Burlap and Blues, The Blues Blog

Happy 2010 to everyone from Burlap and Blues dot com. I hope that your year is happy and bright!

Happy Holidays from Burlap and Blues. Make sure you check out the Burlap and Blues holiday compilation CD's at http://www.burlapandblues.com/holidaycd/

Although I do not personally celebrate Festivus, you can check out the BAB Festivus Tune. Not too many Festivus tunes out there. Special thanks to Chuck for making this happen

<a href="http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mig/playlistbadge/25.swf?autoload=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;playlist_url=http://burlapandblues.com/uploads/Bab_Collab-Festivus_Ver_001.mp3" target="_blank">http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mig/playlistbadge/25.swf?autoload=0&amp;autoplay=0&amp;playlist_url=http://burlapandblues.com/uploads/Bab_Collab-Festivus_Ver_001.mp3</a>

This song may be downloaded here if you like

http://burlapandblues.com/uploads/Bab_Collab-Festivus_Ver_001.mp3

Over the last few days I have been reviewing the Peavey Horizon II. I took a great interest in this guitar when I saw it on the rack because of the low cost, great condition and made in USA status.

One of the first guitars that I owned many many many years ago was a Peavey Patriot that looked hauntingly like this guitar.

This guitar was the first guitar I owned with "blade" pickupsm and the first American made guitar that I owned. I loaned the Patriot in the early 90's to an aspiring musician who wanted a guitar to practice on and never saw it again. Since then I have always had my eye on 1980's era Peavey guitars. I had seen a few in the stores, but most of them have excessive wear and some were not even playable.

1980's era Peavey guitars do not typically have a good resale value. The horizon can be found as low as $99 in average condition, and I have seen T-60's on craiglists around $100, which is an excellent value for an American made guitar.

This instrument was auctioned at a government auction:

I am seeing a niche of people wanting old Peavey guitars to make into Guitar Hero Controllers, which is an actual waste of a fine instrument. I have also seen some so beat up that maybe all they are good for is a Guitar hero controller (ha ha)

Summary:

Value: for around $200 this guitar is definitely worth the money. Many tonal combinations for around the price of a cheap import. Stability in tuning, and not bad condition. I would carefully check fret wear and necks of guitars.

Playability: easy to set up, I have seen a couple of models that are pretty poorly set up, but this model has a few extra tweaks that can bring it back in line easy enough.

Gigability: Not a bad guitar for a gig, I would not use it as a primary or without a backup. Twenty five years is not necessarily without a set of issues in stability.

I hope you have enjoyed the review and I hope to have more new reviews soon!

Part III of the Peavey Horizon II review includes a review of the overdriven tones that are achievable using the Peavey Horizon II. As in Part II of the review, I am using a Fender tweed style amp with 4x10's with a touch of reverb. The same amp setting is used for all recordings of this guitar.

How a guitar responds to overdrive and distortion is a key factor for many players. If a guitar feeds back or is noisy when the drive is kicked in, it will become an annoying guitar to have to lug around to performances. I have found that my Peavey Horizon II is exceptionally quiet for a guitar of it's day. Take a listen to some of the tone samples that have been created. . .

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As I mentioned in my first blog entry, the Peavey Horizon II has a wide variety of tonal combinations available. With several unique switching combinations with each humbucker pickup being able to be humbucking, single coil or blended, there are 45 distinct tonal combinations accessible with this guitar. What occurs with this guitar is classic "Strat style", LP and other distinct tones you can get from the instrument. Interesting enough, during the recording of these samples there was less noise generated than I expected from an instrument of this age.

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This week while visiting a local guitar store I saw a 1983 Peavey Horizon sitting in the used section just beckoning me to take her home. This guitar was manufactured from 1983-1986 and has a very unique pickup configuration that really does give a wide variety of tones from a single instrument.

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Many years ago I was working for a company and really did not particularly care for some of the people I worked with. The Christmas party was 'mandatory' attendance and bringing of food or dessert dish to pass. For those who do not know me I can be exceedingly funny when I need to be.

Ken's dish to pass - Holiday Candy Surprise.

1 pound White Chocolate
1 bag halls cough drops, 2 for stronger and more noticeable flavours.
1 small container of green or red holiday color sugar.

Unwrap cough drops, smash into small pieces, but big enough that they have to be chewed. Some will be sharp, but that is okay, just don't add glass.

Melt White chocolate and add pulverized cough drops.

Pour into thin layers on waxed paper or cookie sheets. When cooling sprinkle sugars over to make candy look festive.

Break into tiny pieces and place on plate to serve.

It was amazing to see how many people kept eating the candy to try and figure out what it was.

We three ugly guitars are going to blind some one from here to a far...

Growing up Bob and Doug were role models. Being role models is not an easy job, so here they are with their 12 or something days of Christmas and important gifts to give...

Here they are in the correct unlogical order

Eight comic books
seven packs of smokes
six packs of two-four
Five golden touques!
Four pounds of backbacon,
Three French toast,
Two turtlenecks,
And a beer,
In a tree!

So in honor of wearing brown shoes, I will wear black shoes. Why this holiday, did somewhere in time we forget the importance of having colors in shoes? Are the color of shoes more or less important than the color of the socks. Fridays are the days that I DON'T have to wear brown shoes. I guess I will just go down in history as a rebel

I am not sure, but if you buy a Festivus Gift, make sure that you air your grievances after you give a gift.