Alternative Brand Spotlight: Airline Guitars
In this edition of Alternative Brand Spotlight, we check out one of the whackiest 60's styled retro brands of all time; Airline...
The Alternative Brand Spotlight is a brief overview of some of the worlds' most interesting guitar, bass, amplifier, and effects companies offering a worthy and unique alternative to the major brands dominating the world of musical instruments today.
Brand:
What the brand Make:
Airline make some of the most unique 50's and 60's inspired guitars and basses available on the market today. Consisting of both original models and recreations of some classic and legendary instruments. Their catalogue is as substantial as it is brilliant.
History:
The original guitar manufacturing company known as Airline had a short 10 year lifespan between 1958-68 manufactured through Valco Guitars in North America, and sold via mail order for that time period.
The essence and spirit of Airline was reignited in 2000 by the company Eastwood, a manufacturer already specialising in off-kilter reissues and reinventions from the 50's and 60's. Originally Eastwood brought back the legendary JB Hutto only, but due to it's huge success, not in any small part due to The White Stripes use of the guitar in defining their entire image, Eastwood extended the Airline range to include nearly the entire original catalogue, as well as a few unique inspired creations.
You'll love these if you're into:
These guitars are aimed at both 50's/60's enthusiasts and those looking for something completely different. The current catalogue features guitars commonly mahogany, glue neck, short scale, and often with twin humbuckers, favouring a Gibson style player looking for something with a less conventional body shape.
However, if you're able to dig up an original then the famous JB Hutto's hollow fibreglass body and oversized single coil pick-ups offers a much harsher and genuinely totally unique tone.
What's in the Range:
The Current range of guitars and basses available from Airline is too substantial to list in it's entirety, but some guitars worth a mention are the legendary JB Hutto, now appearing in the Airline catalogue as the '59 DLX. The 59 appears in many guises, made famous by Jack White in the early white stripes years, the guitar is available as a one, two or three pick-up model, as well as featuring as a DLX model, with extended tone controls, and as a three pick-up Bigsby fitted model.
If that wasn't enough Airline have recently introduced the Jetson Junior model; a one pick-up budget version of the '59 for just over half the price, that even comes in some incredible finishes, such as Ghoulie Green!
Unique Features:
Eastwood's reincarnation of Airline has conventionalised the guitar range; the introduction of mahogany bodies, standard humbucking pick-ups, modern trussrods have all contributed towards making the current Airline series safe and palatable to the modern guitar player.
Today's Airlines are unique only in their appearance, a world away from the original models of the 50's and 60's. When Airline first hit the shelves they were made from Res-O-Glass (their name for fibreglass). The material gave the guitars a particularly harsh tone and unusual feel and response. This was compounded by their unusual oversized single coil pick-ups, traditionally 60's 'over-enthusiastic' amount of tone controls, and the lack of a modern trussrod.
The Dawn Of Sire
This new brand aim to bring you classic funk basses at an affordable price.
Every now and then a manufacturer appears who breaks the mold of convention, someone who refuses to play by the rules of price Vs quality that have been so rigorously set by brands such as Fender, Gibson and Ibanez.
We've seen this sort of thing in the effects market when EHX released the Soul Food, a Klon Clone drive that sounded so close it the £2000 pedal it was imitating that the £50 price tag seemed almost a joke. We've seen it in amplification when Laney released the Ironheart Studio; an all valve recording and live use head, with USB input for direct recording and built in cab simulation to go directly into a PA live.
This year the subject is far less likely, and far harder a product to drop the price on; introducing the Sire Marcus Miller V7 Jazz Bass. That's right, Miller has finally parted ways with Fender after nearly a decade of them making his signature Jazz Bass in both Japan and Mexico, whilst Fender continue on their road to only give signature model basses to punk players no-one's ever heard of.
The V7 is an active Jazz Bass in many ways very similar to Miller's original Fender, only with some really premium features, upgrades and updates...sounds reasonable right, this instrument should obviously be a progression from his old model, if for no other reason, just so Sire get noticed over the brilliant and extremely well built Fender counterpart. The only problem here is that the Fender Miller signature was £800 retail, and the Sire Miller V7 starts at £290 (oh, they do a premium model too....at £330).
So what makes the V7 stand up to the Fender? Well you have to start from the ground up to be honest. They haven't cheaped out on body wood for a start; most Squiers at this price point use Agathys or Basswood, but Sire go straight in with a choice between Swamp Ash or Alder, even going for a natural finish; something you can only do if you're confident in your wood quality.
The instrument's electronics are similarly premium. Even Music Man drop down to a 2 band EQ on their budget model, but not Sire. The V7 comes equipped with a full 3 band EQ AND a separate Mid sweep control. Then, as if that wasn't already enough, they've thrown on an active/passive switch; a feature that Fender don't introduce until you get to their £1500 premium Deluxe models. The edition of an active/passive is in itself a demonstration of confidence in their product, as the pick-ups need to be versatile enough to sound good in either context.
Additional little touches almost go unheralded in the wake of such great playing feature. Of course you'd expect the physical appearance to be the let down considering the quality parts and price tag, but no. The Sire V7 comes with pearl block inlays in either a rosewood or maple neck, pearloid or tortoise shell scratch plate, a huge high mass bridge, through body strung, body accessible truss rod, and it even comes with an optional neck pick-up cover just like the Fender original. Honestly, what a bass!!!
Check out Sire's interview with Marcus Miller below:
The Gear of ArcTanGent: Alpha Male Tea Party
A look into the unique and bizarre set ups of the bands responsible for pushing effects driven music into new territories. In this episode we take a look at Alpha Male Tea Party's Tom peters and his absolutely bonkers double amp set up.
Over the last 3 years ArcTanGent Festival has been responsible for uniting some of the most interesting guitar music being made. Technically there have probably been more effect pedals in one place over the ATG weekend than there are in a Boss Factory.
Following another amazing year of ATG I caught up with some of the most brilliant bands playing the festival and had a chat with them about their weird and wonderful gear.
AMTP make jagged, sugary, super-tight Math-Rock, filled with brilliantly subtle rhythm changes, clever little twists, and ridiculously catchy riffs. Over the last 2 years of ATG Festival the band have earned themselves one of the top podium spots for riff-masters of the festival, and rightly so.
At the heart of this riff making machine is guitarist, Tom Peters, and his reassuringly unusual, obscure and complicated set up. I hooked up with Tom and got him to write down how on earth he goes about making his guitar tone so completely unique... and his answers were anything but simple:
Hi Gear Nerds. You’ve caught me in a somewhat transitional phase of my guitar rig having recently just acquired a Hayden Mofo 100 to replace my faithful but now sadly very ill Groove Tubes prototype plexi head thing and I’m also awaiting delivery of a brand new Boss ES8 switcher/looper for my board. As such, I’ll do this run down as if they are already in my setup, OK?
Walk me through your pedal board. What goes into what?
The most obvious place to start with my board is the Boss ES8 looper. I’ve been using looper/switchers for a while now (I’ve had a Carl Martin Combinator for the last 4 years or so) and this forms the main control surface for my board. I have quite a large amount of pedals and I’ve always hated tap dancing so having the ability to hit one button and engage several pedals at once, especially given how much I enjoy throwing myself around on stage, is pretty indispensable to me now. I decided to upgrade my current looper in favour of the Boss ES8 as it offers a ton more functionality which further cuts down on tap dancing and I’ll be using it’s MIDI control features to change patches and settings on the MIDI equipped pedals I have.
I’ll talk through each loop, like I said above this is purely hypothetical as it’s not even on my board yet!:
GUITAR IN > BOSS ES8
LOOP 1> DIGITECH WHAMMY 5
LOOP 2> BOSS OC2>EHX MICROPOG
LOOP 3> HERMIDA AUDIO ZEN DRIVE
LOOP 4> PAUL COCHRANE TIM
LOOP 5> AMP TWEAKER TIGHT METAL
LOOP 6> MXR SMART GATE>MXR 6 BAND EQ
LOOP 7> STRYMON TIMELINE
LOOP 8> STRYMON BLUESKY
It’s all then split stereo out of a Lehle P-Split box to my two amps. The P-split has a transformer isolated output to get rid of ground loops and also has a very handy phase flip on it which is great for getting the phase relationship right between my two amps.
The ES8 has a tuner out which runs to my Korg Pitch Black tuner.
What would consider the most important pedal on your board? If not a defining pedal, the one that gives your sound that edge.
I’d say that, whilst I have a lot of pedals on my board, my favourite sounds are just the straight up drive tones I use. A lot of my board is dedicated to different flavours of drive but at the core of ‘my sound’ (horrible term) is the Paul Cochrane Tim OD pedal. It’s an absolute beaut and I implore anyone to have a crack at one if they get chance, it’s just the best. I use it in conjunction with my Zen Drive pedal as my main drive tone and it’s the sound of those two pedals together that you’ll here the most in an AMTP set.
Interesting tones are so often the result of stacking rather than a single stomp box. Is there a selection of pedals that you find stack especially well to create something unusual?
As above really, the blend of the two drive pedals is what defines my tone but I also use a lot of octave pedals too, the POG with dirt is a favourite of mine. I also use in certain parts to get a really massive, swelly reverb tone a combination of the Bluesky set to a large room with the Timeline on a really fast pattern delay, it just gives a ton of extra depth in certain sections. I’m pretty conservative with my use of weirder effects in general although this is subject to change in the very near future...
What is your choice of amplification, what led you to this choice, and how do you make it your own?
I’ve run two amps for as long as I can remember. The basic premise behind this started when I realised my 20 watt Laney combo that I used to have just wasn’t loud enough on it’s own so I bought a head and started running stereo to give the verbs and delays and bit of extra oomph. The principle behind the way I set things up is to have one amp providing lots of sparkle and definition and the other providing girth, this is mostly necessary due to the choice of guitar I have which I’ll explain later.
My rigs changed loads of late and I’m very happy to say that I’m now endorsed by Hayden so my current setup is a Hayden Mofo 100 head with matching 4x12 and a Soldano Astroverb 16 2x12 combo. The Hayden is a heft monster and the Soldano is sparkly and gritty, it’s the blend of the amps which give me the punch and definition I like to hear. I adore the Soldano, it’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought but I don’t regret it one single bit. It’s an EL84 driven amp which means it doesn’t extend quite as low as something more hefty like the Hayden so the combination is spot on.
The Hayden has a pretty unusual valve combination by modern standards which is something I was drawn to; it uses two EL34s and two 6l6 valves in the output section which gives the Hayden has a pretty unusual valve combination by modern standards which is something I was drawn to; it uses two EL34s and two 6l6 valves in the output section which gives the amp a really unique character.
What is your choice of guitar, how did you come to play that guitar, and what makes you stick with it?
I’m a very stubborn Telecaster man. I have a good few other guitars and only one Tele but it’s my favourite guitar and I use it on everything. It’s a 2004 Fender Highway One Telecaster in Daphne Blue. I love it like a family member. It’s a particularly bright Tele, I’m not overly sure why but I really love it that way, it’s got this incredibly unmistakable smack and crunch to it which I just need to hear whenever I play guitar now. I’ve not played another instrument that has the same whallop as it. I guess in a way, I just like it so much because it’s the sound I’ve become so used to hearing, I got it when I was 15 and have played it ever since and it just feels like home to me now.
I was drawn to the Telecaster in the first place largely out of bullishness; I kept hearing people say things like ‘you can’t play heavy music on Fender Telecasters’ and the more I heard that, the more I wanted to prove everyone wrong. Of course, it doesn’t have the same low mid thud of a Gibson or other humbuckery guitar but it’s got so much life and character that I don’t really care and I set my amps up to compensate for that. For me, it’s an absolute winner.
The Gear of ArcTanGent: Bear Makes Ninja
A look into the unique and bizarre set ups of the bands responsible for pushing effects driven music into new territories. In this episode we take a look at Bear Makes Ninja's resident Jagmaster wielding tap dancer.
Over the last 3 years ArcTanGent Festival has been responsible for uniting some of the most interesting guitar music being made. Technically there have probably been more effect pedals in one place over the ATG weekend than there are in a Boss Factory.
Following another amazing year of ATG I caught up with some of the most brilliant bands playing the festival and had a chat with them about their weird and wonderful gear.
Bear Makes Ninja make quintessential British Math-Rock. Their classic 3-piece format allows each instrument to shine in its own completely unique way. Their quirky rhythm section is as off kilter as it is solid, and gives the effect crazed guitar enough room to flail wildly about in a refreshingly poppy fashion.
I hooked up with James, the band's Jagmaster wielding tap dancer, and asked him a few super nerdy questions about his set up...
Walk me through your pedal board. What goes into what?
Firstly, the board itself....I made it from a wooden pallet! I took inspiration from Pedaltrain and this crazy thing I saw online with the holes to tidy the cables away. It's the third one I've made so far and seems to be holding together nicely! I plan on painting it soon too.
Set up wise, I have the guitar going into a Behringer Compressor. This stays on permanently and just neatens up my tone a little bit, providing a bit more clarity and punch and it sustains really well too! I've had a few Behringers and have been replacing them as time goes by. They're great for anyone wanting an introduction to pedals without the high costs, but tonally some of them do suffer when compared to higher priced pedals.
From the compressor into my TC Electronics Polytune 2. I find that having the compressor first just helps the tuner to be a little more accurate, cutting tuning times down a little. The polytune is great, nice and accurate with a screen that I've never had problems reading from. It also has a power in AND out, meaning that I can power more pedals from this too!
I currently have an Artec Powerbrick, which I've mounted under the board, which powers the 8 pedals I have on there at the moment, but I feel I will have to upgrade this at some point soon!
Next, we go from the tuner and into the EHX Pitch Fork. This is a great little octave pedal, I'm using it mostly on the 1 up and 1 down setting, allowing me to play 3 octaves at once, which is great for single note riffage! It's one of the best octave pedal I've played in terms of tracking and you can even plug an expression pedal into it so you can pretty much use it like a digitech whammy!
The Pitch Fork then goes into a Nux Mod Core. I bought this a couple of years ago for about £30, mainly because it has ton of effects, which are really tweakable with the addition of a 'deluxe' switch, which essentially doubles the amount of effects on the pedal by adding extra beats and sweeps in the effects. I'm using the Phaser setting at the moment in a couple of tunes. I just wanted to play around with a few different noises and on my tight budget this was a great find!
The NUX goes into a Behringer Digital Reverb. This is one of the first pedals I bought, again because it had the most effects to experiment with for the cheapest price. I tend to use the Cave setting the most, but the Room setting is nice too. The 'Space' setting is my favourite, which adds octaves to the reverb. Mmmm octaves! I'm aiming to replace this pedal soon though as I've noticed that whilst it was a great introduction for me into Planet Verb, it seems to suck a lot of tone from the original guitar sound, compared to others I've tried more recently. My favourite so far is the Line 6 Verbzilla, which I think the Behringer is based on as it has a lot of the same effects, but there's so much more clarity and warmth with the Line 6.
Next up is another Behringer. This one has been my favourite and probably the most important pedal on my board. It's called an 'Ultra Shifter Harmonist' and the setting I bought it for is called 'Trem Bar'. With this, you can make your guitar sweep up or down an octave, or any note in between at a whole range of speeds, from siren-slow, to pretty much instantly. For a mere £35, it's provided me with loads of fun and although the other settings aren't really that great tracking-wise, sometimes that can provide an interesting, crapped-out sort of effect in itself! It's the pedal I mostly get asked about after we play at gigs.
From there is a Boss Mega Distortion, which gives me loads of distortion, but not too much that it goes into chuggy metal territory. I wanted a distortion that was nice and clear when playing 4, 5, or 6 note chords with high gain and this does the job well! For recording, I use a Wampler Slostortion, which is a bit more difficult for me to use live, but is a tad more versatile and has a bit more clarity in tone.
The last pedal is a Boss RC-30 Loopstation. This I use for live looping some guitar parts and also as a riff bank. I'll record ideas into it and save them on it's memory for practice sessions etc. You can also plug it into a computer and load samples onto it, or copy your saved loops onto your computer. Last Halloween, we loaded horror movie themes onto it and played them in between songs at a show we played!
Interesting tones are so often the result of stacking rather than a single stomp box. Is there a selection of pedals that you find stack especially well to create something unusual?
I've been using the Trem Bar setting on the Harmonist with the pitchfork for some meaty 3 octave sweeps and the Reverb and Mod Core pedals stack up nicely to create a 'Phasey cave' sound. Both of these feature quite a bit on the newBear Makes Ninja album we've just recorded and hope to release in March next year.
What is your choice of amplification, what led you to this choice, and how do you make it your own?
My current amp is one I've had for many years. It's a 100w Laney TF300 Valvestate combo, but I wasn't quite getting the power I wanted from the single 12" speaker that was supplied, so I bought a Kustom 4x12 cab and started running the combo through that. It was loads louder and clearer now, so I had no need for the single 12" speaker and promptly chopped it out, effectively making it a head unit and ultimately taking up less space in the van/car/train/bus/ferry! I then painted the wood I had used to make a new shell and fitted it with some old denim and some handmade glow-in-the-dark knobs! Ahhhh, pretty!
My favourite feature of this amp, and probably the reason I haven't upgraded yet is the 'Vibe' switch on the far right. I have no idea of the technicalities behind this switch, but it just makes everything more better! Without it, the distortion sounds fuzzy, but with it on, it's a lot tighter, and it just makes the cleans a lot fatter sounding too!
I did borrow a mates Marshall JCM 900 for a while, which was awesome so when I have the pennies I may have to invest in something with valves!
What is your choice of guitar, how did you come to play that guitar, and what makes you stick with it?
The Jagmaster has been my long time guitar of choice. It was a present for my 16th birthday, back when I worshipped grunge! I've had many guitars since, including a more recent remake of this model, but nothing has compared so far! I can't really pinpoint it as its half rusted out, half replaced, knocked and banged about, but I guess it's the feel of it. I've bought higher priced guitars that I thought would be similar, only to be disappointed and return to this one! The next guitar I hope to try out is a Vintage Modified Squier Jaguar HH. It's the closest thing I can find to my Jagmaster as Fender don't even make a version!
I mainly use the neck pickups on this guitar and I find the factory fitted humbuckers on this model produce a nice thick bluesy tone, whilst the bridge pickups have clear mids and highs without being too raspy.
The Incredible Bass VI Pt. 1: Reintroduction and Reaction
The first in a 4 part series on the reintroduction and application of the Fender Bass VI in the instrument world and modern music.
In January of 2013 Fender did something to alter the landscape of the guitar manufacturing world, they introduced the Fender Pawn Shop Bass VI. The instrument didn't blow the roof off of anything, Gibson didn't go out of business off the back of it, Ibanez CEO's didn't throw themselves from buildings, but it did change things, more a rippling undercurrent than anything else, but probably the most influential release Fender had made in 20 years.
The Pawn Shop Bass VI was a hot-rodded take on the original 1961-75 Fender Bass VI that defined Tic-Tac, and was used so effectively by George Harrison on the Let It Be recordings. The Pawn Shop series wasn't especially mainstream for Fender, more Fender designers dipping their toes into a weirder line of models than they would attempt normally. So it must have come as something of a surprise to Fender when the range sold so prolifically. Certainly in the first few months of the instrument's release it was virtually impossible for Guitar Shops to stock the model so quickly were they being sold. Even the demo video that I did on the instrument had sold and was due to be shipped out as soon as I'd finished recording.
The success of the Pawn Shop Bass VI led to Fender quickly introducing a Fender Japan Model, Custom Shop model, and most importantly, a Squier Vintage Modified Bass VI. The latter was by far the most important, it ticked all the boxes that this bass needed to tick; it was a true reissue of the original, complete with the rubbish bridge, individual pick up selectors and 3 single coil pick-up arrangement, but most crucially, it was incredibly affordable, and maybe that was the point.
The Bass VI is such a unique instrument; too twangy for traditional bass players and with a tuning too low for guitarists to play open chords; taking a punt on an instrument that won't be suitable for all situations meant that, even though everyone wanted one, no-one wanted to shell out over £500 for one. The Vintage Modified version gave people an affordable entry point into what is essentially a completely new instrument.
It was the Squier model that truly changed everything. Sure enough shortly after it's introduction everyone was on it. Ibanez released an SR model, Eastwood, Warmoth. These days it has become simply part of the landscape, with no risk of being discontinued, the Bass VI has finally found its place in the instrument world...
...but what is that place, what do people actually use them for, and how can they integrate into a traditional band format without stepping on the toes of either a standard bass or guitar?
The Pedal Papers #1 - Ibanez Tone Lok LF-7 Lo Fi
In the first of a new feature series, we look at the Ibanez Tone Lok LF-7 Lo Fi filter pedal.
In this semi-regular feature, the Guitar Nerds give you the lowdown some of weird and wonderful stompboxes from the past.
THE PEDAL PAPERS #1 - IBANEZ TONE LOK LF-7 LO FI
Cast your mind back to 2001. Nu-metal was in full swing, red baseball caps were all the rage and making your guitar sound like a payphone was something that people desperately wanted to do. Step forward, the Ibanez LF-7 Lo Fi...
Released as part of the Tone-Lok series, the LF-7 was essentially a glorified EQ pedal that allowed the user to cut high or low frequencies to simulate telephone effects. Two EQ filters were paired with drive and volume controls on push-push knobs that could be pressed in and recessed inside of the pedal. This unique "Tone-Lok" design was implemented to stop the player from moving the controls with their feet mid-gig.
Not only designed for use with guitar, the LF-7 also featured drum and microphone modes, and Ibanez themselves even described it as being useful in "any mixdown context". Three early adopters of the LF-7 were Dino Cazares of Fear Factory and Head and Munkey of Korn.
While it may not be the most useful pedal in the World, I still think that the LF-7 would be a great addition for a player with a pedal board that already features an EQ for tone shaping and needs the occasional filter effect. If you can find one, they are usually reasonably priced at around £40-60.
To hear the LF-7 in action, check out this demo from Youtuber Tim Diederich:
Gretsch release loads of new Players models for NAMM 2017!