Something I still quite don't get about electric guitars - though I've been interested in the topic for the last three decades - is that their design is supposed to determine the kind of music that should be played on them... The idea that a musical genre depends from the sound of specific gear - pickups, amp, effects - is already bizarre to me, since reproducing a sound and a style that already exist feels of limited interest if you're a spirited musician, but when it comes to looks, we are in the blur domain of utter stupidity...
Take for example this Dean ML with its Rising Sun finish: all the reviews I read about it say that its clean sound is quite good, that its neck is extremely playable and its special design makes it both well balanced and good-sounding, making it a perfect guitar for blues. Well, it's no surprise, since it's more or less a combination of Gibson's classic models, the Flying V and the Explorer, both designed in the 1950s and meant for bluesmen. And those humbucker pickups have been on jazz guitars for over half a century, so it's for sure a perfect instrument to play Hoochie Coochie Man - or Boys Don't Cry if you feel like it.
The fact that this ML is the (short lived) signature model of the guitarist of some metal band called Trivium that I never heard about due to my general indifference to metal music (but a few bands like Suicidal Tendancies, Napalm Death, Burzum, Meshuggah or Sunn o))), but I'm not so sure of what should be called metal or not, and should Motörhead be included?) is of little importance, but this guy being half-Japanese kind of justifies the cool Rising Sun finish.
Yeah, I say again that the Rising Sun looks cool on a guitar, even if last time I said this there's been a slight controversy about it. For me, it's a beautiful design, very Japanese, sober, eloquent, and it's really part of European punk culture - I guess I love it since I saw it on a Clash cover in the late 70s, don't remember which one, not even sure BTW. I personally find it less disputable than the Confederate Battle Flag that ornates other signature models of the ML, and it is still in use in Japan for example for the fishermen union, and on the front page of some newspaper - nothing like the Svastika that is drastically forbidden in Germany (I'd probably think different if I was Chinese or Korean of course).
© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!
No comments:
Post a Comment