The legendary guitarist’s pursuit of his perfect tone has led him to collaborate with Ibanez, Peavey and many more over the years and his most recent liaison – with Vox to create a signature line of pedals – has seen him as involved in the design stage as ever.

With three of the new pedals now under its belt, Vox was able to bag Satriani for a special Q&A session at Frankfurt Musikmesse 09 – and MusicRadar was invited to record proceedings.

In this first part of the Q&A, Satriani takes questions from the crowd on his Vox Satchurator distortion, the first of his Vox pedals, and talks us through his reasons for wanting a custom distortion, why distortion is important to guitarists and why the Satchurator is special.

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While much of Frankfurt Musikmesse 2009 was caught on video, sometimes it’s a single picture that can paint a thousand words. So here’s an entire book’s worth: a gallery of gear, rock stars and, er… pizza.

Musikmesse in pictures

Coffee fail: what happened to the humble kettle, bag of unidentified brown granules and fully-meltable plastic stirrers you used to find in hotel rooms?

A Stoneboard leopard-skin keytar? 30 minutes into the show? Only in Frankfurt…

Akai Miniak synth: photographed, filmed, wanted…

Fender Custom Shop… mmmm, Fender Custom Shop

The Reactable. It’s going into production, don’t you know?

When Peavey met Jaws…

Alesis DM6 electronic drum kit…

…and the e-Practice Pad

The Marshall limo arrives – this is how Dave Mustaine rolls in Frankfurt…

And believe it or not, that is Dave Mustaine demoing his new signature Marshalls… it was loud. And dark

Intrepid reporter Chris Wickett says “sleeping is cheating.” Is that TWO empty glasses?

Klanginitiative cube kit: they’ll be all the rage next year (maybe)

A row of sheer Raw Power courtesy of the Gibson stand

While checking out Open Labs’ DBeat, we couldn’t walk past this Opensynth without snapping

Ludwig Liverpool 4 drums: a faithful recreation of Ringo’s 60s kit

A wall of Orange

More Orange. But then again, not orange

This pizza was called The Fire. It was very hot. There was no tomato in it. Just cheese and Jalapenos. And black olives

Green pedal, red pedal, orange trainers. It can only be…

…Joe Satriani at the Vox Q and A. Notice MR’s Chris Vinnicombe stage left

Yamaha NX: nylon strings are all the rage, you see

Here’s a picture of a Roland Ax-Synth. Just because…

A Vox Phantom: a proud member of MusicRadar’s Guitar Porn Series

Spooky fireball guitar thing

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Our Frankfurt-based reporters are back in Blighty, and they’ve brought back the highlights from the final day of Musikmesse 2009.

If you’re a (very) late-comer to the party, never fear: here are day one’s, day two’s and day three’s highlights to get you back you on track.

Show floor highlights: day four

Orange Crush Series
Brand new updates on the popular entry level Crush Series of guitar and bass combos. Full spec TBC but much more power is expected

Ludwig Liverpool 4 Ringo Starr Kit
A loving recreation of Ringo’s 60s kit, a shaky camera and a whole lot of drool…

Klanginitiative’s Cube Kit
Upgraded from a day one basement entry to a full video demonstration. File this under cool/mental…

Peavey PXD Series
Caught a glimpse of these back in NAMM 2008, so it’s about time we got them down on film. Tom from Peavey provides the skinny…

From the basement…

Chicks On Picks

Spooky fireball guitar thing

When is an Orange not an Orange?

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Welcome to day three of Frankfurt Musikmesse 2009! After a sleepless night of video editing and over-peppered pizza (don’t ask) we’ve managed another glorious lap of the show floor.

While backing-up some of yesterday’s top picks with hands-on video demos (hello, Akai Miniak), we’ve found fresh highlights in the shape of Yamaha’s NX series nylon acoustics and Gibson’s Raw Power Series.

Be sure to check back on Monday when we’ll be welcoming home our Frankfurt heroes… by making them post even more videos, hidden treasures and trade show tales. Until then…

Show floor highlights: day three

Exclusive: Joe Satriani talks Vox pedals
Satch’s signature pedals have come a long way in six months – get the skinny from the man himself here

Gibson Raw Power Series
Brand-new stripped-down, all-maple electrics make their worldwide debut. The series includes SGs and Les Pauls…

Carmine Appice signature ddrum kit
Huge kick, regular toms: “this is the same kit I had in 1967,” says Carmine Appice. We’ll let the drumming legend himself explain the rest…

Yamaha NX guitars
Nylon string, pre-aged wood electro-acoustic guitars break conventions, but don’t disappoint. Just ask Rodrigo y Gabriela…

Doepfer Dark Energy
A standalone analogue synthesizer with USB and Midi interface, Sounds cool, looks cooler…

Vox ToneLab ST
The most compact TomeLab yet, this Valvetronix, tube-powered do-it-all unit offers 33 different amp models and an array of cabinets and effects

Nord C2 Combo Organ
The C1 had evolved! Baroque pipe organ, rock solid key action and a bunch of new accessories make the C2 well worthy of its dedicated video demo

Yamaha Absolute Series drum kit update
New finishes, new “next generation” YESS tom mounts and a promise of greater sound projection. We are intrigued…

From the basement…

Hand-shaped cymbals

The Wholigans

Vintage guitar porn

Red pedal, green pedal, orange trainer…

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Despite new Fender products being somewhat thin on the ground at the show this year, the Custom Shop collection on display is as drool-worthy as ever. Earlier today, while I stood gazing in awe and wonder like the world’s poorest kid in an extremely voluminous confectionary emporium, Mike G got snappier than several crocodiles enjoying a rudimentary card game.

Here are the results… click to zoom.

Check out www.fender.com for more.

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The Q&A lasted 45mins and we’ll be bringing you the highlights of this later (including just why distortion is red and delay is green…). However we thought we’d share our exclusive chat with Joe which happened straight after the Q&A. We chatted what Vox products are in the pipeline next, how Satch used the new Vox pedals on the new Chickenfoot album plus how he had to adapt his style when playing alongside fellow Chickenfooter and lead singer, Sammy Hagar. Enjoy the video – we did!

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First, the NTX’s narrower nut and smaller fingerboard radius is perfect for us electric types (no wonder Rodrigo y Gabriela like ‘em so much), but secondly because it’s coming in a rather sexy black edition that makes you look ace as this baby sounds. Check out our video below and we think you’ll be impressed as we were.

The NX range will begin shipping from June 2009

NTX700 – £575rrp
NTX/NCX900 – £785rrp
NTX/NCX1200 – £1,149rrp
NCX2000 – £3,135rrp

For more information about the NX range and other Yamaha guitars, head to the Yamaha Guitars website. To read an exclusive review of the NX series, head to next month’s Guitarist.

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MusicRadar’s Frankfurt-based colleagues have been up all night… editing video.

Scroll down for day two’s spoils including Gibson’s Raw Power series and Akai’s Miniak synth…

1. Nord C2 Combo Organ

Nord’s Thomas Johansson shows off the C2 Combo Organ and its sister the Pedal Keys 27 bass pedal keyboard

2. Akai Miniak synth and MPD18

Big highlights from day two at Frankfurt, so we had to get them on video: the MPD18 USB pad controller and the Miniak virtual analogue synth.

3. Gibson Raw Power Les Paul

Ok, so this is more of a drool fest than a gear demonstration but just look at those curves… mmmmmm.

4. Carmine Appice ddrum signature kit

“This is the same kit I had in 1967,” says Carmine Appice. Who better to demo a signature line than the namesake himself? What a legend…

5. Matt Nolan cymbals

Ever seen a cymbal shaped like a samurai helmet? Or a shield? Or a hand? Neither had we. Check out British cymbalsmith Matt Nolan discuss the craft.

Missed day one? Catch up here: 7 new gear demos from Frankfurt 09

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Hall 5 here in extremely sunny Frankfurt is a treasure trove of tech goodness. We took the chance to hook up with the good folks at Akai who gave us the skinny on their hottest new products for Musikmesse 2009: the MPD18 USB pad controller and the Miniak virtual analogue synth. Check out the vocoder action on that!

The Miniak and MPD18 will be available from musical instrument and professional audio retailers later on in 2009.

For more information, please visit the Akai Professional website.

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A few words on the Frankfurt Musikmesse 2009 from Guitarist magazine’s
reviews editor, Dave Burrluck.

Against a dire worldwide economic background, the Frankfurt Musikmesse
should really be a trade fair of few new products. It isn’t. As with the
NAMM show earlier this year, standout products might have been a little
thin on the ground but by the end of day two I’m already wondering just
who is going to buy all the new products on show.

As we’ve seen over the past few years the main trend is one of diversity.
New directions sit side-by-side with reissues from the fifties and
sixties. I stumbled across a slavish reissue of the original, as used by
Jeff Beck, Tonebender, for example, quickly followed by a reissue of the
rather lesser known Burns Buzzaround. As Burns boss Barry Gibson put the
final touches to a prototype of yet another blast from the past I began to
wonder exactly what year it is.

It was back in 1978 that Yamaha unleashed the first ‘serious’
Japanese-made guitar, the SG2000. Still in production today, a very
limited vintage white SG2000 is the highlight of their 2009 electrics. Yet
Yamaha also likes to move forwards. The company’s major acoustic launch
for this year is a range of still rather niche electro-nylon NX guitars.
In two body styles, and with prices starting at £575 in the UK, these
cutaway electros are using a new and unique 2-way pickup system
purpose-designed for the new range. Artists like Lee Ritenoir, Rodrigo y
Gabriela and Antonio Forcione are already using ‘em.

Over at Hughes & Kettner we’re shown a new take on old valve technology: a
new circuit that they’ll be fitting, initially, to their Switchblade amps.
It evaluates the condition of the amp’s valves and rebiases them if
necessary. It’ll also allow you to swap different valves for different
voices. Named the TSC, this little circuit could have a big influence and
all you need to know is where to stick your plectrum to start the very
fast rebiasing.

Old meets new: welcome to the guitar world of 2009.

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