Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i Total Guitar

The idea that Clapton, Van Halen, Satch or Angus Young could plug into any rig and still sound recognisable is certainly believable. A huge part of what we know as tone is in the mysterious relationship between the mind and hands. That’s unique to every player, so why shouldn’t these guitarists be able to take it wherever they go and whatever they play? Well, because it’s not quite the whole story. Tone is also about the detail of sound that’s beyond the physical act of playing; the results of the limitless combinations of gear we can choose. Indeed, players as diverse as U2’s The Edge and My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields are immersed in the details of those possibilities – using painstakingly curated combinations of effects to create their parts.…

1 “This is my first Fylde guitar, a Falstaff. I had this built back in 2006 and I picked it up in 2007. I had played a Fylde in the old Hank’s Guitar Shop on Denmark Street. I’d seen it on the wall and it had completely blown my mind. But there was no way I could afford one. I was playing a factory-built acoustic guitar at the time but this guitar was way, way better than anything I’d ever played.” 2 “I was on tour with John Martyn and driving past the Fylde workshop on the way to Glasgow, because they’re based in Penrith in the Lake District. So I just stopped in and pretty much cold-called them. I knocked on the door and I said, ‘How are you…

1. USE THE RIGHT FINGERS The numbers tell you which fretting fingers to use. A ‘1’ refers to your index finger, ‘4’ is your little finger, and ‘2’ and ‘3’ are in between. 2. LEARN THE NOTES There are five notes: C, D, E, G and A. After the A the scale starts again on another C note. Note that we’ve coloured the C root notes black. 3. WHAT’S IN A NAME? Just as with chords, ‘major’ refers to the scale’s bright sound. Minor scales have a dark, sad feel. The word ‘pentatonic’ tells you that there are five (penta-) notes or ‘tones’ (-tonic), C, D, E, G and A.…

EHX GLOVE £64 One of the characteristic elements of the OCD’s clipping is that, when run at 9V, much of the clipping comes from the op-amp itself. The EHX glove resolves this with an internal charge pump, which bumps the circuit internally from 9V to 18V, from the ‘Super OCD’ modded OCD designed by Fred Briggs. Sadly, it doesn’t include Fred’s additions of a dedicated bass or higher-quality op-amp, but it’s still a great-sounding drive. MOOER HUSTLE DRIVE £43 Small but perfectly formed, this diminutive and affordable pedal is allegedly a direct clone of the OCD. However, if we were judging the Mooer Hustle Drive by the lower-gain sounds on offer, it would more accurately be described as a clone of the original version of the pedal, before the gain…

Soulfly’s riffer-in-chief Max Cavalera and lead guitarist Marc Rizzo are pragmatists. They need gain, and lots of it. Their sonic deterrent of choice is the Peavey 6505+ amplifier – a nuclear option through which they run their signature electrics. Cavalera’s ESP RPR is a BC Rich Warlock-cum-Explorer, finished in camo. Rizzo’s Washburn is a seven-string single-cut with active EMG pickups. Pedals must be easily replaceable and the DigiTech Drop allows them to change tunings onstage – no guitars in alternative tunings here! MARC’S RIG 1 WASHBURN PARALLAXE PXL-MR27B-D “I’ve always loved Washburn guitars. I was a big Nuno Bettencourt fan and he’s got those N4 signature guitars. He is a big influence on me; that’s what I go for, to try and play melodic and do some ripping leads when…

Jonny took up guitar at the age of 12, with an interest in blues as well as more contemporary pop styles. Though this can be heard in his music, it’s clear that the blues is what informs his electric lead playing most profoundly. His phrasing is sometimes quirky, often playing along a string, rather than staying within more traditional pentatonic shapes – though he does, of course, use these too. Jonny is a fine rhythm player, but as a singer, he often uses his guitar skills to play ‘answering’ phrases to vocal lines and, of course, the occasional solo. He employs a variety of Gibson and Fender guitars – with a particular fondness for the Telecaster, but any type of electric will work for our lesson. These examples highlight Jonny’s…

It is no surprise that the music of Colorado singer-songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov has always occupied its own space. His heavy-hearted indie-folk seems both cavernous and intimate all at once, like diary entries scrawled across landscape paintings. He sees the world through the eyes of a traveller and that sense of open space seems to define his life and his approach to musicianship. Isakov spent the first six years of his life in South Africa before his family upped sticks for Philadelphia, PA. “My parents moved to the States in 1986,” he tells TG. “It was during the peak of apartheid and it was an intense change. You know, that’s a really different vibe growing up with mango trees, and then moving to Philadelphia. It’s grey. I was scared of…

In terms of off-the-shelf electrics, Ernie Ball Music Man is best known for its formidable artist roster, which counts some of the instrument’s most outstanding proponents among its signature endorsees – John Petrucci, Steve Lukather and Steve Morse to name but three – but one name that may have flown under your radar is James Valentine, lead guitarist for pop heavyweights Maroon 5. The band’s material may not be your cup of tea, but make no mistake, Valentine knows his guitars, and this affordable version of his signature model makes a compelling prospect indeed. “ITS BODY LOOKS AND FEELS INSTANTLY CLASSIC” Loosely designed to marry Valentine’s favourite attributes of a Telecaster and an ES-335 (see Be My Valentine), the resultant shape is a curious hybrid that feels familiar and contemporary…

There can be an odd paradox with electric guitar players – some bemoan a lack of innovation and fresh approaches to guitar design, but when they come they’re passed over by the majority in favour of the tried and true. Nevertheless, there are always people looking for something different and Guild might have just what they want. “IT BALANCES QUIRKY RETRO WITH EVERGREEN ROCK” The US company has previous form recently reviving its 60s oddity the Thunderbird as the T-Bird, and now resurrecting another 1963-born model, the single-pickup S-50 Jetstar with changes for the modern era here. Guild has never been a go-to for electrics in the way it has with acoustic but the new T-Bird made a strong case for that to change. Can this Jet fly as high?…

The first song I remember hearing… Helter Skelter– The Beatles “My dad was always playing The Beatles when I was a kid. I remember him putting on the White Album for the first time at full volume and telling me to duck as a plane was about to crash into the room just before Back In The USSR came on. Once I’d remerged from under the sofa I was hooked and I have been a massive Beatles fan ever since. But it was Helter Skelter that really struck a chord with me. It’s such a great song and just so heavy for its time!” The tune that made me want to write… Bring It On Home– Led Zeppelin “The first time I heard Led Zeppelin II through headphones I remember…

CHRIS BIRD While attempting to recreate Eric Clapton’s legendary woman tone, TG’s tuition editor was pleasantly surprised to discover that neighbour-bothering amp levels aren’t always required. “Roll off your guitar tone, max out your amp tone, adjust gain and volume to taste and you’ll get surprisingly close,” says Mr B. Turn to our huge feature on p46 for more. MICHAEL ASTLEY-BROWN In between chatting to Black Peaks’ Joe Gosney and reviewing Sterling’s Valentine model, our gear guru has been pondering his favourite guitar tones – Billy Corgan, Tom Morello and Jeff Buckley all rank highly, but he’s an absolute sucker for Alain Johannes’s shimmering cleans and searing octave fuzz on Chris Cornell’s Euphoria Morning. DALLAS GREEN While the City And Colour man told us about his new live album (p82)…

For whom the bells toll “I first started playing because I was obsessed with the Tubular Bells Live DVD. I remember the guy introducing it was like, ‘Two highly-compressed electric guitars!’ and then Mike Oldfield played this amazing guitar solo. Then it was Springsteen. He always played a Telecaster, so then I wanted a Tele and that solidified which guitar I was going to play.” “IF WE DIDN’T HAVE THAT MOMENT OF, ‘SHIT, I’VE GOT A PROBLEM’ THEN I THINK WE’D BE OVER, OR DEAD” Finger tips “I ended up buying guitars and buying guitars. I had a Custom Shop Nocaster, a Tele like Springsteen’s, another Tele that I set on fire myself. Then about five years ago, I sold everything and got three Teles that sound insane. And I’ve…

1 DRIVE  The clipping waveform distortion on the OCD is delivered by two 2N7000 transistors after the first stage, with the Drive control determining how much the signal is amplified before it hits this point. After the first version, the drive pot had its value bumped for more dramatic distortion, and on later iterations of the pedal an asymmetric 1N34 germanium diode was controversially added to more dramatically shift the character of the clipping. In the DIY community, the pre-germanium version remains more popular to build. 2 TONE  The tone control is essentially a treble roll-off. Although a fair bit of treble is filtered at the main amplification stage, the tone control is used to remove treble above a fixed frequency right before the output of the pedal. 3 HP/LP…

GET THE TONE #1 CLASSIC ROCK LES PAUL RHYTHM GUITAR Into a clean Marshall-style amp you can get some dark rhythm sounds with a neck pickup and this setting. Increase the tone at the pedal, and roll off at the guitar and you get some Billy Howerdel-style mid-2000s rhythm tones too. GET THE TONE Volume: 10 o’clock Drive: 2 o’clock Tone: 2 o’clock Toggle: to LP GET THE TONE #2 LES PAUL LEAD With a humbucking guitar in the bridge position, start with this setting for some classic, powerful leads. With a hotter amp, pull back the volume as required. Try running the pedal at 9V in order to get some pre-amp compression, then adjust tone and drive to tame the highs as required. GET THE TONE Volume: 11 o’clock…

1 FENDER TELECASTER DELUXE SILVERBURST & ELITE TELECASTER “First of all, I got the black Elite Tele with the single-coil pickups (next page), which I love and it cuts through really well on certain songs, but I really wanted a Tele with humbuckers in that I could use for the majority of our set. “It turned up in the post, and it was the most beautiful guitar I’ve ever seen. And not only that, but it’s the best guitar I’ve ever played. It holds a tune really well, and it’s just got a vibe to it. Acoustically, it’s really loud, so I’ll just sit there at home on the couch playing it acoustically and love it, and then switch it to an amp and it just roars.” 2 FENDER PLAYER…

1. REVOLUTION – THE BEATLES (1968) Lennon’sB-sideto Hey Judesaw him up the ante on dirty by adopting the somewhat reckless tact of plugging his Epiphone Casino straight into the ’board with Paul and George to overload the preamps. It’s probably not a sound most fans seek to emulate but, hey, we’ll cut them some slack as they earned plenty of musical credit in their decade together. 2. REELIN’ IN THE YEARS – STEELY DAN (1972) The Dan were known for recruiting the creme de la creme of musicians for session work, and Elliott Randall’s playing with his ’63 Strat isn’t the bone of contention here. More that this kind of distortion with a PAF neck humbucker through a cranked 400-watt, eight speaker AMPEG SVT bass amp sounds jarring in the…

CROSSROADS Copyright © (1978), 1990, 1991 Standing Ovation and Encore Music (SESAC) Under license from The Bicycle Music Company All Rights Reserved. International Copyright CREAM CROSSROADS Intro / main riff The main riff has pull-offs and hammer-ons right from bar 1. For a pull-off you pick the string, then, when you want the next note to sound, pluck the string by pulling your fretting finger downwards to re-pick the string. With hammer-ons, bring your finger firmly down onto the string to make contact without picking the string. CREAM CROSSROADS Verse The verse builds on the intro riff as Eric adds in some chunky palm-muted powerchords. These are quite easy; the challenge lies in switching between powerchords and the more intricate riff. We recommend practising both sections slowly and swapping between…

The 1980s was a time of big hair and tight trousers for rock bands, and acts like Van Halen, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi and Aerosmith ruled the roost. Our 80s rock style track is played at a sedate 70bpm so it’s the perfect canvas for heartfelt, extended solos. The chords in the verse use the trick of keeping the top notes the same whilst the bass notes change – you’ll be holding down the D note on the 3rd fret of the second string here. The chorus is much simpler, featuring standard rock powerchords in the main. We’ve written out chord shapes that you can use to play along with the jam track. For solos, take inspiration from iconic guitarists like Steve Vai or Def Leppard’s Phil Collen. Pentatonic scales sound…

Welcome to the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome*) Station! Every issue, TG scours the market for the hottest new gear and brings you transparent reviews that you can trust. From the smallest of accessories that make your life easier, to big investments such as brand new guitars, amps and effects pedals – if it’s worth your attention, you’ll find it here! HOW WE TEST CURATION Our product selection is driven by our love of gear. We select the most exciting products on the market every month to bring you opinions you can trust. FACE-VALUE REVIEWS We’re not gear snobs here at Total Guitar. We judge it on whether it looks good, sounds good and plays well – not by the name on the headstock. NO SNAKE OIL You won’t find us…

“I wanted something that looked classic, but hadn’t been done before. I didn’t want to just do another Telecaster or Stratocastershaped thing. I was talking about my favourite guitars, and Sterling [Ball, Ernie Ball CEO] brought out two different CAD layouts of a Tele and a 335. We put them on top of each other, starting pulling on the edges, and came up with that shape. While the guitar was still a prototype, I snuck it into Maroon 5 rehearsals, without any explanation. I wanted to gauge a true reaction. I got great feedback from my bandmates, but also from our front-of-house sound guy, who came up to me right after our soundcheck and was like, ‘What is that? It sounds fantastic!’”…

It’s a sign of the times that these extended-range guitars are affordable enough for beginners. If they struggled with the sort of über-gain metal tones that inspired the eight-string’s popularity in the first place, certainly while playing chords (a 12" speaker in your practice amp is a must), we were encouraged by the sonic potential. Playing single-note rhythms, trying new techniques and slapping the eighth string a la Les Claypool all sounded cool. There’s not a lot of difference between them. If the SubZero and Jackson sounded a little more solid in the low-end, the Schecter and LTD were still resonant, playable and fun. If you intended on gigging these, then perhaps you’d still be looking to spend around £700 or thereabouts on a Jackson Pro Series or an Ibanez…

When Mike Fuller of Fulltone originally devised the OCD, he wanted an open-sounding distortion pedal with decent headroom to more faithfully emulate a driven tube amp. This desire for extra headroom is why the OCD can be run from anything from 9-18V, with the pedal delivering a noticeably different, less compressed sound when run at the higher voltage. MIKE FULLER ORIGINALLY WANTED AN OPEN-SOUNDING DISTORTION PEDAL Although this has never been confirmed by Mike Fuller himself, the OCD takes its driving inspiration from a now little-known pedal partly descended from the Ibanez Tube Screamer. As can be discerned from looking at the schematics side-by-side, the original OCD is essentially a Voodoo Labs Overdrive, itself similar to a cascaded MXR Distortion+. Although the first version of the OCD featured an expoxied…

3 /4 is a simple time signature – with three pulses in each bar, count to three along with the music to get the timing down. A kick-snare-snare drumbeat outlines the 3/4 feel in Elliott Smith’s Waltz #2, with chord changes on beat 1 of each bar underpinning the groove. The verse in Free Me by Foo Fighters has a similar feel but with an emphasis on beat 3 from a ringing guitar chord. The Beatles’ Norwegian Wood achieves its 3/4 feel with McCartney and Harrison’s guitars accenting bass notes on beat 1 and striking other notes on beats 2 and 3. 1 4/4 TIME TRACKS 14-15 4/4 is the most common time signature in music. The first ‘4’ tells you there are four beats in every bar of music;…

We’ve all been inspired by the sounds of classic songs at some point, propelled to chase down or even buy our way to get that sound. Online debate constantly rages between players over who used what, how and when on record, but there cannot be a ‘definitive’ list of the 25 greatest tones ever in order; that’s an impossible task. Instead, we’ve unleashed the tonehounds and hunted down the very best classic sounds you can achieve with accessible gear. And we’re covering a world of possibilities in the process with valuable tips these tones can teach us that all players can benefit from. From Hendrix to Homme, and Marr to Marvin, we’re breaking down their sounds and building your signal chain. It’s time to dust down the pedalboard and fire…

Appearing on Cream’s third album Wheels Of Fire, Crossroads was recorded at a live show in 1968 with guitarist Eric Clapton playing his famed cherry red Gibson ES-335. The techniques employed in the solos (two in total, which we’ve split into 12-bar sections, 1a, 1b etc,) were fresh and innovative, and included pre-bends, huge bends, palm muting, aggressive vibrato and an unconventional double-bend moment. The main riff, with its staccato phrasing – and jazz-influenced drummer Ginger Baker steadfastly refusing to play the down-beats is pretty funky. Through the opening solo, note the use of both minor and major pentatonic scales and the neat way that Clapton throws in the open first string during bar 6. These are core scales in rock and blues lead, so even if scales aren’t really…

CALIFORNICATION John Frusciante & Chad Smith © Copyright 1999 Moebetoblame Music All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured Transcriptions from Rockschool’s Classics series can be used as Free Choice Pieces in Guitar Grade exams and in public exams such as GCSEs. For more info, visit: www.rslawards.com One of RHCP’s most popular tracks, Californication begins with an interplay between Flea’s bassline and guitarist John Frusciante’s arpeggios. Note the use of 9th intervals on these chords reflecting the influence of Jimi Hendrix’ soul rhythm style. The 9th intervals are a B note in the A minor chord and a G in the F chord: identifiable thanks to being open strings. The strumming starting in bar 7 needs to be rock solid, so practise slowly and try to feel the pulse. Many…

This track from Ryan Adam’s 2000 debut solo album Heartbreaker has a lazy feel, best achieved with a relaxed strumming motion. Copy the song’s shuffle groove simply by making your downward strums last twice as long as the upstrokes. If your hand isn’t quite strong enough to play barre chords for the entire song then a capo can be a real lifesaver. This essential tool allows you to use familiar open chords transposed and given a new lease of life higher up the fretboard. For CPMU clamp your capo across the 3rd fret and kick things off with an open G shape. Thanks to the capo the chord looks and feels just like a regular G but now sounds a B b pitch. It’s fine to think of it as…

1 SEYMOUR DUNCAN BILLY GIBBONS ‘RED DEVIL FOR STRAT’ PICKUPS Designed to recreate Billy’s trademark PAF humbucker tone in a pickup that will fit any Strat-sized single-coil rout. Promising an “extra-spicy PAF” response from the bridge, while the neck and middle are a little less hot. The set features three unique pickup winds, with specially calibrated Alnico V magnets, four-conductor lead wire and vacuum wax potting. Get ’em as a single neck, middle or bridge, or as a set. (£132.95 per pickup, seymourduncan.net) 2 KORG RIMPITCH 2 Besides boasting one of our favourite product names in recent memory, the original Rimpitch was a nifty little tuner that slotted into an acoustic’s soundhole. Its successor is fully chromatic, so supports alternate tunings, as well as reference pitches from 438 to 445Hz.…

After being, ahem, a little bit overused in the 1980s, chorus fell out of fashion. Outside of a few prolific users like Kurt Cobain, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Billy Howerdel, it was relegated to the status of niche effect. Now, however, it’s very much back. Created by a delay line that pulls part of the signal out of tune, chorus can go from subtle thickening of a tone to a glassy, sharp roar - think the solo in Smells Like Teen Spirit. By increasing the mix of the effect toward fully wet, a chorus typically crosses the line into vibrato, with an even more pronounced detuned pitch effect. We’ve collected together a few of the best boutique boxes, so let’s get stuck in... Way Huge Smalls Blue Hippo £152 HIP AS…