Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Guitar Player

SOME OF THE best musical collaborations are those that on first glance look a little “off.” I don’t mean weird linkups like Jimmy Page, Tom Morello and P. Diddy reworking “Kashmir” for the 1998 Godzilla film, or Metallica and Lou Reed teaming up to make Lulu. I’m thinking more along the lines of Eddie Van Halen laying down the solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” Omar Rodríguez-López and John Frusciante connecting for their self-titled album, David Gilmour and the Orb conspiring on Metallic Spheres…and most certainly this issue’s cover stars Les Claypool and Sean Lennon reuniting for South of Reality, their new, and second, full-length album. The musical union of Primus bassist Claypool and multi-instrumentalist savant Lennon is inspired, entertaining and, on first glance, a little surprising. You might not…

COUNTRY ARTIST LINDSAY Ell made a big statement when her debut album, The Project (Stony Creek), landed on Nashville’s Music Row in 2017. In “guitar town,” where some of the most capable guitar-playing stars have session pickers play on their records, Ell challenged the status quo by writing, singing and playing her own songs and solos. On the cover, she’s pictured holding one of her Stratocasters. “I felt like it wouldn’t be my record if I didn’t play on it,” she says. “Playing guitar on my record is so important. It’s the other half of the song.” A native of Calgary, Alberta, Ell started out on piano but switched to guitar after hearing mainstream country stars like Shania Twain. She quickly fell in love with her new instrument and the…

GUITARS PRODUCE EXTREMELY high initial transients when you first pick a string, which can be an issue with digital recording. If you set the input of your audio interface high enough to accommodate the peaks, the guitar’s average level remains low. This can result in more noise, less apparent sustain and the guitar’s level not hitting the “sweet spot” for processors like compressors and amp sims. You could place a studio-quality limiter between the guitar and the interface, but few limiters have instrument-level inputs, and the transients can cause pumping and other undesirable audio artifacts. So here’s the solution: a passive limiter that requires no power, costs under $2 in parts, and is small enough to fit inside a small box, guitar cable or even an audio interface input. Because…

“PLAYING WITH LES IS A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE BECAUSE I’M GIVEN DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES, ESPECIALLY IN TERMS OF PLAYING SO MUCH LEAD GUITAR.”— SEAN LENNON BACK IN 2015, Sean Lennon’s band the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger was the opening act on a tour co-headlined by Primus and Dinosaur Jr. Which is how Lennon ended up in an impromptu jam session with Primus bassist and lead vocalist Les Claypool one night before a show. “We were playing on acoustics in the back of Les’s tour bus, 10 or 15 minutes before one of us was supposed to go onstage,” Lennon recalls. “And we came up with a bunch of things really fast. I remember Les being like, ‘Yeah, I noticed that you were kind of writing a song as we jammed,…

IF YOU GREW up in the 1970s and were smitten by loud, fast rock and roll, there’s a solid chance it was Kiss’s Ace Frehley who first inspired you to pick up a guitar — or, at the very least, sparked your urge to mime an air axe with unabashed gusto. Kiss took showmanship into the stratosphere with their cooler-than-hell futuristic outfits, quasi-superhero makeup and tightly choreographed concert extravaganzas that included fire breathing, smoking guitars and tons of pyro. All spectacle aside, however, the band played tight, solid hard rock and wrote some damn catchy tunes, too. And while bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons and rhythm guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley have kept an incarnation of Kiss going since the early ’70s, it’s the original lineup, which lasted until the departure of Frehley and…

“I LIKE TO play acoustic guitar really loud,” Bob Weir told Guitar Player at the 2018 Winter NAMM show, where Pigtronix heralded the release of his Real Deal Acoustic Preamp. Weir, Grateful Dead tech Mike McGinn and the Pigtronix team led by David Koltai collaborated on the pedal, which is designed to facilitate a natural acoustic sound at high stage volumes. The Real Deal incorporates variable low- and high-frequency filters that can be used in either Single Source or Dual Source mode, allowing a player to plug in a typical acoustic-electric guitar and play, or use a more complex dual-signal setup incorporating a mic, as Weir does. The simple story is that the Real Deal came in handy on a gig with a rock quartet, where I ran a Taylor…

IN 1986, PETE Anderson’s guitar work with Dwight Yoakam, together with Richard Bennett’s playing on Steve Earle’s Guitar Town record, was ground zero for the twang revival that followed. Anderson recently decided to extend his range with a vibrato-equipped baritone. Having built a relationship with Reverend Guitars that spans two signature models, he worked with the company to create a baritone version of his Eastsider S, a Tele-style guitar with a three-pickup configuration. Like the Eastsider S, the new signature Pete Anderson Eastsider Baritone sports a chambered korina body and three alnico pickups: one T-type in the bridge and two S-types in the middle and neck. Unlike that model, the new guitar has a 28 5/8–inch-scale full-length baritone neck and a traditional-style Wilkinson WV6 SB bridge with stamped-steel saddles, a…

Raid Dana’s Gear Stash! The coolest part about my role as Guitar Player’s Gear Coordinator is ending up with tons of awesome products that our editors have evaluated throughout the year. Occasionally, when the reviews are complete, some generous manufacturers offer up their wares to our community, giving our loyal readers a chance to “Raid My Stash.” This month, we’re offering BAE Audio’s Hot Fuzz distortion pedal. This groovy hybrid pedal is essentially two effects in one. The left side is a high-frequency boost, and the right side is a fuzz box designed in the spirit of British 1970s-style units. For a chance to win this pedal, simply send an email with “Hot Fuzz” in the subject line to nbmgearcoordinator@gmail.com. Keep in mind that all review pedals have been used…

IMAGINE IT’S THE Summer of Love in San Francisco’s storied Haight-Ashbury district. Hundreds of people have spontaneously gathered in Golden Gate Park to listen, dance and vibe to a five-piece combo onstage, whose members are deftly playing a bewitching blend of rock, blues, folk and psychedelia. Those with even a basic knowledge of rock and roll lore might rightly envision the Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead as the artists at this historical cultural epicenter. But on any given afternoon, the band in question was just as likely to be the Ace of Cups, a pioneering all-female outfit that was as prominent on the scene as its more famous peers but which has, until recently, been nearly lost to history. The Ace of Cups were formed in 1967 by guitarist/bassist/harmonica…

IN THE ESTIMATION of many great guitarists, the blackface Fender Princeton Reverb is the finest club and studio amp ever created. There’s so much empirical evidence behind that claim that it’s a tough one to knock off its perch. The combo was famously employed in the studio by Clarence White and Tommy Tedesco, who played the main guitar parts on several Beach Boys hits, among countless other recordings, and it is beloved by Telecaster virtuoso Jim Campilongo, whose devotion to it is near-religious. Duane Allman is purported to have used a Princeton Reverb for his slide parts on Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla,” and the amp’s iconic tone can be heard on a handful of seminal Steely Dan guitar solos. To put it simply, this petite powerhouse has long proved…

RELEASED ON THE Milestone label in 1967, The Immortal Blind Lemon Jefferson is a compilation of selected 78s the great blues guitarist recorded for Paramount from 1927 through 1928. As one of the earliest blues recording artists, Blind Lemon Jefferson was among the first to attain exposure via disc. This, together with his genius, made him a monumental contributor to the blues as we know it. Dubbed the father of Texas blues, his influence has impacted many musicians, such as Lead Belly, T-Bone Walker, Charlie Patton and Chet Atkins, who called Jefferson “one of his first fingerstyle influences.” His music has been recorded by a diverse crew that includes Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Phish and the Beatles, who covered his song “Match Box Blues” as “Matchbox,” learning it via Carl…

YOU ARE INVITED to play this parlor game: Who among the legendary guitarists has evolved as a player over the decades? You’ll find the list is small. Jim Hall did, right up until his death in 2013, and Jeff Beck continues to explore his craft. Many other veteran guitarists are still playing, but are they growing artistically? Robben Ford began as a blues prodigy, playing with legendary artists Jimmy Witherspoon and Charlie Musselwhite, and transitioned into a fusion master as a member of bands like the Yellowjackets and Tom Scott’s L.A. Express. The Inside Story, his 1979 release, reflected his jazz-rock abilities, and his brief tenure with Miles Davis in 1986 certified his credentials as a modern jazz player. Many of Ford’s fans would have been happy to see him continue…

IF YOU’VE BEEN paying any attention to Frets articles in the past couple of issues, you now understand that tonewoods contribute to how dark or bright an instrument sounds, while manipulation of the woods determines the frequency equalization. “A luthier can control the balance of bass and treble by way the braces are placed and how they’re shaped, just like working the graphic EQ on a stereo,” says Santa Cruz Guitars founder Richard Hoover. He was happy to offer some examples and provide insights into another interesting equalization factor, namely soundhole size. What’s the general rule for manipulating an acoustic guitar top to control equalization? Anything that makes the top more flexible increases bass, and anything that stiffens it increases treble. If the top is done intelligently, it’s not going…

DESPITE HAVING HAD some form of home studio since the ’80s, I never really got into plug-in amp simulations. I was always more comfortable with mics and amps or various hardware modeling devices (like SansAmps or the Hughes & Kettner zenTera), and I’ve relied almost exclusively on my beloved Kemper Profiler for the past several years. But as amp sims have gotten better, and I’ve become more tech savvy, I’ve been curious to explore the multitudinous sounds and flexibility these magical programs bring. Producer Howard Benson and engineer/mixer Mike Plotnikoff have crafted killer guitar tones for Bon Jovi, Santana, My Chemical Romance and many others. So when I got the chance to check out this STL Tonality plug-in suite they created, I jumped at it. STL Tonality supports VST, AU…

WHEN IT COMES to recording guitars, amp-modeling software has come a long way, but there’s still nothing like the sound of your favorite amp turned up to the point where it starts to sing. Unfortunately, that point is well past a decibel level that neighbors or family will allow, which is where the Fryette Power Load comes in. This device lets you plug your guitar into your favorite amplifiers (up to 200 watts) and run the signals directly into your audio interface, bypassing the actual speakers (or not, as we shall see). The Power Load provides a variable reactive load that makes the amp behave as if it’s driving a speaker, which is a crucial element of any amp’s sound and feel. Some attenuators add a reactive element to simulate…

AS AWESOME AS the venerable Stratocaster is, there have always been a couple of things about the design that never made sense to me. Like, why does the one pickup that needs a tone control — the bright bridge pickup — not have one? And why, if that pickup is already a little on the bright side, is it angled to add even more highs to the treble side? One guy who mitigated the latter issue, either by default or design, was James Marshall Hendrix. By flipping a righty Strat over and playing it lefty, Jimi benefitted from reversing the bridge pickup, inching the treble poles closer to the neck and nudging the bass side closer to the bridge, for warmer highs and tighter lows. There was another advantage: The…

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“I CONSIDER MYSELF to be in a very unique and privileged position,” Vivian Campbell says. “I can’t imagine there are too many people who have had as colorful and as varied a career as I’ve had.” Campbell has been on quite the journey since he formed his first group, Sweet Savage, in Belfast, Ireland, at just 15 years old. From there, he achieved international prominence in the early 1980s as the hotshot young shredder in Ronnie James Dio’s band before going on to play with everyone from Whitesnake to Thin Lizzy to the Riverdogs. These days, Campbell is the guitarist in Def Leppard, which he joined in 1992 following the death of original member Steve Clark. He also just released his sophomore effort with Last in Line, a project that…

BRAZILIAN GUITARIST BADI Assad is a true artist in every sense: inventive, unique, creative, restless and always changing. The younger sister of renowned Brazilian guitarists Sérgio and Odair Assad, she came out of the highly competitive world of classical guitar but soon went in her own musical direction, searching for something more. When she was just 17 years old, Assad was named Best Brazilian Guitarist at the International Villa Lobos Festival. Soon after, she began to experiment by adding mouth percussion and rhythmic body percussion to her performances. In 1995, her solo album Rhythms won Guitar Player’s readers’ poll for Best Classical Album of the Year, and she was voted Best Acoustic Fingerstyle Guitarist by the magazine’s editors. Even though Assad has roots in the classical world, her music defies…

YEARS AGO, I was lucky enough to meet the late, great Allan Holdsworth. I’d always heard he had freakishly big hands. When the opportunity arrived, I was surprised not only that he offered his hand but also at how my own became enveloped in his. But more on that later. The guitar pictured here has nothing at all to do with him. This tiny-looking 1965 Ryder ES-16 is a student guitar made by Rickenbacker for the Ryder Music School. While the “student” status suggests a spartan feature set, don’t be fooled. This is a very cool guitar! WEIRDO FACTOR What I find weird is that, while the guitar is clearly a Rickenbacker, the company’s name isn’t anywhere on it. Once I got past that, I realized that this was made…

MOUNTED IN A SMALL picture frame at Zack Feinberg’s home in New Orleans, a pair of guitar picks illustrate two pivotal moments from his musical journey thus far. Both occurred when he was a kid growing up in New York City. This first took place when Feinberg’s father, a blues fan and guitar player himself, took him to see B.B. King. The impressionable young blues fan was awestruck when King handed him a pick he’d used during the show. Two weeks later, Feinberg was standing among the fans at a Buddy Guy show on Jones Beach, off Long Island. As the blues veteran made his way through the crowd, he too handed the youngster one of his plectrums. “I think it’s unusual that I was into that music at such…

MASTERING THE ART of sweep picking is one of the most ambitious technical endeavors a guitarist can pursue. It takes considerable patience to learn how to perform sweep arpeggios with fluidity, keeping the notes separated so they don’t ring together and sound like a lazily strummed chord. Once you have the technique down, however, you can burn through massive six-string sweeps at breathtaking speeds. But what then? Employing Yngwie-sized roller-coaster sweeps in your solos may sound impressive, but, if overused, it can grow tiresome for your listeners. In this month’s lesson, we’ll give you some helpful tips on how to vary your application of the sweep-picking technique and broaden your phrasing palette to keep things interesting. We’ll also illustrate each step with plenty of helpful musical examples. RHYTHMIC VARIATION One…

IN LAST MONTH’S issue, we spoke with Strokes guitarist/vocalist and solo artist Albert Hammond Jr. about the genesis of his new signature model Strat, which is based on a 1985 reissue of a 1972 model that he purchased when he was 18. Basically stock except for a pickup-switching scheme that was rigged for him by his tech, the guitar has a five-way selector that works like this: Position 1 (all the way back) is the middle pickup, position 2 is the bridge and middle pickups, position 3 is the bridge pickup, position 4 is the bridge and neck pickups, and position 5 (all the way forward) is the neck pickup. Another of his tweaks that carries to the AHJ is a flush-mounted trem, which explains why the guitar ships without…

A FUNNY BIT in the promo about the Mini Superbeetle is that it can make good “décor.” While I get it that shrinking the legendary Vox Super Beatle — a 120-watt solid-state behemoth introduced in 1966 by the Thomas Organ Company — down to something suitable for vibing-up a Tokyo apartment is a fine idea, the Mini Superbeetle is more than just cute. This little rig features the distinctive styling that made the original a hallmark of the ’60s British Invasion, right down to the chrome rails on the 1x10 open-back speaker cabinet. However, instead of being solid-state like its ancestor, the small head incorporates NuTube power, which is described as “vacuum fluorescent display technology developed in a collaboration between Korg and Japan’s Noritake Itron to obtain vacuum tube sound…

BREEDLOVE HAS FOUR new Lu’au Concert Series ukuleles debuting in 2019, including the Concert Natural Shadow E on review here. It’s an affordable instrument, built overseas but designed at Breedlove’s headquarters in Bend, Oregon. Master luthier Kim Breedlove (brother of co-founder Larry Breedlove) found motivation for the Lu’au Series by taking walks in Hawaiian koa forests, but he decided to make the back and sides of these ukes out of myrtlewood, a tonewood he discovered many moons ago growing along Oregon’s Pacific Coast. Capped off with a solid Sitka spruce top from nearby Alaska, this new Breedlove uke represents a combination of South Pacific and Pacific Northwest inspirations. The Lu’au Concert E’s top is finished with an attractive Natural Shadow gloss that gives it an aged vibe, while the reddish…

Contemporary Guitar Improvisation (Utilizing the Entire Fingerboard) Book & CO by Marc Silver Available Now Since 1978, Contemporary Guitar Improvisation is THE classic book for learning guitar improvisation. This innovative system is based on five basic fingering patterns that form the foundation for improvising over virtually any chords, in any key, across the entire fingerboard. All patterns are diagrammed, so note-reading ability is not necessary. Recommended by guitar legend George Benson. MarcSilverGuitarImprov.com $42.00 USO (includes delivery in the U.S.) Ampli-Firebox Atomic Amps Available Now World-class tube amp modelling and effects in a compact stomp box. Customize up to 9 rigs. Footswitch accesses up to 4 sounds in stantly. Free USB editor. XLR and 1/4" outputs. The Ultimate Amp in a Box! MSRP: $299 www.atomicamps.com/amplifirebox Teach Your Kids Guitar Teach Guitar…

> Progressive rock’s most expressive lead guitarist, David Jon Gilmour was born in Cambridge, England, on March 6, 1946. As a youngster, he became interested in music after hearing early rock and roll hits by Bill Haley, Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. At age 13, he borrowed his neighbor’s guitar and never returned it, teaching himself to play using The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide, a lesson book and record by Pete Seeger. While in grammar school, he befriended future Pink Floyd founders Syd Barrett and Roger Waters. > In December 1967, Gilmour was invited to join Pink Floyd as guitarist and co-vocalist to help cover for the increasingly erratic Barrett, who would leave the following year. The band became one of prog-rock’s most influential and successful acts through albums like…