What’s been eating that guitar?

That was my first thought when I saw the spalted maple top on the ASAT Classic Bluesboy from G&L Custom Creations.

As it turns out, my question wasn’t off the mark. Those caramel-and-rust streaks and ink-black scribbles — the blotchy wood’s peculiar signature — are caused by fungi that discolor the pigment and create mottled patterns. The look is, understandably, alarming to players accustomed to tops with elegant bookmatched grain and gorgeous flame patterns. Like veined cheeses and stonewashed jeans — both of which owe their appearance to interactions with fungi—spalted maple is an acquired taste.

Which is just as well, given the wood’s scarcity. When G&L located a small supply of spalted maple, the guitarmaker snapped up the timber and earmarked it for a limited run of the company's popular ASAT Bluesboy model.

The maple top is mated to a solid alder body, and a clear natural finish is applied. The 25 1/2–inch-scale neck has a clear gloss finish and a rosewood fingerboard with 22 frets.

Electronics consist of a nickel-plated Seymour Duncan Seth Lover humbucker in the neck position and a G&L Magnetic Field Design ASAT Classic single-coil pickup in the bridge position, both activated by a three-way switch and volume and tone controls. Other features include Sperzel nonlocking tuners and a traditional “boxed steel” bridge with six individual saddles. The guitar ships with a G&L molded hardshell case.

G&L’s Custom Creations shop built just 60 copies of this guitar over January and February 2008, and the price is a reasonable $2,500.00, so if you want one, snap it up soon. For more information, visit G&L online and click on the Custom Creations link in the side navigation.

So you’ve released an all-tube 15-watt amp head the size of a lunch pail, and it becomes a monster hit, selling more than 10 thousand units in just 18 months. What do you do for an encore?

The chaps at Orange figure a 1x12 combo version should do the trick. The new Tiny Terror combo combines the Brit company’s Tiny Terror head with a Celestion 30-watt G12H speaker. Both reside inside a very tidy-looking cabinet reminiscent of Orange’s Seventies-era OTR combos.

According to Orange, the Tiny Terror combo was developed following sustained demand for it from guitarists, studios and even journalists (as if anyone listens to them). Like the Tiny Terror head, it puts out 15 watts RMS of Class A power (7 watts RMS Class A with the half-power switch engaged) and has controls for gain, tone and volume. Two 12AX7 tubes reside in the preamp, while a pair of EL84s go to work in the power amp.

List price is $1,039, street is $819. Units should begin shipping in mid-to-late summer.

While humanity speeds en masse down the digital music trail, millions of struggling musicians are still recording rehearsals, gigs and ideas for their breakthrough hit song with the humble cassette tape. Talk about suffering for your art. 

Although compact and cheap, cassettes suck. The audio quality is miserable, the cartridges are fiddly to insert and remove from the player, and the damn things are analog! You actually have to wind through them to get to the part of the recording you need to hear.

And as anyone who has searched for cassettes these days will tell you, fresh blanks are becoming very scarce as the medium rolls at 1 7/8 inches per second to the end of its 40-year run.

All of which makes the new Olympus LS-10 especially lustworthy. It’s a handheld stereo digital recorder with a pair of mics built in and positioned at right angles for

Tired of lugging a guitar tuner around? Here’s a solution that’s both cool and cool looking.

The N-Tune Chromatic Tuner installs on your guitar in place of your standard volume control, with no modifications required. When the control is pressed down, it acts like a standard volume control. Pulling the control up mutes the guitar’s output and activates the tuner.

A display ring under the knob shows the notes and tuning status symbols: Flat, Sharp, Tuned and Tuned Sharp (for accidentals: C sharp, D sharp, etc.). Bright LEDs guide the tuning process by illuminating the note being tuned and the relevant symbol.

When a note is tuned sharp or flat, the corresponding LED will blink red and flash faster as the note is tuned to pitch. The green Tuned LED will light when the string is in tune.

Two pots are available: a 250k pot for Stratocaster-style guitars and a 500k pot for Gibson and everything else. The pot is a high-grade design, and the stem allows you to use your original control knob. N-Tune uses one nine-volt battery, which mounts with Velcro under your pickguard.

Note that if your existing volume pot has additional features, they will not function when the N-Tune is installed.

The N-Tune has a list price of $100. For more information, go to www.n-tune.com.