Vintage Style

Souldier is an independent, small manufacturer of guitar straps. These guitar straps are some of the COOLEST guitar straps I’ve ever seen. I’m a guitar, bass and effect pedal admirer and have really been impressed with lots of great gear over the last couple years.

Now, I’m equally impressed with a guitar accessory. Up until now, I’ve never given a guitar strap a second glance. Up until now.

Souldier has bought up some great vintage–really vintage–fabrics and along with recycled seat belts crafts some truly awesome and comfortable guitar straps. The designs on these straps are timeless recalling the late 60s as well as post-grunge.

Souldier Straps

Another Souldier Strap

More Souldier Straps

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Fuzz Of The Week

This week’s Fuzz of the Week is the MJM Guitar FX China Fuzz.  The China Fuzz to me is a great sounding fuzz pedal with two distinct voicings:  The Leeds and the Loose.  According to MJM Guitar FX, the China Fuzz is an exact replica of the vintage Univox Superfuzz circuit.   And you can change between the Leeds and Loose via a toggle switch.

The Leeds side delivers a big, beefy sound.  Lots of lows and lots of cavernous fuzz.  This side sounds equally great on single note leads or on wall of sound chording.

The Loose side brings out the more defined Superfuzz sound and is a great vintage sounding fuzz.

MJM Guitar FX China Fuzz

Univox Superfuzz

Check out the China Fuzz today.

Waking the Neighbors

Rock and Roll is supposed to be loud.  And rebellious.  But like Mick Jagger and Jeff Beck, we all gotta grow old sometime.  And when you think about it, growing old is better than the alternative.

Even old guys like to rock.  But when you are at home, and the family is around or the next door neighbors have their windows open, how is one supposed to rock?

Great low wattage tube amps is how.

There are numerous low wattage tube amps that have come on the market recently that deliver that crunchy breakup that only comes from a tube amp cranked up and driving the power tubes.  And with the proliferation of low-cost PA systems, guitarist can now gig with low-wattage amps too.

Here are 3 of our favorite low-wattage amps that really deliver the goods:

The Orange Tiny Terror–a 7 or 15 watt Class A tube amp driven by a pair of EL84 tubes and comes in a very cool package:

Orange Tiny Terror

The Port City Twelve, a 12 watt combo or head driven by a pair of 6V6 tubes:

Port City Twelve Amp

And finally comes the Vox AC4TV, a very cool, rich sounding 4 watt amp that also comes in either a combo or a mini-stack.  The AC4TV is driven by a single EL84 tube and can run in 4 or 1 or 1/4 watt modes:

Vox AC4TV Head Amp

Fat Tone Guitars is giving away a FREE Vox AC4TV combo amp.  Just visit our website for details and enter to win this bedroom beauty.

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s replace The Beastie Boys

According to Pitchfork.com…

“If you’re heading to Lollapalooza this year, you won’t have to choose between Tool and Bassnectar on Saturday night anymore. The Beastie Boys had been scheduled to co-headline the Chicago festival’s August 8 lineup, but as we reported yesterday, Adam Yauch’s cancerous throat tumor forced the group to cancel all their tour dates.

Well, the Lollapalooza folks didn’t waste any time in naming a suitably kickasss replacement: veteran festival-circuit monsters Yeah Yeah Yeahs.”

Lollapalooza will take place in Chicago again this August.  We also are passing along our best wishes to Adam Yauch and his family.

We don’t know what gear the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s are currently playing but they can grab more here.

Worlds Largest Pedalboard Again

While it’s got a lot of catching up to do to reach the media coverage of MJ’s demise, the Worlds Largest Pedalboard Part 2 at the just completed NAMM show in Nashville has been written about but many bloggers but warrants some coverage by Fat Tone Guitars.

Here’s our coverage.

ZVex, Fulltone, George L’s, PedalTrain, Keeley Electronics and many, many more participants contributed to make this one cool bash.  And loud.

Worlds Largest Pedalboard

That’s a lot of pedals.

Fuzz Of The Week

Fuzz pedals are to the boutique pedal world as IPA is to the craft beer world.  IPA is not only my favorite “category” in beer right now, but it seems to be a style of beer that is popular for most small beer makers to concoct.

Open a craft brewery and you’ve got to have an IPA.  You don’t need a stout or a porter or a lambic, but you need an IPA.   For those that don’t know, IPA stands for India Pale Ale and was originated by the British as a top formenting ale that would last the long ship ride from the British isles to India.  It’s got lots of hops and tastes good.

It’s the same with small effect pedal makers.  And with good reason.  Fuzz pedals are awesome effect pedals.  Kinda like a distortion pedal, typically more meaty than an overdrive pedal, a good fuzz will fatten your tone, make your leads stand out, and grow hair on your guitar sound (good hair).  Lot’s of fuzz pedals are descendants of the venerable Electro-Harmonix Big Muff or the Dunlop Fuzz Face and many boutique pedal makers have taken those circuits and added little doohickies here and there to tweak them just right and make them sing.

Today, we’re mentioning the Dunlop Authentic Hendrix Fuzz Face which sounds great in your rig and doesn’t cost a ton.  Plus, in it’s cool round enclosure, it looks like no other pedal on your pedalboard.

Dunlop Hendrix Fuzz Face

Jimi Hendrix's pedals

Enjoy some snippets of cool Fuzz Face players.

Going to the Gig in Style

The gigging guitarist needs a lot of good tones at his/her disposal. That means a good guitar, a good amp and effect pedals that complete the rig. As anyone who’s setup a pedalboard rig knows, there are a lot of ways to connect your pedals; to loop or not to loop.

If you loop, how many loops?

Where do you hide the wiring and the power supplies?

There are a lot of pedalboards on the market and a growing list of custom pedalboard makers. From PedalTrain to Trailer Trash. And now comes Trillium.

Trillium is an amp maker that has put out a good looking, deluxe pedalboard.  This has all the room you need and looks awesome on stage or in the studio.

Trillium Deluxe Pedalboard

Trillium Pedalboard top

Trillium Pedalboard Power

You can have it all with this pedalboard.

Summer Festival Season

The Rothbury festival in Michigan wrapped up last week and I hear from a couple friends that it was a very cool festival.  And that is in spite of the fact that The Dead played (sorry all you Jerry fans).   Other artists that performed included Bob Dylan, String Cheese Incident, The Black Crowes, Willy Nelson and G Love and Special Sauce.

If you haven’t heard them, G Love and band deliver a tasty gumbo of roots rock, funk, jazz and hip-hop.  They are kind of the sum of all these influences and their music is very funky and danceable.  In addition, Mr. Love has a very cool signature Gretsch Corvette in Racing Green and sporting TV Jones Classic ‘Tron pickups and a Bigsby.

This is a great sounding and playing guitar.

We are contributing to Pitchfork

Fat Tone Guitars is doing it’s best to contribute to the continued success of the annual Pitchfork Music Festival, July 17-19, 2009

Pitchfork Music Festival

Our own guitar wizard Wes will be one of the stage techs at this venerable festival.  Go there and enjoy Built to Spill, Yo La Tengo, Tortoise and the reunion of The Jesus Lizard.

Wes worked at Pitchfork last summer when Japan’s own Boris graced their stage.  Boris is a huge metal band known for the lively stage antics and loud sound.  In addition, Boris’ lead guitar player is sporting an Orange stack–which sometimes includes the Orange Rockerverb 50 and a couple of the Orange PPC412 speaker cabs.  If you are playing a big outdoor festival, you could a lot worse than this beast of a rig.

Boris and Orange

Effect Pedal Tones

My ears are ringing.  It’s a good kind of ringing, but they are still ringing.

We just got done recording a bunch of great guitar tones with many of our effect pedals.

Keeley Electronics

Barber Electronics

Greedtone

BMF Effects

What I am learning is that my ears (when they stop ringing) are getting better.  I’m now able to discern more of the subtleties inherent in the tones produced by many of the effect pedals in our shop.   In fact, I greatly enjoyed the Barber Burn Unit and the BMF Liquid Sky Chorus.

I also really enjoyed the playing of Jimmy Ceja of the Bad Honky Tonkers.  He can really lay down the blues and rock grooves.

Check back with Fat Tone Guitars often as we are in the process of adding to our library of tones.

Fat Tone Library of Tones