May 19, 2013

I am like a goldfish. I buy guitars that I think will be a cool project, then lose interest and forget about them. 99% of the time they end up getting sold off without any work being done on them. Recently, when I bought an old Model series Charvel, I figured I was probably in the same boat. I had a vague idea of doing a Van Halen-style 5150 stripe job on it,...

Feb 19, 2013

A couple of bad things about Godin Guitars: A difficult name – is it Go-DIN? Is it Go-DAHN? (As far as I know it’s the latter) A difficult brand name to get a foot in the door – to the guitar playing massive, Godin have never had the pedigree or market penetration of a Gibson or a Fender or one of the other big boys. A difficult aesthetic to...

Dec 18, 2012

For most of the past 2 decades, Paul Brandon Gilbert has been a dominant force in the shred scene. Paul’s story basically set the tone for the Shrapnel era of technical guitar wizardry – featured in Guitar World as a 15 year old prodigy, graduated from GIT at 18, and went on to kick the world’s ass with Racer X, Mr Big, and his own brand of...

Guthrie Govan, or Mountain-Goat-Jesus, as I like to think of him, may be the most advanced and versatile guitarist on the planet at the moment. To say that he can play any given style on guitar is a massive understatement – give the man a backing track and he’ll redefine the genre for you while he’s melting your face with his insane fretboard...

Sep 17, 2012

First of all, Six-String Samurai would like to warmly welcome MusicPlanet Wellington as our latest friendly local retailer to jump on board the Samurai Express and allow us to check out some of their cool gear! MusicPlanet does a wide variety of products ranging from keyboards and pianos to drums and PA/recording gear, but obviously what we’re interested...

Sep 9, 2012

Everyone has their preferred string brand. Personally, I’ve always used Ernie Ball strings. I don’t actually know why, funnily enough. I used to use D-addarios when I was starting out but at some point I just switched over to EBs and never gave it a second thought. However, like it or not, strings do have a tangible effect on your tone – new...

Aug 14, 2012

As some of you may have seen, I recently did a review of the PRS 20th Anniversary Singlecut Trem. If you read that one, you’ll quickly find out how much I rate PRS on build quality, coolness, yadda yadda yadda. So when I was thinking of interesting new things that I would like to look at, I said to myself – hey, I wonder what PRS is up to these...

Jul 18, 2012

So, I realize I’ve actually been quiet for awhile now. As I mentioned on Facebook recently, I’ve actually been busy brewing all sorts of schemes for Samurai-related awesomeness, including a long overdue feature on my beloved Marshall Slash AFD100, some talk about my very modest but growing mic locker, starting a long-term comparison of guitar...

Jun 28, 2012

Charvel is a name that will forever be associated with 80s metal/shred. Although the company was named after Wayne Charvel, early on in the game he sold the company to Grover Jackson, whom we all know went on to pioneer another behemoth of metal guitars, starting with the now-classic Randy Rhoads model. Grover Jackson basically started Jackson guitars so that...

Jun 18, 2012

In 1952, the very first Goldtop Les Pauls hit the streets, and a revolution was born. Over the years, many guitars have worn the goldtop finish, and it has always been a nod to history, elegance and downright basic pimptasticness. Yes, that is a word I made up. Fast forward to the contemporary guitar makers of today, and I daresay you’ll be hard pressed...

Jun 9, 2012

So today while I was up in Auckland for the weekend, I hit up one of the music shops down the road from where I was staying, and checked out some brands that I haven’t really been paying a heap of attention to in the past couple of years – Ibanez and Schecter. First of all, if any of you guys are fans of these brands, I’m not saying...

Jun 4, 2012

How many of you have had a change in musical style or whatever, sold your guitar, only to eventually want it back so badly that you bought it again? Not the same type of guitar, but the exact same guitar? I know it sounds stupid, but I’ve totally done it, haha. Twice now. The first one was a 19XX (I want to say ’97?? I’m not sure right at this...