Products & Gear

Arguably no other jazz guitarist has been so blatantly imitated as Django Reinhardt, the Belgian Gypsy whose acoustic work from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s has attained virtual cult status. And while he died in 1953, his spirit lives on, witnessed by the presence of Gypsy jazz in feature films like Sweet and Lowdown … Read More “Saga Gitane Guitars”

I’m not an Akira Kurosawa scholar, but I played one for about a year in college, long enough to know what satori means. The Japanese film luminary allowed damn near every one of his protagonists the experience: a moment of revelation when all the voices in your head quit playing Rashomon for just a second … Read More “Pritchard Amps: Sword of Satori”

Guyatone TD-X Elaborating on its popular MD-3 Micro Delay unit by adding a 12AX7A vacuum tube and a new filter array, Guyatone has created a tube echo pedal that emulates vintage and modern delay sounds like BBD, tape and digital. The TD-X allows for up to 2,600 milliseconds of delay time and includes a host … Read More “Gigbag: July/August 2004”

My personal variation on Dexter Gordon’s line in the film ‘Round Midnight extolling “a nice, wet Rico reed” would be “happiness is a ’60s Gretsch 14-inch floor tom.” As evidenced by Maryland (ne Baltimore) Drum Company’s Timepiece Series kit, founder/product specialist Keith Larsen and partner/woodworker John Coale apparently concur. Drummers searching for that esoteric combination … Read More “Maryland Drum Company Timepiece Drums”

Computer Courses in Music: Ear Training If you can read music, and if your computer runs Windows, you can use this CD-ROM to practice recognizing musical elements like intervals, scales, rhythms, chords, cadences and melodies-by ear. Easily used for individual and group learning, the exercises in this course are interactive and adjust automatically to personal … Read More “Gigbag: May 2004”

As consumers of recorded music and hi-fi equipment, we are at a crossroads. For most of us, the CD and CD player have reigned as the principal means for music playback for nearly 20 years. And though the CD will continue its dominance in the realm of music reproduction-no matter the digital download trend-many of … Read More “Going Solo: CD Players That Stand Alone”

Talking cash straight off the bat here may come off crass, but at some point I have to reveal that Gibson’s Johnny A. Signature guitar-from the Custom Shop-carries a $5,562 price tag. So, better to get that out of the way now before I go on describing the instrument because you’re going to want one … Read More “Gibson Johnny A. Signature Guitar”

“The trumpet is the instrument of the gods,” said master musician Marcus Belgrave in a recent interview about his Detroit Jazz Festival trumpet summit (which I took part in this past summer). Now if these gods happened to descend from the heavens in an ornate spaceship, complete with all the trimmings out of a sci-fi … Read More “Phaeton Trumpets”