New guitars and a new tremolo stabilizer product tested

Hi again!

Some months ago I bought two new used guitars. Two real metal beasts :-)

From left to right: B.C Rich Ironbird Limited and Agile Hornet Pro 725

The Ironbird is a six string and the Hornet is a seven string. These two are replacing my Gibson Explorer 7. Cheaper guitars but they got what I like, Floyd Rose and 24 jumbo frets. After ripping them apart, setting them up and tuning them to my liking they are also both very nice to play. The only bad thing I found is that the Ironbird is not very well balanced when it's hanging in the guitar strap. It's neck heavy so you need to pull it up the whole time. I've played one gig with the Ironbird already and it was okay, but I will try to see if I can make this better by moving one of the places where the strap is attached. The Agile, inspite its v-shape, hangs really good on you.

I had never heard of Agile Guitars before but I read a lot of good critics about the guitars before I contacted the seller. When I tried out the guitar the setup was really bad. The bridge was heavily tilted to the front and the guitar was out of tune, but everything seemed to be working and nothing seemed to be broken either. The seller asked me in advance what strings I'd like to have and about the tuning. I guess he had it tuned some other way and maybe used different string gauge and that when he then tried to adapt it for me he did not manage to do it properly. I always redo the setup anyways so it would not mean any additional work for me, but I was actually a little worried that it was broken somehow or of such bad quality that it was not possible to fix it. After a while and some out-of-tune-chording I decided to go for it. Glad I did. After setup it was a totally new and really nice guitar.

As you have heard before I use tremsetters to make it possible for me to do unibends and double stops without having to compensate with my fingers. These two babies needed some tremsetting to. A while ago I stumbled on some information regarding the Super-Vee product called the Mag-Lok. It uses magnets instead of springs to increase the spring tension at the floating point. Here's a video explaing it;

After some reading it was really simple to install and it worked really good. The feeling when rocking the whammy bar was smoother around the floating point and I did not have to use that much force when diving down since the magnets as soon as they separated did not add any resistance. Clever! But to have it working so good I had to remove the small hairy washer that was placed between the magnets. The only bad thing about this product was that it sometimes resonated with the notes played. I noticed that on the Ironbird and that guitar already had a bit of foam rubber squeezed in between the springs and the lid to dampen the springs so it also killed the mag-lok resonance. It was not that apparent on the Agile so maybe it was a unique problem on the Ironbird, I was also a little skeptic that the Mag-lok would work on the Agile since it is a seven string guitar and therefore has a higher force from the strings at pitch. And so it seemed the first time I installed it. But the day after when I tried it again everything was working fine. When thinking about this this makes sense since the surrounding springs setts the equilibrium point of the floating bridge. The force needed to dampen the floating bridge will therefore not depend on the string force.

Here are some photos of installation of the Mag-lok and replacing the pickups on the Ironbird to EMGs:

The Mag-Lok installed and the old pots almost removed

Closeup of the Mag-Lok installation

The Mag-Lok in the background and the new wiring for the EMGs in the foreground. I normally run my EMGs on 18 Volts, but fitting one battery in the cavity was tight enough, Two batteries was totally out of the question.

And here is a photo of the Mag-Lok installation on the Agile:

As you can see I have four springs in place due to the pull from the seven strings. I did not realize it at the time of the installation, but all the strings and the Mag-Lok are tilted. To straighten them out would require a small move of the spring holder on the left side in the picture above. Since it does not affect the function of the bridge and that I estimate that the move needed is too small to be able to make new wholes in the wood, I will leave it like it is.


To sum it up, I'm really happy with the Mag-Lok! It was really easy to install and worked immediately without fine tuning it. I will change my first choice of tremolo stabilization
from the HipShot Tremsetter to the Super-Vee Mag-Lok!!

Rock on!

Editing videos

Hi there!

When my bands performs I usually record the whole thing with my Zoom Q2HD:

The Zoom Q2 is a really neat little device. The Q2 is the second Zoom portable recorder I own. The first one was an Zoom Q3. The Q3 is only capable to record in VGA (640x480) resolution and since that is not much to brag about I bought the Q2 HD device when it was released. Both devices record very good sound, but if you like to have a good video quality to go with your high quality sound you should go for the Q2 device. There also exists a Q3 HD device that came out just after I bought the Q3. I have not tried the Q3 HD unit but it was more expensive then the Q2 so it should be just as good, I guess. 

The Zoom recorders are really simple to operate and I normally place them on a tripod way back in the room and do digital zoom afterwards and it still is quite okay to add to youtube. Here is an example:

Please also note what happens when one tries to tune the guitar :-)

The editing and upload software that comes with the Q2 and  Q3 works fine, but are lacking some expected features like the option to select a different working directory on the PC. The sound mastering features sounds rather good and enables quick uploads to YouTube without endless fiddling with a multiband compressor..

Rock on!

Sweden Rock 2014 review, day 2!

Hi again!

Well, I haven't had much time for this lately. Too much gigging and rehearsals going on. Work and normal life to of cause :-). Anyways, I started a review of this years Sweden Rock Festival and I will try to finish it. Now it's time for day two of four!!

Thursday and day two of the festival. This day the Swedish summer finally started to show itself. It became really hot, by Swedish standards. Just one shower disturbed the nice weather.

Band: Pretty Maids
Style: Heavy Metal
Review: I really loved the first couple of records they did in the early days, then I somehow lost track of them.  I don't really remember why, I just forgot about them. Must have been some bad record I guess, but I really don't recall.
I really loved the beginning of the concert, they had a lot of energy and that old trademark sound. I did not recognize the songs so they must have been from a new record. I remembered that I said to myself that I have to check them out again when I get home. So far so good. The singer did not sound exactly like he did back in the days and in the middle of the concert I realized that it was not the same singer. But he did a really good job. From that smashing start the show slowly changed one step at a time into a sleepy ballad swamp. I decided to head for the bar instead. But after just walking 10 meters or so, I heard them riffing out the absolutely fabulous intro to the song Back to back. Yeah!! They blasted out some more old classics before they called it a day. The end was worth the wait!
Credential: 5

Band: Transantlantic
Style: Progressive rock
Review: After falling in love with Rush and Dream Theater and the likes I have widen my taste with more progressive and fusion music. I have never really heard Transatlantic before, but I saw a concert on Youtube to prepare myself for this concert.  I really loved this show! It was very varied and of cause full of progressive sounds. The songs were really long, of cause, but really good. I don't know their songs, but it seemed like they did not play that many songs at all :-). Portnoy was in a good mood also. He fooled around and made fills on his toms with his hi-hat stand etc. The drum placement on the front right side of the stage, with Mike's side to the audience was also entertaining. A really fun and uplifting concert.
Credential: 7

Band: Black Stone Cherry
Style: Southern Hard Rock
Review: These guys were new to me. I had heard a couple of songs in the Sweden Rock Spotify playlist, that's it. The sound was unexpected. I thought they would sound like a classical southern rock. They did, but with a much more aggressive and heavier sound. Perfect!! I've always liked the southern style, but it tends to get a little too lame sometimes. I really liked the songs on Spotify. The show contained the same aggressiveness and even a couple of notches more. The band members had a really wild stage show and unfortunately it affected their performance. Okay, it was cool and funny for a while, but really tiresome in the long run. I don't need the bands to play perfectly, I mean it's rock 'n roll, but still, I have a limit to what I can accept and this was just a little below that line. But these guys are young and they will soon hopefully realize that the visual part is not everything. I've listened more to their songs after Sweden Rock and I really like this!!!
Credential: 6

Band: Eyes Wide Open
Style: Melodic death metal
Review: Through friends of my relatives and a AC/DC song at a party I know these guys. Therefore I thought I had to pay my respect to them and visit their show. I don't like death metal and I hate growl!! But, when I prepared myself for this concert I found out that these guys had really evolved. I listened to their newest release "Aftermath" and I was really surprised. The songs were really good and the growling did not disturb me that much. It was a nice kind of growl mixed with clean chorus vocals. I saw them perform a couple of years ago in a tent at Sweden Rock Festival. This was a totally different experience!! They showed much more stage presence and performed much better. Unfortunately I missed the start of the show and I had to leave before the end, nature called. Really fun to see people doing the thing they love doing!! Good luck guys and rock on!!
Credential: 7

Band: Alter bridge
Style: Heavy Rock
Review: This was a really bad thing!! The baddest thing at Sweden Rock Festival 2014!! Alter bridge played at the same time as Masterplan :-((. I really like both of these bands. I've seen Alter bridge before and they are really awesome, but since I've never seen Masterplan before I had to to choose Masterplan this time. This review is a little unfair since I only saw the first two songs as I was passing by heading for the Masterplan stage, but I still wanted to write it! I discovered Alter bridge by accident actually, but I really dig what they do. Their songs are really versatile and the musicianship is excellent!! Well, what can I say? What I heard this time was also excellent!!
Credential: 8

Band: Masterplan
Style: Power Metal
Review: The first thing I heard with Masterplan was the record Aeronautics. It was absolutely fantastic!! Then I heard "Back for life", it was also really good! But then I forgot about them for a while. I prepared myself by listening to their newest record, also a very good record. The show was really good and perfectly performed. I did not recognize all the songs, but the ones I recalled, they performed really well. The new singer did cope really good with the old and new songs. He did a perfekt job!! Nothing to complain about here, Pure German quality though and through. Ah, and with a Swedish touch :-)
Credential: 8

Band: Alice Cooper
Style: Hard Horror Rock
Review: I've never really been a fan of Alice. The 70's music was too strange, mystical and soft for me. The 80's songs where good, but had too much hit focus for me. I visited a concert sometime around 2000, Brutal Planet. I did not understand it at all. All the songs where weaved into each other and sounded almost like one long continuous song. In the middle of the show he just turned back the time and performed old classics. Strange concert structure. I've seen this concert on DVD after that and I have really started to like it. After Brutal Planet I have not followed Alice's releases. I saw him on Sweden Rock some years ago, it was okay. This concert was much much better then everything else I've seen with Alice. The songs were varied and the show was spiced with his normal effects. He spent quite some time in the the middle of the concert celebrating old dead rock heroes by covering their songs. That could have been a bad thing, but he turned it to a success somehow!!
Credential: 8


Rock on!!

Review Sweden Rock Festival

Hi!

Although I have visited Sweden Rock Festival, SRF, every year since 2006 with the exception of 2012 I have never attempted to write a review before. But now it's time, so here it is folks:

We traveled from Ludvika on the Tuesday morning June 3 at 07:00. We drove to Karlstad in my Saab to pick up one additional travel companion and then we continued to Grums to change to the house mobile we had rented. We arrived in Norje at 23:00 just in time to get one of the last places at the Å Camping where we almost always stay during the festival.

Wednesday morning started at about 09:00 with the usual breakfast at the local tourist center followed by a walk-through of the outside area of the festival and getting the festival bracelet. The sky was very cloudy but in spite that it was rather warm and nice. Skin trousers, jacket and a hat helped :-). We headed back to our house (mobile) and started off with our traditional morning drink which is a mixture of hot strawberry tea and whiskey. One lead to another...
Following is a list of the bands I saw on this day and a quick review of the concert. The credential is a number from 1 to 10 where 1 is really bad and 10 is really good.

Band: Vdelli
Style: Blues rock
Review: It was well performed, but the songs were rather similar in structure and sound. The two last songs deviated from the other songs and was much more dynamic and interesting. That made them the best songs on the show!
Credential: 3

Band: Freak Kitchen
Style: Progressive Wacko Metal (my own classification attempt)
Review: The concert was funny from first second to last. It contained funny and ingenious lyrics accompanied by very technical and crazy/funny music and absolutely crazy and voluminous talk between the songs. But in spite the technical level of the songs most of them contained a melodic and catchy vocal parts. The guitar solos Mattias IA Eklundh plays are always true to his very unique style. There was no boring period at all during this concert, but some parts of the songs were kind of hard to follow because of the complex rhythms used.
Credential: 7

Band: Magnum

Style: AOR

Review: I have never been a big fan of Magnum. They have some really great songs, but if I listen to a them whole album I get bored. They are a little too soft for me. But, that is not true when they play live. Then they play everything just a notch heavier and that is just enough for me. I saw Magnum live the first time the last time they played at SRF. I had no expectations at all and I was really surprised by how I good I thought it was. This time it was not as good though. I don't know why, but it seemed that they were running on auto pilot or maybe they were not that inspired as they were the last time. They played good songs and played them well, but something was missing. I also thought that the singer Bob Catley did not perform as well as the last time. It was probably just a bad day at work for them.

Credential: 5

Band: Paul Dianno vs Blaze Bayley

Style: Heavy Metal

Review: This was a little special thing. Two old Iron Maiden singers performing Iron Maiden songs. Because of the title this could very well have been a contest or a duel. I will therefore announce the winner here :-). Blaze started the show. I have seen him play at SRF before, but now he played only Iron Maiden songs. During the show I started to think the same thing as I did the last time, why on earth did I stop listening to Iron Maiden when he joined the band? I used to think that Maiden lost everything at that time. The songs went bad and singer was nothing compared to Bruce Almighty. But during this performance I thought Blaze was performing really well and I liked his vocals. The songs were really good too. So I've been wrong all these years :-(. It's a shame!!
Credential: 7
After Blaze's really good first half Paul had to put up a really god show to measure up. I really dig the good songs during the early Maiden years when Paul was the singer so this should be no problem for him I thought. But, apparently I was totally wrong. The band did a really good job, nothing to complain about there. But Paul sounded really awful :-(. He ruined all the songs I have to say. This show was the worst I have seen in all my years at SRF. It was mentioned that Paul was going to retire from music after this tour. Sadly I think it's a really good idea.
Credential: 1
Oh..  and the winner is...   Blaze Bayley :-)

Band: Queensryche
Style: Progressive Heavy Metal
Review: I just loved Queensryche during their peek around the album Operation Mindcrime. They stayed good for some more releases but after that their style gradually turned too soft for me. They suddenly did a really good release with the follow up to Operation Mindcrime called Operation Mindcrime II but after that nothing again. But now they have replaced the original singer Geoff Tate with Todd LaTorre. A though change since Queensryche's sound is so much affected by Tate's vocals, but a really good one I think. The new release is the best since Mindcrime II and when it comes to vocals LaTorre does a really good job. Their performance here just proved my point. The change was a real vitamin injection. The band really performed well and LaTorre had no problems at all to deliver the old and new songs with perfection. This was the best show this first day of SRF!! 
Credential: 9

This review became longer then I expected, I therefore end here. I will be back with a review of the other days later.

Rock on!!

Sweden Rock Festival

Hi there!

Now it's time to quit the normal life and travel half across the Swedish landscape to the annual 4-day rock bubble called Sweden Rock Festival. I cannot say enough positive things about this festival. It's a lot of old style heavy metal bands but also some newer bands that performs live and the festival spirit here is really nice. No fighting and hard words only very happy and slightly (and some even more) intoxicated people discussing music and other matters. We almost every year get the first taste of the summer at this festival and that is also really nice after the long cold winter...

This year super head liner is Black Sabbath, but for an old style metal guy like me there is a lot more to get exited about. Unfortunately Megadeth has cancelled, that was a pity, but Swedish Electric Boys will take their place and that is nice too. But there are many more good bands to see. I have detected the first disaster, Alter Bridge is playing at the same time as Masterplan!!! Well, I guess I have to see half of their shows. Bummer.

I drive early tomorrow (or today actually) from home to Norje where the festival is. We will go via Karlstad this year so there will approximately 700 km  of driving tomorrow :-).

Have a nice day and rock on!!

Changing guitars!

Hi again!

Back to guitars and music :-) I am right now selling my Gibson Explorer 7-string and an Grass Roots guitar.

The Gibson Explorer 7-string is a good and cool guitar. The first owner did a really nice job polishing the varnish away from the backside of the neck. Usually the varnish on a Gibson neck sticks to your fingers when playing, but that is not a problem with this guitar! The EMG707:s delivers as usual. I have done some re-coupling  of the pots on it. I cannot play with the separate volume controls for neck and bride pickups. I will change that back before I sell it.

Here it is!

I'm also selling a more unusual guitar. It's a Grass Roots but I don't know the model name. As I understand it Grass Roots is part of the ESP family and it is only sold in Asia. Someone here in Sweden had imported this guitar and I bought it from him some years ago. After setting it up correctly it turned out to be a really nice guitar. It looks cool with it's ESP f-shape in some brown animal blotchy painting. The original pickups was crappy so I replaced them with a set from my old Charvel by Jackson model 6 and the result was awesome.

Here it is!

I am selling the Gibson explorer because I miss having a Floyd Rose and 24 frets. The Grass Roots I sell just to limit my guitar collection a bit. :-)

Rock on!

Weekend to an end

Hi there!

Not everything in my life is music. This weekend for me has been entirely focused on running. I ran the worlds largest half marathon, Göteborgsvarvet, for the third time. Göteborgsvarvet is a real town festival! This year about 200 000 people was gathered along the 21 km long track cheering for the 64 000 runners. As you might have guessed it was a little crowded on the track, but it was quite okay. It always is since the spirit of the people running, the spectators and the functionaries are really nice and pleasant. People are having outdoor barbecues along the track or just drinking beer and enjoying themselves as they watch the runners go by. There are also about 50 music stations around the track that help us runners to keep the spirit up and they deliver everything from live folk music to metal covers. Nice!!

The goal for me this year was to reach the finishing line, and I did :-)  It was no easy ride beyond 16 km. A big portion of determination and stubbornness carried me to the end and today I have had, as Ace said, trouble walkin´.

Good night!

Easter

Hi there!

Today I have been working with typical spring chores like changing tires on the car from winter to summer tires, cleaning the house and preparing it for the Easter holiday. After a nice supper with the family and some family time I have now retired to the basement for some guitar fiddling :-)

Here's an old thrash classic to get the mood up and running for ya!

Mosh away!!

My music

Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not a progressive only person. I like variation. Sometimes I like to indulge myself with the most complex progressive and technical stuff and sometimes I need the totally opposite, just plain old mean rock 'n roll. It does not really matter what genre, as long as it has some rock 'n roll connection and is energetic. But I also like rock based fusion. I've thought about this and I've come up with a good definition of the music I like. I like good music!! :-)

It has not always been like this. In the beginning I was a hard core fan of Elvis and did not now much else. The artwork of the album Destroyer by Kiss changed my life forever. Radio Luxenbourgh then continued the change by introducing AC/DC, Saxon etc.  As the years have passed I have widen my musical landscape. It's more accepted nowadays to have a really wide music taste, but in the 80's you had to choose, heavy metal or synth music. That was easy for me and I picked the side even before I know it was a side. Here are some different good music for me:

and as a proud Swede :-)

I can continue forever, but you get the idea...

ROCK 'N ROLL!

Rush influence

Hi again!

One of my favorite songs with Rush is this song

Absolute cheer progressive heaven :-)

Enjoy!

New really good discovery!

Hi!

I stumbled on a band called DGM yesterday in the sofa in front of the TV. Well, DGM was not on TV. I was surfing youtube with headphones and the rest of the family was watching the normal Friday night TV shows. I don't know why I have not heard about DGM before! I really like progressive metal!!

In the beginning for me there was only one group, KISS!!! They opened the world of hard rock for me, I had never heard anything like it. After that came AC/DC, Saxon, Iron Maiden and the rest of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. So my world was classic HM all the way. The progressive thing all started for me with buying a tape on sale with an (to me) unknown group called Rush. The album was Permanent Waves and it was released 1980. I guess I bought it around 1982.

I remember that I thought that the album was strange but somewhat interesting musically. The vocals was really strange or unusual. I think I must have listened to the cassette a couple of times before I threw it on the not-good-heap. But somehow the album grew on me subconsciously so I gave it another chance after a couple of years or so. I found that my first impression of the album was all wrong. The music was not strange, it was different and satisfied other parts of my musical, so far uncharted, knowledge. The vocals also sounded much better. I don't know why I did not like it from the beginning.

So more Rush followed, also other progressive music. In the beginning it was just longer songs with more arrangements by bands like e.g. Iron Maiden. Then came Dream Theater!! I just love Dream Theater for their ability to make super complex songs that really does not sound complex and has nice and catchy melodies. Progressive in secrecy :-). But don't get me wrong, then can sound really complex as well!! After Dream Theater I have discovered a lot of good progressive bands, but I have also discovered some that are truly progressive but they can not deliver something that grabs me musically, i.e. a good song!

Back to yesterday's discovery, DGM. DGM is an Italian band that played instrumental music in the beginning but nowadays includes vocals. The album I stumbled on was their newest creation "Momentum". The best albums for me are the ones that gets good after listening to them 10 times or so. The ones that I like from start I usually gets tired of really quickly. But I have listened to Momentum for about 10 times and I still really like it! The songs are rather fast but really good musically with good vocals, strong melodies and excellent performance. Progressive power metal in it's best! I can't wait to see them on Sweden Rock Festival :-)

Here is DGM with Momentum on youtube!

Rock on!!

New direction

I have now made a decision that will make my facebook friends happy. I have decided to expand the content of this blog from only talking about guitars, amps and other guitar related devices to even include music and general stuff that I normally bore my facebook friends with :-).
The reason for changing scope of the blog is that the Axe-Fx has really reduced my gear chasing needs. My world is all inside the Axe-Fx now. As I grow more familiar with it I might start to talk about that here in more depth, but for now I settle with the more general things. This leads to fewer blog posts and by expanding the content of the blog I hope I have the need of doing more posts.

Please give me some feedback! Is this good, bad or don't you care. Please let me know! It would be nice to know with whom I am communicating...

Rock on!

No live clip yet

Hi there!

I have now tried the Axe-Fx live some time ago. Unfortunately I did not manage to get the gig recorded. But as I've heard from people in the audience that the sound was really good, but that the level of the guitar was too low. What can I say? It was not the first time and you can not really have too much guitar :-).

Another discovery I made is that my sounds got really drastically changed during a jam party that I organized about a couple of months ago. I actually thought that someone fiddled around with the settings and accidentally managed to save them. But after upgrading the firmware to the newest version a couple of weeks ago I discovered that this really changed the sound of my presets. That must have been a reason for the change during the jam party since I did a firmware update just the day before. It was actually mentioned in the release notes. So lesson learned. When I perform a firmware update in the future, I will do it and than go through all my presets and scenes and check that they still sounds the way they should.

Rock on!

Soon live with my Axe-Fx II

Hi again!

Now I have really started to get a really nice sound from the Axe-Fx II! It sounds smashing at rehearsals. It is really like playing an amplifier but the sound is clearer. I am not talking about the amount of gain here, it is enough! What I mean is that what I play comes across much better even when I use the heavy distorted sounds and with full band. The monitor is also working great. It is maybe not totally constant across the whole frequency spectrum, but it's really suitable as a guitar monitor. I mean you do not need a perfect sound in the monitor, you need to hear what you play! What is really nice is that it is really easy to get controlled feedback when using the monitor. YES!! :-D I thought that would be one of the things I had to sacrifice when moving from amp to simulator, but I was luckily wrong.

I have not used the unit live yet but next Friday it is time for the premiere. The gig is a small gig nearby so we use our own PA. The place is not built for band performances, but it works. We have played there before. It is one large oblong room with one smaller room on the side connected via a removable wall. We used the smaller room as our stage. Strange, but it worked really nice. It will work even better now when I take up much less space :-). I'm really exited about this and I'm really convinced that the sound will be awesome!

Okay, I leave you now with a video clip from a performance with my cover band Fire in the Basement. I really like the sound from my guitar here, quite on the edge of feedback every now and then. This is my ENGL Powerball singing :-D. It is for sale here and here now.

Rock on!