The Ibanez ART300 is a killer guitar at a VERY affordable price, excellent looks, and awesome playability. This is my ART300 guitar review.

I picked up the Ibanez ART300 at my local GC because it had this weird scalloped textured top that looked like it had been hand carved, with deep black slick paint on top. I mean it didn’t exactly scream “death metal” (although it could have), so I plugged it into a Marshall to see what came out. The guitar was pretty light, like 5-6 lbs, the action was low and the stock “LoZ” pickups were suprisingly bright and crisp (but not too hot). The neck pickup was nice and warm - and I did play this on both clean and lead settings. I had no problems playing some tasty jazz and blues licks, and this thing really started to sing in bridge position on lead mode through the Marshall for killer ZZ Top, Skynyrd, and even Ozzy tones. I had the gain way up and down, and this guitar could easily play thrash, goth, death metal, classic rock, southern rock, blues, SRV, hair metal, and anything in between from uber-crunch to rhythm backup to Jenny 867-5309. I recommend this guitar - especially at the $399 retail price, you can’t beat this kind of quality and sound in that price range. I’ve seen both brown and grey tops for this model, but I prefer the slick black!

Here’s a younger guitar slinger with his brand new ART300 Ibanez axe on YouTube playing through a Peavey bandit with a few effects.

Getting Daddy a Guitar Gift for Father’s Day, Birthday, or Christmas? I recommend getting him this guitar and a personalized guitar strap!

ART300 Ibanez at Guitar Center

Ibanez ART300 Electric Guitar Black Caiman Mahogany body. Scalloped maple top. Set-in ART neck. Bound rosewood fingerboard. 22 medium frets. Ibanez LoZ-N (neck) and LoZ-B (bridge) original active humbuckers, 2 AA battery operation. 24-7/10" scale. Gibraltar III bridge. Diamond inlays.

ART300 Ibanez at Musician’s Friend

Ibanez ART300 Electric Guitar Black Caiman The ART300 single cutaway offers a modern variation on the set-neck Artist theme at an unprecedented low price. With a set neck joint, mahogany body, beautiful textured maple top that suggests reptilian hide, and Ibanez original active pickups, this sucker's built for the heavy rocker. For over 30 years, the classic Artist design has provided a real, high-quality alternative to the other famous mahogany double humbucker."

ART300 Ibanez on eBay

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One of my favorite songs is Deep Purple’s “Burn”. It’s a song that hasn’t been performed live since 1992, you don’t hear on the radio a lot. Now, for all you young guitar slingers - here’s a little history lesson. You probably know Deep Purple for their signature song “Smoke on the Water”. You might know Woman from Tokyo or Highway Star as well. What you might now know is that the singer that made those songs famous was Ian Gillan - who was fired from the band in 1973. He was replaced by a young singer by the name of “David Coverdale” until 1976. The album “Burn” was recorded in 1973, and the title track “Burn” was what they opened each show with while David Coverdale was singer (replacing Highway Star as opening number).

In 1976 Deep Purple broke up and David Coverdale went on to found the band we all know him for - “Whitesnake”. Ian Gillan did return Deep Purple again (except for the time he was fired “again” from 1989-1992), but he would never sing a single song from the Coverdale era, which is why “Burn” was never performed live again, except during the 1989-1992 era when Joe Lynn Turner was lead singer. There’s your classic rock history lesson for the day kiddies, read the Wikipedia page about “Deep Purple’s Burn” for more info. This video is from the “California Jam” where Deep Purple played “Burn” as the opening number only 2 months after the album was released.

If you are a working guitarist you have a need for a harmonizer pedal - you just don’t know it yet. Usually you have one singer in the band and one backup person if you’re lucky. I know a lot of guitarists that from time to time they do a “one man show” acoustic style with just themselves and a mic. There is brand new technology out now that will blow your mind, and as a working guitarist - think that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

“The Digitech Vocalist Live 2″ is a pedal - a “stomp box” that is a vocal harmonizer for guitarists. It was made for guitar players because you plug both your guitar and your microphone into it, take at look at this pic for the inputs…

What happens is - when you play the pedal recognizes and interprets both your voice and the chords you’re playing. It knows if you’re singing a “C” over a “G” chord progression and you can program it to sign your hamony vocal either a third or fifth above your voice. You sing and you play, and just like any other effects pedal - when you want harmony - just stomp on it!

The Vocalist Live 2 pedal also has a built-in guitar tuner, compressor, reverb, and EQ controls. So, once you buy this pedal you’ll be out about $300, but look at it this way - you now have a backup singer that works for free! It’s got the highest user reviews on all the gear sites, I think this is one new piece of technology that everyone is liking a lot!

Here’s the extended description and a few purchase options -

DigiTech Vocalist Live 2 Harmony Processor The DigiTech Vocalist Live 2 Harmony Processor uses breakthrough musIQ technology to directly analyze the output of any electric or pre-amplified acoustic guitar (no special MIDI guitars or hex-outputs needed). Then it generates the correct vocal harmony. For example, if you're singing an A over the chords that are generally found in the key of G, Vocalist will harmonize with a C. But, if you then play an A major, the Digitech Vocalist will shift to the C#…because like any good harmony singer, it listens to the guitar! A surprising number of songs "fool" other harmony pedals because these songs just don't work with a single key/scale setting. In fact, any song that has the same note sung over two different chords (for example, a C sung in the melody over a C maj / F maj chord sequence) is going to confound conventional harmony pedals.With musIQ, forget about the technology just sing and play! Skip complicated programming and having to analyze each song chord-by-chord; just 1. Plug in your microphone and guitar; 2. Pick a 3rd or 5th-above or below harmony preset; 3. Sing and play — when you want harmony, just step on the footswitch!Patent-pending musIQ technology combines new Note Detection algorithms with state-of-the-art Harmony Generation. The Note Detection section analyzes complex guitar waveforms and determines which notes in each chord are critical to accurate harmony. This information is then fed to an advanced harmony engine that creates harmonies consistent with both the singer's melody and the underlying guitar accompaniment.This totally new, musically-intelligent effects processor hybrid of traditional chordal and scalic harmony modes means that Vocalist Live musIQ harmonies stay true to not only the overall key and song scale, but also localized variations due to chords that aren't part of the global key. You've never heard anything like it!

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Here’s a great YouTube video I came across on Create Digital Music where the stage tech’s (or board op) really, REALLY screwed up! The song was Van Halen’s famed “jump”, and the keyboard intro was to be played as a backing track on tape (well, not tape really, digital - probably mp3 or something). So, whoever queued the track played it at 48K instead of 44.1K (cd quality standard) - and in digital terms that’s like playing a tape too fast or playing an old 33 1/3 album at 45 rpm. Basically it made the keyboard parts a “microtone” higher, but not high enough for Eddie to even play it a half or whole step higher to match, and what you get is a brutal, brutal version of the song. As their web site says it was definitely an “on stage disaster”!

For all of you young bucks that never saw this - here is Eddie Van Halen playing at a “Les Paul and Friends” show in 1988 (now some 20 years ago). This would have been about in the prime of Van Halen only 4 years after their 1984 album, that is arguably their best selling to date. It’s an all our rock instrumental jam that last over 5 minutes and Eddie starts it out with “Cathedral” from the Diver Down album. An incredible performance by the godfather of modern rock guitar introduced by the inventor of the Les Paul AND multi-track recording!

A pack of adapters for your powerstrip so bulky power cords don’t rob half your outlets.

Every now and then I see a gadget that I think would be perfect for musicians or guitar players. Today I saw this pack of “powerstrip liberator” plugs that are perfect for a guitar player because we always have a bunch of things to plugin to one strip. I have one powerstrip in my pedal box and I plug 3 big bulky adaptors for my stomp box pedals. If I have anything else to plug into it, it’s always a bear working around those adapters because they’re so bulky that once you plug it in it takes 2-3 outlets on the strip. With these “liberator” jumper adapters you can get around that. This combo pack is really cool because you get 3 different kinds. You get the classic kind that gets bulky adapters off the strip, and also the pass through kind that get the adapters off the strip, but have an outlet on top to give you another space on the strip to plug more things in. The last kind, which is really cool, is an adapter you can use when you’re trying to plug something in a flat space, very, very handy. I can’t tell you how many times I could have used this in a gig where the outlet was in a really, really weird place. At a very reasonable $12 - I don’t know why any musician wouldn’t want to have these in their gig bag at all times! This would make a great gift for any guitar player! Click here to find out where to buy the “Powerstrip Liberator Combo Pack”.

Do you have a cool guitar player gadget that we should know about? Please comment now!

Fender released the Van Halen Frankenstein replica in 2007 and this video is from the NAMM show where Eddie Van Halen talked about it and then performed. This was such a crazy video for me to watch, the quality is good because it was posted on YouTube by Fender themselves. The weird part was just Eddie’s mannerisms when he was talking, like running his fingers through his hair over and over (why didn’t he just pull it back?) and how disheveled he looked. Honestly if you didn’t know he was one of the world’s greatest guitar players you might’ve thought he was a vagrant or just an agin drunk. So he talks well into the video about the “Frankenstein replicas” and then he grabs one off the display behind him. He straps it on, and he rocks the complete shit out of that thing! Now I’m thinking I’m a complete idiot for saying anything bad about him at all - he is STILL one of the greatest guitar players in the world! Oh, by the way - that frankenstein replica is selling for $25-30,000!!

This is an incredible performance you may not have seen yet, it’s Billy Gibbons of “that little ‘ol band from Texas” - ZZ Top! He’s playing at the Fender gala at NAMM - and he belts out his rendition of “Texas Flood” on his well-worn Telecaster. He talks a little bit before the song - which is why this guitar video is 8 minutes long. He remembers that back in the day he and Stevie Ray Vaughan would fight over the words to the third verse of this song (and it turns out they both had them wrong). You just can’t beat Billy Gibbons, he makes it sound like “Pearly Gates” Every Time!

So when you were 12 years old playing in your school talent show - could you do this? This 12 year old GIRL guitar shredder tears it up! She may not be that accurate, but she gets a 10 for stage presence and sheer balls! In addition - she was only 12 here, who knows what she can do now!

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