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STEELY DAN LEGEND WALTER BECKER: A GW TRIBUTE

GUITAR & BASS TRAN SCRI PTI O NS

THE CARS "Just What I Needed” ARCH ENEMY "The World Is Yours" STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN "Leave My Girl Alone" (Live from Austin City Limits)

PICKUPS DEMYSTIFIED!

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING HOW THEY WORK WHY YOU SHOULD CHANGE YOURS AND

FOO FIGHTERS DAVE GROHL & CO. KEEP IT HEAVY WITH CONCRETE AND GOLD

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ARCH ENEMY

ACT OF DEFIANCE

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CON T EN TS VOL. 38 |

NO. 12 |

FEATURES

DECEMBER 2017

(from left) Foo Fighters Chris Shiflett, Dave Grohl and Pat Smear

30 WALTER BECKER (1950–2017) Guitar World pays tribute to the Steely Dan legend responsible for such classic rock gems as “Do It Again,” “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Hey Nineteen”—not to mention a most reluctant guitar hero.

36 ARCH ENEMY Their latest album and single are tearing up charts and playlists like never before. From the looks of things, it’s clear that, after more than 20 years, this is Arch Enemy’s moment of triumph.

46 THE FOO FIGHTERS They should be on a break right now, but the Foo Fighters would always rather rock than rest. Dave Grohl, Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear sound off on what got them to cut their vacation time early and crank out the new Concrete and Gold.

58 A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO PICKUPS

Active or passive? Humbucker or single-coil? And what the heck is a “henry”? Let us answer these and countless other questions you might have with this comprehensive guide to the dizzying world of electric guitar pickups.

TRANSCRIBED “Leave My Girl Alone” (Live)

by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble

PAGE

“The World Is Yours” by Arch Enemy

PAGE

DEPARTMENTS

12 WOODSHED / MASTHEAD 14 SOUNDING BOARD

82 COLUMNS

82. String Theory

Letters, reader art and Defenders of the Faith

17 TUNE-UPS

by Jimmy Brown 84. In Deep by Andy Aledort 86. Mob Rules by Mike Orlando

Act of Defiance, Ivar Bjornson, JD McPherson, Greta Van Fleet, Lee Ranaldo, Jesse F. Keller

122 SHOP TALK

73 SOUNDCHECK

Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville

73. Mesa Engineering Triple Crown TC-50 by the Cars

PAGE

110

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

76. Hughes & Kettner era 1 acoustic amp 78. Fusion Guitars The Fusion Guitar 79. Guitar Tone Company Bloody Finger 80. Tascam Track Factory

C OV ER P H O TO G R AP H BY J EN RO SE N ST E I N

JEN ROSENSTEIN

“Just What I Needed”

“WE HAVE SELECTED THE FINEST FEATURES OF THE D-28 FROM BOTH MY GRANDFATHER’S AND MY FATHER’S ERAS. WE’VE BROUGHT FORTH THIS GUITAR’S RICH HISTORY AND MARRIED IT WITH MODERN INNOVATIONS.”

— CHRIS MARTIN IV CHAIRMAN AND CEO

D-28 (2017)

ANTIQUED VINTAGE APPOINTMENTS | FORWARD SHIFTED TOP BRACES | HIGH PERFORMANCE NECK TAPER

WOODSHED VOL. 38 |

NO. 12 |

DECEMBER 2017 EDITORIAL

NOW WE’RE TALKIN’! I HAVE TO SAY, I’m overwhelmed. Touched even. Last month in my Woodshed I made a plea to all of you, admittedly out of some sense of frustration, to write in and tell us how we can make this magazine better—to voice your opinions and tell us what kind of content you would like to see more of in these very pages. And boy, did you all come through. Our inbox has never been so flooded with thoughtful comments and suggestions, and the kind of uplifting support and camaraderie that pretty much restored my faith in humanity. Chad Bomber, Steve Chervincky, Dave Tycer, Timothy Turk, Dale Opel, Scott Gilson, Joe Verga, Zeke Clemons, Sebastian Gregory, Nick Kedrowski, Richard Odom, Darryl Hunt…these are just some of the people who put on their editor’s cap and weighed in—but believe me, the list of names is endless. I feel like our staff increased ten-fold practically overnight. It’ll take me a while to read through every letter and give careful consideration to all the great suggestions—but after reading the first wave that came in after you all got the last issue in your hands, I got ideas for all kinds of feature stories, recommendations for new bands and players, suggestions for new columnists and so much more. And to be honest, some of the editorial in the last issue and this issue was the direct result of reader suggestions; ideas that might never have crossed my mind have now made their way into the magazine. In other words, yes, your feedback actually matters. If there’s one overwhelming sentiment expressed in your letters, it’s that most of you want us to expand our instructional and gear content and bring you deeper lessons on specific aspects of playing, focus more on guitar-playing fundamentals, maybe devote some pages to songwriting and getting the best sounds from your amps and effects, etc. And I couldn’t agree more. I admit I feel as though we lost our way a bit there over the past few years, maybe focusing too much on celebrity interviews and not enough on the one thing that is at the very center of everything we do and the very reason you are here right now: the guitar. Sure, we’ll still be bringing you all the latest interviews with the heroes and legends we idolize as well as the fresh new faces on the scene, but in the coming months we’re going to make a concerted effort to include more of the type of content so many of you are clamoring for. Connecting with you all is something I’ve always held in high regard, and probably even more so now, seeing as we can no longer rely on newsstand and bookstore passers-by who would buy an issue simply because they like the cover artist or one of the songs we transcribed. That business model here in America is suffering greatly, which means we need the GW faithful more than ever. So to all of you who wrote in with either supportive comments or editor-worthy suggestions, I can’t thank you enough. You all read my Woodshed last month and heard me loud and clear—and now I’m hearing all of you, one at a time.

EXECUTIVE CONTENT DIRECTOR Jeff Kitts MANAGING EDITOR Damian Fanelli TECH EDITOR Paul Riario ASSOCIATE EDITORS Andy Aledort, Richard Bienstock, Alan di Perna, Chris Gill CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Joe Bosso, Dan Epstein, Eric Feldman, Randy Harward, Mike Orlando, Jon Wiederhorn SENIOR VIDEO PRODUCER Mark Nuñez

MUSIC

SENIOR MUSIC EDITOR Jimmy Brown MUSIC TRANSCRIPTIONIST Jeff Perrin MUSIC ENGRAVER Patricia Corcoran

ART

ART DIRECTOR Mixie von Bormann ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Tamara Lee CONTRIBUTING DESIGNER Alexis Cook

ONLINE

MANAGING EDITOR Jackson Maxwell EDITOR Damian Fanelli

PRODUCTION

PRODUCTION MANAGER Nicole Schilling

BUSINESS

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—Jeff Kitts Executive Content Director

GUITAR WORLD (ISSN 1045-6295) is published 13 times a year, monthly plus Holiday issue following December issue, by NewBay Media, LLC, 28 East 28th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Phone: 212.378.0400. Fax: 917.281.4704. Web Site: www.nbmedia.com. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Newsstand distribution is handled by Curtis Circulation Company. Subscriptions: One-year basic rate (12 issues) US: $14.95. Canada: US$29.95. Foreign: US$49.95. Canadian and foreign orders must be prepaid. Canadian price includes postage and GST #R128220688. PMA #40612608. Subscriptions do not include newsstand specials. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Guitar World, P.O. Box 2029, Langhorne, PA 19047-9957. Ride-along enclosure in the following edition(s): None, Standard enclosure: None. Returns: Pitney Bowes, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2, Canada. Entire contents copyright 2018, NewBay Media L.L.C. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited. NewBay Media L.L.C. is not affiliated with the companies or products covered in Guitar World. Reproduction on the Internet of the articles and pictures in this magazine is illegal without the prior written consent of Guitar World. Products named in the pages of Guitar World are trademarks of their respective companies. PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. SUBSCRIBER CUSTOMER SERVICE: Guitar World Magazine Customer Care, P.O. Box 2029, Langhorne, PA 19047-9957. Online: www.guitarworld.com/customerservice. Phone: 1-800-456-6441. Email guitarworldmag@icnfull.com. BACK ISSUES: www.guitarworld.com/store REPRINTS: NewBay Media, LLC, 28 East 28th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Phone: 212.378.0414

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Steely Dan numerous times and his playing always mesmerized me. He’s right up there with Di Meola, Carlton, Clapton and the other greats. A lengthy tribute would certainly be in order. —Donald Taylor

Troubled Waters Roger That I have been a longtime subscriber and I read every issue cover to cover. However, this is the first time ever that a story has made me misty-eyed. There will probably be many letters complaining about the Roger Waters interview in the October issue because of his political stance, but the gist of the interview and what made my eyes well over was the story he tells at the end of the interview. The police officer simply stating, “He’s poor” in regards to the thief that stole Mr. Waters’ shoes as a young man at the beach—that is what this story is about, the lesson that policeman taught Roger, that “compassion and some understanding” is what we need most of all. —Carlos M. Collazo I may not agree with all of Roger Waters’ political views, but it’s always interesting to read what this living legend has to say. And thank you so much for the Gordon Lightfoot “Sundown” transcription in the same issue. He is truly a great songwriter. Now, if we can get some James Taylor, Bread and 10cc, you’d have a lot more happy readers. I was sad when I heard the news of the passing of Walter Becker. I saw

I did not appreciate the comments and the whole political content of Roger Waters’ interview in your magazine. I get that musicians and artists are a particular breed of personality. Many are rebels and activists, and that drives their creative spirit. I understand that all through history bands have supported or been against certain political viewpoints. But this article was nothing but a political hit job on the president of these United States—and for Roger to call the president names is beyond disgraceful. I find Roger and his anti-Semitic views repulsive, but he’s entitled to his opinions. I do not appreciate this magazine giving him a place to air them, though. Concentrate on the music or give equal time to opposing views if you must head down that road. I await a full Ted Nugent interview with him on the cover. —A. Ludmerer Love Pink Floyd, David Gilmour and Guitar World. Roger Waters has always desecrated our presidents and our way of life. Roger, if you hate our great country and its leaders so much, get the fuck out and stop making millions of dollars off our citizens. Or run for president and let’s see how great a job you do. I do believe the pig stands for Roger and it’s time to send him to the slaughter house. —Rob Pratt

Is there nothing more tiring than listening to more fawning over Roger Waters? Why do we extend visas to listen to his tired clichés about anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism that any freshman in a reasonable college would laugh into the tired dustbin of English labor union yack? And dare I say, what a damn phony. Charging hundreds of dollars for tickets to insult us? It is classic cognitive dissonance to listen to “classic” Pink Floyd and his current drivel. The man has not put out a decent piece of music on his own—ever—and yet we hail him as the soul of Pink Floyd. Please join me in calling out his phony bullshit. —Jeffrey Bronchick As stated in part of Roger Waters’ naive political drivel, he says, “There are people who’re so damaged, they think they are better than other people.” Hey Roger, look in the mirror. You are a musical genius, but you are a condescending, arrogant prick. Stick to music. —J. Harris Thanks for the interview with Roger Waters. Never realized how much of an asshole he was before this. —Gust Theopulos

be into them. “And You and I” by Yes? Come on, Guitar World, you can do it! —Dave Pousho

You Devils I’m extremely disappointed in your October issue. Once again, you had to feature a satanic band—Venom—in your magazine. Not only that, you had to show a satanic image in the article, the cover of their Black Metal LP. Why, why, why do you have to feature satanic bands in your fine magazine? Why don’t you feature some Christian bands like Stryper, Whitecross, Petra or King’s X? Venom is the satanic band of all satanic bands, with 33 1/3 platters like Welcome to Hell and At War with Satan. I may have to cancel my subscription if you feature any more satanic bands in your magazine. —John Scholl P.S. I hope you have the courage to print this letter.

Ink Spot Death is one of my favorite bands of all time ever since I was a little girl. —Alisha Gory

Sick Notes Hello, Guitar World! I noticed that recently you’ve been featuring some transcriptions that could be considered fun, epic workouts for dedicated guitarists, and I have some other suggestions. How about “Victim of Changes” by Judas Priest? That would be a lot of fun to play and has some great parts. “By-Tor and the Snow Dog” or “Xanadu” by Rush would also be excellent choices. I’ve never seen any of these songs transcribed, and I’m sure a lot of your readers would

GOT A TATTOO of your favorite band or guitarist you want to share with us? Send a photo of your ink to soundingboard@guitarworld. com and maybe we’ll print it or post it on our Facebook page!

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DEFENDERS

THE BEATL ES W O O D A R T B Y K R I S M A R T I N S O N

of the Faith

The Doc of Rock

(aka Dave Goodman MD)

Maxwell Collins-Mcclean

AGE 40 HOMETOWN Newton, MA GUITARS PRS Custom 24, Nash Tele, Gibson SG and Flying V SONGS I HAVE BEEN PLAYING Dire Straits “Sultans of Swing,” Robert Palmer “Bad Case of Loving You,” Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” Stray Cats “Stray Cat Strut” GEAR I MOST WANT Wild Custom Guitars Wildmaster

AGE 13 HOMETOWN Duncan, BC GUITAR Ibanez GIO, Jay Jr SONGS I HAVE BEEN PLAYING Audioslave “Like a Stone,” Metallica “Enter Sandman,” White Stripes “Seven Nation Army,” Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication” GEAR I MOST WANT Ibanez RG Series SA160QM, Ibanez GSR206BWNF GIO, Marshall MG50CFX

David McCarty AGE 64 HOMETOWN Bloomington, IN GUITARS 1951 Epiphone Broadway, Eastman AR805, Martin D-28 Authentic 1941, DL Wilson D-18 SONGS I HAVE BEEN PLAYING Django Reinhardt “Nuages,” “Belleville” and “Blues for Ike,” Riders in the Sky “Compadres in the Old Sierra Madres” GEAR I MOST WANT An original Selmer, a wartime Gibson L-5, a Stromberg Master 400

Are you a Defender of the Faith? Send a photo, along with your answers to the questions above, to defendersofthefaith@guitarworld.com. And pray! guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

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TUNE-UPS UPS IVAR BJØRNSON

JD MCPHERSON

GRETA VAN FLEET

DEAR GUITAR HERO: LEE RANALDO

“The next thing I knew, I was being called a bass player. I’ve accepted it now, but I didn’t even own a bass when we made the first record.”

JESSE F. KEELER

28 Chris Broderick with two of his Jackson USA signature Soloist HT7 guitars

Burning Man FOR THE SECOND ACT OF DEFIANCE ALBUM, OLD SCARS, NEW WOUNDS, ACE SHREDDER CHRIS BRODERICK TAKES HIS PLAYING TO NEW LEVELS OF HOTNESS.

STEPHANIE CABRAL

By Dan Epstein

OVER THE COURSE of 20 years with Jag Panzer, Nevermore, Megadeth and Act of Defiance, Chris Broderick has developed quite the reputation for serious seven-string shredding—so it comes as something of a surprise to learn that he’d actually intended to “tone down” his solos for Old Scars, New Wounds, Act

of Defiance’s second and latest album. Tkk “I wanted to have absolute control over every aspect of my technique for this CD,” he explains, “so I initially thought it would be best if I didn’t push it too hard.” Thankfully, for fans of Broderick’s dazzling playing, things didn’t quite work out that way. Old Scars, New Wounds features

his most adventurous soloing yet, utilizing everything from dispersed-octave arpeggios and classically influenced counterpoint to locked tremolo bar accents and two-handed tapping runs. “I had all these techniques that I’d always wanted to work into my playing,” he says, “and through the course of developing them, they organically—and kind of inadvertently—worked their way into my playing.” Broderick cites the second solo in “M.I.A.,” the album’s lead-off track, as an example. “I do this octave-dispersed arpeggio technique in it where I use guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

NEWS + NOTES

WHAT'S ON MY

PLAYLIST

IVAR OFBJØRNSON ENSLAVED 1

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

AXOLOGY • GUITARS Jackson USA Signature Chris Broderick Soloist HT7 • AMPS Fractal Axe-Fx II XL+ • STRINGS Ernie Ball Slinkys .010–.046, with a .062 or .065 for the seventh string

2 “Precious and Grace” ZZ Top “I have several guitar heroes, but Billy Gibbons is the only one that makes me think I really want to be that guy. He’s a cigar and liquor connoisseur, he’s a guitar god, great singer and has the ultimate beard.”

3 “Marrow” YOB “I have been on tour with the boys, and saw them side and front stage night after night. This song just hit me every night.”

4 “A Fine Day to Die” Bathory “This song is just so huge and so full of aggressive yet sophisticated energy. The arrangements, the drums, everything.”

5 “Bleed” Meshuggah “They will do an album, and then dozens and dozens will try to emulate it and fail for the most part—and then Meshuggah will be another gazillion miles ahead on the next album, re-inventing the whole thing before anyone gets close. ” E, THE FOURTEENTH ALBUM FROM ENSLAVED, WILL BE AVAILABLE ON OCTOBER 13 VIA NUCLEAR BLAST.

I VA R B J O R N S O N : C H R I S T I A N M I S J E

“Every note I played, no matter where it was on the fretboard, seemed to have a thunk to it on the bottom end, this punch that I just loved! I wound up using it for my lead tone, and I love the way it sits in the mix.” Broderick formed Act of Defiance with drummer Shawn Drover in late 2014, shortly after the pair left Megadeth. While bassist (and former Shadows Fall guitarist) Matt Bachand and ex-Scar the Martyr vocalist Henry Derek joined too late to have any songwriting input on the first album, 2015’s Birth and the Burial, all four members contributed songs for Old Scars, New Wounds, and Broderick feels the album is much stronger for it. “The first record was great,” he reflects, “but it was really Shawn and I going, ‘We need to get this out! We’ve gotta make this happen right now!’ With this CD, after all of the touring we had done, all the hanging out and living with each other, it was much more about, ‘What are we as a unit? How do we voice our musical ideas?’ “I’m in a band full of guitarists and songwriters,” he laughs. “But this band is all about being able to express ourselves, and I think the music really benefitted from our multiple voices.”

CHRIS BRODERICK: STEPHANIE CABRAL

P.I.M.A., my classical right-hand fingering, and then I pair that up with sliding into melodic notes on the top and bottom end with my left hand. So, basically, I’m doing this kind of counterpoint between the upper melody and the lower melody, that develops between these octave-dispersed arpeggios. I thought it came out really well!” Broderick used only two guitars on the album—both of them his signature Jackson seven-strings. “One was red, and one was transparent black,” he says. “One had the action put up a little bit higher for the rhythms, and had slightly heavier gauge strings on it; and the other I used for my leads, which had the strings I normally play live. I like to play .010 through .046; when I record, I’ll typically go with a .065 on the seventh string and a .062 when I’m playing live.” Rather than use amps for the recording sessions, Broderick played all his Old Scars, New Wounds guitar tracks through a Fractal Axe-Fx II XL+ preamp/effects processor, which he also uses onstage. “I love recording that way, because it makes experimentation with different amp models and effects so accessible,” he says. “I went with a more upper-midrangefocused cabinet for my rhythms on this CD—one that had a good punch on the bottom end, but sounded like it was going to tear your head off on the top end.” For his lead tone, Broderick says he’d primarily used the Fractal’s Friedman HBE simulator in the past; this time, however, he made a last-minute decision to switch things up. “I just went digging around one day and stumbled across the Diezel Herbert simulation,” he recalls.

“Hollow” A Perfect Circle “The way ‘wine guy’ [Maynard James Keenan, who owns the Caduceus Cellars winery] sings on top of the magic guitar line in the chorus shows how he can be so eccentric and still awesome. Maybe the reason his ‘other band’ never releases the new album is that it is too good.”

TOSIN ABASI Shreds 8 strings. Every single one is NYXL.

NEWS + NOTES

JD McPherson with his TK Smith Custom guitar

THIS ONE-TIME ART TEACHER GOT THE AX, GRABBED HIS AX AND PUT HIS UNDIVIDED HEART & SOUL INTO HIS VINTAGE BRAND OF ROCK AND ROLL. By Damian Fanelli

WE’VE ALL HEARD of guitar gods whose rock careers took off when they dropped out of school, formed a band and hit the road. But JD McPherson’s “school dropout” story has a twist: the Oklahoma native was a dedicated art teacher—until his contract wasn’t renewed. “I was a really good teacher, I was great with the kids, but I’m really, truly a terrible employee,” says McPherson, who’s been in bands since he was 16. “I can’t wallow in the mire of administrivia, can’t keep paperwork, can’t keep up with the political game. It was gonna happen sooner or later.” But McPherson—who’s now based in happenin’ East Nashville, Tennessee—isn’t complaining. With his day job safely out of the picture, he’s become one of the true stars of a burgeoning international rock-and-roll scene. And yes, that’s rock with the “and

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

roll” still attached—as in vintage-leaning, uber-rootsy, lean, mean and damn fun. His third album, Undivided Heart & Soul (out October 6 via New West Records), shows that the singer-guitarist-songwriter draws from a much larger pool of influences than the Buddy Holly/Sonny Curtis recordings that initially turned him on to vintage rock and fueled his earlier work. “People might be surprised at my perception of what rock and roll is, the fact that it didn’t end after three years of its inception,” McPherson says. “I love rock and roll all the way through Rockpile, through T. Rex and the Stooges. All those things are fair game to soak up into what we do.” Undivided Heart & Soul shows those influences and more, including Link Wray’s greasy chords, Dave Davies’ spasmodic crunch and a touch of the Creation. The

11-song set was produced by McPherson and Dan Molad and recorded at Nashville’s Historic RCA Studio B, home of the Everly Brothers, Chet Atkins and countless other Music City legends. Highlights include the ethereal “On the Lips,” the angular “Lucky Penny” (which features punchy bass by former Four Charms main man Jimmy Sutton and thunderous drums by Jason Smay) and the simply brilliant “Hunting for Sugar”— but the entire album is full of surprises and is a joy to behold. Guitar-wise, McPherson plays an early Sixties Supro Dual Tone, a customized Tele or two and his dashing TK Smith Custom. “The new album is 97 percent TK Smith Custom,” McPherson says. “It gets so many different sounds. Just the difference between the bridge and neck pickups is huge.”

AXOLOGY • GUITAR TK Smith Custom • AMP Texotica Presidio 15 Combo • EFFECTS Fulltone Supa-Trem, Way Huge Havalina Germanium Fuzz, Dr. Scientist Reverberator

J I M M Y S U T TO N

JD McPherson

Jessica Lynn Singer, Songwriter, Track Factory User.

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NEWS + NOTES Brothers Josh (left) and Jake Kiszka of Greta Van Fleet

WITH THEIR REFRESHINGLY RETRO ATTITUDE AND GUITAR-FUELED SOUND, THE MICHIGAN-BASED FOUR-PIECE LOOK TO MAKE THE MAINSTREAM A SAFE PLACE FOR ROCK AGAIN. By Joe Bosso

PACKING A PANTLOAD of Zeppelin-esque riffs along with the unbridled energy of early Van Halen, the Frankenmuth, Michigan–based quartet called Greta Van Fleet has stormed radio and streaming services in a way that few rock bands have done in years. High-velocity tracks like “Highway Tune” and “Safari Song” from the band’s debut four-song EP, Black Smoke Rising, seemingly came out of nowhere and are edging more established groups off of playlists. “I think we’re all pretty surprised at the reaction we’re getting,” says guitarist Jake Kiszka. “We didn’t expect to receive such attention right out of the gate. I don’t know what to attribute it do; hopefully, it’s just because people are responding to great music.”

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

The 21-year-old Kiszka formed Greta Van Fleet with his brothers Josh (vocals) and Sam (bass) when they were in their mid-teens; their pal Danny Wagner soon climbed aboard on drums. Swept away by their parents’ “vinyl playground,” Kiszka and his siblings based the band on the music they grew up loving: Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. “It didn’t feel like old retro music to us at the time,” he says. “It was exciting stuff. It wasn’t until I got to middle school that I even realized the other kids were listening to new stuff on pop radio, and it sounded nothing like what I liked. The contemporary music lacked feel, so we just stuck with what felt right to us.”

Kiszka started out playing a Fender Squier before graduating to Gibson Les Pauls and SGs. He cites Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix as enormous influences (“the first time I heard Hendrix play ‘The StarSpangled Banner,’ I nearly fell out of my chair”), and he doesn’t shy away from comparisons to Jimmy Page. “Are you kidding me? I embrace it!” he says with a laugh. “That big riff style that Page pioneered is something that always excited me. I think it’s a little sad that huge rock riffs are lacking in a lot of today’s music. Maybe if people see what we’re doing and how cool it is, we can help make it come back.”

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DEAR GUITAR HERO

GU I TA R WOR L D â&#x20AC;¢ DECEM BER 2017

Lee Ranaldo takes a breather in Athens in 2015

LEE RANALDO

He was one of the key architects of the alt-Nineties guitar aesthetic in Sonic Youth and has a new album called Electric Trim, but what Guitar World readers really want to know is… Interview by Alan di Perna

WHAT ARE THE ORIGINS OF YOUR FENDER SIGNATURE MODEL JAZZBLASTER? —ALEX MELTON One of the key guitars in my career has been an earlySeventies Fender Telecaster Deluxe that I had before Sonic Youth started, and that I played pretty much throughout Sonic Youth. It was one of the guitars we lost in that big 1999 theft, when we had all our gear stolen. But it was one of the few guitars that actually got returned. I still play it onstage, and it’s on my new album. But that guitar, with those Fender wide-range humbucking pickups, was really the impetus for me putting those pickups in my Jazzmasters. At some point in the mid-Nineties, one of the roadies was like, “You love the Jazzmaster body style, but you love the sound of those pickups in your Tele. Why don’t you just put those pickups in your Jazzmaster?” And that became the basis for the signature model. I probably used my signature model on the new album too, as well as a white ’65 Jazzmaster I have.

What have you been up to since your last album, Acoustic Dust, in 2014? —Britney Bruce Mostly making the Electric Trim album. The people who put together that Acoustic Dust record in Barcelona brought this guy Raul “Refree” Fernandez in to help with production. He’s pretty well known over there, although not so much over here. And we became fast friends. At the end of the sessions, he said, “I’d love to work with you on a new record at some point.” Because the Acoustic Dust thing was just versions of my old songs from the last two records. So in 2015, Raul said, “Hey, I’m coming to New York for a few weeks. Should we bat a few things around in the studio?” I had been sending him some demos. And that’s where it started. I knew Raul was a lot more conversant with modern production styles than I am. Usually my records are made trying to capture the essence of a band playing in a room. He’s more into programming and samples. Raul and I worked on and off for

about a year, as he was coming to New York, and later I was going to Barcelona. Pretty much every song started with an acoustic demo by me. Starting that way, rather than with a full band, opened up a lot of new possibilities. We had all kinds of people coming in, playing and singing on the record, but mostly it was just Raul and me in the studio. We were treating live playing and Raul’s electronic sounds, samples and beats on an equal par. There’s definitely a couple of songs where I couldn’t even say who was drumming on certain sections of the songs. It could have been Kid Millions on the verses, Steve Shelly on the choruses and maybe electronic drums on the bridge. It’s the same with guitars. A lot of the rocking solo stuff is Nels Cline from Wilco. But occasionally it’s me, Raul or someone else. Alan Licht got a lot of tasty bits mixed into a lot of the songs. Some of the song files stretched to more than 100 tracks, which is crazy for me. I don’t usually work that way. With this record, we were looking to inject new sounds and new

techniques into my songwriting. It paid off in spades, as far as I’m concerned. How did you and Nels Cline first connect? And what do you value most about his playing? —Lane Delgado When Sonic Youth first started going to L.A. in the early Eighties, Nels was working in this local record store that we always went to—Rhino Records on Westwood Blvd. That was right near Kim’s house [Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon], so we’d always end up there. And that’s how we first met Nels. We knew he was a guitar player, and over the years we just struck up a long friendship. He was kind of a secret weapon around L.A. for a long time before he first got into the international scene, around the same time he started playing with Wilco. But we knew he was a fantastic guitar player from the earliest days we were going out to L.A. We’d go to see different shows he was doing—small club shows. We knew we had the same tastes and interests. We’ve

been tight buddies for a long time. What do I value most about his playing? He’s a monster player and he can play so many different styles. He can play snarling rock leads, or he can play tasty, beautiful almost pedal steel type stuff. He’s really a great colorist, and that’s one of the things I really love about asking him to play on my records. And he’s very sensitive to the material. He’s not just playing across it scattershot style. He’s really digging in and finding ways to enter it, even if he hasn’t been living with it for the past four months like I have when he comes in. Was it your work with Glenn Branca’s guitar orchestra in the late Seventies that first got you interested in alternate tunings? Or did you do it before that? —Brandon Kingston It was long before that, actually. When I first learned guitar—when I was 14 or 15—I had an older cousin who showed me some stuff. And he was into all these tunings. He was showing me tunings that people like David Crosby or Neil Young used—like dropped D and open D tunings. Then when I was in college, I started finding out about Lou Reed in the Velvet Underground using the ostrich tunings—tuning the guitars to all one note and things like that, which seemed very interesting. And when I moved to New York and started working with Glenn and Rys Chatham, they were doing all that stuff too. Actually, Glenn was really getting sophisticated about spreading his tunings across the frequency range. When I was in grade school and high school, I did a lot of chorale singing. And the chorus would be tenor, bass and alto and soprano. And when I first started working with Glenn, that’s how he was referring to his tunings—the soprano guitar and the alto and tenor guitar. So it was very interesting to see how he was guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

DEAR GUITAR HERO

What’s your favorite Sonic Youth album? —Dwayne Evans I don’t really have one. I helped make them all, and we never released a record that we didn’t believe in 100 percent. So my experience of those records is so different from everyone else’s. But I guess I like A Thousand Leaves [1998] a lot. It was the first record we made after we set up a serious multitrack studio, actually with the gear we bought on Lollapalooza [in 1995]. We bought a 16-track tape machine, a Neve desk and all that stuff. We were just in our glory being in a recording studio all our own without any clock ticking, and just working away. I love the way we recorded that album. I love the way it sounds. I love a lot of that music. I love the title. That’s a favorite, I suppose, for me. The other favorite is the last one we did. Which was an instrumental album on our SYR label, it’s SYR number 9, and it’s a soundtrack for a French film called Simon Warner a Disparu. It’s really beautiful music. But it’s kind of under-the-radar. I don’t know if it’s on the top of anybody’s album list. What’s some of the coolest new gear in your arsenal? —Kit Palmer I have a guitar built for me by this company in Germany called Deimel. Frank Deimel sent me a couple of guitars. There’s one he built me called the Firestar, which is a really cool guitar that I’ve used live a lot over the years. And I have a guitar made by this company out in Des Moines called BilT. It’s kind of based on a Jazzmaster shape and it’s got wide-range humbuckers by Lollar. My electrics are usually set up with vintage Fender wide-range pickups or Lollars or

Curtis Novak’s pickups. I’ve got a lot of guitars set up like that these days. But I’ve really been focused on acoustic guitars a lot recently, both in my live shows and in the studio. So I’m trying to beef up my acoustic collection. Since finishing the Electric Trim album, I got two new acoustics by a maker I really love, Michael Gurian. He was in New York in the early Seventies, and he trained all these guys who founded Froggy Bottom and all those boutique companies that are out today. Gurian was a classical guitar builder who later went on to steel strings as well, and he made these beautiful guitars for about 20 years. So I bought one—all mahogany with a spruce top. I just completely fucking love this guitar. And it was built like a mile from where I live. In 10 minutes, I can walk to where Gurian’s first shop on Grand Street was, here in New York. At some point I got curious about what his rosewood models sound like, so I bought one of those too. This guy’s guitars are amazingly well-made, and they have their own sound. they don’t sound like Martins or Gibsons. He was really an innovator in a lot of ways. Who are your all-time guitar heroes? —Anthony Garcia That’s a hard one to answer! If it had to be just one, and I had to answer right this minute, I would say Joni Mitchell. I’ve hardly ever even tried to figure out how to play her songs, because they’re so complex. But I’ve been inspired by them a lot in terms of the acoustic guitar tunings and songwriting I’m doing now. But a list of guitar heroes would include Jerry Garcia, John Fahey, all three guitar-playing Beatles, Keith Richards, Django Reinhardt, Robert Fripp… Some would be on my list just because they’re amazing tunesmiths. Paul McCartney is an amazing lead player in his own right, but he’s also a chord guy. Same with Elvis Costello. And there’s a young woman named Haley Fohr who performs as Circuit des Yeux. She’s working with a very unique vocal style and open tunings.

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

Ranaldo in Barcelona last year

DO YOU THINK THERE WILL EVER BE A SONIC YOUTH REUNION? —IRA GOLDMAN It’s really wise for me to never say never. But, honestly, I don’t ever think about it. And I really don’t think anybody else in the band is thinking about it. We’re all pretty happy and excited doing what we do now. I think the least interesting thing about it happening, for me, would be if it was just a nostalgia trip and we were playing our old material live. The way I think Sonic Youth would go about a reunion would be to start with new music—seeing if there was anything worth pursuing there, in this current moment. It would have to be something worthwhile, other than just a ka-ching, dollar-making nostalgia machine. That’s never been Sonic Youth’s modus operandi.

ALEX RADEMAKERS

taking his cues from that kind of orchestral arrangement of either voices or instruments. Then, when Sonic Youth first started, we didn’t have a lot of good guitars. Some of them were cheap and wouldn’t hold a normal tuning at all. So, taking a cue from Glenn, we started putting some of them in alternate or open tunings, and they became more useful as sound-making devices.

NEWS + NOTES

JESSE F. KEELER OF DEATH FROM ABOVE What influenced you to pick up a guitar? My dad is/was a guitar player and I was intimidated by playing guitar because he’s so good. Plus, he’s left-handed. So my instrument, when I was a kid, was the drums. And when I was about 11 or 12, I kinda said, “Fuck it. I wanna play anyway,” and I learned how to play upside-down on his SG. I still think of drums as the instrument that is the easiest for me to play, because I’ve been playing it since I was three years old. But, yeah, the guitar—I was attracted to it because I was brought up seeing what it could do, and having the example of my dad being so passionate about it. Do you remember your first guitar? Yes, it was a 1989 Epiphone Les Paul. It cost 200 bucks and I paid for it on layaway at $11 a month. I still have it and it still works and I’ve used it on re-

cords ever since. I’ve had fewer problems with it than any other guitar I’ve bought since then. What was the first song you learned? The first two songs I learned were both on the same day. The first one was “Bo Diddley” [by Bo Diddley] and straight into “Purple Haze,” because the structure of the main riff, I guess, was similar. I played those two songs forever and then figured out that “Foxy Lady” was also similar. But those are the only three songs I was ever taught how to play. The rest was on me. When did you switch to bass? When I started this band, it wasn’t my intention to be the bass player. There was a bass that someone left in the house and I wrote a bunch of songs on it with the intention of adding guitar parts afterward, and we just never got around to it. The

next thing I knew, I was being called a bass player. I mean, I’ve accepted it now, but initially I didn’t even own the bass when we made the first record. It just sorta happened and I’ve been going with it. Have you ever had an embarrassing moment onstage, or a nightmare gig? I was playing T in the Park in Scotland. The stage was kinda covered in a thin layer of dust, and in the first song, the first step I took, my foot slipped out from underneath me, the head of my bass came up underneath my synthesizer, broke one of the keys in half, and the key went flyin’ and landed on me, when I was trying to stand up. Of course the audience was cheering because they thought it looked cool or something. But I was in pain. That keyboard’s still not fixed—and this was more than 10 years ago. Is there a particular moment on Death from Above’s latest album, Outrage! Is Now, that makes you proud as a player? My goal on this record, in gen-

Jesse F. Keeler onstage with his Dan Armstrong bass

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

eral, was to play complex stuff, but have it not distract from the songs. And I feel like I did that. But the solo part in “Freeze Me” was the hardest thing for me to play on the record. I really did takes on it for pretty much a whole day. I thought I was gonna throw up at one point; I was getting so frustrated. It’s easy for me now, because we’ve done it enough. But at the time, man—I was seriously losing my mind. When I listen to it now, I think it was worth the effort. I’m quite proud of that one. What is your favorite piece of gear? My 1969 Dan Armstrong bass is the greatest bass I’ve ever played. It’s the closest thing to a shredding guitar, which is what I really wanted. Its sustain is amazing. The neck is really only just a little bit bigger than a guitar neck. When I first got it, and started playing things that I’d struggled with in the past with no effort; I felt like I was cheating. And it opened up all kinds of possibilities for me and changed how I play. It’s been many years now and I still feel like I’m still getting to know this bass. I have four of them now. Do you have any advice for young players? Play all the time. Play as much as you can. Play while you’re watching TV. When I was a little kid, I always used to be watching television with a guitar in my hand. Every time there was a jingle or someone singing or whatever it was, I tried to play along. It forced me to hunt around on the neck to find the notes, and to become more comfortable with it, so that when I had my own ideas, I didn’t feel that same need to hunt to figure out where those things were. Often times, learning how to play a song, you end up learning so many things that you might not have stumbled upon on your own, for years. There’s a million moments like that to be had; you have to just do it. —RANDY HARWARD

T I F FA N Y C U T H R E L L

INQUIRER

Thrill Is Gone

The

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Guitar World pays tribute to Walter Becker, the Steely Dan legend responsible for such classic rock gems as “Do It Again,” “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Hey Nineteen”—and a most reluctant guitar hero.

30 G U I T A R W O R L D

Reclusive, elusive and sardonically self-effacing, Walter Becker was not your typical guitar hero. He often shunned the limelight and kept mum about the details of his enormous contributions to the game-changing music of Steely Dan, his own solo recordings and the records he produced for other artists, such as Rickie Lee Jones, China Crisis and his longtime musical partner Donald Fagen. Becker died much as he had lived, slipping away quietly on the Sunday before Labor Day on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he’d made his home for many years. He was 67 years old at the time of his passing. The cause of his death was not given. But his die-hard fans knew something was amiss when Becker was unable to appear with Steely Dan for this summer’s Classic West and Classic East concerts, the blockbuster shows that teamed Steely Dan with fellow Seventies hitmakers the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, the Doobie Brothers, Earth Wind & Fire and Journey. All that was said officially at that time was that Becker was recovering from “a procedure.” If Becker was a guitar hero, he wasn’t the kind who said it all with his ax. He also contributed substantially to Steely Dan’s glib, evocative, sophisticated lyrics. An adept producer and arranger, he played a number of instruments besides the guitar. All of his musicality grew out of the innovative songcraft he forged with Steely Dan vocalist/keyboardist Donald Fagen. The band was known for working with a legion of legendary session guitarists—Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Dean Parks, Hugh McCracken, Paul Jackson Jr., Rick Derringer and others. But it was often Becker who was able to provide just the right rhythm or lead part to suit the complex mechanics of a Steely Dan arrangement. His solo playing can be heard on key Steely Dan tracks such

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

C H R I S WA LT E R / W I R E I M A G E / G E T T Y

BY AL AN DI PERNA

Steely Danâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Walter Becker (left) and Donald Fagen in 1977.

guitarworld.com

as “Josie,” “Hey Nineteen,” “Gaucho” and “Black Friday.” Not that he’d ever call your attention to that. Becker was the antithesis of the stereotypically egocentric guitar man. And much of his greatness lies in that very fact. “It wouldn’t bother me at all not to play on my own album,” Becker told rock journalist Cameron Crowe in 1977. The singer and songwriter Rickie Lee Jones first met Becker when he produced her 1989 album Flying Cowboys. In a statement issued after his death, she remembered Becker as being “rather delicate looking. And he had a soft energy, nothing like what I thought I saw in the pictures. A softy. A recovering addict. Hey, me, too. He knew more about music right off the bat than anyone I had met in a long time. He didn’t patronize, he didn’t condescend, not even a tiny bit, not for one moment.” Becker was a New Yorker by birth, and there was plenty of New York attitude in his

tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of Ward Manor, a moldering old mansion on the Hudson River that the college used as a dorm. We liked a lot of the same things: jazz (from the Twenties through the mid-Sixties), W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Berger and Robert Altman films come to mind. Also soul music and Chicago blues.” Becker left Bard in 1969, without taking a degree, and joined Fagen in New York with an eye toward getting into the music business. They served as backing musicians for vocal group Jay and the Americans, wrote the soundtrack for Richard Pryor’s 1971 film You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It or You’ll Lose that Beat, and landed one of their songs, “I Mean to Shine,” on a Barbra Streisand album. A gig as staff songwriters for ABC Records brought them out to L.A. at the dawn of the Seventies. But they soon realized that much of their music was too

ters that might have stepped out of a 20thcentury American novel. This kind of lyric writing had hitherto been more associated with songsmiths, such as Bob Dylan or Paul Simon, rooted in the less harmonically complex folk tradition. Either that or the threechord rock and roll of working class poets like Bruce Springsteen. Steely Dan’s juxtaposition of musical and lyrical sophistication was something else again. “The ‘anarchists,’ or people who are interested in more interesting lyrics, are, generally speaking, not interested in jazz harmonies,” Becker said in an interview. “They want something more raw and what they perceive to be subversive-sounding, which usually means clanging guitars. We thought superimposing jazz harmonies on pop songs was subversive.” In her own tribute to Becker, Rickie Lee Jones wrote that Steely Dan “introduced a new idea into the musical conversation of the time. It was the idea that intelligent

He was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. —DONALD FAGEN wiseguy wit. He started out playing saxophone but soon switched to guitar. Early on, he learned some blues licks from guitarist Randy Wolfe (a.k.a. Randy California) who would go on to found Spirit. But in 1974, Becker gave Rolling Stone magazine a different account of his early musical training: “I learned music from a book on piano theory,” he said. “I was only interested in knowing about chords. From that, and from the Harvard Dictionary of Music, I learned everything I wanted to know.” It was most likely the blues guitar thing, however, that caught the ear of Donald Fagen in 1967, when he and Becker were students at Bard College, an arty enclave just north of Manhattan, on the Hudson River. “I hear this guy practicing,” Fagen said of Becker, “and it sounded very professional and contemporary. It sounded like, you know, like a black person, really.” The two students became close friends and almost immediately started writing songs together. In a tribute to Becker issued shortly after his passing, Fagen offered some details: “We started writing nutty little

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

complex for most other artists to record. So they decided to put together their own band, appropriating the name Steely Dan from the fictitious brand name of a dildo “Steely Dan III from Yokahama” in the William Burroughs novel Naked Lunch. Becker was on bass in the original lineup, with Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Denny Dias sharing guitar duties. Steely Dan’s 1972 debut album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, captivated FM album rock radio instantly, with the standout tracks “Do It Again,” “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Dirty Work.” It was soon followed by Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) and Pretzel Logic (1974), which yielded further album rock radio staples such as “Bodhisattva” and “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number.” These recordings brought a new sound and style to early Seventies pop and rock music. Steely Dan’s first album essentially marked the debut of “adult rock.” The chord progressions and arrangements had an aura of jazz sophistication, while the lyrics had a literary quality—allusive and cryptic, peopled by outsiders, losers, criminals, gamblers, party girls and other charac-

music was cool. In a year where drum solos lasted minutes, quarter hours even, and singers screamed—a lot—Steely Dan made it cool to be educated. It is safe to say that they are the beginning of college rock.” At the same time, though, Becker was quick to distance himself and his band from the jazz-rock-fusion scene also ascendant in the early Seventies through the work of guitarists such as John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola. “I’m not interested in a rock-jazz fusion,” Becker said in 1974. “That kind of marriage has so far only come up with ponderous results. We play rock and roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz.” The aforementioned Pretzel Logic was the first album to feature Becker on guitar. He’d entrusted the bass role to a top L.A. session musician, saying, “Once I met Chuck Rainey, I felt that there was really no need for me to be bringing my bass guitar to the studio any more.” Becker can be heard soloing on Steely Dan’s interpretation of the Duke Ellington/Bubber Miley jazz compo-

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Becker plays his Hahn Guitars Model 229 at the 2015 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California

sition “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” from Pretzel Logic, using a talk box on his guitar to get a trombone like-timbre. From this point onward, Steely Dan would enter a new career phase. All members but Becker and Fagen eventually left the fold, touring was suspended indefinitely and Steely Dan became solely a recording entity. Becker and Fagen forged a role as studio auteurs, crafting intricate musical arrangements and directing a cadre of L.A.’s top session musicians in the realization of pristine, highly polished album tracks. This approach led to the creation of 1976’s The Royal Scam and 1977’s Aja. The latter album, in particular, represents the apotheosis of Steely Dan’s studio artistry. It was the group’s best-selling album and their first LP to go Platinum. Album tracks like “Aja,” “Deacon Blues” and “Josie” are still revered by guitarists and other musicians today. But Steely Dan also had their critics as the Seventies drew to a close. Their perfectionist studio approach was derided as being too slick. Steely Dan got lumped in with L.A. “Mellow Mafia” acts such as the Eagles and Jackson Browne, and that was not a flattering comparison at the time. For some, their music came to personify the worst aspects of L.A.’s laid-back, materialistic “hot tub” culture. Their plush, loungy aesthetic was

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

dismissed as a prime example of the “818 Area Code Sound”—a somewhat contemptuous reference to the telephone exchange for L.A.’s sheltered, suburban San Fernando Valley. Punk rock had arrived, causing a seismic shift in the valuation of rock songcraft and performance. And all this coincided with a series of professional and personal crises for Steely Dan, and Becker in particular. Work on Aja’s follow-up album, Gaucho, was hampered by technical difficulties, record company hassles and Becker’s escalating heroin addiction. On January 30, 1978, Becker’s girlfriend, Karen Roberta Stanley, died of a drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment. This led to a $17 million wrongful death lawsuit against the guitarist, which was settled out of court. Shortly after this, Becker was hit by a New York taxicab, which fractured his right leg in several places. In the face of all this adversity, Fagen and Becker pulled the plug on Steely Dan not long after the release of Gaucho in 1980. Becker retired to the Hawaiian island of Maui where he turned his attention to avocado farming and acting as what he called “a self-styled critic of the contemporary scene.” During these years of recovery and recharging, he was a bit less prolific than Fagen, but hardly a hermit. Becker released

two well-received solo albums, 1994’s 11 Tracks of Whack (which has 12 songs) and 2008’s Circus Money. He also emerged as a record producer in his own right, attaining significant chart success with his work for the British group China Crisis. But it was his production work on Fagen’s 1993 solo disc Kamakiriad that would lead to the reformation of Steely Dan. This time, the duo embraced live performance wholeheartedly, touring with a new lineup in support of the 1993 career retrospecive box set Citizen Steely Dan. These dates would produce the 1995 live set Alive in America. Becker and Fagen released a new Steely Dan studio album, the Grammy-winning Two Against Nature, in 2000. It had been two decades since the last Steely Dan studio disc, and the album was enthusiastically embraced by a new generation of fans, as well as the group’s original fan base. A second studio disc, Everything Must Go, appeared in 2003. These recordings, combined with Becker’s solo recordings and live work with Steely Dan, shed fresh light on his guitar playing and overall musical mastery. In his eulogy to his musical comrade, Fagen summed up Becker’s contribution to popular music succinctly and accurately, stating, “he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter.”

WORLD POWER

ARCH ENEMY X

Arch Enemy's Michael Amott (left) with his signature Dean Guitars Tyrant Battle Axe and Jeff Loomis with his signature Schecter Cygnus

GUITAR WORLD

WORLD POWER Their band members come from all over the globe and their latest album and single are tearing up charts and playlists like never before. From the looks of things, it’s clear that, after more than 20 years, this is ARCH ENEMY ’s moment of triumph.

By JON WIEDERHORN

Photo by AXEL JUSSEIT

DECEMBER 2017

ARCH ENEMY X

WORLD POWER

before joining Sanctuary. But with every lineup shift came change and, frequently, growth. Gossow’s replacement, Alissa WhiteGluz, the 32-year-old former vocalist for the Canadian metalcore band The Agonist, is a personable, charis“Well, there’s a first time for everything, right?” says matic growler with a ferocious death metal roar and founding guitarist Michael Amott from his home near a surprisingly pleasant singing voice. As difficult as it Gothenburg, Sweden, where he’s taking a few days is to replace a vocalist, Arch Enemy fans have taken to to decompress before Arch Enemy meet up at their White-Gluz, partially because Gossow introduced her rehearsal space in Frankfurt, Germany. There, they’ll to the band, and in part because her exuberance and practice their summer festival set, which includes “The blue hair appealed to the Hot Topic crowd. World Is Yours,” the first single from their new album The most recent band recruit, ex-Nevermore coWill to Power. founder and ace lead guitarist Jeff Loomis (who “You know, sometimes things don’t work out,” replaced Cordle in 2014) might be the most technically Amott says. “I don’t really want to elaborate on that. At gifted player to join the AE ranks. And he’s stepped the time, it was, of course, surprising. But I called my in at a great time. Twenty-one years into their career, brother, [band co-founder] Christopher [Amott, who Arch Enemy could be at the top of their game. Will to has been in and out throughout the group’s history] and Power is a striking, musically diverse album that comhe finished the tour with us. What’s really surprising is bines elements of thrash, Gothenburg-style melodic that we didn’t miss a show.” death metal and stomping traditional metal with proWhen asked about the incident, Cordle had no comgressive touches. The tracks are highlighted by Amott ment. “Not interested in anything to do with them,” he and Loomis’ abundant guitar harmonies and fiery texted. leads. The video for the fiercely melodic “The World Is Putting out fires and overcoming challenges has Yours” had accumulated nearly 4.5 million views less become a regular task for Arch Enemy. than a month after it was posted, and Arch The band is currently on its third vocalist; Enemy just announced a co-headline U.S. 14-year screamer Angela Gossow quit in tour with Trivium that runs through Decem(from left) 2014 before Cordle left; she currently manber 6 in Houston and could expose Arch Arch Enemy's ages Arch Enemy from her home in GerEnemy to a younger, more mainstream folDaniel Erlandsson, many. When Christopher Amott wasn’t lowing. Michael Amott, in the band, Fredrik Åkesson and Cor“I never considered Arch Enemy to be Jeff Loomis, Alissa dle played for two years each, the former a death metal band, and I didn’t start Arch White-Gluz and from 2005 to 2007 before leaving to joinEnemy with the intention of being death Sharlee D'Angelo ing Opeth, and the latter from 2012 to 2014 metal,” stresses Amott. “I’ve already done

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

K ATJ A K U H L

J US T S IX DATE S B EFORE T H E END OF T H EI R 201 4 U.S . TOUR, ARCH ENEMY G UI TAR IS T N IC K CORDL E ( EX- A RSI S) , WH O JOI NED THE B AND IN 2 012 , D EC IDE D, FO R U N KNOWN R EA SONS, H E WA NT ED O UT. S O, ON NOVEMB ER 1 0 A T S A N FR AN C IS CO’S R EG ENCY BA L L R OOM, H E WALKED OF F S TAGE A F EW S O N G S FR O M T H E END OF T H E SET A N D DI DN’T RETURN.

that type of stuff [as a member of Carnage and Carcass], so I wanted to focus more on melody, while still keeping the music heavy. And I think this record does that.” While Loomis was Amott’s first choice to fill in for Cordle, Arch Enemy’s architect was afraid Loomis wouldn’t accept the offer. “I always tell Jeff he’s overqualified for the gig,” Amott says, then laughs. “But having a highprofile guitar player join was really great for us. He plays amazing stuff almost without effort, and I’m still sitting here struggling to figure out how to hold a guitar pick.” Loomis first met Amott in 1999 when Arch

Enemy and Nevermore were playing some of the same festivals. The two bands toured Europe together in 2003, though Arch Enemy had to pull out of the last few shows after their bus was infested with blood-sucking insects and some of the members became ill. Impressed by Loomis’ playing, Amott asked him to join Arch Enemy in 2005, when Christopher quit for the first time, but Loomis was committed to Nevermore and turned down the offer. When Loomis broke up Nevermore in 2011, largely because he was having problems with alcohol and needed to dry out (“Moderation

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40 GU I TA R WOR L D GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

definitely wasn’t in the dictionary next to the Nevermore name”), he went cold turkey until he was sober, then started looking for another gig. Come November, he will have been sober for five years. Staying sober was easier for Loomis than finding the right project. He staged clinics and put out the solo album Plains of Oblivion in 2012, but it didn’t connect with Nevermore audiences the way he had hoped it would. Besides, he wanted to play in a band again, so when Amott called him for the second time, Loomis leaped at the opportunity. “Being a big fan of Arch Enemy and knowing most of their catalog already, and all their songs, I was really blown away when Michael asked me to be in the band again,” says Loomis. “It was definitely a no-brainer. I said yes immediately because I loved their music and they seemed to be getting bigger. I was like, ‘Yeah, man. Let’s do it!’ ” There was no time for Loomis to celebrate, even with non-alcoholic beverages. Arch Enemy had a European tour booked with Kreator in two weeks and Loomis had to learn numerous guitar parts. “Everything happened so fast, it was crazy,” he says. “By the time I felt somewhat confident with the material, I was already on a plane to France.” Before he learned the solos note-for-note from the band’s past albums, he sometimes had to improvise the middle part of a lead. Even so, he fit right in, his virtuosic playing style complimenting Amott’s cutting, bluesy Michael Schenker–esque approach. “Once Jeff came into the band you could definitely feel a shift from gray clouds to blue sky,” White-Gluz says from her home in Montreal, Quebec. “He’s so chill and polite and he’s such a nice dude. And he’s so humble, even though he’s crazy-talented.” For Loomis, the greatest challenge was playing six-string guitars instead of the sevenstrings that have been his go-to instruments since 2000. So Loomis, who practiced for 16 hours a day as a teenager to learn his craft, applied some of that discipline to breaking in his Schecter JL6, the six-string model of his signature JL7. In no time, he was as adept on a six-string as he is on a seven. “The only thing that was a little weird was that when I played six-string guitar in the past I was used to A440 tuning, and the tuning for Arch Enemy goes down to C standard, which is two whole steps down,” he says. He thought finding the right string gauge would do the trick. He tried out extra heavy Ernie Ball strings and it felt “like playing piano wire.” So he switched to lighter strings—.060 to .01—which were just substantial enough so he could use a tremolo on his leads and bend the strings without breaking them very often. He replaced his light picks with a heavy, pointed plectrum to give his playing a more aggressive attack. Once Arch Enemy had played around 300 shows to support their 2014 album, War Eternal, their first to feature White-Gluz, the

JEFF PLAYS AMAZING STUFF ALMOST WITHOUT EFFORT, AND I’M STILL SITTING HERE STRUGGLING TO FIGURE OUT

HOW TO HOLD A GUITAR PICK. —MICHAEL AMOTT

band’s label execs encouraged them to record a new album. In mid-2016, Amott presented the company with a demo of “The World Is Yours,” which he wrote in 2014. They loved it and asked to hear more, and he admitted he only had bits and pieces of other songs. So, after playing a few shows in Mexico in late 2016, Amott and band co-founder and drummer Daniel Erlandsson rented an apartment in Cancun to write for 10 days. A winter party mecca south of the border might seem like a strange place for a couple of Swedes to work, yet Amott and Erlandsson were motivated, diligent and productive. “We didn’t get drunk once!” Amott insists. “It was great because being away from home, there weren’t the usual distractions from making music. Every day we just went for a swim in the morning and had breakfast and then started writing metal.”

The two came up with some great passages, but no full songs. Then they put together the framework for the mid-paced, steady-riffing “The Eagle Flies Alone,” and the doors of creativity opened up. “I came up with practically the whole thing completely on the spot and it turned the record around,” Amott says. “I have found that when you have that first song that you’re really happy with, you go, ‘Alright, now we can start making the record.’ ” Amott wrote four other full songs in Mexico, then flew back to Sweden and, between gigs, continued writing in his home studio. At one point, he asked Loomis—who was the primary songwriter in Nevermore—if he had any songs to contribute and Loomis was almost ashamed to admit he hadn’t written anything. “When they started writing, the album came together really fast,” Loomis says. “I did submit three songs, but I think I might have guitarworld.com

I FEEL RIGHT AT HOME WITH ARCH ENEMY.

THEY’RE MY METAL FAMILY. —JEFF LOOMIS

42 GU I TA R WOR L D GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

missed the deadline. I feel really bad about that, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be the new guy coming in saying, ‘Okay, here’s a bunch of new songs I wrote. Let’s go record them.’ So I only did those three and honestly, I don’t think they were in the Arch Enemy style.” “I feel lucky just to have Jeff playing solos on the record,” says Amott. “I know he is such a high-profile guitar player and his role in Arch Enemy is not what people might expect. I’ve always written most of the music in this band and that’s what I do. Right now, he is more about playing guitar solos and he seems to really get that.” While Amott fine-tuned the demos in Sweden, Loomis mapped out his solos at his home studio in Seattle. Since he had been playing every lead on tour exactly as it appeared on the albums, he looked forward to putting his own signature on the new tunes. “Michael sent me the demos and I really listened to the songs and tried to match them with my playing,” Loomis says. “It wasn’t like in Nevermore when I just went into the studio and improvised. I planned everything out. Like, ‘The World Is Yours’ is extremely aggressive, so I did the math in my head and utilized really fast picking and played in harmonic minor so it flowed with the song.” Loomis recorded his solos using his Schecter signature JL6 and a Line 6 Helix modeled after an old Peavey 5150. Then he used effects to boost the gain and added reverb and chorus. “I want to achieve that sheer metal tone, so there’s a lot of distortion with a gate in front of it for double stops,” he says. Amott unfurled his Dean Tyrant V. He recorded the rhythms over a three-week period at the Sweetspot Satellite Studio in Halstad, Sweden, using a Kemper Profiler. Once the rhythms were tight enough, the DI tracks were re-amped through Marshalls and Mesa/Boogies by mixing engineer Jens Bogren. In April 2017, Loomis flew in to track his solos at the Sweetspot Studio in Harplinge 90 minutes south of Gothenburg. Amott blocked out a week for Loomis to track, and before he arrived he constructed a variety of different tones using live amps, including the JCM800, 2205, a JMP 100-watt head and a JVM 50-watt head. Once they started tracking, though, it took Loomis only two days to finish his solos. More than half of the leads he had pre-written worked perfectly, and the guitarists worked together to tweak and finetune the others. “For some of the leads I wanted a slightly different flavor than what Jeff came up with,” Amott explains. “Making a record is kind of like directing a movie. When the vocals stop, the lead guitar takes over and it’s got to have a dramatic flow. It’s got to tell a story. So I had some ideas for parts for him to play to help keep the songs moving. And Jeff was super open-minded. He has zero ego. He just wants

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vocal techniques, but in the context of Arch Enemy I hadn’t really explored all these colors before,” White-Gluz says. “But I do think with Will to Power we had a natural evolution where I unleashed a little bit more. It’s so easy to go all-out all the time in metal, but having dynamics is what makes for a great album.” Amott wrote “Reason to Believe” with his brother Christopher (who’s now living in New York) when the family got together last Christmas. Following some stilted conversation and awkward silences, the siblings excused themselves and picked up acoustic guitars.

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to play for the song and make everything work as well as it can.” In addition to featuring a new caliber of guitar solos, Will to Power contains Amott’s first metal semi-ballad, “Reason to Believe.” The track features undistorted guitar arpeggios (the only part recorded with a Gibson SG), wispy keyboards and a slow beat before bursting into a chunky midsection and an anthemic chorus. The song provided White-Gluz the opportunity to balance her grizzly-bear growls with clean, melodic singing. “I’ve always been fearless when it came to

44 GU I TA R WOR L D GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

“The only way we communicated was by playing guitars at my parents’ house,” Amott recalls. “We came up with that piece of music and the next day we recorded it at my place.” Amott’s not about to let Arch Enemy turn into a mainstream, progressive or symphonic metal band, and Will to Power, while more concise, is just as heavy as War Eternal. At the same time the guitarist admits he had more fun writing the fragile parts of “Reason to Believe,” the emphatic guitar harmonies on the instrumental “Saturnine” and planning the sweeping orchestral section for “A Fight I Must Win” than he did writing and playing the thrash/death riffs on “Murder Scene” or the galloping, descending guitar passages on “First Day in Hell.” “Having melody in the music is what interests me the most,” says Amott. “The heavy stuff is super-easy. It just flows naturally from my mind. Sometimes I get an idea for lyrics or a melody and I instantly hear all of the guitars and the rest of the song in my head. I don’t know if that makes me the Paul McCartney of death metal, but I’ve been doing this a long time.” Listening back to Will to Power, Loomis is content with the thumbprint he made with his leads and is looking forward to busting out more of his original playing live. He also hopes to contribute more songwriting to the next record. At the same time, he’s planning to keep himself balanced creatively by experimenting with extreme instrumental music, both with his long-delayed solo album and the second record by his side project Conquering Dystopia, which features guitarist Keith Merrow, bassist Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse) and drummer Alex Rüdinger (ex–the Faceless). “I’m so lucky I’m able to play these shows in front of thousands of people with Arch Enemy and then go off into another side of myself guitar-wise and explore a different kind of music,” Loomis says. “It keeps me really busy, but I couldn’t ask for more. I feel right at home with Arch Enemy. They’re my metal family. I think it’s gonna last for a while—as long as we can do it, anyway.” Amott, too, looks to the future with optimism. Arch Enemy plans to tour for Will to Power for at least the next 18 months, but during weeks off he hopes he and Loomis will be able to write together. And he’s not at all concerned that Loomis will be another member who leaves two years after playing on his first Arch Enemy album. “It’s so easy to work with Jeff and he has such a great attitude that I can’t imagine having any problems,” he concludes. “And I can see him having a bigger part writing in the future. Of course, that won’t change the band. We have been around for a long time and we have a certain sound, so our direction is always pretty similar. It’s just evolving and becoming more refined, and I think Jeff will be able to be a big part of that.”

(from left) The Foo Fighters' three-ax attack: Chris Shiflett, Dave Grohl and Pat Smear

P A G E

GUITAR WORLD

DEC

2017

THEY SHOULD BE ON A MUCH-NEEDED BREAK RIGHT NOW, BUT THE FOO FIGHTERS WOULD ALWAYS RATHER ROCK THAN REST. DAVE GROHL, CHRIS SHIFLETT AND PAT SMEAR SOUND OFF ON WHAT GOT THEM TO CUT THEIR VACATION TIME EARLY AND CRANK OUT THE NEW CONCRETE AND GOLD. BY

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

RICHARD BIENSTOCK

JEN ROSENSTEIN

IT’S JUST AFTER NINE A.M. IN LOS ANGELES WHEN GUITAR WORLD CATCHES UP WITH DAVE GROHL , WHO HAS ALREADY BEEN MOVING AT FULL SPEED FOR HOURS. “DUDE, LEMME TELL YOU,” HE SAYS WITH MOCK EXASPERATION. “MY MORNING STARTS…AT NIGHT. LIKE, IT’S ALREADY THE AFTERNOON FOR ME!”

Grohl’s get-up-and-go attitude likely can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that he lives in a house crammed full with a wife and three daughters—“I usually wake up around 4:30 or something like that,” he reports, “and I get a good hour, hour-and-a-half to myself before my house explodes into a tornado of activity.” But it’s also just the 48-year-old’s naturally energized demeanor. To that end, the Foo Fighters—whose last album, 2014’s Sonic Highways, was a transcontinental endeavor that was paired with an eight-part HBO docuseries—recently finished up work on their ninth full-length, Concrete and Gold, and just returned from a slew of overseas shows where they headlined arenas, stadiums and festivals from Reykjavik to Roskilde. Furthermore, they’re about to embark on a U.S. tour that kicks off in San Bernardino in grand fashion with Cal Jam 17, a 12-hour “rock superfest” that is Grohl’s reimagining of the legendary 1974 festival of the same name. In place of the original’s lineup of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and the Eagles, Grohl has put together a bill that includes, among others, Queens of the Stone Age, Cage the Elephant, Royal Blood and, of course, his own band. After that, the Foo Fighters will continue on, crisscrossing the globe on their own full-scale headlining tour over the course of the next year or two. Needless to say, this would constitute a pretty full plate of activity for any band— much less one, that, for all intents and purposes, is supposed to be on a break. “I know, right?” Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett says about the November 2015 announcement wherein Grohl, in an open letter to fans, opined that he and his bandmates “could use a nice wander through the woods right about now,” hinting at a hiatus that was later confirmed by various members. “Like, what the fuck happened?” Shiflett asks. “I was on vacation.” He laughs, then continues. “But the truth

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

is, I never really put too much faith in the whole ‘hiatus’ thing, because, you know, in this band it’s usually shorter than is stated. But we wrapped up touring for the last record, with Dave with his leg broken and everything [in 2015, Grohl fell off a stage during a performance in Gothenburg, Sweden, resulting in his finishing the tour with his leg in a cast, and singing and playing while seated in a self-designed throne], and it was a little before Thanksgiving 2015. And at that time Dave was talking about wanting to take two years off. That was sort of the stated goal. “Which,” he points out, “I never really believed…” As it turns out, Shiflett had good reason to doubt Grohl’s intentions. According to Pat Smear, the former Germs and Nirvana guitarist who comprises the final third of the Foos' three-ax attack, “The last time we were going on a long break, Dave started making [the 2013 documentary film] Sound City. And we were like, ‘What about us, man? We wanna do it too!” So we ended up making that album [Sound City: Real to Reel] and touring for that. That’s how Foo Fighters breaks go.” That said, the band members, who also include bassist Nate Mendel, drummer Taylor Hawkins and keyboardist Rami Jaffee, did get a bit of time off. They spent the holidays and early part of 2016 at home, and Hawkins and Shiflett even managed to squeeze out solo albums (KOTA and West Coast Town, respectively). But soon enough, Grohl came calling. “The beginning of the summer of 2016 was the first sort of text from Dave implying things were gonna pick back up soon,” Shiflett recalls. In Grohl’s defense, initially he didn’t know how soon “soon” would be. “At the end of the last tour [for Sonic Highways] everyone was completely exhausted—mentally, physically, emotionally,” he explains. “We were like a rag that got squeezed dry. It was time to stop, and we knew it. We fin-

ished the tour, I still wasn’t walking 100 percent yet after breaking my leg, we had recorded the Saint Cecilia EP just as kind of a thank-you to the fans…and then we got home. And it’s weird when you come home from that much touring and that much traveling and that much performing. You’re dropped silent onto your back porch with this big question mark, like, ‘Okay, who am I? What am I doing here?’ It’s strange. It can turn into that Apocalypse Now scene with the mirror and the bloody hand if you’re not careful, you know?” Indeed, Grohl soon began to get restless. “About once a month I would walk up into my home studio and look at the guitar and look at the drum set and then turn off the lights and walk out,” he recounts. “And then a month later I’d look at the guitar, look at the drum set, maybe sit down in front of the drums for 15 minutes, and then turn out the light and walk out. A month after that, I’d started setting up microphones. Six months went by, and I just hit this vein where riffs and melodies started coming out. So I would record demos by myself and then send them to the guys and say, ‘Hey, what do you think? Is this cool?’ And after maybe 15 or 16 of them I realized that, if we wanted to, we could walk into the studio and make the record.” Initially, the band reconvened at keyboardist Jaffee’s studio to work on music, but it wasn’t until they paired up with producer Greg Kurstin and entered EastWest Studios in Hollywood that Concrete and Gold really took shape. The Foos have worked with a variety of producers over the years, including Gil Norton (Pixies, Echo and the Bunnymen) and Butch Vig, whose relationship with Grohl extends back to Nirvana’s Nevermind. But they’ve never worked with someone like Kurstin, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who, in addition to forming one half of the indiepop duo The Bird and the Bee, has crafted

FOO FIGHTERS

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FOO FIGHTERS TK TKTKTKTKT Caption Here and Here and Here

studio productions for the likes of Adele and Sia, among others. It was an unlikely pairing, to be sure—a fact that wasn’t lost on Grohl’s bandmates. “One day, Dave said, ‘Hey, I invited Greg down to come see what we do,’ ” Smear recalls. As for whether Smear was familiar with Kurstin’s résumé? “Yeah, Dave probably mentioned it before he came down,” he says, then laughs. “Which was confusing.” But, Smear continues, “then Greg came to the studio and I realized, Oh, you’re like us! You were some punk rock kid who played in weirdo bands, and somewhere along the line you happened to do that thing that now everyone knows you for. So Greg

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

"I THINK WE ALL KNEW FROM THE WAY DAVE WAS TALKING THAT, SONICALLY, MUSICALLY, HE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT THIS TIME." —CHRIS SHIFLETT

may have veered off into other directions like jazz and pop and stuff, but I got it. And we immediately got along.” For Grohl, there was intentionality in pursuing Kurstin, who has a particular talent for crafting lush—and often left-of-center—harmonies, melodies and instrumental arrangements. “I think we all knew from the way Dave was talking even in the early stages that, sonically, musically, he wanted to do something different this time,” Shiflett says. “I don’t know if it was super clear what that ultimately was going to mean, but certainly a very big part of that would be his decision to bring in Greg Kurstin. Because we had a guy in the studio producing us who brought something very different from what is normally a Foo Fighters record. And I think that, through Greg, Dave was able to realize things…there are things on this record that Dave has talked about wanting to do for a long time. We just never did ’em. But Greg was able to facilitate some of that stuff.” Explains Grohl, “Greg and I, we’d hung out for years, but I didn’t imagine that he would ever make a Foo Fighters record. At the same time, I always imagined, what if he did? I knew that he would be able to stretch us in those directions—melodically and sonically, and also in terms of production and composition—farther than we’ve ever gone. Because he’s a fucking genius. And I do not say that lightly. I’ve met a lot of brilliant musicians, and Greg Kurstin, without a doubt, is the most brilliant musician I’ve ever met in my entire life. And I knew that we were about to make an album that was gonna push out in a direction we’ve always wanted to go, but never fully explored.” The result is an album that, at its core, at least, still sounds like a Foo Fighters album, chock full of explosive, smack-you-in-theface riffs, whisper-to-a-scream dynamic shifts, massive, stadium-shaking choruses and insanely catchy hooks and melodies. From the shapeshifting first single, “Run,” to the lurching, punkish “La Dee Da,” the anthemic “The Line” (Shiflett: “that’s the sound that made me fall in love with this band”) to the Beatles-esque acoustic fingerpicker “Happy Ever After (Zero Hour),” Concrete and Gold boasts some of the Foos' strongest work together. But there is also a depth of sound and instrumentation previously unheard from the band. Whether it’s the bloated distorto-bass that powers “La Dee Da,” the swirling miasma of background vocals that lifts the chorus of the otherwise cock-rocking “Make It Right,” or the lush, practically monolithic wall of sound that fortifies the title track (“the heaviest and most beautiful thing we’ve

FOO FIGHTERS

ever written,” says Grohl), virtually every song on Concrete and Gold offers up a twist on the characteristic Foo Fighters sound, and often in a way that requires repeated listens to fully absorb. “A lot of the harmony stuff, the countermelodies, a lot of that was Greg and Dave working that out. And Taylor, too,” Shiflett says. “And Greg was really instrumental in things like the orchestrated layers of vocals. We’ve never had, like, three- and four-part harmonies on our records before. So he definitely brought something new.” Perhaps the finest example of the sonic fruits of the collaboration between Kurstin

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

Grohl with his custom Gibson Trini Lopez guitar, also known as the DG-335

and the band is a song called “The Sky Is a Neighborhood,” arguably Concrete and Gold’s centerpiece. Built on a spare, almost bluesy framework, the track is centered around Grohl’s anguished vocal, which is then fortified with all manner of instrumental ear candy to create a kaleidoscopic sonic picture. Says Shiflett, “There’s superarranged strings, keyboards, all these harmonies and different guitar things going on.” Adds Grohl, “There’s no way we would’ve done that song without Greg.” Interestingly, for all its production, “The Sky Is a Neighborhood,” Grohl says, actually came together pretty quickly, and

somewhat at the last minute. “It was the last song we recorded. We had finished the record and we had two weeks off before we were supposed to mix. I went down to Hawaii, and I came back and I said to everybody, ‘I think I’ve got one more in me.’ Because I always feel like I have one more in me. You know, ‘Everlong’ was that one more song. ‘The Pretender’ was that one more song. So I wrote that song and I came back and we recorded it really quickly. And, I mean, the bare bones of the song are really simple. Taylor and I recorded the drums and guitar live in maybe two takes. And then we just started piling stuff onto it.” “It was sort of a free-for-all because it was so fast,” Smear adds. “Like, ‘Come up with something, we’re recording. Go do it!’ ” Grohl continues, “After listening to it, I said to Greg, ‘I feel like this bridge could have some sort of string section.’ And Greg said, ‘Okay, give me 15 minutes. I’ll write something up.’ And so I walked out of the room. I came back and he goes, ‘Check this out…’ He hit play, and he had done a keyboard string section demo. And I laughed so fucking hard because it was what I’ve always wanted to do. It was perfect.” In addition to stepping outside of their comfort zone with Kurstin, the band also changed things up when it came to gear. “The way Greg records, we knew there was this opportunity to branch out and get some different sounds,” Grohl says. “So one of the ideas before we even went in to make the record was that we’d use equipment that we don’t normally use. There were a few times TK TKTKTKTKT where I used my number one [Gibson] Trini Caption Here and [Lopez] and Fender Tone-Master amps, but Here and Here typically for the more jangly stuff we would lean toward a vintage Gibson or Tele. And we were literally grabbing old P.A. systems and keyboard amps and things that were just on the verge of exploding and piling them up. We were throwing stuff together to try to find the coolest sounds we could.” “Dave said, ‘Just don’t bring your normal gear. Bring something different,’ ” Shiflett recalls. “So everybody showed up with their wacky stuff that they don’t normally play. And that was kind of the spirit of the record. For me, I normally do a lot of Les Paul through a Friedman. I don’t think I played that at all. It was all guitars with P-90s, little combo amps, shit like that. I got a handwired Vox AC15 right when we were doing the demos, and that was kind of the magic amp for me throughout this thing. I had my little Fifties tweed [Fender] Champ. I had a bitchin’ tweed Vibrolux, and I’m sure there was a Deluxe Reverb, maybe a Super Reverb. Then I have a ’68 non-reverse [Gibson] Firebird that I played probably on most

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FOO FIGHTERS TK TKTKTKTKT Caption Here and Here and Here

"WE DIDN’T TELL ANYBODY THAT WE WERE EVEN MAKING A RECORD. SO WE HAD NO DEADLINE, NO PRESSURE." — D AV E G R O H L

of the record. That was kind of my go-to guitar. I also played my signature [Fender Tele Deluxe] model when I needed something with a little more crunch, and I had a couple Teles and a 12-string Rickenbacker that I put on some stuff as well.” Adds Smear, “I brought in some Les Pauls and other big, cumbersome weird guitars. And I fell in love. Like, ‘I get it! These are great guitars!’ And then for my amp I was using this weird combo that Dave’s guitar tech came up with, which was basically an old Seventies vocal mixing board that you might have in your rehearsal place, and that we ran into an old transistor bass head. And that became my sound for most of the record, along with some other things, like an Orange, which I had never used before.” Effects-wise, Shiflett says that “There’s a lot of warbly things like phasers and flangers, an [Electro-Harmonix] Memory Man, that kind of stuff. And there’s some fuzz—I think I used that Jack White pedal, the Bumble Buzz, and there’s a [JHS Pedals] Muffuletta on ‘The Sky Is a Neighborhood.’ ” Smear also reports that Kurstin often took the reins when it came to manipulating guitar sounds. “Greg loves effects,” he says. “And sometimes while you were tracking he’d be playing an effect. Just turning knobs and things.” Smear laughs. “And I’m watching him like, ‘Oh, he’s playing, too!’ ” Outside of Kurstin and the band members, Concrete and Gold also features a slew of guest musicians, from Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, who, after meeting Grohl in the EastWest parking lot, laid down a ridiculously massive stack of backing vocals on the chorus of the title track, to Kills frontwoman Alison Mosshart to jazz saxophonist Dave Koz. Pop icon Justin Timberlake makes an appearance as well, though even his star power is eclipsed by another guest, Paul McCartney, who contributed, of all things, a rock-solid drum track to the Taylor Hawkins–sung “Sunday Rain.” “I think it was Dave’s idea to have him

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

play drums,” Shiflett says of McCartney. “And he’s solid. You know, it’s a very different approach to Taylor or Dave. Those guys are very modern, and Paul’s got that old school thing, where he’s not killing the drums. It’s a very different, loosey-goosey kind of feel. And the coolest thing about it was that afterward he just wanted to hang out. It turned into an hour of just kind of noodling around with Paul McCartney. Which blew my mind.” “He’s exactly how you’d hope he’d be,” Smear adds of McCartney. “He just loves music and loves to play. He came in, never even heard the song before, didn’t know it

at all. He did, like, two takes. And then we just jammed. So that was a good day.” Overall, Grohl says, “With this record, we just had time. We had space.” Due to the fact that the general public believed the Foo Fighters to be on a hiatus, he continues, “We didn’t tell anybody that we were even making a record. So we had no deadline, you know? We had no pressure. And because of that there was a lot more freedom to try different things.” At this point, of course, that has all changed. “Once we go in and we make the record, it’s like starting up a fucking steamroller,” Grohl says. “Once it starts, it doesn’t stop.”

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FOO FIGHTERS

“WE WERE LIKE A RAG THAT GOT SQUEEZED DRY. IT WAS TIME TO STOP, AND WE KNEW IT.” — D AV E G R O H L

last break and did our first show, at the BottleRock Festival [in Napa Valley, California], everybody was a little nervous because we weren’t in the mindset of going out and bringing the party to 40,000 people. Right before we went out, we were standing on the side of the stage with our instruments strapped on. And I looked at everybody and I was like, “Hey!” They looked at me and I said, ‘We’re the Foo Fighters, goddammit!’ And then we just laughed. Because you know, to us, we know exactly what that means.” Grohl continues. “So I just feel like there’s a bit more of a relaxed confidence that comes with age. I mean, I never thought that I’d be doing this past 30 years old. And that was a long fucking time ago! But when I walk backstage now and see the fresh faces of all the new bands, and I’m the guy with fucking grey hair in my beard, I feel kinda proud. Proud that we’re still here. And I also don’t think that we could have made an album like Concrete and Gold without a little bit of grey hair thrown in there, you know what I mean? Because each album is like a rung on a ladder. And you just keep climbing.”

P H OTO G R A P H E R T K T K T K

And it all started pretty quickly once the sessions for Concrete and Gold wrapped. Following the recording, the band almost immediately began rolling out new songs onstage. Says Smear with a laugh, “We actually started rehearsing for the tour, and all we did was play the new songs. And on like the second-to-last day someone said, ‘Hey, we should probably go over the old songs, too!’ ” As for whether they believe there’s been a big change in sound and feel from those old songs to the new ones? “I wouldn’t say [the shift] is, like, gigantic,” Shiflett says. “It’s more like a natural progression. And probably a lot of that is just, like, as the years go by, everybody gets more comfortable doing their thing. I also know Dave always likes to change it up and keep things moving and do things a little different from record to record. It doesn’t hurt to have that spirit in there.” “At the very least, I know that we couldn’t have made this record 20 years ago,” Grohl says. “There’s a freedom in this band now that feels like a weight lifted off our backs, because we know exactly who we are. I remember when we came back from this

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I L L U S T R AT I O N C O U R T E S Y O F F E N D E R

ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE, HUMBUCKER VS. SINGLE-COIL…POLE PIECES, COIL WINDINGS, MILLIVOLTS—YES, NAVIGATING THE WORLD OF ELECTRIC GUITAR PICKUPS IS ENOUGH TO GIVE ANYONE AN ANEURYSM. AND WHAT THE HECK IS A “HENRY” ANYWAY? LET US ANSWER THAT AND COUNTLESS OTHER QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT HAVE WITH THIS

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t’s a no-braine r that the two most important elements of an electric guitar rig are the guitar and amp. But what is the third most important element? The pickups. Why? Because they are the critical, essential link between the guitar and amp, transmitting the guitar’s signal to the amp while also acting as sort of a gatekeeper by boosting and/or cutting certain frequencies coming from the guitar. While a guitar’s tone woods and construction account for much of its overall tonal characteristics, the pickups are the source of a guitar’s primary tone, shaping its personality by sculpting the guitar’s inherent acoustic tone into something that’s (hopefully) more refined, sonically attractive, articulate and dynamically responsive before it reaches the amp and speakers for further tone shaping. One of the easiest, fastest and sometimes even cheapest ways to significantly improve a guitar’s tone is by upgrading its pickups. Simply put, a poor set of pickups can make a great guitar sound lousy, but a great set of pickups can make a cheap guitar actually sound pretty good. Don’t believe it? Consider the example of many low-budget Teisco and Harmony/Silvertone guitars from the Sixties built out of cheesy plywood and inferior mystery materials but equipped with “gold foil” pickups, which on their own fetch almost as much on the used market as the entire guitar they were installed into because those pickups make pretty much any guitar sound divine. While changing pickups can provide a guitar with a significant tonal makeover, a good set of pickups basically enhances what is already there instead of completely transforming a guitar into something else. One way to think of the process is like swapping engines in a car. For example, one could install a Corvette 327 engine in a 1940 Ford Tudor sedan (and lots of hot rodding enthusiasts have done so), but while the swap

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

will increase the Ford’s top speed and improve performance, the new engine won’t turn the Ford into a Corvette. Similarly, one can’t turn a Strat into a Les Paul just by installing full-size humbuckers; there’s much more that influences a guitar’s tone, such as body and neck woods, scale length, neck and headstock angles, bridge construction and so on—but a pickup swap will certainly change the guitar’s performance and personality. Probably the most difficult part of the pickup-swapping process is deciding which pickups to choose in the first place. Back in the Seventies when replacement pickups first hit the market in significant numbers, the choices were basically split between vintage-style or high-output models made by a handful of pickup specialists. Today there are hundreds of choices, which include low-cost “generic” models, numerous variations of vintage classics, super high-output versions, an ever-growing selection of artist signature models, accurate reproductions of obscure cult pickups, revolutionary modern designs and much more, offered by a growing variety of guitar companies, pickup specialists and small boutique makers. Then there are various specs that confuse neophytes and old farts alike and can be as difficult to decode as a Japanese book from a native English speaker’s perspective. The good thing is that if you have a particular, reasonable tone goal in mind, there’s a very strong likelihood that there’s a pickup out there that will deliver the goods. Of course, you don’t want to go through a dozen or so pickups before you find the right one, which is why we’re here to help you navigate through the vast and often confusing world of today’s replacement pickup market. From the terms and technologies behind pickup design to the tools you need to install pickups yourself, the following information is essential knowledge that should put you on a faster track to tonal nirvana.

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F LO L L A R U S A

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WHAT IS A PICKUP? F O R T H I S A R T I C L E we’ll be focusing exclusively on standard magnetic electric guitar pickups and not on other varieties such as piezo or other contact transducers, microphonebased pickups or optical technology. The modern electric guitar pickup that we all know and love was initially conceived in the early Thirties by George Beauchamp for the first commercially successful electric guitar—the Ro-Pat-In/Rickenbacker A-25/A-22 “Frying Pan” lap steel. Whereas previous electric guitar pickup designs focused on capturing the vibrations of a guitar’s top or body, Beauchamp’s design focused on the vibrating strings instead. His design incorporated two large horseshoe-shaped magnets that surrounded the strings near the bridge and a wire coil wrapped around a bobbin that surrounded individual magnetic pole pieces for each string. A standard electric guitar pickup creates a magnetic flux field, which in turn magnetizes a string made of ferromagnetic material like steel or nickel. When the string is plucked, the vibrations of the magnetically charged string disturb the flux field. As the magnetic field fluctuates, the disturbances are transmitted through the wire coil as electrical current. The overall design of a magnetic electric guitar pickup is very simple, but numerous variables such as the type and strength of the magnet(s), size of the coil(s), size of the wire, wire material, wire insulation, number of windings, winding pattern, pole piece design and so on affect a pickup’s performance, output and tonal characteristics. While it’s important to be aware of these variables and how they can affect sound, don’t worry too much about the finer details unless you plan on designing your own pickups.

I N T H E G R A N D S C H E M E of things, there are only two

basic types of electric guitar pickups: single-coil and humbucking. A single-coil pickup generally consists of a coil of wire wrapped around a bobbin surrounding either individual pole pieces for each string or a single, continuous blade that extends across all of the strings. A humbucking pickup involves two wire coils placed either side by side or in a top and bottom stack configuration, also with the coils surrounding the pole pieces or blade(s). Usually a humbucking pickup has a single flat, bar-shaped magnet placed below a side-by-side configuration of coils and centered lengthwise between each coil and its set of polepieces, which are made of ferrous material such as steel to conduct magnetism from the bar magnet and generate the magnetic field. On a single-coil pickup and some stacked humbuckers, the pole pieces are usually made of permanently magnetized material, although many exceptions exist, like the P-90 pickup design, which features two bar magnets underneath the coil with ferrous pole piece screws placed in between the magnets. In general terms, single-coil pickups tend to be

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

SINGLE-COIL PICKUP TYPES BY FA R T H E M O S T popular and common single-coil pick-

up types are Strat- and Tele-style pickups. However, there are a multitude of other varieties worth consideration that each offer their own distinct tonal personalities and performance characteristics. The Gibson P-90 (in soapbar and dog-ear housings) is a very popular choice, but Gibson’s similar and earlier design known as the “Charlie Christian” pickup featuring a single blade pole piece is also a cool alternative with cult appeal, especially among jazz, country and blues players. The Fender Jazzmaster and Franz pickups (the latter commonly found in Guild electrics from the Fifties) look similar to P-90 pickups, but each has its own distinct voice, as do Fender Jaguar pickups, which have similar dimensions to Strat pickups but are surrounded by metal claws to focus a parallel magnetic field along each string. Other interesting classic, original single-coil pickup designs include the “lipstick tube” pickups found on many Danelectro and Silvertone guitars, Gretsch Hilo’Tron pickups, DeArmond/Dynasonic pickups commonly used by Gretsch, Burns Tri-Sonic (a key component of Brian May’s tone), Rickenbacker “toaster top” and variations of the Sixties “gold foil” design found in Teisco and Harmony guitars.

Bare Knuckle Cobra pickup

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F B A R E K N U C K L E

PICKUP TYPES

smaller in size, have lower output and produce brighter tones with emphasized treble, but they also tend to pick up unwanted interference like 60-cycle hum. Humbucking pickups are generally larger, deliver higher output levels and offer warmer tones with pronounced midrange, while also eliminating most extraneous noise due to the noise-canceling properties resulting from using two coils with reversed polarity and the current flowing in opposing directions. However, over time these distinctions have become blurred, and it’s now common to find humbucking pickups in smaller, Strat- and Tele-sized configurations, single-coil pickups with noise-canceling technology and many other variations.

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S E T H L OV E R ’ S O R I G I NA L humbucking pickup design,

introduced on Gibson guitars in 1957 and nicknamed the “PAF” for the “patent applied for” decal affixed to the base plate through the early Sixties, remains the basic template for the majority of humbucking pickup designs produced today. However, there are several other popular classic variations, including Gibson’s smaller mini-humbucker and Firebird pickups, the Gretsch Filter’Tron and Fender Wide-Range (also designed by Seth Lover).

PASSIVE VS. ACTIVE T H E M O S T C O M M O N distinction after single-coil/

humbucking is whether a pickup is passive or active. Passive pickups are the traditional wire coil/magnet/pole piece design, and they remain the most popular style of pickup on the market today. Passive pickups have a high-impedance design (low current, potentially high voltage), and output is usually increased by wrapping the bobbins with additional turns of wire and/or using more powerful magnets. However, increasing the output of a passive pickup also can affect the tone in undesirable ways such as making the treble response too dark or shrill, and the pickups can become more susceptible to undesirable external noise. If the magnets are too powerful, a strong magnetic field can actually suppress string vibration, decreasing sustain and dynamic response—the reverse of the desired outcome. Active pickups have similar basic construction to passive pickups, but the circuitry uses an active preamp (usually powered by a 9-volt battery) to boost the signal, allowing low-impedance designs (high current, potentially low voltage) incorporating fewer wraps of coil wire and less powerful magnets. There are several benefits to this type of design: reduced noise (particularly with single-coil designs), higher overall output, consistent tone when turning down the vol-

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

ume control, no high-frequency loss when using long cables, consistent clarity and note-to-note definition whether using clean or high-gain distortion amp settings, and the ability to use active tone controls to boost or cut frequencies (whereas passive tone controls are really just low-pass filters that can only roll off treble frequencies to make the tone darker). The downside of active pickups is that the tone can cover a wider and flatter frequency range than many players are accustomed to, which some players find too cold or sterile, and the output is generally more consistent, which some players consider less dynamically responsive. As always (at least when it comes to pickups), there are plenty of exceptions to these general descriptions. Some new active pickup models are designed to provide warm tones similar to vintage passive pickups, and some modern passive pickup designs have expanded treble and bass to provide a wider frequency range without sacrificing dynamic response.

OUTPUT N OW T H AT W E ’ V E discussed most of the popular dif-

ferent types of electric guitar pickups, let’s get into the basic details of pickup construction and specs that guitarists should know. In discussions, reviews, recommendations and sales literature for pickups, the topic of output seems to dominate. Pickups are often categorized as low-, medium- or high-output, and the term “vintage output” gets thrown around a lot, usually for low- or sometimes medium-output pickups. This all seems relatively self-explanatory, but confusion often arises when getting into specific ways of measuring output, particularly since the biggest pickup companies use different means for listing these specs. Seymour Duncan uses DC resistance, which is measured in ohms, while DiMarzio measures output in millivolts. Some companies prefer to specify inductance (measured in henries) or even a combination of two to all three of the previous. DC resistance is the easiest spec to measure as it involves little more than using a multimeter set to measure 20k ohms (Ω ) and connecting the meter’s red probe to the pickup’s hot

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wire (usually white or red) and the meter’s black probe to ground (either the base plate, braided shielding or ground wire, which is usually black). Actually it doesn’t really matter if you swap the multimeter’s red and black probes as the reading will be the same, but I think it’s good to maintain a consistent approach as a matter of habit. General DC resistance ranges for Strat and Tele pickups are typically between 6k and 8k ohms, while some lipstick tube single coils have DC resistance around 3-4k ohms and vintage PAF-style humbuckers measure between 8–10k ohms. Modern high-output pickups often measure at least 12k ohms to values above 20k. But while DC resistance provides a good “ballpark” estimate of a pickup’s output, it doesn’t tell the whole story as resistance is influenced by several factors like the total amount of windings, the gauge of the coil wire and magnet strength. One effective description I’ve read compares DC resistance output specs to determining a person’s size only by measuring their height. That may give you a general impression of their size, but is a 120-pound person who is six feet tall really bigger than a 250-pound person who is only five feet tall? So why don’t most other companies use millivolts like DiMarzio does? The problem there lies with the numerous variables involved in measuring output this way. Essentially, one needs a very controlled environment where, at the very least, the same type of string at the same tension placed the same distance from the pickup is playing the same note struck at the same strength, and so on. Millivolt specs are good for comparing different models offered by the same company, but comparing pickups between different companies is not useful as the standards are not consistent. Like DC resistance, output

EQ T H I S S P E C I S much more helpful in the grand scheme of

things than output. Do you want a warmer sound from your guitar? Then you’ll probably want to consider a pickup that emphasizes midrange and bass. How about more clarity, presence and cut? A pickup with boosted treble frequenices may be an ideal choice. Most manufacturers’ EQ descriptions are pretty accurate and many of their websites include recorded examples that provide excellent reference standards, but keep in mind that the new pickups installed in your personal guitar may not match the tone of the guitar in a soundbite due to different tone woods, scale lengths and other construction details, as well as the variations that exist even in two different guitars of the same model.

TOOL TIME

ESSENTIAL ITEMS FOR DIY PICKUP REPLACEMENT

don’t mean to put your local guitar repair tech out of work, but the skills required for replacing pickups are so simple that there is no reason you shouldn’t consider doing this job yourself. For the labor cost of one pickup replacement job, you could buy all the tools you’ll ever need to replace pickups for a lifetime, and for a few bucks more you can do the job with ease and speed. The most important tool for pickup installation is a good soldering iron or station. The main consideration here is that the iron has ample power to melt solder quickly both on potentiometer lugs and bigger surfaces like the back of a pot, tremolo claw or other surfaces used for grounding. A 40-watt soldering iron is sufficient for most jobs (and inexpensive), but even better

millivolts are really only helpful for a ballpark estimate. I could confuse you even further by discussing inductance (which is measured in henries), but since so few companies list this spec, I’ll just skip it for this article. Long story short: don’t worry too much about pickup output descriptions and specs. Depending on the tone you desire, a low-output pickup can be as good of a choice as a high-output pickup. Highoutput pickups became popular in the Seventies as a quick and dirty means to push an amp into more saturated distortion, but now that most amps have high-gain preamps and any number of overdrive and distortion devices are readily available, the distinction has become less important.

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

is an iron or soldering station with variable power or temperature. The Weller WES51 is an inexpensive 50-watt soldering station that is variable from 350 to 850 degrees F and costs less than $100. Higher wattage produces higher temperatures that can quickly heat up braided shielding and the back of a potentiometer enough to ensure a solid solder joint without damaging the pot’s internal resistive strip. Another reason to use a high-power soldering iron or station is that many new guitars use lead-free solder, which can only be removed at temperatures higher than 425 degrees. You’ll also need two tips for the iron—a pencil-style tip with a sharp point for precision work at lower wattage (such as soldering a wire to a pot lug) and a chisel tip with a wide, flat

edge to distribute heat quickly across larger surfaces (such as the back of a pot). If you opt for just a soldering iron, you’ll also need a stand (soldering stations usually have built-in stands). Other essential items include 60/40 (tin/lead) solder with rosin-core flux (do NOT use acid-core flux) or lead-free rosin-core solder (only if your soldering iron is powerful enough) and a good set of wire cutter/strippers that can remove insulation on wire between 10 to 20AWG. Solder wick or a solder sucker is helpful for removing old solder (and keeping it from damaging your guitar’s finish). A curved-jaw locking hemostat or a device called a “third hand” can be very helpful for holding wire and components securely while freeing your hands for the soldering iron and solder. —Chris Gill

WINDINGS

As a rule of thumb, I find it’s best to try to achieve some sort of balance between the guitar and pickup’s tonal character. If you think that your guitar with its current pickup configuration sounds too dark, look for brighter-sounding pickups and perhaps even consider low- or medium-output models. If it’s too trebly, weak and thin-sounding, go for highoutput pickups with boosted midrange and bass.

M O S T P I C K U P manufacturers will not reveal the specifics of how their various pickup models are wound because this is where the true art of pickup design comes into play. Dozens of variables are involved here including the gauge/thickness of the copper wire used, the thickness of the wire insulation (which affects how close the metal of the wound wires are to each other), how tight or loose the coils are wound, how many total windings are used, the pattern of the windings, the width and depth of the windings and much more. However, you don’t need to be concerned about these details unless you plan on winding your own pickups one day. Again, a pickup maker’s EQ charts are more helpful in the long run. One detail to consider, however, is whether a pickup is potted (the windings coated in wax, epoxy or other material) or not. Coil windings, particularly if the wind is loose, can vibrate against each other when a guitar is played at loud volumes, which can result in a piercing, nasty feedback squeal. However, at lower volumes loose windings can produce “microphonic” tones that, simply put, deliver a natural, acoustic-like sound similar to using a microphone. Light potting is an ideal compromise, providing some acoustic-like resonance while resisting squeal. Heavy potting is best for guitarists who play at excessively loud volume levels, but some players think the overall tone of heavily potted pickups is too tight and focused. Then there is the entirely new design of the Fishman Fluence pickups, which replaces copper wire coils with an innovation called the Fluence Core, consisting of two multi-interconnected-layer boards. This design provides two entirely different tones (such as active/passive) at the flick of a switch. Another relatively new innovation is Lace’s Alumitone pickups, which feature “current driven” passive technology that enables a design with minimal coil windings and low DC resistance to produce increased output levels with the expanded frequency response and low noise of active designs.

MAGNETS W H I L E S E V E R A L D E TA I L S of a pickup’s construction affect its tonal character and output, the type of magnet(s) that it uses can tell you a lot about its character right off the bat. The most common types of magnets used for pickup construction are alnico and ceramic. Alnico is short for aluminum, nickel and cobalt, and alnico magnets are usually an alloy of iron, aluminum, nickel, cobalt and copper, and sometimes titanium as well. Alnico magnets can be made in a variety of different compositions with each element in different percentages, which are graded as alnico 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on (an alnico 3 magnet actually has no cobalt, while alnico 8 and above magnets have a small percentage of titanium). With the exception of alnico 3, a higher number corresponds with a stronger magnet. The most common magnets for guitar pickups are alnico 2 and 5. Ceramic magnets are made from barium, strontium and lead-iron oxides, which results in a stronger magnet that also is cheaper to produce. While a pickup’s overall tonal character is influenced by many different factors, in general terms, weaker magnets like alnico 2 tend to emphasize midrange while stronger magnets like alnico 5 have more of a “scooped mid” personality with extended bass and treble response. Ceramic magnets usually produce brilliant treble and crisp, articulate attack. Other magnets used less often for pickup construction include samarium cobalt (featured in Fender’s discontinued Samarium Cobalt Noiseless pickups) and neodymium (featured in Q-Tuner pickups). Both are “rare earth” magnets that are generally stronger than alnico and ceramic magnets but also more expensive to produce due to the higher cost of the raw materials. Another uncommon magnet is rubber ferrite (similar to the magnets most of us use to affix our kids’ artwork to the refrigerator), which is used in most “gold foil” pickup designs.

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

COVERS P I C K U P C OV E R S P R O T E C T the fragile wire coils from damage, but depending upon the material they’re made out of, they also can affect the pickup’s magnetic field and resonant peak. A cover that is made of ferrous material and/or plated with ferrous material (like nickel) will affect the pickup’s magnetic flux, but a plastic pickup cover won’t (which is

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F F I S H M A N

Fishman Fluence Humbuckers for seven- and eight-string guitars

THE POWER BEHIND YOUR PERFORMANCE F1 Flexible Array loudspeakers. Inspired by arena audio technology. Touring line arrays, with their flexibility and coverage control, were the inspiration for the Bose F1 Flexible Array loudspeaker system. Small in size but not performance, the F1 Model 812 allows you to control your coverage in nearly any space. Four flexible array options shape your sound, ensuring every seat in the house enjoys an optimum listening experience. Add to that 1000 W of full-range power plus the portable, high performance F1 Sub and the result is a system with unmatched clarity, range and punch only Bose can deliver. LEARN MORE AT BOSE.COM/F1.

POLE PIECES T H E S I Z E A N D S H A P E of the pole pieces are critical features of pickup design that affect the size and shape of the pickup’s magnetic flux field. Generally speaking, wider pole pieces will produce a wider magnetic field that picks up a larger portion of the vibrating string, producing a more sonically complex tone, whereas the narrower focus of a narrower pole piece produces a more focused tone. A focused magnetic field can be a good thing if you prefer bright, percussive twang, while a wider field generally delivers richer, full-bodied tone. Some single-coil pickups have staggered pole piece heights to compensate for the varying output of different strings, while others have the pole pieces all the same height (like Mitt Romney’s trees in Michigan). Height-adjustable pole pieces with screw or Allen heads allow players to customize the compensation, while blade-style pole pieces are a good choice for guitarists who struggle with decreased signal strength when they bend strings (as bending a string can move it out of a magnetic flux “peak” and into a weaker “valley”).

TWO-CONDUCTOR VS. FOUR-CONDUCTOR HUMBUCKER WIRING I F YO U ’ V E A L R E A DY shopped for humbucking pickups, you may have noticed options for two- and four-conductor

A set of Fender Custom Shop Texas Special Strat pickups

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

wiring. Two-conductor wiring means the pickup has only separate wires for the hot output and ground. Four-conductor wiring provides two separate wires for each of the pickup’s coils, identified as north start, north finish, south start and south finish, with north and south referring to the polarity of the separate coils. Four-conductor wiring offers a multitude of output circuit configurations, including coil split/tapping (for single-coil tones), series, parallel and out-of-phase. The advantages of different wiring configurations are worthy of an entire article unto itself, but my quick recommendation is to choose four-conductor wiring if available as it can be wired like a two-conductor pickup but it also offers other options should you choose to explore those later.

MAKING THE FINAL CHOICE T H E N U M B E R O F C O M PA N I E S making replacement

pickups today is truly staggering and impressive. Most of the major guitar companies like Dean, EVH, Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, PRS and more sell pickups individually, and the big specialists like DiMarzio and Seymour Duncan offer an incredible variety of choices as well as designs beyond traditional Gibson-style humbuckers and Strat/Tele single-coils. Even most smaller boutique companies like Barden, Bare Knuckle, Curtis Novak, Kent Armstrong, Bill Lawrence, Lindy Fralin, Lollar, Mojotone, RailHammer, Rio Grande, Suhr, TV Jones, Van Zandt and Wilkinson offer an impressive variety of models to choose from, as do bigger parts-oriented companies like Allparts and WD. Active pickup specialists include Bartolini, Bill Lawrence, Duncan and EMG, while modern, revolutionary designs are available from Fishman, Lace and Q-Tuner. Just like guitar models, an abundance of signature model pickups is available, and these pickups are a good place to start if your goal is to sound similar to your favorite guitar hero. Even if your favorite players don’t have signature models, it can be worth the effort to find out what pickups they play as that can eliminate some of the guesswork about a pickup’s overall tonal personality. If you choose to go on your own path, don’t be afraid to experiment and make a few changes as you go along. Pickups are a relatively inexpensive investment and as long as the pickups you are swapping are the same size as the ones already in your guitar the modification is easily reversible. Choosing the right pickups for your guitar often can be better than getting an entirely new guitar, especially if you’re already comfortable with the playability of your ax. If you’ve struggled with less than stellar tone for years, and no new amp or pedal has been able to fix it, changing pickups is the best solution, and more often than not the results exceed a player’s expectations. So get out there and melt some solder, burn some fingertips and find the tone you’ve always dreamed of.

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F F E N D E R

why Strat players don’t remove the pickup covers). When Seth Lover designed the original Gibson PAF humbucker, he experimented with a variety of different materials for pickup covers before making his final choice based on how it affected the guitar’s tone (part of the reason later Gibson humbuckers with chrome plating on the covers—instead of nickel—sound different). Removing the covers results in a different magnetic field that boosts output and treble frequencies slightly.

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PRESTIGE: THE MOST DEVASTATING HIGH-PERFORMANCE GUITARS

D ECE M B E R 2017

Mesa Triple Crown TC-50 and 2x12 Compact Rectifier cabinet

the gear in review

HUGHES & KETTNER e ra 1

FUSION GUITAR

GUITAR TONE COMPANY B l o o dy Fi nge r

TASCAM Trac k Fac to r y

Iron Horse

GUITAR WORLD

GOLD AWARD P

FORMANC

MESA TRIPLE CROWN TC-50 E

By Chris Gill

MESA ENGINEERING IS rightfully known for

pioneering the modern high-gain amp as well as for their incredibly versatile Mark Series amps, which offer guitarists a staggering variety of tones and soundshaping options. However, I personally think Mesa’s more streamlined amps are worthy of similar acclaim, especially when it comes to their rock- and metal-voiced amps like the Dual and Triple Rectifier models as well as the under-appreciated Caliber Series. Mesa’s new Triple Crown Series seems to spring from a similar stream-

lined-yet-versatile mindset, delivering awesome rock and metal tones but also offering some of the best clean tones in the industry. The TC-50 is currently Mesa’s only Triple Crown model, available in head only, rack mount head or 1x12 combo formats. We auditioned the TC-50 head with a Mesa 2x12 Compact Rectifier cabinet loaded with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers. FEATURES As you might have guessed from the Triple

Crown TC-50’s name, this is a three-channel 50-watt

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amp with fully independent Clean, Lo-Gain and Hi-Gain channels, each with its own set of gain, treble, mid, bass, presence and master controls on the front panel and independent reverb controls on the rear panel. Each channel also features a mini toggle switch for choosing drive/normal modes (clean channel only) or tight/normal modes (lo-gain and high-gain channels) that let you further sculpt and customize each channel’s character. Other front-panel controls include a Solo (boost level) knob, master output level knob and toggle switch for manually selecting channels. The rear panel is generously appointed with a wide variety of professional features that allow further customization for performance and studio applications. The Bias Select switch features two settings (EL34/6V6 and 6L6) that allows users to swap power tubes to modify the amp’s tonal and dynamic character (the amp ships with EL34 tubes). Switches for the Solo, Reverb and EFX Loop allow users to keep each function permanently on or use the included six-switch footswitch to turn each on and off individually (the other three footswitches are for channel selection). The CabClone D.I. cabinet simulation circuitry includes a speaker on/off switch (for direct

CHEAT SHEET

STREET PRICE: $1,799 MANUFACTURER: Mesa Engineering, mesaboogie.com

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

recording without a speaker cab or external load box), a switch for selecting closedback, open-back or vintage cabinet styles and a balanced XLR CabClone D.I. output. The cabinet style settings also influence the sound sent to the ¼-inch headphone output. Other rear-panel features include ¼-inch EFX loop send and return jacks, two ¼-inch speaker output jacks with 4/8ohm impedance switch, ¼-inch line output, XLR lift/ground switch, 6-pin DIN footswitch jack, MIDI In and Out/Thru DIN jacks, MIDI channel select switch and Store switch for saving amp settings to MIDI program change numbers or performing SysEx load and dump functions. In addition to the two EL34 power tubes, the TC-50’s circuit features six 12AX7 and one 12AT7 to drive the preamp section. The overall construction and transformers are certainly heavy duty, but thanks to its compact configuration, the amp weighs in at a manageable 35 pounds. PERFORMANCE While the Triple Crown

may not offer all of the intricate tonesculpting features of Mesa’s flagship Mark Five model, most players will find the TC50’s versatility similarly compelling. From crisp, ethereal clean tones to incredibly

A 50-watt amp driven by two EL34 power tubes, six 12AX7 and one 12AT7 tubes for the preamp section and a silicon rectifier.

Each of the three channels (clean, lo-gain, hi-gain) features a mode switch for customizing the midrange character of each channel individually.

The CabClone D.I. section allows guitarists to record the amp direct using built-in speaker simulation without having the amp connected to a speaker cabinet.

heavy, dark and doom-laden high-gain distortion, this amp truly does it all and hits all of the desirable destinations in between. The clean channel delivers sharp, percussive spank that goes from crystal clean to overdrive crunch, while the lo-gain channel covers a delicious range of distortion tones from tweed-like grind to British crushed-glass explosiveness. The hi-gain channel is awesome for super-smooth compressed solo tones or dense metal rhythm tones with harmonically complex, impressively defined attack and clarity. The spring reverb tank may be rather compact, but it produces some of the smoothest and sweetest reverb I’ve ever heard from an analog spring unit, outshining reverb tanks more than twice its size. The power-tube-swapping capability, CabClone D.I. section and sophisticated MIDI capabilities are all worth their own reviews, but in this short space I’ll just say they work very well and are very easy to use. Personally, I found that the included EL34 tubes worked best for the kind of sounds I like (open, airy cleans, harmonically complex, aggressive distortion with smooth compression, etc.), although 6L6 tubes sound pretty damn good too with more clean headroom and tighter attack.

The included six-switch footswitch controls channel, reverb, EFX loop and Solo (boost) switching, or more sophisticated switching can be performed via MIDI.

THE BOTTOM LINE If you want it all, from stellar clean tones to vicious modern metal distortion, but prefer simple, easyto-use controls that don’t require an engineering degree to figure out, the Mesa Triple Crown TC-50 is a real winner with a thoroughbred pedigree when it comes to first-class tone.

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Resonant Waves

HUGHES & KETTNER ERA 1 By Chris Gill

THE ERA 1 may be the first acoustic guitar amp offered by Hughes & Kettner, but it comes with 25 years of acoustic amp design experience behind it. That’s because the era 1 was designed in collaboration with Michael Eisenmann, who developed some of the music industry’s first acoustic guitar amps with his company, AER (apparently the model name is a tribute to Eisenmann’s roots). By combining their collective amp-design know-how, Hughes & Kettner and Eisenmann have developed a revolutionary new acoustic guitar amp design that provides incredibly natural acoustic tone, impressively loud output, a full selection of professional features and a surprisingly compact size. FEATURES Measuring less than 14x11x11 (slightly larger than a bookshelf stereo speaker cabinet) and housed in a wood cabinet with a warm cherry finish (a version with traditional black textured covering is available for the same price), the era 1 makes a bold first impression with its gorgeous looks and diminutive dimensions. But there’s a whole lot of power packed in that small box, including a 250-watt power amp, 8-inch speaker and 1-inch dome tweeter, all of which help deliver crystal-clear sound, four channels, 16 digital effects, versatile 3-band EQ, numerous outputs

CHEAT SHEET

LIST PRICE: $1,529 MANUFACTURER: Hughes & Kettner, hughes-and-kettner. com

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

(including an S/PDIF TOSLINK optical out) and much more. Channels 1 and 2 are designed for acoustic guitar and/or vocal mic and are fully appointed with bass, mid and treble EQ with switchable modes that tailor the EQ range for steel-string or nylon-string guitars, combo XLR/1/4-inch input jacks with phantom power switch, FX preset select and FX volume controls and switches for engaging a -10dB pad, pre-EQ tone shaping and a mute function. Channel 3 features a 1/8-inch input and volume control for external audio sources, and the effects loop can function instead as a fourth channel if desired.

A compact acoustic guitar amp with a 250watt power amp, 8-inch woofer, 1-inch dome tweeter, digital effects and much more.

PERFORMANCE Despite its small size, the era 1 delivers huge performance when it comes to sound quality and versatility. Even at the full master volume setting, the sound remains crystal clean and undistorted—even when performing guitar and vocals at the same time, and the output is loud enough for solo performers in small venues or for use as a monitor on stage with a full band. The effects, which include lush reverbs, delay, chorus and multi-effects, are well-suited to acoustic guitar and vocals alike. Best of all, the acoustic guitar tones are rich and resonant, retaining full acoustic character but at greatly increased volume levels.

Channels 1 and 2 each feature an EQ mode switch that tailors the EQ response and frequency range for steel-string or nylon-string guitars.

THE BOTTOM LINE Despite being about the size of a bookshelf stereo speaker, the Hughes & Kettner era 1 is a powerful full-range PA system that amplifies acoustic guitar, vocals and external audio sources at impressive volume levels for small venues and fullband onstage performances.

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Everybody’s Appy Nowadays FUSION GUITAR By Ch ris G ill EVER SINCE SMARTPHONES started to

gain prominence about 10 years ago, a wide variety of guitar-oriented apps have emerged that offer players incredibly powerful performance, recording, practice and educational capabilities for a relatively modest investment. But perhaps the biggest appeal of guitar apps is the portability of a smartphone-based setup. However, there’s one small problem with an app-based rig; usually an interface and headphones or an external amp are required, and guitarists find themselves tethered to several items that restrict their mobility and can make the setup more cumbersome than they’d like. The Fusion Guitar offers an appealing alternative for guitarists who love apps but would prefer an all-in-one system that’s as portable as an acoustic guitar. Everything a guitarist needs is built into the Fusion Guitar, including a dock for an iPhone or iPod Touch, amplification, speakers and battery. The Fusion Guitar is truly a plug-and-

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

play system that takes all of the hassles out of using an app, smartphone and interface setup, making it ideal for anything from casual practice to on-stage performance. FEATURES At its heart, the Fusion Guitar is not much different from a standard electric model, featuring a 22-fret neck (with maple or rosewood fretboard options), a 25 ½-inch scale length, a pair of humbucking pickups (with coil tap for the bridge humbucker) and a Badass-style all-in-one wraparound bridge with separate adjustable saddles for each string. However, the body is made of an injection-molded polymer, measures about 3 ½ inches deep and houses a pair of front-facing 25-watt full-range “audience” speakers plus a single upward-facing 20-millimeter mid/high-frequency 10-watt monitor speaker. There’s also a rechargeable internal lithium-ion battery with an adapter socket and power on/off button. Along the top edge of the upper bout is

an interchangeable docking bay for various iOS devices with Lightning connectors (six individual docks for iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 6, 6 Plus, 5/SE and iPhone Touch Gen 5 are included). The iOS device’s screen faces up toward the player and is easy to reach, making it easy to control guitar apps or view video material. The Fusion Guitar’s built-in speakers amplify the app-processed signal, which also can be amplified externally using the ¼-inch line output jack. There’s also a standard ¼-inch output for the guitar-only signal, a 1/8-inch headphone output and individual volume controls for the guitaronly and internal 20-watt Class D amp/appprocessed signals. PERFORMANCE Setting up the Fusion Guitar couldn’t be any easier. After charging the guitar’s internal battery (it takes about three hours to reach full charge), just install the dock that matches your iOS device, slip the iOS device into the dock, power up and

For video of this review, go to GuitarWorld. com/Dec2017

“Best of all, there are no limitations to which guitar app you can use with the guitar.”

CHEAT SHEET

DIRECT PRICE: $1,399 MANUFACTURER: Fusion Guitar, fusionguitars.com

you’re good to go without any extra cables, interfaces or other items dangling from the guitar. Best of all, there are no limitations to which guitar app you can use with the guitar. The Fusion Guitar internal amp’s output is comparable to that of a small practice amp—not quite loud enough for a small club gig or practice with a band, but loud enough to fill a medium-size room on its own. The Fusion Guitar offers the same portability and all-in-one compactness of playing an acoustic guitar, but with the added benefit of louder volume output and a nearly endless selection of virtual amp and effects tones. The main consideration is whether you like the guitar itself; if you prefer a neck with a slimmer shred profile or different types of pickups, you may need to wait for future Fusion Guitar models to come along as the concept grows in popularity. Overall the quality of the guitar itself is comparable to various mid-price models, which should please the majority of players out there.

An internal rechargeable lithium-ion battery powers the built-in 20-watt amp and speakers to amplify the user’s app-based tones as well as the guitar’s natural electric tones. An iPhone or iPod Touch mounts into the guitar’s top-mounted docking bay where it’s easy to control and view.

THE BOTTOM LINE With its built-in amplifier and speakers combined with a dock that accommodates various Apple iPhone or iPod Touch iOS devices, the Fusion Guitar makes using appbased rigs as easy and convenient as playing an acoustic guitar.

Buzz Bin

Guitar Tone Company Bloody Finger Considering Halloween is swiftly approaching as I write this, it seems fittingly creepy that a boutique pedal named the “Bloody Finger” has arrived on my desk. Shockingly, the Bloody Finger is neither bloody nor includes any severed fingers, much to the dismay of my gruesome expectations. However, the pedal does come in a mirrored plexiglass enclosure, which, to my horror, casts my own reflection upon all its surfaces, and that is indeed scary enough. But all ugliness aside, the Guitar Tone Company Bloody Finger is a one-of-a-kind, colorful buzz saw of a distortion pedal that also functions well as a treble booster and overdrive with stabs of fuzz. The Bloody Finger is a large pedal, similar in size to ProCo’s Rat distortion stompbox, and completely handmade. It is stark and simple in appearance, with two large metal controls for volume and tone, an LED and an on/off switch. It’s true bypass and powered by a 9-volt battery or 9V adapter. The Bloody Finger already has gobs of vicious gain, so how it sounds is dependent on where you set the volume and tone controls to interact with one another. Turning up the volume not only boosts output but also increases gain and brilliance, which works amazingly well for adding even more sustain and definition to an overdriven amp. The tone control performs as a musical filter—once you get past noon, it sweeps in cutting midrange and compression, making its distorted crunch sound like a hot-rodded Seventies Marshall Super Lead at full throttle. Moving the tone control counterclockwise achieves a saturated cocked-wah sound and adds fuzzy bottom-end rumble to notes. Don’t be afraid to get your hands on it; the Bloody Finger is a thick-sounding pedal with plenty of bite. —Paul Riario

STREET PRICE: $275 MANUFACTURER: Guitar Tone Company, guitartonecompany.com

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On the Right Track

GUITAR WORLD

GOLD AWARD P

FORMANC

TASCAM TRACK FACTORY E

By Chris Gill

THE COMPUTER-BASED DIGITAL audio

workstation is the preferred choice of many home studios these days, but for newcomers and even experienced recording engineers, the wide variety of options and questions about the compatibility of various components can be overwhelming and confusing. Fortunately, Tascam, who pioneered the all-in-one Portastudio concept way back in the Seventies, has come up with a brilliant solution with Track Factory. This package includes almost everything needed—including the computer—to put together a powerful software-driven digital studio. The only extra item needed to get started is a visual monitor, but everything else is in the box. FEATURES The Tascam Track Factory consists of a compact Intel NUC computer, Tascam US-2x2 USB audio interface, Cakewalk SONAR Professional software, a keyboard and mouse, Tascam TM-80 large-diaphragm condenser microphone and Tascam TH-02 headphones. The com-

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STREET PRICE: $1,299.99 MANUFACTURER: Tascam, tascam.com

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

puter is loaded with the Windows 10 Home operating system and features an Intel i5-525OU 2.7GHz processor, 8GB RAM (expandable to 16GB) and a 256GB solid state drive. A mini HDMI video port allows you to use an HD TV or computer monitor of your choice. The Tascam US-2x2 interface features two XLR/1/4-inch combo inputs with adjustable input gain, phantom power and selectable mic/line or instrument level input settings. Two Ultra-HDAA high-gain mic preamps record pristine audio at resolution up to 24-bit/96kHz. SONAR Professional is the full-featured penultimate version of Cakewalk’s industry-standard music production software, offering unlimited tracks, 19 virtual instruments, 56 virtual effects (including Cakewalk’s entire acclaimed Studio Mixing and Engineering Suites) and more. SONAR supports VST3 plug-ins, providing access to an immense variety of impressive virtual effects and instruments.

A complete softwarebased recording system, including computer, software, audio interface, mic and headphones.

PERFORMANCE The biggest concern for anyone putting together a software-based digital audio recording system is whether the software, computer and operating system are compatible. Tascam Track Factory eliminates the guesswork from the get-go, providing a rock-solid platform for your recording projects. The whole system sets up in minutes—all you need to do is register the SONAR software and you’re good to go. The computer measures less than 4 inches square, allowing users to conveniently place it anywhere or even take the entire system with them when traveling. The Tascam TM-80 microphone works well for recording instruments or vocals, and the TH-02 headphones deliver clean, flat sound quality—although users will eventually want to invest in a pair of near-field monitors for more accurate “real world” monitoring. The US-2x2 interface provides latency-free monitoring through its headphone jack, making it easy to lay down overdubs with perfect timing.

The TM-80 microphone has a large-diaphragm condenser design that’s ideal for capturing vocals or a wide range of instruments.

THE BOTTOM LINE The Tascam Track Factory combines several pro-quality products to provide home studios with an all-in-one package that eliminates the guesswork of setup and provides a powerful platform for making outstanding recordings.

THE ASUS4f2 ARPEGGIO we looked at

last month (November 2017 issue) may be repurposed in a variety of cool, interesting ways, which I think is a worthwhile topic to explore. We’ll begin by moving it down one fret, and while we’re there we’ll check out a slight variation that offers a similar sound and musical color. And, to get double “bang for your buck,” before we finish today’s lesson I’ll show you a convenient, alternate way to employ each of our two new arpeggios, giving you four new sounds to play with. FIGURE 1 shows the two Asus4f2 fretboard “paths” I introduced in the previous lesson, both of which move diagonally across the neck and span at least two octaves. As you recall, this arpeggio is spelled A Bf D E, or, intervallically, 1 f2 4 5. We’re now going to simply shift every note down a fret, as illustrated in FIGURE 2, but maintain an A tonal center (and bass-note accompaniment in the video lesson). We now have the notes Gs, A, Cs and Ef as our four-note cell. Relative to A, that gives us the major seven (Gs), root (A), major third (Cs) and diminished, or “flatted,” fifth (Ef). It’s a pretty exotic, mysterious sound! Now, if we were to play these same four notes over A major’s relative minor tonal center, Fs minor, we get an equally intriguing but decidedly darker Fsm6-9 sound, with Gs now heard as the second, or ninth, A as the minor, or “flatted,” third, Cs as the perfect fifth, and Ds (Ef) as the major sixth. We’re still playing the same four notes, but when heard over an Fs bass note their individual roles change, in the way our brains perceive them. This duality is comparable to the relationship between the major and minor pentatonic scales. Let’s now go back to our relative major tonal center, A, and the Amaj7f5 arpeggio from FIGURE 2. The variation I spoke of earlier involves raising the flatted fifth, Ef, to En (E natural), which gives us the more conventional and “tamer” sounding Amaj7 arpeggio (A Cs E Gs) depicted in FIGURE 3, again starting on the major

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

T A B

. .

A sus 4 b 2

4 4

5 6 1

12 13 1

. .

12 14

FIG. 2 2 FIGURE

T A B

7 9

14 15

3 1

4 6

4 5

11 12

11 13

6 7

6 8

13 14

10 12 10

15 17

A maj7 b 5 (or F# m6-9)

4 4

10 11

≤

14 16

≤

17 15

8 7

7 5

1 2 1

14 12

10 9

16 14

15 14

9 11 9

9 10

11 10

14 13

. .

7 6

13 11

6 5

6 4

~~~

5 4

. .

T A B

A maj7 (or F# m9)

4 5 1

. .

A maj7 (or F# m9)

6 7 1

6 9

1 4

9 10

9 12 9

≤

16 1417 1714 1314 1413 1114 1411 1112 12

. .

A maj7 (or F# m9)

≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤

A maj7 b 5 (or F# m6-9)

. 12 9 10 9 10 9 11 9 10 9 10 9 . / /. . 3

~~ 11

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

FIGURE FIG. 5 5

10 9

seventh, Gs. Notice that the fret-hand fingerings have changed slightly, with the pinkie (4) used for each E note. Now play this figure again over an Fsm chord, or just an Fs bass note, and you’ll hear a cool, jazzy Fsm9 sound, as I demonstrate in the video lesson. After you get to know these new patterns, play around with some of the smaller “shred cell” repetition licks that

FIGURE FIG. 4 4

. .

7 6

1 2 1

A maj7 (or F# m9)

≥ ≤ ≥ ≤

12 9

10 9

///

FIG. 6 6 FIGURE

1/2

4 1 2 1

~~~~

A maj7 (or F# m9)

≤ ≥ ≤ ≥ ≤ ≥

. 9 10 9 12 9 10 / . .3 3

7 4 4

5 4

11 9

10 9

///.

A maj7 b 5 (or F# m6-9)

≤ ≥≤≥ ≤ ≥ 9 11 9

3(+2)

3 1 2 1

2 1

A maj7 b 5 (or F# m6-9)

9 10

FIGURE FIG. 3 3

4 4

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maj7, maj7f5 and their relative minors

~~~

FIG. 1 1 FIGURE

~~~~~~~~~~~~

COLUMNS

By Jimmy Brown

CLOSE RELATIVES

For video of this lesson, go to GuitarWorld.com/Dec2017

STRING THEORY

. / .

~~~~

live within them, just as I had demonstrated in the previous lesson. FIGURES 4–6 offer some examples with our new arpeggios, each played on the top two strings, using alternate-picked 16th notes or 16th-note triplets. Transpose these shapes and licks to the other important guitar keys, namely G major/E minor, C major/A minor, D major/B minor and F major/D minor.

To download instructional guitar DVDs by Jimmy Brown— as individual chapters or complete discs—visit guitarworldlessons.com or download the official Guitar World Lessons app in iTunes.

LESSONS

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by Andy Aledort

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

1213 14

1214

1213

1512 14 14 1214

1213

15 12

15 14 12

12 13

1/2

12 13 14 15

A7 12

1 1 1

1/4

14 12

12 14

1/2

12 14

12 15 12

15 15 15 15 12

1/2

12 15 12 12 12

1/2

~~~~~

14 14 12

‰

r 12 13

15 12

3 1

1/2

15 14

12 1512

12 14 12

1215 12

14 12

12 15 12

study of slow blues soloing, we’ll again focus on utilizing a single fretboard position of the blues scale while additionally including the major third of the tonic, or “home” chord. The example in this column (see FIGURE 1) is played over a slow 12-bar blues progression in the key of E, so we’re going to use the E blues scale (E G A Bf B D) with the inclusion of the major third, Gs. This results in a hybrid scale, spelled E G Gs A Bf B D, or, intervallically, 1 f3 3 4 f5 5 f7. The most useful thing about this hybrid scale is that the inclusion of the major third serves two purposes: it functions as a chord tone of E7 (E Gs B D), thus solidifying the connection between the improvised melodies and the underlying tonic, while also establishing a chromatic row, from the minor, or “flatted,” third, G, up to the fifth, B. As we have done with all of the examples in the previous three lessons, the major third, Gs, will always follow the minor third, G, sequentially, whether the melodic line is ascending or descending. This way, the major third serves as a targeted, or highlighted, note within the melody. The area of focus for this month’s original solo is 12th position. In this solo, the major third, Gs, is added to the E blues scale in two places. The first is as the third note in the scale when ascending from the E note on the sixth string’s 12th fret, sounded by bending G, 15th fret, up a half step to Gs. We also include a Gs note one octave higher, as an unbent note on the third string’s 13th fret. Keep in mind that you could additionally play the major third, G, another octave higher while remaining in 12th position, by bending the G note on the high E string’s 15th fret up a half step to Gs, just as we had done on the low E string. The majority of the solo is played in a rhythm of 16th notes. In 12/8 meter, three evenly spaced eighth notes fall within each of the four primary beats of the bar, resulting in a feel that may be counted “ONE two three, FOUR five six, SEV eight nine, TEN ’lev twelve.” When playing

12 ‰ 8

T A B

IN THIS FOURTH installment of our

Getting the most out of one fretboard position

FIGURE FIG. 1

~~~~~

HOME BASE

~~~

COLUMNS

For video of this lesson, go to GuitarWorld.com/Dec2017

IN DEEP

14 12

1/2

12 15 12

1/2

15 14 14 12 12 151514 14

* repeat previous beat 1/2

1/2

12 12 12 1512 12 121514 14 1214 1212 12 1312131415 15 15 15 14121412 14 1212 12 14 1412 1214 14 14 1412 12 1212 1214 14 14 14 14 14

1/2

1212

12 12 14 14

E7 1

12 12

1/2

12 12 13 121414 14 1214 12 14 3

1/2

1512

3 1

1412

14 14 12 12 13 1414 14 1214 12 14 1414 12 1414 14 12 14 14

1/2 1

1/2

12 12 1515 15 15 12151414 141412 12 13 14 3

~~ r 141412 12 14 1214 . 14 14 121012 1 1/2

1512

1/2

. 1012 10 10

‰ Ó.

16th notes over this feel, they’re evenly spaced across each eighth note, resulting in a rhythm that may be counted “ONE-an two-an three-an, FOUR-an five-an six-an, SEV-an eight-an nine-an, TEN-an ’lev-an twelve-an.” You’ll also encounter a few 16th-note triplets and pairs of 32nd notes in the solo.

In 12/8, 16th-note triplets may be counted “ONE trip-let two trip-let three trip-let, FOUR trip-let five trip-let six trip-let, SEV trip-let eight trip-let nine trip-let, TEN trip-let ’lev trip-let twelve-trip-let.” Be sure to count through each phrase slowly and carefully as you play, in order to accurately recreate the melodic rhythms.

To download instructional guitar DVDs by Andy Aledort— as individual chapters or complete discs—visit guitarworldlessons.com or download the official Guitar World Lessons app in iTunes. Contact Andy at andyaledort.com.

LESSONS

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by Mike Orlando of Adrenaline Mob

electric guitar is what’s known as “chicken pickin’,” which refers to a very distinct country-style picking approach that many of my favorite virtuoso country players have made great use of, such as Danny Gatton, Albert Lee, Chet Atkins and many others. I’ve worked on different approaches to chicken pickin’ techniques for years, and I love to incorporate this distinct sound into metal-style solos. The way chicken pickin’ is usually executed is by using hybrid picking, wherein one alternates between notes picked with a downstroke in a conventional manner and notes that are fingerpicked. When one fingerpicks, the finger comes up from underneath the string in order to attack it, so, in this way, the fingerpick serves as an upstroke. The upstroke is executed in an aggressive manner, snapping the string against the fretboard, which creates a “cluck” type sound, thus the name chicken pickin’. When chicken pickin’, I will often address pairs of adjacent strings at any given moment, starting with a downstroke with the pick on the lower string, followed by an upstroke with the finger, usually the middle, on the adjacent higher string. FIGURE 1 is based on the A blues scale (A C D Ef E), and I begin on the top two strings, sounding the second string with a picked downsroke, followed by a note on the first string picked with my middle finger. Both notes are fretted at the eighth fret, so I use my fret-hand pinkie to fret both of these notes, “rolling” it from the lower to the higher string. As the lick progresses, you’ll see that I incorporate this rolling technique across each pair of adjacent strings at the same fret until I get to the bottom pair of strings, wherein I need to fret the sixth string one fret higher than the fifth. Pairs of notes on adjacent strings are sounded at the eighth, seventh and fifth frets, so I use my pinkie, ring finger and index finger to fret these string pairs, respectively. FIGURE 1 ends with ascending two-note power chords on the bottom two strings. The best way to get this technique under your fingers is to begin on a single pair of

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

T A B

4 .8 . 4‰ . R

FIG. 2 2 FIGURE

N.C. (A5)

w/hybrid picking m m

T A B

4‰8 4 J

FIGURE FIG. 3 3

T A B

≥

4 ‰ 4

≥

N.C. (A5)

≥

Œ ‰8 J J ≥ m≥

5 7

2 4

5 8

. 4 ‰ 4 57 .

FIGURE FIG. 6 6

T A B

4 4‰58

4 4

X 3

≥

≥ 5

≥

Œ ‰.

(play 3 times) m

≥

. 5 6. 3 4

5 7

4‰ 4

FIGURE FIG. 9 9

T A B

4 ‰58 4

7 5

5 7

FIGURE FIG. 77

35 57

5 7 5757 7 7

5757

. .

5 7

sim.

. 4 58 5 8 5 8 5 8 58 8 8 58 8 8 4‰

FIGURE FIG. 4 4

. 4 ‰ . 4 57

5 8

FIGURE FIG. 8 8

T A B

Œ ‰.

8 585 8 8

5 8 58 5 58 8 8

strings, as shown in FIGURE 2. Once you feel comfortable playing this way, gradually increase the tempo until you’re playing the line as quickly as possible. Another approach is to add double hammer-ons to the phrases, as demonstrated in FIGURE 3: I begin on the bottom two strings with the same technique as shown in FIGURE 1, followed by a pair of hammer-ons on both strings. The idea is then moved up across each higher pair

5 75 57 3

5858

5 8

575 35

~~~ . Ó 5 7

‰. Œ Ó

585

5 8

.~~~

‰Ó

. .

(play 3 times)

(etc.)

FIG. 5 5 FIGURE

T A B

A b5 A 5

(m = pluck string w/pick-hand middle finger) sim. m

. .3

353

1 5

of strings in FIGURES 4–7. In FIGURE 8, each of the two-string pairs has been linked together into a longer phrase that moves across all six strings, ending with a quick hammer/pull on the high E. Lastly, we can incorporate that hammer/ pull into our chicken pickin’ phrase as we descend across each string pair, as depicted in FIGURE 9. Now that you have the concept down, try to invent your own “chicken picked” licks.

Mike Orlando is the lead guitarist and a founding member of heavy metal powerhouse Adrenaline Mob. Their new album, We the People, is out now via Century Media.

LESSONS

DANNY SANCHEZ

ONE OF MY FAVORITE sounds on the

FIG. 1 1 FIGURE

~~~

Using country-style “chicken pickin’” in metal

Tune down one whole step (low to high, D G C F A D). All music sounds one whole step lower than written.

PLUCKED CHICKEN

For video of this lesson, go to GuitarWorld.com/Dec2017

COLUMNS

MOB RULES

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TRANSCRIPTIONS

LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE (LIVE) Stevie Ray Vaughan

As heard on THE ESSENTIAL STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN AND DOUBLE TROUBLE Words and music by BUDDY GUY • Transcribed by JEFF PERRIN

Guitar is tuned down one half step (low to high, Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb). Bass tuning (low to high): Eb Ab Db Gb. All music sounds in the key of A, one half step lower than written. E¨9

E¨7 5fr

2 1333



7fr

1324

213

Intro (0:00) Moderately e = 160 N.C.(G¨)

 

9 9 * 11 9 11 11

9 11

1/2

9 11

9 11 9 6



20 20

9 9

9 11

9 9 11 9 11 11

9 11

N.C.(B¨7)

 6

Bass

8 6



9 6

Bass Fig. 1





 5 8











6 8 8 6



6 8

6 6

8 6



 





6 6 6





8 8

 6

6 6 6

986

6 6



E¨7





GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017



6 8

7

 6  5 6 8

6 7 7

my little girl alone N.C.(B¨7)







6 6 6

8 8

 6  8 8 G8  9  3   8 8 8

8 8

You better leave my little girl E¨9

let ring 18 18



6 6 6 5 6



6 6 6

You better leave 8

8 7

5 6 7







You better leave 6 6 6 5

8 6



E¨9

let ring 20 20

(F7)





9 6

1st Verse (0:17) You better leave (B¨7)

9 6

8 8 6

(B¨7) 1

(E¨7) 1



9 11 9 6

3 *Ring fingertip covers both strings.

Gtr.

5fr

21333

Gtr. (elec. w/clean tone, neck pickup)

7fr

213

B¨9

5fr

6 6 6

6 8

 



6 6 6

 



“LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE” WORDS AND MUSIC BY BUDDY GUY COPYRIGHT © 1965 MIC SHAU MUSIC COMPANY COPYRIGHT RENEWED. ALL RIGHTS ADMINISTERED BY BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT (US) LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC

“ LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE”

alone N.C.(B¨7)



1/2

 

1/4

Lord before I

8 8 7

 





N.C.(B¨7) 15



6 8





8 8 6

8 6

6 6

9 8

let ring

E¨9

 

0 6 6 6 5

and I

7







6 6 6

7 3

and do something wrong

 

 8

1/2

 

 





(B¨7)

6 6 9 6 6 9 6 9 6

(E¨7)



1/4

1/2

8



 20  20 



get evil man



F9 13

 6

 

8



1/2

1/4

9

8 6



let ring

6 7 8

8 7







end Bass Fig. 1 5 6 7

8 8

2nd Verse (1:11) You call my house B¨9

Gtr. 17 (trem. strum)

 5 6 5 



Bass plays Bass Fig. 1 simile (see bar 5)

just yesterday

 

E¨7

20 20

 6 5



 8

guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS

and I picked up the extension

B¨7 6

8 3

  



Why don’t you just go on

 

E¨9 21

6 6 6



20 20



 

 

6 6



and I heard every word you said

Man leave my little girl









6 6

6 3

alone N.C.(B¨7)







9 6

Lord before I get evil man



1/2

8 8 6



6 6 6 5

9 6

8 8 6

 

8 6

8 8 8 7

8

 



something N.C.(B¨7)

wrong 1





1/4

 





8 

8 7





N.C.(E¨7) 1

6 6



1/2





6 6

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017





 

8 3

Bass Bass Fill 1

Guitar Solo (2:05)

Gtr. 29

1/4

(E¨7)

(B¨7) 28



let ring

18 18

(w/overdrive pedal) (bridge pickup)





’cause I’m gonna do

E¨9 26



1/2

“ LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE”

(B¨7)

1/2

31 8



 10

Bass Fill 2 8



 6 6 6 10 10 8  

32 8





9



6 7 6

9 6



9

8 6

6 8

 

(trem. pick) 11 11

 





(B¨7)



11 11





9

3 3 3



(B¨7) 36 6

11 11 9

11 9 6

(F7)





6 6

8 7



6 9 6



6 6









 

(E¨7)

1/2

 



9

(E¨7)

6 8

1/2

(F7) 33







guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS

(2:41)

(B¨7) 37



(E¨7) 38







Gtr. (E¨7) 41 6 9

21 18









6 10

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

 10 3









1/4





1/4



8 3

7 3

6 6

1/2

Bass plays Bass Fill 1 (see bar 29)



Bass

Bass plays Bass Fill 2 (see bar 31)

Gtr. 40 21





(B¨7)



1/4

Gtr. 1 39

1/4







 9

“ LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE” Gtr. 42





(trem. strum) 9 9 11 11

4 6





9 11





1/2

Bass



(B¨7) 43

1/2



6 8



 



1/2

 











1/2 1

 3







6 6

1/4



(E¨7)

(trem. pick) 11



1/4

 

(F7) 8





guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS

(B¨7) 47





(F7) 1

6 6



(B¨7)



(E¨7)



8 7



3rd Verse (3:33) You better leave

You better leave my little girl

(B¨7)

Gtr. 49

6 6

alone

(E¨7)



6 6







20 20

 



6 6



Bass plays first eight bars of Bass Fig. 1 w/ad lib variation (see bar 5)

(B¨7) 51



  G8  8 G8

 

9 6

8 8 6

 

You better leave

(E¨9)

0 6 6 6 5



20 20





  

 

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

8 6



9 6

You better leave my little girl alone N.C.(B¨7)



8 8 6

8 6

8



8 6



6 6



6 9 6



9 6



“ LEAVE MY GIRL ALONE”

Lord before I get evil man Gtr. 57





Bass









X X

E¨9

6 4 4

’cause I’m gonna do something wrong

 20

(F7)





 

  6 



 

6 6 5



6 6

N.C.(B¨7) 3/4



1/4





6 8







1/4

9 6



 10



8 8 3









(trem. pick)

6 ! 







 

 





1/4

(B¨7) w/bar     8   8 8 8 ! G8 G8  G8   6 &6 6









(B7) (freely) (grad. reduce tempo)





1/4

 







6 6

 







guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS

THE WORLD IS YOURS Arch Enemy

As heard on WILL TO POWER Words and music by MICHAEL AMOTT and DANIEL ERLANDSSON • Transcribed by JEFF PERRIN

All guitars are tuned down two whole steps (low to high, C F B b Eb G C). Bass tuning (low to high): C F Bb Eb. All music sounds in the key of C minor, two whole steps lower than written. C5

D5 5fr

134

5fr

C#5

134

7fr

134

G#m

7fr

321

A5 5fr

C#sus4

4fr

321

C#m

6fr

311

4fr

5fr

234

10fr

231

E¨5

8fr

6fr

Intro (0:00, 1:02) Fast q = 185 N.C.(E5)

Gtrs. 1 and 2 (elec. w/dist.) Rhy. Fig. 1 P.M. 1





Bass

 

12 12 12 12



(play first time only)

12 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 15 15 15 15

(repeat previous bar)



P.M.

12 12 12 12



(play first time only)

Bass 5

12 12 12 12

Gtrs. 1 and 2 play Rhy. Fig. 1 (see bar 1)



15 15 15 15

13 13 13 13

 0

Fill 1 (1:10)

Gtr. 3 (elec. w/dist.)

 98

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017







10 !

“THE WORLD IS YOURS” WORDS AND MUSIC BY MICHAEL AMOTT AND DANIEL ERLANDSSON COPYRIGHT © 2017 SAVAGE MESSIAH SONGS ALL RIGHTS ADMINISTERED WORLDWIDE BY SONGS OF KOBALT MUSIC PUBLISHING ALL RIGHTS RESERVED USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC

“THE WORLD IS YOURS”

Gtr. 3 substitutes Fill 1 second time (see previous page) Gtr. 3 (elec. w/dist.) (doubled)

2nd time, skip ahead to

1st Guitar Solo (bar 45)

*w/bar

+1/2

N.H.

2.6

**pull up on bar -5 pitch: A

*Depress bar prior to picking note.

Gtrs. 1 and 2

13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13

12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12

11 11 11 11 11

Bass

B 9

P.M.

(0:10)

Gtrs. 1 and 2 Rhy. Fig. 2

 

P.M.

0 0 0

P.M.

0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0

Bass Bass Fig. 1

 

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

P.M.

end Rhy. Fig. 2

P.M.

 

into the light empire

P.M.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

P.M.

0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

the the

5 !

P.M.

to by

7 7 5

5 !

Sick of being told how to Built through the ages you C5 G5

P.M.

fade raised D5

8 7 5

5 5 3

light slain N.C.(E5) 15

and was G5

 10 !

0 0 0 0 0 0

Verses (0:21, 1:23)

Rise Every C5

end Bass Fig. 1 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

run can A5

your destroy

5 5 3

8 7 5

10 9 7

10 !

5 !





guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS Their

life

it N.C.(E5)

promise unleash 22

P.M.

so your rage D5

much



! D

7 7 5

0 0 0

status The present On your path G5





8 7 5



Gtr. 4 29



Gtr. 3

 146

 

P.M.

0 5 5 3

cage

and

8 7 5

 10 !



10 9 7





17 16 9 8



 10  9  7

10 9 7



walk



away

ultimate N.C.(E5)

P.M.

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

remains

P.M.

untouched

 0

If you want the world (G#5)



0 16 8

(A5)

16 8

12 4

14 6

16 14 8 6

4 4 4 4

  



 0

power

P.M.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

7 !

(B5) 16 8

P.M.

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

quo toward A5

Chorus (0:41, 1:44) (A5)

P.M.

8 7 5

Burn your golden

5 !



0 10

P.M.

N.C.(E5)

7 7 5

 5  5  3

P.M.

8 7 5

Empty words they Turn the page

they’re fools

day

P.M.

rules

 Use your



0 14 6

Gtrs. 1 and 2 Rhy. Fig. 3 P.M.

5 5 5 5

Bass

Bass Fig. 2

5 5 5 5

100

*repeat previous beat

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

7 7 7 7

     

4 4 4 4

  

5 5 5 5

     

“THE WORLD IS YOURS”

mind (A5)

 14 6

P.M.

 w/bar   16 ( 16) 16 14

14 6

16 8

17 9

8 !

  

Gtr. 4 37

14 6

Gtr. 3

16 8

17 9

16 8

If you

 17 9

E 45

 



6 4

 

strength (B5)





6 4

 4



6 4



Rise

really

14 6

16 8

17 9

0 16 8

6 4

 

from

within

the world

0 16 8

16 8

17 9

19 11

12 4



6 4

4 2

end Bass Fig. 2

 4



17 9

1st time, go back to A Intro (bar 1) 2nd time, skip ahead to F (bar 53)

yours C#5

14 6

6 4

end Rhy. Fig. 3

(A5)

16 8



16 8

13 6

(G#5)



want it (B5)

11 9

Bass plays Bass Fig. 2 (see bar 29)

(A5)



C#5

  14 14  6 6 13

12 4



Feel the N.C.(A5) Gtrs. 1 and 2 play Rhy. Fig. 3 (see bar 29)

13 6

Take control

(B5)

B5   14 14  14 6 6 6

14 6

1st Guitar Solo (1:13) (Loomis) N.C.(E5) Gtrs. 1 and 2 play Rhy. Fig. 2 twice (see bar 9)

Gtr. 3 22 22 22

20 22 20 19 17 19 20 20 20 19 20 19 17 16



17 19 19 19 17 19 17 16 16 17 17 17 16 17 13 12

Bass plays Bass Fig. 1 twice (see bar 9) 1½

22 ( 22)



   13 ( 13) 13 slight P.H.



 18

 17



(15)

*Point vibrato bar towards rear of guitar and “bounce” hand off bar to momentarily raise note pitch.

51 12 15

12 15

13 16



16 19

  13 13 12 10  12 12 13 ( 15) ** w/bar “flutter”

* “bounce” w/bar

16 19 16

** “Flick” bar to produce note “flutter” while performing legato rhythmic techniques with the fret hand.

Go back to

16 19

16 19 22 19 16

19 22

2nd verse (bar 13) 1½

19 22

 1



guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

101

TRANSCRIPTIONS

(2:04)

Gtr. 1 Rhy. Fig. 4 53 5 2



4 2

2 2

16 16 14 14

14 14



 /022 

Gtr. 3 Rhy. Fig. 4a 17 14

Gtr. 2 2 0







2 0



Bass Bass Fig. 3 5



4 2



 17  14

2 0

4 2

16 16 14 14

14 14





2 0



14 14



2 0

14 16 14

19 15

2 0

3 1



2 2



2 0

2 2

P.M.

2 0

2 2

2 0

Bass plays Bass Fig. 3 (see bar 53)

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

 1

17 14

17 16 14 14

5 3

3 1



3 1

P.M.

2 2

3 1

16 14

5 3



17 17

21 21

21 21 21 22 21

15 15

19 19

19 19 19 20 19





P.M.



 5  3

2 0





 17  15



4 2

Foaming F5

2 2

17 17



(E5)

P.M.

5 2



  3



P.M.

5 2



4 2



N.C.(F5)

 14 014

2 0



Bridge (2:15) the leash Striking at A5 Gtr. 1 plays Rhy. Fig. 4 (see bar 53) Gtr. 3 plays Rhy. Fig. 4a (see bar 53)

Gtr. 2 61

102

7 3



/022 

2 2



 "20 

2 0





 14 0 /14

A5 5 2

2 2

the

P.M.

3 1

5 3



mouth

P.M.

5 3

P.M.

5 3

P.M.

5 3

“THE WORLD IS YOURS”

No A5

subservice

Gtr. 1 65

 5 2

Gtr. 3 17 14

Gtr. 2

4 2





 /022 22  

2 2

16 16 14 14

14 14



P.M.

2 2

Justice N.C.(C5)

P.M.

2 2

 0 

14 14 14 14



P.M.

2 2

16 14

2 2



12 12

  10

(D5)





 7

Bass

 9

(E5)

15 14 14

14 14



9 99 9

9 9



9 9 9

5 5 5 5 5 5 9 9

12 10 10

5 55 5

 10 10  !

10 !



 ( 21 )



8 8 8 9

17 19 21

14 16 17

14 16



21 21

21 21 21 22 21

19 19

19 19 19 20 18

 4  2



12 12

12 14







 10

9 !

77070

10 10









9 999



 9 99 9



9 9 9 9 9 9 9

 21

1/2

19 19

17 17 17

 16 16

 6

0 8

 

1/2

17 19 21



15 15

 !

10 10 10 9

5 57 7

9 10

17 17

 5  3 3

1/2

10 10 12 14





9 999

2 2



Gtr. 4

P.M.



Interlude (2:25) done (F#5)

Gtr. 3 69 14

2 2

Bass 5

P.M.



  15

17 14

P.M.

 5  3

will

(B5)

7 7 6

14 14



 6 6 4 4



21 21

 17 17

 4 4

4 6 6 7 7

9 9 9 7

7 7 7 7

guitarworld.com 103 guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS

1/2

21 21 21

17 17 17

  19 !

 ! 16

 21

19 19

 17 17







16 16



14 14 14 13 13 13 11 11

6 6 6 6 6



14 14



11 11 11 11 13 13 14 14

 ! 24 ( 24)  1/2

 24

24 24





12 12

   13 13 !

 

7 7 7 7

!

7 7 11

11 11

*Drop-tuning (2:46) N.C.

*Gtr. 3 (w/sub-octave pedal and filter effects) Riff A 85 12 0 13 0 16 0 0 16 0 17

(end filter effect)

*On the recording, all guitars are tuned down two and one half steps for this section of the song. For live performance, the band employs a pitch shift or harmonizer effect to temporarily drop the guitar pitches down one half step lower.

(2:51)

so so

There was only There was only

N.C.(E5) Gtr. 3 plays Riff A (see bar 85)

you could take you could tolerate

much much

Gtrs. 1 and 2 89 P.M.

   

0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0

0 000 0 000 000

Bass 0 0 0

Gtr. 3 93 12

0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

When the bough 0 13 0

16 0

0 0 0

breaks

0 17

the

0 19 0

17 0

0 000 0 000 000

empire 15

0 13

0 12 12

Gtrs. 1 and 2 P.M.

0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0

Bass 0 0 0

104

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

 

will

 

   

“THE WORLD IS YOURS”

(3:07)

fall

Gtrs. 1 and 2 P.M. 97

 

Bass  0 101 7

P.M.



P.M.



P.M.

21 23 24 23

23 !

23 19 21 23 21

Gtr. 1 (strings arr. for clean elec.) Rhy. Fig. 5

5 6 7

7 8 9

4 4 6

Feel the A Gtr. 1 plays Rhy. Fig. 5 (see bar 105)

Gtr. 3 113



21 !

21 21 23 24 23

 

(end drop tuning)

P.M.



Take control C#sus4 C#m

23 !

21 19 21

21 !

21 19

21 20

0 0

7 8 9

7 6 6

5 6 6

from within A

G#m

5 6 7

rise

 18 !

5 6 7

 

  16 16  !

 16

Gtr. 2



Bass 11

P.M.

Use your mind

strength B

  14

P.M.



Breakdown (3:22) (w/half-time feel) (All guitars resume previous tuning, two whole steps down) whispered: If you want the world G#m A B A



P.M.



Gtr. 2 (piano arr. for clean elec.)

105

P.M.



P.M.



P.M.



P.M.

23 !



24 !

 guitarworld.com 105 guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS

If you really

want it

the

world

C#sus4

 117 17 17 !  Gtr. 3

(end half-time feel)

yours

14

14 !

21 !

 21 !

Gtr. 2 24

23 !



(w/dist.)

Gtr. 1

5 6 7

7 8 9

 

4 !

7 6 6

Bass 7

3rd Chorus (3:44) N.C.(E¨5)



18 17

15 14

Gtr. 3 Gtrs. 1 and 2 Rhy. Fig. 6

6 6 6 6

Bass

6 6 6 6

106

the world (D5)

17 15

14 12

     



(F5)

     

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

Take control 15

     

0 

 10

Use your



12 10

 

12 10

0 15 12

     

6 6 6 6

G5   15 15  12

12 10





6 6 6 6

  

5 5 5 5

  

5 5 5 5

(E¨5)

8 8 8 8



mind

P.M.

  

Bass Fig. 4



  

P.M.

If you want

(F5)

Gtr. 4 121

125

(w/dist.)

12 10

F5 

13 10

0 15 12

12 10

 

12 10



 10

end Rhy. Fig. 6 12 10

10 8

end Bass Fig. 4 10

“THE WORLD IS YOURS”

Feel the strength N.C.(E¨5) (D5) (F5) Gtrs. 1 and 2 play Rhy. Fig. 6 (see bar 121)



Gtr. 4 129 15 12 Gtr. 3

18 17

15 14



0 17

20 18

17 15





(F5)

18 17

15 14

0 17

13 15

10 12

N.C.(E¨5) (F5) (D5) Gtrs. 1 and 2 play Rhy. Fig. 6 twice (see bar 121)

 15

  T 1 20 20 !

0 0 15

2nd Guitar Solo (4:05) (Amott)

Gtr. 4

21 6



(E¨5)

 



Bass plays Bass Fig. 4 twice (see bar 121) 141

want it the world is

If you really (E¨5)

Bass plays Bass Fig. 4 (see bar 121)

yours G5

135

rise from within



N.C.(E¨5) 145

(F5) 15

11 11









1/2





18 17

18 18



7 15



17 15

19 15 17

22 19 22  15

17 15

 14 ! 15

(D5)

(E¨5)





18 18 18

(F5)

*w/harmonizer effect



13 13



(harmonizer off)

13 11 11

   

13 13 11 10

*Harmonizer set to produce additional pitches one octave higher and one octave lower than original pitch.

(F5) 150

11 10 11 10

13 11 10 11 10

12 10

10 8

10 9

6 !

Outro (4:26) E¨5

153

Gtr. 3 Riff B * 11 12



13 14

15 15

13 14



13 14

10 10

11 12

13 14

11 12



0 11 12

Riff B1 Gtr. 4 *Composite arrangement: Two guitars arr. for one system. Gtrs. 1 and 2 Rhy. Fig. 7 8 6

0 10 8

6 !

8 !

5 !

7 5

Bass



12 10

3 !

guitarworld.com 107 guitarworld.com

TRANSCRIPTIONS

“THE WORLD IS YOURS”

E¨5

 157 11 12

F5 11 12

13 14

15 15



13 14

G5 11 12

10 10

11 12



(let ring into next beat)

end Riff B

11 12

8 7

6 5

8 7

end Riff B1

0 8 6

6 !

8 !

10 8



E¨5 F5 Gtrs. 1 and 2 play Rhy. Fig. 7 (see bar 153) Gtr. 3 plays Riff B (see bar 153) Gtr. 4 plays Riff B1 (see bar 153)



*Gtrs. 5 and 6 (elec. w/dist.) 161 11 13 11 13



15 15

12 10

3 !

12 10



13 13

15 15

17 16



15 15

*Composite arrnagement: Two guitars arr. for one system.

Bass 6 !

8 !

E¨5

 165

Gtr. 6

5 !

 13  10 !



 10 ! 

3 !



*Gtrs. 5 and 6 1

15 18



15 18

 18





*Gtr. 3 doubles notes one octave lower.



Gtr. 5

 13  11 !

  11 ! 

* 10 13

10 13



10 13

 13





*Gtr. 4 doubles lower note bend one octave higher.



Gtrs. 1 and 2

6 !

8 !

8 6

10 8

12 10

3 !

12 10

Bass

108

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

 

12 10

 3

12 10



 

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TRANSCRIPTIONS

JUST WHAT I NEEDED The Cars

As heard on THE CARS Words and music by RIC OCASEK • Transcribed by JEFF PERRIN

7fr

1333

C#5

Esus4

G#5

7fr

9fr

4fr

7fr

234

231

4fr

134211

C#m

5fr

134211

E/B

5fr

9fr

7fr

134111

11333

Intro (0:00) Moderately q = 124

*Gtrs. 1 and 2 (elec. w/overdrive)



   





9 9 9 7

   

9 9 9 7



9 9 9 7





9 9 9 7

 

9 9 9 7

*Gtr. 1 (w/clean tone) plays bottom three notes only.

Gtr. 3 (elec. w/clean tone)



P.M.

  

      Bass

P.M.



9 9 7





   

P.M.

   



9 9 7



 

9 9 7



 

1st Verse (0:15) I

don’t mind you comin’ here B5

*Gtrs. 1 and 3 Rhy. Fig. 1

C#5

and wastin’ all my

time G#5

11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

6 4

P.M.

9 7

*Gtr. 3 plays bottom notes only.

Bass









9 7

       

      

’cause when you’re standin’ oh

near

E5 B5 Gtrs. 1 and 3 play Rhy. Fig. 1 twice (see bar 5)

P.M.

6 4

       

      

110

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017





6 4



6 4

G#5



6 4

kinda lose my mind

C#5



6 4

      

Gtr. 2

Bass Bass Fig. 1

6 4





       9

 

“JUST WHAT I NEEDED” WORDS AND MUSIC BY RIC OCASEK COPYRIGHT © 1978 LIDO MUSIC, INC. PUBLISHED WORLDWIDE BY LIDO MUSIC, INC. ALL RIGHTS CONTROLLED AND ADMINISTERED BY UNIVERSAL MUSIC CORP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED USED BY PERMISSION. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF HAL LEONARD LLC

“JUST WHAT I NEEDED”

(grad. increase tempo to q = 128) It’s not the perfume that you wear E5 B5

It’s not the ribbons

Gtr. 2 13 P.M. 9 7

9 7

11 7

9 7

11 7

9 7

9 11 9 7 7 7

9 7

9 11 7 7

in G#5

your

C#5

11 11 11 12 11 11 11 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

6 4

6 6 4

0 0

6 7 7 5

6 4

hair

Bass plays Bass Fig. 1 simile (see bar 9)

And I don’t mind you comin’ here E5

Esus4 E Esus4 E

Gtr. 2 17 let ring throughout 0 0 0 0 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 0 0

0 1 2 2

2 2

 9 7

8 9 9 7

 9 9 9 7

8 9 9 7

and wastin’ all my

 9 9 9 7

8 9 9 7

 8 9 96 7 4

7 8 9 9 7

 6 4

*Gtrs. 1 and 3

time

6 6 4

4 5 6 6 4

 6 6 4

6 6 4

4 5 6 6 4

6 7 7 5

6 6 6 6 4 4

C#5

 

P.M.

9 7

6 4

7 5

*Gtr. 3 plays bottom note only.

       

Bass 7

(0:46)

E5 B5 Gtr. 1 plays Rhy. Fig. 1 (see bar 5)

      

Gtr. 4 (synth arr. for elec. gtr. w/dist.) Riff A

 12 !



Gtr. 3

 12 !

12 9



Gtr. 2 9 7

C#5

G#5



P.M.

11 9 11 7 7 7

9 9 7

7 7 9





P.M.

9 7

13 !





(w/pick and fingers) 8 8 4

6 8

P.M.

9 7

9 11 7 7 7

9 7

11 11 11 12 11 11 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0

6 4



6 4

Bass 7

guitarworld.com guitarworld.com

111

TRANSCRIPTIONS

Gtr. 4 25 12



Gtr. 3





12 9



9 7 7





Gtr. 2

P.M.

9 9 7

9 11 9 11 7 9 7 7

9 7

9 9 7

7 7

9 7



C#5 12



P.M.



end Riff A

5 !





9 6 9

7 5 8

   5

5 4 6



P.M.

9 7

9 11 7 9 7

9 7

11 11 12 11 11 11 9 9 9 9 9 9 0

75

7 5

9 7

11 11 11 11 11 11 11 11 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9

7 5

Gtr. 1 P.M.

9 7

Bass 7

2nd and 3rd Verses (1:01, 2:04) don’t mind you hangin’ out 2. I 3. I don’t mind you comin’ here B E5 Gtr. 1 plays Rhy. Fig. 1 three times (see bar 5) Gtr. 3 plays Fill 1 on 3rd Verse (see below)

Gtr. 2 29

9 9 7 7



7 7 8 9 9 7



C#m



9 9 9 11 11 9



9 9 9 7 7







9 9 9 11 11 7



Fill 1 (2:03)

Gtr. 3

 112

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017





E5 16



  

talking in your wastin’ all my time G#



 yeah yeah





4 4 5 6 6 4

sleep time



4 4 5 6 6 4



C#m

7 7 8 9 9 7

 

as long as it was deep I kinda lose my mind

E/B

and and

(2.) It doesn’t matter where you’ve been (3.) ’cause when you’re standin’ oh so near

 



 X

4 2





“JUST WHAT I NEEDED”

wear it well that you wear B5

(2.) You always knew to (3.) It’s not the perfume

E5 Gtr. 4 plays Riff A (see bar 21) 37



9 7

9 11 7 7 7

9 9 7

9 7

P.M.

9 7

can tell I in your G#5

C#5

P.M.

you look so fancy It’s not the ribbons

and

9 11 9 7 7 7

hair

P.M.

9 7

9 10 7 8

11 11 11 12 9 9 9 9

11 11 11 9 9 0

6 4

*Omit chord second time.

I don’t mind you hangin’ out I don’t mind you comin’ here Esus4 E B E B

(2.) (3.)

Gtr. 2 let ring throughout 41 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0

1 2 2

7 7 8 9 9 7

2 2

7 7 8 9 9 7

9 9 7

9 9 9 7

9 9 7

and and

8 9 9 7

9 9 9 7

7 8 9 9 7

  0

5 6 6 4

 5 6 6 4

talkin’ in your wastin’ all my

5 6 6 4

 5 6 6 4

sleep time A5 *

5 6 6 4

7 7 5



P.M.

9 7

Chorus (1:31, 2:33) I



*Gtrs. 1 and 2 45 9 9 7

9 9 7

Fill 2 (2:47) Gtr. 3 (A5)



 

4 5 4

9 7



7 5 5

Gtr. 3

Bass    7 4 7

9 7

6 4

7 5

*Gtr. 1 plays bottom notes only.

  

9 7

guess you’re just what I needed (Just what I needed) guess you’re just what I needed (Just what I needed) A5 C#5 D5 E5

9 9 7

9 7

 

9 7

     

Bass

X X X X

*Notes played 2nd time only.

Gtr. 1

9 7

7 7 5



(C#5)

7 7 5



 5

  11 ! 11 11 11 11  1

11 11 11 11 X 9 9



9 9 7

5 !



1/2

9 11 9 9

9 9 7

9

7 9 7

7 5 5

C#5



11 11 11 11 X 9 9

next bar)    11 ! 11  

 5

 

7 7 5





(let ring into

 



 11

9 9 7



 

needed someone to feed





9 9 7

 

Bass Fill 1 (3:06)

(C#5)      5 6 5 6 5 6  5 6  6 4  4 4

guitarworld.com

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TRANSCRIPTIONS 2nd Chorus, go back to E Chorus (bar 45) 3rd time, skip ahead to G Outro (bar 61)

I E5



needed someone to bleed yeah 3rd time: Yeah A5 C#5 Gtr. 3 substitutes Fill 2 second time (see previous page)

9 9 7

9

Gtr. 3



7 5

7 9 7



0 

12 11

 11

11 9



12 11









1 1 

 

12 11

   

Gtr. 3





Gtr. 3

 

11 9

Gtr. 4 (elec. 1 w/dist.)

Bass

11 9

So bleed me

*Notes played first time only.

       

 

Substitute Bass Fill 1, third time (see previous page)





Guitar Solo (1:49) E5

Gtr. 3 1/2 53 7 7

C#5 1



G#5

5 6

  5

9 9 7

Gtr. 1

9 7



9 11 11 7 9 9

11 11 11 9 9 9

6 4

9 7

11 11 11 9 9 9

6 4



9 7



Bass Fig. 2



9 7



9 7



E5 B5 Gtr. 1 plays Rhy. Fig. 2 (see bar 53) 1

Rhy. Fig. 3 9 7 7

9 7 7

9 9 7

11 11

9 7

11 11

 

   4











P.M.

9 7

9 11 9 7 9 7

11 11 11 9 9 9

7 5

9 5

7 5

9 7

11 11 11 9 9 9

7 5



 





C#5



  7

9 7



9 7

GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

9 7

11 7



G#5 1

6 6

9 7





Bass plays Bass Fig. 2 (see bar 53)

114

 76

G#5

Rhy. Fig. 2

9 7

Bass

Gtr. 2

5 4

 

C#5

P.M.



Gtr. 3 57

4 6



Gtr. 2



 9 7

11 9

6 4

5 6 6 4

“JUST WHAT I NEEDED”

Go back to

E5 59

C#5

9 7 7



9 7

11 7

9 7

11 9

Gtr. 4 (synth arr. for gtr.) Riff B 1

 

G#5



 end Rhy.Fig. 3

7 7 5

11 11 11

1½

9 9

13 13





7 7 8 9 9 7



11 9

Bass plays Bass Fig. 2 (see bar 53)

Yeah B

Gtr. 4 69

 11  9 X

5 6 6 4

11 11 11

13 13



Gtr. 2

11 11 11



9 9 7 7

Gtr. 1



9 9 9 7 7



8 9 9 7



8 9 9 7

9 11 11 9

7 7 8 9 7 7



9 11 11 9

  X

 9  11  11  9 X

5 6 6 4

11 11 11



5 6 6 4

6 4

7 5

9 9 7

9 7

 

Bass 7

9 7

6 7

11 9

6 4

7 5

9 7



6 4

  & 7 7 5



  14 14 !

9 11 11 9



P.M.

9 7

7 7 5

C#m

11 11

9 11 11 9

 

6 !

You’re just what I needed A5

13 13

7 7 8 9 7 7

9 11 11 9

1½

9 9

C#5

You’re just what I needed You’re just what I needed A5

Yeah C#m



 5  6  &64 

yeah-yeah C#m

7 7 5

1½

Bass plays Bass Fig. 2 (see bar 53)

Gtr. 2 65 7 9 9 9 7 7

11 11

E B C#5 Gtr. 1 plays Rhy. Fig. 2 (see bar 53) Gtr. 4 plays Riff B (doubled) (see bar 61)

Outro (3:09) E5 B5 C#5 Gtr. 1 plays Rhy. Fig. 2 (see bar 53) Gtr. 2 plays Rhy. Fig. 3 (see bar 57)

14 13



11 11

9 7 7



3rd Verse (bar 29)

w/pick and fingers)



11 9



0 9 11 11 9



0 11 9



4 !

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115

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NEW GUITAR SOLOING BASICS by Jeff Clementi

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INSIDE THE COOLEST GUITAR STORES IN THE U.S.

CARTER VINTAGE GUITARS

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HERALDED AS “Nashville’s Friendliest Guitar Store,” Carter Vintage has certainly earned that reputation in spades. This 8,000-square-foot shop is not only incredibly inviting (with great benches and private rooms) but the collection of guitars is downright jaw-dropping. During my last visit, I chatted with the staff while Pete Townshend strummed guitars only steps away. Yes, Carter’s is a must-visit. NUMBER OF INSTRUMENTS CURRENTLY IN THE SHOP Walter Carter (Owner): Counting amps, around 1,600 pieces. COOLEST INSTRUMENT CURRENTLY IN THE SHOP A 1967 Martin 00-21 with Merle Haggard’s name inlaid on the fingerboard. It’s the guitar on the cover of his 1969 Jimmie Rodgers tribute album, Same Train, a Different Time. FAVORITE INSTRUMENT YOU EVER SOLD The very first cherry sunburst Les Paul Standard. We got it from the original owner and sold it to a collector. MOST EXPENSIVE INSTRUMENT YOU EVER SOLD We can’t tell you who we sold the first ’burst to, or for how much, but we listed it at $625,000. MOST SOUGHT-AFTER INSTRUMENT BY CUSTOMERS Everyone has different tastes. We have customers looking for the holy grail in every genre—sunburst Les Paul, blackguard Telecaster, Loar-signed Gibson F-5 mandolin, pre-war Gibson flat-head banjo or pre-war Martin D-45. We’re always on the lookout for all of those models.

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GU I TA R WOR L D • DECEM BER 2017

BIGGEST PET PEEVE AS A SHOP OWNER We have the same issues with manufacturers, customers, employees, etc., that every other brick-and-mortar store has—but it’s really hard to complain. We still look forward to coming into the store every day. FAVORITE CELEBRITY ENCOUNTER Because of our location in Nashville, we have lots of celebrities in the store. Without exception, they have been normal people who wanted to check out some guitars, and that’s the way we treat them. Kevin Costner sat on a bench in the showroom and played acoustic guitars for 20 minutes without anyone giving him a second glance. Justin Bieber didn’t draw a crowd until he sent out an Instagram letting his fans know he was in the store. Carlos Santana asked us if he could get a picture of himself in front of one of our wall murals. It’s hard to top that. It’s always a special moment when someone like Pete Townshend grabs a Sixties J-200 off the wall and plays the lick from “Pinball Wizard” and then buys the guitar. Any time a great player picks up an instrument, something special is going to happen. One of our favorites is the impromptu YouTube video Brian Setzer did on a 1941 L-5, which now has over 360,000 views. STRANGEST REQUEST FROM A CUSTOMER The first one that comes to mind was a guy who wanted a Calton case with a hot pink sparkle finish. We were able to fill that request. MOST COMMON SONG OR RIFF WHEN TRYING GUITARS “Stairway to Heaven” is making a comeback, and we hear “Sweet Child O’ Mine” a lot. The banjo players inevitably play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Mandolin is more interesting. The bluegrassers are partial to Bill Monroe’s “Jerusalem Ridge.” The Chris Thile disciples will play Bach’s “Cello Suite No. 1,” and the simply curious will hit the lick from Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road.” Fortunately, there’s enough variety for us to keep our sanity.

by Eric Feldman, guitarshoptees.com

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