Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2023 i Guitar Player

INTRODUCING THE NEW 1951 TELECASTER® IN BUTTERSCOTCH BLONDE Elegant, timeless and expressive, the Tele® is the Fender that started it all. Built to original specs, the American Vintage 11 1951 Telecaster features a thick "U"-shaped maple neck - a hallmark of 50s Telecaster guitars prized for its substantial feel and excellent tonal qualities. The beautiful ash body is bright and resonant while Pure Vintage '51 Telecaster pickups give it that iconic Tele twang. BUILT TO ORIGINAL SPECS. ALL OF THEM. Ash Body Gloss Nitrocellulose Lacquer Finish One-Piece Maple 1951 "U"-Shaped Neck Maple Fingerboard Vintage Tall Frets Black Dot Inlays Bone Nut Pure Vintage Single Line Tuning Machines Pure Vintage Three Brass Barrel Saddle Bridge One-Ply Black Phenolic Pickguard Pure Vintage '51 Single-Coil Tele Pickups Three-Position Blade switch INTRODUCING THE NEW…

CONSIDERING HOW UBIQUITOUS overdrive pedals are today, it’s difficult to think of a time when they were still in their infancy. Remarkably, the late-’60s to mid-’70s classic rock era achieved its template-setting guitar tones without the aid of any overdrive or distortion pedals as we know them today. Fuzz boxes and treble boosters were present and accounted for, but the magic of amp-like clipping in a compact stompbox didn’t become a reality until the mid to late ’70s, and the ProCo Rat was there at the center of it all. Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the former home of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, ProCo Sound Inc. evolved in 1974 from the remnants of another local studio-sound company and quickly made a name for itself manufacturing professional-quality microphone and speaker cables and…

IF MUSIC WERE FOOD, pop would be the versatile meal that’s ready in 10 minutes and can be effortlessly modified for every diet or preference. Blues, on the other hand, would be the slow-simmering dish that’s prepared rigorously and religiously, with strict adherence to ingredients and tradition. The line for it might not be as long as that for pop, but you can bet its patrons will be experienced aficionados who know the real deal when they see it. It’s this authenticity that makes blues both enduring and slow to change. Roughly every 20 years or so, a blues wave arrives, delivering a burst of activity that nudges the genre ever so slightly in a new direction. We are in just such a movement right now, brought about by a new…

CHRISTONE “KINGFISH” INGRAM WASN’T EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO BUY A BEER WHEN HE WAS HAILED AS “THE FUTURE OF THE BLUES.” And damn if he hasn’t lived up to that billing. His smashing 2019 debut, Kingfish, was that rare thing in music — the arrival of a devastatingly talented, fully formed young artist, seemingly from nowhere. But in Ingram’s case, his point of origin was Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town often cited as the birthplace of the Mississippi Delta Blues, so perhaps that holds an explanation for his preternatural abilities: There was something in the water. Two years later, Ingram proved he was no fluke when he delivered an even stronger set, 662, on which he widened his musical net in surprising and thrilling ways while maintaining his earnest commitment to…

“OTHER PEOPLE RECORDING MY SONGS ALLOWED ME TO JUST DO WHATEVER I WANTED TO” IT’S UNCOMMON TO find a veteran musician who has earned two Grammy awards, made 35 solo albums and amassed a Rolodex filled with first-call players, and who also readily volunteers his shortcomings at his craft. But revered Americana singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale has elevated the practice of politely deflecting praise to an art. Over a series of video calls from his Nashville home, he is careful to acknowledge the players who showed him licks and tricks and played on his records. “I still have so much to learn,” he admits, a sentiment he repeats during our conversations. Lauderdale isn’t being coy. While guitar and banjo are only two of the many instruments he can play, he skipped the…

FEW GUITAR GODS have been as public about their favorite vintage guitars as Joe Bonamassa, and several of the stars in his collection have made for impressive reissues and tribute models to date. In addition to JB’s name simply adding celebrity recognition to any new signature model he’s associated with, it also seems that the blues great’s collaboration helps to bring out the best in what might otherwise have been a run-of-the-mill, entry- to mid-level instrument. The Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Limited Edition 1960 Les Paul of 2020 was a case in point, an impressively thoughtful take on a vintage ’Burst at a very reasonable price — and now the same maker’s new Joe Bonamassa 1962 ES-335 promises to attain the same success. Despite the Epiphone name on the headstock, the…

OVER ITS MORE than 150-year life, blues has been the most durable of genres. From slave field hollers to acoustic folk ballads and electrified urban R&B, the music has a long history that weaves through cultural, social and political shifts as well as multiple musical trends. Unlike many popular American styles of the past decades, it’s survived even massive revolutions. Consider that blues didn’t merely linger in the shadow of rock and roll — it thrived because of it, thanks primarily to guitarists who adapted the form into a blues-rock hybrid. It’s this sort of stylistic and cultural elasticity that makes blues so fascinating, and it’s one of the reasons we at Guitar Player enjoy exploring the latest crop of guitarists to emerge in the genre. Over the past few…

“PLAYING THE GUITAR is a life-long pursuit and a joy,” says slide guitar legend Sonny Landreth. “You can always learn something from another player because the art of guitar playing is so personal. What one player takes from somebody else gets interpreted in a new way, and then you pick up the thread and do it your way. In that respect, it never gets old or boring.” Between recording sessions and tours, Landreth puts the guitar down to catch his breath, but he stresses that he has a three-day max for downtime. “I feel like I’m at my best when I keep my edge up,” he says. “It’s like what athletes goes through — they have to let their body rest. But after three days, I’ll look at the guitar and…

YES, I AM a Beatles maniac, but I’ve usually steered clear of Beatles bootlegs that contain subpar performances, or recordings that demonstrate the evolution of their material. Same with Hendrix. I don’t need to hear the private first stirrings of a song’s development…kind of like how I don’t feel a need to see Marilyn Monroe waking up with a hangover. That said, after hearing Let It Be… Naked, I knew I had to own it, because in many ways this 2003 release is obviously, and sometimes inexplicably, a far superior record to the original 1970 album release. As the story goes, the Beatles handed off the Let It Be tapes to producer Phil Spector in the hope that he could eke out an album from what the group perceived as…

IF YOU LIKE your blues served raw, GA-20 will satisfy your jones. The blues rockers are a stripped-down three-piece featuring the lo-fi guitars of Matt Stubbs and Pat Faherty, and the solid drumming of Tim Carman. They’ve made quite a noise for themselves in recent years with a pair of albums that debuted at number one on the Billboard Blues Albums chart. Their last album, 2021’s Hound Dog Taylor tribute GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor: Try It…You Might Like It! saw the group play in the traditional vein, and both Stubbs and Faherty have the requisite chops (Stubbs is Charlie Musselwhite’s longtime right hand). Their latest album, Crackdown (Colemine/Karma Chief), is their third effort in a row to launch at the top of the Billboard Blues chart. On it, the trio…

AFTER INITIALLY ESTABLISHING his reputation with electric guitars, and following with acoustic guitars and amplifiers, it seemed an inevitability that Paul Reed Smith would fill the missing link in the signal chain — pedals. And so here we are looking at three new PRS stompboxes: the Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive, the Mary Cries Optical Compressor and the Wind Through the Trees Dual Analog Flanger. Designed and assembled in the U.S.A., these elegant pedals feature textured housings and individually etched top panels, true-bypass switching and the ability to run on a nine-volt power supply or a battery (not included). I tested these pedals with a Strat and Tele, as well as a Reverend Crosscut and a Slick SL56 thinline, and plugged into a Fender Deluxe Reverb, a PRS HDRX 20 head (reviewed…

MANY SEASONS AGO, Akron-based effects maker EarthQuaker Devices rocked guitarists’ world with a little box called the Speaker Cranker. Featuring just one knob, labeled “More,” it could push your speaker to the edge of breakup without dramatically coloring your tone or affecting transparency. The result was thicker, crunchier power chords and singing leads that bloomed with rich harmonics and an almost full-frequency response. The Speaker Cranker is out of production, but in its place EarthQuaker presents the Special Cranker, a pedal that builds upon the Speaker Cranker with more controls and clipping diode options. The Special Cranker continues where the Speaker Cranker left off. It’s a medium-gain overdrive that delivers more saturation without altering your amp’s organic nuances or character. It’s as spongy, dynamic and touch sensitive as its predecessor…

GEORGE THOROGOOD HAS been playing his unique blend of blues and rock and roll — “American music,” as he describes it — for more than 50 years now. He served his time working the coffeehouses and blues and folk clubs around New England, where he rubbed shoulders with many of the legends of acoustic blues. He even spent a short period working as a roadie and driver for Hound Dog Taylor. During the early years that he was a solo act, Thorogood played acoustic blues from a set predominantly comprised of covers, but he knew early on there was plenty more mileage to be had in performing the more obscure songs. Whatever he played, he injected it with the unique sense of energy and dynamism that has become the hallmark…

TELL A MUSICIAN to follow the rules, and you’ll invariably get a host of arguments that all boil down to the same dictum: Screw the rules. Yet Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and guitarist Daniel Tashian, who for the past five years has served as Kacey Musgraves’ main collaborator and has had success writing songs for artists such as Josh Turner, Tenille Townes and Lee Ann Womack, is a firm believer in musical guardrails. “I don’t know if I ever got anywhere with ‘no rules,’” Tashian tells Guitar Player. “When you think about it, we have lots of rules in society that are very helpful — and they exist for good reasons. Making music is very similar. I think when you’re writing, you want to be very open-minded about letting melodies come to you,…

YOU’VE GOT TO HAND IT TO SOUTHERN SIBLINGS. From the Everly Brothers to the Allman Brothers to the Black Crowes’ Robinson Brothers, those connected by blood and music seem to have a consistent knack for taking bits of the American country, folk and blues traditions and distilling them into their own unique brand of rock and roll. Twelve years into their career, Calhoun, Georgia natives Megan and Rebecca Lovell, co-leaders of the band Larkin Poe, are well on their way to adding their family name to this storied musical legacy. Lead vocalist/guitarist/mandolinist Rebecca and lap-steel/Dobro specialist/harmony vocalist Megan began their musical journey with their older sister Jessica, as part of the bluegrass act the Lovell Sisters. When the trio disbanded in 2009, the two younger siblings renamed themselves after their…

ALLY VENABLE Texan Ally Venable has, unsurprisingly, more than a hint of Stevie Ray Vaughan about her playing. Brandishing a distinctive pink Les Paul, she delivers an interpretation of SRV’s classic “Lenny” and makes the tune her own with her fantastically facile technique, seamlessly blending flash-bomb explosions of furiously fast soloing with deep, biting phrases that drip with emotion, courtesy of her powerful vibrato. Besides being a gifted guitarist, the 23-year-old has a voice imbued with tone and phrasing that belie her tender years. Venable released her fourth album, Heart of Fire, in 2021, to universally positive reviews. The list of blues notables queuing up to guest with her, both live and on record, is further proof, if any were needed, that she is an artist with the potential to…

SEVENTEEN SONGS. FOR most artists, that would hardly amount to a substantial career. For Randy Rhoads, however, the 17 songs he tracked during his brief tenure as Ozzy Osbourne’s lead guitarist and co-writer on the albums Blizzard of Oz and Diary of a Madman were more than enough to establish him as one of the truly outstanding rock guitarists of his generation. Rhoads came from a musical family and, while in his late teens, taught guitar in his mom’s music store, Musonia, by day, then rocked the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles by night with local heroes Quiet Riot. The group recorded two commercially stylized albums that were released in Japan in the late ’70s, but the band had trouble landing a record deal stateside. When Rhoads was offered the Osbourne…

BRITISH GEAR MAKER Victory is primarily known for its well-built tube amps, but the amp-in-a-pedal sector is a growing and popular one, so it makes total sense for this company to join the likes of Bogner, Friedman and countless stompbox makers in this arena. Designed in a collaboration between Victory’s Martin Kidd and Adrian Thorpe of Thorpy FX, Victory’s new V1 pedal series takes the tonal characteristics from several of its amp models and converts them into compact individual solid-state units, providing pedals that can be used as always-on sonic templates, or as standard overdrives with distinct characteristics. I’m checking out the Duchess and the Jack, which aim at American tweed and retro-modern high gain, respectively. Others in the five-pedal series aspire to Vox, Plexi and modern high-gain tones. The…