Gear Review: FU-TONE.com Noiseless Tension Springs

One of the evils of guitar tremolos is the reliance on springs to return the tremolo to its neutral position.  These springs essentially operate like a combo amp reverb tank built inside your guitar — they ring when physically excited.  Skeptical?  Strum some full chords followed by a quick palm mute and you’ll hear those springs ringing.  The ringing can add a boingy or hazy quality to your tone, masking the qualities you want to hear.  As you increase gain from clean to distortion, the ringing in amplified through your pickups and can become quite noticeable and annoying.

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Gear Review: JBE Pickups HB Two/Tone

JBE Pickups (formerly Joe Barden Pickups) manufactures a variety of guitar and bass pickups, including the HB Two/Tone humbuckers.  For nearly 20 years, I’ve been pleased with the performance of these pickups in my Klein Electric Guitar.  When it was time to upgrade the pickups in my newly acquired Kiesel Zeus (reviewed here), installing the HB Two/Tones was a no-brainer.

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Album Review: The Fierce And The Dead - 'The Euphoric’

Following up on their excellent 2017 live album, Field Recordings, the instrumental post-rock/prog rock quartet The Fierce And The Dead (TFATD) return with a new studio album entitled The Euphoric.  The album is available via Bandcamp and all the usual places.

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