Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Guitar Player

THERE’S NO SHORTAGE of stories to tell about Joe Bonamassa. There are the adventures behind his 16 studio and 18 live albums, the exploits with his numerous side projects, and of course the expeditions to find many of the rare vintage guitars in his collection, each of which is a tale in itself. We’ve told those stories many times over the years, which make sense when a guitarist releases a new album (and buys vintage treasures) as often as Joe does. But the story about Joe that’s rarely told is the one about his early struggles to get his career off the ground. Hailed as a prodigy well before he reached his teens, he found interest in his career waning as he grew older and his preternaturally youthful skills lost their…

THE FUZZ BOX hit the scene in the early 1960s, and by the latter part of the decade nearly every gear manufacturer was promoting their own version of the effect. But the most popular American-made fuzz pedal of all time, the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, wasn’t released until the end of the 1960s or possibly the very start of the next. Remarkably, it very quickly became a favorite of guitarists everywhere. That hairy form of distortion known as fuzz was first boxed in a compact solid-state device when Nashville studio engineer Glenn Snoddy devised a circuit to re-create the enticingly clipped sound of a faulty mixer channel. His invention was subsequently released as the Maestro Fuzz Tone pedal in late 1962 or early ’63. Within a year or so, English engineer…

What was the last guitar you bought and why did you choose it? A 1960 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst — an original one. I had been on the hunt for some time, at least 10 years. The thing is, Les Pauls always felt a bit awkward because of my style of playing. I have to adapt my approach with Les Pauls, otherwise I’ll be in the middle of playing and I’ll accidentally hit the pickup selector and change the sound of the guitar mid-solo. For a long time Strats were the most comfortable guitars for me, but over the course of my career I started using Les Pauls on various songs on various records, and also onstage. Because if you want that sound, you can only get it from that…

DR. MICHAEL ALLEMANA is a Chicago-based jazz guitarist, arranger, composer, ethnomusicologist and educator who has known the Freeman family since the early 1990s, when he played in Von Freeman’s band. He and George Freeman also played in a band, with Bernard Purdie on drums. We spoke to Allemana about George Freeman’s contributions to jazz guitar and the historic Chicago jazz scene. How would you describe George Freeman’s playing? George has a wealth of blues, bebop and swing vocabulary. That’s where he resides. What really sets him apart is his rhythm. He has a way of leaving space, and he has a behind-the-beat feel in his quarter notes, eighth notes and other rhythms. When he and I practice together for our group, periodically he complains to me about how I’m rushing something,…

THE EARLY ’70s Maestro Bass Brassmaster is the inspiration for Totally Wycked Audio’s new Krytical Mass KM-01 Reactive Octave Fuzz. Originally designed in 2008, it was shelved for 15 years for reasons that included founder Kevin Bolembach’s obsession with nailing the sound of the original Maestro. The wait seems to have been worth it, because the Krytical Mass is a great-sounding fuzz that’s more straightforward than the TWA prototype that engineer Robert Derby developed. That said, the KM-01 is still a featuresome device with knobs for sensitivity, dry and level; a pair of mini pots for edge (high-frequency rolloff) and bias; and four powerful mini-toggle switches: HPF activates a high-pass filter; LPF 1 activates a low-pass filter situated post clipping diodes to add low-end to the fuzz; LPF-2 is another…

ONE OF MY favorite moments as a Roy Buchanan fan was his late-night performance of Willie Nelson’s “Night Life.” Roy interpreted Buddy Emmons’ steel-guitar voicings, played unique jazz lines and commanded beautiful ii-V progressions. I listened like a voyeur with jaw agape, sensing Roy was playing entirely for himself. I also recall seeing him during bleaker times, in his post-Polydor, pre – Alligator Records era, with an audience of about 20 people as he sang a blues using improvised lyrics: “I used to make $100,000 a year, and now I have to play a place like this…” When I’m asked, “What are the best Roy Buchanan albums to get?” I always answer, “His first two.” That’s the Roy Buchanan I love. Although there are wonderful moments on all of Roy’s…

IN 2003, JOE Bonamassa was nowhere. The 26-year-old guitarist had enjoyed a fast start to his career. Hailed as a prodigy, he was mentored by the likes of Danny Gatton and had toured with B.B. King. Before he reached 18, he was part of a group called Bloodline that featured the sons of Miles Davis, Robby Krieger and Berry Oakley. Everybody said “Smokin’ Joe” Bonamassa was going places. By the mid ’90s, Bloodline was over and Bonamassa went solo. But after two critically hailed albums — 2000’s A New Day Yesterday and 2002’s So, It’s Like That —failed to click with record buyers, the guitarist took a grim assessment of where things stood. “Things were bad,” he says. “I was dropped by one label, and another label I signed to went…

GROWING UP IN a musical family has its perks. Just ask Luther Dickinson, whose father was legendary Memphis musician and producer Jim Dickinson. Luther, who co-founded the North Mississippi Allstars with his brother Cody, recalls how his parents made folk music an intrinsic part of their family home. Now he hopes to help others do the same with Magic Music for Family Folk (New West), his charming new album of traditional gems. “This collection of my childhood favorites evokes memories of my mother playing her Martin parlor guitar and of my father at the family turntable, telling stories about Furry Lewis and Gus Cannon,” Dickinson says, “or explaining a song’s meaning.” In that same spirit, he’s made Magic Music for Family Folk a family affair. “My daughters sang on the…

THE RAMPANT QUEST for suitable amplifiers and speakers to reproduce all that DSP-generated guitar tone as sound waves has yet to produce a clear winner. Powered cabs by Kemper, Atomic, Line 6 and Friedman have won over some fans, while others have conscripted powered monitor wedges. But the gasp of relief heard round the world when Fender introduced its first full-range, flat-response (FRFR) powered cabs, the Tone Master FR-10 and FR-12, suggests that this sector is still very much up for grabs. We tested a pair of FR-10s to tap the full stereoscopic depths of the Tone Master Pro modeler featured in the main review. Designed as a Hot Rod Deluxe combo cab with a top rear-facing control panel, this box looks almost identical in its black Tolex with silver…

WHEN WE ASKED Billy F. Gibbons to select five key songs from across his career, there was a proviso: He couldn’t include “La Grange,” as it had already been the subject of in-depth scrutiny in our “How I Wrote” feature of May 2021. “When I was asked to participate in this series, I got lit up and began peeling the onion over what songs to zero in on,” the Reverend tells us. “The most obvious, ‘La Grange,’ was ZZ Top’s first national breakthrough to climb the pop singles chart. But, alas, having been asked to set it aside, the question that I had to ponder was, ‘Where to start?’” Certainly, it’s no easy task when you’ve got a back catalog with the quality and depth that Gibbons has amassed both with…

DAVID GRISMAN EMBODIES the concept encapsulated in Acoustic America, the Musical Instrument Museum’s new exhibition. The iconic mandolinist, gear collector, musicologist and former Frets columnist has lived the life Americana. Inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2023, Grisman has worked with a litany of legends, including guitarists Jerry Garcia, Tony Rice and Martin Taylor. He founded the Acoustic Disc label in 1990 and has remained dedicated to the preservation and integrity of acoustic music, musicians and instruments. And now, through a partnership with the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, he is presenting the Acoustic America project, an exhibition featuring 90 iconic folk instruments associated with heroes of American music. About a third of the show’s pieces come from Grisman’s personal collection and appear on a…

UAFX Evermore, 1176, Orion and OX Stomp THE UAFX COMPACT series pedals feature the same high-horsepower DSP found in the company’s larger and more comprehensive pedals, but are easier to use and have a streamlined interface and mono I/O. The Evermore Studio Reverb is a large-format 224 — an icon of top-tier recording studios in the late ’70s and ’80s — shrunk to pocket size, and it’s easily one of the most amazing reverbs ever put in a pedal. The 1176 Studio Compressor offers the great sounds of the rack-mount UA studio classic and provides different emulations of dual 1176 setups as used by Jimmy Page for compressed distortion and slide master Lowell George for his trademark clean sustain. The Orion Tape Echo emulates the famed Echoplex EP-III, delivering juicy-sounding…

THE ORIGINAL AND standard Torpedo Captor X came out mid-pandemic to a flurry of anticipation and excitement that was further pumped up by supply-chain issues that made examples rather thin on the ground. The Limited Run Torpedo Captor X SE — the latest rendition of Two Notes’ compact reactive load box, attenuator and IR loader — is thin on the ground by design: It’s a Special Edition made in vintage-looking, dark-brown crinkle-coat finish with beige script logos, with just 450 units available worldwide. The Captor X SE is a descendant of the long-running Two Notes Torpedo range and the latest in a line of studio and live tools that deliver efficient and great-sounding ways of replacing cumbersome speaker cabinets with versatile digital solutions, while delivering a boatload of versatility. A…