Innehållsförteckning för November 2019 från Guitar Player

GUITARIST SAMANTHA FISH, has been a roadhouse blues-rock virtuoso, a hill country Americana chanteuse and a Detroit-soul torch singer, all in the span of a mere eight years. On Kill or Be Kind (Rounder), her new album and sixth overall, Fish masterfully streamlines everything that has made her a compelling artist to date. Her gift for melody and phrasing take center stage on a strong collection of 11 original songs adorned with subtle horns and keys and full of her impassioned guitar playing. Rumbling slide riffs à la Mississippi Fred McDowell and R.L. Burnside undergird “Bulletproof” and “Watch It Die,” while the horns that gave swing to her 2017 release, Chills and Fever, raise the temperature of “Trying Not to Fall in Love With You” and show up throughout the…

“PEOPLE USED TO come up to me and say, ‘Oh, you’re really good for your age,’” Tyler Bryant recalls of his days as a teenage blues guitar prodigy. “And I would almost get offended by it. What I wanted them to say was just, ‘You’re really good.’” Indeed, Bryant’s exceptional talent won him a spot performing at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival when he was just 16. Now that he’s reached the ripe age of 28, let it be said: Tyler Bryant, guitar slinger from the town of Honey Grove, Texas, is really good. His band, Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown, ain’t too shabby, either. Truth and Lies (Spinefarm), their new and third full-length album, is a blues-rock powerhouse, filled with explosive and thick-toned riff-rockers, southern-tinged slide-guitar jams, grungy lighter-waving…

YEARS AGO, I reached out to L.A.-based guitarist and guitar educator Nikki O’Neill for an interview. I was pleasantly surprised and honored when she included me in her 2014 book, The Women’s Road to Rock Guitar (Alfred Music), a breakthrough publication aimed at inspiring more women to play with skill and confidence. Nikki has a TrueFire lesson channel, Nikki O’Neill’s Twang, Soul & Rock’n’ Roll (truefire.com/channels), and she’s released music, available at nikkioneill.com. Her new album is out this fall. How would you describe your music? It’s soul-influenced Americana. There’s a lot of rhythm and blues in it, too. My last album, Love Will Lead You Home, was released in 2017. I also have two new singles that came out within the last year. Who are your main influences? I…

THE GUYATONE LG-40 is one of the plainest guitars I’ve ever owned. I usually write about guitars with sparkle finishes and loads of gadgets, but this one stands out for its complete lack of adornment. It doesn’t even have the manufacturer’s name on it. Other Guyatones in the LG series, such as the LG 160 and LG 350, have distinctive designs, but this plain Jane has to settle for just playing and sounding nice. Still in business today, Guyatone is one of Japan’s earliest guitar makers, having started building Hawaiian and Spanish-style guitars in the 1930s. By the late ’50s, the company had branched into the field of musical electronics and made amplifiers, mics and record player cartridges, as well as a line of electric guitars. From the late ’50’s…

“What Is and What Should Never Be” is another song Led Zeppelin initially worked on in April 1969 at Olympic Studios. Further overdubs took place in June at Mayfair Studios and Groove Studios in New York City. Page had by then switched from his Fender Telecaster to his Gibson Les Paul for recording and performances. The track is notable for the flanging effects and stereo separation on the fade-out. “I’d done a lot of that type of panning and phasing with Jimi Hendrix on Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love,” Kramer says. “‘What Is and What Should Never Be’ had all the phasing and panning, which we loved to do. It typifies the whole vibe of Led Zeppelin II.’’ A version of the song was recorded on June…

“Heartbreaker” was cut at New York City’s A&R Studios in May 1969, with additional work done at Atlantic Studios, also in New York. It’s another integral part of the recorded Led Zeppelin canon and a perfect platform for Jimmy Page to display his guitar virtuosity. “For me ‘Heartbreaker’ is a stand-out,” Kramer says. “The solo was genius Page.’’ A long-standing stage favorite, “Heartbreaker” was added to Zeppelin’s set during their European dates in autumn 1969 and made its premiere at Scheveningen, Holland, on October 3, 1969. It was performed along with “Immigrant Song” at Zeppelin’s bill-topping appearance at the Bath Festival in 1970 and throughout the rest of their dates in 1970 and ‘71. “Heartbreaker” became part of their encore for the U.S., U.K. and European and Japan tours of…

ONCE THE LUCKY accident of finding an interesting riff happens, then I’ll get down to the more deliberate work of figuring out what’s going to happen next,” Bruce Cockburn explains. The national treasure from the Great White North won the 2018 Canadian Folk Music Awards Solo Artist of the Year honor for his 33rd album, Bone on Bone, and now the outrageously prolific fingerpicker has a deep new album of acoustic instrumentals on his hands called Crowing Ignites (True North). Cockburn, who relocated to San Francisco five years ago, is a consummate singer-songwriter, as renowned for his lyrical poignancy as for his exceptional electric and acoustic guitar skills. His albums usually contain an instrumental gem or three, and his last all instrumental affair, 2005’s Speechless, was a compilation of mostly…

HOW TO AMPLIFY an acoustic guitar remains a mystifying question for many players. Despite major advances from dedicated acoustic electronics manufacturers like Fishman and L.R. Baggs, some guitarists still prefer the tried-and-true route of using stage microphones. While mics do a good job of accurately reproducing an acoustic’s sound, they can cause feedback when used in conjunction with stage monitors. Instead, consider these three alternatives. MAGNETIC SOUNDHOLE PICK UPS Placing a pickup in the soundhole is the second oldest way to amplify an acoustic guitar. In fact, a guitar in the Martin Museum reveals that Leo Fender’s earliest attempt at creating an electric guitar involved simply sticking a couple of pickups on a Martin dreadnought, together with a few control knobs wired to an output jack. Like electric guitar pickups,…

I’VE BEEN A huge Kemper fan since I first plugged into one back in 2012. Despite my immediate appreciation for the amazing technology and its realistic and musical tones, it took me a while to understand what the Profiler is capable of. Even after gigging exclusively with a Kemper PowerHead for years, I’m still discovering cool and powerful things that it can do. So no one was more excited than I was to dig into the latest, greatest Kemper product: the Profiler Stage. It’s the culmination of everything we love about Kemper, and more. If you can picture the offspring of a Kemper Profiler and the ingenious Profiler Remote foot controller, you’ll be in the ballpark of what the Stage is. It doesn’t have a power amp — you’ll need…

Raid Dana’s Gear Stash! For those of you who are new to this, we started our gear giveaway to celebrate Guitar Player’s 50th anniversary. It was such a hit that we decided to keep it going. As always, we send thanks to the generous manufacturers who have gifted their wares to the GP community, and to those of you who send in your postcards each month hoping to raid my stash. This month’s giveaway is the Coldcraft Harmonic Tremolo v2, a pedal that recalls the organic-sounding harmonic tremolo circuits found in vintage Fender brownface amps. Whether you want a rounded, polished effect or a choppy vintage tremolo, this pedal gets it done with controls for intensity, balance, volume, speed and tone cut. To get this pedal on your board, simply…

THE NORTH MISSISSIPPI Allstars have traveled far from their roots since releasing their 2000 debut, Shake Hands With Shorty. But two decades into their crusade to keep the traditions of Mississippi hill country blues alive and thriving, guitarist Luther Dickinson and his brother, multi-instrumentalist Cody, were transported back by pictures of the region discovered on a forgotten roll of film shot in 1996 by barbecue-joint photographer Wyatt McSpadden. Those reminders of their past inspired the Allstars’ new album, Up and Rolling (New West). Its music captures the spirit of the Sunday afternoon picnics and late-night jukes of northern Mississippi’s hill country, where the brothers woodshedded in the mid ’90s with blues icons Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and fife player Otha Turner. The band covers those artists on the record, along…

THE GIBSON EDS-1275 double-neck guitar holds a distinguished place in rock history, from the famous cherry-finished example wielded by Jimmy Page during Led Zeppelin’s performances of “Stairway to Heaven” to Don Felder’s striking white model that was an integral part of the onstage sound of the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” The EDS-1275 has been out of production for a number of years, available only as a Custom Shop order through Gibson’s Made to Measure program. Now, thanks to another iconic Gibson artist, Slash, it’s back, and in grand style. The new Slash 1966 EDS-1275 Doubleneck ($13,299 MAP) recreates the guitarist’s own instrument, a ’66 model refinished in ebony that he first picked up at an Indiana guitar shop in 1990. He began using the 12/6 guitar onstage with Guns N’ Roses…

HARD-DISK RECORDING makes it possible to do just about anything. Purists may object, but just as movies have embraced computer graphics (they’re not really blowing up the Death Star in Star Wars), guitarists can embrace unprecedented methods to enhance solos. Let’s look at some techniques for sculpting virtual solos. Timing. Of course, you don’t always want perfect timing. Rushing adds tension, while lagging sounds more laid-back. But some situations do benefit from perfect timing. Fig. 1 shows the start of a solo that incorporates tempo-synced delay. If the initial notes are “off” even slightly, their echoes will conflict rhythmically with subsequent notes. The blue lines in the upper track show how the notes in the green track have been aligned to 1/16th notes. The matching notes in the yellow track…

“I’VE ALWAYS ENJOYED OPENING MY SELF UP TO A LOT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF MUSIC,” WARREN HAYNES SAYS. “I DON’T THINK I COULD EVER BE HAPPY DOING JUST ONE THING.” Indeed, one look at the man’s long and remarkably varied career bears out this fact over and over. It’s evident in the path he followed, from his early days with David Allen Coe to his quarter-century with the Allman Brothers Band to his tenure with Grateful Dead offshoots like the Dead and Phil Lesh and Friends to his own solo outings. He’s worked with the Dave Matthews Band and the Dickey Betts Band and taken guest spots with everyone from Blues Traveler to Peter Frampton to Corrosion of Conformity. As a result, Haynes has remained a busy and in-demand player…

“The Lemon Song” was cut at Mystic Studios in Los Angeles in May 1969, with further overdubs applied in August at A&M Studios in Hollywood. “It was such a small studio,” recalls Chris Huston, the studio engineer at Mystic. “I was very impressed with Jimmy’s ability to double-track and create the sound he wanted first time, every time. What you hear is the product of a lot of spontaneous chemistry in their playing. We did the tracks live, with Robert Plant standing in the middle of the room with a hand-held mic. You can hear that in ‘The Lemon Song’ where Plant sings ‘floor, floor, floor.’ That echo was recorded in real time.” Though originally credited to Led Zeppelin, “The Lemon Song” borrowed heavily from Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor.” ARC…

This is another track from the Morgan Studios sessions of June 1969. Page played his Gibson Les Paul to knock out what the band always considered to be something of a production-line filler. However, this tight, hook-laden song found favor on the radio as the B-side of the single “Whole Lotta Love.” When that tune finished its chart run in the U.S., radio DJs flipped the record over and began playing “Living Loving Maid,” eventually making it an A-side, after which it climbed to number 65 on the Billboard chart. The track also became a favorite of U.S. FM radio stations, where it was frequently preceded by “Heartbreaker,” as on the album. Remarkably, some early U.K. pressings of Led Zeppelin II misprinted the title as “Livin’ Lovin’ Wreck (She’s A…

“Bring It On Home” was the product of on-the-run visits to studios during Zeppelin’s second North American tour in 1969. It included recording at Mystic in Los Angeles and a session on May 10 at R&D Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The latter studio, referred to as the Hut, played host to a vocal and a harmonica overdub. Although “Bring It On Home” was originally credited to Page and Plant, its intro is a blatant rip of Sonny Boy Williamson’s 1963 arrangement of “Bring It On Home” — another Willie Dixon composition — which was issued on the Chess album Real Folk Blues. In 1972, Dixon successfully sued Zeppelin for use of the song, and future releases listed him as the song’s sole creator. Following the intro, on which…

A NUMBER OF things come to mind when you think of Texas — rolling cattle ranches, vast oil fields and porterhouse steaks the size of a Cadillac. But for many guitarists and music fans, a mention of the Lone Star State recalls another vision that includes seminal classic rock legends ZZ Top. For over five decades, this easily recognizable trio has left its lasting mark on blues-based rock, led by a bona fide six-string legend, the exceptionally talented and stylish Billy Gibbons, a.k.a. Reverend Willy G. The bearded guitarist has quite the musical legacy. His earliest influence was watching blues icon B.B. King perform live at ACA Studios (where Billy’s father worked) when Gibbons was eight years old. From that moment on, he found himself obsessed with King’s music and…

Ciari Guitars The Ascender $2,999 The Ascender is a full-size guitar fitted with an aircraft-grade aluminum alloy neck hinge that allows it to be folded in half and become a TSA-compliant carry-on. Store the Ascender in its own travel bag or a backpack, and you’re ready to hit the road. A string-management system and captive nut prevent the strings from flopping around when the guitar is folded. When you’re ready to play, simply straighten the neck and re-tension the strings with the concealed lever-actuator. Unfolded, the Ascender is a 24.75-inch-scale guitar with a traditional single-cutaway body that comes in a range of solid colors. Electronics include a pair of Seymour Duncan ’59 pickups, each with volume and tone controls and coil tap, and a three-way toggle. The shallow C neck…

WE MET THE Powercab family when Line 6 dropped the 112. It proved to be a hip, loud, lightweight way to amplify modelers of all stripes, with what Line 6 describes as an “amp in the room” feel and response that is difficult to come by in the digital realm. The Powercab’s big sibling has arrived in the form of the 500-watt stereo Powercab 212 Plus, a full-featured, high-end solution to amplify your modeling device. I tested it with a Line 6 Helix, a Kemper Profiler Stage [see page 98] and my trusty old SansAmp Tri-OD pedal. The Powercab 212 Plus is a beautiful-looking amp, with a classy grille cloth, understated logo and sexy rounded edges. It has a comfy rubber handle as well as cutout grips on either side,…

WHEN FISHMAN RELEASED the TriplePlay Wireless MIDI Guitar Controller, it represented a giant leap forward in guitar-synth performance, tracking, ease of use and price point, with guitarists everywhere quickly adopting it and singing its praises. With the debut of the iOS-compatible and super-affordable TriplePlay Connect, it seems certain that many more players will jump on the TriplePlay bandwagon. The Connect hardware consists of the same hex pickup that the Wireless system employs, along with a small, simple control module. Installation is straightforward and requires no permanent modifications, just a little double-sided tape. It’s in your best interest to follow the installation instructions carefully for optimum performance, but here’s how forgiving this system is: To meet my looming deadline for this review, I positioned the hex pickup under the strings of…

> The co-founder of Canned Heat, Alan Wilson was a guitarist, harmonica player and occasional vocalist who fronted the pioneering blues-rock jam band on its two biggest hits, “On the Road Again” and “Going Up the Country.” Born in Arlington, Massachusetts on July 4, 1943, Wilson was a shy child who preferred records and books to playing. By his teens he’d picked up guitar and developed an interest in jazz, but his preference turned to blues after a friend spun a Muddy Waters record for him. Wilson developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre and performed as a solo artist on Boston’s coffeehouse circuit. In 1964, the 20-year-old helped bring 62-year-old blues pioneer Son House out of retirement after tracking down the forgotten bluesman at the request of producer John…

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“I’VE DEFINITELY LIVED a dangerous life,” admits 75-year-old guitar legend Dickey Betts, “but not really that much different than a lot of other rock and rollers.” Case in point: Of the six original members of the legendary Allman Brothers Band, only Betts and former drummer Jaimoe Johanson are still around to tell the tale. Guitarist Duane Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1971, at just 24 years of age. Bass player Berry Oakley suffered the same fate a year later, close to the same location. Drummer Butch Trucks shot himself in 2017, and Gregg Allman, the band’s charismatic singer and keyboardist, succumbed to liver cancer after decades of hard living, just four months after Trucks’ passing. Last year, Betts suffered a stroke, only to find himself hospitalized again…

AMID THE VINTAGE Marshall “Plexis,” Mesa/Boogies, Dumbles, Trainwrecks and other legendary amps of the great rock era, the Soldano SLO 100 stands tall as a formidable fire breather that has logged as many star guitarists’ licks as nearly any head in the field. From the early to mid ’80s, Michael Soldano roughed it between his native Seattle and Los Angeles, working to establish himself as an amp maker to the stars. He finally crushed it big time in 1987 with the amp that would become the SLO (for Super Lead Overdrive) 100. After placing a prototype in the hands of Heart guitarist Howard Leese, Soldano — who had taken a roadie gig to stave off bankruptcy — returned home one night to hear messages on his answering machine from Lou…

AFTER COUNTRY MUSIC singer Dave Dudley had a hit in 1963 with the truck-driving tune “Six Days on the Road,” California country music producer Ken Nelson was on the lookout for songs about trucking. He struck gold with the prolific songwriting and baritone voice of Red Simpson. Though Simpson’s experience with road vehicles was limited to driving an ice-cream truck, he got the engine running on a long career of hard-driving trucker country music with his debut, Roll Truck Roll, released in 1966 on Capitol Records. Roll Truck Roll epitomizes the electrified Bakersfield sound, and it features the guitar work of Gene Moles, whose résumé included the Ventures, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Moles played a ’63 Mosrite guitar, customized with low-output pickups and an out-of-phase switch, through a ’59…

GUITARS • Two Gibson Les Paul Warren Haynes signature models (nicknamed “Lester” and “Chester”), strung .010–.046 • Gibson Les Paul ’59 Faded Cherry (“Sex Machine”), strung .011–.058, in drop C# • Gibson Les Paul ’59 Tobacco Burst (“Babee Doll”), strung .010–.046 • Gibson Firebird Brown (“Moe Lester”), strung .011–.050, tuned down a half step • Gibson Firebird Dark Blue (“Ole Blue”), strung .011–.050, tuned down a half step and usually capoed at the second fret • Gibson Firebird with three P-90s (“Paul E Lester”), strung .010–.046, tuned down a half step • Gibson Gordie Johnson SG with P-94 pickups (“Crazier Tuning”), strung .014–.058 and tuned CGCGCC • Gibson ’62 Reissue SG with Burstbucker pickups in D standard • Gibson Gibson Les Paul “Lemondrop” (“W. Child”) strung .011–.058 and tuned CGCGCE…

Page initially came up with the classic “Whole Lotta Love” riff in late summer 1968 at his boathouse home on the Thames in Pangbourne. Some nine months later, in April 1969, it was this song that kick-started the sessions for Led Zeppelin II at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London. The song originally took shape around Page’s killer three-note riff, with its E power-chord conclusion and a descending chord structure that made use of a backward echo, an effect that the guitarist had first used on a Yardbirds recording session with producer Mickie Most. Further overdubs were added at A&M Studios in Hollywood. Final work on the track took place at the marathon mixing session at New York’s A&R Studios on August 29 and 30. “The whole thing with Jimmy was…

“Ramble On” was laid down on the run at Mystic Studios and Mirror Sound in L.A. in May 1969, and at New York City’s Groove Studios and Juggy Sound in June. Plant’s lyrics reference J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as the song slips from quiet, mournful passages into an uplifting chorus. As such, it’s vividly illustrates the light-and-shade dynamic that would characterize much of Zeppelin’s best work. Page’s overdubbed interweaving lick on his Les Paul is an early attempt to create the sort of guitar army assault that would become his trademark. Kramer gives credit to Jones for his nimble bass work and notes how the band members connect so well throughout. “You can pinpoint certain things on the track,” he says. “It’s the whole…

“I’M A KEEN DABBLER. I’M ALWAYS CHANGING PICKUPS AND REWIRING”— ALVIN LEE WOODSTOCK WAS ALREADY the stuff of legend when Michael Wadleigh’s documentary about the event arrived in theaters seven months after the 1969 three-day musical festival. As filmgoers thrilled to performances by the Who, Santana, Jefferson Airplane and a host of other acts, the guitarists in the audience eagerly awaited scenes of the festival’s headline act, Jimi Hendrix, and his explosive rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But well before that footage passed through the projector, many of those viewers were blown away by the sight of guitarist Alvin Lee leading Ten Years After through a blistering performance of “I’m Going Home.” The British blues-rock act was no stranger to American audiences, but neither was it well known. The group…

AS GUITARISTS, WE’RE always seeking out comfortable, convenient scale fingerings that also help us best visualize shapes on the fretboard. To this end, fingering schemes built around repeating patterns appeal to us. The eight-note half-whole diminished scale, which follows a consistent pattern of alternating half steps and whole steps, ideally satisfies these criteria, with symmetrical fingering patterns and fretboard shapes. The scale is also a favorite of many musicians for spicing up lines played over dominant-seven chords. Soon after I discovered this finger-friendly entity, fluidity came delightfully quick. But to my dismay, the neatly recurring patterns in half-whole diminished — along with other symmetrical harmonic-melodic structures, namely the whole-half diminished scale, the whole-tone scale, the augmented scale and the diminished seven and augmented triad arpeggios — proved to be the…

FROM THE NECK down, the Modern Deluxe instruments introduced by Martin this year are endlessly interesting and mark a major step forward for America’s oldest acoustic guitar manufacturer. They’re loaded with forward-minded features, such as torrified tops, titanium truss rods, Liquidmetal bridge pins and carbon-fiber-composite bridge plates, plus copious sophisticated appointments and a standout neck modeled after one from a 1930 Martin Museum piece. Martin did away with the Vintage Series when it introduced the Modern Deluxe Series, which now resides above the Standard Series (which was “re-imagined” in 2018) and the Authentic Series with its spot-on recreations of classics. The Modern Deluxe is currently offered in four styles: D-18, 000-28, and the OM-28 and D-28 models on review. The guitars sport several eye-catching elements. The first one likely to…

JOHN BACKLUND IS a self-taught artist, guitarist and designer who was influenced by futuristic design concepts from the 1930s to the early 1960s. His partnership with Eastwood now makes it possible for just about anyone to own one of his retro-radical guitars, and there are several very different, enticing and quirky models to choose from. The Rockerbox on review here is about the size of an ES-335 and shares some construction elements, such as a laminated maple semi-hollow body and a glued-in mahogany neck that feels a lot like a late-’60s 335. True to form, the Rockerbox flashes retro chic at every turn. Setting the stage is a red-and-cream paint scheme with pin striping on the top and headstock, plus three eye-shaped portholes and a swoopy plastic pickguard with a…

THE ORIGINAL ATTACK DECAY from the 1980s was dubbed a “tape reverse simulator” for its ability to produce backward tape sounds as well as reverse volume swells, bowed-instrument textures, synth sounds and tremolo effects. This modernized version also provides synthesizer-like control over the attack and decay of the notes played into it, and it adds such features as Poly mode (which cleverly puts each note though separate volume envelopes); three user presets; gain, tone and volume controls for the Harmonix fuzz; an effects loop, and an expression input that allows for pedal or CV control over every knob. The Attack Decay comes with a 9.6-volt AC adapter that more than covers its minimum current requirement of 140mA. This pedal is a natural for sound designers and sonic spelunkers (I recommend…