Innehållsförteckning för October 2021 från Guitar Player

MAY 1 7, 201 7. It was one of the most tragic days in popular music history. In the middle of a reunion tour with Soundgarden, the groundbreaking Seattle-based band he had founded more than 30 years earlier, guitarist-vocalist-songwriter Chris Cornell was discovered dead in his hotel room from what was ruled a suicide. He was 52 years old. Throughout his life, Cornell had struggled with substance abuse and depression, but the talented composer and lyricist managed to channel his inner demons into one of the most expressive and influential artistic voices of the modern rock era. Though mostly recognized as lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist and frontman of the Grammy-winning multi-Platinum-selling band, the extremely prolific Cornell left behind a remarkable body of work. He was the driving force behind Temple…

“IT WAS A sincere plea to one of my musical heroes to stick around and keep sharing his gifts with the world,” says Nils Lofgren, speaking about his driving rocker “Keith Don’t Go (Ode to the Glimmer Twin).” Featured on the guitarist’s eponymous 1975 debut album, the song has become one of Lofgren’s most enduring tracks (he’s never played a show without performing it), and over the years he says the sentiments behind it have grown in meaning. “Throughout the decades, I have greater appreciation for the people who created the music that inspired me,” he says. “And while Keith Richards is alive and well — nothing to do with the song, of course — I’m happy knowing that my tribute to him has meant so much to so many…

ALTHOUGH HE’S BEEN designing, building and repairing top-flight guitars for professional players for some four decades, Martyn Booth is less well-known in the U.S. than he deserves to be. The British luthier’s current flagship electric model evolved from a design he created while working for Gibson. It briefly graced the lineup from one of Japan’s biggest makers, but it arguably never reached its ultimate form until Booth decided to make the thing himself. If the outline of the Martyn Booth Signature looks familiar, chances are you’ve encountered this talented and respected British luthier’s work without even knowing his name. Booth designed an acclaimed electric guitar manufactured by Yamaha in Taiwan in the late 1980s and early ’90s known as the Image in the U.S. and the MSG in the U.K.…

THE ’ 70S WAS a bountiful time for analog effects pedals. Among the great fuzz boxes of the era, the Foxx Tone Machine stands proudly as one of the most expressive and more extreme. The pedal was the flagship of Foxx’s lineup, which ran for a few years before vanishing in the latter part of the decade. Appropriately for a fuzz pedal, its metal case was covered in tightly cropped red or blue flocking that made it feel as velvety as it sounded. And while the pedals are hard enough to come by, the Stars & Stripes unit from 1972, shown here, is among the rarest. According to the Tone Machine’s inventor, Steve Ridinger, very few of these red-white-and-blue beauties were made. “My memory is just a few, not 50…

THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND’S 1971 double album At Fillmore East is often and rightly proclaimed rock’s greatest live release. Fifty years on, it still sounds fresh, inspired and utterly original. It is the gold standard of blues-based rock and roll, but it’s easy to lose sight of what a radical album At Fillmore East really was. It took a lot of guts for the Allmans and their record label to release a two-LP live album as their third release. After all, when it came out in July 1971, the band was something of a commercial flop. Although they drew raves for their marathon live shows that combined the Grateful Dead’s go-anywhere jam ethos with a far superior musical precision, their first two releases caused barely a ripple in the marketplace.…

AS IF WE needed more evidence that 2020 was the most insanely improbable year ever, the long-separated and bickering brothers Robinson finally locked wings once again, only to have their reunion tour plans shot down by the pandemic. The show finally got back on track this summer with a national tour commemorating the 30th anniversary of Shake Your Money Maker, their landmark 1990 debut album and a record that kept roots rock relevant in the Monsters of Rock era. The album’s expanded deluxe anniversary edition features the rollicking single “Charming Mess,” a hot take on Humble Pie’s “30 Days in the Hole,” and acoustic and original demo versions of the hit “She Talks to Angels,” as well as an incendiary live set recorded in the Crowes’ original stomping grounds of…

DAVID CROSBY IS an iconic acoustic captain at the helm of his ever-fantastic ship, always listening for a song on the wind that might lead him to some mystical, musical port of call. More than ever lately, he appears to be a man on a mission, perhaps making up for lost time. He’s dropped five albums since 2014. Snarky Puppy ringleader and bass ace Michael League produced 2016’s Lighthouse, and they’ve continued a working relationship that Crosby regards as a band. Otherwise, the guitarist’s primary co-captain is his son James Raymond. Crosby refers to their collaboration as Sky Trails, which is the title of their 2017 album, and James also produced the new album, For Free (BMG). The colorful folk-rock legend sounds almost too good for having lived a pirate’s…

DO YOU NEED a dedicated acoustic amp? If you play a significant amount of acoustic-electric guitar, especially in a performing group, then of course you do. The other members will bring their noise, and relying on house monitors can be a crapshoot. Troubadours traveling with a personal P.A. will be fine, especially if armed with some of the signal processors we’ve addressed in the past few columns. I usually bring an acoustic amp as well. It’s nice to have as a monitor, helps with the overall sound, and is a handy backup for the larger P.A. system. ACOUSTIC AMPS 101 An acoustic amp is designed to accommodate the signal from an acoustic-electric guitar, which is usually equipped with a piezo pickup and preamp. Compared to a magnetic pickup, a piezo…

IT’S UNLIKELY THAT Mac McAnally’s handiwork has escaped your notice. The Nashville session picker has been Jimmy Buffett’s sideman and a hit songwriter, and he’s been named Country Music Association Musician of the Year a total of 10 times. McAnally takes us from a porch in Belmont, Mississippi, to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he worked sessions as a teenager, and finally to Music City. Here are the top five riffs that shaped his life in music. “WILDWOOD FLOWER” MAYBELLE CARTER “We had an old Silvertone archtop guitar. It was too big for me to reach around, but my dad would sit and play ‘Wildwood Flower,’ and that was one of the first things I tried to play. Neither of us had a pick, so the Mother Maybelle thing was hard…

MUSCLE SHOALS’ WATERS are potent. For generations they have poured out hit records, a multitude of which have flowed from Alabama’s FAME Studios. The name stands for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises. In 1959, record producer/songwriter/guitarist Rick Hall founded the music hub as a place where race played no role. What mattered was serving the region’s native musical stew, which featured the participation of artists ranging from Duane Allman and Otis Redding to Aretha Franklin and Etta James. Hall’s son Rodney discloses the recipe in Shoals vernacular. “It’s a swampy kind of music,” he says. “Funky. A lot of bass, and a lot of kick drum. More than that, it’s an amalgamation of country, rock and soul, put together in a gumbo that’s been cooking in the Shoals for over 100…

OUTSIDE OF MONK S, there is no more noble vow of poverty than that accepted by the classical guitarist. You’ve seen us performing at your local wedding ceremony or busking on the subway platform, or maybe we’ve served you at Starbucks, gazing blissfully into the distance with images of Carnegie Hall dancing in our heads (you can spot us by the long fingernails on our right hands). Like those humble hermits of lore, our detachment from both popular culture and the pursuit of the all-mighty dollar has given us access to moments of true beauty and, dare I say, great art. When you owe nothing to anyone, you can do anything. And so, without any concern for trends, and in the spirit of sharing something I’m personally very proud of,…

THE NEW SUPRO Delta King 12 takes its visual cues from the 1950s Valco-made Supro Comet, with its TV-front cabinet and vertical racing stripes. While the amp pays tribute to the blues roots that give it its name, Supro cleverly updates the formula with a handful of features that contemporary players will appreciate, paying homage to the original while expanding the Delta King 12’s versatility. At its heart, the Delta King 12 is still a simple, single-ended tube amp. It has just one output tube and requires a single 12AX7 preamp tube, since no phase inverter is needed. The output tube is a 6L6GC that delivers a full 15 watts, compared to the four watts or so that the single 6V6GT produced back in the day. (The Supro Supreme and…