Andrew's Guitar Page

Yamaha Pacifica PAC311MS

I stumbled on this 'hot-rod telecaster' in a shop in Hertford in January 2003, and my wife convinced me to buy it on the spot(!!) It's a lower-spec version of the Mike Stern signature model, with a humbucker at the neck and a 'single-width' humbucker at the neck. It's gutsy and twangy all at once, enabling me to live out my Danny Gatton fantasies!

• Reviews on Harmony Central

Hohner Revelation RTX

My main guitar since it was launched in 1992, this is a Czech-made production prototype. As such, some aspects of the guitar never made it into the full production run, such as the 27 fret neck and the pull-pot for the novel passive circuitry (which became a push-pot). It has a bridge humbucker, single coil at the neck, and a Wilkinson floating trem with roller nut. Most of these I've seen have a standard 6-a-side headstock, while mine has a 4-2 split.

This was my main guitar with The Little Dog Laughed, using a black Yamaha Pacifica tele-style with two humbuckers (now sold) and Patrick Eggle Berlin (owned by Robin Kohler) as back-up onstage. I don't use it much now for gigging, but I love it dearly and it will be "pried from my cold, dead hands"!

I had another one of these, pretty much identical but with 24 frets and a push-pot - bought on eBay in August 2004 and sold in September 2005.

In case anyone else owns one of these, here are the front and back of the leaflet that was provided with this model, explaining how to use the tone circuitry.

Other Revelation websites

• No pictures here, but a fair bit of history
• Guitar Rod
• This guy has loads of them...

Hohner G3T

A blast from the past, I loved this guitar in the late 1980s until it was stolen in 1992. I bought it partly for practicality (I had just moved to the USA, and expected to do a fair bit of travelling - it came back to the UK with me in the footwell in front of my seat!), but mostly because it looked just like the white Steinberger that my idol, Allan Holdsworth, was playing at that time.

I finally managed to track one down on eBay in June 2005. It seems that the white ones are rarer than hen's teeth...

The other slightly unusual thing about this model is that it has individual switches for each pick-up, rather than an overall 3- or 5-way switch. This means that you can use the neck and bridge pickups (or even all three!) together, and can also get the "stuttering" effect used by Ace Frehley, Tom Morello et al.

Line 6 Variax 300

I do plenty of gigs that need a wide variety of tones, from acoustics to strats, to jazzboxes to banjos(!) Rather than travel with loads of guitars, I invested in one of these... The guitar itself is basic, but in combination with the electronics, it's becoming my main "working" guitar.

I'm currently planning to remove the electronics from this and put them in my Pacifica Tele-style (above)...

My most recent discovery is the Les Paul Goldtop model running through the Vox amp model on my GNX3 - bite with plenty of middle.

Takamine EG523SC

Having decided to have a go at the whole "unplugged" thing, and having earned enough in recent months to justify it, I decided that I needed a decent acoustic guitar. I tried a few, and decided that this sounds good finger-picked, flat-picked and strummed. It's almost identical to one Tim Bastock bought a few years ago and is very happy with. Before I splashed out on a new one, I found one on eBay for almost half the price - Result!

Still have to work out that "unplugged" set though...

Ibanez AF105FNT

When I decided I wanted a jazz guitar, it really had to have a single, floating pickup. While the classic jazzboxes are way out of my price range, I fell in love when I saw this new model from Ibanez in a shop in Windsor. A few weeks later, I walked out of the shop its proud owner. It's great - with bite if required, but lovely warm tone and very playable. Chinese-made instruments still have a bit of a poor reputation, but this one is excellent, and superb value for money.

Squier Affinity Strat

Found (in rather delapidated condition) at a car boot sale for the princely sum of £30(!), a bit of elbow grease turned this into a nice second guitar for my 60s covers band. It might also become an experiment, if I go ahead with my plan to upgrade saddles, pick-ups, wiring mods etc.

DeArmond Ashbory bass

"The little bass with the big sound", variations of Ashbory basses have been made on and off since the mid 1980s. Mine is much more recent, made in Korea by Fender, probably sometime around 2000. It's fretless with strings made of silicone rubber, and (bizarrely) sounds quite a lot like a double bass! I bought mine via eBay, primarily for use in pit orchestras.

Other Ashbory websites

• The official story (as told by its inventors)
• The main community website for Ashbory players

Cheap Spanish Guitar

Picked up at a car boot sale for £10!! It came in very handy when doing West Side Story in June 2002, but doesn't get much use otherwise... aside from playing at home for my young son

Amps & FX

Marshall 5275 75W (1x12) Reverb guitar combo

I bought this in 1989 while I was at Uni, and used it all through The Little Dog Laughed, in stereo with a Fender Twin Reverb (owned by Steve Tippett). Big, heavy and louder than I need right now (particularly when I run my GNX-3 directly into the PA, and only use the amp for monitoring!) I'm thinking about selling it and getting a cheap stereo power amp system.

Digitech GNX-3 multi-fx pedal

Bought this in the summer of 2002 and I think it's excellent (although I still haven't explored all its possibilities). Amp modelling, chorus, delay, wah, pitch shift, and pretty much everything else... all in a single stereo box. I've recently used it for gigging and recording, both times straight into the desk, and it sounded lovely!

Boss MicroBR

I bought this in 2007, mostly to use for practising (very good for recording/looping jazz changes) but it's also a pretty powerful 4-track

Older gear

• Volume pedal - something I can never be without!
• Strobe tuner - an essential for session work!

Gear I've sold

Guitars

• Applause bowlback electro-acoustic (Ovation copy) - bought when the Little Dog Laughed "went acoustic" in the mid 90s, sold in 2008, by which time the Takamine was my main acoustic
• Tanglewood TW-145 SC - very nice electro-acoustic, bought in August 2007 and sold a year later
• Hohner Jack bass - This is the bass I used with 100 Pipers/Halcyon Days in the early 90s, and more recently for in Big Band sessions and pit work. Later models included active circuitry, but this is the original, passive model. I usually blend the two pickups for a punchy, but slightly 'squishy' sound. I must confess that I haven't used this at all for a couple of years, as my gig work has (thankfully) shifted from bass to guitar and reeds. I donated it to a boy Jessica used to look after, who's now learning double bass.
• Hohner Revelation RTX - I bought a production model on eBay in August 2004 and sold it in September 2005 because it really was TOO similar to my main guitar
• Fender Stratocaster (MZ3200575) - won in a competition in September 2004, sold in September 2005 as I hardly ever played it. I guess 'regular' guitars aren't for me!
• Yamaha Pacifica Telecaster-shape with 2 x humbuckers (black) - bought in 1994 and sold in 1995
• Hohner G3T Steinberger-licensed "cricket bat" (white) - bought in the Austin, TX in 1989 and stolen in Harlow, Essex 1992
• Washburn "superstrat" (red) - bought in 1986 and sold in 1989, just before moving to Texas
• "No-name" Les Paul copy - bought in 1984 and given to a friend in 1987

Amps & FX

• H&H 100W bass combo - sold in 2005 (I don't play much bass these days, and borrow an amp when I need to)
• Digitech WH-1 Whammy (the original, and still the best) - sold in 2004
• Digitech RP-1 (original floor-based multi-fx) - sold in 2003
• Jim Dunlop wah-wah - sold in 2002
• Marshall 12W guitar practice amp - part-exchanged in 1988