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First Impressions
The guitar we got our mitts on was the Exhibition Custom Wild Cherry, which features a black wild cherry body, with a beautiful, tiger-striped, Eastern maple top. The neck is a curly maple/quilted maple laminate with black cherry stringers running between the two woods. Topping off the neck is an ebony fingerboard with Birdseye maple binding. Another unique feature of the neck is a volute, effectively strengthening the joint between the neck and headstock. Other niceties include Birdseye pickup surrounds and cover-plates, intriguing deer and elk antler knobs, switch tips and tuner buttons and unique, Southwestern-flavored fingerboard inlays.
To be honest, pictures do not do the Zuni justice. In particular, the antler knobs, and angular fingerboard inlays seem almost overdone and garish in photos, but in person the effect is quite striking, giving the guitar an unexpected, almost understated, charm. It’s as if the over-the-top pieces balance out the gorgeous top, not giving any one element too much visual strength over the other, as can sometimes happen with fancy-topped guitars having otherwise simple elements. All of the little parts come together to make a very attractive whole, with the overall effect being almost organic in appearance.
Picking the guitar up lets you know it is no featherweight, but it isn’t a heavy guitar either – given all of the maple that it contains, it comes in solidly middle of the road. The neck feels nice; once again, not too big, and not too small, with a comfortable, familiar profile – think of a medium Gibson profile. I can’t imagine anyone not getting along with it.
When we first pulled the Zuni Wild Cherry out of its surgical-looking, metallic flight case, it had a touch too much relief. A quick scan of the headstock above the nut revealed no truss rod cover. A glance down toward the end of the fingerboard was also fruitless, but further inspection revealed a tiny hole between the nineteenth and twentieth fret. After a quick call to Michael to make sure I was on the right track, I inserted the provided two-millimeter screw, and an ebony plug popped out, allowing access to the truss rod. I adjusted the rod, replaced the plug, and the access was once again nearly invisible. A nice touch, to be sure.
| “Every aspect of the guitar screams handcrafted” |
Sounding Off
The Zuni features an intuitive control layout, with the pickup selector switch on the upper bout, and two volumes and a master tone right where you would expect them. The tone control is push-pull, allowing coil splitting of the custom, Paul Thielscherwound humbuckers. Tuning up threw me a bit of a curve ball: just as rosewood acoustics tune differently than mahogany, and Strats tune up differently than Teles, it’s been a while since I’ve tuned up a guitar with laminated neck. The Zuni reminded me of an old Firebird I once had – also with a laminated neck, albeit with neck-through construction. It almost fought me while I tried to tune it, but stayed solidly in tune once it was there. That said, I wouldn’t classify it as difficult to tune, just different from what I’m used to.
Plugging in, the Zuni had no problems with an EL34-equipped combo, sounding nice and snarly on the bridge pickup. I found it tonally similar to a P-90, but with the output typical of a humbucking pickup. This guitar really has a lot of clarity, and would be a good choice to drive an effects-laden rig. Through a blackface-type amp, it comes across as a bit bright, preferring Marshall and tweed circuits and the resulting warmth.
Rolling off the tone control while on the rear pickup – my preferred method for approximating Clapton’s woman tone – failed to work here, instead sounding more like a notched wah, which is a cool, if somewhat less useful, tone. It was easy enough to dial in the woman tone with a simple flick of the selector switch, engaging the neck pickup, then backing the tone knob off a bit. With the neck pickup in split-coil mode, rolling off the tone around two-thirds yields some really convincing Strat sounds, not at all what I was expecting. Switching back to the bridge pickup while still in single-coil mode landed us squarely in Tele territory, yet another unexpected surprise. The big bonus here is that the neck pickup really shines for lower gain sounds. I found myself using the neck pickup more than usual, finding it quite articulate, and all the while retaining that familiar neck pickup warmth. So, does the Zuni do classic rock crunch? Yes. Convincing SRV neck pickup sounds? Check. A decent chicken-pickin’ facsimile? Yup.
Which leads us to Zuni’s next surprise. I freely admit that I had many preconceptions about Zuni guitars, and one of them – possibly due to their über-organic appearance – was that they would be more along the lines sonically of an old Les Paul or SG. Imagine my amazement when it handled the high-gain thing with aplomb. For such an idiosyncratic looking machine, this guitar is surprisingly versatile.
The Final Mojo
The Zuni exudes a handcrafted charm that belies its initial flashy appearance. Closer inspection indicates how much of this instrument is truly handmade. The fingerboard inlays are done by hand. The neck is shaped by hand. Every aspect of the guitar screams “handcrafted,” and it is evident that the guitar was crafted by people who love beautiful wood almost as much they love guitars.
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Zuni Custom Guitars
zuniguitars.com
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EBS BassIQ Blue Label Triple Envelope Filter Pedal
The EBS BassIQ produces sounds ranging from classic auto-wah effects to spaced-out "Funkadelic" and synth-bass sounds. It is for everyone looking for a fun, fat-sounding, and responsive envelope filter that reacts to how you play in a musical way.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
