GUITAR TRAPPINGS

The performance of a piezo electric pick-up fitted to an acoustic guitar has a lot to do with the preamplifier used with it; unfortunately many commercial designs are noisy or have inadequate tone controls. It's particularly important that piezo pick-ups are fed into preamps with a very high input impedance, otherwise definition and tone are lost.

Named after top British acoustic guitarist, Gordon Giltrap (a man with far nimbler fingers than anyone's got any right to have!), the GG10 may be used either in place of a regular piezo preamp or in addition to it. This is particularly attractive for those with a valuable guitar, where a bridge piezo system or internal transducer can be mounted invisibly and fed out via a strap peg socket, but it is impractical to mount an on-board preamp.

Housed in the familiar steel Session-style box, the GG10 has an input gain trim, switchable hi/lo sensitivity, and a Hornsaver button — which I'll come back to in a moment.

These are followed by a three-band, passive EQ section, and an output level control. On top of the box is a footswitch with red status LED, which may be configured either as a bypass or a mute switch. As delivered, it functions as a mute, but your dealer can modify it to bypass mode on request. In bypass mode, the high impedance input circuitry still operates. Power comes from a 9V battery or any AC or DC external power supply rated at between 9 and 30 Volts. The bottom of the case has to be accessed via four screws to change the battery, but that's CE regulations for you!

Getting back to the Hornsaver, this is a switchable low-pass filter that comes in around 5kHz to cut out high frequency finger noise and to reduce harshness. It also helps protect delicate tweeters from HF overload.

In use, the GG10 is very quiet. Even when connected to a guitar that already has a preamp fitted, it extends the tonal range significantly; although if your preamp is noisy or otherwise nasty, it can't do anything to improve it. However, the GG10 does have a very powerful output stage, delivering plenty of level, and it's capable of driving it down 100 metres of cable with no problem. The tonality is open, bright, and articulate, with an effective bass, mid, and treble control for shaping the sound any way you like it. Bringing in the Hornsaver takes all the 'fuss' out of the sound, making it tighter and slightly more focused — it's rather like switching from a capacitor mic to a good dynamic model, but without the noise. In a live situation, this makes the sound rather easier to handle.

Ultimately, this box will be most useful to people who can plug their piezo pick-up directly into it, but if you are having problems getting the tone you want out of an existing active piezo system, then this could still be the solution. What's more, the product is tough, inexpensive, and very flexible. Check it out.

Further Information

GG10 £99.95 inc VAT.

Award, (Contact Details)

XTORTIOHATE

Back in the early 70s, you either had a fuzz box or you had an overdrive pedal — and most guitarists thought that was one choice too many! Now we have distortion boxes for blues, rock, metal, grunge, extra gain boost, and who knows what else! Part of the thanks (or blame?) for this variety can be traced back to Boss, who build an almost unbelievable range of stomp boxes of one sort or another, and supply them in incredible quantities to guitarists all over the world.

Painted red for danger, the Xtortion is designed to satiate the needs of the metal guitarist. It is packaged in the familiar and very practical Boss cast alloy housing, with the 9 Volt PP3 battery underneath the bypass pedal section (a Boss external power supply may be used instead). Changing the battery takes only a few moments (and no tools, thanks to the knurled finger screw arrangement that allows the pedal top to be hinged up away from the battery compartment). Plugging in a jack lead switches on the battery, so you need to remember to unplug from the pedal after use. A red LED shows when the effect is active.

Aside from the inevitable Distortion and Level controls, the Xtortion provides control over Contour and Punch. According to the manual, Contour controls the tone of the sound — no kidding? Rotating the control, it shifts from a mid-boosted sound to a scooped stack effect, with quite a lot of variation along the way, and this is what sets the overall character of the sound. Punch (again according to the book) provides more 'punch' when you move the control clockwise. What it actually seems to do is introduce a nice upper midrange resonant honk, making the sound very coloured — almost like playing through a wah pedal set in one position. This allows for an almost perfect caricature of the much abused 'Money for Nothing' guitar riff, but that probably best sums up the nature of the beast.

By balancing Contour and Punch, you can emulate most of the classic stack sounds: vintage Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath, and even pretty close to that superbly 'trashed' sound that Hendrix used on 'Purple Haze'. If you fall into the 'Axe Fiend of HyperGoth' category, you're going to get on really well with this pedal!

At lower overdrive settings, the Xtortion is surprisingly well behaved and is quite usable for blues or R&B, even though that's not really what it's built for. The overall feel is that this box rewards heavy pickers by being very responsive and assertive, and despite its 'blood and guts' image, it's actually very flexible. There is a certain amount of background hiss, as you'd expect from an overdrive pedal, but it's certainly not enough to become a problem. Yes, I liked it.

Further Information

XT-2 £79 inc VAT.

Roland (UK) Limited, (Contact Details).