Every week, through intense scientific testing and examination (otherwise known as complete subjective reaction from John), we bring you the things that made this week at Eclipse Music just a little more exciting.  Might be new, might be used, might be an album we heard, might be something interesting that doesn't have anything to with music at all.  If you agree (or disagree), drop us a line and let us know.

2/8/2010

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for the surprisingly good holiday season we had this year.  I know it's tough out there, but if we are any indicator, life is starting to get better.  Thanks to what has been a really great start of the year, we're glad to announce that we have been able to expand into a few new lines that I am very excited about.

First up - we are now Minnesota's only dealer of Eastwood guitars!  Chances are that if you've been in the store in the last year, you've gotten stuck talking to me about these.  I'm not jaded, but in an era filled with lots of the same old reiterations of the guitars we've seen for decades (no offense teles/strats/les pauls/etc) it's easy to just get a little bored with the details sometimes.  So when I first saw Eastwood, I have to admit that it awakened my inner guitar geek, and it wouldn't shut up until I got these guitars in the store (which took over a year.  Thanks for nothing, economy).

Well, the first batch of them is on site, and they are fantastic.  Every time you get a new guitar line in, you can't help but wonder if they are going to meet up to your expectations, and I'm happy to say that these actually exceeded mine.  The fit and finishing is top notch, the parts quality is high, and the pickups are not your average off the shelf imported stuff.  It's clear to me that from top to bottom, these guitars were designed for accuracy and tone, and no detail was left out.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the brand, Eastwood makes refined and tweaked versions of classic off the beaten path guitars (if you know me, you can probably start to understand why I got just a tad obsessed with this.)  Think Airline, Supro, Harmony, and Mosrite.  However, that's just the beginning.  As you dig deeper, you're going to find all sorts of fascinating oddball guitars that time has forgotten.  How about a Mandocaster, or Wurlitzer Gemini?  Perhaps an Ovation Breadwinner?  The list goes on and on.  But don't make the mistake of thinking these are just weird for the sake of weirdness, these are all over the sonic palatte, and if you sit down with them for a while you just might find that sound and feel you never knew you wanted but can't believe you lived without.

(Still confused?  Start digging here: The Eastwood Guitars website (opens in new window))

To help you preview what we (at the moment) have in stock, here's a list:

Airline Map in Black
P-90 Special in TV Yellow
Sidejack DLX in Metallic Blue
Stormbird in Gold
Delta 6 in Sunburst
Airline Lap Steel in Black (sorry, sold this one, but I can get more)
EUB-1 Fretless bass in Black
JR Elite in White

As always, we welcome special orders, and if there's something you want to see but aren't sure about, let me know and I'll probably go ahead and get it in stock just for the fun of it.

You'll have to pardon my long-windedness here (if nothing else, just pretend I've actually been doing regular updates), but we aren't quite done yet.  We also have a new hand-wired pedal in the shop that is built by a long term customer of the store.  It's been a ton of fun watching this one come to fruition, and being involved in little tweaks and twists by listening to several prototypes along the way and giving my input as the pedal developed.

So, now in stock, we have the Dragon Dog Distortion Plus, a two mode pedal that goes from a nice throaty subtle overdrive all the way to the edges of fuzz while still maintaining a clear distortion character.  True Bypass, mechanically switched, and featuring a unique pre-drive placement of the tone control that will make you wonder why more people don't do it this way.  The initial run of this pedal is going to be hand-painted, so if that's your kind of thing, you might when to get to it sooner rather than later.  And for the collector types out there, we have serial # 005.  As an added bonus, you are going to be shocked by the reasonable pricing, especially given the component quality - the initial run is selling for $149, which is less than some imported factory built pedals that shall go nameless.

There's another line on the way, but I might as well save a few surprises for the future, right?  See you then. 

10/31/2009

So it's Halloween, and I don't have anything scary to report, other than that I finally got around to updating the "used stuff in stock" page, which is probably shocking to most of you.  Lots and lots of new goodies have drifted in, and again the stuff from off the beaten path (Magnatone M8, I'm looking at you) is often the most rewarding.

Restocked our G&L supply as well, and the Electro-Harmonix selection keeps growing and growing (seriously, how can one company be so cool?  It's madness!) so if you haven't been in for a while, come check it out.  As an added bonus, my new puppy Henry is now on a part time schedule here at the shop, so you might as well come in and say hello to the little (well, young, maybe not really little) guy.

 

11/13/2008

 

I should probably modify this whole claim of "updated every week", but at least this way, I get filled with shame and remorse every time I open the edit page on the website, which is a motivating factor.  Anyway, lots of stuff has come and gone since my last update.  We did add Levy's straps, which are pretty fantastic, and shockingly still built on the same continent we live in by our fine slightly northern Canadian friends.

 

Another thing to mention - every week I seem to be helping someone identify some mysterious inherited guitar, and this seems like as good a place as any to make a public service announcement.  Please, for the good of us all, take the time to come in and let me help you figure out what that old dusty weird guitar/bass/amp pedal that has been sitting in your closet unplayed for years is.  We are on a self-established crusade to stem the flow of odd and awesome musical gear into the dumpsters and landfills, and that thing you can't find a use for or make heads or tails of might just be someone elses holy grail.  We don't charge for the service, and we will never pull some "Oh this is probably worthless, but hey we can give you a few dollars for it, just to be nice" routine.  We don't even care if you consign it, trade it, sell it, or decide to keep it.  Just as long as whoever has it knows that no matter how bizarre, it's worth something to somebody.  If nothing else, it gives you a reason to update your insurance so that your coverage notes that replacing that '63 strat with some offbrand cheapo knockoff is not acceptable.

 

 

9/12/2008

 

Well, so much for every week.  Still trying to catch up with repairs, but as long as people keep breaking stuff, I'll be behind I suppose.  A quick tip of the hat to the MXR Stereo Chorus, which is doing a great job of reminding me why we all liked chorus in the first place, and the fact that digital and analog are very different animals.  We've been talking to a bunch of people about some new lines, but it's too soon to spread the news just yet (to keep you curious, a few pedal lines and one instrument line.)  When the details are all sorted out, you'll be the first to know, and next time it will be less than six months between postings.

 

Probably.

 

3/24/2008

 

Promises of things to come: I just finished our restoration of the Supro Martinique I've mentioned on here before, and I took all sorts of pictures of it while it was spread out on the operating table.  Still busy trying to catch up on repairs in general, so I won't have time to get the play by play descriptions up here until later.  Still, I can't help but tip my hat to the incredibly forward thinking approach of Supro in the early sixties - between the piezo bridge and the neck tilt adjustment, it's sad that we didn't get to see what the next 45 years would have brought to the table.

 

3/3/2008

 

Well, I haven't been quite as good as I hoped to be at updating this page (I'm sure you are all shocked by this.)  To make up for it, we added a few new lines to keep you all satisfied with weird pedal noise making fun.  We are now selling MXR, Dunlop, Way Huge, and the "authentic Jimi Hendrix" series of pedals.  The first of these are starting to arrive, so try to swing by when you have a chance.  According to my friendly UPS tracking system, a box containing a Hendrix Octavio, an MXR Custom Shop 1974 Phase 90, an MXR Carbon Copy analog delay, an MXR Distortion III, and a MXR Dyna Comp will be arriving tomorrow.  Big fun!  The Way Huge stuff won't be shipping until some time in June, but it will be worth the wait.

 

I'll add links to this stuff as soon as I get smart enough to figure out how to add a links page to the site.  Also, don't forget to check the link to (some) of our used gear to the left.

 

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I know, the argument rages on about how punk rock or anti punk rock this guitar is, and whether Joe would have approved, and blah blah blah, but at the end of the day what really matters is that it feels great and sounds wonderful.  Not to mention the fact that it looks really cool, and this is coming from a guy who always thinks that the idea of beating up a new guitar is pretty odd.  The bottom line is that it's a modified Mexican made 60's telecaster reissue, but with that thick layer of gloss polyeurethane skinned down to almost nothing, and a neck that's worn down smooth in all the right places.

 

For those of you who care about these sorts of things, we did get one of the first 1500, so we have the limited edition Obey/Shepard Fairey customization kit.  SOLD.

 

This seems as good a place as any to mention that we still have a couple of the Squier Obey guitars with the Shepard Fairey graphics on the front, so if you are looking for one of those, let us know.

 

 Multivox Little David Leslie Simulator

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