Gibson Guitars is under investigation for alleged use of illegal wood. US agents raided a Gibson factory seizing wood, computers, files and guitars from Gibson's Massman Road manufacturing facility in Nashville, Tennessee. They are seeking evidence that Gibson shipped illegal rosewood from Madagascar via Germany. Due to widespread corruption and environmental damage, Madagascan rosewood is barred by the Lacey Act.
Gibson say they are fully co-operating with the federal investigation. "Gibson is a chain of custody certified buyers that purchases wood from legal suppliers who are to follow all standards," the company said. Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz is on the board of the Rainforest Alliance, lobbying for sustainable forestry.
Jimi Hendrix has won the award for 'Best Guitar Riff of all time' for 'Voodoo Child (Slight Return)', beating Slash's efforts on 'Sweet Child O' Mine' in to second spot. The top 5 was completed by Led Zeppelin's 'Whole Lotta Love', Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' and Derek and the Dominos 'Layla'. Only two tracks from the last 10 years made it in to the top twenty – Muse and The White Stripes coming in at positions 11 and 15 respectively in the poll conducted by Music Radar.
Each Guitar Center store across North America is collecting food in these trying times to be distributed nationwide. The drive has been extended as a result of its success, and you can donate non-perishable items at your nearest store. If you need an incentive, everyone donating will get a voucher for 10% off their next purchase from Guitar Center.
With Christmas around the corner, PRS is hoping to be on top of the wish-list for 2009. Announcing the latest addition to the Korean made 'SE' series, the SE Singlecut Korina is set to bring quality to the masses at an unfamiliar price point. As PRS SE Business Unit manager Doug Shive put it, "Musicians looking for all Korina guitars now have a new option within the PRS family that is unmatched in the market in terms of price, aesthetics and quality." Time will tell, but the SE range has been well received so far and all the money is going on the Korina Singlecut going the same way.
Auction House Cristie's in New York are set to auction a number of historic guitars. Johnny Cash's black Fender Malibu, a Fender electric belonging to Waylon Jennings and Hank Thompson's Gibson J-2000 are all serious pieces of kit, but Buddy Holly's Gibson J-45 is the star of the show, with a guide price of $550,000.
The RockBand video game franchise has hit a milestone in having 1000 tracks available for download across the Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms. With downloads now in their 105th week, the battle for supremacy between RockBand and Guitar Hero is far from over. With the RockBand Network due to go live any time now players may soon be able to turn their own music in to playable content for sharing with the online community. Perhaps the tide will turn in favour of RockBand in 2010.
One for the UK readers – the top 10 best selling UK singles of the 'noughties' have been revealed and it makes for grim reading. Sufficed to say Will Young came in No.1 and 4 acts in total from Simon Cowell's TV 'music' empire made the top ten. Remaining spots were taken by Band Aid, Bob the Builder and Shaggy. There's no accounting for taste!
Moog's new guitar is gathering some momentum with its Nigel Tufnell pleasing infinite sustain. Using a system to generate and/or kill the vibration in any or all of the guitar's strings you can get the aforementioned infinite sustain, a pretty extreme staccato or even a mix of the two where fretted notes ring to a defined level while all other strings are electronically silenced. Sounds like cheating to me, but hey... Moog have brought a great deal to the synth world, so we'll see what impact they have on guitars.
And with that, I'll wish you a happy Christmas, and a prosperous New Year!...
Check out my music, video, lessons & backing tracks here![br]https://www.renhimself.com
