May 5, 2013

How is it that no one has ever thought to combine an overdrive and a delay pedal together? Well, Mad Professor from Finland have done just that – and by god, it’s a game changer. As the name implies, the Golden Cello is meant to give you sweet, smooth, violin/cello style lead tones, packed with...

Apr 28, 2013

The ID: Series represents the culmination of more than seven years technical research and development by the same team that designed Series One, Artisan and HT Venue. The unique controls allow you to custom design your own sound, store it and then have the confidence that the amp will perform in a live...

Apr 5, 2013

Hello Samurai friends! Apologies for my tardiness in writing, but lately I’ve been busy hauling all my worldly possessions up from Wellington to Auckland. I hope everyone had a great Easter break – don’t forget to be thankful to both Jesus and the Easter Bunny for the public holiday. A...

Mar 18, 2013

Time to blow some minds – the most famous incarnation of the wah pedal has got to be the Dunlop Crybaby, right? Well it turns out that they just went ahead and copied that name from the original wah pedal: The Vox Crybaby. That’s right. I did NOT know that until I started doing some research for...

Mar 3, 2013

More than meets the eye Everything in the guitar gear world at the moment points towards things getting lighter, smaller, more portable – case in point, my favourite little lunchbox amp, the Mesa Mini Rectifier, and new stuff like the HK Tubemeister, and just about everything really. The lunchbox...

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...

Jan 17, 2013

Here’s an article I wrote for our local retailers the Rockshop when the Kemper Profiling Amp came out. I wrote it for their blog section, and since they’ve sold their unit and have taken down the promo post I wrote, I asked them if I could put it up here for you guys…  Kemper Profiling...

Jan 7, 2013

I realized that we haven’t done a giveaway in awhile – time to change that, loyal Samurai fans, and what better way to kick off 2013?? What we’re giving away this time is a small diaphragm condenser made by the fantastic Brad Martin at 12 Gauge Microphones. They’ve developed...

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...

Nov 26, 2012

The Hand-Wired Series reigns as both the flagship and as a popular favorite among the many families of VOX amplifiers. This esteemed series now welcomes a new addition; the AC4HW1 mini combo amp. The all-tube chassis uses two 12AX7 tubes in the pre-amp and a single EL84 vacuum tube in the power stage,...

Nov 14, 2012

Following on from our review of the McPherson Rock Box Distortion, we were lucky enough to get a very special pedal from McPherson Music – the limited edition Solar Fuzz! It is indeed exactly what the name implies – a fuzz, which miraculously, runs on solar power!!! I don’t know about you...

Oct 29, 2012

Welcome back! So last week, we did a blind A/B comparison between the new Line 6 POD HD500 model based on the Soldano SLO100′s Overdrive channel, and an ACTUAL Soldano SLO100. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check it out here. We did 4 clips in total, with the Line 6 gear panned to one side,...