Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2015 i Guitar Player

IT’S OLD NEWS BY NOW, BUT I feel it deserves more ink. I mean, “Wow!” With one Tumblr post, Taylor Swift took on the arrogant and mighty Apple and launched some massively public fireworks for the simple fact that recording artists should be paid for their music. Like her widespread charity work, she didn’t do this for herself, either. (She acknowledged in her post that she is certainly capable of supporting her band and crew without record-sales royalties.) She did it for new artists, innovators, and, well, all musicians who struggle to eek out a living wage. And, just like that, Apple Music— which had initially decided not to pay artists a cent during the free 90-day rollout of its streaming service to consumers—reversed its position. Scan your brain to…

Jason McClaren Get lost in an idea-that's a good one. Steve Tuccillo I play. Then I play some more. Tylo Jason Naude Listen to a great guitar track. Loz Ruston Close my eyes. Listen to my guitar. Simon Lock Play single string melodies. Tony Strand I crank the hell out of my favorite tunes. Works every time. Angelo Noal Alcohol. Chris Hogan Have an interesting life. Dave Henry I channel Garth Brooks. Wes O’Neill Believing the audience won’t judge. Alan Dick Listen to Joe Satriani! Jeff Waldman Buy new equipment.…

TWO GUITAR PLAYER READERS recently had their guitar collections upgraded quite a bit after winning one of our giveaway events. The Brian May Signed Guitar Contest was won by Matthew Scott of Boynton Beach, Florida, who not only received a Red Special guitar signed by Brian May (hence the contest title), but also a copy of the book, Brian May’s Red Special: The Story of the Homemade Guitar that Rocked Queen and the World. “I’m a super-huge fan of Brian’s and this win is monumental to me,” said Scott. “I’m really going to enjoy this beauty!” Producer Brian Tarquin launched a guitar giveaway to celebrate the release of his Guitars for Wounded Warriors CD, which donated a share of the proceeds to the Fisher House Foundation that houses military families…

GREETINGS FELLOW GUITAR ENTHUSIasts, hobbyists, and innocent bystanders. Today we have the story about how I met one of my idols and bought one of the coolest guitars in my collection. We are talking about Terry Reid’s old highly modified 1952 Fender Telecaster that he bought in Chicago, circa 1968, while he was the support act for Cream’s final U.S. tour. Now for those of you wondering, “Who is Terry Reid?”, Terry is one of the most talented singers, songwriters, and artists I know. His music was way ahead of its time and his voice is a mix of Steve Marriott and Sam Cooke. (Check out “Seed of Memory” or “To Be Treated.” It’s all good.) Last summer I got a call from a guitar dealer buddy of mine asking…

DLS EFFECTS ROTOSPIN Goodies Rotary speaker effect with Fast and Slow controls to set speaker rotation speeds, and Tweeter Intensity, Bass Rotor, and Ramp knobs that let you adjust horn rotation intensities and ramp up/down times. Switchable overdrive section. Price $309 retail More Info www.dlseffects.com BEDELL WILDFIRE SERIES Goodies Available in dreadnought, orchestra, and parlor body shapes, and crafted from solid Adirondack spruce and figured big-leaf maple tonewoods. K&K Pure Mini electronics, maple binding, figured maple peghead veneer, and mosaic inlays. Deluxe hardshell case included. Price $3,990 retail More Info bedellguitars.com VOX VX II Goodies 30-watt amp with all-new VET (Virtual Element Technology) modeling circuits. 11 amp models ranging from classic American and British amps of the 1950s and 1960s to modern, highgain tone monsters. Eight effects, 22 user presets.…

FAITH NO MORE’S JON HUDSON CARES A lot, and not just because that’s a reference to the band’s 1985 single. No, he really does care a lot apparently, because he can scarcely answer a question or voice an opinion without adding a “not that there’s anything wrong with that”-style disclaimer. He is so thoughtful, soft-spoken, and considered in his responses that it’s hard to imagine anyone taking issue with what he has to say, but he clarifies his statements just the same, lending a cool weight and humble gravity to his words. Hudson spoke to GP in measured tones (for the first time since his October 1997 interview on the then-new release Album of the Year) about the first FNM album in 18 years, Sol Invictus [Reclamation], his sound, and…

ALTHOUGH MUCH OF today’s electric-guitar recording is done using plug-ins and virtual amp models, I am still a holdout for miking amps. The manipulation of sound in the air remains my favorite way to get a unique guitar tone. You may argue that playing direct through a plug-in produces a more modern sound, and I would agree that sometimes a whacked-out, heavily effected guitar tone is easier to achieve using modeling technology. But when you go that route and select your sound from software presets, the risk is that you will print a generic “out of the box” tone. This is very convenient, of course, but consider this: By plugging into an amp, selecting mics, auditioning mic positions, and stringing together a handful of pedals—some hi-fi rackmount reverb effects, a…

Where Are the Damn Guitars??? Ever since the calendar flipped over to the 2000s, the top five live concerts by attendance are mostly devoid of raging, rock and roll guitars. Sigh. But just think about how far the turnout for live-music events has come since the Beatles pulleda "paltry" 56,600 fans into New York's Shea Stadium in 1965... Babbu Maan | 4,080,000 Dirba, India. 2008 Concerto del Primo Maggio | 2,350,000 Rome, Italy .2006 Paul Van Dyk | 1,600,000 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil .2006 Peace Without Borders | 1,500,000 The Rolling Stones | 1,500,000 SOURCE: INFOGRAPHIC GUIDE TO MUSIC, GRAHAM BETTS [OCTOPUS BOOKS]…

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ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT ROCK GUITARISTS WHO BECAME FAMOUS IN THE 1970S IS THAT MANY of them continue to make albums and tour, albeit typically on a smaller scale than in their heyday. I recently had the chance to see Pat Travers and his band at a bar in Northern California, and it was an intense experience. Travers, his guitarist Kirk McKim, bassist Rodney O’Quinn, and drummer Sandy Gennaro absolutely killed it on a set that included old hits like “Heat in the Street” and “Snortin’ Whiskey,” cuts from his most recent studio albums Can Do and Retro Rocket, and classic covers such as “Born Under a Bad Sign” and an amazingly dynamic rendition of “Red House.” When I checked the GP index the next day and found…

IT APPEARS TO BE A VERY GOOD YEAR FOR PEDAL ZEALOTS. Heck, we just reviewed more than 120 stompboxes in our annual Pedalmania issue (June 2015), and new releases just keep on coming. The latest goodies include 65 Amps interpretation of classic fuzz boxes, Rupert Neve’s collaboration with Bogner, a big ol’ tube echo from Crucial Audio, and a Binson Echorec revamp by Italy’s Gurus. 65 AMPS COLOUR BENDER As one of my prized possessions is a Mick Ronson Signature Tone Bender (apparently worth $640 today if the web is to be believed), I was intrigued to see how 65 Amps voiced their version of the classic, mid-’60s Sola Sound Tone Bender MKII. The Colour Bender ($295 street) uses three germanium transistors like the original, and while my era-appropriate Ronson…

IF YOU’RE A RECORDING NERD AS MUCH as you are a guitar-gear geek, then it’s big news that AEA offers affordable ribbon microphones based on the classic 1930s RCA 44. Far from costing multi-thousands for a vintage ribbon, the N8 ($1,098 street) and N22 ($899 street) are within striking distance of most home-studio budgets. In addition, these evolutions of the classic ribbon design are crafted by AEA co-founder Wes Dooley, who started servicing RCA 44s after RCA closed its microphone division in 1976. In other words, the dude knows what he is doing. TEST ARENA The varied signal paths for the N8 and N22 included a Manley VoxBox, a Universal Audio 2-610, an API 3124, a Digidesign Mic Pre 8, and a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. Test tracks were piano,…

AS I MAY HAVE MENTIONED before, when I was in high school I took lessons from former Miles Davis guitarist Dave Creamer. I was getting into arpeggios, and he taught me about intervallic arpeggios. Funny story: When I found these intervallic arpeggios that I had written back in the day, I had sort of forgotten what the definition was. I Googled it and all that came up was “Jason Becker on Intervallic Arpeggios.” This led me to believe that Dave Creamer invented the term. I think the basic idea is that the notes skip around rather than just go up and down. These days there are a lot of players who do arpeggios the way I started doing them in ’87, which is very flattering. I am totally honored. I…

GOT A QUESTION FOR YOUR COMMUNITY? guitplyr@musicplayer.com HERE’S A “HOME BREW” THAT I built in 1999. My son did the wood burning in 2004, when he was 16—his first attempt at it! It has a Carvin Hardtail body, a 24.75"-scale Warmoth “thrift shop” conversion neck, a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails (wired in parallel) in the neck, a DiMarzio Red Velvet in the middle, a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge, Master Volume and Tone knobs with a series/parallel switch for the bridge pickup, Dunlop 6105 frets, and a tung-oil finish. This father and son project sounds and plays great, and that’s why I love it. —DOUG COFFMAN…

JEFFERSON STARSHIP RELEASED THEIR album Red Octopus 40 years ago. Fueled by the hit singles “Miracles” and “Play on Love,” the album hit #1 on the Billboard Top 200 and became a staple of rock—and ultimately classic rock—radio. Lead guitarist Craig Chaquico was 20 years old when the record was released, and he recalls some of his memories of the making (and airplay) of that chart topper. —MATT BLACKETT “THE SESSIONS FOR RED OCTOPUS were all done at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco,” recalls Chaquico, “as were the Jefferson Starship platinum albums, Dragonfly, Spitfire, and Earth. “Fresh out of high school art classes, I remember drawing the octopus idea for the logo with a heart and tentacles on a notepad in the control room between breaks and playbacks. It…

Here’s an insight from the pages of Jim and Dara Crockett’s new book, Guitar Player: The Inside Story of the First Two Decades of the Most Successful Guitar Magazine Ever [Backbeat/Hal Leonard]—a collection of oral histories from the editors, photographers, artists, and advertisers who were in the magazine’s orbit during that era. “Guitar Player was the go-to magazine when I was starting my career in the ’70s, and one of the few that embraced all styles of playing. Early GP press proved to be a wonderful means of access to the non-classical guitar world. It led to multiple GP Readers’ Poll awards in the ’90s and beyond, and to future GP features. Reading GP in those early days helped to educate me on the rock and jazz stars of the…

ALTHOUGH HE IS PRIMARILY THOUGHT OF as the longest-tenured guitarist of Yes (and an original member of Asia), Steve Howe has been issuing solo albums since 1975. And with a multitude of these releases offered over the years, it may prove a tad difficult to keep track of Howe’s solo output. That’s where the recently released Anthology: A Solo Career Retrospective comes in handy. Consisting of 33 tracks recorded over a 36-year period, the wide-ranging material touches upon dirty rock ’n’ roll (“So Bad”), tunes that would have fit perfectly on ’80s-era Yes or Asia albums (“Sensitive Chaos”), tranquil country (a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Buckets of Rain”), and a collaboration with the English Chamber Orchestra (a reading of Howe’s classic “Mood for a Day”). And this is not the…

A GUITAR PLAYER PRODUCT GUIDE ALTHOUGH THEY’RE PROBABLY THE MOST TAKEN-FORgranted part of our beloved instrument, the fact is that guitar strings are where it all starts. And changing your strings is probably the cheapest and easiest way to improve your tone, get a fresh perspective, and recalibrate the creative part of your brain—and that’s just if you replace your old strings with the same type and gauge. If you want to start experimenting with different gauges, materials, and construction methods, you can really open up new possibilities. Go heavy-gauge and tune down a step or more. Go super light and put a guitar in Nashville tuning. Throw a set of flatwounds on an electric or put a set of coated, treated, or cryogenically activated strings on your acoustic. It…

WITHOUT COMING CLOSE TO COPYING anything from the golden-age British amp makers, Michael Koski of XITS Sound has absolutely nailed the aesthetic of the early ’60s in his new rendition of the X10. You’d be forgiven for thinking at first glance—or second—that this sweetie of a 17-watt, 1x12 combo was some long forgotten design from Dick Denny’s workbench circa 1960, and its quality and construction bears out that impression too. Ultra compact at just 17" x 17" x 10.5", the unit features cabinetry made from 1/2" Baltic birch ply covered in custom gray linen-pattern vinyl, all-wool “dot” grillecloth with tastefully modernist logo plate, a Bespoke-made leather handle, and a back-painted plexi control panel. If you’re a sucker for style, you’ll just want this thing without even hearing it! After founding…

LET’S ENHANCE YOUR DRY electric and acoustic guitar tracks by constructing what I like to call “The Sparkler”— a sophisticated audio “brightener” that adds definition without treble equalization. Here’s how… BASIC SETUP The Sparkler needs to be a parallel effect. Tracktion and Studio One Pro V3 allow parallel effects routing within a channel. Although several amp sims can do parallel internal routings, only Guitar Rig has the needed modules. So, in most situations, you’ll need to set up a bus and insert the Sparkler as a bus effect. Use the guitar channel’s send control to feed some signal to the bus with the Sparkler. Because this bus terminates in the master bus (like other mixer channels), you can add the effect by turning up the Sparkler bus fader. HOW IT…

SOMETIME IN 1972, I THINK it was, I found myself in the control room of the New York Record Plant’s Studio A with producer Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper, and guitarists Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton, listening to the playback of a song called “Sick Things” from the group’s Billion Dollar Babies sessions. I was a bit nervous, because I really wasn’t sure what or where I was going to play. If you’ve heard the piece, you know it’s a pretty scary-sounding song, but imagine hearing it for the first time in the early 1970s, and you can certainly imagine how I felt. After the playback, Bob said that he wanted me to play only during the outro, and he wanted something in a “Clapton/Cream-style blues.” That made me relax, because…