Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 i Guitar Player

ONE OF MY BIG SURPRISES WHEN I FIRST TOOK THE job at Guitar Player in late 1997 was the ferocious controversy over the concept of “tone.” I must admit I hadn’t expended much critical thought about the sound of a guitar. By then, I had been playing electric guitar seriously for more than 20 years, and I had experimented with tons of different amps, effects, strings, guitars, and even early wireless systems. I knew what guitar sounds I liked for me, but I didn’t focus incisively on the “colors” of other players. I was more concerned with hearing good songs driven by impassioned and unique guitar playing. But, back in late 1990s, I found the “editor me” walking smack into a major battle over whether early digital amps were devil’s…

THANKS TO GUITAR PLAYER’S AWESOME MANUFACTURING partners, we can celebrate our 50th anniversary by giving away “birthday gifts” to our readers. This month, Blackstar Amplification offers its LT Drive and LT Dual effects pedals. The LT Drive offers valvelike response, a huge amount of volume on tap, and controls for Gain, Level, and Tone. The two-channel LT Dual delivers clean boost to high gain, and includes Blackstar’s patented Infinite Shape Feature circuit that can dial in British or American-style distortion/overdrive tones, as well as any sound in-between. For a chance to win one of these pedals, simply send an email with the subject line “GP50 Blackstar” to mmolenda@nbmedia.com. The deadline for entries is July 20, 2017. We’ll select our winners at random and announce their names in an upcoming issue.…

I T ’S ALMOST SUPERNATURA L . Listen to any of the songs on Chuck Berry’s posthumous final album, Chuck, and you’ll hear a strutting, cocksure rockand- roll rebel, instead of a very old man quietly fading into history. This is a guy who announced his new album at 90, still drove himself to gigs at 88, kept his marriage together for 68 years (he dedicated Chuck to his wife, Thelmetta), and even learned how to use Pro Tools in order to work on his tracks. When he died on March 18, we not only lost one of the architects of rock music, we also bid adieu to probably the closest thing guitarists may ever have to an eternal flame. For our March 1988 issue, GP’s Tom Wheeler talked to…

Bo Diddley What is the name of that rectangular guitar you use? I call it the "Big B." I had always wanted a guitar that was different, that would be me. I wanted something that would be just mine and no one else's. So I went to the Gretsch company and asked them if they could make one for me. They said sure, so I told them what I wanted it to look like and what I wanted in it. How is it different from any other guitar? I can only tell you that the pickups are wound different. Cm not going to say how, though. And I can't tell you what else is unusual about it. Those are my own secrets, but you can take it from me that…

CORT/ MANSON CLASSIC TC Goodies U.K.-based Manson Guitar Works partnered with Cort to create the Classic TC, which is based on Manson’s MA Classic, but features new hardware and a custom pickup system that combines a vintage-sounding neck pickup with a bright single-coil in the bridge position. Other specs include a solid ash body, satin-finish maple neck, rosewood fretboard, and a six-on-a-side headstock design that facilitates behindthe- nut access. Price $699 retail More Info cortguitars.com MAGNATONE STUDIO COLLECTION LYRIC Goodies Magnatone has redesigned its distinguishedlooking Lyric amplifier, making the single-ended, class-A design more gig-ready with a larger cabinet, a custom 12" ceramic-magnet speaker, and a 6L6 power tube. In addition to Volume and Tone knobs, the Lyric’s control panel features a NFB (negative feedback) switch that changes gain and harmonics…

WHEN I FIRST MET Allan Holdsworth in the ’70s, he invited me over to his house to jam. All I knew about him was what I’d heard on Bill Bruford’s One of a Kind album [1979]. With one listen, it was instantly apparent that this was a very different guitar player. Sitting across from the innovative genius and playing with him was already intimidating enough, but, one day, we decided to play his new song “Three Sheets to the Wind.” To my ears, his concept for chord melody seemed to be aligned with Ted Green’s famous book Chord Chemistry, in that the three notes in a major triad may be voiced on any trio of strings, using any combination of intervals. Notice the E chord in Fig. 1. The third,…

JIMMY STEWART—WHO IS STILL KICKIN ’ AT 79 YEARS OLD, AN DISTHE SUB JECT OF AN upcoming documentary about his 65-year career in the music business—wrote GP’s The Complete Musician column from 1971 to 1981. Stewart’s 1,200+ film and record dates as a session ace, his work with Gábor Szabó, his gigs as musical director and/or arranger for artists such as Andy Williams and Lainie Kazan, and his roles as a teacher (Musicians Institute) and educator (as author of more than 20 books) certainly made him the perfect mentor for expanding the musical knowledge of our readers.…

As part of Guitar Player’s 50th Anniversary, we are celebrating the advertisers who believed in founder Bud Eastman’s mad idea, and supported the infant magazine through its first five years, 1967-1972. They are: Acoustic Amps, Alfred Publications, AKG, Altec- Lansing, Ampeg, Bigsby, Bill Russell Capo, Black Diamond Strings, Carlsboro Amps, Coral, Danelectro, Darco Strings, Dunlop, Eko, Electro-Harmonix, Electro-Voice, Epiphone, Ernie Ball, Fender, GHS Strings, Gibson, Gretsch, Guild, Hagstrom Guitars, Hallmark, Hammond Organ (Leslie), Harmony Guitars, Heathkit, Hohner, JBL, Kustom, La Bella Strings, Martin, Mel Bay Publications, Messenger Guitars, Mosrite, Ovation, Peavey, Randall, Rickenbacker, Robb Guitars, Rowe/DeArmond, Sigma, Standel, Sunn, TWA, Vox, Yamaha. Thank you all! JOIN THE GP COMMUNITY! acebook.com/guitarplayermag twitter.com/guitarplayernow instagram.com/guitarplayer…

JOIN THE GP COMMUNITY! SOUND OFF! GET EXCLUSIVE NEWS. COMMENT. CRITIQUE. SHARE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-NEWSLETTER. FACEBOOK.COM/GUITARPLAYERMAG TWITTER.COM/GUITARPLAYERNOW GUITARPLAYER.COM MICHAEL MOLENDA Editor In Chief mmolenda@nbmedia.com ART THOMPSON Senior Editor athompson@nbmedia.com KEVIN OWENS Managing Editor kowens@nbmedia.com JUDE GOLD Los Angeles Editor judegold@gmail.com JIMMY LESLIE Frets Editor jl@jimmyleslie.com DAVE HUNTER Gear Section & Video Contributor dhunterwordsmusic@yahoo.com PAUL HAGGARD Art Director phaggard@musicplayer.com…

TUNING IS PART OF PLAYING GUITAR, whether you use a conventional tuner or automatic tuning. However, all tuning methods have a major limitation: They can tune only the open strings. Frets are set to an even-tempered scale, which has inherent pitch errors. Furthermore, when you first pluck a string, it’s under more tension, so it starts sharp before it settles down to its final pitch— and even that “final” pitch can vary by several cents over the string’s decay. In live performance, these small tuning errors aren’t much of an issue. But in the studio, the guitar may be in a mix along with perfectly tuned instruments such as electronic keyboards. Although many pitch errors may be desirable for adding “character,” others might be problematic. Fortunately, there’s a solution. ENTER…

OWNING YOUR TONE MEANS simply that: Your sound defines who you are as a guitar player. So simple, but why are some players able to achieve a definitive and instantly recognizable sound— think Carlos Santana, SRV, Billy Gibbons, Jeff Beck, Jerry Garcia, Jimmy Page, Eric Johnson, and Wes Montgomery to name a few—while others remain harder for the listener to name-check within a few notes? Is it as fundamental as knowing what you want to sound like and choosing the right tools to achieve it? Is it about cloistering yourself like a monk and practicing 12 hours a day? Is it about what you grew up listening to and how it was assimilated into your personal playing? Yes, it’s all those things and much more, because everyone develops differently as…

FISHMAN’S SA220 PERFORMANCE System has a great reputation among solo performers and small groups, and the new SA300x Performance Combo+ System on review here addresses user needs for greater low-end support as well as expanded input options. The SA330x Combo+ System consists of three primary pieces, all of which must be purchased separately: The SA300x unit itself, the SA Sub subwoofer, and the SA Expand 4-channel mixer (which ups the overall channel input count to six). The main component is a 330-watt, fulldispersion line array system with six 4" mid/ woofers and a 1" neodymium soft-dome liquid- cooled tweeter. It has two combo 1/4"/XLR inputs, and its controls include channel Gain, EQ (Low/Mid/High), four reverb options with Level controls, and anti-feedback EQ notching. The SA Sub packs its own 300-watt…

I HAVE BEEN HAUNTING MUSIC STORES since I was a kid back in the ’60s, and I still get that same sense of wonderment—like, “What will they come up with next?” Guitars aren’t just tools to me. They never were. They weren’t simply the conduit between a player and musical expression—they were an extension of the player’s overall image. A guitar had to look like it belonged on stage. For example, I remember mildly resenting guys who used ES-335s in a rock setting, because those guitars looked too tame for rock and rock—at least to me. But there’s no argument in my mind that the Teisco V2T was meant for the stage. Originally introduced by EKO, and known as the Rokes model—it was designed for the groovy, Italian psychedelic band…

PEER COMMENT I got my first issue of Guitar Player in 1974. I love the lessons and I’m a huge fan of Jesse Gress. But I spend so much time going through stacks of issues— because I’ve kept every one—looking for certain lessons that I remember, but can’t find. I hope you will consider publishing an index issue at some point so that I could track down my favorite lessons. Also, Molenda’s March 2017 Noize from the Editor column was hilarious, because everything he said brought back all the same memories. Yes, I did have a ’65 Mustang, my first guitar was an off-the-musicstore- wall Decca electric, and the first band I learned from was the Who. I watched all the television shows he did, but I completely forgot about…

WHEN LARRY CORYELL PASSED AWAY in his hotel room in the early morning of February 19, 2017, I soon realized I not only lost my dad, but so many others lost a guitar hero dubbed, “the Godfather of Fusion.” Larry died in New York, after completing a weekend at the Iridium Jazz Club. He was a true player to the end. Those who attended his final performance testified he was on top of his game, and he left to a standing ovation. I remember thinking at his memorial service that I would never have the pleasure and excitement of playing with him again. This makes carrying on his legacy all the more important. Keyboardist Mike Mandel—a long-time bandmate and friend—recalls that while Larry was enrolled at college in Washington state,…

LIKE A KISSIN’ COUSIN OF JOE GORE’S DUH REMEDIAL FUZZ, THE BRAND NEW ERUPTER Perfect Fuzz has a whimsical name, one big ol’ knob, and a footswitch, and that’s all it requires to unleash a tempest of gorgeously savage caterwauls of pungent aural fury. Yep—this was the sound of the Erupter ($145 street) through a Vox AC30, a humbucker-equipped Framus Panthera Supreme II, and a single-coil California Guitars T-style. Although there’s no Level control here, you get a reasonable signal boost when you hit the switch, as well as an increase in low-midrange frequencies. The amount of mayhem depends on which side you set the Bias knob. (It’s like a vastly more ferocious take on those Left Twix/Right Twix commercials.) Full Left Knob produces gritty, glitch-y spittle that can sound…

It’s easy to describe Ben Lacy as a “one-man band,” because he has a stunning talent for seamlessly weaving guitar, bass, drums, percussion, keyboards, and vocal melodies into crowd-pleasing solo pieces. But the bigger story is that Lacy is one of the funkiest guitar players ever to pick up the instrument. Just listen to him perform solo renditions of “Kashmir,” “Fame,” “Get Lucky,” or “Sir Duke” on the podcast. There are no loopers, octave pedals, or extended-range guitars involved in Lacy’s impressive “stacks of parts” (as he calls them)—just a Brian Moore i2 6-string, a set of .010-.046 Elixir Nanoweb strings, an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Nano (for emulating an ambient, John Bonham- style “snare drum”), and a bass amp (for maximum “wumph”). “For a snare sound, I typically pop the…

IN MY LIFE AS A GUITAR PLAYER, there are few pivotal musical moments. I think I am not alone—at least among those of us who came up in the ’80s and ’90s—for whom hearing Allan Holdsworth for the first time was exactly that. All one needs to do is look at the change in Eddie Van Halen’s playing between Van Halen and Van Halen II to see the impact—a debt that Eddie later paid by securing a deal for Allan for Road Games. Listen to any of us who popped into the public eye in that time period—Eric Johnson, Satriani, Vai, Shawn Lane, Vernon Reid, etc. The list is endless, and the best of us incorporated what Allan taught us as DNA we could splice onto our own, and grow…

LARRY CORYELL WAS ONE OF THE most influential guitar players of the 20th Century and beyond. His pioneering style of jazz-rock electric-guitar playing in the 1960s was revolutionary, and it spurred the entire fusion movement that came of age in the 1970s—especially when Coryell formed his own jazz-fusion band, The Eleventh House, in 1973. I was very fortunate to work with Coryell in late 2016—a few months before his passing at 73 years old on February 19 of this year—when he contributed to my album Orlando in Heaven. The album is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the June 12, 2016, Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. Partial proceeds from Orlando in Heaven will benefit Catholic Charities of Central Florida, which provides support services for the Pulse victims…

ONE OF BRIAN MAY’S MOST FAMOUS solos, the lead to “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” was cut with a Fender Esquire into a Mesa/Boogie amp. And yet, upon hearing it, people still say, “You can recognize that guy’s sound anywhere, after just one note.” How is that possible? Why does Eddie Van Halen sound exactly like Eddie Van Halen no matter which of his many rigs he plugs into? Why is the same thing true about Bonnie, B.B., Stevie Ray, and Jimi? It’s obviously not the gear, so what is it? Is it the note choices, the phrasing, the attack, the bends, the vibrato? Yes, it is … As we’ve said, all of those things—and there are certainly other factors—make up not just the style but the sound of those…

WHEN CONSIDERING WHAT KIND OF amplifier you’ll need to make that righteous new guitar sing, the choices are overwhelming. You can spend $2,000 or more on a hand-wired boutique 1x12 combo that has one channel and cranks out 20 watts, or less than half that on a “production” 50-watt tube combo with footswitchable channels, spring reverb, and an effects loop. You might go the digital route, and get a 120-watt 1x12 combo that features tube modeling, extensive effects, and comes in at under $400. How about a solid-state combo with 100 watts and a bevy of digitally rendered effects for less than $350? Gee, what a surprise that there are tons of affordable options out there for those who want maximum bang for the buck. But even though the low-price…

CONSIDERED FROM A 21ST-CENTURY perspective, it’s pretty incredible that two of the most popular electric guitars ever produced survived a stormy confluence of apathy and incredulity at the time of their origins to become top-tier rock icons. As hard as it is to believe today, the original single-cutaway Les Paul Standard was deleted from Gibson’s catalog after 1960 due to a general lack of popularity and declining sales, only to be replaced in 1961 with a new design that had a radical look that Les himself vehemently objected to. But while we know the single-cut, maple-topped Les Paul would eventually come back with a vengeance to become the most valuable standard-production electric guitar of all time, its replacement—despite Les’ own objections—would be an almost-overnight success in its own right. Although…

From the original Guitar Player, May 1975 IF YOU WANT TO EXPLORE MERLE TRAVIS-STYLE COUNTRY PICKING—AND, LET’S FACE FACTS, ALL acoustic guitarists should have some familiarity with the techniques of that musical icon—Happy Traum’s Strictly Folk column from May 1975 provides some good tips to get you started. “Fair and Tender Ladies” will teach you how to negotiate alternating bass lines with your thumb, as well as how to free up your pinky for the treble melodies.…