The Rapier Returns
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- www.jhs.co.uk/...
Support the channel here - / davesimpson
Massive thanks you to Alan and JHS for the loan of this amazing guitar.
I really cannot recommend going to try one of these for yourself.
There amazing. :) - เพลง
Oh I love that sound. I can hear the Fleetwood Mac era with Danny Kirwan: Then Play On, and particularly the Kiln House, Bare Trees albums. The Rapier definitely helped form Danny’s tone on those records.
Danny only played the Watkins Rapier in his very early days with Boilerhouse blues band. He played a Gibson les paul gold top mostly with Fleetwood Mac. I don't think Danny used the Rapier during the Kiln House period either. They were a poor mans strat. Action was usualy high and they sounded weak and tinny owing to the low output p/ups. 🎸
The distinctive sound that Dave got on his Rapier, a thin jangly sound, I have definitely heard that sound and tone on those Fleetwood Mac albums that Danny Kirwan is on: Then Play On, Kiln House, Future Games, Bare Trees. Not on every song but I hear it. I don’t think every guitar part is played on a Gibson Les Paul. Maybe live that is what Kirwan used but in the studio I think he mixes it up.
@@jimmycampbell78 what you hear mostly on those albums is the sound of P90's plus Danny also played a Les paul with three p/ups on -(the one he allegedly threw against a dressing room wall ). There's also photos of Danny with a fender strat. 🎸
My first guitar was a Watkins Rapier 33, purchased in 1964 and oh how wish I had kept it. I actually swapped it with my mate for a leather jacket, I know now he got the best of the deal.
Absolutely agree with your love of the new Rapier. I am guitarist with original 60s band The Fourmost and together with my fellow guitarist have just secured a deal with JHS and have two Arctic white guitars. We love them and have the perfect vibe with modern playability. Good video mate.
Are the fourmost still gigging l would love to see them again❤
Great demo.
It’s so nice to hear a demo played clean properly 😊
That was some lovely playing there, this axe suits you a lot
Wow Danny erm i mean Dave lol lovely guitar m8 and lovely playing as usual love the twangy tone Dave and big thanks to Alan and JHS for the loan of the guitar to the music man himself Dave
As always Dave, ❤top notch. Huge thmx
Remember these guitars dave the 44 was mostly in red they used to sell them in the bell musical catalogue years ago nice playing again dave 👍
I have a 44 it's not a good guitar but I've had it over 40 years, don't know why. :)
Very Cool guitar!! I can hear some Dire Straights licks jumping out of that axe. Looks good too!!
Danny's was red from the rare color pics ive seen of him with it. Awesome guitar.
Sounds like every guitar made. I’m getting one.
Also. This is the best guitar review I’ve ever seen. Straight to playing. And you just shred. Then a take. You sold me.
Best demo of this Guitar on you tube etc. Considering how versatile it is it should out-sell Squier by miles. It is a pro grade instrument built extremely well. I am going to get one as a grab and go play...by the way it is much more usable than a 60s one. It's those pickups that do it.
The originals were/are absolute dogs to play, hard to find one without an egg slicer action. This though is very impressive, well done Dave.
You get the best out of the super crush 100. Amazing !
Thank you & good morning.
THAT IS ONE COOOOL LOOKING GUITAR!!! AND IT SOUNDS AMAZING!!! more please
👏👏👏👏🥳🥳🥳a new guitar on the collection, nice play and sound.
Sadly i didn't get to keep it.
@@thedavesimpson ow :(
Great jam Dave, that was awesome man 😀🤘🎵🔥🔥🔥
I need, I want, I gotta have this guitar in my life !!
Peter looking on approvingly.
Your playing is as versatile as the guitar i so want 1 fiesta red ♥️
beautiful guitar...love those pickups and the trem bar
Wow! love it great demo Dave reckon you have just increased demand for these!
Great sounding, and brings out a different Dave. Reminds me of a Jazzmaster with the way it can sound so angry! Great playing as usual 👍
Hello dave , wow nice guitar ,i never see this brand before ,it's a very cool old new 60's guitar ! i want to try one now lol , thanks for your video ,take care and be safe !
Watkins of Balham Hill was my local music shop,growing up in the mid 50’s. Becoming a record shop mid 50’s I bought my first records from there. My first guitar was sold to me by Charlie Watkins,as,later, was my first amplifier ( one of many), also an original Copycat ( no. 37), several second hand guitars. I resisted the Rapier because it was cheap and horrible, made of chipboard .
Watkins was my “go to” shop for the early part of my lifelong career in music, and Charlie( and his brother) can be blamed for me ,now 80, having the best time of my life making music ! Well done !
Although the wood used for the Rapier bodies was not good, it wasn't chipboard! They were made of Jelutong, a wood from South East Asia. It was very light and readily available, but was rather soft and not generally rated for tone.
@@mandoprince1 Glad to be corrected,but they were not nice !
That sounded great!
I can guarantee you that new rapier will be far better then the originals, I had one a few years back and it wasn't very good at all.
Awsome..I loved the surfy intro. I like that guitar ..it has mojo for sure
Cool sounding
Very cool guitar souds and she looks Amazing Awsome!!!enjoy It💯🔥, great video
That would be the perfect guitar for a Spaghetti Western
This guitar has more sounds than my telly has channels🥴
Love a versatile sounding guitar.
So many 60s sounds and much more.. - well demonstrated. On another note: Have you ever played a Marlin Sidewinder back in the mid 80s it was the THE budget guitar.
I used to stare at them for hours in my mums catalogues !
The bridge pickups from those things were awesome. I have a pair of them ( the barblade humbuckers ) installed in a strat copy made by a different Marlin company in the Cort factory. They sound - and look - amazing!
@@malcolmhardwick4258 I did get a pink Marlin in 1986 (not the sidewinder) just the strat copy from Gough an Davy Hull. I should have had it set up as It wasn't very good. I also had a columbus distortion pedal which was crap.
@@MegaHairybum Interesting! I think I'm right - did it have a coil tap? There was also a Gold plated luxury one at the same time I think. I had a mate who had a Westone Thunder with humbuckers. I was in awe but he was very good and got the best out of it.
@@cradlecap123 Yes - although technically they were for split coils rather than tapped. I am using the original switches, but configured as Series/Parallel for each pickup. Similar sound to split coils, but still humbucking.
Well done, Dave. It sounded really cool but I'm not sure you could make a guitar sound bad :) Can't wait to hear the next jam on it.
I have a white original Rapier 44. Late 60s, in great playable condition.
Very Stratocaster-esque in sound, that thing! Maybe slightly on the side of Gretch/Filtertron pickups... Lovely!
Sounds great looks great but I’m convinced that you could take a pine board and an old shipping pallet hook some strings to it an you would make it sound good Dave. But that’s a really nice guitar to thx for the sounds.
Mr. Dave!!! I'm going to show this to all my guitar playing friends! I'm told so often that I set my guitars up w/ the action too high.... I always tell them, 'Mr. Dave will back me up! Now I have evidence!
In the video for Electricity by OMD you can see Andy McCluskey playing a fire engine red Watkins/WEM bass
God I want one of these. Was about to drop money on a Hofner Galaxie as they have no modern equivalent (or so I thought) - but will get one of these instead.
Nice to see one being played in a way where you can see what it's really for.
Would be a great guitar for surf style playing. Toast style p/ups ? . Great sound Dave ! An improvement on the old Watkins too ! 👍🎸
This guitar looks awesome
Sounds great! 👍
Lovely tone ala groundhogs blues obituary nice 😃👍
Nice guitar, I like the white on the pick ups great colour choice, at 7:18 sounds to me like Neil Young Dead Man has a nice Dire Straits sound.
Cool demo Dave.
Anything that Alan Entwistle has had a hand in is bound to sound good.
You got a vintage sound out of that one for sure.
Pangs of Nostalgia for anyone who'd come home from school in the 60s and lust over the contents of the Bell's Music Catalogue.
Watkins Rapier 22, 33, 44 filled a couple of pages by themselves.
But I never realised before today that there were different pickups in them.
The one's I saw all had the squared-off single coils, like Strat types but in a square chrome surround. Live and learn eh ?
Paul Weller had a 22 IIRC
I remember those bell's music catalogue's from the 60's ,pick up's on the rapier's looked different than those Dave is playing !
@@Sparky68M Yeah. Looking through the Pics on Google there appear to have been at least 3 different types of pickup on the Old models.
Whether that changed year by year or by different geographical markets I don't know.
WOW ... what a cool guitar!
Oops, I watched the "Blues For Danny" video before this one. The Rapier is awesome! Very cool! you've turned me onto the Marshall Jackhammer - just received one from Reverb. Now i got to find a Rapier...damn you! lol.
Cool and Classy and the guitar great too!👍🙂
I love that. I want one in daphne blue :-)
So many tones.. versitile setup 👌
That is so cool! I love that smell when you first crack the box, invigorating! Such a nice, dare i say, "stratty" mixed with "dan-O" tone. Do you know if those will be in the U.S.?
outstanding Dave!! from 7:50 it sounds a little bit like solo from Beyond the Realms of Death by Judas Priest
I owned and played one back in the 60s in a band called the Grumbles in Walsall. It was a red one - they were a nightmare to tune, never stayed in tune and were not a slick playing guitar. I had it because of the price. It did give a unique sound. The slider switches never lasted.
Dave, you make any and all guitars sound good. Around 08:00 you even have a Pink Floyd sounding thing going. And whatever you were playing would have gone good with Bowie.
I wish when Bowie was still alive you played for him. You would sound good with him and he would sound with you.
I think Paul Weller used one in the early days of the jam
The original rapier 33 had plastic knobs the 44 had metal ones, Like everything else this is a chinese clone the originals were made in the uk I had several of these in the late 60s and early 70s,
OH? are these Watkins the guys which sold the WEM ER 40 and 100 and the Copycat?
Yes !
@@malcolmhardwick4258
thanks!
And the Dominator amp.
Same family, Charlie Watkins did the WEM products, his brother did the Guitars.
Thanks to all ...
Omg that guitar is a _kill-ERRR_ ! EVERYTHING sounded awesome, it's like someone took a Strat & a Brian May Red Special & had a genetic head-on collision at Mach 2. Great sounding, I totally want one, where can I find it? I have never even heard of this guitar before today.
The guitar is so shiny. I have a really easy time buying a new guitar, but a really hard time playing them because i fear scratching them. But once i do, and get over that drama, all is good and i can finally really enjoy playing it...if that makes any sense. But I have a lot of used ones too...And those never scare me at all. Lol those pickups are crazy. Never seen anything like it. Sounds great. That trem bar is crazy unique too. Roller bridge is awesome. Body is thicker than I prefer but other than that it's beautiful. I personally prefer a super low action. Why work so hard? Also keeps you from having fret warble a.k.a. note warble, when playing.
Very nice spanky tones! Good sounding trem as well. Never heard of that guitar before.
I just finished watching another demo on the Rapier. It was horrible. This one was much, much better. Are you getting any work as a guitar player?
Thank you and abit yeps. :)
I've just realised you're recommending we don't try them in the video text.
"I really cannot recommend going to try one of these for yourself."
Haha. Brilliant. Thats dyslexia for you.
Who distributes these guitars in the US? I have a feeling 60 CH Ryan would dig it
It doesn't look that much like a real rapier shape but it sounds good
Very reasonably priced :) Didn't expect that, I'll probably have one of these! Class demo Dave cheers
The original’s weren’t expensive & they had a distinctive sound, playability was a bit hit & miss.
Dave a classy guitar
You got a demo on that e-kit there bro? Ive been geting into them lately...since I played on one I could never afford for around 9k U.S. so I got a intro level Alesis to do some messing around with. Then got a used Roland TD10 with expansion.
weight? neck profile?tnx
Time to write the score for a spaghetti western . I hate where the pick up switch is
Butterfly? 🤔♥️
If anyone is looking to get one of these in the UK i can supply them :D
It doesn’t have a belly cut, how does that feel?
Like a thinner Tele. :)
Did they use a tank cannon to make the trem arm ?
Hints of dick Dale and the surf sound it's so different
If you were to get your hands on an old Watkins Rapier and make a comparison video that would be so sick! Just sayin lol
i hear Under The Sun in there :3
Big dire straits vibes
👋
I had an original - they looked awesome but actually weren't much good in my opinion
A lot of 'em need the neck sorting; at a time when precious few knew what that meant let alone how to do it ... 😉
@@KozmykJ The body wood on mine was like balsa. Really soft and light. No sustain really.
@@32shumble That wasn't a dig at you btw.
Setup generally was a dark occult art back then wasn't it.
I bought a new Fender bass in 72 and it never sounded right.
I blamed the short scale and got a Ricky on the never never.
Many moons passed and I learned what 'Intonation' was 🙄
It wasn't just me.
The shop didn't really know either ... it were a good shop otherwise.
i had one as well it was terrible, but have been considering one since i heard they came back out
You didn't like it, then☺☺☺☺
Hopefully jhs will let you keep it 😁
Sadly not.
@@thedavesimpson shame you don’t live nearer , you could try my mid 60 Watkins . Nice sound but doesn’t play that well.
Nice hair do.
Thank you. No copying now. :)
🐋
Dave, Having watched your video I took a punt on one of these. It was a dog and it was sent back from whence it came with a severe reprimand and no dinner! Just poor workmanship all round. Given its brand name I should have known better.......Thumbs down!! I love your videos, Dave, and in particular your attitude towards affordable gear - however, in this case you've sold us a naughty pup.....
I didn't make your guitar so I don't see why your holding me responsible. The one i was sent was amazing. The problem is that with mass produced guitars like this theres always going to be dogs. You just got unlucky. We've all been there. I did a honest and fair review on the guitar i had.
@@thedavesimpson Dave, I'm not holding you responsible - just commenting on the guitar that you demo'd, raved about, and, on that basis, I purchased. Absolutely agree that some mass-produced guitars suffer from significant quality issues - this guitar's brand is one of those. You got a good-un, I got a dud. Caveat emptor, as they say. Keep up the good work!
Hi Dave. I think your greeting needs a teeny wee bit more sincerity - I'm just sayin' ;-)