Guitar_Player__January_2018

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NOIZE FROM THE EDITOR 

guitarplayer.com 

VOL. 52, NO. 1, JANUARY 2018 

BRYAN TURNER 

I NEVER PUT MUCH STOCK INTO NEW YEAR’S RESOLUtions. 

There’s definitely a feel-good vibe to telling oneself that 

the coming year will birth a different and much better you, 

but it’s all like a pretty birthday card that’s forgotten and left 

in the rain without the accompanying actions of commitment, 

follow-through, and achievement. For example, my dad told 

me constantly that people are great at talking about stuff, but 

terrible at actually getting stuff done. Given that dad and his 

crew could have been crown princes of meaningless bull sessions, 

these little teaching moments were hilariously ironic, 

but, in fact, they stuck with me. I haven’t always “gotten stuff 

done” as much as I would have liked, but I do try to shut up, listen, and drive action. 

At its core, it’s a good mantra for a musician—and a magazine editor—and it’s also 

a worthy practice for most people walking upon the planet. 

So dad’s maxim got me thinking that 2018 is perhaps a very good opportunity 

for making resolutions—as long as those personal promises deliver tangible deeds. 

I worry a lot that if we don’t make some constructive changes the world is heading 

for a very dark place. Having lived through the tumult of the ’60s, where so many 

“bad” and divisive elements of societal thinking were called out, protested against, 

and directed fitfully toward positive transformation, I truly believe that a community 

of people can move mountains. 

Of course, I don’t pretend that my thoughts are universal by any means. They are 

simply the musings of one person’s brain, and they’re not meant to be harmful, controversial, 

or hurtful. But my hope for good is that they simply provide an opportunity 

for us to think about possibilities together. Every mountain moved starts with a 

few people’s shoulders against the rocks. Perhaps that could be us. Here are my “big 

three” resolutions for 2018… 

Be Courteous. Guitarists have always talked smack about other guitar players, 

but GP’s social networks have been getting progressively, well—meaner. All guitarists 

help to promote guitar, so we should support our community, rather than look 

for boorish ways to tear each other down. We must absolutely let each other know 

if we feel a piece of gear, or an album, or a performance isn’t up to snuff, but there 

are ways to offer constructive criticism without being jerks. 

Don’t Lie. People can argue all day about fake news, or believe their favorite info 

sources without checking the accuracy of the statements they make, but, at the end 

of the day, something really is true, or it isn’t. Don’t work for subterfuge and misdirection. 

Strive to find truth in your music, integrity in your playing, and present 

honest and frank discourse to the guitar community. Lying doesn’t accomplish anything 

except broadcasting your own fear and ego, and it wastes thought time that 

the community could be spending on being more productive. 

Be Helpful. The outside world seems so contentious, suspicious, and wary, and, 

as a result, extraordinarily selfish. The guitar community is huge, as well, and within 

its like-minded commune, there are players who need help, players who seem to 

have it all, and players floating somewhere between those two poles. If you’re lucky 

enough not to be in need, then strive to reach out to those who are. Consider mentoring, 

providing education, or outright charity, such as getting gear to those who can’t 

afford it, or whose lives would be forever changed by getting a guitar in their hands. 

For a brighter 2018, it just takes one shoulder… 

EDITOR IN CHIEF 

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GUITARPLAYER.COM/JANUARY2018

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CONTENTS 

JANUARY2018 | VOLUME 52, NUMBER 1 

GP COMMUNITY 

12 Readers weigh in on the “pedal 

controversy” that blew up social media. 

RIFFS 

14 Steve Hunter remembers the session for 

Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” Susan Rey 

catches us up with Jerry Donahue’s health 

and their recent album together, Jason 

Isbell reveals the five riffs that changed his 

musical life, Craig Anderton shares a cool 

trick for Helix users, Adam Levy gets naked, 

and actor/guitarist Jared Leto talks tone. 

COVER STORY 

50 Modern Metallurgy 

Three burning-hot guitarists—Stevie D 

of Josh Todd & the Conflict, Ryan Patrick 

of Otherwise, and Rich Ward of Fozzy— 

engage in a roundtable discussion about 

how they keep metal guitar moving 

forward, craft their tones, and keep 

surprising and engaging audiences. 

FEATURES 

24 Scott Sharrard 

32 George Lynch and Michael Sweet 

38 The Struts’ Adam Slack 

42 Diamond Rowe 

46 Steve Morse 

CLASSIC COLUMN 

114 B.B. King’s Blues Chronicles 

(from September 1983) 

Cover Photo by Hristo Shindov 

HRISTO SHINDOV 

Guitar Player (ISSN 0017-5463) is published monthly with an extra issue in December by Newbay Media, LLC, 28 East 28th Street, 12th floor, New 

York, NY 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. 

Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Guitar Player, 

P.O. Box 2029, Langhorne, PA 19047-9957. 

10 GUITARPLAYER.COM/ JANUARY2018

LESSONS 

62 Getting Into Shapes 

Jesse Gress details how 

chords lay on the fretboard. 

66 Technique 

David Brewster on how 

to creatively employ 

natural harmonics. 

70 Classic Riff “Right On,” 

by Miles Davis, featuring 

John McLaughlin 

GEAR 

22 New Gear 

72 ESP LTD EC-1000 Piezo 

74 Electro-Harmonix Green 

Russian Big Muff, Hot Wax, Cock 

Fight Plus, and Superego+ 

76 EarthQuaker Devices 

Data Corrupter 

80 Meris Mercury 7 Reverb and 

Mission Engineering 529 

USB Power Converter 

82 Atomic Ampli-Firebox 

84 Schaffer Replica EX Tower 

86 Fusion Guitar 

88 Custom Tones Ethos TWE-1 

90 Whack Job 1967 Teisco Banjitar 

92 Classic Gear 1962 Fender Jaguar 

FRETS 

95 Brad Barr 

102 Review: New Taylor 12-Strings 

104 Classic Frets Stefan Grossman’s 

Acoustic Set (from August 1979) 

MAX CRACE 

JOIN THE GP COMMUNITY! 

facebook.com/guitarplayermag twitter.com/guitarplayernow instagram.com/guitarplayer 

JANUARY2018/ GUITARPLAYER.COM 11

GP COMMUNITY 

PEER COMMENTS 

Interact! 

JOIN THE GP COMMUNITY! 

A COUPLE OF WEEKS BEFORE THANKSGIVING 2017, THE COMMUNITY 

was embroiled in a “pedal debacle” that fundamentally revolved around whether 

those who depend on stompboxes were making up for deficiencies in their technique 

and/or creativity, or even if those artists who use pedals solely to craft 

soundscapes—rather than negotiate the typical, time-honored performance gestures 

of conventional guitar technique—can be considered “guitarists” at all. It 

was a heck of a lively discussion, and many readers shared their thoughts on the 

subject with us. Here’s a sampling… 

“They are saying the guitar is dead in modern music, and the soundscape people 

are not helping. I prefer going straight into a tube amp, but I do have a wah, chorus, 

and a phaser. All the tech is cool, too.” —ANTHONY HINTON 

“I am a blues-based guitarist, but I respect those musicians who use their guitars 

to create different sounds than my own. Are guys like David Gilmour, Bill Frisell, 

Andy Summers, Adrian Belew, and Robert Fripp lazy for creating soundscapes 

with guitars? Pure and total hogwash!” —ADAM NIXON 

“I don’t have anything against effects, but I never use them when I am practicing 

or writing. At a certain point, effects just become a distraction when you should 

be working on music. You have to have the self-discipline to know when to not 

use them—which, if you want to be a great musician, really should be most of 

the time.” —CHRIS HOGAN 

“If you depend on pedals to get your sound, it’s the easy way out. Great tone 

starts with your hands, a great-sounding guitar, and then a great-sounding amp. 

To me, that’s the ‘Christmas tree.’ You can make it as ornate as you want with decorations 

(pedals and sounds ), but you must have the tree first!” —ROD JANZEN 

“I told my first guitar teacher that I wanted to be a musician who played guitar— 

not a guitarist. Anyone with three chords and an overdrive can be a guitarist, but 

only someone with the knowledge and the hours of practice can be a musician 

who plays guitar. This could be compared to someone who writes pulp 

fiction and someone who writes literary novels. There naturally is room 

for both, but, in my opinion, the novelist deserves the greater respect, as 

it is the novelist who is the artist. The pulp fiction writer is merely entertaining.” 

—LEN PROBERT 

“Anybody who plays guitar is a welcome addition to the world of music— 

regardless of how the hell they do it.” —CHARLIE PASTORFIELD 

SOUND OFF! GET EXCLUSIVE NEWS. 

COMMENT. CRITIQUE. 

SHARE TIPS AND TECHNIQUES. 

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-NEWSLETTER. 

FACEBOOK.COM/GUITARPLAYERMAG 

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GUITARPLAYER.COM 

MICHAEL MOLENDA 

Editor In Chief 

mmolenda@nbmedia.com 

ART THOMPSON 

Senior Editor 

athompson@nbmedia.com 

PATRICK WONG 

Managing Editor 

pwong@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@nbmedia.com 

OOPS! 

If you picked up our Holiday Edition of the Ultimate Gear Guide on the 

newsstand, you may have noticed something amiss with the Taylor 

reviews in the Acoustic section. We mistakenly published an image 

of an Academy Series guitar in the spot for the 810e DLX Dreadnought. 

Here’s the correct photo. Our sincere apologies to Taylor, 

Taylor-guitar fans, and journalists everywhere! 

12 GUITARPLAYER.COM/JANUARY2018

RIFFS 

PRODUCTION CONCEPTS 

Do It in the Raw! 

PHOTOS BY JAY BELLEROSE 

ADAM LEVY REVEALS HOW TO MAKE A NAKED GUITAR & DRUMS RECORD— 

AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BLACK KEYS OR WHITE STRIPES 

BY MICHAEL MOLENDA 

ADAM LEVY—FORMER GP STAFFER, 

sideperson to the stars, and man of a million 

chord voicings—seems to love upsetting 

his own apple carts. Perhaps it’s that 

restless jazz-musician mindset, but Levy 

has navigated everything from pop, rock, 

jazz, and beyond, and he even transformed 

himself from an instrumentalist into a 

singer/songwriter. But when a planned 

organ-trio recording went off the rails last 

year due to schedule conflicts, Levy was 

confronted with perhaps his riskiest project 

to date—the beautifully stark and raw 

Blueberry Blonde. 

“I had everything all booked, and then the 

organ player had another commitment and 

needed to drop out,” he says. “I thought, ‘Oh, 

sh*t—should I cancel or reschedule?’ And 

my drummer, Jay Bellerose, just said, ‘No. 

Two people is enough to make a record.’” 

So how do you make a last-minute conceptual 

transition from a trio to a duo? 

Well, I didn’t want a listener to get to 

the end of the album and wonder, ‘Did the 

bass player not show up that day?’ [Laughs.] 

But Jay convinced me that by going more 

sparse and spacious we could actually do 

more interesting things. It didn’t mean the 

recording was going to sound empty. It just 

meant that what we played would matter 


more. Our inspiration was the transitional 

stuff between folk and blues—before rock 

and roll really exploded—and we found 

some great touchstones for how our album 

could sound from recordings by blues guitarist 

J.B. Lenoir and folksinger Josh White. 

Though it’s perhaps an obvious modern 

comparison, the White Stripes and Black 

Keys did not influence this record. 

These songs are very intimate, and 

they’re done live in a continuous take 

with no overdubs. Did you have to hire 

a studio cop to prevent you from adding 

more guitar? 

Before I made this record, this level of 

starkness would have scared the hell out of 

me. Would I have to turn into a Chet Atkins 

or a Tuck Andress if no one else is holding 

down the chords when I solo? But rather than 

figure out how to do everything all at once, I 

just adjusted my internal thresholds to say, 

“Okay, that’s enough music.” It’s like an ego 

thing to think the music you’re making needs 

more guitar. I had to cut some ego loose, and 

try to listen to the tracks more like an outside 

listener. So I’d play a melodic solo and 

let the space just be. That was the big takeaway 

on this project—less me is okay. And, 

you know, I realized records that are more 

spare draw my ears in more. When everything 

is played really explicitly, I almost 

feel like I can tune out for a few seconds, 

because everything is being taken care of. 

But when the music is very sparse, it’s like 

the listener’s imagination becomes part of 

the band, because they’re filling in the gaps. 

So, just like the tiny house movement, 

are you now a disciple of minimalist 

production? 

I just think that musicians shouldn’t 

be afraid to make records that are raw. 

Sure, there are a lot of massively produced 

albums out there, and a lot of artists try 

to emulate them. But I don’t believe you 

can imprint some big idea from an album 

you love onto your own record if you don’t 

have the budget, the insight, the songs, or 

the production chops. But you just might 

be able to figure out how to make smaller 

stuff sound big. Just talk to the microphone 

and tell your story. g 

JANUARY2018/GUITARPLAYER.COM 15

RIFFS 

PLAY IT FORWARD 

Jerry Donahue and Susan Rey Experience 

Tragedy & Triumph on Ashgrove Sessions 

BY VINNIE DEMASI 

WHEN SUSAN REY FIRST MET JERRY 

Donahue 35 years ago, she was an upand-coming 

singer/songwriter, and he 

was already a 6-string legend, thanks to 

his otherworldly Telecaster mastery with 

Celtic folk-rockers Fairport Convention and 

sideman stints with Elton John and Gerry 

Rafferty, among others. The two remained 

friends as Donahue gained a higher profile 

with The Hellecasters, and Rey became 

an in-demand performer and song stylist. 

After reconnecting in 2012, Rey and 

Donahue enlisted drummer Tom Walsh and 

bassist Matt Malley to form Ashgrove— 

a band that reimagined material from 

Donahue’s tenure with Fairport Convention, 

Fotheringay, and The Hellecasters, 

as well as Rey’s extensive cover repertoire. 

Gigging and recording intermittently 

between their other professional commitments, 

the band was about to begin mixing 

its first CD when tragedy struck. In July 

2016, Donahue suffered a severe stroke 

that left him unable to speak or move his 

right hand. Saddened but undaunted, Rey 

was determined to see the project through 

to completion. 

“After Jerry’s stroke, I decided to take 

over the engineering,” says Rey of the Ashgrove 

Sessions [Susan Rey Music]. “It was 

not something I had ever done before, so 

I had to learn. But I have good ears, and 

I understood what Jerry’s original vision 

was, and how to stay true to it. When I 

played him the final mix for the first time, 

he began to tear up. It’s the only disc he 

keeps in his CD player. Nobody is allowed 

to touch it.” 

How did you choose the material for Ashgrove 

Sessions? 

It was a combination of songs from 

Jerry’s and my repertoire that had special 

meaning to us. For example, “Long Road” is 

a tune by Ventures guitarist Gerry McGee, 

who was Jerry’s guitar teacher when he was 

a teenager. Their guitar duet at the track’s 

end is the first time they’ve ever recorded 

together. One track that became especially 

significant to me was our version of Bob 

Seger’s “Turn the Page.” Originally, Jerry 

tracked the solo in an understated way, but 

after playing it live a few times, I think he 

had a better understanding of the intensity 

I was going for, and the re-recorded 

solo is one of my favorites. 

How did working with someone of Jerry’s 

caliber inspire you as an artist? 

It got my chops together as an accompanist 

for sure. When we formed Ashgrove, 

we decided we didn’t want to rely too heavily 

on a second guitarist, so I learned mandolin 

specifically for this project. I did play 

rhythm behind some of Jerry’s instrumentals 

like “Hellecaster Stomp,” and he’s a 

stickler about getting the tones, tempo, and 

phrasing just right. Last spring, he asked 

me to accompany him when he opened for 

Albert Lee. Knowing he trusted me to play 

behind him was a real honor and a confidence 

builder. 

How far along is Jerry in his recovery? 

He’s making steady progress. He can’t 

use his picking hand yet, but he’s still very 

cognizant musically. When preparing for 

the CD release show, I struggled to learn 

our version of Fortheringay’s “The Sea” 

because of all the open-tuned chords he 

used. Jerry picked up a guitar, retuned the 

strings, and fingered all the chords along 

with the CD recording with his left hand. 

I said, “I struggled for hours with this, 

and you could have taught me to play it 

all along?” He just smiled. With one hand 

he’s still probably better than all of us! 

Bonnie Raitt was kind enough to donate an 

iPad loaded with several speech programs 

that he’s working with, and we also have a 

Sweet Relief fund that fans can donate to. 

Jerry has a long journey ahead of him, but 

he is a very determined man, and he has 

a lot of love and support behind him. g 

16 


TECHNOLOGY 

Multibanding the Helix 

BY CRAIG ANDERTON 

HARDWARE DIGITAL EFFECTS HAVE 

come a long way—which you know if you’ve 

tried new technology like the Kemper Profiling 

Amp, Fractal Axe-FX, or Line 6 Helix. Lately, I’ve 

been particularly fond of the Helix’s ability to 

do multiband processing that lets you split the 

guitar into four bands (low, low mid, high mid, 

and high), and then distort each band individually. 

For rhythm guitar and power chords, this 

gives a big, clean, focused sound compared to 

having all the frequencies go into a single amp. 

Here’s how to do multiband amps with the Helix. 

Split the Bands. Set both signal paths to 

the same input, and then drag a block downward 

from each signal path to create a second, 

parallel line for their respective paths. This creates 

four parallel signal paths. 

Each path starts with a 10-band graphic EQ 

block. For the low frequency band, I turned the 

62.5Hz, 125Hz, and 250Hz bands up full, and 

set 500Hz at around -10dB. At the next higher 

band, I set the 250Hz and 500Hz bands up full, 

with 1kHz down about -4dB. The next band had 

500Hz down about -8.5dB, and 1kHz and 2kHz 

up all the way. For the highest band, I turned 

2kHz, 4kHz, 8kHz, and 16kHz up full, with 1kHz 

at about -8dB. The bands overlap somewhat, 

because I felt that gave the best sound, but 

where to split the bands varies with your guitar 

of choice, and the preset’s purpose. 

Amp Up. Next come the four Amp+Cabs. I 

tend to use the same Amp+Cab in each chain, 

but you can also mix and match. To compensate 

for multiband operation, you’ll probably 

want to turn up the Drive, because there isn’t 

as much signal going into each amp. But turn 

down the Master, because the output from four 

amps adds up. However, note that turning down 

Drive for the highest-frequency path can give a 

sweet, less harsh sound, and pulling down all 

the Drives somewhat can produce some beautiful 

clean tones. 

Analyze. The next stage is for diagnostic purposes—a 

Gain block in each signal chain turned 

to zero gain. Enabling the Gain block mutes the 

sound, so bypassing a Gain block allows tweaking 

a particular path without hearing the others. 

After creating your preset, you can delete these. 

The last block is for Pan. I usually leave the high 

and low bands centered, with the middle bands 

A multiband preset template for the Line 

6 Helix. 

spread a bit to give a cool stereo effect. 

And there’s more! Remember that amps 

and cabs take a lot of processing power. Still, 

with the hardware Helix, you’ll usually be able 

to add some more effects. This is where it gets 

really interesting. For example, insert chorus, 

delay, or auto filter in only the middle two bands. 

But the proof is in the playing. Create a preset 

with only one Amp+Cab, and then create a 

multiband preset using the same Amp+Cab, 

and prepare to be blown away when you compare 

the two. g 

QUICK TIP 

BUILD A FOUNDATION 

“We have a conceptual formula for our tones. They’re not accidents. There’s a certain combination 

of elements that gives us our identifiable sound. At times, we want the chaos and sloppiness of 

pure energy, and, other times, it’s about being as tight and precise as possible, but there’s always a consistency 

to the guitar tones. For something to be recognizable, there has to be some consistency, 

some grounding.” —JARED LETO (GUITARIST, 30 SECONDS TO MARS. ACTOR, BLADE RUNNER 2049) 

JANUARY2018/ GUITARPLAYER.COM 

17

RIFFS 

HERO WORSHIP 

Jason Isbell 

MY MUSICAL LIFE IN FIVE RIFFS 

J.B. LAWRENCE 

BY JIM BEAUGEZ 

A PAIR OF GRAMMY AWARDS UNDERscores 

Jason Isbell’s reputation as a singer/ 

songwriter, but his latest album, The Nashville 

Sound [X5 Music Group], also finds him flexing 

his 6-string strengths. Along the way to mastering 

his mix of melody, ferocity, and restraint, 

Isbell’s journey intersected some serious guitar 

techniques. Here are the five riffs that changed 

his life... 

“THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S,” CHET 

ATKINS 

“My uncle was into the Chet Atkins/Merle Travis 

style of picking,” says Isbell, “and this song was 

a big deal for me when I was seven years old. 

When I started writing singer/songwriter stuff, 

and I was depending on an acoustic guitar to 

accompany myself, having an understanding 

of these alternating thumb-picking patterns 

really helped me out.” 

“CORTEZ THE KILLER,” NEIL YOUNG 

“When I started coming up with melodies and 

chord changes on my own, this song kept coming 

back to me, because of the tension and release 

created when you hold that D note from one 

chord to the next. It creates this kind of cool 

suspension.” 

“I KNOW A LITTLE,” LYNYRD SKY- 

NYRD 

“In my house, there was a big love of early Lynyrd 

Skynyrd—especially the guitar playing of Steve 

Gaines—because the band took pride in playing 

things that were complicated. This intro 

blew my mind, and it still does. In fact, my wife 

[songwriter/fiddle player Amanda Shires] showed 

me how similar it is to a lot of jazz-influenced 

Texas swing. If you work up to a point where 

you can play that kind of guitar, you can do a 

whole lot of stuff.” 

“SALT CREEK,” BILL MONROE AND 

THE BLUEGRASS BOYS 

“From a very early age, my grandfather would 

have me play rhythm guitar for him while he 

played mandolin, banjo, or fiddle. I got interested 

in bluegrass music that way, but I have 

my own bastardized version of it. I thought I 

had a handle on bluegrass flatpicking before I 

moved to Nashville and discovered the checker 

at the grocery store is probably a better picker 

than you are!” 

“RUNNING ON EMPTY,” JACKSON 

BROWNE WITH DAVID LINDLEY 

“I started out playing slide guitar listening to 

people like Duane Allman, and then going back 

and listening to Elmore James. But when I heard 

David Lindley’s lap-steel part on this song, it really 

opened my eyes to a different, more melodic way 

of playing slide that wasn’t based off the standard 

licks I’d heard in blues music.” g 

MORE ONLINE 

> Watch Jason Isbell play these riffs at 

guitarplayer.com. 


RIFFS 

SESSION FILE 

Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” 

BY STEVE HUNTER 

IN MY OPINION, “SOLSBURY HILL” IS 

one of the most perfectly written and produced 

pop songs ever. I know that Peter 

was having trouble with a line or two in 

the lyrics at one point, so this song ended 

up being the last one we recorded. Literally, 

the day after we recorded it, all the 

New York musicians were scheduled to 

fly back to New York. Robert Fripp had 

already flown back to England because he 

had sessions scheduled. 

I remember Peter and I went into producer 

Bob Ezrin’s office so that Bob could 

show me what he had in mind for the tune 

on piano. As Peter was playing it, I began 

to realize it was in an odd time—7/4— 

and that it was a particular style of 7/4. 

The first section was counted as a bar of 

3, and then a bar of 4. But the next section 

was counted as a bar of 4, and then a bar 

of 3. Just to make things even more interesting, 

at the end of the cycle were two 

bars of 4. Okay, so I was already sweating 

a little. Then, Bob said he would like 

to do the whole song on acoustic guitar 

with modified Travis-style picking. Now 

I’m really sweating. To my credit, I didn’t 

panic—at least visibly—and Bob showed 

me the idea on a nice acoustic. Oh, yeah—I 

almost forgot: The song is in the key of B. 

To make the Travis picking flow better, we 

put a capo on the second fret, so that the 

part could be played as if it were in the key 

of A. I worked out the chord voicings and 

the Travis picking in Bob’s office with just 

the three of us as an audience. 

The beautiful thing about this song is 

that it’s so well written it flows from your 

fingers. It wasn’t long before I had completely 

forgotten the meter was 7, and I 

simply played the song. I triple-tracked the 

acoustic part, and as I added each overdub, 

Bob sped up or slowed down the tape 

speed so that each pass was slightly out 

of tune with the previous track—which 

created this lovely, natural, and lush chorusing. 

After we were finished with the 

acoustics, we recorded some beefier guitars 

at the end. 

As most of you know, “Solsbury Hill” 

has become one of Peter’s signature songs, 

and it is, without a doubt, one of the most 

brilliantly written songs I have had the 

great pleasure of playing on. g 

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FEATURES 


True Friends 

SCOTT SHARRARD ON RECORDING GREGG 

ALLMAN’S FAREWELL ALBUM, SOUTHERN BLOOD 

BY JIMMY LESLIE 

CREDIT? 

“MUSIC IS A SANCTUARY FROM THE HEAVIness 

for a musician,” says Scott Sharrard. “We are 

all country preachers trying to help people and ourselves 

get through.” 

When it seems that, each week, another rock 

legend moves on to the great gig in the sky, Gregg 

Allman’s passing from liver cancer on May 27, 2017, 

is particularly notable for the indelible imprint his 

music made on the guitar community. Allman was 

a straightforward acoustic strummer and organist, 

but he had arguably the all-time hottest lineup of 

dual lead-guitar players by his side with his older 

brother Duane and Dickey Betts in the original 

Allman Brothers Band. And throughout the band’s 

incarnations that spanned generations, outstanding 

string-slingers included Dan Toler, Jack Pearson, 

Jimmy Herring, Warren Haynes, and Derek 

Trucks. Allman’s solo outfits always featured gifted 

guitarists, as well, but in his ultimate nine-piece 

Producer Don Was (middle with hat) oversees a 

session for Southern Blood. 

ensemble, Allman settled on a single player with 

singular skills—Scott Sharrard. 

“Gregg and I were meant for each other, because 

I understood how to convey what he meant,” says 

Sharrard, who brought a Swiss army knife sensibility 

when he joined Allman in 2008. His broad 

stylistic range, as well as a strong knack for songcraft, 

earned him musical director status in 2013. 

What was your original audition with Allman 

like? 

The audition was pretty crazy. My friend Jay Collins 

played sax in Gregg’s band, and he arranged for 

me to sit-in with the Allman Brothers at a sold-out 


25

FEATURES 

>>> TRUE FRIENDS 

The Gregg Allman Band and the crew of FAME studios on hallowed ground in Muscle 

Shoals, Alabama. 

shed in Camden, New Jersey. Luckily, 

Gregg and I hit it off immediately over 

our mutual obsession with the blues. He 

was very happy that I knew Wayne Bennett’s 

guitar playing from all those Bobby 

“Blue” Bland records. Gregg loved Wayne’s 

playing, and he was one of only a handful 

of players Gregg would bring up when he 

was looking for something specific. His 

brother was essentially his father figure, and 

he would always speak with overwhelming 

reverence for Duane’s artistry on the 

guitar and beyond. For tone, his man was 

David Gilmour. Gregg was one of the biggest 

Floyd fans I’ve ever met. 

You were one of the few people who 

knew about his advancing liver cancer. 

How did that affect the way you went 

about making his last album, Southern 

Blood? 

Making a great record is what you do 

while you’re waiting for the barbeque to 

arrive. It’s all about chemistry, and being 

comfortable to let loose. If we dwelled on 

the reality that this was Gregg’s last will 

and testament as a musician, we’d have 

simply broken down. The vibe starts at 

the top. Gregg was having the time of his 

life making this record, and Don Was did 

a masterful job at keeping the production 

moving—making sure it was loose, 

but controlled. The vibe at FAME studios 

in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, was incredible, 

and the talented staff there has soul 

to burn. How could we lose? 

Can you offer some insights about 

working at FAME? 

FAME is a church of sound, and it was 

very significant for us, as Gregg and Duane 

started out recording there when they were 

kids. Rick Hall has some amazing Allman 

Brothers demos, and early Duane Allman 

sessions that will blow your mind. Of course, 

Duane went on to become a studio player 

there on so many great sessions for Aretha 

Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and more. They 

have a couple of amps that Duane used— 

although I’m not sure if they still work. 

The Hall family has done an incredible 

job restoring and updating the place. It’s 

the best place in the world to cut tracks. 

How did the sessions go down, and 

what did Don Was do to capture great 

guitar tones? 

The band up in a circle with Don in the 

middle to help direct, and we cut live using 

isolation booths for everything except drums 

and percussion. The guitar amps were in a 

storage closet. I requested the specific mic 

set up I always use—a stereo ribbon mic out 

in the room, and some Cascade Fat Head 

Ribbon mics or anything comparable to close 

mic the speakers. I detest the sound of an 

SM57 pointed at the speaker cone for what 

I do. I didn’t spend all this time and money 

on guitars and amps to stick an $80 mic on 

them! Don and I thought the tone we got 

with the room reflections in the closet at 

FAME sounded like B.B. King’s sound on 

his early Memphis sessions. 

What gear did you use? 

I used my touring rig. The amp was 

either a Fender Super Reverb reissue with 

Celestion G-10 Vintage Ceramic speakers 

and vintage tubes, or my trusty ’65 Fender 

Vibrolux Reverb with the same Celestions. 

On a couple of tunes, I also added a Supro 

Thunderbolt 1x15 combo running parallel. 

My main axe is a Gibson CS-336, circa 

2002. Paul Schwartz at Peekamoose Guitars 

in New York City heavily modified it 

with locking tuners, new frets, a master 

volume, and Seymour Duncan Antiquity 

pickups. I played all the electric slide stuff 

on a 1965 Harmony Bobkat with those 

amazing gold-foil pickups. Rhythm guitar 

was mostly my trusty mongrel Telecaster 

that has a maple neck from an old Danny 

Gatton model, and a Warmoth body. It’s as 

light as a feather, and the tone is spectacular. 

I use La Bella HRS Series nickel-plated 

strings, gauged .009-.046 or .010-.050, 

depending on the guitar. 

What about effects? 

I’m not much of a pedal guy, but I would 

use the Xotic Effects Soul Driven live with 

Gregg because the sound is impeccable, and 

it truly delivers the right tone at a lower 

stage volume. In the studio, I used a Fuzz 

Face on “Blind Bats and Swamp Rats” to 

get that squealy feedback. Otherwise, I just 

cranked the amp to 7 or 8, and used my 

guitar’s volume to clean it up for rhythm. 

I also employed the vibrato effect in my 

Fender amps on a couple of tunes to get 

that “soul glow” rhythm bed. 

How did you come up with the hauntingly 

beautiful intro melody that kicks 

off “My Only True Friend”? 


FEATURES 


I was staying at Gregg’s house one day 

about three years ago. The place was full 

of memories, and we stayed up late telling 

road stories. I awoke from a vivid dream 

about Duane and Gregg the next morning 

at sunrise. I ran to a guitar downstairs, and 

as the sun came up over Gregg’s boat slip in 

the delta, I started playing the intro exactly 

as it wound up on the record. 

How did the lyrics come? 

I’d written down three lines Duane 

spoke to Gregg in that dream: “You and I 

both know/This river will flow to an end. 

Keep me in your heart/Keep your soul on 

the mend. You and I both know/The road 

is my only true friend.” Eerie stuff, right? 

That became the start of the first verse, 

and the last line became the chorus, but 

it needed more. Luckily, Gregg loved it. 

Months later, he came up with the prechorus—around 

the time he shared his 

terminal diagnosis with me. It was real 

emotional. Gregg thought the song was 

missing something all the way up to the 

last minute when were at FAME. Marc 

Quinones [percussionist] encouraged 

me to write a third verse, which I somehow 

did at my hotel that night. I gave it 

to Gregg the next day, and we cut it live 

right then and there. 

What guitar did you use? 

My Gibson CS-336 into the cranked 

Super—nothing else. I layered the harmony 

on the main lick a third above using 

the same rig. 

The solo is like a little song with 

From left: Duane Betts and Devon Allman 

SPEAKING OF THE ALLMAN BROTHERS 

LEGACY… 

“WE’VE KNOWN EACH OTHER SINCE 

we were kids hanging around on tour with 

the Allman Brothers Band,” says Gregg Allman’s 

son Devon, who is gearing up to tour 

with Dickey Betts’ son, Duane. “The easy way 

out would be to join up with Berry Oakley Jr. 

and someone named Trucks, and play all 

Allman Brothers Band songs. But our dads 

always wanted us to make our own marks. 

It’s a delicate balance. We want to make 

people happy playing some familiar music, 

but we need to forge our own paths, as well.” 

When the combined tour launches this 

spring, the sons plan to perform their own 

material with their own bands, and then tip 

their hats to their fathers for an encore set 

of familiar favorites—possibly filled with 

guest stars. 

“I’m going for a more of a ’70s Tom Petty 

or Jackson Browne kind of sound playing 

acoustics, Telecasters, and Stratocasters,” 

reports Allman. “Losing both of my parents 

in the past year factored into the songwriting 

of my latest record, but it’s a celebration 

of life, and that’s a good place for me to go. 

I’ll play through Victoria and Orange rigs for 

the tour. Of course, I’ll whip out the trusty Les 

Paul I’ve been playing for the past 15 years 

for the encore set with Duane. We’ll keep it 

true blue [laughs].” 

“I’m looking at having a five-song EP 

released by tour time,” says Betts, whose 

guitar and vocal styles naturally echo Dickey 

Betts, as well as an array of classic rock and 

blues influences from Mick Taylor to the three 

Kings—B.B., Freddie, and Albert. “My main 

guitar was the prototype for my father’s signature 

Les Paul that was given to him around 

2001. It’s modeled after a ’57 goldtop, and he 

played it for years. A blackface Fender Super 

Reverb is my tonal home. I’m not much of a 

pedals player—although I’ll use a boost or 

a slapback echo now and again.” 

Both Allman and Betts cite Duane Allman 

as a major inspiration, and although both 

dabble with playing slide, neither is a true 

enthusiast. 

“I grew up watching my dad play with 

Warren Haynes killing it on slide,” says Betts. 

“And considering Derek Trucks—well, I kind of 

stayed away from playing slide until recently. 

I’m getting better at it now, and playing slide 

is truly a nice tool for any guitar player to 

have in their belt.” 

So who’s going to play slide when they 

team up to play, say, “Statesboro Blues”? 

“I may wind up playing some of Dickey’s 

parts,” says Allman, “and he may wind 

up playing Duane Allman lines.” 

“We’ll have to wait and see what happens 

naturally for the Allmans material,” 

adds Betts. 


FEATURES 


some Gilmour-isms in the phrasing, and 

hints of jazz harmony. 

Bravo on picking that up. Gregg instructed 

me to think about David Gilmour and Kenny 

Burrell! I knew exactly what that meant. 

What’s the story on your other original 

tune, “Love Like Kerosene”? 

I first recorded that song on my 2011 solo 

album, Scott Sharrard & The Brickyard Band. 

Gregg first covered it with us on Gregg Allman 

Live: Back to Macon, and it became a concert 

staple. We cut a swampy, Howlin’ Wolfstyle 

take on this record. I used the bridge 

pickup on the CS-336 to get a snappy tone 

from the Super. 

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the Dylan cover, “Going, Going, Gone”? 

Taj Mahal gave that Dobro to Gregg as a 

present, and it was my pleasure to play it on 

that tune at Gregg’s request. I tuned standard, 

and I used my usual slide—a Pyrex 

Dunlop Blue Bottle. They stuck a mic on it 

in a booth, and we rolled. 

What are your overall thoughts on 

playing slide? 

Playing slide is like flying a helicopter. I 

still don’t feel like a natural with it, because 

there’s so much muting to do, and pressure 

means everything. Intonation is very delicate. 

Duane was the master, and now it’s Derek. 

Besides Duane, my influences growing up 

were Lowell George, Bonnie Raitt, Robert 

Nighthawk, Tampa Red, Warren Haynes, and, 

of course, Elmore James. Start with Elmore, 

and you can’t lose. 

Did you or Gregg play acoustic on Jackson 

Browne’s “Song for Adam”? 

I played acoustic on that, but Gregg was 

a great acoustic guitar picker. He used his 

thumb, and fingerpicks. 

How does it feel to look back on Southern 

Blood? 

Southern Blood is a beautiful farewell 

letter to my man’s friends, family, and fans. 

He lived for music. We wrote one song that 

we didn’t have time to cut. It’s a good-time 

funky blues, so it probably wouldn’t have 

fit anyway. It will be a bonus track on my 

solo album Saving Grace, which is due for a 

spring release. I recorded part of it at FAME, 

as well. It’s also worth mentioning that I got 

to use Duane Allmans ’57 goldtop Les Paul 

on my record. 

What are your thoughts on being an 

Allman torchbearer? 

Gregg changed my life a couple of times 

over. His band gave me the courage and drive 

to play this music—real rock and roll—with 

blues, jazz, soul music and its many tributaries 

as bedrock. Writing with him, helping 

lead his band, and taking the stage was a finishing 

school for me. I’m at an absolute peak 

as a player, writer, and singer. I intend to use 

Gregg’s passing as fuel to be better. The bar 

is very high. Every legend that passes leaves 

an enormous hole. It’s going to take elbow 

grease, desire, humility, fire, and passion to 

pull us out of the musical tailspin of the past 

20 years. I intend to protect traditions while 

also pushing forward. As we mourn the loss 

of our hero and my friend, you can trust that 

I’m just getting started. g 


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FEATURES 

United Front 

MICHAEL SWEET AND GEORGE LYNCH 

RETURN TO BLOW YOUR MIND 


WHEN MICHAEL SWEET AND GEORGE LYNCH 

released their first collaboration, Only to Rise, in 2015, 

the conceptual pull of their ’80s bands—Stryper and 

Dokken, respectively—was quite thrilling for those 

who had been waiting for some melodic shred by 

two icons of the genre. The album delivered on its 

promise with great songs, and, of course, kick-ass 

guitars. It also zoomed up into the top 10 of the Billboard 

charts—which meant that those who waited for 

such a musical mash-up were legion. 

Well, the hordes should be prepared to be exhilarated 

again, as the collaborators—under the band 

name Sweet & Lynch—have launched stage two, 

Unified [Frontiers]. Musically, he new album follows 

the same general path as Only to Rise, but with two 

notable exceptions. Lynch was more involved in the 

arrangement of the songs this time out—for Rise, he 

sent a ton of parts, but left it to Sweet to piece things 

together—and the nature of the world today informed 

Sweet’s melodies and lyrics. What this means to listeners 

is that Unified still has all of the memorable 

songwriting and ferocious guitars, but it also sends 

a deeper message. Prepare to be inspired. 

It’s so great that Only to Rise wasn’t a one-time 

project. What keeps you two collaborating? 

Sweet: I think George and I work well together 

because we’re both melodic minds and melodic musicians. 

Melody is the foundation of everything, and 

you’ve got to have something that really attaches itself 

to people—beautiful melodies that people can remember 

and sing along to. When he sends me stuff, it’s 

almost laid out for a singer already. I can hear the 

vocal melodies in his guitar parts. 

Lynch: In my own mind, I’m the world’s greatest 

singer, but I can’t sing. But I hear what I would like 

to hear there, and I’m always imagining the melodies 

the vocals are singing. When Michael puts down his 

vocals—obviously he’s on the other side of the country, 

and we’re not communicating directly regarding 

vocal ideas or anything like that—it’s usually not what 

I envisioned, but it’s still great. 

There may be a teachable moment, here. Michael, 

what do some guitarists do that makes it 

difficult for a vocalist to write melodies, or even 

sing over the tracks? 

Sweet: Well, with a lot of guitarists, it’s just constant 

soloing and jamming in the verses and prechoruses. 

How can you find any room for the vocal 

melodies? You’re done. But George is so amazing at 

knowing the right time and place to throw that stuff 

in, and the right time to hold back. 

Michael has stated that one of the production 

concepts for Unified was to make a record influenced 

by the best music of the ’70s and ’80s. 

Lynch: I was a little afraid of that concept, to be 

frank. I don’t even know what the ’80s thing means 

anymore. I was once hired by a record company in 

Japan to do something very ’80s specific, and it was 

one of the few times in my musical life that I was not 

able to pull something out and make it work. I failed. 

I literally walked out of that studio after a full day, 

and I wasn’t able to recreate what they wanted—a 

very ’80s guitar sound on a ’80s-style song. Perhaps 

that aspect of my creativity was lost in the 30 years 

since I was that person. 

So how does a creative team in 2017 produce a 

record with, say, ’80s overtones that still speaks to 

a modern audience? 

Sweet: Musically, I don’t think the goal was ever 

changed. It’s important to write songs that melodically 

grab people. You want them to sing along. The 

opportunity today, however, is to seek different and 

original chord progressions. We shouldn’t always 

be writing the same old standard rock songs with 

three chord changes. Even if you have a set melody 

already, there may be different chords that will work 

with it. For example, instead of going from a D to a 

G, try going to a Gm. You should change things up 

and explore other creative areas. I don’t always write 

the melody around the chords. Sometimes, I write 

the chords around the melody. 

Then, there’s the importance of lyrics, and how 

they can speak to the times. I think it’s important 

that we write words that inspire people. We live in 

a world that is not just uninspired, but oppressed. 

There’s a lot of crap in this world, and we all have 

to deal with a lot of ridiculous stuff that is done and 

said. So it’s important for me to write lyrics that are 

going to make people smile—make them feel good, 

lift them up, encourage them, and inspire them, 



33

FEATURES 

>>> MICHAEL SWEET & GEORGE LYNCH 

instead of the opposite. There’s enough 

of that already. 

What gear was critical to recording 

your parts for Unified? 

Lynch: The last few years, I’ve kept it 

pretty simple. I’ll just use two different guitars 

for two rhythm tracks. Usually, one of 

the guitars will be an ESP—a Kamikaze or 

a Tiger. For the second track, depending on 

the part, I might use a Les Paul, a Strat, or 

a Tele. I’ll also change amps sometimes, or 

the microphone, or the mic preamp. The 

trick is to find something complementary. 

You have to really listen, though. Sometimes, 

two awesome sounds can cancel 

each other out. So I might throw down a 

really crappy distorted tone, and, for some 

reason, it makes the blend sound just 

wonderful. The crummy tone adds some 

glue to whatever frequencies are missing 

in the first guitar. An engineer taught me 

that back in the ’90s, and it’s something I 

do to this day. 

I’m an amp freak, so I built shelves in 

the studio from floor to ceiling that are full 

of amps. For this record, I used my preferred 

“default” head—my stock ’68 Marshall 

100-watt plexi. I have to put something 

in front of it to push it where it needs to 

go, but it doesn’t matter too much if it’s 

an old BOSS 10-band EQ, a Tube Screamer, 

or something else. Then, I have a ’68 Marshall 

JMP 50 that I love. Those are the two 

big ones for me, but I also started using 

this amp called a Metz. I have an 18-watt 

version with EL84s, and a quad EL34 version 

that’s 35 watts or so. Another interesting 

amp was the RedPlate BlackLine. 

The bottom line for me is if I plug in and I 

can’t stop playing, then I’ve got to have it. I 

like to be inspired by an amp. For cabinets, 

I’ve got some old Oranges and Marshalls, 

and I use various combinations of them. 

Sweet: I had my signature Washburns 

in the studio, as well as some PRS Miras 

from when I was playing with Boston. I 

love the tone of those—they’re kind of like 

a Les Paul Jr. For amps, I wound up using 

my Mesa/Boogie Mark V head through a 

2x12 cab, and I also used my signature ISP 

MS Theta Pro. It just sounds killer. They 

added an extra EQ circuit for me to get 

more of my own signature EQ. I use a lot 

of EQ, man. I use pre-EQ and I use post- 

EQ, and, sometimes, multiple pre and multiple 

post. It’s just the way I get my tone. I 

knock it out on the front end, change the 


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FEATURES 

>>> MICHAEL SWEET & GEORGE LYNCH 

distortion, and get that half-cocked wah on 

steroids sound. And then, for the post-EQ, 

I get a nice, big fat chunky sound. 

Lynch: Another critical factor for me 

is the mics. I’ve got an old RCA BK-5A 

ribbon that was designed in the ’50s to 

be used for high-volume film sound—like 

cowboy movies with guns blazing. They’re 

really great mics for loud guitar. If I need 

two mics, I’ll use a Royer 121 ribbon and 

a Telefunken 609. Those two mics together 

give me that bright perfect combination of 

openness and low end, and they’re very 

midrange friendly. 

How did you divide up the tracking responsibilities? 

Sweet: Probably 75 to 80 percent of 

the guitars are George. He’s doing all the 

soloing, and most of the rhythms, and I’m 

doing some overdubs, texturing, and little 

ear-candy stuff in the choruses. But this 

wasn’t ever meant to be a dual-guitar band. 

It was meant for me to be the singer, and 

for George to be the guitar player. 

George, did you work out your solos 

beforehand? 

Lynch: No. I’m not disciplined enough 

to go, “Okay, I’m going to sit with this stuff 

before session day, and I’m going to compose 

everything before I start recording.” 

I have never done that except once—for a 

Dokken song called “Tooth and Nail.” That 

was the last time I ever did that. I prefer composing 

my solos in the studio, so that I can 

let the song inspire me. So I’ll just improv 

over a song a few times until I start getting 

an idea for a framework. Maybe I’ll get the 

intro or the outro, and then I’ll see where 

it’s all leading me. I just piece it together. 

Spontaneous creation… 

Lynch: Exactly. But I think the end justifies 

the means. If you end up with “Comfortably 

Numb,” whatever it took to get 

there was worth it. If it took a month or an 

hour, it doesn’t really matter. That said, I 

should probably spend more time tracking 

solos, because this stuff is forever. Back in 

the ’80s, the solo was life and death to me. 

It defined my whole existence, so it had to 

be insane, and I’d spend a lot of time on 

it. Nowadays, it’s still important to me, 

of course, but I’m doing a lot of records, 

so it’s a bit more like a job—although a 

job that I enjoy very much. I’m also much 

more comfortable in my own skin, and 

more confident. Thirty years ago, what I 

could do was more of a mystery to me, and 

I was very stressed out all of the time. It’s 

just easier now. I’m not afraid that it’s not 

going to happen. I go in excited, because I 

know it’s going to be cool, and I try not to 

beat myself up too much—or the people 

I’m working with. That’s the other thing. 

Back in the day, I was really hard on engineers. 

I work 24 hours, and it’s hard for 

an engineer to sit in a chair while you’re 

playing the same part for the 184th time. 

I’m sure they want to strangle you. I try to 

be sympathetic to that now. g 

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Glam Bam Reboot 

THE STRUTS’ ADAM SLACK PAYS HOMAGE 

TO A GUITAR HERO 


THE STRUTS LOVE OF QUEEN GOES DEEP. YOU 

can hear it in the epic glam-like grandeur of the songs, 

and it’s beamed front and center by vocalist Luke Spiller’s 

uncanny resemblance to Queen’s late and legendary 

frontperson Freddie Mercury. The cherry on top is 

the Brian May-influenced fretwork of Strut’s guitarist 

Adam Slack. 

Yet, despite the reverential tribute to a beloved 

band, the Struts are not a pack of clone-worthy renegades 

from the Queen musical We Will Rock You. A 

mere tribute act probably wouldn’t be asked to open 

arena shows for Guns N’ Roses, the Who, Foo Fighters, 

and the Rolling Stones, and fan interest is wildly 

impressive. The Struts have logged millions of You- 

Tube views, with their latest single for “One Night 

Only”—a full album is expected this year—charting 

upwards of 300,000 views. While the band itself may 

not be above accentuating certain musical similarities 

to Queen, the full package includes a ton of energy, 

great songwriting, and, at least in Slack’s case, a desire 

to pay homage to a hero, while simultaneously striving 

to develop a personal style. 

We’ve only heard the premiere single “One Night 

Only,” but can you reveal what gear you used for the 

new-album sessions? 

I bought [Pearl Jam guitarist] Mike McCready’s 

Gibson Les Paul earlier this year from Chicago Music 

Exchange, and it’s the best f**king guitar I’ve ever played 

in my life. It never goes out of tune, it sounds amazing, 

and it really sustains. I used it for everything I played 

on “One Night Only,” but for the rest of the album, I 

used loads of things. I have some models from this Japanese 

company called KZ1 that make guitars inspired 

by Brian May’s Red Special. I used one of them on a 

few songs on the album. It’s really cool, and you can 

get some really bizarre sounds out of it, because of all 

the switches and pickups. It also has a great nasal-like 

tone for solos. It’s a little tougher to remember the 

amps, because we wrote and recorded about 40 songs 

over eight months in different studios in the U.S. and 

the U.K. I’m certain there were some Vox, Marshall, 

Friedman, and 3 Monkeys amps in the mix. My favorite 

pedals were a SoloDallas Schaffer Replica and a J. 

Rockett Audio Designs Archer overdrive, and I use DR 

Strings, gauged .010-.053. 

For live performances, I’ve been using a Divided By 

13 BTR 23 and a Friedman Small Box running simultaneously—one 

a bit clean, and the other a little overdriven. 

I’m getting a Vox AC30 for the road, as well. 

For guitars, I may take the McCready, or my ’68 Les 

Paul Junior—which has been my dream guitar since 

I was a kid. 

Wait. What? Did you say that the band actually 

recorded 40 songs for this album? 

Well, the second album is a big thing, isn’t it? It 

makes or breaks your career, really, and we just want 

to make sure we get it right. It’s all about searching 

for the right songs. We currently have 11 songs we’re 

all really proud of, and we’re still trying for one or two 

“big single” productions. Sometimes, I don’t think 

we’ll stop writing until right before the record has to 

come out. In the interim, it was nice to release “One 

Night Only,” because it had been a while since we had 

released something out for the fans. 

What players most influenced your style? 

My two idols are Keith Richards and Brian May— 

completely different players. I love the swagger and 

rhythm of Keith Richards’ playing. You know who it 

is when you hear it, and his parts give so much sex 

appeal to the songs. Brian May is an absolute genius. 

His guitar is like an orchestra. Queen was huge for me. 

I think that, individually and collectively, they’re one 

of the most talented bands ever. 

On “One Night Only,” you did a nice solo that was 

obviously inspired by Brian May. 

Yeah. “One Night Only” has probably the most 

Brian May-style playing I’ve ever done. There’s one bit 

in particular that’s a little like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” 

but the rest of it is just me messing around. I try to do 

my thing, but if something sounds good—even if you 

could say it has harmonies that sound too “Brian”— 

I just let it sound good. I try not to think about it too 

much. But I always try to avoid being just a copycat. 

Do you tend to work out your solos to the song, or 

do you sit in the studio and improvise until you get 

something you like? 

It’s kind of both, really. I like noodling—unless the 

band gets pissed off, because it has been an hour, and 

I’m still coming up with something. Sometimes, it will 


BRAD HEATON 


39

FEATURES 

>>> ADAM SLACK 

just be an accident. I’ll play around and 

go, “Oh, that’s a nice bit,” and then try to 

work something around it. There are also 

times when I’ll hum a solo without having 

a guitar in my hands, and I’ll have to figure 

out what I was doing. It’s different every 

time. I’d love to ask Brian how he does it, 

if I meet him. What do you do? 

I tend to like improvising. I love that 

“seat of your pants” thing. If your solo in 

“One Night Only” had a bit of “messing 

around” as you said, it’s a great example 

of conscious crafting and improvising. 

The intro part is a real ear-catcher. 

Thank you. That definitely was a situation 

where the initial idea came while I was 

noodling, but then it took quite a while to 

decide how to phrase and refine each part. 

Did you ever take lessons, or did you 

learn everything by ear? 

I never had lessons. It was actually Green 

Day that got me into playing guitar when 

I was 13. I remember seeing the video for 

“Minority” on TV, and I was like, “Wow, I 

want to do that.” So I bought a Squier Strat, 

and I learned from downloading Green Day 

videos and copying how Billy Joe played. 

Then, at 15, I got into Oasis, and I started 

being aware of solos. But I don’t feel like I 

started playing properly until I was 18, and 

began playing in bands and writing songs. 

I used to jam with my cousin’s cover band 

in my hometown—just playing rhythm— 

and sometimes he’d throw me into the 

deep end in front of the crowd. He’d say, 

“Do a solo!” I’m like, “I don’t even know 

how to play.” But I think it was really good, 

because when you’re thrown into the deep 

end, you have to learn how to swim. I guess 

I picked up things that he was doing, and I 

learned by playing live, really—making horrendous 

mistakes along the way. YouTube 

lessons really helped me, as well. 

From a performance standpoint, what’s 

it like going from small clubs to arenas? 

To me, it all depends on my monitor 

mix. Sometimes, the stage volume can 

be loud in a small club, and that can get 

a bit overwhelming. On the other hand, 

there are times when I can’t have my 

guitar loud enough, because Luke can’t 

hear himself. And then, you have those 

horrible gigs where you can’t really hear 

the guitar, and you can’t really hear the 

vocals. That’s the problem with smaller 

clubs, and it’s quite frustrating. None 

of us want to use in-ear monitors, so 

we kind of just duke it out. But we did 

a show in Quebec with the Who, and it 

was the best gig I’ve ever played. It was 

in front of 80,000 people, and the wedges 

were incredible. We could hear everything 

crystal clear. Of course, if you walk 

away from the sweet spot of the wedges, 

it gets tougher. You can feel the drums, 

for example, but not hear them. But you 

just get used to everything, you know? 

You trust your sense of rhythm, and you 

just get on with it. g 

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FEATURES 

Songwriting Chops 

DIAMOND ROWE EXPLORES MELODIC SHRED 


THE MEMBERS OF TETRARCH ARE OBVIOUSLY 

too young to have starred in some golden-era-of- 

Hollywood film celebrating the American Dream, 

but their story would have made an excellent script 

for a ’30s feel-good flick, nonetheless. The timeless 

plot revolves around hard work and a maverick 

spirit, but, today, when so many bands struggle to 

find an audience and a viable way to support their 

art, the Tetrarch narrative also becomes a kind of 

beacon of hope. 

The band formed in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2007, and 

while it has released a bevy of albums and singles— 

and gained tour-support spots for major acts such as 

Avenged Sevenfold, DevilDriver, and Seether—it has 

never had the commercial and promotional benefit 

of a major record label. Even more intriguing, Tetrarch’s 

latest album, Freaks, cracked the top 20 of 

several iTunes charts on its release. That’s a pretty 

stellar accomplishment for a band that is entirely 

independent. Go team! 

Diamond Rowe shares the guitar duties in Tetrarch 

with guitarist/vocalist Josh Fore, and here she 

provides some insights about the current metal scene 

and how she forged her own unique style of shred. 

What started you on your guitar journey? Did a particular 

guitarist blow your mind and inspire you to 

start playing yourself? 

No—that’s really not what happened. It’s an interesting 

story, actually. I was 12 years old, and I was 

riding in the car with my mom, and this thought just 

popped into my head: “You know, it would be kind of 

cool to play an instrument. I think I’ll play guitar.” I 

don’t know where it came from, but when I get into 

something, I’m all in, and nothing else matters. I 

bought every tab book you could imagine, and I had 

my parents pick up gear for me at Guitar Center. I’d 

sit in my room for eight hours a day, and just figure 

it out. I’d pour over the tab books, watch video lessons, 

and practice like mad. As I hadn’t really listened 

to music seriously until then, I also had to formulate 

who were my favorite bands and guitar players. 

That’s when I discovered Metallica. They were my alltime 

favorite band, and I loved Kirk Hammett’s playing. 

I’d watch their live DVDs over and over and over 

again. Then, I found Kiss, Eddie Van Halen, Slash, 

and Dimebag Darrell, and I realized I was becoming 

influenced by guitarists who were really good at serving 

the song—even if they were shredders. 

You can obviously shred yourself, so how did 

you determine when fast playing serves the song, 

and when it doesn’t? 

It’s hard for me to define precisely, but when I hear 

someone sweep picking all over the place, I’ll usually 

say, “That’s really cool. I can’t do that as well as 

they can.” But that’s not what made me love guitar. 

My favorite bands were always mainstream metal 

bands that knew how to write good songs. The solos 

the guitar players in those bands played is the kind 

of playing that made me want to play guitar myself. 

I saw those solos as tasteful and exuding some kind 

of emotion, so I guess that’s still what I want to hear 

today. I mean, I love fast shredding, so if I can figure 

out a way to do that and still the serve the song, then 

I’m happy. I want non-musicians to feel something 

when they hear me play. I don’t really concern myself 

with other musicians. 

That’s an interesting comment. Could you elaborate 

on that thought? 

Well, a musician might listen to a solo, and immediately 

start saying, “Oh, she should have put a fast 

lick there,” or, “She should have done this or that.” 

But not everybody who listens to Metallica or Disturbed 

really care about that thing. They’re going to 

say, “Whoa, that was really a cool solo,” or, “Wow, I 

really felt something when those notes hit me.” So 

I’m more interested in serving those people, rather 

than other musicians who might say, “Oh, she’s not 

as good as Tosin Abasi.” I mean, what’s that mean, 

anyway? Of course, I’d like to impress people with my 

playing, but I’m not trying to compete with anyone. 

I’m trying to play music. 

That said, how did you go about working up 

your speed? 

For me it was persistence. I know that a lot of 

people say to hook up a metronome, start slow, 

and speed up. I tried that, but it made guitar playing 

a little too much like studying for me. I mean, 

it worked, but I didn’t want to do it very much. For 

me, it was more productive to listen to records, 


STEVE ZIEGELMEYER 


43

FEATURES 

and learn the notes of whatever fast lick 

I was trying to learn. Then, I’d stop the 

song, and play the notes slowly until I 

could get it up to speed—or at least as 

close as possible. Once I had that down, 

I’d practice along with the song until 

my speed matched the recording. There 

wasn’t much of a technical method—I’d 

just practice the lick over and over. I’d sit 

there for hours [laughs]. 

What was the main rig you used for 

the Freak sessions? 

I mainly played my black ESP Eclipse, 

but I did some lead lines and octave parts 

with my Les Paul Standard. My strings are 

a .010 set of Ernie Ball Skinny Top/Heavy 

Bottom. We tried a few different amps, but 

I remember a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier 

and a Peavey 6505 were blended together 

for most of the tracks. We used to plug right 

into our amps, but we wanted some variation 

for this album so we used a DigiTech 

Whammy, a Boss DD-3 Digital Delay, and 

some effects—like a phaser—added with 

software plug-ins. 

When you started carving out a singular 

guitar sound for yourself, what 

types of things were you looking at? 

Basically, I’ve played a Mesa/Boogie 

Triple Rectifier since I started playing guitar. 

I’ve always liked that really chunky, fat, and 

grainy tone—something you can almost 

feel when you palm-mute the low-E string. 

When I play rhythm, that’s my thing. Josh, 

however, is a scooper. He scoops out all the 

midrange. I don’t. I like my mids. 

How do you and Josh split up your 

roles when you write songs together? Is 

one of you the main riff writer, or the lyric 

writer, or is it a creative free for all? 

We both pretty much touch on everything 

when it comes to writing. He might 

have a riff or a vocal melody, and I’ll help 

him expand on the idea, or vice versa. If 

he does more of one thing, it’s coming up 

with vocal melodies. But, other than that, 

we both do everything—riffs, solos, rhythm 

parts, counterpoint lines, hooks, and so on. 

It’s never really a set method, but usually 

somebody will start something, and then 

we’ll come together to finish it. 

As you’re aware, there’s a thriving 

community of female guitarists who 

shred brilliantly. Did any of them influence 

you in some way? 

This is probably going to make me a terrible 

person, but I’ve never been influenced 

by a female guitar player. In fact, I honestly 

didn’t even think about the fact that I was 

a female playing guitar until later in my 

career. I never wanted to seek out someone 

just like me, and I never paid attention 

to the fact that I was even different. I 

never thought, “Oh, I’m a girl. People won’t 

believe in me, and I’m not going to be able 

to shred.” I just liked all the dudes. I’d say, 

“Yeah. Eddie Van Halen. I’m going to play 

like that!” And, you know, I just tried to 

play like that. End of story. g 

44 


FEATURES 

Musical Radicals Revisit 

a Long, Strange Road 

AS THEY PREPARE TO TOUR AGAIN, STEVE MORSE 

REMEMBERS THE EARLY DAYS OF THE DREGS 

BY JOE BOSSO 

BEFORE HE JOINED DEEP PURPLE IN 

1994, guitar virtuoso Steve Morse already had 

an impressive career as a solo artist, and as a 

member of Kansas. 

Before that, however, is when the story really 

starts. 

Back in the early ’70s, Morse, fresh out of the 

University of Miami, put together the progressive 

rock-fusion group, the Dixie Dregs. During 

the band’s initial run, from 1973 to 1982, they 

released seven wildly acclaimed albums that mixed 

rock, jazz, classical, country, and bluegrass into a 

sound that thrilled discerning music fans while it 

confounded radio programmers. Even the band’s 

label at the time, Capricorn, didn’t know what to 

make of them. 

“I think Capricorn took us on as a sort of 

interesting art project,” Morse says with a laugh. 

“We followed a pretty weird career path in those 

days. If something made us laugh, we were prone 

to do it. ‘Okay, let’s put this music with that— 

nobody has done that before.’ We definitely took 

the fork in the road less traveled—which doesn’t 

always help when the business people are trying 

to sell records.” 

During those years, Morse’s wildly idiosyncratic 

guitar playing—incorporating everything 

from his love of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page 

to a fascination with players as disparate as John 

McLaughlin, Chet Atkins, and Albert Lee—started 

to become the stuff of legend. 

“It wasn’t a premeditated plan to put all of 

these styles together,” Morse says. “I was just 

doing what came naturally to me. But I was, 

shall we say, eager. I was young, and I couldn’t 

wait to show everybody what I could do. I guess 

you could say my playing was more ‘caffeinated’ 

on the early records. The whole band was a little 

impatient in how they played, which might be 

what people liked about us.” 

Since disbanding, the Dregs (as they became 

known in ’81) have reunited on several occasions, 

and with Deep Purple about to take a breather, Morse 

and three of the group’s original members (drummer 


STEVE ZIEGELMEYER 


47

FEATURES 

Rod Morgenstein, bassist Andy West, violinist 

Allen Sloan), along with keyboardist Steve 

Davidowski (who played with the outfit from 

1975-’77), announced they’re going to hit 

the road again for a series of dates starting 

in March 2018. For Morse, part of the challenge 

of playing with his old cohorts will be 

as much mental as it is physical. 

“It’s kind of impossible to be the same 

guy as I was back then,” he admits. “Although 

certain things come back to you when you 

play with the group of people you came up 

with, so you do get into a familiar frame of 

mind. All I can do is play the songs as well 

as I can, and that means I have to practice 

a whole lot.” 

He already has a head start. The night 

before our interview, Morse was giving his 

fingers a workout on a nylon-string guitar 

as he reacquainted himself with the classical-based 

track “Go for Baroque” (from the 

1981 Dregs album, Unsung Heroes). 

“I’m isolating trouble spots that I need 

The Dixie Dregs in 1979. From left: Allen Sloan, T Lavitz, Rod Morgenstein, Morse, and Andy 

West. 

to work on,” he says. “There’s a section in 

the song where I’m playing diatonic tenths 

in the first position. This can be extremely 

hard to master, so I’m making up little exercises 

to regain that ability. It’s like you have 

to get your fingers thinking the old way, 

so it’s a process.” 

Take us back to the scene at University of 

Miami, where the Dregs formed. What was 

48 


the guitar community like at the school? Did 

you fit in, or were you an outlier of sorts? 

I wasn’t an outlier “of sorts.” I didn’t fit 

in at all! It was like, “Why is this guy here?” 

[Laughs.] People were pretty much into their 

own little camps, but I was all over the place— 

which is probably why I wound up with a 

band like the Dregs. I originally went there to 

learn classical guitar. I wanted to incorporate 

that into my style of playing and writing, but 

the classical guys didn’t want me because I 

was too much of a beginner. The jazz guys 

didn’t want me because I was too oddball, I 

guess. The only place they could stick me in 

was something called “rock ensemble,” but 

it was really kind of jazz. It took me a while 

to find my place—if I ever did. 

Do you think you had your guitar sound 

down when the Dregs first formed, or was 

it always sort of an evolving issue for you? 

I’m sure it evolved. I know that I always 

had a hard time finding a sound that had a 

good rock feel, but was still clean enough 

for a lot of the chordal things I was doing. 

We had songs like “Wages of Weirdness,” 

and we did country-based tunes, so I needed 

clarity. I experimented with an Acoustic 150- 

watt head, and then I went to Ampeg V4s. 

My sound back then was always a bit of a 

compromise. Channel-switching amps just 

weren’t available at the time. 

The process by which you built your 

“FrankenTele” has been well documented. 

But tell me, did you have any clue as to what 

you were doing? This was before Eddie Van 

Halen and self-mods were in vogue. 

Well, I can tell you that everything I did 

was born out of necessity. I started with a ’67 

Strat—I broke the whammy off of that—and 

the Tele part came later. I got the black Tele 

as payment for doing a session for a friend. 

Instead of money, I got a guitar. There were 

things I liked about the Tele, but a lot of 

things I didn’t like—such as feedback and 

tuning problems. Plus, I couldn’t get the 

kind of gain and midrange I wanted. Somebody 

else would have just gotten another 

guitar, but I didn’t. I liked the neck of my 

Strat, so I thought, “Why not combine the 

two?” And, viola! It worked. I had no idea. I 

stripped the black paint off of the Tele body, 

and that seemed to work okay, so I started 

on the pickups next—which became a real 

trial-and-error process. The problem was, 

once I started fixing one thing or making 

Continues on page 111 


49

Grand Masters of Metal Mayhem 

(left to right) — Ryan Patrick, 

Stevie D, and Rich Ward. 


MOD 

ERN 

MET 

ALL 

URGY 

A MOLTEN-METAL 

GUITAR ROUNDTABLE 

WITH JOSH TODD 

& THE CONFLICT’S 

STEVIE D, OTHERWISE’S 

RYAN PATRICK, AND 

FOZZY’S RICH WARD 


PHOTOGRAPHS BY HRISTO SHINDOV 


51

COVER STORY 

MODERN METALLURGY 

hey don’t call it “hard 

T 

rock” for nothing. 

The bands profiled 

in this month’s cover 

story all had to struggle 

to deliver their 

artistic statements. 

Fozzy—on the outside, a seeming pop-culture 

sure thing with a famous wrestler at 

the helm—had to overcome early missteps, 

regain respect, and rebuild an audience. 

Otherwise went the independent route 

for years before signing a record deal, but 

then had to carefully balance their restless 

and diverse creativity within the confines 

of what it means to be a commercial act. 

Finally, Josh Todd & the Conflict became 

a side project of a more-established hit 

maker, because the bigger band was, for 

various reasons, stalling the release of new 

music—a frustrating position for any ambitious 

and productive musician to be in. 

Happily, everything turned out wonderfully 

for all—if you want to cut to the 

chase. But the creative skirmishes provided 

us with a chance to share some real-world 

insights on career challenges, avoiding clichés, 

developing individual styles, writing 

riffs, and constructing tones. 

STEVIE D 

Buckcherry vocalist Josh Todd and guitarist 

Stevie D started a side project—Josh 

Todd & the Conflict—because they didn’t 

want to hold back their creative surges 

until the next Buckcherry album could 

be organized. Produced by Stevie D and 

Stone Temple Pilots drummer Eric Kretz, 

the project’s debut album, Year of the Tiger 

[Century Media], afforded the two Buckcherry 

veterans an opportunity to explore 

a few different musical landscapes—such 

as “Rain” (which percolates with some 

blues-gospel-styled vocals, stuttering percussion 

breaks, and caterwauling guitars) 

or the title track (which could have been 

released in the first era of British punk). 

What gear did you use for the Year of 

the Tiger sessions? 

For Buckcherry, I use mostly vintage 

Les Pauls and SGs. For the cleaner bells 

and whistles with some chime, I would 

use vintage Fender Strats and Teles, and 

everything would be plugged into vintage 

Marshalls or Fenders. But for Josh Todd & 

the Conflict, I took a whole new approach, 

because we wanted a sound that was a 

bit reckless and big, but still bare bones. 

You know, not tons of reverb, and not too 

slick—a punk-rock spirited album. So my 

jumping off point was ’70s punk rock and 

Steve Jones. He used a Norlin-era Les Paul 

Custom in the Sex Pistols. So I have two 

’74 Customs, and while I know that Norlin-era 

Gibsons are not the most sought 

after guitars in the vintage world, they 

just sound meaner to me. So that’s where 

I started with the guitars—although I just 

developed a signature model with Sully 

Guitars. It’s called the ’71 Trella, and it 

has a Fender scale length, a mahogany 

body with a maple cap, and an ebony fretboard—kind 

of what I like in that mid- 

’70s Les Paul Custom. We tune down to 

C, so I use Dunlop strings, gauged .010- 

.056. I want to get my shred on, but also I 

need something a little thick around that 

bottom end. 

For the amps, I have a signature amp 

with Carol-Ann, and it has a high-gain 

channel. So I went there. Then, I went to 

the Bogner Uberschall, and I mixed that 

in with a Marshall Silver Jubilee. That’s 

kind of the meat and potatoes of where 

the guitar tones started. I also brought in 

some pedals, of course. I used the Digi- 

Tech Whammy, a Keeley Chorus and D&M 

Drive, and I like the Electro-Harmonix POG 

as an octave pedal, because it tracks better 

than any other octaver. For some leads, I 

used a Klon, and for others, I just dimed 

the gain on the amp. That often seems like 

the better way. It’s cleaner. A lot of overdrives 

are a bit too much in their high-gain 

settings. The tone starts collapsing, in my 

opinion. We also had some fun on the song, 

“Rain.” I went after a “Brian May spirit,” 

and dimed a Pete Cornish Treble Boost 


like Joe Bonamassa, where we get to build, 

meander, explore, and improvise. Still, 

whatever you play has to be honest. Like, 

two singers can sing the same line, but 

if one is really believing it—he will present 

it better, and he will sell it better. It’s 

the same thing with guitar. There are certain 

things that rock and roll guitar players 

have done a million times, but it’s just 

the delivery. It’s in the hands. It’s in the 

vibrato. Licks have all been recycled in one 

way or another. For example, there’s a new 

guy out there named Jared James Nichols, 

and he is playing really melodic, and really 

bluesy. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done 

before, but he has put his own thing on it, 

and he really loves what he’s doing. You can 

hear that, so it’s seductive—even though 

there’s a whole encyclopedia of licks he’s 

referencing. 

RYAN PATRICK 

into a Vox AC30, which was also dimed. 

Then, I grabbed a Guild Brian May Signature 

guitar, and I played the solo with a sixpence—just 

so I could cop that Queen vibe. 

How do you typically come up with 

riffs for songs? 

I try not to pound square pegs into 

round holes. I feel like you have to listen 

to where you’re at, and what sounds natural 

to the song. And you have to be flexible 

about how a riff actually sits in the 

track. Let’s say you write a riff at home, 

but when you bring it into the studio, it’s 

not quite there. So you have to be flexible 

with your cadence, your phrasing, and 

maybe even your note choices. If it doesn’t 

fit, then use it for something else. Write 

something new. I’ve written with a lot of 

people, and the younger they are, the more 

stubborn or married to their ideas they 

become. Flexibility is key for the flow of 

a great song. 

Do you have a process for determining 

whether a riff is awesome and albumready, 

or simply not useable? 

I think inherently you know if a riff is 

working. When you’re listening back, and 

it’s just not popping, it’s not jumping out at 

you, or it’s not making you feel like, “Oh, 

man, this rules!” If it’s not making you totally 

happy immediately when you’re listening 

back, then you have to start tweaking. And 

the longer you tweak, the less likely it is 

that it’s good. The best songs and the best 

riffs were written fairly quickly. 

Is it possible for guitarists to develop 

an approach to soloing that references 

the past, is true to the player’s personality 

and influences, and yet sounds fresh 

and modern? 

I can only speak for me. I’m playing 

all day. So I’m constantly striving to learn 

new things. Like, I’ll still listen to guys like 

Angus Young and Eric Gales and others, 

and I admit that I swipe moves from all of 

them. Sometimes, I’ll practice their patterns 

while I’m watching TV, and, over 

time, I learn how to make those licks mine. 

I switch up a few notes, or I’ll add a note 

to the pattern, or take out a note. When 

I’m actually laying down a solo, I want to 

sing it first. My idea is to have a beginning, 

a middle, and an end, and it’s usually all 

over in eight bars. We don’t do anything 

Founded by two brothers—vocalist Adrian 

Patrick and his guitarist brother Ryan—in 

2003, Otherwise started out with something 

to prove. And the recreational MMA enthusiasts 

definitely took a fighting spirit and a 

never say die attitude out into the musical 

ring—a palpable force of energy and passion 

that you can actually feel in the video 

soundtrack to the song “Angry Heart” from 

their recent release, Sleeping Lions [Century 

Media]. But the Patrick brothers aren’t 

simply young warriors looking to make 

their mark in the hard-rock community. 

The Las Vegas natives are also focused on 

giving back. Ryan, in fact, founded a nonprofit 

company, Life By Music, to get musical 

instruments into the hands of as many 

kids as possible. And one of Ryan’s proudest 

accomplishments is that his photo— 

hair flying and tongue sticking out—is 

displayed at the theater of the Las Vegas 

academy where he studied guitar. 

“It’s such an honor,” he says. “But it’s 

inspiring, too, because I can tell the current 

students, “I was once in that same 

chair as you are, and now I’m a recording 

artist. That’s great, but I’m still learning.” 

So how exactly did you start on your 


53

COVER STORY 


guitar journey? 

I went to the Las Vegas Academy of Performing 

Arts, and I trained in classical guitar 

and jazz studies under a gentleman named 

Bill Swick. I’m so grateful to him—he’s like 

my guitar dad. He accepted me into the program 

when I couldn’t read music. You see, 

the girl I liked in middle school was going to 

the academy, so I was like, “Hey, I’m starting 

to pick up guitar. Let me audition.” I covered 

the Smashing Pumpkins version of “Landslide” 

for my prepared piece. But when we 

got to the sight-reading part of the audition, 

I said, “Look, I don’t know how to do that.” 

I left the audition thinking I was just going 

to go to my regular high school, and a few 

weeks later, I got the acceptance letter. It was 

one of the coolest moments of my life. And 

Mr. Swick taught me day in and day out for 

four years straight. The knowledge he gave 

me was just incredible. 

What guitars made the scene for Sleeping 

Lions? 

I used a ’69 goldtop Gibson Les Paul that 

belonged to Bob Marlette, our producer. I 

also played a Fender Strat, and it was kind 

of my secret weapon. I’d never recorded 

with a single-coil guitar before—I usually 

play Les Pauls or SGs—and it changed a 

lot of the tones on the record. It was really 

cool to switch it up, jump on the Fender 

train, and get some twangy tones out of 

that beautiful Stratocaster—even though 

that chugging creamy low end of a Les 

Paul is what had established the Otherwise 

guitar sound. 

What about amps? 

Most of the record was recorded with a 

Bogner. My live sound is actually a Rivera 

Knucklehead. I’ve been rocking that one for a 

long time. It’s my road dog. I just got set up 

with a Line 6 M13, so now all of my effects 

are digital—which is something I’ve never 

done before. But, in the studio, the Bogner 

seemed to be cutting through a little bit 

more than the Knucklehead. It also added 

a bit of a richer sound to our heavier riffs. 

It just sounded more massive. Bob wanted 

to work with some other options—like a 

Fender Jazz King. But I was like, “Dude, I 

don’t know, man. That’s like way, way on 

the other end of what we do live. Let’s work 

with this Bogner.” And, you know, I ended 

up falling in love with the Bogner. 

What tunings did you use for the album? 

This record probably has the most diverse 

tunings we’ve ever used. We recorded a song 

in B that I played on a Danelectro baritone 

that we ran through an MXR La Machine 

to get this gravelly low, roaring electronic 

sound. I actually played with the baritone 

on my lap. There are three songs written in 

standard tuning—which I don’t think we’ve 

done since our first national release. Then, 

we have songs a full step down, and a halfstep 

down. 

It was interesting, because the tuning of 

each guitar prompted me to write different 

parts. The Strat was usually tuned a half-step 


COVER STORY 


down, and the Les Paul was a full-step down. 

So if we were playing, and I wasn’t feeling 

it, I’d change guitars. I’d also switch if we 

found my brother was pushing his vocal 

range on something. Rather than changing 

the chords or transposing the song, I’d just 

grab one of the down-tuned guitars to see if 

it helped lift up his vocal approach. Or maybe 

if something wasn’t bright enough, I’d try 

standard tuning. Sometimes, we’d end up 

doing a song in standard that was originally 

written a whole-step down. The other benefit 

was that we had these different tonalities 

to the songs. It wasn’t a vision or a plan, it 

just ended up that way. 

There’s so much music out there now, 

so given your own mission statement, how 

does a band break out and really get people 

to listen? Do you join a community and feed 

off the shared audience, or do you take a 

chance and celebrate your uniqueness— 

which risks putting the band outside of a 

typical fan base? 

That’s the frustrating thing about being 

a mainstream heavy act. We get categorized 

into this genre called “active rock,” and that’s 

kind of where you have to live. Of course, I’ll 

pay respect to the community, but, like many 

artists, there are parts of this band that are not 

active rock approved. So it’s tough, because 

we want to rock, but we don’t want to alienate 

some fans, and we want to get played on 

the radio. We’re a heavy band, but we don’t 

consider ourselves a metal band. We always 

like to believe that we’re descendants of the 

hard-alternative scene of the ’90s. 

But it has come to a point in this day in 

age that artists will be told, “You guys have 

to have a package. You’ve got to market it 

a certain way.” And, not to discredit anybody’s 

success in the industry, but from 

our understanding, bands develop very concise 

products that become digestible for the 

common listener to enjoy. But we don’t 

have costumes or wear makeup. We’ll play 

a song that will start a mosh pit, and the 

next song will bring tears to your grandmother’s 

eyes, because it will remind her of 

her youth. We want to stay true to what we 

want to do. But we definitely have a label, 

and they’ll say, “Hey guys, this is what it is. 

This is what we want. This is how we see 

it.” We’re like, “Okay, we can do that. But 

we also want to experiment and push the 

boundaries.” That’s what we did on some 

songs on Sleeping Lions with the electronic 

elements and the different tunings. 

I guess we’ve never been happy with 

where we are. We want to push our own 

boundaries, and not be typecast as a certain 

kind of band. So we come with a bit of 

resistance to convention, and I think that 

we sometimes pay the consequences of not 

being in the good graces of certain business 

people for that stance. I don’t want to make 

it look like I’m pissed off at the industry, 

because I am not. I am f**king grateful. I’m 

excited and stoked about this record. But 

that doesn’t change the fact that there are 

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COVER STORY 


some interesting hoops you have to jump 

through when you’re a professional. Until 

you get to that level where you’re up on the 

top of the mountain, and you can do whatever 

you want, there is definitely some diplomacy 

that has to take place. 

Is there anything surprising you may 

have learned since becoming a professional 

musician? 

Just that a huge part of being a performer 

is having confidence in your showmanship. 

As for me, I can promise you’re 

going to feel the chords I’m going to play, 

because I’m going to play them with every 

part of my body and soul. I’m not saying 

that other guitar players don’t do this, but 

I have a philosophy: I feel like I’m at war. 

Even if I’m just making a bend, I promise 

you that bend is going to sound like the sky 

is ripping apart. Now, that’s not the hardest 

thing to do, technically speaking. It’s easy. 

It’s simple stuff. But it takes a lot of heart 

to really lay it all out there. 

RICH WARD 

Rich Ward co-wrote every track on Fozzy’s 

new record, Judas [Century Media], and it 

must have made him feel like a conquering 

hero after all the band’s ups and downs. After 

seven studio albums, the band is finally a bona 

fide smash hit. But it doesn’t take much to 

get the generous and gear-obsessed guitarist 

and producer talking about how reverence 

for “the masters” has changed, rather 

than his own band’s commercial ascension. 

“It was sad that Allan Holdsworth passed 

almost unnoticed by the major media,” says 

Ward. “There was a moment in the ’80s, where 

he was always part of the conversation for 

everybody who was into guitar. We used to 

celebrate genius. For example, you rarely hear 

about Steve Lukather in conversations these 

days, and yet, if you put Steve onstage with 

your average guitar player, he would send 

them home crying. I saw Toto play last year, 

and he’s still playing better than everybody. 

It’s not my place to tell other people who 

they should acknowledge, but I think we’ve 

gotten too tribal about things. We’ve turned 

into a society of cliques where if you’re not 

in, then you’re tuned out.” 

Fozzy’s video for “Judas” logged more 

than ten-million YouTube views. That’s 

crazy, right? 

It is insane. But that has always been my 

preconception for the way things are supposed 

to work in the music business. You 

just try to paddle as fast as you can to keep 

the momentum up from the early records that 

your fan base liked. And here I am—seven 

albums into this Fozzy band—and it’s just 

now starting to catch fire. But I will embrace 

it for all it is, and love on it like this is the 

way it’s supposed to happen. 

It is interesting, though, that the band 


COVER STORY 


had such a slow burn. Vocalist Chris Jericho 

is a huge wrestling star, and he loved promoting 

the band, so you’d think all of the 

publicity around Fozzy would have blown 

things up from the get-go. 

I think we inadvertently made some crucial 

mistakes early on. My priorities were with 

my other band Stuck Mojo, and Chris’ priorities 

were with wrestling. And when the band 

first formed, we were a covers band that was 

doing basically what Steel Panther is now 

doing. We were dressing up in costumes, and 

the band was called Fozzy Osbourne. It was 

a really fun, cool party band, and we didn’t 

really think of it beyond that, because we all 

had our number one love and priority someplace 

else. Unfortunately, we also played on 

WWE Raw, where Chris is a villain, and we 

kind of tarred and feathered the band’s name 

by performing as “bad guys” on the show. 

Those wrestling fans take it super seriously. 

They were booing us before we even started 

playing. And I feel like we’ve spent the last 

12 years undoing the first few years of our 

career. But there will always be those people 

who say this isn’t real, because Fozzy was a 

joke band wearing costumes playing Krokus 

and Twisted Sister covers, and their frontman 

is a wrestler who plays characters on TV. 

We never thought we deserved anything— 

we just wanted a chance to earn our respect 

and earn our spot. If now is that time—awesome. 

I play guitar for a living. That in itself 

is pretty amazing. 

So how do you transition from a fun cover 

band to serious original outfit that can compete 

in the commercial music industry? 

That’s the other thing. Normally, bands 

have a sound based on their influences and 

years of banging it out in a rehearsal space. 

We never quite had that moment. And when 

we could no longer fall back on the idea that 


we were a cover band, we had to talk about 

who we should be as ourselves, so to speak. 

It was simple things, of course, such as realizing 

we had to rehearse as a unit more. 

We also had some chemistry from playing 

together. But we knew we had to be taken 

seriously on the merits of what we do. So 

our first record as an original act had guest 

stars such as Zakk Wylde, Mark Tremonti, 

and Marty Friedman, and there we lots of 

guitar solos. We thought that was a good first 

step to earn the respect of the guitar community. 

Of course, we immediately lost 50 

percent of our fanbase because Fozzy was 

no longer fun-loving Chris Jericho playing 

a character and doing covers. 

Wow. That must have been depressing. 

Well, at least we were making musical 

decisions based on what we wanted to 

do, and Megaforce—our label at the time— 

gave us the freedom to make the records we 

wanted to make. Maybe somebody should 

have said, “Here are some career things to 

think about, fellas,” because when you give 

musicians carte blanche to make the records, 

they might not be thinking about how that 

music can turn into something a large audience 

of people will buy. It’s a learning experience. 

But, that being said, my focus has 

never been about where I am on the Billboard 

charts. I’m still that kid who stands 

in the mirror listening to The Number of the 

Beast by Iron Maiden and tries to learn how 

to play every note. 

What was the rig you unleashed on the 

Judas sessions? 

The star of most of the rhythm tracks is 

a 1976 Gibson Les Paul Standard. The ’76 is 

my favorite year of Les Pauls, and the reason 

is they have maple necks, so they’re a little 

brighter sounding. We detune to drop C, and 

when you start dropping down the tuning on 

a Les Paul, they’re notoriously on the darker 

side of the spectrum, so having that maple 

neck is really nice. Also, the mid-’70s Les 

Pauls have a slim-taper neck profile, and as 

my hands are kind of small, it’s more comfortable 

for me. I feel like I have better control. 

I think for metal riffing they’re the 

perfect balance—especially as I’m still that 

classic-rock guy who loves the tonal profile 

of a Les Paul through a Marshall. 

I cut my solos with different guitars, 

though. I have a Charvel USA model that 

has a nice mid presence that cuts through 

the mix, and a Dean Tracii Guns Signature 

NashVegas. I put a mini Seymour Duncan 

Jeff Beck stack in it, and it sounds amazing. 

I learned a long time ago, when you’re 

tracking lead stuff, you need to find something 

that has a separate tonal profile from 

the rhythm guitars so that the solos can live 

in their own space in the mix. 

I’m an SIT guy, and I use a .058 on the 

low string. I’ve experimented with string 

gauges to the point where if I use anything 

lower than a .058, the guitar gets too dark 

sounding for me. When I think about guitars, 

I think about my heroes like Eddie Van 

Halen, Angus Young, Randy Rhoads, and 

John Sykes, and they had this brightness to 

their sound—a cutting tone that had a certain 

aggressiveness. So I try to find that balance 

between string tension and touch. For 

example, I’m often lightly palm muting when 

I’m hitting chords in order to keep the vibration 

of the string so that it’s not warbling out 

of tune, but is still hitting the guitar hard 

enough to push the pickups. That’s a bit of 

an art in itself. 

For amps, my Marshall 1987X plexi reissue 

is my non-master-volume “headroom 

amp,” and I put a Tube Screamer in front of 

it. It’s big and open sounding. It’s usually 

not the star of the show, because it doesn’t 

have enough gain, but it plays a nice supporting 

character. It’s the “Malcolm Young.” 

It really is a great rhythm sound. But my 

primary amps are a Marshall JCM800 and 

a Splawn Pro Stock. A lot of times, it will 

be the JCM800 in the left speaker, and the 

Splawn in the right speaker, with the 1987X 

mixed in somewhere. I’m a big fan of Steve 

Vai and how he orchestrates guitar layers, 

so I also used an EVH 5150 III, a Friedman 

Brown Eye, and a Diezel to create different 

textures. The trick is always how to get all of 

the parts heard. It’s like how they recorded a 

lot of vocal harmonies in the ’70s. It wasn’t 

one singer stacking every note. They’d put 

four people singing harmony together, because 

the distinctly different voices would create 

interesting blends. So that’s what I’ve really 

tried doing— finding guitars and amps that 

work well together and have them all in the 

same room. I do use one cabinet for all the 

amp heads, though. It’s a checkerboard Marshall 

straight-front cab loaded with mid-’70s 

Greenback speakers. For miking, it’s nothing 

fancy—just a Shure SM57. I figure if that 

mic was good enough for Back in Black, it’s 

good enough for me. g 


61

LESSONS 

Getting into Shapes 

HOW CHORDS LAY ON THE FRETBOARD 

BY JESSE GRESS 

WE GUITARISTS TEND TO LEARN CHORDS by memorizing and 

recalling the physical shapes they form—little cells of dots that 

roam the fingerboard like constellations. Barres, diagonal lines, 

triangles, right angles, and even the Big Dipper are but a few of 

the shapes that emerge when we “connect the dots,” so to speak. 

But while this methodology certainly aids retention and recollection, 

it doesn’t account for how and why these sonic shapes actually 

exist. So how do chords get their shapes? Glad you asked! 

INVERSION THERAPY 

Two-note harmonic intervals can certainly suggest chord sounds, 

but traditional chords require at least three notes. Theoretically, 

triads are three-note chords that can be spelled three different 

ways, from low to high. These are called inversions. The three 

spellings of a C major chord are root-3-5 (root position), 3-5-root 

(first inversion), and 5-root-3 (second inversion). Each inversion 

is formed by transposing the lowest note up one octave, i.e., the 

bottom note of one inversion becomes the top note of the next 

one, played 8va. 

Unlike guitarists, piano players learn all about chord inversions 

from the get go. Contrast this with your basic five-string, 

open C cowboy chord dissected in Fig. 1a—the first chord shape 

most of us learned—and you can see how all three inversions are 

lumped into one diagonal grip. Placing all three inversions on 

the same string group as shown in Fig. 1b reveals three “building 

blocks” that can be used to form the basis for the other four 

common open major chord shapes depicted in Fig. 2 (A, G, E, and 

D), which, when transposed, are often referred to by the name of 

their open shape, regardless of the root—an “E”-shaped F# chord, 

“A”-shaped Bb chord, etc. 

This is where the guitar and keyboard worlds divide. Guitar 

chord voicings, or spellings, are typically composed of three to 

six notes, one per string, and the physical layout of notes on the 

fingerboard makes it possible and often necessary to spread out 

notes, double them in different octaves, or to omit select chord 

tones. (Try inverting a Cmaj7 chord—root-3-5-7, 3-5-7-root, 5-7- 

root-3, and 7-root-3-5—and you’ll understand why.) The top and 

Fig. 1a 

Fig. 1a 

 

T 

A 

B 

Fig. 1b 

Root 

position 

R 3 5 

C 

C 

C 

X 3 2 X X X 3 1 1 X X X 2 3 1 X X 

V IX 

R 3 5 

Fig. 2 

A 

C = 

0 

1 

0 

2 

3 

Root 

position 

0 

2 

3 

First 

Inversion 

C 

X 3 2 1 

First 

Inversion 

1 

0 

2 

R 3 

Second 

Inversion 

3 5 R 5 R 3 

G 

Second 

Inversion 

or 1 2 3 

( ) 1 1 1 2 1 3 2 3 1 

( T )( ) 1 3 2 

( 5 ) R 5 R 3 5 R 3 5 R 3 R R 5 R 3 5 R ( 3 )( 5 ) R 5 R 3 

E 

0 

1 

0 

( ) 

D 


Fig. 3 Fig. 4 

Major Triads 

Minor Triads 

Root position 

♭ 

Root position 

G C F B 

Gm Cm Fm B m 

3 2 5 X X X X 3 2 5 X X X X 3 2 1 X X X X 3 4 1 

3 1 5 X X X X 3 1 5 X X X X 3 1 1 X X X X 3 2 1 

5 

5 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 5 5 

3 

3 3 

♭3 

R 

R R R 3 

R R R R 

♭ 

First inversion 

E A D G 

3 1 1 X X X X 3 1 1 X X X X 3 1 2 X X X X 2 1 1 

5 R 

5 R 

5 

R 

5 R 

3 3 3 3 

Second inversion 

C F B ♭ E ♭ 

2 3 1 X X X X 2 3 1 X X X X 1 1 1 X X X X 1 3 2 

5 R 3 5 R 

3 5 R 3 5 3 

R 


Em Am Dm Gm 

2 1 1 X X X X 2 1 1 X X X X 2 1 3 X X X X 1 1 1 

♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 

5 R 

5 R 

5 

R 

5 R 


Cm Fm B ♭m E ♭m 

3 4 1 X X X X 3 4 1 X X X X 2 3 1 X X X X 2 3 1 

♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭3 ♭ 3 

5 R 5 R 5 R 5 

R 

bottom brackets on each grid in Fig. 2 isolate numerous threeand 

four-note partial chords that reside within each full chord 

shape. Only the C and G shapes contain all three inversions in 

order, from low to high. 

MAJOR & MINOR TRANSFERS 

So here’s the deal: Any chord shape or voicing transferred to an 

adjacent string group will retain its intervallic formula, as long as 

notes on the B and E strings are adjusted as necessary to compensate 

for the guitar’s standard, asymmetrical tuning scheme, i.e., 

all notes transferred from the G to the B string must be raised one 

fret, and then stay at that fret when transferred to the high E string. 

Fig. 5 

Augmented Triads 

Fig. 6 

To illustrate, the 4x3 block of grids in Fig. 3 uses numbered 

scale steps to replace traditional dot markers and show root-position 

and first- and second-inversion major triads transferred across 

four adjacent three-string groups. Row 1 starts with G, the lowest-pitched 

root-position major triad available in standard tuning. 

As the chords move across adjacent string sets—from G to C to 

F to Bb—the roots remain on the same frets (as do the 3’s and 

5’s in the first and second inversions), while the notes played on 

and above the B string are raised one fret, resulting in a transformation 

to the F and Bb shapes. The first-inversion major triads 

in row two begin with E (spelled G#-B-E), and transfer to A, G, 

and D as they move across each string set, while the series of second-inversion 

triads in row 3 starts on C (spelled G-C-E) moves 

to F, Bb, and Eb, respectively. Note the partial E-type, A-type, and 

D-type Diminished shapes Triads used throughout. For homework, transpose each 

inversion up the same string set, as we did in Fig. 1a. Just move 

the first- and second-inversion shapes up the fretboard until each 

root 3 ♭ coincides X X X X 4 with 2 1 X the X correct X X 4 3 root 1 note. 

♭5 

♭5 

♭ 3 In Fig. 4, the ♭ 3 in each previous major shape is “flatted” (lowered 

a semitone, from the major third to the minor third) to pro- 

♭3 

duce the Gm, Cm, Fm, and Bbm root-position minor triads in Row 

1, first-inversion Em, Am, Dm, and Gm triads in Row 2, and second-inversion 

Cm, Fm, Bbm, and Ebm triads in Row 3. 

Root position 

Root position 

G+ C+ F+ B ♭+ 

A dim D ♭dim G ♭dim Bdim 

3 2 1 X X X X 3 2 1 X X X X 2 1 1 X X X X 2 3 1 

3 1 ♭5 X X X X 1 5 

♯ 5 

♯ 5 

R 3 3 3 ♯5 ♯ 5 ♭ 3 

R R R 3 

R R R R 



E+ A+ D+ G+ 

Edim Adim Ddim Gdim 

3 2 1 X X X X 3 2 1 X X X X 2 1 1 X X X X 2 3 1 

3 1 2 X X X X 3 1 2 X X X X 3 1 4 X X X X 2 1 3 

♭5 

♭5 

♭5 

AUGMENTED AND DIMINISHED TRANSFERS 

♯ 

R 

R 

R 

R 

5 

♯ 5 

♯ 

♭ 

R 

R ♭ 3 ♭ 

“Sharping” 3 ♭ 

(raising) 3 R ♭ 5 

5 

3 3 3 3 ♯5 

all of the 3 5’s R transforms Fig 3’s major triads 

into the three rows of root-position (root-3-#5), first-inversion 


Second inversion (3-#5-root), and second-inversion (#5-root-3) augmented triads 

C+ F+ B ♭+ E ♭+ 

Cdim diagrammed Fdim B in ♭dim Fig. 5. The E lowest ♭dim 

note in each inversion, be it the 

3 2 1 X X X X 3 2 1 X X X X 2 1 1 X X X X 2 3 1 

2 3 1 X X X X root, 2 3 1 X 3, X or #5, X X 1 again 2 1 X remains X X X 1 4 at 1 the same fret when transferred 

♭ 3 ♭ 

across 3 

four string groups. Notice how, unlike major and minor 

R 3 

R 

3 ♭ ♭3 ♭ 3 

♯ 

R 3 R 

3 

5 ♭5 

♭5 

♭5 

R triads, R each augmented R 

5 

♯ 5 

♯ 5 

♯ 5 inversion R maintains and the same shape 

as its root position. These are known as symmetrical inversions. 


63

LESSONS 

>>> GETTING INTO SHAPES 

Fig. 6 

Diminished Triads 

Root position 

A dim D ♭dim G ♭dim Bdim 

3 1 

3 1 ♭5 X X X X 3 1 ♭5 

X X X X 4 2 1 X X X X 4 3 1 

♯ 

♭5 

♭5 

5 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 

3 

♭3 

R R R R 


Edim Adim Ddim Gdim 

3 1 

3 1 2 X X X X 3 1 2 X X X X 3 1 4 X X X X 2 1 3 

♭5 

♭5 

♭5 

R 

R 

♭ 

♯ 

R ♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 R ♭ 5 

3 R 

5 

3 1 

R 3 


Cdim Fdim B dim E dim 

2 3 1 X X X X 2 3 1 X X X X 1 2 1 X X X X 1 4 1 

♭5 

♭5 

♭5 

♭5 

R R R 

R 

♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭3 ♭ 3 

♭ 

♭ 

Similarly, flatting all of the 5’s turns Fig 3’s major triads into the 

root-position (root-b3-b5), first-inversion (b3-b5-root), and second-inversion 

(b5-root-b3) diminished triads transferred across 

four string sets in Fig. 6. The lowest available root-position diminished 

triad is Abdim, hence the chords in Row 1 are located a halfstep 

higher than the previous major, minor, and augmented triads. 

SUSPENDED TRANSFERS 

Moving on, Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 utilize the same transfer routine applied 

to suspended second and suspended fourth triads, respectively, and 

their inversions. Fig. 7’s root-position (root-2-5), first-inversion 

(2-5-root), and second-inversion (5-root-2) sus2 triads are formed 

by replacing the 3’s or b3’s in major or minor triad shapes with a 2 

(a whole step above the root), while Fig. 8’s root-position (root-4- 

5), first-inversion (4-5-root), and second-inversion (5-root-4) sus4 

triads take shape by replacing the 3’s or b3’s in major or minor 

triads with a 4 (a whole step below the 5). 

Fig. 7 Fig. 8 

Sus 2 Triads 

Sus 4 Triads 

Root position 

Root position 

Gsus2 Csus2 Fsus2 B ♭sus2 

Gsus4 Csus4 Fsus4 B ♭sus4 

3 2 5 X X X X 3 2 5 X X X X 3 2 1 X X X X 3 1 1 

2 3 5 X X X X 2 3 5 X X X X 3 4 1 X X X X 3 4 1 

5 

2 5 

5 5 

R 

R R R 


Esus2 Asus2 Dsus2 Gsus2 

1 1 1 X X X X 1 1 1 X X X X 1 1 2 X X X X 1 3 3 

2 5 R 2 5 R 2 5 

2 

R 

5 R 


Csus2 Fsus2 B ♭sus2 E ♭sus2 

2 3 2 X X X X 2 3 2 X X X X 3 4 1 X X X X 3 4 1 

2 2 

5 R 

5 R 

5 R 

5 

R 

Fig. 9Fig. 9 

3-note 3-note voicings voicings 

♭ 

R 4 R 4 

R 4 

R 

4 


Esus4 Asus4 Dsus4 Gsus4 

4 1 1 X X X X 4 1 1 X X X X 4 1 2 X X X X 3 1 1 

5 R 

5 R 

5 

R 

5 R 

4 4 4 4 


Csus4 Fsus4 B ♭sus4 E ♭sus4 

1 1 1 X X X X 1 1 1 X X X X 1 1 2 X X X X 1 3 3 

5 R 4 5 R 4 

5 R 5 

4 R 4 

Fig. 10 Fig. 10 

Fig. 9 Fig. 10 

Major Major Seven Seven Chords Chords 

♭ 


Minor Minor Seven Seven Chords Chords 

Gmaj7 Gmaj7 Cmaj7 Cmaj7 Fmaj7 Fmaj7 B maj7 B maj7 

Gm7 Gm7 Cm7 Cm7 Fm7 Fm7 B m7B m7 

2 1 4 2 X 1 X 4 X X X X 2 1 4 X 2 X 1 X 4 X X X 2 X 1 4 X 2 X 1 4 X X X X 1 X 1 4 X 1 1 4 

3 1 4 3 X 1 X 4 X X X X 3 1 4 X 3 X 1 X 4 X X X 3 X 1 4 X 3 X 1 4 X X X X 2 X 1 4 X 2 1 4 

♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 ♭ 3 

R 3 3 3 

♭3 

R 3 3 3 

♭3 

R R R R R 3 R 3 

R ♭ 7 R ♭ 7 R ♭ 7 R ♭ 7 R R R R 

7 7 7 7 

♭ 7 ♭ 7 ♭ 7 ♭ 7 

7 7 7 7 




Gmaj7 Gmaj7 Cmaj7 Cmaj7 Fmaj7 Fmaj7 Gmaj7 Gmaj7 Cmaj7 Cmaj7 Gm7 Gm7 Cm7 Cm7 Fm7 Fm7 Gm7 Gm7 1 1 Cm7 

1 4 2 13 

4 X 2 X 3 X X X 1 3 X 2 41 3 X 2 4 X X X 1 4 X 4 X 41 4 4 4 1 X 3 41 

X 2 3 X 4 2 X X 1 X X 3 41 X 2 3 4 2 1 3 1 1 3 X 1 X 1 X X X 1 3 X 1 12 3 X 1 2 X X X 1 4 X X 2 13 4 2 3 1 3 1 1 ( 43 

) 1 X 1 ( 4 ) X X 1 3 X 1 

III R III R III R III R III III R 

III III 

R R 

R 

7 3 

3 

♭ 3 

5 5 7 

R 

III R 5 III R 5 R III ♭ 7 ♭ 3 R III ♭ 7 III R 

III R ♭ III 

7 

7 ♭ 7 ♭ 7 ♭ 35 

7 3 

3 

♭ 3 

3 

5 5 7 

R 5 R 5 III ♭ 7 ♭ 3 III ♭ 7 III 

III R ♭ 

7 

7 ♭ 7 ♭ 7 ♭ 35 

III R ♭ 7 

3 

3 3 5 7 3 5 7 3 

3 3 5 5 

5 5 

5 5 5 5 

5 

( ♭ 7 ) ( ♭ 7 ) 

♭ 

♭ 

64 


SEVENTH-CHORD TRANSFERS 

With four-note major seven (root-3-5-7), minor seven (root-b3- 

5-b7), and dominant seven chords (root-3-5-b7), which have a 

root position, plus three inversions, it often becomes necessary 

to re-voice/re-spell traditional inversions to accommodate more 

playable shapes. Taking the 5 out of the picture—it’s the least 

important chord tone in any seventh chord—allows the reduction 

of a major seven chord to the three-note root-3-7 shapes 

Fig. 11 11 

Dominant Seven Chords 

3-note voicings 

G7 C7 F7 B ♭7 

2 1 3 X X X X 2 1 3 X X X X 2 1 4 X X X X 1 1 3 

3 

♭ 7 

3 

♭ 7 

3 

♭7 

3 

♭ 7 

R R R R 

G7 C7 F7 B 7 

1 3 1 X X X X 1 3 1 X X X X 1 3 2 X X X X 1 4 2 

III R ♭ 7 III R ♭ 7 III R 

III R 

♭ 7 ♭ 7 

5 

5 

5 

5 

4 

2 

4-note voicings 

G7 C7 F7 

3 2 4 R X X X 3 2 1 X X X 3 4 

3 

R ♭ 7 R 3 ♭ 7 R 3 ♭ 7 

R 

1 

R 

G7 C7 F7 

1 3 1 2 X X X 1 3 1 4 X X X 1 3 2 4 

III R ♭ 7 III R ♭ 7 III R 

3 

♭ 7 

5 

5 3 

5 3 

♯ ♯ ♯ 

G7 9 C7 9 F7 9 

2 1 3 3 X X X 2 1 3 4 X X X 2 1 4 

3 

R 

R 3 ♭ 7 R 3 

♭ 7 

♯ 9 ♯9 

4 

♭ 7 

♯ 9 

4 

2 

C7 F7 B 7 

2 3 1 4 X X X 2 3 1 X X X 1 1 1 

3 

5 R ♭ 7 5 R 3 5 R 3 

♭ 7 ♭ 

Fig. 12 

7 

Fig. 12 

Cmaj7 C7 Cm7 

X X 2 4 1 3 X X 2 3 1 4 X X 1 3 1 4 

R 

R ♭ 3 R 

3 

3 

5 ♭ 7 5 ♭ 7 5 

7 

♭ 

♭ 

transferred across four string groups in Row 1 of Fig. 9. Inverting 

these voicings gets pretty stretchy (though you are encouraged 

to explore them), so we’ll stick to string transfers for all of the 

remaining shapes. The first set of four-note root-5-7-3 voicings in 

Row 2 can be transferred across three adjacent string groups, but 

when we skip a string in the spelling of the chord, as in the pair 

of root-7-3-5 shapes in the last two grids, we run out of strings 

after just one transfer. 

Fig. 10 presents three-note, root-b3-b7 minor seven shapes on 

four string sets in Row 1, and both four-note (root-5-b7-b3) and 

five-note (root-5-b7-b3-5[or b7]) shapes in Row 2. For homework, 

flat the 5’s in the four-note shapes to convert Gm7, Cm7, and Fm7 

to Gm7b5, Cm7b5, and Fm7b5. 

Two sets of three-note dominant seven shapes—root-3-b7 and 

root-5-b7—occupy Rows 1 and 2 of Fig. 11. The next two rows 

illustrate two sets of familiar looking four-note shapes played on 

three string groups—root-3-b7-root in Row 3, and root-5-b7-3 in 

Row 4. Row 5 brings a sharp nine to the dominant-seven party 

(the “Jimi Hendrix chord”), where it gets transferred over three 

string groups to form three shapes every guitarist should know. 

(Tip: Lowering all #9’s one fret forms ninth-chord shapes.) Row 

6 takes the three-note voicings from Row 1 (starting on C7) and 

embellishes them with 5’s in the bass (5-root-3-b7) to produce 

three common shapes. 

Finally, transferring the four-note Cmaj7, C7, and Cm7 voicings 

in Fig. 12 across three different string groups requires a bit 

of homework, as well as a shift in perspective. Here, we’re starting 

on the top four strings and working backwards, so you’ll need 

to lower any note that passes the second string by a half step. 

Know your chord formulas, and you can embellish or alter any 

of the previous shapes to produce virtually any type of chord. For 

instance, lowering the 7 to the 6 transforms major seven chords 

into major sixes, and adding the 2/9 to dominant seven or minor 

seven shapes creates dominant nine and minor nine chords, 

respectively. The same goes for altered chords—just sharp or flat 

the 5’s and/or 9’s. 

As you explore different chord types, keep an eye out for the 

many commonalities between shapes, such as G7 and Dbdim, Gsus2 

and Dsus4, Am and C6, Fmaj7 and Dm9, G9 and Bm7b5, and so on. 

Transpose all shapes to all keys and positions, and you’ll never 

be more than one fret away from any chord you’ll ever need! g 

MORE ONLINE! 

For audio of this 

. 

lesson, go to 

guitarplayer.com/ 

lessons/ 

january2018 


65

LESSONS 

>>> TECHNIQUE LESSON 

How to Employ Natural 

Harmonics Creatively 

BY DAVID BREWSTER 

THE USE OF NATURAL HARMONICS— 

harmonics played on open strings—is 

common in many styles of acoustic and 

electric guitar music, from classical and 

jazz to rock and metal. The technique is 

fairly easy to perform and allows a player 

to sustain a pure-sounding, high-pitched 

tone after letting go of the string with the 

fret hand, which frees up both hands to play 

notes on other strings. Many resourceful 

guitarists have employed natural harmonics 

creatively, often using them into conjunction 

with fretted and/or open notes 

to craft rich textures for their song riffs, 

parts and melodic fills. In this lesson, we’ll 

cover how the technique is performed, cite 

a few well-known instances of its use in 

popular music and look at some cool and 

relatively easy ways to employ natural harmonics, 

with examples inspired by great 

guitarists and composers. 

For those who are new to the technique, 

a natural harmonic is performed by picking 

a string while lightly touching it at one of 

several specific locations along the length 

of a string with either the tip or the side 

of a fret-hand finger, which is positioned 

directly above the indicated fret, not slightly 

behind it (to the left of it, if you’re a righthanded 

player), which differs from conventional 

fretting. And you do not press 

the string down to touch the fret either. 

Performed properly, the finger may then 

be lifted away from the string after it is 

picked, with the harmonic continuing to 

ring. In order to get a natural harmonic to 

sound, however, the fretting finger needs to 

touch it at a node, which is a precise point 

along the open string’s length where a particular 

harmonic resides. The most prominent, 

meaning audible, and commonly 

used harmonics are those located directly 

above the 12th, seventh, fifth and fourth 

frets, which generate pitches, respectively, 

one octave, an octave and a perfect fifth,two 

Ex.1 

Ex. 1 

 

 

4 

 

 

T 

A 

B 

Ex.2a 

T 

A 

B 

let ring 

12 

octaves and two octaves plus a major third 

above the open note. 

One of the earliest appearances of natural 

harmonics in popular music can be found 

 

 

44 

 

 

 

 

Ex.3 

3 

12 

15 

12 

14 

12 

14 

12 14 

7 

Ex.2b 

2b 

 

 

4 

T 

A 

B 

let ring 

12 

7 

7 

12 

12 7 

7 

12 

7 

12 

7 

12 

7 


at the very end of George Harrison’s electric 

guitar solo in “Nowhere Man” by the 

Beatles (Rubber Soul), wherein he performs 

a single natural harmonic that he allows to 

ring, creating a distinct ending for his lead 

break. A famous early rock example is the 

first two notes Jimmy Page plays on electric 

guitar after the four-bar bass intro to the 

Led Zeppelin epic “Dazed and Confused” 

(Led Zeppelin), which he performs in conjunction 

with a wah pedal to add vocal-like 

inflections to the two ringing harmonics. 

Another distinct and instantly recognizable 

melodic motif performed with natural 

harmonics can be found in the intro to Buffalo 

Springfield’s classic Vietnam War-era 

protest song, “For What it’s Worth” (Buffalo 

Springfield), wherein guitarist Stephen 

Ex.4 

T 

A 

B 

Stills plays the same two natural harmonics 

shown in Ex.1 in succession to provide 

a basic, yet catchy repeating figure over 

the song’s two-bar bass-and drums vamp. 

Hearing these two natural harmonics performed 

consecutively is enough to bring 

this song to mind, revealing how powerful 

natural harmonics can be when they’re 

well placed in an arrangement. 

Natural harmonics can be used to play 

the common E minor pentatonic scale (E 

G A B D). Ex. 2a first shows the scale performed 

conventionally, in a one-octave 

descending line, then Ex. 2b has you recreating 

the same sequence of pitches using 

natural harmonics. You’ll need to quickly 

toggle your fret hand back and forth between 

the 12th and seventh frets (use the sides 

 

44 

 

 

 

 

Ex.5 

5 

4 

 

 

 

 

 

T 

A 

B 

Ex.6 

6 

T 

A 

B 

Ex. 4 

 

let ring 

12 

let ring 

4 

7 

7 

12 

3 3 3 

5 

5 

4 

5 

5 

4 

5 

12 

5 

 

4 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

let ring 

 

7 

0 0 0 0 0 0 

5 

7 

7 

12 

5 

5 

4 4 

 

3.2 

of your pinky and index finger) to perform 

the notes in this same order. Try to 

avoid touching the strings you’ve already 

played harmonics on, as to not inadvertently 

mute them. You can hear a similar 

sequence of natural harmonics played in 

the classic 1970s hard rock song “Barracuda” 

by Heart (Little Queen). 

The sequence of natural harmonics in 

Ex. 3 brings to mind the simple but catchy 

melodic phrase heard in composer John 

Williams’ “The Conversation,” as featured 

prominently in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Again, as 

is always the case with natural harmonics, 

be careful not to touch the strings with harmonics 

still ringing on them after you’ve 

played them. 

Inspired by the intro to Rush’s “Red Barchetta,” 

from their 1981 prog-rock masterpiece 

Moving Pictures, Ex. 4 is a repeating 

eight-note melodic phrase performed with 

natural harmonics at the 12th and seventh 

frets, offering yet another example of how 

much mileage you can get from just these 

two positions. 

One of the greatest pioneers in the creative 

use of natural harmonics, as well as 

other types of harmonics, such as artificial 

harmonics, is Edward Van Halen, and there 

are countless things you can learn from 

studying this brilliant fretboard magician’s 

playing and riff writing. Examples of Eddie’s 

crafty and inventive use of natural harmonics 

include the intro to “Women in Love” 

(Van Halen II) and the catchy (and tricky) 

melodic phrase he plays right before the 

chorus in “Panama.” Ex. 5 features Eddie’s 

nook-and-cranny natural harmonic clusters, 

which provide an interesting assortment 

of natural harmonics located above 

the fourth and fifth frets. Employing fourthfret 

harmonics like this can greatly increase 

the melodic possibilities afforded by natural 

harmonics. To expand this concept further, 

Ex. 6 demonstrates a phrase similar 

to one Eddie plays during the verse section 

of “Poundcake” (For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge). 

Note that this example also employs 

a natural harmonic located approximately 

two tenth’s the distance from the third fret 

to the fourth. This in-between-the-frets harmonic 

isn’t as loud as the more prominent 

ones located directly above the 12th, seventh, 

fifth and fourth frets, so you’ll want to pick 


67

LESSONS 

>>> NATURAL HARMONICS 

the string strongly to help bring it out. Using 

your guitar’s bridge pickup and distortion will 

help accentuate harmonics in general too. 

Ex. 7 is inspired by the intro section of Joe 

Satriani’s “Up in the Sky” (Crystal Planet) 

featuring a similarly rapid sweep-picked natural-harmonics 

figure. These rapidly-picked 

harmonic clusters are simplified by incorporating 

a basic sweep-picking, or “raking,” technique 

as they shift quickly across the strings 

and from one fretboard position to another. 

Ex. 8 features an interesting melodic 

idea inspired by Jedi shred-master Steve 

Vai and demonstrates a cool way to use 

natural harmonics in conjunction with 

fretted, sliding bass notes. This approach 

can be used create an interesting variety of 

“harmonic chords” and shimmering tonalities, 

Ex.7such as those heard during Vai’s landmark 

instrumental “Sisters” (Passion and 

Ex.7 

T 

A 

B 

T 

A 

Warfare) or in the guitarist’s playing on 

the David Lee Roth’s “Damn Good” (Skyscraper). 

The “trick” here is to hold the fretted 

bass note when performing the natural 

harmonics that follow. Another great and 

well-known example of combining fretted 

notes and natural harmonic in a riff can be 

heard in the Y2K-era alt-rock hit “Blurry” 

by Puddle of Mudd (Come Clean). 

Our final example (Ex. 9) is inspired by 

Swedish shred-master Yngwie Malmsteen’s 

brilliant playing in his celebrated live solo 

excursion based around Albinoni’s “Adagio 

in G Minor” and offers another interesting 

way to employ natural harmonics, which is 

to play a targeted natural harmonic and then 

“answer” it with the same pitch as a fretted 

note. After these first two notes, the lick 

takes off into a Malmsteen-approved E harmonic 

minor run, that concludes with two 

 

 

44 

 

 

 

 

44 

Ex.7 

 

 

 

 

 

44 Ex. 7 

 

 

 

 

 

12 7 

5 12 5 

T 

 

A 

12 7 

5 

12 

 

5 

12 12 

7 

7 5 

12 5 

 

4 5 12 4 5 

B 

T 

 

A 

12 7 

5 

12 5 

12 12 7 7 5 

 

4 

5 12 12 5 

4 

5 

B 

T 

 

A 

12 7 

5 

12 5 

12 7 5 

12 5 

 

4 

4 

B 

Ex.8 

44 

 

 

Ex.8 

8 

 

44 

 

 

Ex.8 

 

 

 

44 

 

 

 

12 

 

 

 

7 

5 

12 

 

7 

5 

T 

12 

7 

5 

A 

12 12 

 

7 7 

5 5 

B 

12 

7 

5 

T 

A 7 8 12 

12 

12 10 5 7 

7 

7 7 3 5 

5 

5 

B 

12 

7 

5 

T 

A 7 8 

12 

10 5 

7 

7 3 

5 

12 

7 

5 

B 

7 8 

10 5 

7 3 

Ex.9 

9 

 

Ex.9 

 

 

 

44 

Ex.9 

 

 

 

 

 

4 

 

3 

 

4 

 

 

3 

 

 

19 19 17 20 19 17 

3 20 19 17 12 12 

19 19 17 20 19 17 20 17 16 17 20 

 

20 19 17 12 12 

19 19 17 20 19 17 20 17 16 17 20 

20 19 17 12 12 

20 17 16 17 20 

B 

T 

A 

68 B GUITARPLAYER.COM/JANUARY2018 

additional natural harmonics, which give 

the run a balanced and elegant resolution. 

As you explore using harmonics melodically, 

feel free to experiment and attempt 

novel combinations of harmonics and fretted 

or open notes. 

For a more in-depth study of natural 

harmonics, as well as several other types 

of harmonics on the guitar, check out my 

book Harmonics for Guitar [Hal Leonard]. g 

MORE ONLINE! 

For audio of this 

. lesson, go to 

guitarplayer.com/ 

lessons/ 

january2018

walrusaudio.com

LESSONS 

>>> CLASSIC RIFF 

“Right Off” 

BY MILES DAVIS, FEATURING 

JOHN McLAUGHLIN 

BY JESSE GRESS 

A PRIME CONTENDER FOR FUNKIEST 

jazz-rock riff of all time—just ask Jeff 

Beck, who’s been quoting it onstage 

for years—John McLaughlin’s threebar 

Eb-minor-pentatonic-based ostinato 

that emerges 18:43 into “Right Off,” 

the opening track that spans the entire 

first side of Miles Davis’ 1971 landmark 

album Jack Johnson (later reissued as A 

Tribute to Jack Johnson), foreshadowed 

the future of fusion guitar. 

The origin of the riff seems to date 

back to Freddie Stone’s rhythm guitar 

figure from Sly & the Family Stone’s 

“Sing a Simple Song,” the B-side of 1968’s 

“Everyday People,” before it evolved into 

this incarnation (recorded in early 1970), 

and ultimately ended up as the basis for 

the cornerstone figure in the Mahavishnu 

Orchestra’s “The Noonward Race” from 

1971’s The Inner Mounting Flame. But here, 

with Miles laying out, the riff is fueled by 

a power trio comprised of McLaughlin, 

bassist Michael Henderson (who doubles 

the riff one octave lower), and the propulsive 

drumming of Billy Cobham. 

Syncopations abound throughout Ex. 

1’s transcription, so you’ll want to maintain 

a constant alternate-picked 16th-note 

motion going with your pick hand (down, 

up, down, up, etc.), whether you’re hitting 

a note or not. (Tip: count “1-e-and-a, 

2-e-and-a, 3-e-and-a, 4-e-and-a” to learn 

the rhythms before applying the notes.) For 

instance, in bar 1 we skip the first 16thnote 

(“1”) and nail the next three with Ebs, 

picked up-down-up (“e-and-a”). Though 

these begin with an upstroke, be sure to 

feel the initial downbeat as a silent downstroke. 

Following this strategy throughout 

the riff will keep you locked into the 

desired groove. 

Beat two contains a bluesy root-b7-5- 

root lick (Eb-Db-Bb-Eb) glued to four consecutive 

16th notes and ornamented with a 

pull-off between the first two. Beat three’s 

events occur on its second and fourth 16thnote 

upbeats (“e” and “a” only), where a 

b3 (Gb) is followed by the cool wild card in 

the riff (and a typically overlooked detail), 

a rogue open-A note acting as the b5 of Eb. 

Beat four is identical to the first three notes 

in beat two, minus the pull-off. 

It’s interesting and clever how bar 2 

begins with the same rhythm as beat three 

of bar 1, and beats two and three are rhythmically, 

and in the case of beat three, melodically, 

identical to previous beats one and 

four. Beat four begins with a 16th rest (a 

silent downstroke) that precedes an Eb root 

on the “e,” which is sustained beneath two 

strongly accented Eb9 chord hits (on “anda”) 

that seem to scream “Shut up!” And 

that’s precisely what happens as McLaughlin 

turns bar 3 over to Cobham and lays 

out for a full measure. Both factors significantly 

contribute to the urgency—sustained 

for a whopping 17 repeats—and longevity 

of this eternally classic riff. g 

Ex. 1 

 

= ca. 123 N.C. 3 E 9 

3 

3 

 

 

4 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 

1 2 

3 1 

 

3 

 

 

T 

A 

B 

6 6 6 6 

4 

6 

6 

4 

0 6 

4 

6 6 

6 

4 

6 6 4 

6 

6 

6 

6 

5 

6 

5 


GEAR 

ESP LTD EC-1000 Piezo 

TESTED BY MICHAEL MOLENDA 

FOR YEARS, ESP’S LTD EC SERIES 

guitars have offered a lighter, and perhaps more 

shred-ready (thanks to the thin-U necks) alternative 

for players who dig the classic Les Paul 

vibe. I don’t have the chops to be a true shredder, 

but whenever I’ve wrangled ECs on long 

festival shows or endless rehearsals, I’ve greatly 

appreciated the near-weightless ergonomics 

and easy playability, as well as the fact the EC 

tonal profile can produce much the same roar 

as my favorite Les Pauls. Now, for the first time 

in this series, the EC-1000 Piezo adds more 

practical (and, well, fun) benefits—the ability to 

switch between magnetic pickups and a mono 

or stereo piezo system, or even blend the two 

sonic flavors together. 

I’ve always been a sucker for the EC’s modern 

twist on a vintage form—the sharp headstock 

angles, severe bout, and “waving banner” fretboard 

inlays—and the EC-1000P’s striped binding 

and stunning see-through black finish over 

a quilted-maple top is even more reason to fall 

in love with this gorgeous guitar. Construction 

is flawless, from the rounded fret ends to the 

quality hardware. The rear bevels—especially 

the super-comfy incline where the neck joins 

the body and the carving on the lower bout— 

make playing the EC-1000P a blissful experience. 

Nothing hinders riffing away in any position 

you choose, and, at times, it can almost feel as 

if you’re not actually holding a guitar. 

But the killer app of the EC-1000P is really the 

addition of the Fishman Powerbridge system, and 


not simply because it offers acoustic timbres in 

an electric guitar. That’s a fantastic nod to versatility, 

of course. Who doesn’t love starting off a 

song with a beautiful acoustic-style strummed 

or fingerstyle part, and then exploding into fullon 

humbucker rage? It’s cinematic. However, I 

found the ability to blend the humbucker and 

piezo tones to be even more rewarding. For 

shredders, being able to dial in a hint of shimmer 

and clarity to saturated lead tones is definitely 

a boon—especially if you dig blasting off 

with the neck humbucker. There are also innumerable 

and super-cool riff and rhythm sounds 

available with subtle tweaks of the magnetic/ 

piezo balances. You can go all the way from 

emulating layered studio tracks to crafting tortured 

midrange attacks. 

The piezo tones do possess a hint of the 

“piezo quack,” so devising passable acousticlike 

tones takes some care—you may want to 

send the piezo signal to a dedicated acoustic 

amp, which the EC-1000P’s two output jacks 

allow—but in all other applications, the system 

offers brilliant tone-blending possibilities that 

can take your tone out of the boring and conventional, 

while not traveling so far outside 

of the norm that you feel as if you’re producing 

synth sounds. The EC-1000 Piezo is, quite 

simply, a tone chef’s delight. It’s also one hell 

of a guitar. g 

A Selected ESP Timeline 

1975 

Hisatake Shibuya 

opens a shop in 

Tokyo called Electric 

Sound Products 

(ESP). The 

company starts by 

making replacement 

parts, and 

eventually becomes 

a guitar and bass 

manufacturer. 

1987 

Metallica’s James 

Hetfield and Kirk 

Hammett adopt 

ESP as their go-to 

guitar brand, and the 

players start a relationship 

with the 

company that has 

continued ever since. 

1995 

ESP Guitars 

launches its 

affordable 

LTD Series. 

2013 

ESP Guitars opens 

a fully-operational 

manufacturing 

facility in the 

United States for its 

ESP USA Series. 

. 

SPECIFICATIONS 

LTD EC-1000 PIEZO 

CONTACT 

espguitars.com 

PRICE 

$1,099 street 

NUT WIDTH 42 mm 

NECK 

Mahogany (three-piece), set, 

thin U 

FRETBOARD Rosewood, 24.75" scale 

FRETS 

24 extra jumbo 

TUNERS 

LTD locking 

BODY 

Mahogany with quilted-maple 

top 

BRIDGE 

Fishman Powerbridge 

PICKUPS 

Seymour Duncan ’59 (neck), Seymour 

Duncan JB (bridge) 

CONTROLS 

Master Volume (humbuckers), 

Master Tone (humbuckers), 

piezo Volume (Fishman Powerchip 

onboard mixing preamp), 

mini toggle, 3-way selector 

FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario XL110, .010-.046 

WEIGHT 

8 lbs 

BUILT 

Korea 

KUDOS 

Super playable. Light. Awesome 

tonal versatility 

CONCERNS 

The piezo tones can get quacky. 


73

GEAR 

Electro-Harmonix 

Green Russian Big Muff Fuzz, Hot Wax Overdrive, 

Cock Fight Plus Talking-Wah-Fuzz, 

and Superego+ Synth/Multi-Effects 

TESTED BY DAVE HUNTER 

ONE OF THE MOST PROLIFIC PEDAL 

makers on the planet, Electro-Harmonix has 

just blessed us with another release of creative 

contraptions in a quartet that includes reworked 

favorites, a transition-era fuzz monster, 

and an otherworldly soundscape generator. All 

were tested with a Les Paul and a Stratocaster, 

into a custom JTM45-style head and 2x12 cab. 

GREEN RUSSIAN BIG MUFF 

Emerging from Mike Matthews’ rebuilding phase 

circa 1990 after the closure of EHX’s New York 

operation in the mid ’80s, the Russian-made 

rendition of the Big Muff Pi became a favorite 

of ’90s grunge, punk and noise-rock guitarists, 

and a collectible fuzz in its own right in the process. 

The reissue, the new Green Russian Big 

Muff ($80 street), has a circuit that purportedly 

remains true to the original, while incorporating 

true-bypass switching and moving it 

all to a more compact box. 

Smooth, warm, wooly, bovine of low-end, and 

spitty in the highs, this pedal justifies the Russian 

Muff’s return, and remains a fun and fierce 

fuzz by any standards. It might verge on “onetrick 

pony” status, and the Tone knob doesn’t 

do much until the end of its travel, but it’s a 

cool and worthy flavor of fuzz by any standards. 

KUDOS Retains the original Russian-built 

fuzz’s character admirably, in a rugged, compact 

design. 

CONCERNS Tone knob is rather limited, as 

per the original. 

HOT WAX 

Joining EHX’s Crayon and Hot Tubes overdrives 

into one two-channel unit, the Hot Wax ($109 

street) flaunts its charms pretty quickly. To the 

individual Drive and Volume knobs and shared 

Treble and Bass, EHX has wisely added a Blend 

control—popular with new-design ODs and 

comps these days—which allows you to dial 


in a balance between overdriven and buffered-bypass 

clean signals to retain sharpness 

and clarity. 

Between the Crayon’s warm and middly 

overdrive and the Hot Tubes’s articulate, harmonically 

saturated, and, well, tubey breakup, 

this double-header offers a lot of variety—along 

with über-distortion when you stack the two 

(Crayon into Hot Tubes). I found the Hot Tubes 

side particularly dynamic and player-responsive, 

with good bite and admirable note separation. 

Crayon, on the other hand, sounded its best at 

lower Drive settings for a great fat-boost/lowgain 

OD. Together, they make a tidy overdrive 

machine that stands up well to many higherpriced 

boutique two-channel pedals. 

KUDOS Versatile two-in-one package, with 

particularly impressive tones on the Hot Tubes 

side. Useful Blend knob. 

CONCERNS None. 

COCK FIGHT PLUS 

The Cock Fight Plus ($120 street) repackages 

the original cocked-wah-plus-fuzz circuit into a 

rocker pedal with added traditional wah-wah 

and talking-pedal effects. As such, bountiful 

noise crafting is promised, although you can 

only select on/off of the entire package globally 

from the under-treadle stop switch, adding 

fuzz or flicking between wah and talking settings 

via toggles on the side of the unit (which 

includes the nifty ability to chain fuzz before or 

after wah-wah). 

My immediate impression out of the box 

was that I’d liked to have seen EHX put this in 

a steel enclosure, although the plastic housing 

does feel sturdy, and is certainly lighter. After 

plugging in, I found a lot of fun and freaky noises 

at hand, and particularly enjoyed the ease of 

crafting both honky fuzz-wah bursts and vocal 

“fuzz-talk” effects that are tricky to achieve 

with more standard effects. The fuzz itself is 

rather raw and spikey, but maybe that’s part 

of the fun, and there’s a ton of sonic mayhem 

here for the money, regardless, and some funky 

good times to be had. 

KUDOS A lot of wild sonic potential for 

the price. 

CONCERNS Some players might like to 

access fuzz and wah-wah independently. 

SUPEREGO+ 

Okay, EHX’s new synth engine and multi-effects 

in 100 words: go! Clearly the Superego+ ($250 

street) does way too much to capture its aural 

excesses adequately here—suffice to say this 

is a soundscapist’s dream, and maybe a onestop 

shop for the entire inspiration for your next 

indie-movie scoring job. Between synth generation 

with or without phaser, flanger, vibrato, 

rotary, chorus, tremolo and more, this thing does 

a ton, and does it very well. And with inputs for 

an expression pedal and external three-button 

controller, plus FX loop Send and Return jacks, 

there’s more control- and connect-ability than 

first meets the eye. 

I had a blast creating ethereal, glissy synth 

sounds with layered effects and just enough dry 

signal blended in to reveal my guitar’s melodic 

underpinnings, and although I was just beginning 

to scratch the surface, I’d already say this 

is worth the price of entry even if you only ever 

use it for spacey late-night noodlings to entertain 

yourself. An utterly groovy tool that any 

sonic daydreamer really should check out, and 

an Editors’ Pick Award winner. 

KUDOS A truly incredible palette of soundscapes 

within one compact box, at an impressive 

price. 

CONCERNS Mode switch takes some time 

to get the hang of. 

CONTACT exh.com g 


75

GEAR 

EarthQuaker Devices Data Corrupter 

Modulated Monophonic Harmonizing PLL 

TESTED BY KEVIN APARICIO AND MICHAEL MOLENDA 

AS GUITARISTS WHO LOVE TO EXPERiment 

with bizarre sounds, how could we pass 

up anything called a “modulated monophonic 

harmonizing PLL?” The phrase itself almost 

makes no sense, unless you’re one of the science 

nerds on The Big Bang Theory. But it portends 

secret labs and clandestine government 

agencies messing with the fabric of time and 

space, so count us in. 

There actually is a boatload of science in the 

Data Corrupter ($225 street), and if you truly 

believe the mysteries of PLL—or phase locked 

loop—technology, it dates back to 1673 and 

some wacky Dutch physicist goofing around 

with pendulums. Fast forward a few hundred 

years to 1932, and you have the British deploying 

the PLL concept to both strengthen and stabilize 

telecommunication signals. A relatively 

quick trip of four decades later, RCA comes up 

with its CD 4046 CMOS Phase Locked Loop 

IC, which ends up sometime around the early 

2000s in John Schumann’s PLL analog harmonizer—a 

rare and much-sought effects box 

for sonic alchemists and iconoclasts that can 

currently fetch prices of more than $2,000 for 

a used model—and, thanks to Schumann’s particular 

madness, a pre-war telecommunications 

circuit becomes a musical tool. 

The Data Corrupter is perhaps a more 

intuitive and stable device for plugging in guitars, 

basses, and keyboards, but it’s still faithful 

to Schumann’s PLL concept—which is to 

viciously morph an input signal into something 

buzzy, fuzzy, and completely unique. You get 

three voices to tinker with: Square (a wonderful 

fuzz tone), Subharmonic (with eight octave/ 

interval options), and Master Oscillator. There is 

also a Frequency Modulator switch that works 

in Glide mode (a portamento slide between 

notes) or Vibrato mode (the pitch modulates 

up and down for very cool sci-fi laser effects). 

A three-voice mixer gives you ultimate control 

over the blend of synth sounds. 

As a guitar pedal, the Data Corrupter tracks 

an input signal so accurately that it’s downright 

frightening. That’s a very good thing if 

you worry about that stuff, but we were somewhat 

disappointed that the pedal zip-locked 

itself to our performance gestures. Happily, the 

manual warns that chords and sloppy playing 

will result in chaotic tracking, and we say, “Do 

it!” It was so much fun to roll back the Volume 

on a guitar and hear the Data Corruptor struggle 

to track the signal. The randomness and tonal 

surprises can be fantastic, and part of the joy 

here is pushing the pedal beyond its limits just 

to see what happens. After all, you don’t buy a 

“Data Corruptor” to craft pristine, ’70s-approved 

guitar tones that revel in their awesomely forthright 

conventionality, do you? In fact, for one 

test, we let Armageddon rage by plugging the 

output of an EarthQuaker Rainbow Machine 

pitch-shifter into the Data Corruptor and simply 

sustaining one note. 

Less adventurous types can cut back on the 

mayhem, and use the Data Corruptor to produce 

sustained, tortured fuzz reminiscent of a 

’70s Electro-Harmonix Micro Synthesizer, as well 

as other cool fuzz flavors. You could also work 

out your Jan Hammer obsession with its lessferal 

synth-like tones, lord over your friends by 

demonstrating its marvelous prog-rock-inspired 

lead sounds, get all “Baba O’Riley” by emulating 

sequencer pads, or simply dedicate the pedal 

as your “horror-flick effects generator” and call 

yourself an soundtrack auteur. Whether you walk 

on the wild side, or wear your bike helmet inside 

elevators, the Data Corrupter delivers a ton of 

inspiration to both camps. Any pedal that can 

be so outright bizarre, and simultaneously so 

usable, earns not only a place on the bridge of 

our starship, but an Editors’ Pick Award to boot! 

KUDOS Incredibly intuitive design. Conjures 

strange and beautiful noises. 

CONCERNS Not for the faint of heart. Bravery 

required. 

CONTACT earthquakerdevices.com g 


TM 

© 

Over $300,000 in cash awards & prizes! 

Entry fees help support the non-profit 

John Lennon Educational Tour Bus 

jlsc.com 

Sponsored by: 

“Lennon” and “John Lennon” are trademarks of Yoko Ono Lennon. All artwork © Yoko Ono Lennon. Licensed exclusively through Bag One Arts, Inc. Design: Baree Fehrenbach

GEAR 

>>> FIELD TEST 

Meris Mercury 7 Reverb 

TESTED BY MICHAEL ROSS 

THE DESIGNERS AT MERIS BRING 

extensive effect experience from their days at 

Line 6 and Strymon to their new line of pedals, 

and one of the sonic modifiers chosen for the 

launch is the Mercury 7 reverb ($299 street). 

Rather than offer preset reverb types, the Mercury 

7 permits you to sculpt your own ambient 

flavors with six knobs, two buttons, and a 

second layer of alternative parameter access. 

But it goes even deeper. You can program up to 

16 different sounds, with four available through 

an optional four-button footswitch plugged into 

the expression input, or access all 16 through 

MIDI. You can also use an expression pedal to 

morph between two different 

sets of parameter 

settings. 

The sonic possibilities 

of the Mercury 7 are too many to go into here. 

The important thing to know is that the price and 

footprint of this pedal are justified by the sound 

alone. Thanks to a premium analog signal path 

and 24-bit AD/DA with 32-bit, floating-point DSP, 

even with the Mix and Hi Frequency fully up, and 

with the longest decay, the reverb revealed no 

hint of the metallic edge often found in digital 

reverb pedals at those settings. It is a gorgeous 

sound, perfect for ambient swells, and the Swell 

function of the left footswitch 

let me produce them 

without using a volume 

pedal or knob. The alternate 

function of that footswitch is to hold the 

decay as long as your foot is on the switch, permitting 

the building of evocative pads. Modulation, 

pitch intervals, and vibrato are all available 

to color the ’verb, but it is basic sound quality 

that sells this effect. 

KUDOS Lush, studio quality reverb in a 

pedal format. 


CONTACT meris.us g 


Mission Engineering 

529 USB Power Converter 

TESTED BY ART THOMPSON 

ONE OF THE WAYS TO REDUCE NOISE 

in pedalboard setups is to keep AC line voltage 

out of the system, and Mission Engineering’s 

new 529 USB power supply makes 

it possible to power up to five stompboxes 

via a USB plug-in power supply (included), 

a smartphone/tablet power adapter, a computer’s 

USB port, or a rechargeable battery 

pack. The 529’s anodized-aluminum enclosure 

is very compact at 4.5"x 1.75" x 1", and, at 

just four ounces, it’s perfect for compact flyrig 

boards. The 529 has four 2.1mm outputs 

rated at 150mA, one at 500mA for higher-current 

devices, and USB In and Out ports. The 

package also included USB cables and 2.1mm 

power cables for connecting five pedals. 

Mission offers the 529 in two versions: 

Standard ($149 direct) and Pro ($199), 

which includes an APC li-on battery rated at 

10,000mAH that’s about the size of a smartphone 

(5.7" x 3.5" x 0.5"), and is equipped 

with an on/off switch, a USB charging jack, 

and dual USB outs. 

The Pro system I received worked as expected, 

powering a selection of analog distortion, delay, 

and modulation boxes via the adapter, while I 

waited to bring the APC battery (which is available 

separately for $53) up to full charge. This 

can take five hours if the battery is low (a multibar 

LED indicates charge status), and you can 

expect eight or more hours of run time with a 

typical pedal rig. 

I used the APC battery, as well as USB batteries 

of my own, almost exclusively during the 

review process, and got quite hooked on not 

having to connect my board to a wall outlet. 

Between the quiet operation, compact size, and 

convenience of not having to run an extension 

cord to reach the board, the 529 USB Power 

Converter is a great alternative to traditional 

stompbox power supplies. 

KUDOS The first USB-to-effects-pedal power 

converter. Fits easily on very small pedalboards. 


CONTACT missionengineering.com g 


DESIGNED AND MANUFACTURED BY TECH 21 USA, INC. 

For details and video, head to tech21nyc.com

GEAR 


Atomic 

Ampli-Firebox Tube-Amp 

Modeling Pedal 

TESTED BY DAVE HUNTER 

EMERGING SOLIDLY FROM ATOMIC’S 

amp-modeling wheelhouse, the new Ampli-Firebox 

($299 direct) aims to deliver the most compact 

and form-factor-familiar live modeling tool 

yet. Its success in that realm might just make it 

a first-call solution for many players in search 

of a backup amp or all-in-one virtual rig for fly 

dates, or both. The unit contains the same tech 

created by Studio Devil for Atomic’s more fully 

featured Amplifire 12, all packed into a rugged 

4.5” x 3.5” x 1.5” pedal with eight knobs, three 

toggle switches, and two footswitches, with both 

¼” and XLR outputs (one 3-way toggle assigns 

cab simulation to either or both, so you can run a 

¼” cable to your backline amp without sim and 

an XLR feed to front-of-house with sim), input 

for standard 9V center-negative power supply 

(included), and a USB out to connect to Mac or 

PC, where all the deep-dive setup takes place. 

To be clear, the Ampli-Firebox is ready to go 

right out of the box: plug it into your amp or PA, 

select from the nine factory-loaded presets, and 

away you go. To really tap this thing’s potential, 

though, connect that USB cable and download 

Atomic’s Editor software for Mac or Windows, and 

you access fine-tuned adjustment and pairing of 

the available 14 amp models (many of the usual 

suspects, and some interesting alternatives); 

related cab sims (to which—great bonus—you can 

add third-party IRs in WAV form); the clean boost 

or overdrive, fuzz, or distortion model assigned 

to the Boost footswitch; and the parameters for 

compressor, EQ, delay, and reverb effects. There’s 

also a handy A/B Mode that converts the Enable 

button’s otherwise on/off function to a channelswitching 

function, letting you toggle between two 

amps and their related parameters and effects. 

Between that and the Boost button, that’s four 

on-the-fly voices on stage. 

I tested the Ampli-Firebox with a variety 

of guitars, mostly into a pair of Mackie HR824 

studio monitors via an audio interface, but I also 

checked it into a standard tube guitar amp and 

cab, and a powered PA cab. Without re-litigating 

the quality of the amp and effects emulations 

themselves, which have already proven 

to cruise ably alongside many of the popular 

digital alternatives today, let’s cut to the chase 

by saying this little box offers a lot of tone and 

flexibility in a stunningly portable package, providing 

impressively amp-like playing feel and 

dynamics along with it. Part of the fun is that 

the Ampli-Firebox forces you into a more traditional 

amp-like relationship with the rig, rather 

than beckoning you to constantly change up presets. 

Yet those nine factory or user settings are 

all still there via the Amp Style and Amp Channel 

toggles when you want them (the sausagefingered 

among us will need to flick carefully to 

avoid nudging knob settings in the process). 

You might feel it would be nice to have a 

small LCD to display your selection, or some 

interface for effects selections and parameter 

tweaking while offline, but that would bust the 

compact size and familiar stombox form factor 

wide open—and that’s what Atomic’s Amplifire 

and Amplifire 12 deliver in any case. As it sits, 

the Ampli-Firebox is a beautifully utilitarian 

pedalboard or gig-bag rig solution, and a welcome 

new product to the market. For doing all 

of this so well, and at this price—and the fact 

that we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of 

what it can do—the Ampli-Firebox earns an Editors’ 

Pick Award. 

KUDOS Versatile and great-sounding ampmodeling 

in a compact, pedal-like box. 

CONCERN: The toggle switches might be 

tough to reach without jogging knob positions. 

Manual could explain some programming functions 

more clearly 

CONTACT atomicamps.com g 


TURN OVER 

A NEW LEAF. 

MAPLE. 

Guaranteed for life. 

www.kysermusical.com 


83

GEAR 

Schaffer Replica EX Tower 

TESTED BY MICHAEL MOLENDA 

IN MY MAY 2015 PREVIEW STORY ON 

the Schaffer Replica Pedal, I called it “Instant 

Angus.” Now, I’m done with that. I’m not talking 

about Angus Young anymore. 

Sure, part of Young’s delicious tone recipe for 

Back in Black—as well as other AC/DC albums 

and live shows of the era—was his Schaffer- 

Vega Diversity System wireless, which not only 

allowed the guitarist to perform his school-boy 

pranks unbound by guitar cables, it also imparted 

some mysteriously wonderful preamp coloration 

to his sound. Some three decades later, 

Angus enthusiast Fil Olivieri cracked the tonal 

code, sought out Ken Schaffer (who manufactured 

just 1,000 SVDS systems before moving 

on to other pursuits), and developed the Schaffer 

Replica Pedal and Tower. If you want the full 

story—and it’s interesting and historical and pretty 

darn entertaining—you can read the May 2015 

cover story on AC/DC, the June 2105 review of 

the Schaffer Replica Pedal, or visit the SoloDallas 

website. 

But, you see, at this point the Schaffer Replica 

magic isn’t about Angus. It’s about you. 

Plug into an EX Tower ($1,330 direct), and your 

foundational sound becomes almost viciously 

in your face. The midrange frequencies shift to 

battering ram, the highs tighten up like talons, 

and the low end diminishes somewhat, but 

becomes a bit stouter and more controlled, like 

a grenade exploding inside an isolation booth. 

It’s all immediately awesome, and all you did 

was plug in. My job here is done. 

Well, except that there are subtleties in 

effect, and you should take some care to tailor 

them to your specific style and taste. Just like 

the Volume and Tone knobs on your guitar, there 

are a lot of timbral possibilities residing in the 

Tower’s Input (input and compander level) and 

Output (boost level) controls—especially with 

cleaner, less saturated tones. Moving to the 

rear panel, you can defeat the vintage optical 

compressor, and choose between Normal and 

“Monitor” (David Gilmour’s favorite option from 

the original SVDS) boost modes. With apologies 

to the fabulous Gilmour, I preferred normal 

mode because it was cleaner. Cleanliness, in 

fact, is another matter you should address. At 

full rumble, the Tower can produce audible hiss. 

For the most part, the noise will be unheard 

onstage, but it may bother some players in the 

studio. You can easily put a noise gate in your 

signal chain, or go back and tweak the Tower 

controls to deliver the sexiest attack with the 

least hiss. This may be the hardest thing you’ll 

ever do, because the full-on feral assault is so 

powerful and mesmerizing that you’ll be tempted 

to roll with the noises intact. 

The Schaffer voodoo really works in a jawdropping 

way—just ask Richard Fortus’ sound 

technicians on last year’s Guns N’ Roses tour—but 

I understand that $1,330 is a lot to consider for a 

guitar preamp (though that’s certainly a reasonable 

price for some studio preamps), and Solo- 

Dallas muddies its own waters by offering two 

affordable pedals based on the Schaffer-Vega 

tech—the pedalboard-friendly Storm ($335) 

and the Classic ($369). I’ve used them all, and 

each one is wonderful, but the Tower is slightly 

more articulate sounding, more sonically versatile, 

and it’s built with vintage-styled components. 

The pedals can sound slightly two-dimensional 

and a little flat when compared to the Tower’s 

more expansive “wallop spectrum,” but they are 

super values for the price, and they will rock your 

world. But if you can afford the EX Tower, you’ll 

be shaking entire galaxies. Heed your destiny! 

KUDOS Clarifies signals. Awesome attack. 

Ideal midrange focus for guitar. Roars like sex, 

drugs, and rock and roll (without actually being 

naughty). 

CONCERNS Pricey. Can produce audible 

hiss at high settings. A tad fragile. 

CONTACT solodallas.com g 


GEAR 

Fusion Guitar 

TESTED BY KEVIN APARICIO 

EVEN THOUGH I LIKE MY GUITARS SIMple—I 

don’t even want Tone knobs on them— 

I’ve held a piece of the future, and, surprisingly—I 

love it. The Fusion Guitar incorporates an Apple 

iPhone or iPod Touch as an engine—as well as an 

onboard amplifier, speakers, and a rechargeable 

battery—and it definitely looks like something 

the superheroes of the Justice League might 

jam with before setting off to save the world. 

The über-portable, self-contained guitar could 

certainly fit in the Batmobile, ready to rock out 

and beam joy into a desolate vista of darkness 

and dread. Non-superheroes can simply bring 

the Fusion Guitar anywhere they please—from 

dog parks to mountaintops and beaches and 

beyond—and perform and practice unfettered 

from amps, pedalboards, and cables. 

Designing the Fusion Guitar into a “self-sustaining 

performance environment” did require 

some ergonomic compromises. The shape is 

somewhat unwieldy for positioning on your lap, 

the body is a bit girthy (though not if you’re used 

to strapping-up ES-175s or jumbo acoustics), 

and the weight is a little on the heavy side with 

an iOS device onboard. Although those who 

prefer skinny shred-style instruments may have 

another view, I didn’t feel the guitar impeded 

my technique or was in any way uncomfortable. 

In fact, playability is excellent. The action 

is low and fast, and the frets feel great. Intonation 

is spot on, and after days of heavy playing, 

the tuning did not drift very far at all. 

Of course, the coolest feature of the Fusion 

Guitar is the ability to plug in your iPhone to a 

top-mounted dock (for easy viewing and operation), 

utilize various tone-construction apps, 

and hear them through the two, full-range Tymphany 

Peerless speakers. To my delight, I was 

able to call on my favorite amp models in Apple 

GarageBand, going from a clean Fender amp to 

a dirty Vox jangle to a cranked Marshall stack 

with a few swipes of my finger. I also built my 

own virtual pedalboards, and I had so much fun 

experimenting with the seemingly endless possibilities. 

I was even able to create drum loops 

and play over them. Buskers of the world unite! 

If you want to invite some outside friends to the 

Fusion party, you can choose output options for 

a P.A. system, a conventional guitar amp, and 

headphones. The surprise here is that the highoutput 

humbuckers—armed with a coil-tap function—sound 

really fantastic when plugged into 

an amp, making the Fusion Guitar much more 

than a tool for personal practicing or jamming 

on the go. You could gig with it, and have all the 

versatility of rocking through a computer without 

having to subject your laptop to the dangers 

of dank clubs and seedy bars. 

I love what this guitar can do. I love all of 

the tonal possibilities and the portability. I love 

that it’s kind of a toy concept that evolved into 

something pro and working guitarists can use to 

create music. I just simply love this guitar. Long 

live technology! g 

SPECIFICATIONS 

FUSION GUITAR 

CONTACT 

fusionguitars.com 

PRICE 

$999 street 

NUT WIDTH 1.685” 

NECK 

. FRETBOARD z 

FRETS 

TUNERS 

BODY 

BRIDGE 

PICKUPS 

CONTROLS 

Maple, though-body, C profile 

Maple or rosewood, 25.5” scale 

22 jumbo 

Fusion non-slip 

Impact resistant polymer 

Wrap-around, adjustable saddles 

Two humbuckers (coil-tap for 

bridge) 

Two volume, 3-way selector 

FACTORY STRINGS D’Addario, .009-.042 

WEIGHT 

8.9 lbs 

BUILT 

China 

EXTRAS 

Onboard 20-watt amp (Class 

D), two onboard speakers, Universal 

charger, rechargeable lithium-ion 

battery (four to six hour 

average battery life), guitar strap, 

guitar strings, dock adapters for 

various iPhone/iPod Touch versions, 

padded gig bag. 

KUDOS 

Excellent implementation of 

technology. Plays well. Versatile—can 

go from private practice 

to the stage. 

CONCERNS 

Apple devices only—currently 

not for Android phones. 


FROM THE 

ARCHIVES 

REVEALING INTERVIEWS WITH THE GUITAR MASTERS 

GUITAR HEROES OF THE ’70s 

A thrilling collection of articles that originally 

appeared in the 1970s and detail the equipment 

and tone explorations of transcendent guitarists 

such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, 

Jeff Beck, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Howe, Brian May, 

and many others. 

ISBN 978-1-61713-002-1 

$14.99 

CLAPTON, BECK, PAGE 

This book traces the mammoth and influential 

careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy 

Page, with insightful interviews from the ’60s 

to the present. Learn how these guitar gods 

developed their styles and sounds and thrill to 

their own assessments of their technique, tone, 

and creativity. 

ISBN 978-0-87930-975-6 

$14.99 

Free U.S. shipping on orders of $25 or more! 

Least expensive method applies. Use promo code MDGTR at checkout. 

musicdispatch.com 800-637-2852 

CARLOS SANTANA 

Here, collected in one volume, are all of Carlos 

Santana’s Guitar Player interviews, from his 

first post-Woodstock discussion to an interview 

about the popular juggernaut that was 1999’s 

Supernatural to the masterful seminar 

he gave on creativity in 2008. 

ISBN 978-0-87930-976-3 

$14.99 


87

GEAR 


Custom Tones Ethos TWE-1 


INSPIRED BY THE TRAINWRECK 

Express amplifier (built by the late Ken 

Fischer), the TWE-1 is solid-state pedal 

designed to emulate the touch-responsiveness 

and clean-to-overdriven range 

you get from a high-grade tube amp. 

Along with Volume, Hi Cut, and Gain 

controls, the pedal has 3-position Cab 

switch (4x12, 2x12, off), a Presence switch that provides three levels of 

high-frequency boost (post OD), a Voice switch (Traditional and Modern 

British), and a bypassable Brite switch that provides two levels of highfrequency 

boost (pre OD). 

Tested with Tele and a Trussart Steeldeville though a Fender Deluxe 

Reverb set clean, the TWE-1 with its Gain at noon or higher responded in 

an amp-like way to changes in guitar volume and picking strength, delivering 

everything from gritty cleans to richly saturated distortion textures. 

Thanks to its strong output, the TWE-1 is suitable for clean boosting too. 

All good stuff, but the standout feature of the TWE-1 is its powerful toneshaping 

ability. The Hi-Cut knob attenuates treble when turned clockwise, 

and the Brite switch makes it easy to get the appropriate sparkle with humbuckers 

or single-coils. The Cab switch beefs up the low-end significantly 

in the 4x12 position (I felt the 2x12 setting sounded best with my Deluxe), 

and the Voice switch lets you choose between a thicker tone in the “M” 

position or one with more upper-midrange emphasis in the “T” setting. 

The Presence switch set to Hi restores shimmer when the Hi Cut control 

is turned up (a cool sound in itself), and between all of these functions, 

the TWE-1 certainly answers the needs of players who want a compact 

OD pedal with exceptional sound and flexibility. 

KUDOS Excellent tube-style distortion tone. Very dynamic and touch 

responsive. EQ options galore. 


CONTACT customtonesinc.com g 


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GEAR 

>>> WHACK JOB 

1967 Teisco Banjitar 

BY TERRY CARLETON 

EMERGING GUITAR BUILDERS WANTING 

to cash in on the electric-guitar boom of the ’50s 

and ’60s, had to contend with a market that had 

been cornered by Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, and 

Rickenbacker. Or had it? One way for a company 

to attract new customers in a far out and 

groovy way—and avoid trademark disputes with 

bigger, more established manufacturers—was 

to offer what was essentially a basic guitar, but 

with a different shape or funky finish. Teisco had 

many guitars they hoped would catch on in that 

way. Which brings us to the Banjitar… 

WEIRDO FACTOR 

Well, it looks like a dang banjo! But it ain’t! It’s 

a fairly regular electric guitar. Psych! 

PLAYABILITY & SOUND 

After Teisco merged with Kawai in the 

mid-1960s, a lot of the brand’s build 

aesthetics improved, and this little 

beauty has a really cool carved 

top with triple binding. The 

back of the guitar has a beautiful 

tobacco stain on bookmatched 

maple. The neck, 

like many European guitars of 

the day, is one of those multilaminated 

jobs, often referred 

to as “propellerwood.” It’s super 

strong, and thought to be more 

durable than just one piece of 

maple or mahogany. The fretboard 

on this 26-fret freak is a nice piece of 

Indian rosewood, the neck is skinny, and 

the frets are dressed nicely. The trem works 

like a sluggish Bigsby, but it’s adequate for mild 

surf bending. 

The pickups are loud and voiced very differently 

from each other. The bridge pickup produces 

a lot of high end, but it’s not too screechy, while 

the neck delivers a mellow sound that’s good for 

strumming. With distortion added by an amp or 

a pedal, both pickups get magical. The bridge 

pickup is so microphonic that it almost sounds 

like it has reverb on it. The neck pickup is a bit 

more manageable, and, together, they team up 

for a great garage vibe—kind of like something 

Jack White would love to wrestle with. Both 

pickups have on/off switches—which are really 

cool for stutter effects on power chords—and 

a spring-loaded button on the bridge pushes 

a foam mute under the strings. So the Banjitar 

can sound like a banjo—sort of… 

VALUE 

Like any Teisco, if it’s stock and plays halfway 

decently, it’s usually worth a few bucks. But the 

market on these whack jobs is all over the place. 

I got mine a while ago from Craigslist for $300, 

but I have seen people asking up to $2,000 on 

ebay, and one sold for $600 two years ago on 

reverb.com. 

WHY IT RULES 

In this day of actual electric banjos—check out 

Dave Ristrim with Luke Bryan—you can use the 

Banjitar to fool audiences into thinking you’re 

going to unleash some furious country pickin’, 

but instead you can get all metal or something 

on them. The fun never stops! 

Feel free to contact me at rtcarleton@gmail.com 

with photos of your rare wierdos. g 


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GEAR 

>>> QUICK HISTORIES OF THE ROOTS OF GUITAR LUST 

The 1962 Fender Jaguar BY DAVE HUNTER 

QUIRKY, COMPLEX, AND UTTERLY UN- 

Fender in so many ways, the Jaguar never quite 

lived up to its top-of-the-line status. But this hip 

contender has roared back to attain major cult 

popularity in recent years, and has become the 

main squeeze of major trend-setters, including 

Johnny Marr and the War on Drugs’ Adam 

Granduciel. 

Musical styles were evolving fast by the late 

1950s and early ’60s, and Fender was ready to 

mix it up with some new guitar designs aimed 

squarely at other sectors. The Jazzmaster, 

released in 1958, had largely suffered failure to 

launch with its intended jazz market, but unexpectedly 

hit the mark with the burgeoning surf 

scene. In 1962, to consolidate its appeal in this 

new, young sector, Fender released the Jaguar, 

a guitar largely designed to appeal to that very 

crowd. The model’s foundation clearly owed a 

lot to the major elements pioneered four years 

previous in the Jazzmaster. It had the same 

swept “offset” body with forearm and ribcage 

contours borrowed from the Stratocaster, and 

the same floating vibrato unit and bridge. At 

the other end, it also sported the Jazzmaster’s 

larger headstock design with a newer twist on 

the Fender logo. 

Two other simple but key changes, however, 

would make it an entirely different animal, both 

in feel and in sound: First, the Jaguar was built to 

a 24" scale length, which made it shorter than 

the Jazzmaster, Telecaster, and Stratocaster— 

all of which had a 25.5" scale—and therefore 

made it sound and feel a little different. Second, 

Fender designed an entirely new pickup for this 

model, which used the approximate foundation 

of the narrow Stratocaster single-coil rather than 

the wide, flat Jazzmaster pickup, but added a 

U-shaped steel channel, or “claw”, into which the 

unit was mounted. The intention was apparently 

to better shield these pickups from the radiofrequency 

interference that often plagued other 

single-coil pickups—and the broad Jazzmaster 

coils in particular—but the added steel also 

increased the inductance of the Jaguar pickup 

slightly, arguably thickening its tone. 

Along with the fancy new pickups came a 

more complex control scheme that included— 

along with the same upper-bout “rhythm circuit” 

controls as the Jazzmaster—three lower-bout 

slide-switches, two of which provided individual 

on-off for each pickup, and the third 

a Mid-Tone Cut (aka “trangle switch”) that 

switched in a capacitor to scoop the guitar’s 

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS 

> Solid alder body with ribcage 

and forearm contours 

> One-piece maple neck with 24"- 

scale rosewood fingerboard, attached 

to body with four wood screws 

. 

> Two narrow single-coil pickups 

with added steel “claws” 

> Floating vibrato unit with independent 

rocking bridge 

> Independent pickup on/off 

switches, Mid-Tone Cut switch, 

upper-bout “rhythm-circuit” 

with separate roller controls 

tone. This oft-confusing bevvy of switches 

might have contributed to denting the Jaguar’s 

potential popularity, which is perhaps 

ironic as they were likely intended to be further 

justification of the model’s top-dog status 

in the Fender catalog. 

Although it gained some popularity with 

surf guitarists right out of the gate (a Jaguar 

was Carl Wilson’s firm favorite in the Beach 

Boys), as well as some pop and studio players, 

the model failed to embody its destiny as the 

most expensive model in the lineup. As a result, 

for many years the Jag was one of the used bargains 

in the dustier corner of the music store, 

when Strats and Teles were flying out the door. 

Punk, grunge, and indie-rock rebels grabbed up 

these more affordable and unusually-styled 

Fenders over the following couple of decades, 

as the Jaguar firmly reinserted itself as a stylishly 

outré tool of the alternatively minded, yielding 

superb sonic service in the hands of Tom Verlaine 

of Television, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and 

John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, 

among others. The Jag’s pickups, when they’re 

good ones (and originals can vary a lot), can be 

more snarly and angry than those of most other 

Fenders, and they play particularly well through 

a pushed amp or a good overdrive pedal. The 

shorter scale length also fattens up the overall 

tone somewhat too, while enabling a lithe, 

slinky playing feel. Add to that the slightly plinky, 

snarky percussive attack and reverb-like resonance 

that the added string length between 

bridge and vibrato contributes, as well as the 

smoothly utilitarian attributes of the vibrato itself, 

and this is a guitar that offers much to love. g 

GUITAR COURTESY OF NATIONWIDE GUITARS, PHOTO BY BRAD AND BRUCE RICARD 

92 


FAIR USE IS FAIR PLAY 

Whether he is recording Mark Knopfler or learning a 

new plug-in, award-winning recording engineer Chuck 

Ainlay always acquires the music software he uses 

from legitimate sources. Chuck believes in fair play 

and works exclusively with legal software. 

Respect yourself, your craft, and the work of others. 

Buy the software you use, and buy the music you love. 

www.imsta.org 

International Music Software Trade Association 

New York • Toronto • Hamburg • Tokyo 

Tel: 416 789-6849 • Fax: 416 789-1667 

The International Music Software Trade Association is a non-profi t organization that represents the interests of music software and soundware publishers. 

One of our most important functions is to advocate for the legal use of software in the music production and creation landscape. We do this primarily 

through public education campaigns. We are supported by our members who are software and soundware developers, distributors, retailers & publications. 

We are challenging piracy on moral grounds appealing to the good in all of us. We are trying to change behavior.

A GUITAR PLAYER SPECIAL ACOUSTIC SECTION 

BRAD BARR 

ON COAXING 

INNOVATIVE 

SOUNDS FROM 

TRADITIONAL 

SOURCES 

REVIEW 

COMPACT 

TAYLOR 

12-STRINGS 

352ce & 362ce 

VITOR MUNHOZ 

CLASSIC FRETS LESSON! 

ISATO NAKAGAWA’S 

EAST-WEST VISION OF A 

FINGERSTYLE WALTZ 


VIBRATION 

TRANSFERENCE 

RIDING ALONG ON BRAD BARR’S 

SONIC EXPEDITIONS 

BY JIMMY LESLIE 

CANADIAN BRAD BARR IS A FOLK-ROCK 

explorer always seeking creative ways to conjure 

fresh sounds from traditional sources, and 

much can be learned from his many discoveries. 

He and his drummer/multi-instrumentalist 

brother Andrew are the core of the Barr Brothers 

with harpist Sara Page, as well as The Slip 

with bassist Marc Friedman, and Surprise Me 

Mr. Davis with keyboardist Marco Benevento. 

But the Barr Brothers has been the focus, 

since its debut album in 2011 led to high-profile 

television and radio appearances including 

The Late Show and KCRW’s Morning Becomes 

Eclectic, concerts with the likes of My Morning 

Jacket and Emmylou Harris, and headlining 

the Montreal International Jazz Festival. In 

2014, the breakthrough release, Sleeping Operator, 

racked up tens of millions of combined 

streams, and the Barr Brothers are back with 

Queens of the Breakers [Secret City], weaving 

a tapestry made of classic folk, psychedelia, 

and garage rock. 

The video of your recent TEDx Talk is insightful 

because it’s just you and your acoustic gear— 

other than the solidbody Danelectro used for 

your signature “Vibration Transference” trick 

at the start. How does that work? 

I learned that from watching a movie called 

Latcho Drome, which has no dialogue, but it’s 

worth checking out, because it chronicles the 

path of gypsy music from its Indian origins to 

France where it becomes hot jazz, and down 

to Spain where it becomes flamenco. There’s a 

scene where a Romanian violinist Nicolae Neacsu 

from the group Taraf de Haïdouks attaches a 

single horsehair taken from his bow to a violin 

string via a little knot. As he pulls his fingers 

down the horsehair, the frictional vibration transfers 

to his violin string, and it sounds like he’s 

playing it with a bow. You can achieve a similar 

sound on any guitar using polyester thread— 

cotton doesn’t work because it’s too smooth— 

attached with a double knot to a wound string. 

It works great to get a drone going. To start the 

TEDx performance, I looped the drone using a 

Boomerang Plus—which I like because of how 

quickly the footpads react—and then I picked 

up my Oahu to play slide blues on “Half Crazy” 

from Sleeping Operator. 

What’s the story on that old Oahu? 

I found it in an antique store—not a music 

store. It was made in the mid ’30s or early ’40s 

by the Oahu Publishing Company—hilariously 

based in Cleveland, Ohio—attempting to capitalize 

on the popularity of the Hawaiian slack-key 

craze. The Oahu is a squareneck with a raised 

nut, so it’s meant to be played lap style, but I’ve 

never been able to wrap my head around that 

technique, so I play it up against my body like a 

standard acoustic using a metal Dunlop slide on 

my third finger. I like to put an extra heavy string 

on the bottom—.058-.060—so the Oahu doesn’t 

slack out in lowered tunings. For “Half Crazy,” I 

tune to a low open C tuning that goes C, G, C, E, 

G, C [low to high]. It’s great for blues, because 

even though you’re focused on the minor pentatonic, 

there’s always that one major third to 

bounce off. I love playing the blues in-between 

major and minor, rather than all one way. 

What’s your line of thinking as you progress 

from Eastern-flavored, modal stuff, and 

96 GUITARPLAYER.COM/JANURY2018

The Barr Brothers band 

is Andrew Barr, Brad Barr 

(middle), and Sara Page. 

gradually morph towards American Delta blues? 

“Half Crazy” is based on a North African 

trance blues, where I feel most blues tonalities 

originated, but it also feels like Muddy Waters 

to me. I wanted to explore that connection. For 

me to stay interested in the blues, I had to get 

beyond the riffs everyone knows. Blues actually 

exists all over the world, from India to Japan, 

where music played on the shamisen sometimes 

sounds like Jimi Hendrix riffs. I like to incorporate 

embellishments I’ve picked up from Ravi 

Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan—such as hitting a 

note, and then re-approaching it from below by 

climbing up the pentatonic scale. Malian guitar 

is also a big inspiration, from Ali Farka Toure to 

current stuff from Omara “Bombino” Moctar. It’s 


97

BRAD BARR 

based on cyclical patterns using only a few 

notes repeated with interesting rhythms, 

and making it exciting with the drummer. I 

grew up playing with my brother on drums, 

so trying to group notes in patterns that 

will throw him off his sense of the one is 

something I’ve been developing—for fun— 

my whole life. 

How do you get the Oahu’s signal loud 

enough to hear over a drummer without 

feeding back? 

Those strings are high off the fretboard, 

so I use a Fishman Rare Earth magnetic 

humbucker. The Fishman’s tight bandwidth 

makes it less ambient than other pickups, 

and therefore less prone to feedback. I also 

crank up a Union Tube & Transistor MORE 

pedal to boost the signal. That’s my “desert 

island” pedal I use all the time, because the 

gain structure is so great. Surprisingly, it’s 

based on the gain stage from an old Digi- 

Tech rack multi-effects unit. It works well 

with all kinds of amplifiers. I like to use a 

Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb complemented 

with a low-wattage amp for extra bite. I 

have a Supro that has a nice snap, and a 

tweed Fender ’57 Custom Deluxe reissue 

that’s a little cushier. I use a Radial Engineering 

unit to split the signal, and I have 

both amps on all the time. Sometimes on 

Queens of the Breakers, I used a Gibson 

Super Medalist, because the reverb is amazing. 

I use the same gain strategy with my 

main acoustic, a 1951 Gibson J-45. I used 

that in the TEDx video to play “Song That 

I Heard” from the new record. 

Can you offer any insights on the vintage 

Gibson, and specifics about “Song 

That I Heard”? 

That J-45 is so light—it feels like there’s 

barely any wood in the bracing—which 

makes it really loud and resonant. I’ve 

always loved the low-mid growl germane 

to Gibson acoustics. I mostly use dropped 

D or dropped D with the fifth string tuned 

down to G on my guitars. 

“Song That I Heard” is in dropped D, 

and I put a Kyser capo at the sixth fret, 

because the key of Ab seemed to work 

best. I use Travis picking for alternating 

bass, and I like to put the third or the fifth 

in the bass position because I appreciate 

Bach harmony. Another aspect is to take a 

major triad, and put the third up an octave 

to spread out the chord voicing. 

The tune from Queens of the Breakers 

with the most unique-sounding chords 

is “Look Before It Changes.” Is there a 

connection? 

I wrote both of those songs on a trip to 

Mexico, where I brought a 6-string ukulele. 

I may have started “Song That I Heard” on 

the uke, and transferred it to guitar, but 

“Look Before It Changes” was non-transferrable, 

because it’s very specific to that 

instrument. I have an aversion to the ukulele, 

because it has been overexposed commercially. 

But I found that Kala 6-string on 

a trip to Hawaii, and it’s really cool because 


BRAD BARR 

the fourth and second strings are coupled 

with octave strings, so notes leap up and 

down in a way you don’t anticipate melodically 

or harmonically. Watching a group 

called Mogo Mogo in Mexico was inspiring. 

I had a couple of shots of Mescal afterwards, 

and I wrote “Look Before It Changes” 

on the beach with the Kala tuned down 

a bit—E, A, Cb, Fb [low to high]. As I can 

only play that song on that instrument, it 

stands out on the album. 

What was the most interesting recording 

technique used on Queens of the 

Breakers? 

We had a breakthrough on the title 

track that we also employed on “Hideous 

Glorious.” We retreated to a cabin in the 

woods near a lake for song development 

and preproduction. Engineer Graham Lasssard 

suggested that we record those songs 

acoustically, and then re-record right on top 

of them as an electric band. The first versions 

had acoustic guitar and harp, upright 

bass, and a basic drum beat. Then, everybody 

went full electric on the second pass. 

I tracked with the J-45 for the first pass, 

and then I used a Harmony Stratotone. I 

don’t know if any other bands have ever 

tried such a thing, but it really worked. I’d 

recommend it highly as a recording technique, 

because all you have to do is capture 

two great takes, and you’re done. You wind 

up playing with yourself [laughs], and find 

that you know how to accompany yourself 

better than you might think—maybe 

better than anyone else. I used dropped D 

tuning with a capo at the third fret for both 

takes of “Queens of the Breakers,” but on 

the second pass, I had a bunch of pedals 

jacked up for delay, reverb, and way more 

gain. I soloed with a wah pedal pressed all 

the way forward, utilizing its sustain. 

What pedals do you use most? 

The MORE pedal and an Electro-Harmonix 

Holy Grail reverb are always on. An 

Electro-Harmonix Memory Man is usually 

on, and I use the Boss Tremolo pedal a lot. 

I get otherworldly reverbs from the Earth- 

Quaker Devices Afterneath pedal, and a 

ripping tone on the J-45 that has no business 

coming from an acoustic guitar via the 

Homebrew Electronics HBE UFO Ultimate 

Fuzz Octave. It has a built-in noise gate 

that automatically cuts the sound when 

it gets too hot, and you can utilize that to 

get the ripping effect. The solo on “Love 

Ain’t Enough” from Sleeping Operator is a 

great example. That Homebrew pedal was 

discontinued, but it helped define the early 

sound of the Barr Brothers. 

What’s the status of The Slip, and Surprise 

Me Mr. Davis? 

I have records in the can for both. Those 

projects were simply sidelined by geography 

and schedules when the Barr Brothers 

started gaining momentum, and my 

brother and I found ourselves with wives 

and children. Those records will come out. 

I’m just waiting for the right time. g 


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REVIEW 

362ce 

352ce 

TAYLOR 352CE AND 362CE 


THE TWO 300 SERIES 12-STRINGS 

featured here are new models for Taylor, 

and they represent the luthiery prowess of 

Andy Powers, who is now head of guitar 

development for the California-based 

company. More compact and easier to 

get around on than traditional big-bodied 

12s, the 352ce and 362ce also intentionally 

deliver a less booming sound, 


which makes them ideal for recording 

and performance situations where you 

don’t want to overpower a mix. These 

guitars are identical in size and shape, 

both measuring 19 1/2” long x 15” wide 

x 4/38” deep, and their necks feature a 

slightly shorter scale length of 24 7/8” 

and 12 frets clear of the body. The latter 

point is important because a 12 th -fret 

joint moves the bridge into the center 

of the soundboard, which warms up the 

response. The smaller body also facilitates 

getting the strings in motion, and 

the net result is a guitar with enhanced 

dynamic response and touch sensitivity. 

The key physical difference between 

these two models is their body woods: 

The 352ce has sapele back and sides 

and a gloss-finished Sitka top, whereas 

the satin-finished 362ce has blackwood 

sides and back (a tonewood native to 

Australia) and a hard mahogany top. They 

weigh 4.74 and 4.68 lbs respectively, and 

both have inviting neck shapes and silky 

smooth frets. They arrived with excellent 

setups that provided low action without 

buzzing, and the intonation was good 

throughout the reaches of the fingerboard. 

The guitars also came up to pitch easily 

and stayed in tune well, which is always 

a plus when there’s 12 strings to manage. 

I can’t emphasize enough how comfortable 

these guitars are to play. The necks 

are so accommodating that you can almost 

forget you’re playing a 12-string, and the 

shorter scale produces a little less string 

tension as well. Even playing a barred F 

in the first position is effortless! Students 

at a friend’s teaching studio found these 

guitars very easy to get around on, and 

that’s not usually the deal with small hands 

and 12-strings. So Powers has indeed created 

a more player-friendly instrument, 

and one that compromises nothing on 

the sonic side. 

The 352ce has a crisp, deep sound 

that blossoms beautifully in an acoustic 

setting. Whether playing with a flatpick 

or fingers, the response is very tactile, 

and there’s plenty of sustain to let notes 

ring to their fullest. It’s a richly detailed 

and lively sounding guitar, and that chorus-y 

color with 12 strings chiming in harmony 

is downright inspiring. By contrast, 

the 362ce is browner sounding and has 

a bit softer response; and while the righteous 

12-string majesty is fully present, 

the 362 compresses more readily than 

the 352, and you have to pick a bit harder 

to make lead lines pop. Nevertheless, it 

sounded very deep and full-bodied in a 

mix with fiddle, mandolin, and solidbody 

electrics, making it highly useful in a variety 

of situations. 

We also played these guitars through a 

Fishman SA-220 system and a Vox VX50 

AG acoustic amp, both of which did a 

good job of preserving the characteristics 

of these different sounding guitars. 

Taylor’s ES 2 system, which combines a 

behind-the-saddle pickup with three individually 

calibrated pickup sensors and a 

pro-audio-grade preamp, make it so easy 

to plug-in and get happening sounds that 

you’d likely never need to do anything 

other than aim a good studio mic in the 

vicinity of the soundhole when recording. 

In terms of which to buy, I’d say try 

them both. The brighter sounding 352ce 

is a fabulous guitar that has versatility 

written all over it, but the 362ce has its 

charms as well, and would be a great 

choice for recording or performing in an 

acoustic combo. Either way, these ultra 

playable guitars are real gamechangers, 

and should be on the A-list for anyone 

shopping in the 12 zone. g 

CONTACT taylorguitars.com 

352ce 

PRICE 

$1,899 street, Taylor Deluxe hardshell case included 

NUT WIDTH 1 7 /8" Tusq 

NECK 

Mahogany 

FRETBOARD West African ebony, 24 7 /8" scale 

FRETS 

18 medium jumbo (12 clear of the body) 

TUNERS 

Taylor Nickel 

BODY 

Sapele back and sides, Sitka spruce top 

BRIDGE 

West African ebony with Micarta saddle 

ELECTRONICS Taylor Expression System 2 

CONTROLS Volume, Bass, Treble 

FACTORY STRINGS Elixir Phosphor Bronze Light 

WEIGHT 

4.74 lbs 

BUILT 

USA 

KUDOS 

Superb playability. Compact feel. Gorgeous sound. 


362ce 

PRICE 

$2,099 street, Taylor Deluxe hardshell case included 

NUT WIDTH 

NECK 

FRETBOARD 

FRETS 

TUNERS 

BODY 

BRIDGE 

1 7 /8" Tusq 

Mahogany 

West African ebony, 24 7 /8" scale 

18 medium jumbo (12 clear of the body) 

Taylor Nickel 

Blackwood back and sides, hardwood mahogany 

top 

West African ebony with Micarta saddle 

ELECTRONICS Taylor Expression System 2 

CONTROLS Volume, Bass, Treble 

FACTORY STRINGS Elixir Phosphor Bronze Light 

WEIGHT 

4.68 lbs 

BUILT 

USA 

KUDOS 

Superb playability. Compact feel. A warm sounding 

guitar with abundant complexity and depth. 



103

CLASSIC ACOUSTIC ARTIFACT 

From the original Guitar Player, August 1979 

IN HIS AUGUST 1979 “ACOUSTIC SET” COLUMN, STEFAN GROSSMAN EXPLORED AN EAST-WEST 

vibe, offering up a fingerstyle piece by Isato Nakagawa. —MICHAEL MOLENDA 


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Guitar Bazaar 

Harmony 

Insurance in 

with your needs 

Steve Morse Continued from page 49 

it better, another glaring problem would 

always become more apparent, and that’s 

when all the various pickups came into the 

picture. And then, there was the Tune-o- 

Matic bridge and having a custom pickguard 

made around the pickups. Maybe a real guitar 

builder could just see these things at once, 

and go, “I know exactly what to do.” That’s 

what they do. 

After you broke the whammy bar off the 

Strat, you didn’t go back to using one for 

years. Did that force you to create vibrato 

effects with your hands? 

It did. I broke the whammy off the Strat 

when I was trying to play “Are You Experienced?” 

It snapped off, and I just gave 

up on it. But you’re right, it did sort of 

make me dig in more and use my hands for 

vibrato. Everybody used a whammy for a 

more legato style, and I was convinced that 

alternate picking gave me more of a cross 

platform, so I stuck with that. I found that 

when you’re doing alternate picking, and 

you have to stop and grab the whammy bar, 

it’s kind of unnatural. 

When you wrote “Go for Baroque,” was 

that kind of an “‘F’ you” to your school’s 

classical department that didn’t want you? 

Not at all. In fact, it was more of a love 

for classical, and a teacher I studied with 

named Juan Mercadal. He was a touring 

headliner in the classical world. I saw him, 

and I thought, “I need to study with this 

guy.” But he wouldn’t take me on at first. 

I needed to be at a certain level. The grad 

students ended up teaching me. It wasn’t 

until my third year that I was ready to 

study with him, because I had done a lot 

of homework. 

I imagine that you traveled pretty light 

and tight in the early days of the Dregs. 

Did that force you to streamline your gear? 

Oh, yeah. I owned the station wagon and the 

trailer that we toured with, and space was at a 

premium. People had to find ways to lie down 

and sleep—except me, because I was always 

the hyper guy who drove all night. Eventually, 

we got a record company advance, so everybody 

got some more gear, and we went to a 

12-foot trailer. But I still kept things simple. I 

had two Ampeg V4s and two cabinets with JBL 

speakers in them. The second amp was basically 

a slave for my tape echo. I had a separate 

volume pedal that I used for that. 

I understand you maintained your practice 

regimen on those long tours—seven 

while driving. 

I insisted on it. I did it at the expense of 

sleeping. I would practice between sets and 

after the gigs, and, yeah, I’d practice while 

driving. It wasn’t as difficult as it sounds— 

especially if you’re on long stretches of highway. 

It wasn’t like I was on a slalom course. 

You use your knees to work the steering 

wheel, and you’ve got your feet to work the 

speed, so I could play the guitar with two 

hands. It was child’s play to run scales while 

driving. Now, I want to point out that I’m 

not suggesting other people try to do it— 

especially nowadays when people have the 

temptation to look at texts and things. I don’t 

like the idea of endangering other people. 

And I stress that I always had my eyes on 

the road, so I could react to anything that 

was coming my way. 

Do you ever hear from bands that cite 

the Dregs as an influence? 

No, not really. [Laughs.] People have said 

nice things. The most notable guy has been 

John Petrucci, and Mike Portnoy, too. They’re 

both unbelievable at what they do, so that’s 

flattering. g 

JANUARY2018/GUITARPLAYER.COM 111 


Robert Megantz 

 

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CLASSIC COLUMN 

HOW COOL IS IT THAT B.B. KING WAS ONCE A COLUMNIST FOR GP? WE EVEN HAVE SOME OLD PHOTOS 

of him jamming with the editorial staff in the warehouse. Wild. In his September 1983 column, he wanted to talk about moving from 

Gibson to Fender and back to Gibson in the quest for his lifetime musical partner—that iconic “lady” named Lucille. —MICHAEL MOLENDA

Guitar_Player__January_2018

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