Oh Well

I know I promised to let you know about the other couple of amps I’ve been playing with over the weekend, but it snowed and there are sick kiddies to be tended and well, life ain’t always my own.

So sue me.

Anyway, as I said before, the Gonzo Gonzalez has gone to a new home (or will do tomorrow anyway), which left a couple of boxes to play with.

The first of these is a Romeo and Juliet box which I’ll tell you about tomorrow, but is basically another lovely fuzzy Amy-tone with a wee bit of a twist that amused me no end.

OK, I admit it, Amy-tones, I’ve fell in love with, as they are so cool to play thru.

I tuned my little cigar box guitar today using open G (I might have that wrong, G-D-G?), which sounded great and like a Harrier taking-off from the Ark Royal in a Typhoon when I put it thru the Gonzo.

And I could have stayed playing all day, which is going some, as I am truly hopeless when it comes to playing slide.

Bleeding awful,
I don’t mind admitting.

Saying that, I am rapidly falling in lust with slide guitar all over again since I built a CBG and Amy gives it a real hell-on-earth kind of noise that you just can’t get with a ‘real’ guitar. Amazing tone, and if you are a guitarist and have never played a CBG, you really owe it to yourself to try one. Most of them are pretty cheap – just check out eBay or Cigar Box Nation and you’ll find one easy enough, or better still build yourself one. It could be the best thing you ever do.

But I was talking about what I’ve been up to, and yes the R&J is cool, but it is the green Cano one that has really got me thinking. You see, much as I love the sound of authentic – Jook joint – delta blues, and much as I believe that CBGs are the closest you can get to that Robert Johnson sound. Much as all of that is true, I have to admit that Peter Green playing Black Magic Woman whilst a member of Fleetwood Mac, was my first and defining ‘Blues moment’.

There, out in the open.

And so, despite the fact that it is utterly meaningless, I wanted to do a none-signature, tribute model for our next Jooky little amp, and so the Green one will no doubt become The Greenie One and due entirely to the fella’s imagination and out-of-phase brilliance, I want to do something a bit different.

With this in mind then, I’ve been playing with the green box and have decided to do my own version of the classic BB King (OK, Gibson) Variotone, so that it will have a nice rotary switch that lets you instantly change the tone of the guitar (well, of the guitar’s sound as it trundles thru the amp) between a variety of presets.

What is taking so long? Well, rather than go with the basic Gibson settings I figured it would be nice to pick half-a-dozen of my favourite bluesy songs, and try and find tones that match each of them.

Which is tricky.

And takes a while, I’ve found.

But there we are, it is all
Good
Fun.

p.s. I'm also building a quite mad fuzz box at the moment, which is for the guitarist in a Bristol band. More about that if he doesn't think it is a pile of shonkiness, later on.