On the 2nd day we arrived early as we wanted to catch up with some people that we thought members of the L4G family should know about. We spoke with Yannis Anastasakis from Jam Pedals, Marcel Coenen who was there with Bo-El guitars, Terence Hansen who was performing at the main stage and demonstrating his 2 neck acoustic guitar at the Heeres guitars stand, Avid about the Eleven Rack interface/amp simulator, Rotosound , JPF Amplification and many more. Most of these are going to be discussed in separate reviews and interviews coming soon on the L4G blog. So let’s have a look at what else was happening on the 14th of November at Guitar Nation 2010 at the Olympia center.

Jam pedals are high end quality vintage style guitar pedals. With their unique design and sound approach they attracted artists like John Abercrombie, Greg Koch, David Hidalgo, Anthony Jackson, Jonny Lang, Benrie Marsden, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd to name a few, and it’s been a rapidly growing company around the world. The company was started in 2005 by Yannis Anastasakis, with whom I happen to be very good friends with since my early rocking teenage years playing guitar in the same town but in different bands. We caught up with him to see what Jam Pedals are all about.

Blackstar is a fairly new rapidly growing amplification company based in Northampton, UK, which makes series of valve pedals and amplifiers. The company consists largely of ex Marshall employees. On their artist roster they include Gus G. (Firewind, Ozzy Osbourne), Silenoz (Dimmu Borgir), Reb Beach (Winger, Whitesnake, ex- Dokken), Fredrik Akesson (Opeth) to name a few. We went to the Wembley Guitar Centre to have a look at the HT Blackfire Metal Valve distortion. The HT Blackfire is the Gus G. signature pedal. Let’s have a closer look.

Guitar Nation 2010 is a newly introduced guitar exhibition that was held in the Olympia Exhibition Centre in London on the 13th and 14th of November. The Olympia Exhibition Centre is well renowned in London for holding exhibitions of all kinds. The exhibition was sponsored by: Allianz Insurance, Guitar, Guitar World, Bass Guitar, Acoustic magazines, alongside Licklibrary, Surface Festival 2011 and XFM. Live4Guitar didn’t want to miss this great opportunity to check out some cool gear and some amazing demonstrators, so we made sure we attended both days of the event. We met a lot of friends and supporters there. We met cool new guitarists and performers and experienced many new products that you won’t yet see on the everyday market or at your local music shop. So lets have a look at what happened on the 13th of November.

As mentioned in my first Amplitube 3 review - Ik Multimedia is one of the world's leading companies in guitar amp simulation. Quite recently they released an interface for iPhone (3G, 3GS, iPhone 4), iPad and iPod touch (Generation 2-3), the iRig. iRig gives you the chance to have fully featured guitar tool in your pocket. By downloading one of the Amplitube versions (Free, LE, Full) from the app store you have a guitar tuner, metronome, amps, stompboxes, cabinets, microphones, a track recorder and a mastering plugin in your pocket for a few Bucks.

London's tube lines closures and planned engineering works are nowhere near stopping Live4guitar getting to one of the biggest metal festivals in the world, The mighty Ozzfest. For 14 years the “Prince of Darkness” has been getting bands under his wing in order to put up a great show of heavy metal music. Bands including Pantera, Rob Zombie, Marylin Manson, Mudvayne, Iron Maiden, Incubus, Black Label Society, System of a Down, Arch Enemy and many others have performed at Ozzfest over the years, putting up incredibly successful events.

Over the last few years we have witnessed the rise of many talented guitarists from the Balkan region (Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania...) And now we have the first prominent, widely recognised guitar event!!!

The capital of Romania, Bucharest hosted a summit for the third time, masterclass, competition and the guitar show called Ziua Chitarelor.

"Ik Multimedia" is undeniably one of the leading companies of the 21st century for guitar and bass amplifier emulation, in the digital world. Founded in Italy (Modena) in 1996 with goals to help musicians, producers and songwriters, IK Multimedia has been providing hardware and software for home and studio recording. Their new magical tool for the recording/performing guitarist is out now. Check out Amplitube 3.