Re: Enver Izmailov (stick-warr gtr)

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Raul Bonell <raul.bonell@gmail.com> wrote:
> ... warr have all the summed possibilities. i think this is one of the
> reasons why mark invented it, isn't?

My guess is that Mark Warr "invented" the Warr Guitar because felt
frustrated with the Stick, as he started out on that instrument. He
simply wanted a Stick with a more dense tone. I'd love to find an
interview where he talks about the early process of visualizing the
Warr guitar.

>From what I understand the Warr Guitar is quite different to the Stick
and the guitar. At least the Stick I like, light wight bamboo wood
with PASV-4 pickups. As with guitars, I tend to like the tone you get
out of light weight wood instruments. I had two old guitars from -57
and -59, Gibson SG and Les Paul Junior models and they too had this
"light wood" tone character (mahogany), like a Strat of the more fat
kind. This is a rather short sustain and sort of "light tone" that can
easily be shaped by acoustic feedback if the volume is loud enough.
The bamboo Stick sound like that but of course with longer string
sustain. The Warr on the other hand makes me associate to dense Gibson
Les Paul or PRS tone instruments. A string tone character I'm not at
all into and can't relate to. But I do like the fat and full jazz tone
Randy Strom gets on the Warr. I also think some Stick players give the
Stick a bad reputation by not really playing the instrument but more
like "tapping down strings at positions memorized from a score chart".
I must say that I also dislike 90 percent of the Stick tone you hear
around. No pun intended - it is just a matter of taste: the plunky
clavinette-like Stick sound is not my bag, and it took me a lot of
research to find out that they can actually sound in a different way.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com