Martin Day

Saturday March 29th was Martin Day at Hot Licks - P.F. location with Dave Evans the Martin Mid-Atlantic Rep for Martin guitars. We didn't have a huge turnout for the event but everyone that came had a great time and got to see some really cool guitars. Dave brought down four guitars (HD-16RLSH, OOO-18 Authentic S/B, Johnny Cash Model, and OMC cherry) of which we kept the OMC cherry for stock.

JohnnyB. and Dave Evans with the OOO-18 Authentic

That OMC cherry is one sweet playing/sounding guitar!!! I had not given the Sustainable wood series much thought before, but just wow what a great sounding guitar. This one took alot of people by surprise that came to the event, it was hands down every one's overall favorite.
Let's see where to start...I guess we would need to ask a couple questions first.

Q: What is a sustainable wood guitar?
A: A guitar that is made of wood that originated in forests managed in an ecologically responsible manner.

Q: What kind of wood is the OMC cherry made of?
A: There are a few different woods on the OMC cherry...

• Neck, Back & Sides: Cherry (from Pennsylvania)
• Back center wedge & Headstock overlay: Maple
• Fingerboard & Bridge: Katalox (Central American wood)
• Top: Sitka spruce (Rescued)
• Rosette, Headstock motif & fingerboard dots: Cherry

Q: Why is Martin guitars making guitars out of these different type of woods?

A: Martin wants to be environmentally responsible while continuing to offer customers the highest level of quality instruments with whatever materials are available.

No matter what this guitar is made of its a players guitar. The action is incredible on it, low...but not to the point of any fret buzz. The tone is well rounded, balanced, not the traditional Martin boom of the low end, but a nice round low end with a smooth high end. This guitar seems to really excel at finger-picking and thumb strumming. It is equipped with the Fishman Ellipse Aura system fitted inside the sound-hole. A very nice system that has phase switch, Bass boost, blend (for the different pickups), Anti-feedback switch, four presets (Aura imager), and volume control. This guitar is a real complete package, sound, playability and price.

OMC Cherry Sustainable wood

Fender Day April 5th

Come out and join us for a Fender Day. This is at our Prince Frederick location.

Used Musicman HD-130 head

Musicman HD-130

$399.00

Musicman throughout the years have put out quality products and this amp is no different. These HD-130 were produced in the 70's and taken out of production after Ernie Ball acquired Musicman in the mid 80's.

First let me say this is a very cool amp head with lots of headroom and clean tone. It has two channels, one with volume, treble & Bass, the second with volume, treble, middle, bass, reverb, intensity, speed, master and (two switches - Bright/normal & Deep/normal), both with two inputs per channel. The amp is powered by four EL-34's which you can split the power from 130watts to 65 watts using the hi/low power switch on the front. The preamp section is Solid state, which even though I read about that in some forums I still had to take the back off to verify it. I just couldnt believe it sounds as good as it does with only tubes in the power section.

The back panel of the amp has two plugs for the Reverb & Tremolo switches, two speaker inputs, a speaker impedance switch to go between 4 or 8 ohms, ground switch, and of course the power switch. Weather you play country, jazz, blues, pedal steel or rock(if you are playing rock throw your favorite pedal in-line and let it crank) this amp will perform wonderfully. So if you are looking for a high power kicking guitar head this will fill the bill at a bargain price.

Bill Kirchen

If you have never heard Bill Kirchen you should stop over to his website I have linked on local Friends and check him out. There is a nice little bio on his site about what he has done and who he has played with so no need to go into that here, but to say the least he is a killer player.

He stops by from time to time just to chat and see what we have in guitars. Usually he will sit down a play some which is always a pleasure, and even once he brought in a guitar for me to work on (I only needed to splice some wires together). I was very happy to help with his instrument and even took some pictures of it Anyway I wanted to post up the pictures cause he had someone do a custom paint job on it, and its just cool.

Just a cool guitar from a cool player. I don't know the name of the guy who he had paint it, but I am sure I could ask and find out.

Here is Bill Kirchen playing one of his famous songs http://youtube.com/watch?v=vGpr-Zy_wRs

Taylor Solidbodies...something unique.

We got in some of the new Taylor Electric guitars this week, 0ne of each model the Classic, Standard, and Custom (From top to bottom).

I was excited to get a chance to finally play one, and with that being said, I am not sure if I really like the sound of the instrument.... While these are Electric guitars they are very different from other elecrtic guitars.

The tone is unique, almost hollow sounding, but not like a true hollowbody. This is achieved thru the use of tone chambers. I think the difference in tone is from a couple things, the way the bridge attaches to the body and the way the neck attaches to the body. If you look below at the bridge from the front and the back you will see what I am talking about.

The neck is attached by a single hex screw (T-Lock), along with the wood to wood fit that you see in the picture bleow, which I think also adds to the different tone.

They have two different types of pickups also, a mini-humbucker(Style I) and full size humbucker (Style II), these are what really started this whole solidbody craze for Taylor. They also took a little bit different approach to the electronics putting a fuse on the circut board. This is there to stop the shock of an unproperly grounded microphone.

Taylor also has taken a different approach to the exotic tops like where they inset the wood into the body so its not a thick slab of wood like you would normally see. The standard comes with a figured Tamo ash (bottom left) and the Custom with either the Walnut (bottom right) or Koa.

They have a complete different way of looking at an electric, being known as an acoustic company, and it shows here. These are some very well made instruments that play really well...but do they have that soul that guitar players are looking for??

That is a question as a player you will have to answer for yourself.

A little update

Just a quick little update about the guitars featured on this Blog....some of them are sold >.>

The Korina PRS has been sold to a very lucky owner who also recently ordered and recieved a Mesa Custom amp. The Mesa was just as cool as the Guitar...very lucky guy there.

The Taylor 914-ce also sold and the PRS Corvette is gone too.

These were all great instruments that I am happy found good homes.