Longterm Test
A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist ’s longterm test report
DAVE BURRLUCK Guitarist, Gear Reviews Editor
What did you do during lockdown? Our gear reviews editor played the heck out of Nik Huber’s latest solidbody. What was it about this guitar that hooked him? We find out…
Keep the recipe simple and use the best-quality ingredients money can buy and you’re on the way to producing a great plate of food – or indeed a guitar. Of course, those elements don’t mean a lot on their own. It takes a guitar maker to corral them into a dish that will appeal to the knowledgeable palate of a musician. If there were Michelin stars for guitar makers, Nik Huber would have a few. But without those quality ingredients, even what appears to be a simple recipe, such as the maple/alder bolt-on Piet, simply wouldn’t taste as good.
While the name John Woodland may not immediately ring any bells, you will have heard of his company, Mastery Bridge (especially if you’re into your offsets). It creates the hugely regarded upgraded Jazzmaster/ Jaguar-style bridges and vibratos used by top professionals such as Nels Cline and thousands of others. Even if you’ve never hankered after an offset, you can’t help but be impressed by the design, engineering, craft and art of the Mastery Bridge hardware.
“You can’t help but be impressed by the engineering, craft and art of the Mastery Bridge hardware”
Based just outside of Minneapolis, John is an experienced luthier and guitar historian to name but two strings to his considerable bow. He was a major consultant to Andy Babiuk’s book The Story Of Paul Bigsby, and has spent many years delving into the real origins of the Martin Dreadnought. He’s a consultant to major musical instrument museums as well as Christie’s and Julien’s auction houses. In 2018, John was hired to do conservation work on Prince’s massive guitar collection and he is currently working on a book with Gerald Ronning entitled Look Up In The Air: The Origin Of Prince’s Cloud Guitar.
With so much going on, many mere mortals’ brains would probably explode. John’s nearly did but as Nik Huber says,“Guitar making is more a calling than a profession. It can be addictive. It has to be, in a certain way. But it is not about ‘more, more’. Our constant craving is ‘better, better, better’. We have never heard of any well-known guitar company that was founded with the words,‘Okay, let’s build some mediocre guitars and knock off early.’ Everybody we know who managed to build great guitars is realised by their craftsmanship, focus on the work, and effort.”
While the specific details of John’s no-compromise designs are well documented on his website– and now used by a who’s-who of great guitar makers including Collings, Novo and Suhr – I found myself, like Nik Huber, getting used to the different voice that the Mastery hardware brings to the Piet.
“To be honest, I was struggling with the Mastery vibrato because there was so much sound or noise coming from places I’ve never experienced before – there’s kind of a harp in the background, resonating,” says Nik.
Like many, I like the idea of Fender’s offsets but their vibratos have put me off. And while it’s impossible not to admire the design, the Mastery bridge and vibrato is no cheap date, adding around £600 to the cost over a hardtail version. Strummed acoustically, you hear a pretty dominant, almost banjo-like slightly plinky response, something that very nearly had me leaving the Piet in its case. But the more I played, the more I learned – the more I understood. While the Mastery bridge and vibrato are certainly a strong flavour they doesn’t overpower the dish, balanced by both Huber’s craft and that of Harry Häussel’s pickups – both elements we’ll discuss as this
Longtermers test continues.Yet the Mastery combo certainly doesn’t present us with the Jazzmaster/Jaguar’s usual artefacts when you string it with nines or 10s; it was originally designed with much heavier, flatwound strings, of course. In fact, the Piet is one of the most stable guitars I have access to, vibrato or hardtail. The elegant Huber logo’d tuners have barely been touched, although the light-satin nitro neck-coating has already burnished up to a silky smooth low gloss after the considerable number of hours use I’ve subjected it to.
The odd thing is here I was creatively inspired by this guitar and its unusual resonance while the origins of the design can be traced back to Paul Bigsby, the ‘Father of the Modern Electric Solidbody Guitar’, whom John had studied in such obsessive detail. And it was during his time researching Bigsby, and the history of the Dreadnought, that John designed the original Mastery bridge and vibrato that opened up the next chapter of his life – as if John Deichman (the actual inventor of that Martin) and Paul Bigsby were saying thank you.“If you can design hardware then all these other builders can use your hardware. Mastery Bridge is Paul Bigsby’s business model. We make stuff in small batches, just like he did,”John told The American Interest’s Peter Goldenthal.
Bearing in mind the sort of experience and skill that Nik Huber, Harry Häussel and John Woodland are bringing to this guitar, I’m actually beginning to think it’s underpriced. For now, I’ll let that fuse slow burn and get back to my recordings…
“I marvelled at the stability of the X10 and how it held its tuning – even after time elapsed, it was virtually spot on”
Writer DAVID MEAD Guitarist, Deputy Editor
This month David rummages through his collection of leads to find the correct hook‑ups in order to audition the wealth of tonal possibilities from the different pickups on the X10: piezo, humbucker and MIDI. A little bit of tech know‑how proved useful, too…
In the last Longterm Test I did for the Emerald X10 (issue 459) all I really did was change the strings for a heavier set in order to accommodate my penchant for altered tunings. During the course of that bonding period, I marvelled at the stability of the X10 and how it held its tuning. And even after time elapsed and several different tunings in the meantime, once again, when I removed the guitar from its case for this update, it was virtually spot on.
As a reminder, and in case you missed the original feature, the X10 is a carbon-fibre guitar from Emerald’s workshops in Donegal’s beautiful countryside. The model itself is available in what Emerald refers to as three levels: Level 1 comes with six individually adjustable under-saddle piezos in the form of Graph Tech’s Ghost Acousti-Phonic system; Level 2 adds a Krivo magnetic pickup in the neck position; and Level 3 completes the set with a MIDI facility.
We have the Level 3 instrument on test and so I was eager to explore its Swiss Army knife range of sounds. I was also keen to keep things as simple as possible in the process because if you have the right gear it’s possible to have all three sound sources fed into different amplifiers and blend them together in a swirling whirlpool of tonal ecstasy. Or something. It sounds like a particularly inviting rabbit hole to disappear into, but in the interests of keeping a level head and taking things in baby steps, I’ll stick to good old mono for now and leave the blending extravaganza until next time. Hopefully by then I’ll have access to the Guitarist studio and more space. Meanwhile, I’m still strictly following the lockdown rulebook within the confines of chez moi.
The next road to ride is the guitar’s switching system. On the top of the X10 there are three mini-switches and three rotary controls. The switch nearest the player controls two pickups, allowing you to select the piezo only, the magnetic pickup by itself or, in the middle, both on at once. The two rotary controls nearest you are volume controls for the piezo and humbucker respectively. The piezo volume also doubles as a tone adjustment: pull it for a ‘darker’ EQ, leave it as is for mid EQ. As you can imagine, there are quite a few options to get used to here alone. But wait, it gets better. Using the jack output with an ordinary mono guitar cable will give you both the piezo and humbucker voices combined. Use a stereo cable and you can split the signals to different amps. I used a mono cable for my initial probing and, whereas the controls take a little bit of getting used to, I was soon able to mix and match the outputs from the piezo and humbucker into a single amp, finding everything from straight acoustic to warm jazz tones and all in between.
One thing I found while adjusting controls and switches with all the necessary toing and froing with my right arm, I did occasionally catch the mini-toggles with my t-shirt and knock them to another setting. It might just be me demonstrating a bit of newbie clumsiness, but those mini-toggles are a bit on the long side.
MIDI and I are old adversaries and like many guitarists we’ve enjoyed a love/hate working relationship for more than three decades. The MIDI gear I own is either vintage or really out of date, depending on your point of view… but what the heck, it still works. The really big plus here is that you don’t need a special add-on hexaphonic pickup attached to the X10 as the onboard Ghost Acousti-Phonic takes care of things for you. The Emerald connects to MIDI via a 13-pin cable like the Roland GKC5 and once connected to my ancient Roland GR-50 we entered the wonderland of infinite possibilities that MIDI has to offer. I’ve always had a pipe dream of blending orchestral strings with an acoustic guitar; I’ve tried it on electric guitar in the past with impressive results but never on acoustic and so this was quite a revelation. Happily, this was a simple plug-and-play operation: find a string patch on the GR-50, blend it in with the X10 using the volume control and, hey presto, strings and acoustic guitar in perfect harmony. Among my other MIDI-friendly accessories I have a Mellotron and a Minimoog in app form and so things could get seriously freaky later on, but for now I was happy with the prog-rock opportunities that lay before me.
Trying out the triptych of piezo, humbucker and MIDI is going to be a challenge, but I’ll report back as to how I get on next time and let you know. Until then…