Ktone Travel Guitar
Ok, I admit it. I was seduced by the low low price. This Ktone travel guitar, found cheap on ebay, is apparently a knockoff of the Hofner Shorty. The Shorty gets reasonably good reviews, so I took a chance on this one. After a few minutes with the Ktone, it became very clear that the flaws in workmanship and detail far outweigh the price savings.
Turns out, sometimes you get exactly what you pay for… So, I’m now turning my attention to the significantly more expensive, but undoubtedly waaaay better Traveler Guitar Escape EG-1 Vintage. I had a chance to play it at a local GC, and this one looks to be a winner.
Here’s some pictures of the Ktone guitar, which start off promising and then go downhill fast:
Breaking in the Speaker
I’ve often heard people talk about how their headphones or guitar speakers really “opened up” or became more “dynamic and alive” after breaking them in.
I recently had the opportunity to borrow a virgin, unplayed Celestion G12M Greenback speaker, which is the same speaker as in my Vox AC15HW1 hand-wired. More
CoAxe Pickups: Interview with VOX R&D
As you can hear in my recent video review of the Vox SSC33, the Vox CoAxe pickups sound amazing. They’re dynamic, noiseless in all modes, and most importantly offer up a wide range of incredible sounds.
With the two blades sandwiching the pole pieces, you can see right away that these aren’t your typical humbucker, single-coil or P90…
Curious for more details on these mysterious creations, I got in touch with the man behind the magic- the inventor of the CoAxe pickup: Eric Kirkland, Chief Designer at VOX Guitar Development (G-Rok), in Novato, California. Read on…More
Vox SSC33TB Guitar
I recently had a chance to play the new Vox SSC33, and it’s a thing of beauty. This is the mid-priced 33 series guitar, in the single cutaway, teaburst finish, with an ash top, mahogany body and neck, and rosewood fretboard. It’s an incredible value when you consider it shares the same MaxConnect aluminum bridge, CoAxe pickups, and super-smooth tuners as Vox’s higher end 55, 77 and Virage guitars. And it comes with a really nice padded gig bag.More
What’s In The Cabinet?
What’s in an amp cabinet? As it turns out, quite a lot. In this video I do an experiment with the same two AC15 amps as in my last video– the AC15C1 Custom, and the AC15HW1 hand-wired.
Both amps use the same Celestion Greenback G12M speaker, and these two here have each been played about the same amount, so they should be “broken in” evenly. More