Ernie Ball PowerPeg String Winder Review

Aloha!

Well, here is something I thought I could live without until I actually used one – the Ernie Ball PowerPeg powered string winder.

If you have ever changed strings on a guitar or bass, you know that most of the time is spent getting the string ends wound around the tuner post. Often times you get a few turns on it and then it pops off, and the whole thing is kind of a hassle. I have used a Jim Dunlop manual string winder for years, and it does a pretty good job of speeding things up and saving my fingers, but it turns out that there really is a better way.

The Ernie Ball strong company introduced the PowerPeg a few years ago, and I did not think much of it at the time. I mean, how much better could this be than my old hand crank winder? Plenty, it turns out…

My PowerPeg winder was included in a promotional deal with a brick of new Slinkies, so I had to give it a try. After removing it from the plastic tray I was not super impressed, as it is lightweight, and the silkscreened logo is fuzzy and crooked. Part of its lightness was due to the fact that the 4 AA batteries it uses were not included. There is no good excuse for the silkscreen appearance, though.

The unit is the size of a small cordless drill/driver, and is an eye-catching combination of red and black, maybe so it will not get lost on the workbench. Controls consist of a rocker trigger switch for forward and backward operation and an ON/FF that locks out the trigger. That is it. The universal head attachment is cleverly designed so that it fits everything from ukulele tuner knobs to big Schaller-style bass cloverleaf tuners. I wish the head attachment would detach so that I could use it in my Dremel cordless driver if this thing ever poops out on me.

There is no drama to using the PowerPeg, as it fits neatly in the hand and the dual-direction trigger is intuitive. I have used it on all of my guitars and basses, and have not found one that will not fit. Despite its lack of heft, it is holding up fine, with no wobble to the head attachment. The original batteries that I put in it are still going strong after dozens of string changes. So, it does everything as advertised.

And in the real world I use this thing all the time. I change at least a few sets of strings per month, and it drastically cuts down the time of this maintenance chore. The true test was putting a new set of strings on my 12-string. I always procrastinate on this one because it is a major league pain to work on, but the PowerPeg made this job tolerable, which says a lot.

Anyway, the Ernie Ball PowerPeg is a good tool, and is reasonably priced. I see them at Guitar Center for about $20 (MSRP is $29.99), and it is worth every penny when you consider all of the time it will save and the aggravation that will be avoided. Check one out if you get the chance!

Mahalo!

Little Martin LXK2 Acoustic Travel Guitar Review

Hiya!

I travel a lot for my day job, and to keep my fingers in shape I usually take along a guitar, which is often a hassle when flying the friendly skies. This has lead to a lot of experimentation with different travel guitars, and the best compromise I have found so far is the Little Martin LXK2.

My goal was to find something that would fit easily in the overhead bin, be reasonably priced, play well, and sound good. There are plenty of products on the market that do the first two things, but they often end up being miserable to play and/or sounding like crap (e.g. the Martin Backpacker or any of those crummy little Yamaha ¾ size acoustics). So the obvious choices were the Little Martin or the small-size Taylors.

So, when it came time to pick up a 3/4 –size guitar, I did my due diligence, and A/B’d the Little Martin with the Baby Taylor and the Taylor Mini GS. Do not get me wrong, both of the Taylors are fantastic instruments, and played very well, but I just liked the sound of the Martin better. A matter of personal preference, I guess. So let’s take a look at this thing.

For starters, the Little Martin is not assembled in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, as this would be impossible at this price point due to higher labor costs here. Instead, it is put together (with parts made in the US) at their factory in Mexico, the same one that builds their lower end and Backpacker instruments. Just so you know...

Also, the Little Martin does not use much in the way of solid woods. The top, back and sides are wood-patterned HPL, which stands for high-pressure laminate. To call it plywood would be churching it up a bit. The neck is what they call Stratabond, which is a laminated piece with about 35 strips of wood glued together. Martin markets these components as being environmentally responsible, but we all know that they use them because they are cheap. I don’t see too much of a downside with either one of these for a travel guitar, as these materials appear to be quite sturdy.

The top has “1-series" Sitka spruce bracing, like the cheaper Martin D-1 and DM models. This is a simpler light weight "A-frame" system that uses less braces. The cross braces are tapered drastically at the ends to improve flexibility at the edges of the top to improve bass response at the expense of the treble range. There is no free lunch, you know.

the neck has a glued mortise and tenon joint, unlike some of its competitors that use bolt-on necks (Baby Taylor). The fretboard and bridge base are made of Micarta which looks kind of like ebony but is actually a composite material that has a phenolic resin injected under high pressure into some sort of fiber (god know what), and then baked. Kind of like fiberglass or carbon fiber, I guess. Anyway it is hard as a rock, and sounds nice. You will also find nickel-plated Gotoh Tuners and a classy-looking Martin logo on the peghead.

Though it is small, the Little Martin is easy to play. It has a 23-inch scale (about 2 1/2 inches shorter than a full-size guitar), so it is not too much of a transition to this guitar. The neck has a flat oval shape, and it is considerably easier to play than Martin’s miserable Backpacker models. Fingerstyle is not too hard, and it is fun to play melody lines on it.

The body is a modified 0-14 shape, and it is big enough that it can be comfortably played on the knee, though I still prefer to use a strap, even when sitting. There is no neck dive and It is nice to have a body to rest the right arm against – both of these are big minuses for the Backpacker.

Besides playing well, it sounds pretty nice, too. Though it lacks the bass and punch of a dreadnought, it is loud enough for practicing or around the campfire, plus it sounds less tinny than the small Taylors, and nothing like the nasally Backpacker model. Apparently their bracing system lives up to its promises. It does not have a very complicated or rich sound, but it has even volume from string to string, and …

This particular guitar was very well put together by the folks down Mexico way, and the fretwork was very good. Intonation is pretty close to perfect. The action was way too high for my liking, but my tech did a set-up and lowered the bridge saddle, and now I am very happy with the way it plays. I am going to wear to cowboy chord frets out on this thing!

The Little Martin sounds good enough and plays so well (after a set-up), that I think this would be a great starter guitar for kids or people with small hands, and obviously it is a great instrument for the travelling business man.

This guitar comes with a nice padded gig bag, which has worked well for travel, but there is one caveat. On small regional jets there is just not enough room in the overhead bins (and no closet), so I have had to gate check it a few times. It has handled all of this with no problems, so it is super-durable. But…it still makes me nervous enough that I ended up springing for an SKB molded hard case. Now this thing is ready to travel anywhere and I can have peace of mind.

I have save the best part for last, and that is the price. The Little Martin LXK2 has a list price of $409 and a street price of $289, which includes the nice gig bag and a one-year warranty. You will get a lot of guitar for not much cash, so you should check one out if you get a chance.

Mahalo!

Sugar Blue – Raw Sugar Album Review

Hello!

This CD review was originally published in the January 24, 2013 edition of Blues Blast Magazine. Be sure to check out the rest of the magazine at thebluesblast.com

Sugar Blue – Raw Sugar

Beeble Music

www.sugar-blue.com

www.beeblemusic.com

2 discs / 13 tracks / 119:16

If you love the harmonica, then picking up a copy of Sugar Blues’ Raw Sugar album will be a no-brainer. Sugar, originally known as James Whiting, is one of the finest players around and has the credentials to back it up. He was brought up in a musical family, was inspired by the jazz greats, and learned the harmonica by playing along with Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder songs. He has been appearing on recordings since 1975, and has played with the Rolling Stones, Prince, Bob Dylan, Willie Dixon, Frank Zappa, and too many other fine artists to list.

Sugar has released at least a dozen albums, and had his hand in a few Grammy awards over the years. Raw Sugar is a two disc live recording that includes Blue on harmonica and vocals, Rico McFarland on guitar, Damiano Della Torre on keyboards, Ilaria Lantieri Blue on bass and James Knowles on drums. This two hour collection of songs is broken up into two sets, with seven pieces written by band members as well as some neat cover tunes. Many of the songs on this compilation can be found on his earlier studio releases.

“Red Hot Mama” is the first song on disc one, and at 5 ½ minutes, it is one of the shortest tracks on Raw Sugar. This up-tempo piece kicks off their show like an old time blues review with a driving bass line, a machine-gun fast drum part and a full-blast organ. Right away you can hear that this a tight band and these guys feel the soul. Sugar Blue enters the fray with his distinctive harp sound, and we get to hear a bit of his smooth voice too. This was a great choice for starting things off!

There is an extra injection of funk as this song quickly segues into Muddy Waters’ “One More Mile” and Rico McFarland gets a chance to shine. Rico is straight out of Chicago and has played with some of the best including James Cotton and Lucky Peterson. His hot contemporary blues licks and smooth solos bring a lot to the table and are a nice counterpoint to the hopping rhythm section.

On this release there are plenty of songs over 10 minutes, as Sugar Blue lets his band mates have plenty of room to experiment, showing that he is not one to hog the spotlight. A great example of this is the band’s 14-minute version of Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man,” perhaps one of the most recorded blues songs ever. They did a great job of making this song their own by giving it a faster and more modern arrangement. Della Torre had a part in this by adding a steady stream of honky-tonk piano throughout and even some subtle jazz work during a break in the action. I cannot say enough about Sugar Blues’ showmanship and harmonica skills, as he is one of the best out there and this song should be required listening for anybody that is learning to play the harp.

There is little chance that Sugar Blue would do a show without including his two most famous songs, “Another Man Done Gone” and “Miss You.” Sonny Boy Williamson recorded “Another Man Done Gone” first, but Sugar earned a Grammy for it with his fabulous performance at the Montreux Jazz Fest in the early 1980s. Of course he has played this song quite a bit since then, and it comes off perfectly on this recording. The Rolling Stones’ chart-topper “Missing You” is Sugar Blue’s most commercially successful song, and I always considered it to be Jagger/Richards’ funkiest effort -- it was certainly popular in the clubs back in the late 1970s. But Sugar’s band takes this song to a whole new level, led by Iliana’s hot bass line which is perfectly synced with Knowles’ drums, and it is most definitely one of my favorites on Raw Sugar.

Many times artists edit out their conversations with the crowd from their live albums, but Sugar Blue left many of his in, for which I am grateful. If you have not seen the man play live, these excepts give you a great insight into his personality and nature, and it is plain from these CDs that he is a humble and sweet man who loves to play out with his friends and lives to please his fans.

If you are a fan of Sugar Blue or have been lucky enough to attend one of his shows, Raw Sugar is a must-have CD. If you love blues harmonica and want to capture the energy of a great performance, you should make the effort to check this CD out; if you do you will want to get a copy for yourself!

Mahalo!

2010 Gibson Explorer Electric Guitar Review

Hi there!

There is a general consensus in the rock world that the Les Paul is the ne plus ultra of the Gibson electric guitars. But for me, I always preferred SGs as I think they sound better and play smoother with less of a weight penalty. That is, until I finally got an Explorer.

Gibson launched the Explorer model in 1958, and their goal for this and the Flying V (introduced the same year) was to push the envelope and put forth a space-age design. They hit the mark, in my opinion.

Consumers did not agree, and the Explorer was discontinued in 1963, only to be introduced again in 1976 when Gibson saw that other manufacturers (especially Hamer) were successfully selling their design. It became an iconic instrument for hard rock and heavy metal guitarists, with James Hetfield from Metallica being the most famous.

There have been quite a few changes over the years, but we are going to focus on the here and now as today we are looking at my 2010 Gibson Explorer.

We had better start with the body, which is a humongous slab of mahogany. It has a truly bizarre shape with a long lower fin and no forearm or belly contours. This one is covered in a glossy coat of Ebony, which is thin enough that you can see the pockmarks of the grain. These guitars are also available in Cherry or Classic White. I think that Ebony looks the best on this body shape. All of the colors come with a three-layer white pickguard.

It is loaded up with a 596R neck pickup and a 500T bridge pickup, neither of which have covers. It is wired more simply than a Les Paul with two volume knobs, a tone knob and a 3-way pickup selector toggle. By the way, it has speed knobs, which have always been my favorite look. The electronics are accessed through a plastic cavity cover on the back of the guitar.

The Explorer has a slim profile set neck, which is made of mahogany with a rosewood fretboard. I hear that Gibson is now using granadillo for fretboards, which is a green ebony that comes from trees in West India. No comment.

There are 22 frets and some pearloid dot inlays sunk into the fretboard. There is no binding to be found, either on the neck or the body. The Corian nut is the Gibson standard 1.695” width.

The pointy (and perfectly chip-able) headstock has the Gibson logo inlaid into the tip, and has the classic bell-shaped truss rod cover. There are chrome plated mini Grover tuners, which match the stop bar tailpiece and Tune-O-Matic bridge.

The Gibson Explorer comes in quite a bit cheaper than its Les Paul cousins, with a list price of $2399, and a street price of $1399, which includes one of the biggest hardshell cases I have ever seen. It is covered with lizard texture Tolex and lined with bright white fur! I’m in love!

I found this one at my local Best Buy with plenty of shop wear, but at a stupidly cheap price (under $500, including tax and the original hard case and paperwork). They slashed prices when they shut down the music departments in their stores this past spring, so I stocked up on instruments to pull down some extra cash.

But, after a quick and dirty set-up I forgot any ideas I had of flipping this guitar to make a few hundred bucks. This thing plays incredibly, and sounds beautiful! The pickups are terrific for rock or metal, though they are lacking in pure clean tones. Combining this with that big chunk of mahogany equals a super fat tone. It is a grinding and distortion machine.

The neck is a departure from many modern-day Gibson, in that the frets are level and the intonation is great. I know they say that all of the instruments that come out of Nashville are Plek’d, and if this is so than I have no respect for the Plek process. Almost all new Gibson solid body guitars play like crap right out of the box, and require extensive work to reach their full potential. I am glad that this one is an exception.

Ergonomically, it can be a bit tricky, depending on your playing style. The body is big, and I have heard some players complain that the huge lower fin gets in the way of their forearm when playing. I have not run into any trouble with this, so maybe I hold the guitar differently than they do. In mitigation of any ergonomic issues, this Explorer weighs around 9 pounds, which is way lighter than most of the Les Pauls I have ever owned.

Anyway, this guitar will not look quite like this anymore. One of my very good friends is an artist with a tremendous sense of style, and I have given him this guitar as a blank canvas to do with as he wishes. I look forward to sharing the results with you!

Mahalo!

The Bopcats: 25 Year of Rock & Roll Album Review

Hello!

This CD review was originally published in the January 16, 2013 edition of Blues Blast Magazine. Be sure to check out the rest of the magazine at thebluesblast.com

The Bopcats – 25 Years of Rock & Roll

EllerSoul Records

www.bopcats.com

www.ellersoulrecords.com

17 tracks / 53:24

Lindy Fralin is a household name amongst guitarists, as his custom guitar pickups are well-regarded by players that are looking to upgrade the tone of their axes. Heck, I have bought a few of his products over the years too, and they were all worth the money. But they may not know that the reason his pickups sound so good is because he is an accomplished guitarist in his own right, so he knows exactly what kind of tone is needed for live and studio performances.

Lindy formed The Bopcats a quarter of a century ago, and they have been playing out of Richmond, Virginia ever since. His current band includes Paul Hammond on drums and Steve Hudgins on bass, but over the years he has been joined by his brothers John and Gary Fralin on the keyboards, and a retinue of great bassists, drummers and horn players. They have been making their bread as a gigging band, with their recording efforts limited to a few albums in the 1980s and demo tapes for their press kits. But they recently released a neat CD, 25 Years of Rock and Roll, and it is a great overview of their work, which is rooted firmly in genuine 1950s-style rockabilly.

This CD includes seventeen tracks, eleven of which are originals. The balance of the material is carefully selected covers from the likes of Johnny Cash, The Rolling Stones, and the Blasters, and there is not a clunker on the album. The band’s overall sound and tone was pulled straight from the early days of rock and popular country music, and is just as pleasing fifty years later. In keeping with the vintage vibe there is only one tune that clocks in longer than four minutes.

25 Years of Rock and Roll starts off with two original tracks, “I Don’t Want to Be Alone” and “Dark Train,” and right away you will hear that that these guys are adept at writing, and have nailed the rockabilly vibe. Fralin’s guitar is tight, the drums are snare-heavy, the bass is round and the keyboards support the songs well. The vocals are lightly soaked with reverb and their harmonies are spot on, making this the real deal.

The rest of their original songs are also very good, and my favorite of the bunch is “Wheels of Mine.” This tune has everything I am looking for: fun guitar parts, an upbeat tempo, and nice vocal harmonies. As an added bonus it is about cars, so what is there not to like?

Their cover tunes run quite the gamut. Even though Dave Bartholomew’s “Who Drank My Beer?” uses raging honky-tonk piano instead of horns, it still captures the spirit of the original. The Bopcats also include a respectful version of Bob Luman’s “Red Cadillac” that includes some of the most killer vintage guitar tone ever. Their cover of the Stones’ “Ventilator Blues” actually comes off better than the original, and the vocals are strikingly Jagger-esque. Dave Alvin’s “Marie Marie” plays very well, and reminds me of how much I miss the Blasters. One song that I never saw coming was a pumped up version of Johnny Cash’s “Get Rhythm.” The band managed to convert one of my least favorite songs into something that I actually like listening to. Bravo!

The best thing about The Bopcats’ 25 Years of Rock and Roll is that this collection of songs is timeless. They could have been recorded in the 1950s, during the rockabilly renaissance in the 1980s, or today. You owe it to yourself to check out what these great musicians have put together here. It will surely put a smile on your face!

Mahalo!

Review of Priscilla Queen of the Desert at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California

Aloha!

I recently had the opportunity of the Priscilla Queen of the Desert stage musical at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles, and was blown away by the production. This is fun show that is really well done, and it was definitely worth the braving the terrible traffic to get there.

The stage show is adapted from the 1994 movie by the same name. This film is a cult classic, with a fairly bizarre storyline. It is a tale of two drag queens and a transsexual woman that travel across Australia from Sydney to Alice Springs to perform a drag act, and meet the surprise son of one of the drag queens. Priscilla is the name of the tour bus that they use for the journey, and you can probably figure out the queen thing for yourself. It is full of sexist stereotypes and a bit of mild racism, but is still a pretty fun movie in a campy way. I liked it…

Priscilla Queen of the Desert was adapted into a musical in 2006 (also in Australia), and eventually moved on to Europe and Broadway in New York. The 2011 Broadway version was produced by veteran show woman Bette Midler. It was well-received by audiences and critics, and was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award Best New Musical award, and picked up a Tony for Best Costume Design.

This rendition of Priscilla is the first national tour of the musical, which kicked off earlier this year at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, and will finish up in September in Denver. The basic story follows that of the movie, with a few plot difference and timing changes, and includes a couple dozen singing and dancing numbers, mostly based on 1970s and 1980s pop and disco tunes. This show has a truly fun playlist, and a great book by Stephan Elliott and Alan Scott, the story carries very well from the movie to the theatre. Well, it is quite a bit happier than the movie, actually, which is what I had hoped for.

The sets and lighting were spectacular. The centerpiece is Priscilla, and it moved about on stage as needed and turned around so you could see its festive interior for some of the scenes. It also had oodles of built in lights so it could change colors as needed, and there were a number of sequences that took place on its. It was a striking effect and it really made the show for me.

The costumes were equally good. There were plenty of changes, and each one was more outlandish than the one before. Costume designers Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardner really outdid themselves.

The leads were well-chosen for their roles, and they did an admirable job of singing, dancing and acting. Wade McCollum took the lead as Tick (or Mitzi), and I felt true empathy for his character’s troubles. Scott Willis played Bernadette (the older transsexual), and Bryan West took on the role of Adam (Felicia). Willis and West had a great chemistry and the conflict from their opposing roles (traditional versus Modern drag queen) was really something to behold. West’s “Material Girl” was a awe-inspiring!

Joe Hart did a fine job as the “straight man,” as he was quite believable. I felt a little bad for Chelsea Zeno, who had to play the role of Cynthia, Bob’s gold-digging wife. She did well, but the role is racist and comes from misogynistic angle, and I don’t think it has a place in a 21st century musical.

The ensemble was a feast for all of the senses, with a pack of hunky and bitchy male dancers in almost no clothes, and a trio of divas that would miraculous appear all over the stage (and above) to sing for the masses. Well done, Emily Afton, Bre Jackson, and Brit West!

The orchestra was small (about 10 folks), but how many musicians do you need for the 70s and 80s hits they were cranking out? They did a fine job of capturing the spirit of the originals, while giving them a unique tone, and I did not hear any miscues.

The only bad thing I have to say is that though the musical and vocals were great the sound engineer did a terrible job of mixing them. The vocals were often overpowered by the guitar and bass, which is a shame for everybody involved.

Despite this trouble, I have to wholeheartedly recommend Priscilla Queen of the Desert. The book, singing, acting dancing, costumes, sets and lighting were all spot on. It was the craziest and most fun musical I have ever seen, and it provided a 2 ½ hour escape from reality, which is exactly what I expect from musical theatre. The tour has left Los Angeles, but if it comes your way you have to check it out when it hits your town – you will be glad you did!

Mahalo!

tc electronic Polytune iPhone Guitar Tuner App Review

Howdy!

I love that my iPhone can do all kind of things so that I don’t have to carry around as much stuff anymore when I travel. I have not taken a camera on vacation in years, calculators are a thing of the past, and address books and planners have become redundant. Well, I don’t have to take a metronome or tuner with my anymore either.

I really like the way my Peterson Istrobosoft app works a lot like it pedal brother, so I was hoping the Polytune app would be like the tc electronic pedal, but it turned out to be a huge disappointment and a waste of 5 bucks.

This is really quite a surprise, because everything about the app looks good on paper (or the screen). The biggie is the Polytune technology, which allows you to strum all of the strings and get a snapshot of which ones are out of tune. Then you can pluck individual strings to fine tune them. This works very well on their pedal.

It also can be customized so that you can choose guitar or bass modes, and 5 semi-tones for drop tunings. The reference pitch can be changed, and it has a claimed accuracy of 0.5 cent – the same as the pedal.

A neat feature this has is that you can change the color of the display “LEDs” in case you are colorblind and have trouble seeing them. Also, it uses the phones microphone, so you do not have to plug the guitar in. Their pedal cannot do either one of these.

As with most tuner apps, there are plenty of customizable features, and all of this stuff is menu-driven, so it easier to make these changes than on the Polytune pedal. By the way, it will save your changes, so you do not have to set it up each time you use the app.

After I downloaded the app, I was amazed at how much more quickly it would load than the Peterson app. I mean, it comes on instantly without have to wait for the intro screen to turn off – this is a plus. But that was it for the plus column.

The Polytune app just does not work very well. When strumming all of the strings it goes into the multi-string mode and flickers on and off so that I cannot get a good fix on which strings are flat or sharp. It does this even with no background noise, and on every acoustic guitar that I tried – my Martins, the Takamine or the Masterbilt.

When playing single strings it was unable to hold a single tone for very long and would show all of the overtones in rapid succession. It did not matter if the strings were plucked or picked. When I could get a string to stay on the screen for a while it was about half a tone off. I doubled checked my settings, but it was not in a different tuning mode.

This app does nothing well, and I feel like I wasted my time and money. There is nothing else to say.

Should you take a chance and want to try this thing anyway, the tc electronic Polytune app is $4.99 from the iTunes Store. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.

Mahalo!