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15 Aug

Fican Guitars Tornado

Fican Guitars | www.ficanguitars.com.au | RRP: $3900

Stuart Monk’s Fican Guitars is a new brand driven by a unique vision. Monk’s guitars aren’t based on those 50s-derived legends we all know and love: instead he follows his own path. He began building guitars after an injury to his finger made it difficult to play C-shaped necks. He built a D-shaped neck that felt more ergonomic.

15 Aug

15 Aug

Ormsby TX GTR Eaton Special

Ormsby Guitars | 0410 540 327 | www.ormsbyguitars.com | RRP: Contact for Pricing

We’ve already reviewed the Ormsby Hypemachine and SX models in both their custom and production GTR forms. This month we’re taking a peek at another Ormsby design, the TX. Imagine a Telecaster or an Ernie Ball Music Man Axis fed through a warp in spacetime and you’ll get the basic idea. It’s a single-cutaway offset design with great ergonomics and that’s before you even take into account the fretting-hand-friendly multiscale design, which presents a 27.8” scale length on the lowest string and a 25.5” scale on the highest (a 6-string version is also available with a 25.5”-27.5” scale). The benefits of this are many; in terms of how it angles your fretting hand, how it presents a more even tension from string to string and how it intonates better. But we’ve covered that before, so let’s get to the guts of what makes this particular guitar what it is.

15 Aug

18 Jul

VOX Starstream Type 1 Guitar

Yamaha Music Australia | (03) 9693 5111 | www.voxamps.com | RRP: $1299 - $1399

Vox are certainly known for classic looks and classic tones when it comes to their amplifiers. They are also known for straying from the classic when it comes to their guitars. So, it comes as no surprise that their latest release – the Starstream Type 1 – looks the way it does. This instrument certainly is different, yet it looks so intriguing, you simply have to pick it up and see what it’s all about.

18 Jul

11 Jul

Ernie Ball Music Man Luke III Electric Guitar

CMC Music Australia | (02) 9905 2511 | www.cmcmusic.com.au | RRP: $4450

Picture yourself back when you first started playing. You’d picked up your first electric guitar 6 months earlier; some cheap Strat copy that came 
in a package deal with a 10w practice amp and all the accessories necessary for your parents to feel like they were getting a bargain. You walk into the room at the back of your teacher’s house where you’ve been learning all the barre chords and even had a crack at a few Hendrix solos over the course of the last year, and there it is. Hanging on the wall all shiny and new like it was plucked straight out of that Guns N’ Roses video you’d taped off Rage. The youthful awe, one day you’ll have an axe like that! The EBMM Luke III looks and feels like it was designed to have that very appeal.

11 Jul

21 Jun

Ormsby SX Custom Electric Guitar

Ormsby Guitars | 0410 540 327 | www.ormsbyguitars.com | RRP: Contact for Pricing

I’ve been lucky enough to play a bunch of Ormsby guitars over the past few years. One of the coolest community-friendly things about Ormsby is their regular meet-ups (or meat-ups, if there’s food involved like the one I went to a while back), where you can get hands-on experience with as many guitars as you can handle. Recently a meet-up was organised for Melbourne and a few dozen guitarists got to try out plenty of custom and production guitars, as well as check out the Line 6 Helix and Relay G10.

21 Jun

21 Jun

PRS S2 Standard 22

Electric Factory | (03) 9474 1000 | www.elfa.com.au | RRP: Contact for Pricing

PRS are responsible for populating the dreams of many guitarists. Their quality of make and purity in tone is held in such high esteem that, for many, the dream of owning one is just that: a dream. Putting an end to this longstanding monetary barrier is the arrival of the
 S2 Standard 22 – an axe stocked with the same PRS ingenuity, but without the heavy price tag.

21 Jun

20 Jun

Ernie Ball Music Man Cutlass Electric Guitar

CMC Music Australia | (02) 9905 2511 | www.cmcmusic.com.au | RRP: from $3495

The Ernie Ball Music Man Cutlass has a small body fitted with three single coil pickups. There’s not a great deal of bells and whistles as far as the bridge and tuning machines are concerned. But don’t let all these details deceive you: the Cutlass isn’t a delicate little biscuit. It’s no anvil either, but there’s a bulkiness to this guitar, which is reflective of the guts encased within.

20 Jun

15 Jun

Ultimate Pedal Effects Special: Fuzz and Preamp Pedals

Warm and Fuzzy

This month we have already taken a look at the best of the best when it comes to Distortion, Delay and Overdrive. Now it's time to dig a little deeper and find some hidden gems in the pedal world. Let's take a look at some Fuzz and Preamp Pedals..

15 Jun

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