Keep the giveaways rolling! Enter Stompboxtober Day 22 for your chance to win a pedal from Walrus Audio!
Walrus Audio Lore Reverse Soundscape Generator
Create the soundtrack to your storybook adventure with the Lore Reverse Soundscape Generator. Made up of five different programs, the Lore is an ambient creation machine built around reverse delay and reverbs. Featuring two DSP chips running in series, each with their own analog feedback path, the Lore takes you on an adventurous journey rich with themes of reversing, time-stretching, pitch-shifting, and vast ambiance.
Another day, another pedal! Enter Stompboxtober Day 21 to win a pedal from Eventide Audio!
Riptide Eventide Pedal
Ripping Distortion and Swirling Modulation
Ready to be swept away? Introducing Riptide, the result of extensive research into the iconic Uni-Vibe and legendary overdrives. Whether you're looking to ride the slow, vibey waves of lush modulation or dive headfirst into the pulsing depths of overdrive, Riptide invites you to play with power and attitude that's unapologetically bold.
Riptide features not one, but two distinct voices for each effect, all delivered in glorious stereo. Plus, you can effortlessly transition from Drive into Vibe or Vibe into Drive. Let ‘er rip.
Two Colors of Drive
Riptide features a balanced distortion with superb dynamics and touch sensitivity. Green is a dynamic, mid-range crunch. Red is a smooth and boosted overdrive.
Two Colors of Vibe
Authentic Shin-ei Uni-Vibe emulation captures the richness and modulation of the original, in stereo! Green is the traditional Uni-Vibe. Red is a deeper, phase-y Vibe.
Features:
- Four Effects: 2 Overdrives, 2 Uni-Vibes
- Drive ⇆ Vibe at the press of a button
- No Deep Dives: 3 Drive Knobs, 3 Vibe Knobs
- Five presets at your feet — more available with Eventide Device Manager (EDM) software
- Dual-action Active Footswitch is latching or momentary
- Rear panel Guitar/Line Level switch for matching impedances with guitar, synths, FX loop or DAW interface
- Map any combination of parameters to an Expression Pedal
- Use a single Aux switch for Tap Tempo or a triple Aux switch for easy preset changing
- MIDI capability over TRS (use with a MIDI to TRS cable Type A or converter box) or USB
- Multiple Bypass options: Buffered, Relay, DSP+FX or Kill dry
- Catch-up mode to dial in your sound when toggling between presets/parameters
- Eventide Device Manager PC or Mac application for software updates, system settings and creating/saving presets
PRS announces two new limited-edition models in the CE Family: the PRS CE 24-08 Black Limba Limited Edition and the PRS CE 24-08 Swamp Ash Limited Edition.
An eye-catching feature of these limited-edition guitars is their body wood. The black limba body offers rich, natural color and powerful but warm voice, while the swamp ash model has more pronounced grain and is known for its balanced tonal spectrum, with bright, articulate highs and a warm, defined low end.
“Every once in a while, we choose woods from our stock to create special instruments, and these guitars are great examples of just that,” said Paul Reed Smith, Founder and Managing General Partner, PRS Guitars. “The CE has been with us since the very early days of PRS. I love celebrating this model with new woods and by adding the ‘08’ switching system to it for the first time. These are real players’ guitars.”
Both the PRS CE 24-08 Black Limba and Swamp Ash Limited Edition guitars come with a 24 fret, 25” scale length maple neck and rosewood fretboard. Both models also feature PRS 85/15 pickups – made by PRS in Stevensville, Maryland. These pickups deliver exceptional clarity with extended high and low end.
Paired with PRS's intuitive 24-08 switching system, these CE 24-08 models offer a wide array of tonal possibilities with eight different pickup configurations that effortlessly transition between humbucking tones to crisp single-coil sounds. This is the first instance of this switching system on PRS’s CE model platform. The PRS patented tremolo bridge adds even more versatility to the sound.
These PRS CE 24-08 Limited Edition instruments were designed with players in mind. For complete specifications, video, and more, please visit https://prsguitars.com/ and follow PRS Guitars @prsguitars on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok to stay in the conversation.
Joe Satriani’s G3 returns with Reunion Live, an album that sets out to capture the energy and essence of their sold-out 2024 US tour.
This reunion features guitar icons Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai—who first joined forces in 1996. The live album showcases the boundary-pushing performances that define G3. Fans will enjoy full sets from each guitarist, including hits like Satriani’s “Sahara,” Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover,” and Vai’s “For the Love of God,” along with a thrilling encore jam of Hendrix and Clapton covers.
In addition to the live experience, Reunion Live offers new live albums from each artist, plus a collaborative supergroup LP. Available in multiple formats, the deluxe edition features a different colored vinyl for each artist, a special splatter LP for the jam sessions, and a 64-page photo book, divided into separate artists and jam chapters, documenting this monumental event. It is also available in a 2CD set with a 16-page photo booklet. The album perfectly mirrors the live tour format, with individual sets followed by an epic jam session featuring all three guitarists.
Pre-order here.
Satriani says, “This live album recorded at The Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles captures all the energy of the live performances while shining a spotlight on the ever-evolving art of playing the electric guitar.”
Tracklisting (all formats):
- Gravitas (Vai)
- Avalancha (Vai)
- Little Pretty Intro (Vai)
- Little Pretty (Vai)
- Tender Surrender (Vai)
- Zeus in Chains (Vai)
- Teeth of the Hydra (Vai)
- For the Love of God (Vai)
- Land of 1000 Dances (Johnson)
- Righteous (Johnson)
- Trail of Tears (Johnson)
- On-Ramp Improv (Johnson)
- Freeway Jam (Johnson)
- Desert Rose (Johnson)
- Venus Reprise (Johnson)
- Raspberry Jam Delta-V (Satriani)
- Surfing with the Alien (Satriani)
- Satch Boogie (Satriani)
- Sahara (Satriani)
- Nineteen Eighty (Satriani)
- Big Bad Moon (Satriani)
- Always with Me, Always with You (Satriani)
- Sumer Song (Satriani)
- Introductions
- Crossroads (Encore Jam)
- Spanish Castle Magic (Encore Jam)
- Born to Be Wild (Encore Jam)
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.