Innehållsförteckning för March 2021 från Guitar World

WHY DO WE crave new guitars when we already have a SWAT team’s worth of guitars in all different shapes, sizes and pickup configurations? I’ve come to realize that — unless you’re super wealthy and buy guitars simply because you can — it all comes down to the concept of “potential.” You see a new guitar — like last weekend when my brother sent me a link to the very Italian-sounding (but Nashville-based) Novo Guitars Rivolta Combinata XVII in Autunno Burst — and you think, “Holy crap, I need this!” But why? I’ll tell you why! It’s because, regardless of your age, you still imagine a situation sometime in the future — a “mythical show,” as Jimmy Page says on page 48 — when a giant E chord from that…

“A LOT OF folks just assume I’m a rock dude because I play guitar,” says Khruangbin’s Mark Speer. “But that’s not really where I come from.” Indeed it’s not. In fact, since debuting in 2014 with the hazy, exotica-tinged instrumental, “A Calf Born in Winter,” his band — which includes bassist Laura Lee and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson — has made a name for itself as one of the foremost purveyors of, well… what style of music does Khruangbin play, exactly? Over the course of two full-length albums and a handful of EPs, the band has explored everything from Thai funk to Middle Eastern disco and myriad other regional styles, and infused these sounds with splashes of psychedelia, dub, roots and more. As for Speer’s distinctive guitar approach, he says,…

IN APRIL OF 1970, FRESH OFF THE triumph of their first two albums, Led Zeppelin were touring North America for an astounding fifth time in two years. The quartet was determined to become the biggest band in the world, and there was every indication that they were well on their way. Their live shows had become the stuff of legend, breaking attendance records, and on this particular one-month jaunt, they would gross a total of more than $1,200,000 — roughly $8 million in today’s money. But their experience on tour was not without its glitches. And a major one was the U.S. South and its still ultra-conservative mores. “It was my dream to play Memphis,” Jimmy Page told Guitar World back in 2008. “I grew up loving the music that…

MENTION THE BAND KANSAS TO THE average listener, and he or she will instantly name two classic rock staples: “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind.” “Oh, sure, those are the big ones,” says guitarist Richard Williams, who co-founded the progressive rock outfit back in 1970. I could let it get to me and go, Hey, we ve got a whole body of work,’ but that would be a waste of time. Those are the songs that brought us to the table. Without ‘Wayward Son’ and “Dust in the Wind,’ we wouldn’t be around today.” Williams recalls how in 1976, with the band deep in debt to their record label and facing an uncertain future after their first three albums (Kansas, Song for America and Masque) stiffed, they…

ProBucker 2 and 3 humbucking pickups are made with several identical details to original PAF pickups to provide authentic vintage tones. The “epsilon logo” tuners are based on the unusual stock Kolb tuners found on Joe’s original Black Beauty Les Paul. The wiring provides bridge, bridge-middle out-of-phase and neck pickup settings with individual tone and volume controls for the bridge-middle and neck pickups. The neck has a very comfortable shallow C profile that provides ample mass for tone and a slim feel for fast playability. THE BOTTOM LINE The Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Black Beauty Les Paul Custom isn’t the next best thing to an original late-Fifties Les Paul Custom — it’s even better thanks to its outrageously affordable price, stellar tones and immaculate playability. STREET PRICE: $799 MANUFACTURER: Epiphone, Epiphone.com…

STREET PRICE: $289 MANUFACTURER: DryBell, drybell.com The Boost and Range controls provide sound similar to a classic Rangemaster Treble Booster with the added versatility of Low and High EQ shaping. Whether adjusted from fully dry to fully wet, the 1176-style compressor delivers transparent compression that maintains pick attack and articulation. THE BOTTOM LINE: The DryBell Unit67 delivers high-quality EQ, true 1176 compression and classic Rangemaster-style treble boost to deliver studio-quality refined tones for less than the cost of separate boutique treble booster and compression pedals.…

SCRATCHY RIFFING Using fret-hand-muted strums, and how to play “Gainesville Station” IN THIS COLUMN, I’d like to focus on the intro rhythm part from the song “Gainesville Station,” from my latest record, Soul Shifter. Guitarist Steve Gaines from Lynyrd Skynyrd was a big inspiration for me when I was a kid, and I wrote this song as a tribute to his incredibly soulful playing style. Steve, as many of you know, was tragically killed in the band’s plane crash in 1977. I took some of that mojo inspiration that I got from him and did my best to inject it into this song. I refer to muted-string strums — muted with the fret hand — as “scratches,” like the ones you hear at the very beginning of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little…

“LONDON CALLING” WORDS AND MUSIC BY JOE STRUMMER, MICK JONES, PAUL SIMONON AND TOPPER HEADON COPYRIGHT (C) 1979 NINEDEN LTD. ALL RIGHTS IN THE U.S. AND CANADA CONTROLLED AND ADMINISTERED BY UNIVERSAL - POLYGRAM INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED USED BY PERMISSION REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC…

Comprehending a World Without Eddie I want to thank GW for producing such a high-quality tribute to the G.O.A.T., EVH [January 2021]. I’ve purchased several magazines remembering EVH, and I’m proud to say as a longtime subscriber, none stacked up to GW. I was particularly moved by the articles written by Chris Gill. Chris literally took us on his personal journey and with him up the canyon to 5150. I can’t begin to tell you how thoughtful and articulate his writing about his experiences made me feel. As many of us are continuing to mourn the passing, this comprehensive review of EVH provides some lasting thoughts and created images that provided some relief as we comprehend a world without EVH. Chris reminded us that EVH was just not a musician,…

CHRIS MIKE 1 “Drive Home,” Steven Wilson When I want to hear a guitar solo that brings tears to my eyes, this is the one I go for. I think it’s one of Guthrie Govan’s best moments so far. 2 “Hot for Teacher,” Van Halen I remember when my dad got me the VHS of Live: Right Here, Right Now. It was one of the reasons I took up the guitar. “Hot for Teacher” encapsulates almost everything Van Halen are known for. RIP, Mr. Eddie! 3 “Lady Fantasy,” Camel A masterpiece that drags us all along through the purest and passionate guitar playing by Andrew Latimer, one of the most underrated guitar players, in my humble opinion. 4 “Gravity,” John Mayer A great live performance from…

“One of the [nuns] picked up The Number of the Beast, and it’s got Eddie and the devil. I’m like, oh my God, she’s going to drag me straight to the church and hear my confession” IRON MAIDEN GUITAR maestro Adrian Smith recently published his first book, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler. As its full title suggests, the eye-catching tome is dedicated to the guitarist’s number-one off-stage pastime, fishing. But there’s a bit more to it. “[Monsters of River & Rock] started off as a 100-percent fishing book,” Smith tells Guitar World. “As I went on, I found there were parallels with my two passions of fishing and music; I was combining them more. I’d say the books is probably 70 percent fishing…

BEFORE GOING ON to world domination with Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was a go-to session guitarist during the mid Sixties, playing on records by artists as diverse as Marianne Faithfull, Petula Clark and Van Morrison. By the time he joined the Yardbirds alongside Jeff Beck in 1966, he was a well-known face on the music scene, eventually recruiting the future Zeppelin super-group lineup after the band disintegrated around him. Page is associated with a variety of guitar tones, particularly when recording, but his best-known live rig is surely the ’59 Gibson Les Paul/Marshall 1959 SLP stack combination, which would fuel Zeppelin’s fat-sounding, colossally loud stage setup. Still, don’t be discouraged if you don’t own either of these — most solid-body hum-bucker-equipped guitars will suffice for a basic ballpark tone to…

CONSIDERING THAT THE Boss OC-2 Octave — with its straightforward sub-octave pitch-shifting — has been the perennial “thickening agent” for so many guitarists and bassists since its introduction in 1982, it’s somewhat surprising that this glittery espresso-colored stomp-box doesn’t get more of the love and recognition it deserves. No matter, because Boss followed up much later with the OC-3 Super Octave, which introduced polyphonic octave effects, turning this bottom-end box into a broader innovation. Well, this time around, I believe many players will take notice of Boss’s brand-new OC-5 Octave, which expands upon those legendary predecessors with improved tracking performance and a wider range of polyphonic capability, all while still preserving the classic sound of the original OC-2 pedal. FEATURES Housed in Boss’s familiar pedal enclosure, the OC-5 features dedicated…

Vidami Video Looper Pedal 2020 IS OFFICIALLY a bust, thanks to the pandemic, but the silver lining of being shuttered indoors is that many of us have taken up new hobbies or simply making a fresh start with stuff we’ve never had time for — like that guitar hanging on the wall. Certainly, “How to” and “Lesson” videos must be blowing up on YouTube among players looking for some much-needed self-improvement. However, being a guitarist requires two hands on deck, so learning anything online will eventually cause you to remove at least one hand from your instrument to repeatedly rewind and pause a video, which is frustrating if you’re trying to nail a lick or a phrase, or even hone in on a riff or a song. Enter the Vidami…

I GOT RHYTHM, PART 14 More “Kashmir”-like moves LAST MONTH, WE analyzed the hypnotic, cyclical rhythmic pattern featured in the Led Zeppelin classic “Kashmir” and learned how to count it a couple of different ways. I then offered a few “spin-off” variations on it that I came up with, which posed a fun challenge to play, count and tap your foot to. I’d now like to show some additional, similarly-styled rhythmic patterns, which I think serve as effective vehicles for mastering 16th-note syncopations and grooves. FIGURE 1 presents a helpful primer exercise, or drill, that surveys the four posdat sible ” motif permutations , as applied of the to 16 three th notes -note in “ 4 4 da me -da - ter. To help us focus strictly on the…

DRAWING THE LINE Traditional bluesgrass-style riffing, and how to play "Over the Line," part 2 LAST MONTH, I introduced the basic approach I use to play the song “Over the Line,” a traditional bluegrass-style tune I cowrote with Steve Poltz that appears as the title track on an album by the band Jeff Scroggins and Colorado. Traditional bluegrass guitar playing is at the heart of my love of the guitar, as it has laid the foundation for my guitaristic studies both musically and technically. In this lesson, I'd like to offer some more riffs and licks that I like to play this song, which demonstrate some of my favorite bluegrass-style moves. To review, I play this song with a capo at the 4th fret, and so any unfretted, "open" string…

“SIMPLE MAN” WORDS AND MUSIC BY RONNIE VAN ZANT AND GARY ROSSINGTON COPYRIGHT (C) 1973 SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. AND EMI LONGITUDE MUSIC COPYRIGHT RENEWED ALL RIGHTS CONTROLLED AND ADMINISTERED BY SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED USED BY PERMISSION REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC…

THE EFFECT THAT Nirvana’s sophomore album Never-mind had upon popular music a few months after its release on September 24, 1991, cannot be overstated. By January 11, 1992, it knocked “the king of pop” Michael Jackson out of the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 album chart while simultaneously hammering a final nail in the coffin for hair metal’s reign as grunge began to dominate hard rock in the early Nineties. However, Nevermind’s influence reached well beyond the burgeoning Seattle grunge scene, ushering in mainstream acceptance of alternative rock and punk as well. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana’s first single from Nevermind, succeeded largely because it brought together diverse elements — the raw power of punk, the heavily distorted guitar sonics of thrash and surprisingly sophisticated pop melodies — into…

Michael Penze AGE: 54 HOMETOWN: Smithville, MO GUITARS: Ibanez JS140, JS1000, JEM “Bad Horsie,” JEM 77FP, JEM 777, homemade light-up JEM, Ibanez EW20ASE SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING: Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” The Vapors “Turning Japanese,” Black Sabbath “War Pigs,” Steve Vai “Bad Horsie” and original music (Audio M.D.), available on Spotify GEAR I MOST WANT: Ibanez JS20TH Silver Surfer, Ibanez JEM20TH Connor Bowdoin AGE: 20 HOMETOWN: Albuquerque, NM GUITARS: Fender Mexican Stratocaster, Jackson 7-string, Ibanez S 370 DX, Epiphone Les Paul, J. Northrup Customs Telecaster, Yamaha Classical SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING: Dream Theater “Untethered Angel,” “Scene Seven: I. The Dance of Eternity” and “Metropolis Pt. 1”; Haken “1985” GEAR I MOST WANT: Strandberg Boden Prog 6, Ernie Ball Music Man Majesty David Aichele AGE: 60 HOMETOWN: Pine…

ANYONE WHO HAS seen Joe Bonamassa’s massive vintage guitar collection has probably assumed that the dude is hell on every and Sixties. While sometimes that I wish that he’d leave things alone just for a little while so the rest of us could have a chance, lately I’ve been willing to give him a pass thanks to the annual limited-edition signature models he’s produced in partnership with Epiphone, particularly the models they’ve offered since 2016. These models are based on cool and unusual gems from Joe’s collection, including his 1963 Polymist Gold Firebird I, 1958 Korina Flying V, Gibson Custom Shop black ES-355 and 1960 Les Paul Standard. Bonamassa’s 2020 limited-edition Epiphone model — his eighth for the company — is based on a very sweet 1958 Les Paul Custom…

STREET PRICE: $129.99 MANUFACTURER: Boss, boss.info The inclusion of a +1 OCT control provides an octave-up effect in both Vintage and Poly modes to blend in with the lower sub-octaves or simulate 12-string sparkle. In Poly mode, the OC-5’s variable Range control contains the effect to the lower registers for octave basslines to sit alongside chords, or even isolate the sub-octave effect to the lowest note in a chord. THE BOTTOM LINE For meaty heft, the Boss OC-5 digs deep in offering the classic bass-emulation of their original OC-2 along with perfected tracking and enriched polyphonic capability.…

THE KEY TO getting great live guitar tone is by following a similar approach to what an engineer does in the recording studio: using a high-pass filter to cut excess bass, adjusting key EQ frequencies and applying high-quality transparent compression to tighten up the overall sound and bring it forward in the mix. By combining a Rangemaster-style treble booster, versatile EQ section and compression based on the revered Urei/ Universal Audio 1176 compressor/limiter, the DryBell Unit67 provides the sweetening functions of expensive studio processing gear in a compact, stage-worthy stomp box format. FEATURES Because the DryBell Unit67’s boost/range, EQ and compression sections are highly interactive, the pedal is considerably more versatile than using separate treble booster, EQ and compressor effects. The top control panel is simple and self-explanatory, featuring a…

AROUND THE BENDS, PART 2 More expressive string bending techniques LAST MONTH, I introduced the expressive approach of playing all the notes of the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D) on the B string only, utilizing bending techniques to scoop into a note from below or swoop down to it from above, in the latter case by using a pre-bend and release. I'd now like to offer more examples of this soulful way of playing melodic lines. To review, when playing E minor pentatonic on the B string only, we can start with the open string, followed by D (3rd fret), E (5th fret), G (8th fret), A (10th fret), and then B, one octave higher, at the 12th fret. We can continue into the higher octave…

“PREACHIN’ BLUES” Larkin Poe CO-GUITARISTS AND SISTERS Rebecca and Megan Lovell turn in a refreshingly raw and soulful performance with this popular 2017 cover of an old Son House blues classic. The song is in the key of D, for which Rebecca’s drop-D-tuned electric guitar (low to high: D, A, D, G, B, E) provides the foundational low-string riffing, fulfilling the role of a bass line with added, swampy grit. Megan performs her featured melodic lead parts on a lap steel in Dobro-, or “high-bass”-style open G tuning (low to high: G, B, D, G, B, D), which puts her “home-key” position at the 7th fret, rather than the 12th fret and/or the open strings, as is more common with blues slide guitar. (This is comparable to the way Duane…

GUITAR: Early Nineties Japanese Fender Stratocaster with rosewood neck and Seymour Duncan JB bridge humbucker (bridge pickup), Volume: 10 AMPS: Mesa/Boogie Studio preamp (Rhythm channel, Volume: 6, Master: 5, Treble: 6, Bass: 3, Middle: 8, Reverb: 0, Rhythm Bright: On, EQ: In, 80: +3, 240: -2, 750: 0, 2200: +5, 6600: +3), Crown Power Base 2 power amp, Marshall 1960B 4x12 cabinet with Celestion G12T-75 speakers EFFECTS: Boss DS-1 (Tone: 4, Level: 10, Distortion: 7), Electro-Harmonix Small Clone (Rate: 5, Depth switch: Up) STRINGS/TUNING: Dean Markley Nickel Steel .010-.052/Standard PICK: Jim Dunlop Tortex standard .60mm (orange)…