guitarz.blogspot.com:
At first glance you'd be forgiven for asking "Are there enough controls on that single pickup guitar?" However, of course, the
Kramer Ripley is not a single pickup guitar as such, rather it is equipped with a Bartolini hex pickup which essentially consists of individual pickups for each of the six strings. The guitar features a stereo output and individual panning controls allowing each string to be assigned its own position within the stereo spectrum. This particular example is one of only three made that includes an on-board "Hex" distortion allowing levels to be individually set for each string, and it is also the same guitar that appeared on tracks on Mick Jagger's
Primitive Cool album from 1987.
Eddie Van Halen is also known to have played a similar Kramer Ripley guitar, and its stereo effects can clearly be heard on the song "Top Jimmy" from Van Halen's
1984 album.
This particular guitar - which has been played by Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), Jeff Beck and Mick Jagger - is currently being offered for sale on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £1,800.
G L Wilson
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Ian Youngs ( BBC News )
ReplyDelete"From The Beatles to the Arctic Monkeys, Britain's great rock bands have belted out the soundtracks to our lives and carved a place at the heart of our culture.
So why have so few new bands broken through in the past couple of years? And what are new acts doing to keep guitar music alive?
There is a theory that says, almost 60 years since the birth of rock 'n' roll, all the great guitar riffs have been played to death."
When I look to innovative and inspired offerings such as this Ripley, I can't help but wonder WHY? For all the technology that's been applied to 6 strings, how can we say guitar [bands] are 'dead' when we put so little effort into even understanding what was commercially and -widely- available!
For all their self-appointed 'expertise' in mastering technology, why are humdrum Strats and LP's still king w/ the younger set? Perhaps Gavin was right all along, for all the blather about wanting to do something 'groundbreaking', in our core, most guitarists are really just traditionalists. ( para )
At 53, onboard effects date back to before I owned my very first guitar, so I don't really have an excuse either?
I would be happy to be able to go with one signal from the 4 treble strings and one from A-E.
ReplyDeleteOr two and two on a bass. Anyone know of such?
Kramer did make a Ripley bass, but I think it was only available as a 5-string.
DeleteSo there were only 3 of these?
ReplyDeleteBecause I own one - in black.