Innehållsförteckning för April 2020 från Guitar Player

I SERIOUSLY DOUBT the electric guitar will ever go out of style, but in recent years, its ubiquity in popular music has been challenged by the return of an old-timer: the acoustic guitar. It was just two years ago that Music Trades Magazine reported electric guitar sales had dropped 22.7 percent over the previous 10 years, while acoustic guitar sales during the same period grew by 14.6 percent. Possible reasons for those trends include the rise of Taylor Swift (who is thought to be the impetus for more young females picking up the instrument) and the surging popularity of Americana music. For that matter, going unplugged could very well be a response, intentional or not, to our increasingly technology-dependent world. And if you’re a performer, as a growing number of…

KARI NIEMINEN LAUNCHED the Finnish guitar company Versoul in 1995 with just two acoustic models. He now offers more than 50 acoustic, electric, resonator and bass guitars, as well as amplifiers and a fuzz pedal. Multiple examples of his instruments are owned by a who’s who of rock royalty, including Billy Gibbons, Pete Townsend and various members of the Rolling Stones, and have found their way into the hands of players like Michael Landau, Tim Pierce and the late Allan Holdsworth. Some thanks for that is owed to the Who’s Roger Daltrey, who introduced Nieminen to guitar technician/guru Alan Rogan in 2003. “Alan was Keith Richards’ guitar tech before he switched to being Pete Townshend’s, some decades ago,” Nieminen explains. “Alan helped me introduce my guitars to many important artists.”…

DESPITE HIS REPUTATION as one of the heaviest and most ferocious guitar shredders of the past several decades, Vinnie Moore is remarkably mellow, chill and engaging when GP meets him backstage at New York City’s historic St. George Theatre in December 2019. Moore’s band, the pioneering heavy metal outfit UFO, with whom he joined forces in 2003, is winding down its farewell tour. “I would love for this to continue as long as it can, because it’s so much fun to do,” he explains. “But [UFO lead singer and co-founder] Phil Mogg has been at this since the late ’60s, and I can certainly understand why he wants to retire. What’s remarkable to me though is that, while a lot of singers lose their voice as they age, Phil’s has…

MURIEL ANDERSON IS a musical adventurer. When it comes to genre, she’s almost impossible to pin down. Though she is known as both a fingerstyle and harp guitarist, those definitions don’t come close to encompassing all her interests and capabilities. A lifelong student of music and a lover of world cultures, Anderson is constantly seeking higher musical ground. Her ambition has produced a long list of accolades that include winning the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, playing with Chet Atkins and Les Paul, and developing Muriel Anderson’s All Star Guitar Night, an annual charitable performance featuring some of the finest pickers on the planet. Her music was featured in Woody Allen’s 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. More recently, she toured a multimedia collaboration with photo-artist Bryan Allen that includes cultural exploration,…

THE QUEST TO find the right pickups for Liberace, my Warmoth Stratocaster, goes back 20 years. I’ve always loved how it plays and, especially, how it looks, with its white mother-of-toilet-seat pearloid wrap and matching headstock. It took five pickup sets before I got it to sound as good as it looks and plays. But back in 2003, when I was still trying to figure out why it didn’t sound the way I wanted it to, I walked into Gelb Music in Redwood City, California, to pick the brains of its staff. Unfortunately, they couldn’t tell me much more than I already knew about the many factors that go into making a guitar sound good. As I was leaving the store, a display featuring the then-new Made in Mexico Fender…

At the dawn of the 1970s, Led Zeppelin were one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Though the foursome of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham had been in existence for just upward of a year, in that brief span of time the group had released two massive-selling albums — Led Zeppelin and II — and performed more than 150 live shows across the U.K., Scandinavia, Europe and North America. The U.S., in particular, had embraced the band, perhaps even more than its British homeland, with fans on these shores ravenous for the group’s heavy blues-rock sound. Of course, Zeppelin were hardly the only British band plying that style in the late 1960s. During that time, Cream, Ten Years After, the Jeff Beck Group,…

IN THE LATE 1950s, Gibson’s Kalamazoo factory experienced an unprecedented increase in its range and production of solid-body and semi-acoustic electric guitars. The company had first begun manufacturing solid-body instruments in 1952, when it introduced the Les Paul Model alongside its traditional archtops and flat-tops, and in the years afterward Gibson became increasingly experimental with regard to guitar form. By 1957, the Les Paul range was well established and included the Standard, Custom, Special, TV and Junior models. Some fairly radical Gibson designs, such as the ES-335, Explorer and Flying V, had also just commenced production. Gibson’s owner at the time, the Chicago Musical Instrument Company, acquired the Epiphone brand in 1957 and began producing a new range of Epiphone solid-bodies at its factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It began in…

1. All examples in this lesson may be played with a swing-eighths feel (usually referred to simply as a swing feel). Swing-eighths is based on an undercurrent of eighth-note triplets, as you would have in 12/8 meter, with the first eighth note of each beat held for what would be the first two eighth notes of an eighth-note triplet and the second eighth note (on the upbeat) played on what would be the third note of the triplet. This results in a lopsided-sounding “long-short” rhythm for each pair of eighth notes. (Recall the shuffle feel heard in “Pride and Joy” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and the blues standard “Sweet Home Chicago.”) Alternatively, you could play any of the examples with what’s called an even eighths, or straight eighths, feel, which…

TAYLOR INTRODUCED FOUR new Builder’s Edition models at NAMM 2020 that include the 324ce, 816ce, and the two models on review here: the 912ce and 12-string 652ce. Designed by Andy Powers, these impeccably made guitars are the first Grand Concert models to be introduced to the Builder’s Edition series, and both draw their inspiration from the electric guitar world in order to — as Taylor says — “bring the comfort, precision and utility that electric players love in an acoustic experience.” 912ce As the first Builder’s Edition guitar from the 900 series, the 912ce is a compact instrument that looks seductive with its natural Lutz spruce top (also available in Wild Honey Burst), dark Indian rosewood back and sides, and extensive shell inlays on the peghead, fretboard, rosette and top/back…

DYNAMICS HAS BE COME a watchword for many guitarists today who seek as much expression and personality from their gear as they strive for in their playing. The concept is often applied to high-end tube amps, the types that allow you to clean up your sound by laying off the pick attack slightly and/or rolling down the guitar’s volume, and to segue seamlessly into soaring lead tones by hitting it harder. This is exactly the response that French pedal maker Jacques is chasing in its new Electric Lamb Edge Overdrive, a spin-off of the discrete, hand-wired Electric Sheep pedal. The Edge in the name isn’t there to tell us it was designed for the famous U2 guitarist, nor that it provides a lot of cutting-edge tonality; the true raison d’etre…

THE IDEA FOR the Side Step arose from discussions TWA had with Dweezil Zappa about a sample/hold function for the company’s Triskelion bandpass filter. Those talks led TWA to develop a low-frequency oscillator (LFO) pedal that could control the Triskelion via its expression jack. TWA is now selling that pedal as the Side Step, a variable, tap-tempo LFO that can control most devices that have an expression input or one for a five-volt or greater control-voltage source. The LFO’s rate can be set by means of tap tempo, an onboard rate pot or an external expression pedal (not included). The Side Step has eight waveform options for the LFO, including the aforementioned sample/hold, selectable by a rotary switch. The pedal can be hard bypassed, allowing you to use the device…

This month’s giveaway is a Danelectro Back Talk Reverse Delay, a new incarnation of the company’s 1990s tape-simulating reverse delay pedal. The Back Talk works its magic via three controls for dry-wet mix, delay speed and number of repeats. The retro aged case looks great, and the pedal’s rich, saturated tone sounds like the real deal. To get this delay on your pedalboard, send an email with the words “Back Talk” in the subject line to stash.raid@gmail.com, and you just might win! The deadline is April 6, 2020. All gear is “as is.” Fab Issue When I received the February issue, it was great to see George Harrison on the cover, but as a 65-year-old guitarist/Beatle fan since age 10, I’ve become bored reading the same old common-knowledge stuff. I…

ETHAN GRUSKA’S APPROACH to recording isn’t to get a perfect take, or even one with swagger or feeling. Sometimes the mistakes are what make the song. For En Garde (Warner Records), his second solo album, Gruska — whose production and performance credits include John Legend, Trombone Shorty, Fiona Apple and the National’s Matt Berninger — invited friends and collaborators like Blake Mills and Phoebe Bridgers to perform. But instead of using their contributions in a straightforward manner, he used the interesting, unscripted moments to turn the songs on their heads. The technique is well suited to Gruska’s compositional style. Drawing inspiration from the same well as eccentrics Brian Wilson and Elliott Smith, and imbued with the melodic sense of Jeff Buckley, his compositions veer away from conventional chord progressions and…

ONE POPULAR TAPE-RECORDING technique is to alter the tape speed prior to recording, giving the recorded voice or instrument a different timbre when it’s played back at normal speed. This can be used subtly or for dramatic effects. For example, if you halve the tape speed, the tempo will be twice as slow, and the pitch will be an octave lower. The slower tempo allows a guitarist to play passages that will sound insanely fast, and with a super-bright timbre and short decay, when played back at correct speed. Today’s digital signal-processing algorithms can stretch time and transpose pitch independently of the other. However, most programs don’t have the equivalent of a tape recorder’s varispeed control, which can change the pitch of all tracks simultaneously. Although you can pitch-stretch a…

IT SEEMS THAT, with each year, we look to the winter NAMM show with increasing anticipation. The MI industry has been on a roll, turning out fantastic gear that meets the desires and needs of musicians and makes innovative use of emerging technologies and materials. Once again, this year’s NAMM show in Anaheim, California, didn’t disappoint. While we found plenty to like in all of the gear categories, we agreed that this NAMM was all about acoustics. We saw some remarkable advances in the acoustic world, including new models from Martin, Taylor and Yamaha, as well as Gibson’s rebooted Acoustic Custom Shop and L.R. Baggs’ Soundscape technology. That said, there was no shortage of terrific new products and technologies in the realms of electric guitars, amps, effects and gear for…

WATCHING CHRISTIE LENÉE perform her solo acoustic act is like seeing a firecracker pixie execute a high-wire circus routine while doing flips and juggling flaming bowling pins. But Lenée is not only a trick pony. Her use of dexterous fingerpicking and two-hand tapping to relay deep emotions through tuneful compositions was more than enough to win her the 2017 International Fingerstyle Guitar Championship, an acoustic-only competition held at the Walnut Valley Festival in Kansas. Fast forward to the 2019 U.K. Guitar Show in London this past September, where the rules of acoustic engagement were more modern. Performing before a panel of esteemed guitar magazine editors and virtuosos, including Andy McKee, Molly Tuttle and John Jorgenson, Lenée put on her trademark pedal dance, incorporating live looping while wearing a tambourine on…

LISTENING TO MICHAEL Lee Firkins’ highly expressive and thoughtfully structured blues-rock guitar playing is exciting. Firkins is admired for his seemingly effortless way of creating melodies and musical moods, emotions and textures that hit you the moment you hear them. He’s always had one foot firmly rooted in rock and the other in blues, yet his eclectic style reveals an affinity for other genres as well, such as jazz, fusion, funk, country and bluegrass. His creative musical ideas, refined playing techniques and broad range of influences have helped him forge a highly appealing and instantly recognizable style. While Firkins may not be a household name, the release of his self-titled debut album on Mike Varney’s Shrapnel Records back in 1990 quickly caught the attention of his peers and fans of…

WHILE MANY GUITAR manufacturers reserve their signature models for shredders of the heavy metal and hard rock persuasions, Fender has perennially cultivated relationships with the many guitarists in the alternative and indie sectors who favor their instruments. To date, the list has included the likes of Kurt Cobain, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., and former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr. This impressive roster has now grown to include Britt Daniel, whose sharp and percussive rhythm attack has underpinned the music of the band Spoon for the better part of three decades. For his signature model, Daniel created an amalgam of the two semihollow late-’60s Telecaster Thinlines that he uses as his primary touring guitars, incorporating elements of the vintage instruments’ factory specs and…

“THERE ARE SOME guitar players that are good, and there are some guitar players that are really f*cking good,” Dave Grohl once said. “And then there’s Kaki King.” Since arriving on the guitar scene in 2002, King has carved out her own path as a visionary artist, not only with her virtuoso two-handed tapping and percussive use of the guitar’s body but also in her compositions and performances. She was born Katherine Elizabeth King, on August 24, 1979. Sensing her innate musical ability, King’s father bought her a guitar when she was four. “I guess my dad was hipper than most,” King told Guitar Player’s Jude Gold in June 2003. “Instead of sending me off to piano lessons with all the other kids, he forced me to play guitar —…

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WHEN NILI BROSH assaulted the stage during last year’s Batten-Menn-Brosh concert in San Francisco, she was like Wonder Woman leading the Justice League and the Avengers into a ferocious battle against every supervillain on the planet. Her loud, take-no-prisoners tone seemed to engrave each note she played deep into the walls of the auditorium. Her melodies demanded attention, whether they were aggressive and edgy, or supple and lovely. Every song had grand, climactic moments, many shaped by impossibly fast whirlwinds of sound. From the frenzied reactions that night, it was obvious the crowd was in awe of a commanding musical force. The hero saved the day. The vile hordes were vanquished. But Brosh’s superhero persona, as powerful and impressive as it is, takes a knee on her new album, Spectrum…

FENDER’S LATE-1950S 4x10 tweed Bassman combo is among the most celebrated guitar amps. Jim Marshall liked it so much that he pilfered Fender’s schematic to create the JTM45 and the early-to-mid-1960s Plexi. For many players, though, Fender’s glorious 2x12 Twin Amp of the mid to late ’50s is the epitome of rock and roll amplifiers for that era and beyond. A closer look reveals that it even has stunning parallels with the Marshall combo that helped to change the course of rock a decade later — which might explain how Eric Clapton, the legendary guitarist behind that sonic revolution, migrated so easily from a Marshall to a Fender combo over the course of his long career. As Fender’s amplifier lineup evolved from wide-panel to narrow-panel tweed combos in the mid…

AGUSTÍN BARRIOS WAS born in Paraguay in 1885 and began his formal guitar studies at 13. He improved quickly and went on to give virtuoso performances that made him a legend throughout South America. His repertoire and writing were influenced by Fernando Sor, Beethoven, Francisco Tárrega and the folk and popular music of his day, and as a result his music covers a wide color palette. Roughly three decades after his death in 1944, a Barrios renaissance occurred, and his many recordings and transcriptions were rediscovered. Andrés Segovia, Leo Brawer and John Williams revered Barrios, with Williams calling him “the greatest guitarist/composer of any time.” Many of Barrios’ 300 compositions are still performed, and he stands out as both a recording pioneer and one of the 20th century’s great guitar…

Are you an electric or acoustic guitar player? The majority of our readers are both, but there’s no denying that the acoustic side resonates more robustly in the culture these days. Electric shredders simply aren’t generating as many streams, sales and tour tickets as rootsy singer-songwriters and country pluckers. One cat who bridges the gap first graced our cover in May 1986 with the infamous headline “Who is Eric Johnson and why is he on our cover?” Nearly 35 years later, there’s no need to ask why Eric Johnson is on our cover again. He was, and still is, a unique breed of guitar hero. Although he’s from the shredder era, and even sported an impressive spiked mullet, Johnson didn’t surrender to every tapper trapping in Van Halen’s wake, so…

IN A CAREER that has spanned 55 years and yielded an equal number of albums, José Feliciano feels that the experience of recording is just as exciting as the day he started. “I love making records, and I see no reason why I would ever stop,” he says. “Being in the studio is just as magical as performing onstage. It’s different in that you have no audience, but the idea that I’m creating something that will be on somebody’s radio is incredibly thrilling. I feel lucky and blessed that I get to communicate to people through my music.” Feliciano’s latest album, Behind This Guitar, is an energetic and soulful eight-song set that ranges from elegant love ballads (“Smoky Places”) to bracing rock (“Love One Another”). While splashes of electric guitar…

THE FIRST TIME I was handed a jazz chord chart, I was 13 years old and trying to prove to the director of my middle-school jazz band that I could cut it as the ensemble’s guitarist. I had been on his bad side ever since I nearly flunked out of his symphonic band as an alto saxophonist, so when I requested an audition, he practically laughed me out of the room. Nevertheless, he handed me a chord chart — also referred to as a “lead sheet” — and told me to bring my A-game to the audition. To cut a long story short, I bombed the audition, not because I couldn’t play but because I had no understanding of how to properly approach the material. Instead of following the changes…

IT’S A SAFE bet that Italian products are going to have style, so it was hardly surprising to open the box containing the Duality 100 and lift out a chunky tube-powered head sporting laser-cut metal panels, white pointer-style knobs and black/red cosmetics. This powerful brute hosts four EL34 power amp tubes, six preamp valves and — the “Duality” moniker notwithstanding — three channels: Clean, Vintage and Modern, with a selectable lead boost for the latter two channels and a bypassable series effects loop. These functions are selected via front-panel buttons, the included five-button D100F foot switch, or by MIDI, which also allows for saving presets as well as loop and master-volume settings. Tested with a Gibson Historic ’59 Les Paul and a Reverend Gristlemaster T-style guitar — and run through…

HOW COULD ANYONE resist an overdrive/distortion pedal that promises a “bonus feature” of Paul Gilbert’s talent, countless years of experience and boyish charm? The PG-14 is certainly a cutie, with its light-blue housing and Japanese-tennis-shoe graphic. And then comes the talent and experience stuff, beginning with a complement of six controls (four pink and two black) for precisely dialing-in OD tones. It’s all pretty self explanatory, with the drive, volume and tone controls being familiar friends of pedals past and present. However, you also have a push control that determines how hard the input of the circuit is, shall we say, “pushed,” thus affecting the drive control as it’s turned either right (more) or left (less). The tone control does its brightening/darkening thing as you’d expect, and without any pronounced…