Welcome to the first installment of the Lauzon Music Newsletter. Our goal is to bring to your attention some of the special and unique guitars, amps and pedals that come through our doors. Each volume will spotlight select items, as well as bring to your attention news of events and other happenings at Lauzon Music.
This month you can read about 2 very special guitars and one heck of an amp for both home and stage.
It was no easy task selecting these few items to highlight in this newsletter. We feel lucky to have so many interesting pieces come through our doors. All of this and more is in the store and available now. We invite you to come in and see it all for yourself.
- Jimmy Page Gibson Les Paul Custom VOS. #25 of 25, autographed by Jimmy Page
- "The Tree" guitar by R. Taylor - stunning quilted Mahogany with Adirondack top
- Suhr Badger 18 Amp - 18 watt rock machine with London Power Scaling
In the early days of Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page relied heavily on a three-pickup 1960 Les Paul custom "Black Beauty". Unfortunately, the guitar was stolen in 1970 at an airport and never recovered.
Page has always felt that that particular Electric guitar was "the one that got away." Gibson proudly returns Page's cherished lost guitar in the form of the Gibson Custom Shop Jimmy Page Les Paul Custom, a painstaking recreation of the iconic instrument with the addition of some of the most innovative electronics to ever grace a Les Paul Custom guitar. The result is this stunning "Black Beauty" with a slim-profile neck, Page BurstBucker pickups, gold Bigsby tailpiece, and an innovative six-position toggle that lets you isolate the neck and bridge pickups or add the middle in any combination. A push-pull treble tone knob splits the rear pickup for the traditional Jimmy Page single coil option.
Handcrafted for comfort and playability, the Jimmy Page guitar is period accurate, and has received the VOS (Vintage Original Spec) treatment by the Gibson Custom Shop. A special nitro-cellulose finish treatment gives it the patina of a gently-aged vintage guitar. The rest of the gold hardware features a worn look to match.
The Gibson Jimmy Page Les Paul Custom is Gibson's heartfelt tribute to a true legend and to the guitar he loved and lost. Perhaps no one has had a bigger impact on the style and sound of hard rock guitar than Jimmy Page. As the musical mastermind of Led Zeppelin, Page's tone, playing, and phrasing made him one of the most influential musicians of the past 50 years. The exclusive Les Paul electric guitar that bears Page's name also comes with a special Gibson Custom Shop case with silk-screen JP signature Certificate of Authenticity.
A very special limited run of 25 guitars were made and sent to Jimmy. Upon playing each guitar he selected one for himself. The remaining 24 were autographed by Page, and numbered 2 through 25. Our guitar is number 25 and is the only one in Canada.
Hot Item 2 - "The Tree" guitar by R. Taylor
This spectacular piece features beautifully quilted Honduran Mahogany back and sides with an Adirondack Spruce top. One of ten pieces made.
From R Taylor:"This wood has been held in reverence by the guitar-building community for many years. From the Chicibul jungle in Honduras, there is only one known source of this highly figured Mahogany, and the huge Swietenia Macrophylla specimen that these backs and sides come from has its own name: The Tree. Mentioning The Tree in a gathering of guitar makers will inevitably lead to much discussion, stories, and ultimately; desire.
Felled in 1965, and standing over 100 feet tall, The Tree chose its own direction to fall: into a deep ravine where it lay, irretrievable, for 18 years. As with many things of a singular and beautiful nature; desire and ingenuity stepped firmly in, a plan was formed, and The Tree was quartered where it lay, and dragged, trucked, and floated over 170 miles to an ancient steam-powered mill for rough processing.
Yes, it is the most stunning Mahogany ever seen; with a deep Quilt figure overlaid with Tortoiseshell "veins". The guitar in these photographs has no color or tint added to the finish; this is the natural color of the wood. It also happens to be the best sounding Mahogany we have ever built guitars with. To call it "rare" is a gross understatement; we have very few sets remaining of this Quilted Honduran Mahogany.
You may wonder why we have wood that is being made into guitars now, forty years after it was cut. The answer is simple; the wood is so daunting in its uniqueness that woodworkers have simply sat on the edge of fear to think of using it and possibly wasting it. And yes, it is extremely expensive.
Is there another, similar tree somewhere in the jungles of Honduras? Nobody can answer that question, but be sure that the stories will be spun for decades to come when The Tree is spoken of."
Hot Item 3 - Suhr Badger 18
The Suhr Badger is the first of many Suhr-branded amplifiers we have planned for the future. Nearly a year in the making and in the concept stage in John Suhr's mind for an even longer period of time, the Badger has been John's labor of love and the crystallization of his vision of the ultimate low-wattage cathode-biased all-tube amplifier. Tonally, the Badger imparts a> distinctly British flavor with the EL-84 output section, but it doesn't quite sound like any of classic UK vintage amps.
From warm three-dimensional crystal clean tones with a surprising amount of headroom for an amp within this power range class, to spine-tingling on-the-verge-of-breakup sounds that are super touch-sensitive to your> picking dynamics, to sweet and singing bluesy overdrive lead tones, to broad and open-sounding crunch rhythm sounds that are ideal for classic rock riffing, to juicy and fat lead sounds with the right amount of grease and sustain for fusion and classic rock single-note playing, the Badger does 'em all with authority, character, and tonal quality that simply has to be heard to be believed.
The Badger can operate in 3 distinct modes for a variety of musical situations. The first is the non-master-volume mode. When the Drive and Power knobs on the far left of the front panel are turned all the way up, they are out of the circuit. This means the Gain control on the far right becomes the volume control. The EQ section of Treble, Middle, and Bass act as normal.
This is the ultimate in simplicity. Like the great non-master vintage amps, the Badger is ideal for playing in small clubs and venues where you can really get the power section involved in the tone you're getting. The second mode of the Badger kicks in once you bring the Drive control into the circuit. The Drive controls the amount of signal being sent into the power section, which in turn controls the volume level. The Gain knob now acts as a preamp gain control. This mode is the familiar "master volume" setting on virtually all modern guitar amps being produced out there today. The third mode engages the unique and extremely effective Power Scaling feature. In this mode, the Drive control becomes like a secondary gain control and the Power knob controls the overall volume. With careful balancing of the settings of the Drive and Power control knobs, you can get power tube overdrive from moderate to bedroom volume levels with a full transparent tone without the squashed compression artifacts of most attenuators and load boxes.
The Power Scaling feature, licensed from London Power, lowers the wattage to the power amp, allowing the power tubes to clip. The tubes run cooler and aren't running as hard compared to using the speaker load while still retaining the interaction of the tubes and speaker(s). This proprietary technology allows the output power of an audio amplifier to be dialed down from 100% to less than 1%. With the Badger, you now have total control over your tone and volume from the clubs to churches to garage rehearsals to home recording to late-night practicing in your bedroom.