VIntage And Valves comprises sampled guitar licks, phrases and motifs played through traditional tube amps and miked up. Fender, HiWatt, Vox and Mesa Boogie amps are used, and the list of guitars includes a Rickenbacker formerly owned by Pete Townshend, and a Gretsch Princess as well as Gibsons and Fenders.

I loaded the samples into my Akai S2000 and was pleased to find that none of the programs required more than around 8Mb of memory. When I came to audition them, however, all of the programs played back at the same time, so I had to go through the Renumber routine every time I loaded a new set of sounds. All of the samples are tempo-related, though I felt that one or two were at variance with the tempo quoted. For example, a nice chugging riff marked up at 60bpm sounded decidedly more comfortable over a 47 or 94bpm backing.

The samples themselves are very nicely recorded and are devoid of any processing, so you can treat them just as you would a miked-up live guitar session. There are chuggs, bluesy riffs, the obligatory R&B riffs and a few rather nice major and minor chords as well as a passing musical reference to 'Pinball Wizard'. After these it's guitar solo time, again in a traditional bluesy style in a choice of keys and tempos.

Usually you get a short phrase mapped to each of a handful of MIDI notes and, if they're played carefully, you can recreate the kind of thing you hear between vocal lines in a traditional blues tune. I think the selection falls short of being able to offer much in the way of complete solos, but you can definitely get the right kind of feel. There's plenty of choice in the solo licks department and the standard of playing is certainly good.

On the whole, Vintage Valves is a reasonable attempt at covering the 'bluesy' genre. However, guitar sample CDs are always going to be a problem because, to sound anything like the real thing, they have to be phrase-based rather than multisample-based. This is a limitation because the phrases only work in their own keys and at their own tempos -- you can never get enough phrases to put together the solo or part you want. I, personally, could have also used some more blues chord progressions.

I think it would be easier to find a local guitarist and buy them a curry in exchange for playing the parts you need, but if you live on a desert island with no guitarists within reach, then Vintage Valves offers some interesting and authentic flavours that will slot into your own blues compositions without too much of a struggle.

Paul White

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