Innehållsförteckning för September 2019 från Guitar Player

IN THE SE DAYS OF COUNTLESS instructional YouTube videos, the idea of having to buy or borrow a cassette or videotape to learn a particular guitar style might seem quaint. But back in the day, for a young player like Johnny Hiland, who lived in the remote reaches of Maine with limited access to music teachers or schools, those resources were a godsend. Arlen Roth produced some of the earliest examples of those instructional cassettes and videotapes for his company, Hot Licks, with Hiland being among the many current guitar heroes to reap the benefits. Not just an educator, Roth has made his bones as a sideman to the likes of Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Janis Ian and enough others to assure him a place of high…

IN 1979, NIL S LOFGREN united with Lou Reed to write songs destined for what would be Lofgren’s next album, Nils. Of the 13 they created without ever actually bouncing ideas off one another, five would remain unheard until the release of Lofgren’s inspiring new release, Blue With Lou (Cattle Track Records). Along with the picturesque “City Lights,” which Reed presented on his 1979 album, The Bells, Lofgren finally shares the rest of the long-lost gems — “Attitude City,” “Cut Him Up,” “Don’t Let Your Guard Down,” “Give” and “Talk Through the Tears — all of which blend Reed’s insightful prose with the uniquely soulful vibe that Lofgren injects in his music. All the songs, including six new creations from Lofgren, were cut live in his home studio with bassist…

IT’S OFTEN SAID Marshall stacks were born to fill bigger and bigger venues with enough volume to satisfy thousands of screaming rock and roll fans. But a couple of years before Jim Marshall lifted Fender’s tweed Bassman schematic to build the JTM45 — and several years before the British amp maker dreamed of doubling it to create a 100-watt amp — Leo Fender and his team in Fullerton, California, were chasing that goal with assistance from one of the most bombastic guitarists of the era: Dick Dale. In 1959, Dick Dale and his band, the Del-Tones, began cramming some 3,000 stomping teenagers into the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California, where they moshed to something that would soon be known nationwide as surf music. In that era of woefully underpowered P.A.…

THERE ARE A few records I’ve avoided in Vinyl Treasures because they might be too obvious. Is anyone who reads Guitar Player unaware of Jimi Hendrix? That said, Electric Ladyland cannot be overlooked. Hendrix’s third album, it was released in 1968, a year in which Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to reach the Moon, and American opinion began to turn firmly against the Vietnam War. On the music front, 1968 saw the release of Jeff Beck’s Truth, the Mothers of Invention’s We’re Only in It for the Money and Cream’s Wheels of Fire. Meanwhile, the Beatles studied Transcendental Meditation in India, where they wrote much of the music that appeared on the White Album. The historical context gives weight…

Mark Knopfler has this deceptively powerful advice about how gear can influence music. “If you take your song and change the key or the instrument that you play it on, or you pick up something else and do it a different way, very often the instrument will dictate something new to you. It’s the difference between sitting down with a piano and sitting down with a guitar, or sitting down with a Spanish guitar as opposed to an electric. I often find that what I’ve written can yield something else. Even a different string gauge can create something completely different. Very often I’ve found that if I’m playing something with very heavy strings, I’m not bending them, and it leaves room for something else to happen.”…

CLOSE TO A QUARTER century ago, Buddy Miller developed a singular guitar style that would make him an icon in the music genre known as Americana. With a rootsy resonance grounded in country, blues and rock, and a healthy dose of Daniel Lanois–influenced ambience, Miller’s approach is one where prodigious technique is always subservient to soul. Through seven solo records, as well as albums with Jim Lauderdale, Bill Frisell and others, Miller has honed a unique approach to twang, while his textural side was brought to bear in his work with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy. All of the above is applied to Breakdown on 20th Avenue South (New West), his third collaboration with his wife, Julie. On some of the electric numbers, the tone of his trademark Italian Wandrè…

THE TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND features a dozen performers. That’s a lot of music onstage. Derek Trucks’ tone has got to complement not only his wife Susan Tedeschi’s guitar and vocals but also keyboards, flute, trombone, trumpet, saxophone, bass, two drummers and three harmony vocalists. His playing and gear choices are truly judicious though. Trucks has a signature Gibson SG, but live he typically prefers his Gibson Custom Dickey Betts SG, aged by Tom Murphy. That it was a gift from Duane Allman’s daughter lends it a sentimental value and a sense of familial connection. With his SG and a glass Dunlop slide, he goes straight into his Alessandro custom head and cabs and a Fender Super Reverb. Trucks’ fingerpicking slide style naturally attenuates some of his amp’s gnarly treble, but…

AN UPTEMPO HYBRID of blues and bebop jazz, jump blues directly preceded the rock and roll explosion of the 1950s. Rhythmically, the style is closer to rock and roll than either of these foundational genres, with a strong backbeat groove, but there’s more to playing jump blues than minor pentatonic riffing. Above and beyond note and chord choices, which can range from simple “box”-pattern licks and stock dominant-seventh and -ninth chord “grips” to sophisticated melodic lines and jazzy voicings, the key to sounding authentic in the jump-blues style lies in controlling your swing and even, or “straight,” eighth-note phrasing at swift tempos. In this first installment of our two-part lesson on this exciting style, we present a trio of extended musical examples inspired by the playing of three of its…

IF YOU’VE DONE any recording in the past few decades, whether at home or in a big-time pro studio, you’ve probably had your signal processed and sweetened by Focusrite gear. The company’s interfaces and mic pres are legendary, from the early consoles that the great Rupert Neve designed for producer George Martin to the mass-marketed units attainable by the rest of us. And oh, how attainable they have become. Behold the Scarlett Solo 3rd Gen, the latest incarnation of this well-loved USB audio interface range. This new unit features years of recording knowledge and tone in a package barely bigger or more expensive than an effect pedal. The diminutive Scarlett Solo looks cute but totally professional. Focusrite pretty much owns the device’s red anodized look, and it simply reeks of…

A PERENNIAL F AVORITE among the high-gain crowd, Bogner Amplification further broadened its appeal seven years ago with the original Goldfinger 45. The amp offered succulent vintage-voiced high-gain tones, along with expletive-inspiring cleans and an off-the-charts versatility that fully warranted Reinhold Bogner’s declaration that this was “not just an amplifier but a vintage valve guitar system.” As popular as that GP Editors’ Pick Award winner quickly became, it wasn’t long before Bogner and colleague Jorg Dorschner saw ways to improve the GF45’s lead channel — labeled Ω (Omega) — and the Goldfinger Super Lead is the result. Although a few control and switch functions have changed, the Goldfinger SL’s plethora of routing, switching and power-output options fully enable the retention of that “valve guitar system” tag, although to call it…

IF YOU’RE LIKE many guitarists today, you’ve put together a pedalboard comprising a range of effects, possibly including multiple instances of some. In doing so, you’ve certainly dealt with your share of issues, such as the need to turn multiple effects on and off quickly or at once, which can require some fancy and even treacherous footwork. For that matter, using a plethora of stompboxes and cables can suck the tone out of your beloved guitar/amp combination, whether the pedals are true bypass or not. Recognizing these issues, among others, the folks at EarthQuaker Devices have come up with Swiss Things pedalboard reconciler, a pedal that, like the Swiss Army knife that inspired its name, contains an aggregation of tools designed to make life easier for pedal-loving guitarists. Swiss Things…

> B. B. King called her the “best damn slide player working today.” Indeed, with a glass slide on the second finger of her left hand, Bonnie Raitt coaxes a voice from her Fender Stratocaster as tough, sensuous and expressive as her own. Her nearly 50-year career almost didn’t happen. Born in Burbank, California, in 1949, to the Broadway musical star John Raitt and pianist Marjorie Haydock, Raitt began playing guitar at a young age before attending Radcliffe College and majoring in Social Relations and African studies. While there, she got friendly with blues promoter Dick Waterman and moved with him and other musicians to Philadelphia. “It was an opportunity that young white girls just don’t get,” she said, “and as it turns out, an opportunity that changed everything.” >…

Raid Dana’s Gear Stash! Thanks to Pigtronix for giving one lucky Guitar Player reader a chance to win an Octava Micro octave-up distortion pedal. Expanding on the octave-up feature found in the original Pigtronix Disnortion pedal, the Octava has an onboard low-pass filter control that lets you create singing octave-up tones anywhere on the neck to produce everything from soaring violin-like tones to grinding fuzz. For a chance to get this pedal on your ’board, simply send me an email with “Octava” in the subject line. One lucky winner will be chosen at random. Keep in mind that the pedal is “as is.” This is just a fun way for us to spoil our loyal readers with gear that our own editors have reviewed. Deadline for entries is September 20.…

GROWING UP IN South Carolina, Marcus King found the guitar early in childhood and dug in deep. Sitting in at gigs with his father, blues guitarist Marvin King, taking jazz lessons from session player Steve Watson and absorbing music from hometown heroes the Marshall Tucker Band prepared him to release his debut album while still a teenager, thanks to another mentor, namely Warren Haynes. King’s top five riffs reflect his blend of southern soul, blues, rock and jazz. The Allman Brothers Band, “Don’t Want You No More” “This record was in my dad’s collection, and I would listen to it constantly. I would slow it down and try to get all the parts and subtleties that Dickey Betts and Duane Allman were doing. That was the first time I was…

IT’S BEEN 40 years since Japanese engineer Susumu Tamura created the game-changing Maxon OD808. Subsequently rebranded for Ibanez as the TS808 Tube Screamer, this tube-sounding distortion/boost pedal with midrange-enhanced sound quickly became a must-have for legions of guitarists following its use by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson. It’s gone on to inspire countless imitations by scores of pedal makers ever since. In celebration of this landmark achievement in guitar tone, Maxon has released the Limited Edition 40th Anniversary OD808 Overdrive, touted to be the closest in sound to the 1979 version (see sidebar, p. 28). We spoke with Tamura, who resides in Matsumoto, Japan, about designing the pedal back in 1979, and about revisiting the analog circuit four decades later to make it sound as close as possible to…

FRENCH CLASSICAL GUITARIST Ida Presti was a phenomenal player, and she has a fascinating story. Born in 1924, she began as a child prodigy and quickly rose to fame in the classical world in France. In 1952, she joined forces with her husband, Alexandre Legoya, and the two worked together until her untimely death in 1967, when she was just 43. Classical guitarist Alice Artzt was one of Presti’s best-known students and spoke with me at length about Presti’s transforming influence on her life and music. Here is a small excerpt from our interview. Ida Presti was such a remarkable player that it’s unbelievable she’s not a household name. Absolutely. She was astounding as a musician and performer. She could do anything at any speed, with a sound that was…

AS A COLLECTOR of unusual guitars, I’m drawn to those that look weird, have unusual features or boast both of these qualities. What’s odd about this 1966 EKO Florentine 2 is not simply how it looks but also that it has remained relatively unknown for 53 years. Located in Recanti, Italy, and still operating today, the EKO Company was the largest exporter of electric guitars in all of Europe, from its inception in the late ’50s right through the ’60s. EKO was also known for making the highly sought-after Vox guitars of the ’60s, as well as other, lesser-known brands. While many of its models were adorned with outlandish plastic wraps and multi-button matrixes, the Florentine 2 is rather understated and appears to have been designed for guitarists with refined…

THE NEIGHBORHOOD surrounding SIR Hollywood can be seedy. One tragic afternoon, I saw EMTs carting a corpse away from the bus stop just outside the musical equipment rental company’s front doors. Once you step into the lobby, however, the vibe changes. Your eyes adjust to the dim light, and you become energized by the palpable sense of possibility that fills the place. With its soundstages, green rooms, dance studio and massive arsenals of guitars, basses, amplifiers and other rentable gear, this complex is where high-stakes auditions are nailed or failed, where bands emerge from industry showcases triumphant or heartbroken, and where dreams take flight or crash and burn on the runway. Mostly, though, this is an oasis where an established band (and its stage crew) can run through a set…

“I’M ALWAYS LOOKING for an element of the uncommon,” Eric McFadden says. Perhaps that’s why he’s still something of a mystery to the mainstream after a quarter century of virtuosic playing with George Clinton, Eric Burdon, Stockholm Syndrome, Anders Osborne and countless others. McFadden’s fantastically broad range makes him difficult to pigeonhole, and he’s equally interesting on either side of the acoustic/electric guitar equation. It takes a truly unique cat to blaze a career path from playing gypsy mandolin with P-Funk to strumming flamenco-inspired nylon-string with the Animals, right up to his largely electric blues affair Pain by Numbers, released last summer on Tab Benoit’s Whiskey Bayou Records. Last fall, McFadden released an acoustic duo album with Omar Torrez (check out the video for the furious “Mosquito Song”), and at…

IF YOU’REAN acoustic cat who uses multiple tunings for a solo or singer-songwriter set, it’s essential that you maneuver from one to the next efficiently to keep momentum. Even if you have great ears, it’s smart to have a digital tuner (and a backup battery) handy at all times. A surefire way to lose an audience’s attention is by making copious fine-tuning adjustments by ear and accounting for your instrument’s every little idiosyncrasy. If your guitar has cheap tuners, consider upgrading them. It’s relatively easy and affordable. For that matter, if you have multiple acoustics, designate one for each of your main tunings, and use the following logic to flow from there. GROUP TUNES BY TUNINGS If you have a significant collection of songs in different tunings, consider creating a…

TWO NOTES HAS made a name for itself with the Torpedo Studio and Torpedo Live units, which have helped countless touring and recording pros eliminate bulky speaker cabs and best-guess miking techniques from their signal chains. Now this creative French company delivers the Torpedo C.A.B. M IR Loader and Virtual Speaker Cabinet, its most compact cab-sim solution yet. While attenuators and re-ampers have become a favorite way to bring volume levels down in venues and studios, the virtual speaker cabinet, or cab simulator, has also gained popularity in recent years. Put simply, these rack-sized processors help you sound like you’re raging through a hefty 4x12 in the front-of-house mix or on a recording, all while reining in your decibels. The Torpedo C.A.B. M takes this tech out of the cumbersome…

BASED IN HOLLYWOOD, BAE is perhaps best known for its vintage-style mic preamps and equalizers. However, the company has entered the stompbox arena with the Hot Fuzz and now the British-inspired Royaltone fuzz on deck here. This pedal features a steel enclosure with chassis-mounted jacks, pots and switches, along with a PC board that grips the four low-noise transistors and selected mix of ceramic, electrolytic, film and mica caps. There’s also a built-in holder for a nine-volt battery (included) in case you don’t want to power it with an external supply. What makes the Royaltone a little different is its footswitchable three-band EQ. This adds a lot of variety to the sounds, although the attack and level controls by themselves allowed for a good range of fuzz textures when I…

BACK IN F OLK music’s heyday, one of the most popular ways to plug in an acoustic guitar was with a magnetic soundhole pickup that used a mounting system designed to hold the pickup securely under the strings without damaging the instrument. Acoustic-electronic technology has grown exponentially since then, and onboard systems with undersaddle piezo pickups have become prevalent. Even so, many instruments don’t come stock with piezos. For that matter, there are many reasons why a soundhole pickup remains something every acoustic player should own. While the market for soundhole pickups has traditionally been dominated by passive designs that offer little or no tone adjustment capability, venerable pickup manufacturer Seymour Duncan has a powerful new option available in the form of the Active Mag, an active pickup that includes…

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ALONG WITH GUITARIST Waddy Wachtel, bassist Leland Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel, Danny Kortchmar helped create a sound that permeated radio in the early 1970s. His work with artists like Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, David Crosby, Carole King, Graham Nash and Neil Young certified him as one of the next generation of session legends following on the heels of the Wrecking Crew. Now Kortchmar has reunited Wachtel, Sklar and Kunkel to record a rollicking set of tunes, including some he wrote with and for superstars like Taylor, Jackson Browne and Don Henley. Listening to Honey Don’t Leave L.A. (Vivid Records) by Danny Kortchmar and the Immediate Family, Kortchmar’s and Wachtel’s guitar styles distinctly define themselves. The latter’s crunchy rhythm and gritty slide stand in contrast to the former’s cleaner-toned, funky…

THE LATEST IN the long production history of the OD808, Maxon’s new OD808 ($199) celebrates the 40th anniversary of this iconic distortion pedal in a limited run of 400 units, with the first 40 being hand-signed by the original Maxon designer, Susumu Tamura. Using the current production OD808 as a template, Tamura recently made some modifications aimed at giving the pedal a “more open, articulate sound with improved dynamic response.” I tried out the new pedal with a ’63 Les Paul Junior, a reissue Gretsch White Falcon with TV Jones pickups, and a Reverend Gristlemaster T-style guitar, running them through a Fender Deluxe Reverb and a Vox Superbeetle head and 1x10 cabinet. The OD808 is probably the best-sounding modern Maxon rendition I’ve heard. At all settings it sounded sweet and…

THE HEADRUSH IS a multi-effects processor that can work with traditional guitar amps, but it also includes amp and cab modeling for direct recording in the studio or for performing live with flat-response/full-range amp systems. One of its main features is a large touchscreen, which invites doing your own tweaks and programming. This issue’s column will take advantage of that capability. About Bi-Amping If you have studio monitors, they’re probably bi-amped, with a crossover that separates the audio into low and high frequencies. These feed low- and high-frequency speakers respectively. Bi-amping optimizes each speaker for its intended frequency range, and it reduces distortion because the low- and high-frequency audio don’t interfere with each other. We can create bi-amping within the Headrush thanks to the Split option, which sends the signal…

“I LOVE THE WHOLE PROCESS OF WRITING SONGS ALONE AND RECORDING THEM WITH THE BAND. BUT THE BEST PART IS PLAYING THEM LIVE” THE LANDSCAPE OF guitar playing covers a massive geography for me,” Mark Knopfler says. “It goes all the way from Scotland into England and through the Delta, with important stops in a bunch of other places along the way. I like to think I’m bringing all those influences to bear every time I play. But when it comes to guitar — and, really, music in general — you truly only get to be a tiny part of it. It’s something that’s much, much bigger than you are.” So says Mark Knopfler. Humble words from a guy who has done it all: recorded massive hit records, written critically…

IF YOU’RE LIKE me, you may have thought about your melodic leads and improvisations at one time or another and said, “I’m sick of playing what everyone expects to hear in my solos. Always the same scales, the same arpeggios… I need to take some chances!” It’s easier said than done, however. So how does one take real melodic chances without sounding like your guitar is falling down a flight of stairs? The key to achieving this seemingly elusive objective is to use harmonic-melodic substitutions, or superimpositions. This means either performing a line based on an arpeggio that differs from the chord over which you’re playing, or employing a scale that operates outside of a given key. Back in the May 2019 issue, I touched upon this concept in my…

THE FOLSOM IS the latest solidbody model from Petaluma, California–based Grez Guitars, and it features the seldom-seen combination of a single-cutaway basswood body and a glued-in mahogany neck with a 25-inch-scale ebony fretboard. The three versions being offered all pair a Lollar Firebird humbucking pickup in the neck position with a Fralin Tele single-coil in the rear, and the textured black pickguard surrounding them is reminiscent of something Paul Bigsby might have designed in the 1950s. There are a trio of hardware options: a Mastery bridge and Bigsby B5 vibrato ($2,780), a Mastery bridge and Grez tailpiece ($2,680), and the setup that our review model came with, a Wilkinson Tele bridge with three adjustable saddles and through-body stringing. The three glossy nitro finishes Grez offers are Natural, Light Cream and…

I REMEMBER HEARING about amp sims from Craig Anderton back in the 20th century. I felt threatened by them. I used real amps with real mics on them, and I rocked. Or so I thought. When I finally tried some of these software amps, I wasn’t crazy about them. They were clunky, my computers were slow and lame, and they just didn’t feel or sound right. Said the old man who was 20 years behind the times shaking his fist at the kids on his lawn. Fast forward to today, and this old dog has learned a few new tricks. I’ve experienced great-sounding digital amps, I have a fire-breathing computer that can handle whatever digital demands I throw at it, and I know a little bit more about getting a…

THIS BUILD-IT-YOURSELF kit comes with easy-to-follow instructions and uses point-to-point wiring on a turret board and chassis-mounted pots for a neat, old-school-style circuit layout. The kit comes with a pre-drilled metal enclosure and all the necessary parts, including a footswitch with an LED ring around it that illuminates green when the pedal is on. All you need to provide are hand tools, a soldering setup and a battery or nine-volt adapter. The Tone Attack is basically a preamp with active bass and treble controls that allow for boosting and attenuating at their corresponding frequencies. With all the controls at noon, the pedal is approximately unity gain. I used the Tone Attack by itself with a Fender Deluxe Reverb, and it worked well as booster with the master turned up, easily…