side by side. And by combining an analog signal path with digital control, it makes impressive, efficient use of its size—stuffing fine-sounding harmonic tremolo, phaser, rotary-style, chorus, vibrato, flanger, and Uni-Vibe-style effects into a single hefty enclosure. Many of the effects can also be blended and morphed into one another using a rotary control aptly called “mood.” The Elipse, most certainly, has many of those.
Modulator With Many Masks
Anywhere pedal hounds meet and chat you’ll encounter spirited talk about the way pedals sound relative to a certain gold standard. It makes sense. Benchmarks are useful for understanding anything. But one of the things I like best about the Kernom Elipse is how it eludes easy comparison to such standards, and how the fluidity of its controls make it sound unique. As with any review, I compared the Elipse to as many pedals as I have that are relevant. Here, that included an Ibanez analog chorus, Phase 90 and Small Stone phasers, an optical Uni-Vibe-style pedal, a Boss BF-2,Mu-Tron Phasor II clone, and more. But what made the Elipse stand out in this company was function as much as sound. Operating the Elipse with an open mind, rather than a quest to replicate another pedal’s sound, leads to intriguing, unique, and unusual tones more specialized modulators don’t always offer.
“The Elipse is pretty ambitious for an analog modulator, but doesn’t spread itself too thin.”
Three of the Elipse’s controls—speed, mix, and depth—function predictably. The latter two controls, however, change function depending on the pedal’s mood (or mode). In tremolo mode, setting the mix at noon generates complex, warbly, and elastic harmonic tremolo-like textures. At maximum, it shifts to a more binary, on/off sound akin to optical or bias tremolo. In chorus/vibrato mode, the noon position marks a 50/50 wet/dry mix of pitch shift and dry signal—the ingredients for any chorus. At maximum, the signal is 100 percent wet, yielding pure pitch-shift vibrato. The shape control, meanwhile, adjusts the LFO waveform. In tremolo mode that means moving between triangle- and sine-wave pulses. The swirl control is the wild card of the bunch. It adds big-time dimension to the Elipse in all modes. Through most of its range, it slathers slow phase on whatever modulation is already bubbling and burbling. In the latter third of its range, though, it also adds gain, and by the time you reach maximum, the output is discernibly thickened in the low-midrange zone. The gain and low-mid bump helps compensate for the perceived volume loss intrinsic to modulation. But they also excite different segments of the harmonic spectrum as you manipulate other modulation-shaping parameters—adding expansiveness as well as the thickness you might miss from vintage modulators.
Enunciation Modulation
Compared to many of the modulation pedals I used for contrast, the Elipse has a high-mid-forward voice. This frequency bias has advantages. It lends most of the Elipse’s modulation textures a clear, airy essence that keeps their character present when adding fuzz or big delay and reverb effects. It makes some modulations less chewy, but it’s also easy to imagine such textures slotting easily into a mix where some thicker analog modulators would gobble up harmonic space.
The basic EQ profile also makes it easier to probe the nuances in the “in-between” voices, living in the liminal spaces between pedal moods. When you start to play with these blended textures and various blends of drive, shape, mix, and depth, you encounter many sounds that veer from vintage templates in cool ways. Lathering on gain from the swirl control and lazy depth rates made the hybrid chorus/flange intense, dreamy, and enveloping. Similar blends of slow, heavy harmonic tremolo and rotary speaker sounded massive too.
The Verdict
The Elipse is pretty ambitious for an analog modulator, but doesn’t spread itself too thin. Players looking for one or two very specific modulation sounds might find the interrelationships between the Elipse’s controls too complex. The inability to save more than a single onboard preset without a MIDI switcher might frustrate guitarists used to all-digital pedals’ preset capabilities. Players that already have MIDI switchers in their rigs, however, could fall hard for the ability to switch between Elipse’s myriad, complex, analog-colored textures. With or without MIDI, it is an excellent analog modulator that offers colors galore.
Fabulous neck with just-right fatness. Distinctive tone profile. Smooth, stable vibrato. Ice blue metallic and aluminum look delish together.
Higher output pickups could turn off Fender-geared traditionalists.
$939
Eastman FullerTone DC’62
An affordable version of Eastman’s U.S.-made solidbody rolls with unique, well-executed features—at a price and quality level that rivals very tough competition.
Eastman’s instruments regularly impress in terms ofquality and performance. A few left my PG colleagues downright smitten. But if Eastman isn’t a household name among guitarists, it might be a case of consumer psychology: Relative to most instruments built in China, Eastmans are expensive. So, if you spend your life longing for a Gibson 335 and a comparable (if superficially fancier) Eastman costs just 20 percent less than the least expensive version of the real deal, why not save up for a bit longer and get the guitar of your dreams?
For some players, though, such brand-devotional hang ups are obstacles to getting the best instrument for the best price. Some just like having an alternative to legacy brands and models that live as dreams in a zillion other heads. As Eastman evolved as a company, they’ve paid close attention to both of those market segments—creating refined original designs like the El Rey and Romeo while keeping quality, execution, and playability at an exceptional standard. With the introduction of the FullerTone instruments, a series of Beijing-built guitars modeled after Eastman’s California-built, Otto D’Ambrosio-designed solidbodies, Eastman’s price/performance goals reach a kind of apex. Because the FullerTone guitars aren’t archtops or thinlines and use bolt-on necks, they range from just $799 (for the simpler SC’52) to $899 (for the more full-featured DC’62 reviewed here). That’s a competitive market bracket, to say the least, but Fullertone delivers the goods in ways that count to players.
Somewhere in an Alternate O.C….
You don’t need to be a certified Mensa member to suss the FullerTone’s design benchmarks. The name’s likeness to that of an Orange County locale where historically important electric guitar design took place is a less-than-covert tip of the hat. More tangible evidence of the DC’62’s Stratocaster inspirations exist in the shape of a bolt-on, 25.5"-scale neck, six-on-a-side headstock, a curvaceous double-cut body, and vibrato. (The more Telecaster-like DC’52 uses a T-style bridge and comes sans vibrato).
Many of these design nods, however, are distinguished by Eastman’s refinements. The patented neck joint, for instance, mimics that of the upmarket, U.S.-built Eastman D’Ambrosio. It employs just two screws, bolted into steel anchors in the neck itself. It’s a robust, clever design. The joint, which works in part like a long tenon, provides extra neck-to-body contact, making the effortless access to all 24 medium-jumbo frets all the more remarkable. (The fretwork, by the way, is impeccable).
“The neck’s profile will pique the interest of anyone bored with the sameness of generic, modern C-profiles.”
The neck itself—roasted maple, satin-finished, and capped with a 12"-radius Indian rosewood fretboard—uses an angled headstock design that differs from Fender convention, but the break angle is much shallower than a Gibson, which aids tuning stability. The neck’s profile, though, will pique the interest of anyone bored with the sameness of generic, modern C-profiles. Eastman calls it a medium-round profile, but that doesn’t do justice to its substance, which calls to mind Fender’s chunkier 1960s necks. It’s not a shape for everyone, and shredders and players with really petite hands might be less enthused, but it’s exceptionally comfortable, fills the palm naturally, and, at least for me, induces less fatigue than slimmer necks.
The Strat-style vibrato is a smart, functional evolution of a classic form. The arm sits securely in a rubber sleeve that keeps it precisely where you want, and the bridge itself is fixed to a substantial brass block and features individually intonatable saddles. The vibrato is so smooth and tuning stable that you will want to use it often. Really aggressive, twitchy vibrato technique can produce knocking against the body as you pitch up—at least as it’s set up at the factory. Otherwise, it’s fun and forgiving to use.
I would be remiss, by the way, if I didn’t mention how good the black limba body looks in satin ice blue metallic with a brushed aluminum pickguard. Though the DC’62 is available in black and desert sand (the latter with gold anodized pickguard), this particular combination is beautiful, elegant, and tasteful in a way that accentuates D’Ambrosio’s timeless lines.
Substantially Yours
The DC’62’s pickups are produced by Tonerider, and they include two stacked noiseless alnico 5 single-coils in the center and neck positions (measuring 7.9 ohms) as well as an alnico 2 unit, also measuring 7.9 ohms, that Eastman calls a “soapbar humbucker with gold-foil cover.” That’s a curious mash up of nomenclature. Traditionally, “soapbar” pickups are P-90s, which are single-coils, and though the gold-foil-style cover looks cool, it doesn’t lend any gold-foil-ness in terms of construction. Tone-wise it inhabits a unique place. Some aspects of its response evoke a Stratocaster bridge pickup rendered large. There are also hints of a Telecaster bridge unit’s meatiness. But of all the pickups I compared it to (at one point there was an SG, Telecaster, Wide Range-equipped Telecaster Deluxe, Stratocaster, and J Mascis Jazzmaster strewn about the room), it sounds most like a Rickenbacker Hi-Gain in an ’80s 330. That’s cool. I think Hi-Gains are underrated and sound fabulous. But the Tonerider unit is definitely not an S-type pickup in any traditional sense. The stacked single-coils, too, deviate significantly from the Stratocaster’s sonic mold. They are noiseless, as advertised, but have heat and push that make a vintage S-style pickup sound glassy and comparatively thin.
The Verdict
With a fantastic neck, smooth playability, and tuning stability that keep you glued to the instrument, the top-quality DC’62 is flat-out fun to play, which is good, given that at $899 it’s in a price class with Fender’s excellent Mexico-made Player II guitars and PRS’s superlative SE series, to name a few. But the DC’62 offers a unique palette of tones that don’t fit neatly into any box, and with a shape that breaks from tradition, it’s a competitively priced way to take sonic and stylistic paths much less trodden
This late-’90s Masterbilt was made to mimic the feeling and look of vintage luxury.
This collaborative effort between Japanese and American guitar builders aimed for old-school quality without breaking the bank.
I recently called a rideshare to pick me up from the airport and was surprised when the driver pulled up in a Jaguar. I’d never been in one and was stunned at how quiet it was, and how the backseat was as comfortable as a living room couch, but retained a refined look. This 1998 Masterbilt prototype reminds me of that airport ride.
Some guitars just feel expensive. Not in an “I shouldn't be touching this, lest I scratch it” way so much as simply exuding luxury. Maybe it’s the flawless ebony fretboard, making gliding up and down the neck feel like ice skating. Or perhaps it’s the slim, ’60s-style neck shape which felt instantly comfortable in my small hands. It may have something to do with the sumptuously low 2/32" action at the 12th fret, requiring hardly any effort to play.
Makes sense, considering this guitar’s origin story. Mac Yasuda was born in Nishinomiya, Japan. At 15, he discovered the music of Hank Snow and fell in love with country music and the guitar itself. He stole a classical guitar from his cousin (“He never played it,” said Yasuda) and started a band with his friends. Yasuda traveled to the States in the ’70s and after picking up his first vintage guitar from a pawn shop, he was hooked. He began scoping out gear for his friends, which eventually grew into a shop called Mac’s Guitar Gallery in Kobe, Japan. By the ’90s, he estimated he had owned between 4,000 and 5,000 instruments, and his collection was valued at $3 million. He has authored several books about vintage guitars and is widely considered one of the world's preeminent authorities on the subject.
Yasuda is also an accomplished musician. While in Nashville in the ’80s—perhaps for one of the half-dozen times he’s performed on theGrand Ole Opry—he met Greg Rich, an instrument designer who was then head of Gibson’s banjo division. Yasuda enlisted Greg Rich and another guitar maker named Mark Taylor to produce a line of high-quality, vintage-style instruments under the name Masterbilt. “Vintage guitars are fine, but they're limited,” said Yasuda at the time. His Masterbilt guitars would give us mere mortals the chance to get a taste of the luxurious feel of a fine vintage instrument. Masterbilt debuted at NAMM in 1997, and it’s still unknown how many guitars were actually produced. The trademark of the Masterbilt name was cancelled in 2005 and has since been used by other brands, like Epiphone.
“Some folks think anything from the ’80s or before is vintage, but perhaps the fact that time has continued to march on should be factored in.”
Fanny's House of Music believes this guitar to be an early prototype, one of six ever made. Three were sunburst and three were natural. Playing it feels like playing any fine vintage 335; funny when you consider that at 27 years old, some would consider this Masterbilt vintage itself. The notion of what is considered truly “vintage” is hotly debated on Reddit every few months. Some folks think anything from the ’80s or before is vintage, but perhaps the fact that time has continued to march on should be factored in. Some guitars from the ’80s are now 45 years old! We consider guitars from the ’90s to be vintage at this point, so this 1998 Masterbilt prototype fits right in.
This Masterbilt is now 27 years old. In your books, does that make it a “vintage” guitar?
Photo by Madison Thorn
It’s a good example of how history and passion can intersect to create something special. This guitar tells a story of dedication to quality and an appreciation for the feel of a well-made instrument. Whether or not a 27-year-old guitar qualifies as “vintage” may be up for debate, but the magic in this guitar definitely isn’t. If you’re ever in Nashville, stop by Fanny’s and take it for a spin. You might find yourself feeling a bit like I felt after my unexpected ride in a Jaguar: getting a glimpse into the world of understated elegance, where refinement isn't about flash but about experiencing something crafted to near perfection.
SOURCES: namm.com, Los Angeles Times, Blue Book of Guitar Values, Vintage Guitar, Guitar-List.