Blackstar EL 34 Amp

At the 2022 NAMM show, I could most likely be found at one of the many guitar merchant booths checking out the amazing guitars on display. There was no shortage of new and exciting strummers, from acoustic to electric. Although I love an acoustic’s pure and bright sound, plugging in and pedaling up takes the string sound to a different and exciting level. Naturally, I visited several amp and pedal booths.

Over at the Blackstar Amplifier booth, several guitarists were plugged in and sampling the British-made tube amps. I chatted with product manager Loren Molinare, a guitarist with the  Detroit punk band, The Dogs. Molinare gave me the rundown on the Blackstar amps, whose company is based in North Hampton, England. They had two models on display: the El 34, a thorn finish with a retro look that reminded me of a 1960’s Peavey amp, and the 6L6, housed in a traditional black Cab. “These are the lightest tube amps in the world,” Molinare went on to say, “Their 1” by 12” 50-watt combo weighs 28lbs. Traditionally, a 50-watt combo with a 1” by 12” speaker probably weighs 50 lbs. It’s all about weight everybody wants to streamline it down.”  He described the EL 34 as having a classic rock late seventies AC/DC meets Bad Company, and Blues Rock top boost classic sound. While the 6L6 model is more of a traditional Heavy Metal super gained up sound. I liked the fact that they are so light in weight. Both models have a built-in reactive load and UFB out, so anybody recording at home into their DAW can get excellent tones directly into ProTools or Logic. The Cabs are fitted with brand new custom-designed speakers from Celestion called “Celestion Zephyr” that are specifically made for this product. I have to say they sounded super clean with a nice beefy punch.

Next, I headed over to the Bixonic booth and checked out their new Aventrix A1 pedal- The first edition will be limited to 50 Pedals, which are scheduled to launch in July of 2022. The pedal uses a newly developed DREP Technology (Dynamic Range Expressor Processing) that allows the user to adjust the expansion effect and the compression of the Input Dynamic Range. The accent knob is an expander, so to the far left, it acts as a compressor and compresses the sound. To the right side, it acts as a dynamic filter. It has four shiftable drive modes ( Crunch, OverDrive, Distortion, and Fuzz) that can access a 3-band EQ (Bass, Middle, Treble), allowing you to color your tone. The newly added Accent adjustment has unique dynamic range expansion effects to produce plenty of great-feeling tone tricks. So the harder you hit, the more break-up you get from the amp. You can save three pre-sets with two presses of a button. It has an adjustable buffered bypass sound for EQ and Accent and switchable true bypass or rich and clear buffered bypass. It is also a Tuner for both guitar and bass. It’s an attractive design with an adjustable illuminance dial so that you can control the lights. It has both a Guitar and Bass mode and is pedalboard friendly. I might have to pick one of these up when it is released.

Session Bassisist, Seamoon Funk Machine Co-Creator-Neil Jason

Not far from the Bixonic booth, I heard some super funky bass from the Seamoon booth. Session bass guitarist Neil Jason was plunking out some extremely funky bass lines. Jason has been in the business for over 40 years and has over 500 album credits playing with many famous artists such as Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Dire Straits, Eddie Van Halen, Keith Richards and so many more. He also was a member of the Saturday Night Live band. Jason took the time to talk with me about the Seamoon Funk Machine. “I discovered the Seamoon Funk Machine about 40 years ago, and the originals are not made anymore, and they had a problem because they would not stay together. So I started redeveloping it along with Ben Fulton about five years ago. We came up with one by copying my old recordings with the Brecker Brothers, Brian Ferry, and Roxy. We would bring all of them out and test them until we got the box that made that sound. And now, for last couple of years, we’ve been working on the rest of the lines.”

Seamoon Funk Machine Pedals

There are three new models of the Seamoon Funk Machine. The Octatron is an octave pedal. The Sky Machine is a new chorus pedal, and The Grind Machine is an overdrive. There is no definitive release date, but they should be released sometime late this year to early in 2023. The next one out is The Octatron. Jason talked more about the upcoming pedals saying, “Basically what I do is I find recordings of the best sounds of these types of pedals from the analog days’ cuz I want everything to be analog. Then we work on it and structure it so that when I play, it sounds like the old recordings, and that’s the way we are developing the sound on most of the pedals.”  Jason spoke about the creative objective saying that the idea was to make everything very Bass-centric. As a caveat, most of these pedals work very well with the trumpet and saxophone, and they have a trim pod inside so you can trim for a specific sensitivity. According to Jason, several horn players in Europe and the States have been using the Funk Machine.

Bixonic Aventrix Pedal

The Octatron will probably be coming out in Summertime, and the Grind Machine will follow. The Sky Machine chorus will probably come out before the end of the year. So all you funk bass players, keep a look out because I have to tell you these pedals are intensely funky.

Jen B/ BackStage360