90 0

JOHN RENBOURN RETRO ROCKER POWER PLAY

MAY 2019

F E AT U R I NG

ACOUSTASONIC
FIRST REVIE W
HOLY GR AIL
TELECASTERS
PROTOT YPES
& R ARITIES
PICKUPS & MODS
ESSENTIAL
RECORDINGS
RECORDIN GS

FINISHES
THE CUSTOM

M SH L
COLOUR STORY
P78

New 20-watters
with Plexi and
JCM800 tones!
DE
SI

S
IN

CT
FE
EF

KENNY BURRELL
IN
IG
OR
 Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA
Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk

Store Of Memories
This issue’s celebration of the Telecaster (see p56) took me back
to the first few times I ever ventured into a guitar shop, many
years ago, as a complete beginner. I grew up in Lowestoft, in
East Anglia, and our town’s music shop was Morlings. Sadly, it
closed in 2012, after a 120 years of serving the town’s musicians
– a casualty of changing times on the high street. Back when
I was a teen, though, the place was always full of customers on
a Saturday morning. Foremost in my mind is the glorious smell
of guitars that filled the shop’s upper floor. There was a stand of Fender combos
with red knobs, then the hot new look. And on the walls, guitars that I coveted
without really even knowing why. There was a pewter-coloured Eric Clapton
Strat with Lace Sensor pickups that was king of the hill in terms of price. And
beside it was a Tele, which I would now recognise as a Blackguard reissue, with
a curious sort of custard-yellow finish and that silver-finish neck pickup.
I didn’t know enough to understand why the Tele had a unique pickup,
but it set it apart somehow and caught my imagination. From such details,
obsessions grow. The sales assistant, whose name was Phil, always seemed
to have a Tele in his lap, too: except for some reason he plumped for the
then-new HMT Thinline Telecaster with a Floyd Rose – and proceeded to
play jazz on it! It seemed like it spent more time in his hands than on sale,
but the sound of that music drifting down the stairs always drew me up to
the top floor to ogle the guitars. So I guess that Tele paid its keep, too.
These days, it’s much easier to buy guitars over the internet – but no web
store will stick in your mind as the setting for the earliest days of a love affair
with the guitar like that shop did. I guess it’s a timely reminder to support your
local bricks-and-mortar guitar shop whenever you can, so today’s newcomers
have a chance to start their journey into guitar with memories that will linger
with them the rest of their lives. Enjoy the issue and see you next month.

Jamie Dickson Editor

Editor’s Highlights
John Renbourn Marshall Magic Custom Colours
Fingerstyle virtuoso Clive If you love the sound of a Plexi Ever wondered what causes
Carroll remembers his friend but the full-size original is too lacquer checking or what the
and mentor, the late, great much of a monster, you should rarest Fender Custom finishes
John Renbourn, and reflects check out Marshall’s new small- are? Join Rod Brakes for a
on his musical legacy p48 but-potent Studio amps p20 colourful history lesson... p78

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 3

 Future Publishing Limited, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA
Telephone 01225 442244 Email guitarist@futurenet.com Online www.guitarist.co.uk

EDITORIAL
Editor-In-Chief
Jamie Dickson
Art Editor jamie.dickson@futurenet.com
Reviews Editor
Darren Phillips Dave Burrluck
darren.phillips@futurenet.com Deputy Editor dave@daveburrluck.com

David Mead
Managing Editor david.mead@futurenet.com
Senior Music Editor
Lucy Rice Jason Sidwell
lucy.rice@futurenet.com Content Director, Music jason.sidwell@futurenet.com

Scott Rowley
scott.rowley@futurenet.com

Contributors
Richard Barrett, Rod Brakes, Adrian Clark, Trevor Curwen,
Adam Goldsmith, Nick Guppy, Phil Hilborne, Martin Holmes, Richard Hood, Rob Laing,
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In-House Photography
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Contents

cover photography by
Neil Godwin

COVER FEATURE
70 YEARS OF
THE TELECASTER

56 From the single-pickup

Esquire to the latest
Acoustasonic incarnation, join
us as we trace the evolution
of the Fender Telecaster – the
first solidbody electric guitar
and an ageless classic

6 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 Contents

ISSUE 445 MAY 2019

REGULARS
028 ......... The Lineup
030 ......... Gas Supply
032 ......... Opinion
036 ......... Substitute
038 ......... Feedback
040 ......... Competition
UBSCRI
042 ......... New Music
& RECEIV E A
044 ......... One For The Road BLACKSTAR
046 ......... Backtracking PEDAL
114 ......... Subscribe WORTH £59
122 ......... Tone Makers See p114 for details
123 ......... Board Games
130 ......... Longterm Test
134 ......... The Mod Squad
138 ......... Pickup Lines
140 ......... Classic Gear
152 ......... Reader Ads
154 ......... Next Month

FEATURES
048 ......... John Renbourn
056 ......... 70 Years Of The Telecaster
078 ......... Fender Finishes: The Custom Colour Story
084 ......... The Darkness
124 ......... Workshop: Origin Effects

NEW GEAR
010 .......... Gretsch G5655TG Electromatic
Center Block Jr
014 .......... Eastman DT30 GACE
020 .......... Marshall Studio Vintage &
Studio Classic Combos
026 .......... Belvoir ‘Tess’ Custom
090 .......... Fender American Acoustasonic
Series Telecaster
100 .......... Shergold Provocateur SP01-SD & SP02-SD
110 .......... Headrush Gigboard
116 .......... Mad Professor Loud’n Proud
118 .......... Wampler Fuzzstration
120 .......... Boss DC-2W Dimension C

TECHNIQUES
142 .......... Phil Hilborne on Kenny Burrell
146 .......... Blues Headlines with Richard Barrett

VIDEO & AUDIO

To enjoy all of the video and audio
content in this issue, type the
following link into your browser and
follow the instructions in the post
entitled ‘Guitarist video and audio’:
http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 7

 f i r st p l ay

GRETSCH G5655TG
ELECTROMATIC CENTER
BLOCK JR
£859

WHAT IS IT? A modern-voiced

retro rocker destined to snag
Les Paul and 335 punters

Orange
Crush
Typecast by rock ’n’ roll folklore, the kings
of rockabilly guitar pull out the stops to hook
the quiff-less with a compact semi that’s
more modern rocker than 50s throwback
Words Ed Mitchell Photography Phil Barker

henever we’re presented with

W a new Gretsch guitar to review,

we always remind the reader
that these things aren’t just for rockabillies.
This is closely followed by the obligatory
wheeling out of non-rockabilly Gretsch
icons such as Small Faces and Humble Pie
genius Steve Marriott, Quadrophenia-era
Pete Townshend and, of course, the late
AC/DC rhythm king, Malcolm Young. It’s
a weird caveat for any brand, but then, like
Rickenbacker, Gretsch still appears sealed
inside certain genres like a fly in amber.
While Gretsch has embraced its 50s rock
’n’ roll and 60s Beatlemania heritage, it has
produced many models that distil classic
features into more modern packages. Stuff
like the Power Jets, and the recent hardtail
BT variants, look like something Beatle
George might have picked up in early 60s
Hamburg yet have enough grunt to satisfy
the rock and metal crowd.
The latest poster child for the ‘Gretsch
is for everyone, not just for rockabillies’
campaign is the affordable Chinese-built
G5655TG Electromatic Center Block Jr.
Your blueprint wolf in a zoot suit.

10 GUITARIST MAY 2019

This Electromatic isn’t hollow
like a G6120, or chambered
like a Duo Jet. As its model
name suggests, the G5655TG
has a semi-hollow body with
a feedback-busting spruce
centre block. It’s more like a
Gibson ES-335 vibe, then…

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 11

first play GRETSCH G5655TG ELECTROMATIC CENTER BLOCK JR VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

1 2

1. Given the pressures to The new guitar’s spec sheet opens in

look for alternatives to classic fashion with a body pressed from
beleaguered rosewood
sources, Gretsch has
sheets of laminated maple. Those fluent in
spec’d laurel for the the language of Gretsch will also recognise
G5655TG’s 305mm the iconic metal G-Arrow control knobs,
(12-inch) radius licensed Bigsby B70 True Vibrato, and
fingerboard. It looks and
plays great. You might the ‘Neo-Classic’ thumbnail fingerboard
not have noticed the inlays, the latter first seen on the 1958
substitution if we hadn’t G6120 and Duo Jet models. Other familiar
mentioned it
features include the set maple neck, 625mm In other timber-related news, the 2. No brothel creepers
(24.6-inch) scale length, master volume fingerboard looks like rosewood. It isn’t. required. Yes, the
G5655TG looks like a
control, not to mention that beautiful The G5655TG’s 22-fret 305mm (12-inch) rockabilly dreamboat,
Orange Stain finish and gold scratchplate. radius digit interface is actually hewn from but the Broad’Tron
Ironically, the big news here is the a slice of laurel. You’ll be seeing a lot more of pups offer a wider
G5655TG’s diminutive dimensions. It might this timber in the sub-£1,000 guitar sector, range of tones than
that Orange Stain finish
look like your classic G6120, at first glance especially at a time when rosewood is might suggest. Country,
at least, but this ‘Junior’ guitar handles more enjoying a much-needed rest. blues, classic rock, even
like a Duo Jet. In fact, the G5655TG comes metal – all musical food
groups are catered for
in at less than half the depth of a typical Feel & Sounds
Gretsch hollowbody. It’s not fully hollow, Unless you’re married to your 50s baseball 3. The G5655TG might
either. As a member of the brand’s Center bats or 80s shred-friendly lollipop sticks, have a modern voice,
Block gang, this little guy has a chunk the G5655TG’s slim C neck profile should but it still has that most
Gretsch of accessories:
of spruce running up its middle, deftly greet most of you as an old friend. Plus, in a Bigsby. This is the
chambered to provide some weight relief. a pun you must have feared was coming licensed version of the
merely one paragraph ago, the laurel wood classic B7 True Vibrato,
paired here with an
The tonal palette is gravy rich, fingerboard feels, well, hardy. There’s an anchored six-saddle
agreeable percussive feel to this lesser- Adjusto-Matic bridge
but there’s still bags of definition, spotted timber.
no doubt fuelled by the spruce- We haven’t mentioned the pickups yet.
The G5655TG comes loaded with a pair
core laminated maple body of Broad’Tron humbuckers. Wired to a

12 GUITARIST MAY 2019


dedicated volume control apiece, a master
tone, and the famous Gretsch master
volume, these pups are not designed to
make you sound just like Eddie Cochran.
The Broad’Tron has more of a fat modern
tone with an output that overdrive and
distortion circuits will love to gobble up.
You still get some trademark Gretsch
twang in tandem with a sopping wet reverb.
Crank up the filth on the bridge unit,
however, and a punchy modern rock tone
reveals itself. That definition is maintained
even when you dial down the master volume
control thanks to a treble bleed function.
The middle position adds some warmth,
as you would expect. This, and the neck
position, are where you want to be for blues
and jazz stuff. The tonal palette is gravy
rich, but there’s still bags of definition, no
doubt fuelled by the spruce-core laminated
maple body. That robust foundation
also allows you to go high-gain without
GRETSCH G5655TG ELECTROMATIC CENTER BLOCK JR first play
GRETSCH G5655TG
ELECTROMATIC
CENTER BLOCK JR
PRICE: £859
ORIGIN: China
TYPE: Single-cutaway semi-acoustic
electric guitar
BODY: Laminated maple with
chambered spruce centre block
NECK: Maple, glued-in
SCALE LENGTH: 625mm (24.6”)
NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech
NuBone/43mm
FINGERBOARD: Laurel, 305mm (12”)
radius
FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
HARDWARE: Gold Licensed Bigsby
B70 True Vibrato, Adjusto-Matic
anchored six-saddle bridge,
die-cast tuners
STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 54mm
ELECTRICS: 2x Black Top Broad’Tron
The pickups are wired through a humbuckers, master volume,
dedicated volume control apiece, a 2x volume, master tone, 3-way pickup
master tone and a three-way selector
selector toggle switch
toggle switch. The classic master
volume has a treble bleed to maintain WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.5/7.11
top-end clarity as you turn it down OPTIONS: No
RANGE OPTIONS: Limited Edition
G5655TG Electromatic Center Block
incurring the wrath of the feedback demon. Jr in Snow Crest White (£839)
Who knows, extreme metal with a Bigsby LEFT-HANDERS: No
whammy might just catch on… FINISHES: Orange Stain (as reviewed),
Azure Metallic, Cadillac Green
Verdict
Couple of things. The G5655TG is proof Fender Musical Instruments EMEA
that Gretsch absolutely owns build and 01342 331700
finish quality in the sub-grand guitar www.gretschguitars.com
market. This thing is flawless. In fact, we’ll
go as far as saying it’s getting tougher to
distinguish the Electromatic stuff from the
Japanese Professional Series models.
Also, yes, this is a Gretsch for just about
everyone. If you’re onboard with the retro
9
looks, then we reckon you’ll get the tone you PROS While you get all the Gretsch
want from the Broad’Tron pickups. eye candy you can handle here, the
To sum up, then. You get killer playability G5655TG offers a wider tonal range
and tone in a scaled-down affordable than its illustrious ancestors
package with lashings of eye-popping
Gretsch curb appeal. What’s not to love? CONS The Broad’Tron pups might
There’s every chance our little orange crush not please the old-school crowd,
could be your next big squeeze. but there are plenty of other
Gretsch guitars for those guys
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 13
 f i r st p l ay

EASTMAN DT30 GACE

£2,650

WHAT IS IT? A Grand Auditorium

electro-acoustic with a double
Sitka spruce and Nomex top

Doubling Up
Eastman has grabbed the double top concept from the
world of classical guitar luthiery and delivered some
intriguing results. Is it going to change the world?

Words David Mead Photography Olly Curtis

aking a quick poll around the Guitarist

T office confirms that we’ve liked –

loved, even – virtually every Eastman
guitar we’ve seen. The China-based company
has been making waves throughout the
industry with its solidbody single-cut models,
with the SB59/v in particular causing some
heart palpitations in this vicinity. But making
electric instruments using classic old-school
technique to breathtaking effect isn’t the
only trick up its sleeves – this acoustic Grand
Auditorium looks set to win the guitar
world’s hearts and minds as well.
The first thing to look at is the whole
‘double top’ concept. Explained in more
detail elsewhere in this review (see Double
Top Theory, p17), in layman’s terms this
means that the top of the guitar is basically
a Sitka spruce sandwich with some very
clever space-age material called Nomex
as the filling. Obviously, the soundboard of
an acoustic guitar is a large part of its tone-
shaping voice and so any goings on in this
area are going to form the heartbeat of the
instrument’s very being. We’ll find out what
effect this particular innovation has had in a
few minutes, but, for now, we’ll consider the
other components that have gone into the
construction of this rather fabulous beast.
Back and sides are rosewood and we notice
that there is a CITES certificate number
inside the glove compartment of the DT30’s
hard case. This should give the end user
a reassuring hug from Eastman in these
uncertain times regarding wood legality.
Moving onto the neck, Eastman has chosen

14 GUITARIST MAY 2019

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 15
first play EASTMAN DT30 GACE
1 2
1. A 45mm bone nut, ebony
fretboard and one of
Eastman’s mysteriously
titled ‘Hallelujah Inlays’
2. The controls for the
onboard LR Baggs
Anthem pickup system
are neatly stowed in the
guitar’s soundhole
3. The back and sides are
rosewood and Eastman
has thoughtfully provided
a CITES certificate
number for the new
owner’s peace of mind
Close your eyes and
you’d swear you were
holding a vintage
D-28… The dynamic
range is stunning
16 GUITARIST MAY 2019
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
one-piece Honduran mahogany, famed
3 as a traditional timber and all round tonal
asset to an instrument’s overall soundprint.
Just at the base of the headstock on the rear
of the neck there’s a volute, which some
luthiers regard as something of a vestigial
tail, added originally to add strength to
the weak part of the neck, but regarded
nowadays as more an ornamental device.
Whatever – it’s an attractive nod to the
tradition and a welcome addition in this
writer’s cosy little acoustic world.
Tuners are Gotoh’s SG301s that line up
around the rosewood fronted headstock.
Ebony is the choice for the fingerboard,
festooned by what Eastman mysteriously
refers to as being ‘Pearl Hallelujah Inlays’
in all the usual places. Other accoutrements
include a bone nut and saddle, an ebony
bridge and flamed maple bindings. Visually,
it’s a stunner with workmanship inside and
out, well in keeping with what we’ve seen
from Eastman so far.

As if things couldn’t get any better, there’s
an LR Baggs Anthem system fitted in the
name of stage readiness. This system is
rapidly becoming the go-to amplification
enabler for some of the top hand builders,
adding exactly the right combination of
girth and airiness to an acoustic’s amplified
sound. We await to hear what it can do
for the DT30 when we fire up our AER
Compact 60 a little later on. But first of all,
we had better check out what it sounds
like au naturel.
Feel & Sounds
Picking up the DT30, you notice the slight
late-50s Les Paul feel to the neck. It’s on the
right side of chunky and sits in the hand
like it was meant to be there. Some players
feel a little out of their depth with a wider
45mm (1.75-inch) nut width, but here you
honestly wouldn’t notice, such is the fine
balance between neck width and depth.
The body sits comfortably on the lap –
A one-piece Honduran
mahogany neck adds
additional tonal thrust
to the Eastman DT30
there’s no second strap peg to test a more
vertical playing position, but nothing here
suggests that you’d be in for anything other
than a comfortable ride should standing up
be your thing.
Everything is in fine fettle, but you’re
probably as eager as we were to find out
what difference that space-age technology
in the soundboard has made to the DT30’s
soundscape. We approached it without
making any presumptions at all and were
very pleasantly surprised. The double
top has added some weight, volume
and sonority into the picture and first
impressions are that the Eastman sounds a
little more like a really good dreadnought.
Close your eyes and you’d swear you were
holding a good vintage D-28. The sound is
rich without being muddy, and the dynamic
range on offer is really quite stunning.
Strummed quietly, there’s no downturn
in terms of tone – some acoustics tend
to wimp out a little if played pianissimo,
EASTMAN DT30 GACE first play
DOUBLE TOP THEORY
We asked Pepijn ’t Hart from Eastman
Europe to give us the lowdown on the
double top concept: “The Double Top
project started two years ago after a visit
from renowned US classical guitar builder
Kenny Hill,” he tells us. “He has done many
double tops on his classical signature
series. What is a double top? Two very thin
layers of Sitka spruce and in the middle
a honeycomb core of Nomex, vacuum-
pressed to one top. Nomex is a paper-thin
material that comes from NASA technology.
The top is 30 per cent lighter than a regular
guitar top and when we started this project
I still remember sitting in the workshop
playing two visually identical guitars and
the difference in sound just blew my mind.
One had an Adirondack top, the other
one the Double Top. It’s like it doubles
the energy you put into it!”
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 17
first play EASTMAN DT30 GACE
With all of the tonal
colours here, in the
right player’s hands,
this guitar could
paint masterpieces
becoming thin and tinny. Not so here; even
at a whisper the DT30 retains its sweetness.
At the other end of the spectrum, the
voice is full and hearty with just a taste
of compression in the mix. It sounds
‘produced’, never becoming raucous,
impolite or ungainly, but with more than
enough power for those exuberantly
boisterous moments on stage.
Another thing we notice is what a rich
range of tone there is available here: played
closer to the bridge, the strings shimmer
with rich, airy trebles; played more towards
the neck, everything mellows down nicely.
Plugged in to our AER Compact 60, the
LR Baggs Anthem springs into life losing
18 GUITARIST MAY 2019
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
The volute at the base
of the headstock is a
nod to acoustic guitar
building tradition
EASTMAN DT30
GACE
PRICE: £2,650 (inc hardshell case)
ORIGIN: China
TYPE: Grand Auditorium
electro-acoustic
TOP: Sitka spruce/Nomex double top
BACK/SIDES: Rosewood
MAX RIM DEPTH: 110mm
MAX BODY WIDTH: 400mm
NECK: Honduran mahogany
SCALE LENGTH: 650mm (25.5”)
TUNERS: Gotoh SG301
NUT/WIDTH: Bone/44.45mm
FINGERBOARD: Ebony
FRETS: 20, medium
BRIDGE/SPACING: Ebony/58mm
ELECTRICS: LR Baggs Anthem
WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.3/5
OPTIONS: None
RANGE OPTIONS: The Double Top
Range includes the DT30 D
(dreadnought) and DT30 OM
(Orchestra Model), both £2,199
nothing of the Eastman’s acoustic charm
along the way. We doubt that any recording
LEFT-HANDERS: Yes (custom
order only)
engineer – or front of house sound person FINISH: Nitrocellulose (as reviewed)
– would have to work too hard to secure
the player an excellent live sound from Eastman Musical Instruments
the DT30. Even without adjusting the Europe BV
onboard preamp controls and with the EQ +31 (0)36 5404478
on the AER set perfectly flat, the sound is www.eastmanguitars.com
transparent and rich.
Verdict
We mustn’t forget that this is a brand-new
guitar and the ageing process is going
to mature the tone as the years roll by. It
will be interesting to see how time affects
the double top, but there’s nothing to
suggest that it won’t open up like any
other acoustic instrument. As with many
instruments that offer us an all too short
flirtation as they pass us by, we’d like to
9
meet this guitar in a few years and see what PROS An innovative instrument
stories it can tell us then. With all of the from a company destined to
tonal colours available here, we suspect become a giant killer in the industry
that, in the right player’s hands, this guitar
could paint masterpieces. CONS Hardly anything at all –
we were charmed off our feet!
first play MARSHALL STUDIO VINTAGE & STUDIO CLASSIC COMBOS

20 GUITARIST MAY 2019

VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
f i r st p l ay

MARSHALL STUDIO
VINTAGE 1X10 COMBO
£999

WHAT IS IT? This downsized

twin-channel EL34-powered
20-watter is a stack-in-box,
inspired by the 1959 Super Lead

MARSHALL STUDIO
CLASSIC 1X10 COMBO
£999

WHAT IS IT? Again, EL34-

powered with a 20-watt output,
this replicates the classic 80s
Marshall grunt, inspired by the
later 2203 JCM800

Shrunken
Treasure
Marshall’s new Studio range adds affordable
portability to its classic formats. But can a 1x10
combo match the might of a stack?

Words Nick Guppy Photography Phil Barker

n an industry where the word ‘icon’ is

I frequently overused, there’s no doubt

that a Marshall head on top of a pair
of 4x12 speaker cabinets is as much a rock
guitar icon as the Les Paul or Stratocaster.
These days, however, modern innovations
such as quiet stages, in-ear monitoring and,
ahem, health and safety have made the
stack something to be seen more often than

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 21

first play MARSHALL STUDIO VINTAGE & STUDIO CLASSIC COMBOS
1. The Studio Vintage’s two
parallel channels are
heard. Marshall’s answer to this trend is
three slightly more sensible scaled-down
best mixed by linking
them with a patch lead versions of its most famous monster stacks.
Announced at Winter NAMM 2019, the
across the input jacks
new Studio range features 20-watt head
2. Both combos feature a
three-position standby
and 1x10 combo versions of the Super
Lead ‘Plexi’ and JCM800 amps, with a
switch offering a choice
of 20 watts or five watts’ relaunch for the Mini Jubilee 20-watt
output power head and 1x12-inch combo, which together
cover just about every classic Marshall
tone you’re ever likely to need. Here,
we’re looking at the two new combos: the
Studio Vintage and Studio Classic, inspired
respectively by the 1959 Super Lead and
2203 JCM800.
2 Made in Marshall’s famous Bletchley
factory, both combos are powered by a
pair of EL34s and styled to look just like
the originals with tough ply cabinets and
period-correct vinyl. The electronics live
in a solid steel chassis. Marshall’s typically
neat PCB layout features one main board
holding all the valve bases, with smaller
ones for front- and rear-panel components,
linked by ribbon cables terminated with
Molex connectors. Smaller-than-usual
transformers keep the weight down.
The Studio Vintage combo has top-
facing controls on a dark gold plexiglass
control panel that – together with other
22 GUITARIST MAY 2019
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
The Studio Vintage
cops the Super Lead
vibe very accurately,
with a sparkling
treble, fast attack and
snappy bass response
– every note is heard
details like the gold piping, small logo and
expanded metal mesh vent – authentically
evoke the look of an original 1959 Super
Lead. Next, the Studio Classic has the full-
width front-facing gold aluminium control
panel, black grille cloth and white logo
of the JCM800. They’re quite portable,
easily carried in one hand, with compact
dimensions that will fit on any size of stage.
Common to both is a 20-watt power
stage using a pair of EL34s and a single
10-inch Celestion V-type loudspeaker,
with a comprehensive array of speaker
outlets, a fixed-level line out and a simple
series effects loop that can be turned
off with a small push-button switch.
A three-way standby switch offers a
choice of either the full 20-watt output
 MARSHALL STUDIO VINTAGE & STUDIO CLASSIC COMBOS first play

or a reduced-power five-watt option. The
front panel controls are the same as the
original designs: the Studio Vintage has
two differently voiced non-footswitchable
channels called High Treble and Normal,
each with a pair of high- and low-sensitivity
input jacks and a volume control, feeding
a shared bass, mid and treble EQ with a
master presence control. Meanwhile, the
Studio Classic offers a single pair of high-
and low-sensitivity jack sockets, with a
preamp gain and master volume, feeding
a similar EQ/presence section.
with the controls maxed out, and using a 3. Both combos are loaded
guitar with beefy humbuckers helps things with a 10-inch Celestion
V-Type loudspeaker –
along nicely. Overall, the Studio Vintage it’s a great choice for
cops the Super Lead vibe very accurately, classic rock sounds
with a sparkling treble, fast attack and
snappy bass response that ensures every
note is heard. It’s also a great platform for
pedals, with a simple series loop that can be
defeated if it isn’t needed.
Marshall’s early master volume amps
cascaded the Super Lead’s two channels
in series as a starting point, adding extra
distortion controlled by preamp gain and

Sounds
Sonically, both amps sit in the eras you’d
associate with them. The Studio Vintage’s
Normal channel is fat and warm, while the
High Treble channel does exactly what
it says on the tin, with a sharp, aggressive
high-frequency response. Neither channel
is particularly versatile on its own, but the
trick with this type of amp is to link both
channel inputs with a short patch cable.
Used like this, the channel volumes become
the primary tone controls and it’s easy to
dial in a perfect balance that can be fine-
tuned to taste with the regular tone knobs.
While the Super Lead was never a high-
gain amp, you can get a respectable crunch

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 23

first play MARSHALL STUDIO VINTAGE & STUDIO CLASSIC COMBOS VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

4. Both combos feature a

fixed level line out and
The Studio Classic has the
a series effects loop
with a defeat switch
characteristic midrange JCM800
grunt, although it’s been
tamed a little, with a slightly
sweeter distortion
master volume knobs. Following the end
of the infamous Rose-Morris distribution
deal, the early Master Volume heads got a
redesign, resulting in the JCM800 series
that dominated world stages throughout
the 80s. The JCM800 amps were more
aggressive than their direct ancestors,
with various modifications that added up
to a distinct tone: edgier and with an even
faster attack than the Super Lead, not to
mention a brutal overdrive that kept note
definition all the way up to 11.
The Studio Classic has the
characteristic midrange JCM800 grunt,
although it’s been tamed a little, with a
slightly sweeter distortion. While single
coils sound good, the Classic really needs
a beefy humbucker to pull the most
exciting sounds from it: classic pickups
such as Seymour Duncan’s SH-4 JB or
DiMarzio’s Super Distortion love to work
with these amps and provide the perfect
front-end push. Pedallists will be pleased
to know they can have all the headroom
in the world simply by plugging into the
Studio Classic’s low-gain input socket, or
the switchable fixed-level series effects
loop. Both amps may be rated at 20 watts,
but Marshall watts have somehow always
been louder and both combos produce

24 GUITARIST MAY 2019


plenty of power to handle small to medium
gigs. Even on the five-watt setting, there’s
more volume here than some 20-watt
amps we’ve tried.
Verdict
We think Marshall’s new Studio combos
are ideal weapons for gigging guitarists
who hanker after big-stack tone combined
with portability and (slightly) more
sensible volume levels. As both amps have
a lot of clean headroom when needed,
they’re also ideal partners for pedalboards,
while the slightly compressed frequency
range of the 10-inch loudspeaker makes
them easy to mic up in the studio. Here,
the lower five-watt power option makes it
easier to wind these amps up to what Billy
Gibbons calls “patent pending” levels and
get some sizzling hot Marshall tone onto
your next single. The line out and effects
loop are useful extra features, although
it’s a slight annoyance that there’s a defeat
button for the loop on the back of the
chassis but no remote footswitch option.
This aside, both new Studio combos
sound great, they’re good value for money
and built to handle life on the road. If
you’ve always wanted to go over big with
Marshall, size is no longer an issue.
MARSHALL STUDIO VINTAGE & STUDIO CLASSIC COMBOS
MARSHALL STUDIO
VINTAGE COMBO
PRICE: £999
ORIGIN: UK
TYPE: Valve preamp and power amp
OUTPUT: 20W RMS, switchable to
5W
VALVES: 3x 12AX7, 2x EL34
DIMENSIONS: 500 (w) x 460 (h) x
245mm (d)
WEIGHT (kg/lb): 16/35
CABINET: Birch ply
LOUDSPEAKER: 1x10” Celestion
V-Type
CHANNELS: 2, non-switchable
CONTROLS: Normal volume, High
Treble volume, presence, treble, mid,
bass
FOOTSWITCH: None
ADDITIONAL FEATURES: Series
effects loop with defeat switch; fixed
level line out, high/low power
5. The Studio Classic’s standby switch
preamp gain and master OPTIONS: None
volume control the
classic JCM800 roar RANGE OPTIONS: Along with the
that dominated 80s rock Studio Classic, there’s the renamed
Mini Jubilee 1x12 combos at £999
and £799.All three designs are also
available as heads (£875 for the
Classic and Vintage; £689 for the
Jubilee), with matching 1x12 and
2x12 cabinets at £429 and £599
respectively
Marshall Amplification
01908 375411
www.marshall.com
8 8
PROS A great take on the classic
‘Plexi’ look and sound
CONS The effects loop would be
more useful with a footswitch jack;
a patch lead to jumper the inputs
should be thrown in
first play
MARSHALL STUDIO
CLASSIC COMBO
PRICE: £999
ORIGIN: UK
TYPE: Valve preamp and power amp
OUTPUT: 20W RMS, switchable to
5W
VALVES: 3x 12AX7, 2x EL34
DIMENSIONS: 500 (w) x 460 (h) x
245mm (d)
WEIGHT (kg/lb): 15/32
CABINET: Birch ply
LOUDSPEAKER: 1x10” Celestion
V-Type
CHANNELS: 1
CONTROLS: Preamp gain, master
volume, presence, treble, mid, bass
FOOTSWITCH: None
ADDITIONAL FEATURES: Series
effects loop with defeat switch, fixed
level line out, high/low power
standby switch
OPTIONS: None
RANGE OPTIONS: See Studio
Vintage (left)
PROS A slightly finessed JCM800
roar that can be tamed for home and
studio use as well as live gigs
CONS As with the Studio Vintage,
the effects loop would be more
useful with a footswitch jack
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 25
wishlist Belvoir ‘Tess’ Custom

theWishlist
Dream gear to beg, borrow and steal for…

Belvoir ‘Tess’ Custom £4,250

CONTACT Belvoir Guitars PHONE 07846 157321 WEB www.belvoirguitars.co.uk
Words David Mead Photography Neil Godwin

1 2

1. Based on an LP-style
single-cut, the Tess’s
body is made from 3
130-year-old South
American mahogany
with a tessellated
pattern top made from
alternating blocks of
hand-carved walnut
and beech with a satin
nitrocellulose finish

2. Tess’s neck is a
maple/walnut/maple
laminate with a 22-fret
fingerboard made from
Indian ebony, sporting
LP-inspired trapezoid 4
inlays. The headstock
has a holly fascia, an
abalone castle inlay
3. The mind-boggling array 4. Switching and controls
and Grover tuners
of electronics aboard include rotaries (top
the Tess includes a Bare to bottom): volume
Knuckle Stormy Monday for bridge and neck
pickup in the bridge, a pickups; volume for
Sustainiac in the neck piezo and MIDI; master
and a Graph Tech bridge tone (push for Sustainer
with built-in piezo and on/off); Sustainer
MIDI sensor. The XY harmonic gain (push for
control pad sits behind Sustainer mix control);
with an all-seeing eye… and XY pad control

26 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 Belvoir ‘Tess’ Custom wishlist

he origins of the Belvo

oir

T ‘Tess’ Custom began in the

imagination of its prou
ud owner
Stephen Shelton. Gigging witth his band
Littermouth, he was using a 1969
1 Les
Paul Goldtop Deluxe with a Roland MIDI
pickup for occasional synth d duties and
swapping over to a Taylor 810 0 acoustic
for certain songs. When the band
b began
to incorporate some Muse nu umbers in
their set, Stephen started to wonder if a
custom guitar might be a one e-stop option
and, given the opportunity to o include a
few additional features, actua ally make
ordered.
his onstage life a little more o
“I’d approached several UK lu uthiers to
discuss my once-in-a-lifetime e dream
guitar,” he told us, “but it was
s Belvoir’s
willingness to make this tech-heavy idea
work in a sympathetic and traditional
approach that appealed to m me. Their
design team very quickly sen nt me over
rendered digital drawings to bounce
around ideas and the process was a lot
more fun than I’d expected.”
The brief that Stephen gave the
Norfolk-based Belvoir guitar makers was
that he wanted the Les Paul aspect
a of
the instrument to give him th he sounds
of Jimmy Page and Slash via the bridge
pickup, as well as the sustain ned stylings
of Muse’s Matt Bellamy throu ugh the neck.
Oh, and while Belvoir was at it, perhaps
a piezo for quality acoustic so ounds and
a MIDI function that could be e controlled
from an XY pad – and why no ot have it all
wired so a mix of the instrument’s various
electronic components was p possible at
any one time?
Initially, Stephen was working with
Belvoir’s Clive Eastwood: “I’m m sure Clive
secretly had a few ‘WTF?!’ moments
when he first heard my ideas,” Stephen
confesses. Head luthier Chris s Lawes
takes up the story: “The challenge was
to incorporate Steve’s requirements,
specifically the flat and rectangle XY
pad, into a carved top LP build that
flowed. To me, guitars are all about
curves. I’d already built a diam
mond
tessellating LP as a prototype and
the eureka moment came witth the
idea to use a block pattern, re eplacing
the largest block with the MIDI controller
pad inserted from behind. Aftter the top
was glued up, it was a straigh htforward
build using tried-and-tested materials
along with vintage techniques – albeit
with some seriously complex x electrics…”

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 27

The Lineup

What’s
Goin’ On
All the best guitar events you
need to put in the diary...
Debashish Bhattacharya
30 May & 2 June
Subscription Rooms, Stroud & Kings Place, London

This Indian musician is one of the greatest acoustic slide players in

the world, with fans and collaborators including John McLaughlin,
John Butler and Jerry Douglas. Even though Butler is a celebrated
slide player in his own right, he travelled to India to study with
Bhattacharya in 2016. “It’s extremely rigorous,” says Butler of
the Calcutta musician’s pioneering slide technique. “You watch
Debashish play and you realise what 10 hours of practice for 10 years
looks like. It’s like watching Michael Jordan… it’s superhuman.”
Debashish will be joined by his daughter, vocalist Anandi
Bhattacharya with his lap
Bhattacharya, and tabla player Tanmoy Bose for these performances.
slide guitar (of his own
He will perform again in London at Kings Place, as part of the design) at the 16th annual
Songlines Encounters Festival, alongside kora player Derek Gripper. GlobalFest New York, 2019
www.debashishbhattacharya.com

Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

Joey Landreth Bristol Folk Festival Muse George Benson
23 April to 9 May 3 to 5 May 1, 5 & 8 June 18 & 19 July
Various UK & Ireland venues St George’s & Folk House London, Bristol, Manchester Hammersmith Apollo

After Bros Landreth bandmate Ariel
Posen visited the UK in February on
his own solo journey, Joey will be
coinciding a new album on 19 April
with his own tour. Three singles
have already surfaced in the form
of Cryin’, Dangerous Heart and
Forgiveness that have hooks as
sublime as their tones.
www.joeylandreth.com
From The Jam
1 May to 6 June
Various UK venues
With no full reunion on the cards,
Bruce Foxton’s partnership with
Russell Hastings continues to
celebrate the bassist’s work with
The Jam. For this tour the duo,
alongside pianist Tom Heel, are
turning their attention to stripped-
down acoustic versions from the
original band’s back catalogue.
www.fromthejamofficial.com
With Kris Drever, Cara Dillon and
Grace Petrie performing this year, it’s
a celebration of contemporary talent
with Norfolk-born and now Bristol-
based Sam Kelly representing folk’s
exciting future. His new collaborative
album with Ruth Notman impressed
us in issue 443.
www.bristolfolkfestival.org
The Wildhearts
3 to 12 May
Various UK venues
The classic line-up return with
their first new album for 10 years
on 3 May, the appropriately titled
Renaissance Men. Singer/guitarist
Ginger, guitarist CJ, bassist Danny
McCormack and drummer Ritch
Battersby have lived a dozen lifetimes
between them and continue to
dedicate themselves to the sacred
cause of rock ’n’ roll.
www.thewildhearts.com
These three arena dates will find
Matt Bellamy’s trio upping the
ante as the band bring the futurist
themes of their Simulation Theory
album to the stage. For the guitarist,
it should prove an extra-special run
as his hero Tom Morello is special
guest support.
www.muse.mu
Stone Temple Pilots
12, 13 & 15 June
Glasgow, London, Donington
Having experienced the tragedy
of previous Stone Temple Pilots’
vocalists Scott Weiland and Chester
Bennington passing away in
recent years, the band’s story with
lead singer Jeff Gutt is now writing
a positive chapter. These two long-
awaited headline gigs will be followed
by an appearance at the Download
Festival on 15 June.
www.stonetemplepilots.com
The legend releases his 45th album,
Walking To New Orleans, on 26 April,
a tribute to trailblazing heroes Fats
Domino and Chuck Berry. It’s filled
with the energy of its Music Row
sessions from top-class Nashville
session musician contributions.
No doubt Benson will be bringing
plenty of that to London, too.
www.georgebenson.com
Ramblin’ Man Fair
19 to 21 July
Maidstone, Kent
The annual weekender returns
with headliners The Darkness, Black
Stone Cherry and Foreigner and a
fine selection of guitarists featuring
elsewhere on the bill, including Richie
Kotzen, Neal Casal from the Chris
Robinson Brotherhood, Vernon Reid
from Living Colour, plus Devon Allman
and Duane Betts.
www.ramblinmanfair.com

Dick Dale
A
ny loss of a true trailblazer
who shaped guitar-playing is
especially hard to bear, so it is
with great sadness that we mourn the
death of Dick Dale, who passed away on
16 March at the age of 81. The Fender-
wielding, rockabilly-loving left-hander
with his machine-gun tremolo picking
reigned as the undisputed king of surf
guitar from the early 60s. And Dale’s
maverick moves with the Strat didn’t just
make him a principal test pilot for Leo
Fender but a lightning rod to formative
rock ’n’ roll guitar.
Although his breakout in the
Californian surf-guitar scene of the
early 60s drew on his American
country and rockabilly influences,
Dale’s Middle Eastern heritage loomed
large. He was born Richard Anthony
Monsour in May 1937 to a Lebanese
father and Polish mother and received
early lessons from an uncle playing
the oud (a Lebanese fretless stringed
instrument). His experiences playing
another traditional Middle Eastern
instrument, the tarabaki (goblet drum),
would impact the percussive style he’d
adopt for guitar later on.
When Dale’s father found work in
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
California as a machinist for Hughes
Aircraft, destiny came calling for his son
when the family moved from Boston to
El Segundo. Its surfing scene quickly
attracted the teenage Richard, but as
a player he was playing country music
– earning the stage name ‘Dick Dale’
from fellow performer Texas Tiny, who
favoured its suitability for the genre
more than ‘Richard Monsour’.
1937 – 2019
Dale’s dalliance wouldn’t last; the call
of the waves was too strong. It’s hard to
overstate how ahead of his time Dick
Dale was as a guitar player when he
became the leading light in the emerging
surf-rock scene. And the former big-band
hotspot Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa,
California became its epicentre. But just
like the punk-rock that surf guitar would
influence in the 70s, Dale met resistance
to the music he was pioneering there
from the older generation. “They didn’t
want anyone to play the guitar,” he told
Guitarist in 2011. “They said it was the
· picking with these strings echoes in
Dale’s maverick moves
with the Strat made him
a test pilot for Fender and
a lightning rod to formative
rock ’n’ roll guitar
· in the limelight for a new audience in
devil’s music. I told ’em, ‘Would you
rather have your kids somewhere where
you can see what they’re doing; or out in
the street drinking T-Bird wine?’” Such
measured reasoning obviously worked
like a charm, with 4,000 teens a night
eventually packing the Ballroom for the
guitarist and his band the Del-Tones.
The guitarist’s reputation meant Leo
Fender came calling for feedback from
Dale to develop an improved Showman
amp design. It took a little testing and
a lot of volume to get right: “I blew up
Obituary
over 50 amplifiers,” said Dick. “The
speakers would catch on fire.” And even
back on his early key surf singles like
Jungle Fever and Let’s Go Trippin’ (the
latter found on his essential ’62/’63
debut with the Del-Tones, Surfers’
Choice), there’s a muscularity to Dick
Dale’s tone that would become hard to
replicate. While others favoured thin
string gauges, he went big: 0.016, 0.018,
0.020, 0.039, 0.049 and 0.060… not for
the faint-fingered, especially as the lefty
was playing a right-handed guitar with
the bass strings on the lower side at
the time. His incredibly rapid alternate
history through the hands of everyone
from Angus Young to East Bay Ray and
Jack White. It was primal. “I don’t know
anything about an augmented 9th or a
13th chord, and I don’t give a crap,” he
told us. “All I know is how to make my
guitar scream with pain or pleasure.”
It was an unexpected delight to see
Dale and instrumental surf music back
1994 when director Quentin Tarantino
used the guitarist’s staccato spin on
Greek folk tune Misirlou in the hugely
successful Pulp Fiction. While that
success meant new faces at his shows,
his live work-rate remained consistent
with shows played up until the end of last
year and more planned for May. While
Dale’s struggles with ill health over the
years reportedly meant his income from
live performance was vital for covering
medical costs, many will now reflect with
gratitude at the chance they had to see a
legend of guitar’s golden era one last time.
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 29
 The Lineup
Gas Supply
Our pick of the month’s most delectable, wallet-bothering new gear
Sheeran By Lowden £595 to £965
CONTACT Lowden Guitars WEB www.sheeranguitars.com
Q&A
What is it?
In a move that took everyone by surprise,
high-end Northern Irish guitar maker
Lowden announced at NAMM this January
that it was launching a new brand of
guitars created in partnership with chart-
dominating songsmith Ed Sheeran.
The new guitars, made under the
‘Sheeran By Lowden’ moniker, are priced
far more accessibly than any of Lowden’s
core-line acoustics but are based on two
existing Lowden small-body acoustic
designs: the ‘S’ and the Wee Lowden. The
latter was first built in 2013, when it was
commissioned as a gift for Sheeran by
Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody.
Though Sheeran has put his name to a
dinky Martin signature model for many
years, he was an early adopter of Lowden’s
GL-10 electric guitar and small-body
Lowden acoustics have formed part of
his guitar collection for some time. Now,
it seems he’s been wholly won over by
Lowden’s Irish charms...
So, what’s the spec of the new
guitars like?
In a word, interesting. There are eight new
models (four each in the S and W ranges),
which are all built with a five-piece body.
The ‘S’ series guitars feature a four-inch-
deep body with a 244/5-inch scale length.
The top two models of the S range (S03
and S04) also feature an elegant cutaway.
The slightly smaller W range, based on the
Wee Lowden, has a 17¾ inch-long body
that is 3¾ inches deep and none of the
W range features a cutaway. Scale length is
slightly smaller, too, at 24 inches.
The model numbers that appear across
both ranges designate specific build types:
01 denotes a walnut body with cedar
top; 02 is a pau ferro body with a Sitka
spruce top; 03 pairs a cedar top with a pau
ferro body; while the range-topping style
04 has a figured walnut body and Sitka
spruce top. All models feature an ebony
fingerboard and bridge, while upper-tier
models from both ranges will feature an
LR Baggs VTC pickup system. Both ranges
are built in Ireland and Lowden says the
guitars will go on sale this spring.
30 GUITARIST MAY 2019
They’re much cheaper than the
core-line Lowdens. Why?
George Lowden, the company’s fo ounder,
asked engineers in the aerospace industry
how they would approach the prob blem
of building the Sheeran guitars in an
affordable way, without compromising
Lowden’s reputation for high-quality
guitars. “Working with aerospace
engineers has enabled us to dream m
up new ways of making a guitar highly
efficiently, using high-tech processes that
are normally used to make planes,” he
SHEERAN S01
The entry-level S01
explains, adding that the bracing of
o the Sheeran by Lowden is
guitars is nonetheless still shaped
d and the non-cutaway, purely
voiced using Japanese hand-chise els. He acoustic option in the
larger-bodied ‘S’ series
continues:“We want the guitars to o really
speak to the player.” Lowden also says
the guitars make use of reclaimed d spruce
and timber from trees that have faallen
naturally, saving resources.
What else should I look at?
The original small-but-credible
contemporary acoustic was Taylor’s
GS Mini, which remains a highly playable,
compelling choice if you’re in the mmarket
for a compact acoustic that punch hes
well above its weight, tonally. The original
GS Mini came with a solid Sitka sp pruce
top with laminate sapele back and d sides,
but now mahogany-top, walnut-bo ody and
all-koa versions are available, streeting
for £499, £599 and £799 respectively.
Newer versions of the GS Mini hav ve been
upgraded to ‘Mini E’ spec, which re efers
to the onboard ES-B pickup system m. You
should also check out Yamaha’s Gear
Of The Year-winning CSF3M comp pact
acoustic (£586), which comes with
a surprisingly rich-sounding solid
mahogany body and rosewood
fingerboard, plus Yamaha’s
effective and disarmingly simple
SRT pickup system.
JARGON CRUNCHING
Reclaimed spruce: This refers to Lowden’s
preference for using, where possible, spruce
sourced from trees that have fallen naturally
due to storm damage and the like, obviating
the need to fell virgin timber for use in guitarss
– making the Sheerans more sustainable.

SHEERAN W01
The smallest and simplest of
the guitars, this non-cutaway
features a five-piece solid
walnut body and cedar top but
has no in built . ferro body.
SHEERAN S03
The up-spec’d S03 model
features a cedar top, with
cutaway body made of pau ferro
for improved upper- fret access,
plus a body bevel for comfort.
SHEERAN SO2
The ‘S’ sized guitars are slightly
larger than the ‘W’ models and
this non-cutaway 02 variant
features a Sitka top and pau
SHEERAN W04
The top-of-the-line ‘W’ model
features a non-cutaway, figured
walnut body with a bevel on the
top edge for comfort, plus an
LR Baggs VTC pickup.
The Lineup
ALSO OUT NOW...
SUBPRO PICKUP
£149
Now, here’s an interesting
idea – a pickup that fits
acoustic guitar soundholes
(and also surface-mounts
on electric guitars) and
allows you to route the
signal from individual
strings to two separate outputs, opening up
new tonal possibilities. For instance, maybe you
want an octaver and fuzz effect on the bottom
three strings and clean delay and reverb on the
top three strings? No problem. Just assign the
strings to two separate outputs and send the
signal from those outputs to separate effects
chains. The secret to the pickup’s flexibility is
that it contains six micro pickups – each of which
is controlled by its own three-way switch that
selects between outputs 1 and 2 or switches
the pickup off. The height-adjustable pickup
is passive, so requires no batteries, is clad in
chrome-plated housing and comes with its own
non-invasive fitting kit. As a magnetic pickup
system, it won’t work for nylon-string guitars, but
that’s about the only limit to your experiments.
www.submarinepickup.com
JHS SWITCHBACK
£115
D
Developed as a way to
ra
apidly A/B pedals in
th
he workshop, the JHS
Switchback could add a
S
to
on of possibilities to your
’b
b
board. It has a single input
and output (signposted
‘g
guitar’ and ‘amp’) and two
effects loops that toggle with a switch (you can
buy JHS’s Red Remote unit to toggle between
the loops via footswitch). The attraction lies in
the number of things you can use the Switchback
for. First, you can toggle between two groups
of effects in their own isolated loops for instant
access to different soundscapes. You can also
place the Switchback in your amp’s effects loop
and use it in a similar way to toggle between delay
and reverb, for example. Or just use it to A/B the
sound of two different overdrives. Or you can
route the two sends out to separate amps, giving
you an instant means to toggle between amps
in a twin-amp rig. The possibilities go on, making
this an affordable, tone-expanding utility.
www.jhspedals.com
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 31

A DA M
GOLDSMITH
T
he reality of being a professional
jobbing musician these days involves
accepting the fact that your income
can fluctuate wildly if you’re going to rely
solely on waiting for the phone to ring for gigs
and sessions. This is reflected in the use of the
term ‘session musician’, which, up until the
last 15 or 20 years give or take, was taken to
mean a musician who made their living almost
exclusively from plying their trade playing on
other people’s records and film soundtracks,
etc, in commercial recording studios. You can
see this from the great tradition of US studio
guitar players from Tommy Tedesco through
Larry Carlton and Steve Lukather, and UK
players such as Martin Kershaw, Mitch Dalton,
and Colin Green. You may not be as familiar
with these names as Larry and Steve, but they
certainly were my heroes when I first started
and are fabulous musicians and guitar players.
PHOTO BY GAB ARCHIVE/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES
32 GUITARIST MAY 2019
SESSION DIARY
Gun For Hire
Being a session musician today means going beyond the
bounds of the studio, says Adam Goldsmith
The term session musician these days
seems to be self-applied to anyone who is
a freelance musician for hire. Certainly in
the arena of guitar playing, there is no-one
left who makes a living solely from studio
playing. I mention this not in order to
bemoan the year in which I was born and
yearn for a decimated industry, more to
point out that, these days, you need to make
an effort to have multiple income streams
to make a decent living. In Martin Kershaw’s
book (Strange But True: The Memoirs Of
One Of Britain’s Top Session Guitarists),
he relates the story of how the first time
he got paid £1,000 for a day’s work in a TV
studio was in an orchestra accompanying
the live coverage of the moon landings in
1969. I can assure you there is not a great
difference in the fee today, whereas the
cost of living? You get the idea.
Tommy Tedesco (centre)
was a member of session
collective The Wrecking
Crew, playing guitar here
with Carol Kaye in an LA
studio during the mid 1960s
This can, however, be a positive thing,
since your life ends up being more varied.
I split my time between studio work, TV
shows, live gigs, orchestral work, teaching
and also writing what is known as library
or production music. You know the little
themes and bits of incidental music you
hear on daytime TV? Yep. That. I’ve spent
this last week in my friend and writing
partner Andrew Kramer’s studio putting
the finishing touches to an album we are
providing for a production company.
Production Music
The way these things work, generally,
is you are employed by a production/
library/record company and given a brief
(I was recently tasked with recording an
album of Gypsy jazz-esque music by the
record company, EMI, for example), you
go away and record it and they distribute
it for you and take a percentage of the
publishing royalties when and if the music
gets licensed. Usually, you’ll be required to
provide various edits of the music, possibly
a full two-minute version, 30-second
version and a 15-, 10- or five-second ‘sting’.
As a guitar player, I’ve had loads of fun
doing this as you’re in the studio but not
particularly under any pressure to get
things first or second take, as you may well
be in a more traditional studio session.
From a guitar playing point of view, this
can give you a chance to experiment and
learn like you normally might not get. For
example, my recent adventures in Gypsy
jazz afforded me the opportunity to learn
about a style of music I had only basic
knowledge of, improving my studio skills
and musicianship, but also providing a great
opportunity to buy a new guitar (well done,
Eastman!), learn that extra-large tough
plectrums come in very handy for this
rhythm style, and hopefully earn a few quid
at the same time.
If you’re just starting out as a professional
musician, then I’d really recommend you
keep this in mind, and keep your irons in as
many fires as possible.

NEVILLE
MARTEN
O
nce again, this column owes itself
to office banter. Out of the blue,
senior music editor Jason Sidwell
said, “If you could be any guitarist other
than you, who would you be?” I mulled it
over for a moment and decided there were
several options. He didn’t mean actually
‘become’ them – personality, financially,
stardom-wise or whatever – but remain
myself with their abilities as a player.
I could choose my original guitar-playing
heroes George Harrison, Eric Clapton or
Jimi Hendrix. Imagine playing Something
to John and Paul with slight trepidation,
given the short shrift many of his songs had
received, and then have them say it was one
of the best The Beatles ever recorded. Or
showcasing his awesome slide playing that
evolved fully formed between The Beatles’
break-up and All Things Must Pass just a
year later. And, of course, knowing that
your band changed everything!
Then think of Clapton: what must he have
felt like after laying down his guitar on the
‘Beano’ album, that amazing live Crossroads
with Cream, or winning a basket-load of
Grammys for Tears In Heaven? And what
about Jimi, marmalising Woodstock? Then
there’s another hero, James Taylor, whose
music awoke me to classier chords and the
love of acoustic fingerstyle playing. Old JT
could pen a half-decent tune, too. Being the
‘me’ version of any of these would be a bit
cool. Or just cut to the chase and be the ‘real
deal’ like BB, Freddie or Albert King. Oh my
God, it’s looking impossible!
But what about something completely
different? Martin Simpson, say, whose
genius mix of folk, blues and gospel is
delivered sublimely and is completely out
of my comfort zone. Or Joe Pass: imagine
that degree of musicality and skill, possibly
never surpassed, or John Williams. That’s
another thought: to be at the absolute top of
your game in whatever genre you inhabit.
So, how about having the seemingly endless
ability of a prodigy such as Guthrie Govan?
Being able to play literally anything you
can imagine (and having the imagination to
Opinion
NEVILLE’S
ADVOCATE
Nev ponders which guitarist he would choose to be, were
a genie to pop out of the lamp and grant such a request
think of it anyway). Or Allan Holdsworth, he currently is), and endless TV sessions
who still leaves me open-mouthed. including being hired as the folk guitarist
Then there’s Tommy Emmanuel: that who performs at the village fete on
man can hold a room of five or 50,000 Midsomer Murders. Mitch can walk down
people spellbound with one guitar and a the street without being hassled, too, so
bottomless vat of tunes. Perhaps being the perhaps this ‘jobbing’ genius is the one
ultimate showman-performer-musician I should aspire to?
would be where it’s at? However, I’ve concluded that I’d rather
What about a great session guitarist? be one of those guitarists I could have been
Top sessioneers like Reggie Young, Larry more like had I tried a bit harder, done
Carlton, Tommy Tedesco, Big Jim Sullivan, more (any!) studying, or maybe not had
Jimmy Page, Steve Lukather, Dean Parks, a full-time job all my life. I reckon I have
Chris Spedding et al can transform a enough natural ability that, had I pushed
song with their musical gold dust. But myself harder, been more diligent, or not
unless you’re one of those who busts out opted for the monthly pay packet, I could’ve
of sessions into stardom, like Lukather, got to Robben Ford’s level of knowledge
Page and others, you’re at the mercy of and technique. But I don’t know whether
producers, the pop charts or other trends. I’m the inner musician he undoubtedly is,
So maybe not. That said, if you’re a brilliant with that sublime feel, timing and innate
reader and top guy such as UK session understanding of what’s ‘right’ to play.
man Mitch Dalton (who writes a monthly So that’s the sparkle I’d like Jason’s genie
column for Guitar Techniques), you can to dust me with – the rest is just hard graft,
maintain a lifelong career doing everything and anyone can do that.
from working with the Royal Philharmonic, I’d love to know which guitarist you’d
to doing Strictly Come Dancing Live (as choose to be and why. See you next time.
NE F THE N The Ultimate
Ul Strat?
What? Fender Artisan Thinline Koa Stratocaster Where seen? Guitar Village, Farnham
Price? £3,999 Description? This popped up on Guitar Village’s Facebook page. I usually
hate blinged-up Fenders – that’s for others to do, in my view – but this caught my eye
as I love the look of koa and enjoyed the Eric Johnson Thinline Strat we looked at a while
back. The bound body is roasted okoume (a fast-growing, lightweight timber resembling
mahogany but not of that family), while the neck is roasted birdseye maple and the
fingerboard African blackwood with a 9.5- to 12-inch radius. It’s an exotic-looking guitar
that uses sustainable timbers – a great combination. It weighs just 7.35lbs, comes with
Custom Shop hand-wound 60/63 pickups on a gold anodised pickguard, and may well
tempt players who usually opt for Suhrs, Andersons and the like. Pretty tasty if you ask me.
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 33
 Opinion
J Tele neck pickups are sometimes derided as weak and woolly.
DIC S N
S
ome time ago I was praising the
sound of Tele neck pickups and the
person I was talking with shook
their head and voiced the opinion that the
pickups weren’t much use for anything. I was
genuinely surprised as it’s always been a
go-to sound for me, especially for funk, blues
and soul. Okay, a Tele neck pickup doesn’t
have that big spring-loaded boing that a
Strat neck pickup does. But I’ve always felt
that was a benefit: the warm, mellow sound
of a good Tele neck pickup fits in anywhere
but doesn’t scream SRV or Jimi or what have
you. Nonetheless, I had to admit that a lot of
great Tele players, from Andy Summers to
Keef, have preferred the beefier sound of a
humbucker in their Tele’s neck position.
A good Tele neck pickup
can hold its own with a
bridge humbucker
34 GUITARIST MAY 2019
RAISING THE TONE
Brass Neck
But, as Jamie Dickson shares, a good one won’t let you down
Putting together this month’s big cover
feature tribute to the Tele put me in mind of
the whole debate again, so I asked pickup
design guru Tim Mills of Bare Knuckle why
it might be that the traditional Tele neck
pickup sometimes gets a bad rap, when it
can sound so sweet?
“As one of the smallest of the single-coil
family – I mean, it’s a tiny little coil – it really
can have a beautiful tone,”Tim agreed.“But
a lot of players will still say,‘It’s too woolly,
it’s too muffled – I just can’t get enough
output out of it.’ But if you’ve got a good
one, then you can get an absolutely great
tone out of it. And, in fact, I actually partner
up a bridge humbucker on one of my Teles
with a traditional Tele neck pickup and
I don’t struggle at all with output and balance
between the two. I get a great tone from both,
and great middle [both pickups selected]
tone,” he added.
“The trick generally is what the cover
is made of,” says Tim.“The [traditional]
deep-drawn brass covers do roll out a lot
more high-end, because brass is a very
good conductor. That brass cover is a lovely
screen for the pickup and offers plenty of
protection [from hum and general damage],
but it does tend to reduce the output a little
bit. So something that I started doing many,
many years ago was using deep-drawn nickel
covers,” he says, unlocking one clue as to how
you can get the best of both worlds from a
Tele neck pickup.
·
“The trick generally is
what the cover is made of.
The deep-drawn brass
covers do roll out a lot
more high-end, because
brass is a good conductor”
·
“We’ve got the right tooling to produce the
deep-drawn covers,” Tim says, “but we’ve
actually managed to do it out of nickel-silver
as well. It’s a much thinner cover and the result
is a much brighter, punchier tone out of that
pickup. So we offer both to our customers. You
know, you can go with the traditional chrome-
plated deep-drawn brass – but you will have
a rounder high-end response. Or you can have
a polished nickel-silver, or a nickel-plated
nickel-silver cover. With the plating, again, it’s
starting to increase the thickness, so you are
going to start getting a little bit of attenuation
at the high-end. But it’s nothing like the deep-
drawn brass ones. So that is a big help and
certainly sorts out any imbalance with even
the most powerful bridge coil.

Tim Mills of Bare Knuckle
Pickups in his workshop
in Falmouth, Cornwall
“Another thing worth knowing if you like
that Blackguard-style Tele neck is that for
about six months they actually wound it with
a 42-gauge [wire] not the finer 43-gauge
that’s more usual. For me, that almost gives
a Strat neck pickup sort of tone. It’s not
the same, but it’s certainly leaning more
towards that than the warmer Tele necks
that everybody’s used to. And those are the
ones that I really, really like.”
It’s A Wind-Up
Given that winding a Tele neck pickup with
thicker 42-gauge wire tends to beef its voice
up, why didn’t Fender persist with it?
“The reason people don’t generally tend
to wind Tele necks with 42-gauge is because
you can’t get as much wire in there,” Tim
explains. “The 42-gauge is a bigger-gauge
wire than a 43, so it’s a trickier wind to get a
coil of 42 on there. But, boy, you get a great
tone out of it. If you can get, say, 7,000 turns,
you’re doing well, and get the cover on as
well, without doing a stupidly tight wind. The
thing you risk doing with a really, really tight
wind, is that you can either stretch your wire
or you might actually damage it or get a little
partial short in there somewhere.
“And I’ve never been a fan of really, really
super-tight winds, anyway. You know, I like
there to be a little bit of give in the coil. And
I think it pops better and it just responds
better. But that’s just a personal thing.
These 42-gauge wound necks really are a
super tone. And, again, that’s what I’ve got,
paired up with quite a high-output bridge
humbucker in the Telecaster.”
www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk
Opinion
THREETOGETREADY
Beefy Tele Pickups
Bare Knuckle Flat ’50 set from £167
True to the early Broadcaster spec of
43-gauge wire and flat-profile magnets,
Bare Knuckle’s fierce Flat ’50 set yields
a snarling,mid-rich tone that’s hugely
evocative of the raw BlackguardTele
sound.It’s the hottest of the four sets
that form BKP’s vintage-styleTele range.
Custom versions are available on request.
Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound
Tele set £61 (bridge); £54 (neck)
Think yourTele tone is too weedy?Try
Seymour Duncan’s Quarter Pounders,
its highest-outputTele single-coil design.
With oversizeAlnico 5 rod magnets and
a high-output coil,these will deliver an
almost P-90-like performance.While
pickup output readings can be deceptive,
the bridge unit in the sett has 17k,
giv an a of what to expect.
Creamery Pickups E idth
dth
eck £TBC
An interesting take on how to solve the
weak-soundingTele pickup problem is
Creamery’s hand-wound‘ExtraWidth’
neckpickup,whichusesheavier42-gauge
wire and taller magnets to yield a fuller,
fatter,more Strat-like tone in a traditional-
looking unit,with a DCR of around 6k.
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 35
 The Lineup AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

Substitute
This Issue: Drop 2 Chords (Part 1)
Though this isn’t a term you hear
used every day, ‘drop 2’ chords are a
simple but extremely effective way to
add more variety into both your chordal
accompaniment and to spice up your
lead playing. If it’s good enough for Eric
Johnson, it’s good enough for us!
In the never-ending quest to find a
new twist on some of the more common
guitar chord voicings (or even some more
outlandish ones, come to think of it),
we’ve already covered how swapping the
bass note with one of the higher notes
in the chord can dramatically change its
character, especially in context. In this
feature, we’ll take the second to highest
note of some chord triads and drop it to
the bottom. In this case, we’re creating a
wide-voiced chord triad based on C major,
D major, E minor and F#m7 b 5. Check out
the chord boxes below.

Example 1
Instead of playing the D, G and B strings at the 5th fret to give G,
C and E (as we would in a C barre chord), we’ve taken the second
to highest note (the ‘2’) and ‘dropped’ it, putting the C back in
root position but leaving a ‘hole’ between the G and E. Not really
a chord for strummers, due to the unused third string in the
middle, but an interesting way to give major chord harmonies.
Example 2
Shifting up to D is technically the same thing, but we should
definitely include it here, because in this context it sets up the
transition to the following chord. The A, D, F# triad moves
the D down to the root position in this case.

Example 3 Example 4
This triad rejigs a B7 chord
h d iinto
t something
thi g lik
like an D# diminished This E minor chord takesk the
th E from
f the
th middle
iddl (on
( the th G string)
by taking an A, D# and F# (or G b) and shifting the second highest and puts it on the 7th fret of the A. Not so unusual if you’ve played a
note (in this case, D# on the 8th fret of the G string) to root barre E minor chord, you may say, but this has the extended interval
position. This sets us up nicely for the following chord. between the 5th and the root that characterises this type of voicing.

36 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 Feedback

Feedback
Your letters to the Guitarist editor. Drop us a line at guitarist@futurenet.com

SEE SEE RIDER

Star Letter
JOIN THE DOTS
As a self-taught guitarist, I never saw the
need to read music. Instead, I became fluent
at sight-reading tab, which served me well
for years. However, I have steadily become
disheartened with playing, rehashing old
stuff and learning (but not engaging with)
new stuff I thought I should learn. Then I was
asked to participate in a theatre production,
playing music I was unaccustomed to, and
the score was in music notation not tab.
So I learned to read music and worked out
the most efficient way of playing to make
my life easier, while constantly trying to
decipher the funny symbols on the pages
in front of me… I had to learn different ways
of playing uncommon chords to make
the performance easier, and fit in with the
orchestra. I had never heard of Freddie Green
until three weeks ago, but what an impact
that has had on my playing.
My love for playing guitar has been reinvigorated by learning something out of my comfort
zone – practice now has a real purpose to it. The music director said it would be challenging
but would improve my musicianship and that playing in an environment I was totally alien to
would make me a better guitarist; I couldn’t agree more. To sum it up, if you’re stuck in a rut,
learn something new, a different style, or learn to read music so you know your guitar better;
it’s liberating. And I am looking forward to the next challenge.
Matt Moseley, via email
Last month’s issue – talk about an eye-
opener! No, not David Gilmour’s collection for
sale or the 1958 Les Paul Custom, I’m talking
about the David Gray feature in the One For
The Road article. Guitarist asks him ‘What’s
on your rider?’ and Gray replies, “Vodka,
beers, couple of bottles of red, couple of
bottles of white, always a couple of bottles of
Champagne, chocolates…”
Bloody hell, we’re lucky if we can scavenge
the last few sausage rolls left over from the
buffet after our latest function gig!
Ray Faulder, via email
I think most of us are in the buffet
scroungers’ club when it comes to gig
riders, Ray – mini quiches are preferable,
but we certainly wouldn’t sniff at a
sausage roll. Thankfully, all we have to
do to improve the situation is write some
chart-topping hits. Oh, wait a minute…
David Gray emanating
light as he thinks about
his after-show chocs…

Thanks for sharing your experience, Matt. Achieving growth on guitar is hard, but
it’s a bit like exercise: the first few jogs round the block seem like a Herculean effort,
but then your fitness increases and things get easier and you discover what you’re
capable of. A good way to get going is just to throw yourself in the deep end as you
did. It’s a bit nerve-racking, but, boy, does it focus your attention when you know
what you’ve learned will be put to the test in a live gig! We’ve advanced further and
faster by getting our race face on and woodshedding for a challenging gig than by
any other method – so pushing yourself can and does get results. It doesn’t have to
be learning to read music, of course, but setting your sights on the next level and
giving yourself a test you can’t shy away from can work wonders.

Each issue’s Star Letter wins a Korg Pitchblack Custom

– a smart pedal tuner with ultra-high +/-0.1 precision for
sharp visibility and pinpoint accuracy right at your feet.
www.korg.co.uk

38 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 Feedback

BEAT IT! so I’ve always contented myself with buying

Ian Barlett’s ‘Bartz Ratcatcher’
relic’d and ready to rock!
SLOW AND STEADY
The editor’s letter in issue 444 of Guitarist
was very timely as it contained something my
guitar teacher and I were also discussing. Two
years ago, at the tender age of 60, I started
to learn to play. I now pride myself on being
able to play in any key and can improvise
over many tracks (even when I don’t know
the key), using techniques taught to me by
my superb teacher. But I can’t play quickly
nor do I want to. My teacher agrees and has
taught me to use short phrases and leave
spaces. I just love this way of playing. On the
odd occasion when I have played for friends,
they, too, love this relaxed approach to music.
Less is more, as they say.
Loved the article on Gilmour, who is my
all-time favourite guitarist and the one who
inspired me to give it a go.
Neil Mathieson, via email
I’m writing because I was kind of confused
about the whole ‘relic’ trend. I recently bought
a 60s reissue pro Strat and I wouldn’t dream
of damaging it. Some of my guitars date
from the 1980s, and I’m proud they’re still
fairly pristine, despite having been gigged.
However, as an experimental project, I bought
some bits of guitar from eBay and assembled
the pictured guitar [see image, left]. It’s not a
relic Strat, it’s the Bartz Ratcatcher!
Putting this together was fun and it didn’t
cost a lot. I now have a fairly good but totally
unique and personalised guitar. I would
encourage anyone who would like to build
their own guitar to just do it.
Ian Bartlett, via email
Thanks for sharing your homegrown
Relic, Ian – it looks a stunner! Have any
other readers had a crack at doing an
authentic-looking aged finish for their
guitars? Send your pics and relic’ing tips
in and we’ll print the best.
HANDS-ON THERAPY
Everybody has heard of music therapy
and many readers will identify with the
effect of picking up a guitar and blowing
the blues away. As a parent of three guitar-
playing sons, I’ve never really played myself
(although I do know all three chords…) and
Modding guitars often
provides players with
much-needed focus
instruments and lessons for them, while
listening to the wonderful results.
However, a recent death in the family made
me realise that all those years of setting
up and modifying guitars has ultimately
provided me with an important way of
working through the trauma and intense
sadness. There is something about soldering
yet another Free-Way switch, levelling frets
and adjusting intonation on an instrument
that one of my sons will produce something
wonderful on that allows me to find some
peace in a troubled world. Despite not being
a player, I have read Guitarist for nearly 20
years, and as a consequence I have caught
GAS through no fault of my own. The great
thing about GAS is that, unlike chemical
medication, there are no side-effects (except
for a determination to find that Michael
Landau tone…) and no-one gets hurt.
Mike Guerra, via email
Hi Mike, sorry to hear about your loss, but
it’s great to hear that getting stuck into
modding projects has helped you find
some solace. Sometimes it’s good to get
away from the phone screen and the TV
and absorb yourself in making something
practical that you can take pride in,
taking care to do the job as well as you
can. More power to you – and hope you
unlock the formula to that magic Landau
tone some day soon.

Thanks, Neil – we always liked what

Eagles guitarist Don Felder said about
this. Felder, of course, played one half of
one of the most memorably melodic solos
of all time on Hotel California. He said
he learned his superbly formed phrasing
from listening to his father’s jazz records,
in which every soloist had to take a breath
every phrase or so. It gave punctuation
and structure to each solo that raised it
above merely ‘blowing’ all over the track.
Music shouldn’t be gabbling – it should
be something you want to say that’s
worth listening to. And going a little
slower can definitely help by coaxing
meaningful melody from every phrase.
Ironically, it makes people prick up their
ears and listen more than a blistering,
ear-tiring barrage of notes.

Send your letters to: guitarist@futurenet.com

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 39

Competition

WIN!
A Pinegrove Strap
ased in the West Yorkshire his favourite song, the Cajun that follows, carefully enter the

B market town of Hebden

Bridge, Pinegrove Leather
(www.pinegroveleather.com)
sprang into existence when
guitarist Rod Boyes made himself
a harmonica case on his kitchen
table a few years ago, using an old
Zephyr sewing machine. The case
drew attention from his gigging
pals and pretty soon Pinegrove
Leather was formed, named after
classic Pine Grove Blues. Rod has
since been designing guitar straps,
harmonica cases and just about
everything else a roaming musician
could desire. Rod hand-picks every
hide he uses and each design is a
bespoke, hand-crafted realisation
of an individual customer’s needs.
For a chance to win your very
own Pinegrove strap, fathom out
an answer to the cunning question
web address below in the device
of your choosing, and sit back and
wait for the postman. Good luck!
Which TV cowboy saga
featured a youthful
Clint Eastwood?
A) Bonanza
B) Alias Smith And Jones
C) Rawhide

Closing date:
31 May 2019
Make sure you enter at
http://bit.ly/git445pinegrove
before the closing date.
Good luck!
 Music
The month’s best guitar music, plus top players in the studio
PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUSTIN HARGRAVE
George Benson
Walking To New Orleans
Provogue
Jazzman makes an
unexpected detour…
In many ways, George
Benson has enjoyed two
careers in a single lifetime:
one as a superb jazz instrumentalist and
natural successor to Wes Montgomery, the
other as multi-Grammy-Awards-winning
soul vocalist deluxe. So, which version of
the legend do we get to meet on Walking To
New Orleans, his first album release since
2013’s Inspiration: A Tribute To Nat King
Cole? In a way, neither. As a break from his
dual roles, this album is a tribute to Chuck
Berry and Fats Domino and, as such, sees
the jazzman firing off faithful covers of
classics such as Nadine, Rockin’ Chair and
I Hear You Knocking. It’s an unexpected
off-road excursion, to say the least, and one
that perhaps no-one would have expected
– George Benson plays rock ‘n’ roll, who’d
42 GUITARIST MAY 2019
8 Washes of acoustic colour
have thought it? “I’m a great appreciator
of the music made by both of those guys,”
says George. “Chuck Berry was a great
showman and a great musician, and Fats
Domino cut nothing but hit after hit after hit.”
Vocals are as smooth as ever and the
guitar playing is period correct for the
material covered – there are no extended
free-falling flights of improvisation here,
just tasteful short flurries – but the general
vibe you pick up on almost immediately is
the fun everyone concerned was obviously
having in the studio. It’s a joyful tribute that
stays in character and offers George’s take
on some indelible classics from the early
days of the rock genre – and, like everything
else the man has ever done, it’s sublime in
every respect. [DM]
Standout track: Havana Moon
For fans of: Chuck Berry, Fats Domino
Tal Wilkenfeld
Love Remains
BMG 10
Bass sessioneer steps
out of the shadows
Even if you’re unfamiliar with
the name Tal Wilkenfeld, the chances are
you’ve still heard her bass playing many
times. When she was in her early 20s she
was playing with Jeff Beck (check out the
Ronnie Scott’s performance on YouTube)
and since then has played with Clapton,
Prince, Herbie Hancock and Mick Jagger
– and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Love Remains is her first outing as a
songwriter and it’s a remarkable debut.
Stylistically speaking, there’s a blend
of punky pop (Fistful Of Glass), tender
ballads (One Thing After Another) and
slight leanings towards prog on occasion,
especially on Under The Sun. Needless
to say, the bass playing is superb
throughout, but it’s the songs that take
centre stage here – she’s a tremendously
capable singer, too. [DM]
Standout track: Under The Sun
For fans of: Esperanza Spalding,
Annie Lennox
Dominic Miller
Absinthe
ECM 8
from rock sideman
Apart from being a member of
Sting’s touring and recording ensemble,
Dominic Miller has established himself
a solo career playing mainly acoustic
instrumentals on both nylon- and steel-
strings. Absinthe is his second solo outing
on the prestigious ECM label, usually a
holding pen for European and American
jazz artists who work at the extremes
of the genre, but Dominic’s work is as
melodic as it is adventurous. The album
comprises 10 well-wrought vignettes,
the instrumentation – keyboards, bass,
bandoneon and drums – circling his
delicate guitar artistry. In the notes, he says
Absinthe is dedicated to the spirit of the
French Impressionists – no pun intended
– and the originality and melodicism bears
this out in every note. [DM]
Standout track: Christiania
For fans of: Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny
 Music

Reese Wynans And Friends

Sweet Release
Mascot 9
Reese is having a party
and you’re all invited
This is the first solo release for
Reese Wynans, Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
member and keyboard player to the stars,
including Stevie Ray Vaughan in Double
Trouble: “I’ve never had an album out with
my name on it before,” he says, “so I’m
very excited. I’d like this record to make
people feel happy and celebrate the music,
because that’s what we were doing…”
To help him out in the festivities, Reese
has surrounded himself with some heavy
friends, including Kenny Wayne Shepherd,
Doyle Bramhall II, Warren Haynes, Josh
Smith and Joe Bonamassa – and that’s only
the guitar players! Double Trouble guys
Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton also join
him. The material centres around blues and
soul with more than just a nod to SRV with

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAYNE TANSEY

the inclusion of Crossfire and Say What!
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ED RODE

with Kenny Wayne Shepherd providing six-

string grunt throughout. Joyous. [DM]
Standout track: You’re Killing My Love
(featuring Doyle Bramhall II & Josh Smith)
For fans of: Stevie Ray Vaughan,
Joe Bonamassa

JD Simo
Start me up Off At Eleven
Crows Feet Records 8
On-the-rise guitar acts to look out for
For some, the 60s never went away…
Steve Gunn When a record company’s PR uses
The Unseen In Between phrases like “a psychedelic, free-
Matador 8 flowing, dynamic kaleidoscopic of sound”,
it usually causes bemusement. In the
Retro-infused outing from the US underground case of JD Simo, though, the phrase may
Celebrating a very individual marriage between the genres be justified. It’s no surprise, for instance,
psych and folk-rock, this is singer-songwriter Steve Gunn’s that JD is a member of The Grateful Dead
fourth album. He’s been on the underground scene in the bassist Phil Lesh’s band as he’s obviously
US for the past 10 years, but hasn’t registered on the radar a fan of extended soloing – check out
much here in the UK. Alternating between acoustic and the 16-minute jam Accept – and wishes
electric guitars, The Unseen In Between’s nine songs have Woodstock was still happening. Having said
more than a dash of 1960s psychedelic pop to them – in fact, that, we’re not being critical, simply because
vocally, you can sense the ghost of Floyd’s Syd Barrett somewhere in the mix. New the whole retro vibe of this album is so ably
Familiar, for instance, could easily be an early Floyd B-side and Morning Is Mended executed. Sure, it’s a nod to the tie-dyed
wouldn’t sound out of place on the studio disc from Ummagumma. But there’s generation, but it successfully raises the
enough individuality and character here to mark Steve Gunn as a name to watch out ghosts of bands such as Peter Green’s
for in the future. [DM] Fleetwood Mac and all the fun and restless
Standout track: Lightning Field innovation of that era – in a good way. [DM]
For fans of: Early Floyd, The Kinks Standout track: I Got Love If You Want It
For fans of: Early Fleetwood Mac, Grateful Dead

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 43

 Music
Midge Ure
The Ultravox man reflects
upon an interesting
apprenticeship and shares
a clever hotel-room hack
Words
David Mead
What was your first gig and how
did it go?
“I think the first ever performance was as
a cub in the scout hall at the church near
where I was living when I was seven or eight.
I came out from underneath a box in the
middle of a scout jamboree on stage and
sang a Herman’s Hermits song. They called
me ‘Dyna-mite’, as in ‘tiny’, so it was obviously
set in stone that I was going to have some
sort of nickname that was connected with
a diminutive stature! It did go down well
– I think all the ‘yummy mummies’ at the
time screamed and clapped just like it was
The Beatles, so I think it quite possibly gave
me the taste for following this through.”
Describe your current stage rig…
“I’m doing an acoustic thing in spring and a
full electric band tour at the end of the year.
The acoustic one is pretty straightforward.
I use a pair of matched Taylors, limited-edition
versions; I’ve been using them for 15 years
now, I think. They’re probably based on the
812s but more flash. They sound great either
acoustically or plugged in. They’re just DI’d,
straight into a tuner, no effects.
“The electric setup is slightly different. I use
Hughes & Kettners, little 36-watt amp heads
– Grandmeisters – and although they’re
only 36 watts, they’re absolute killers, just
phenomenal, with a couple of 2x12 cabinets.
44 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Midge’s Songs, Questions & Answers acoustic
tour concludes in May, when he picks up his
electric for festivals and The 1980 Tour
They also have these fantastic DIs out of the
back. Recently, I’ve been using the amplifiers
on a silent stage and there are very few amps
that have a really good DI out and these
new H&Ks are fantastic. They have cabinet
emulators and stuff like that – it really does
sound like it’s been mic’d. For the guitar, again,
just a tuner and a Boss Blues Driver overdrive
pedal. A very straightforward setup. The
guitars, I have two that I use all the time: one is
the Vintage [V100] Lemon Drop and JHS did
a special signature model for me, which is the
V100MU. It’s kind of a Gold Top Les Paul with
two P-90s and it has a Gibson-style Vibrola.”
What’s on your rider?
“Very little these days. We tend to trim that
right back; I’ve not drunk for a long time
so all the booze has kinda disappeared.
Depending on the time of year, it’s a couple
of non-alcoholic beers, or in the summer,
non-alcoholic ciders, some Pepsi Max and
some reasonably healthy stuff you can make
a sandwich with or just nibble at. Coffee, tea.
That’s it. Old age brings with it sensibilities
and so gone are all the excessive bins full of
ice filled with booze and crappy sandwiches!”
What’s your best tip for getting a
good live sound?
“I think having good musicians around
you. It’s to do with the fingers, the quality of
the player. So, with me, I suppose, having
a combination of the right amp and the
right guitar gives you the sound because
everything else comes from your fingers,
it comes from your technique.”
What non-musical item couldn’t you
do without on tour?
“A couple of things – and this is going to
sound really dull. If you’re touring in Germany,
most of the hotels don’t have kettles, so
having a little portable hand-steamer, where
you can not only get the wrinkles out of your
clothes without having to resort to ironing, but
it also doubles up as a kettle for boiling water.
So that’s quite a handy thing to have with you.
And I suppose if you’re doing long-haul flights,
some form of neck pillow, because, believe it
or not, we don’t all fly first class!”
What’s your best tip for getting the
audience on your side?
“You have to go out there with the sense that
everybody in the audience has purchased a
ticket to see you and that means that 50 per
cent of the audience really want to see you
and 50 per cent have been dragged along
by their significant other half. They’re the
ones you really have to get. The other half,
you’re preaching to the converted. And don’t
go on and play an entire new album without
advertising that that’s what you’re going to
 Music

do, because we are creatures of habit; we

like what we know. Most people will not feel
satisfied if they don’t hear certain songs, so
you have to be prepared for that.”

What’s the best venue you’ve played

in and why?
“Mine doesn’t exist any more. Mine was the
Glasgow Apollo, which used to be the Green’s
Playhouse. I think when it was built it used to
be the biggest theatre or cinema in Europe.
I cut my teeth seeing every band who ever
performed in Glasgow, before it changed its
name to the Glasgow Apollo. My management
company, when I still lived up there, owned the
Apollo and so I had access to everything from
The Carpenters to Led Zeppelin, and that was
my musical apprenticeship. When I finally got
to play there, it was everything I hoped it
would be.”

What’s the worst journey you’ve had

either to or from a gig?
“None of them are particularly good – that’s
the dull part. You can easily do a two-day
journey across America to get from one gig
to another, but I suppose that has some
romanticism about it as well. The one that
stands out is my first band in Glasgow.
We were driving a Transit to a gig and the
gearbox packed in and so we pooled the
money we had, including the fee from the night
before, bought a new gearbox and changed
it at the side of the road, because the singer
at the time was an apprentice mechanic,
and carried on to the gig.
“But things like that are sent to try us and
they separate the men from the boys – you
get there and do the gig with oily fingers.”

What’s the nearest you’ve come to

a Spinal Tap moment on tour?
“Mine would have been complaining bitterly
on tour that a rider said ‘have French
Champagne in the dressing room’ and,
because we were in America, it was Californian
Champagne. I remember kicking off about it
and then realising what a twat I was because
I don’t drink Champagne and I never did!”

What’s your favourite live album?

“Well, it’s debatable as to how live it was, but
Thin Lizzy’s Live And Dangerous has to be up
there because it captured everything that was
great about a Lizzy show. It was powerful, it
was connected, the atmosphere you could
usually cut with a knife and take home with
you – there was something magical about it.
I remember hearing it for the first time and it
took me back to seeing Lizzy at their peak.”

Midge Ure is on tour across

the UK for most of 2019.
For further info, visit the website
http://midgeure.co.uk
 BACKTRACKING
Our pick of recently reissued classic albums, essential compilations
and vintage guitar recordings you must hear
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTTIE MOORE

DEEP CUTS
Nigel Pulsford on lost-classic
guitar albums you must hear
Defunkt
Defunkt
Toto Hannibal/Island Records 1980
40 Tours Around The Sun Eagle Rock 8
The first album from New York
Old-school live retrospective from legendary band funk collective Defunkt, led by
Not to be confused with the recent ‘best of’ album released in February this year bearing a similar trombone manipulator and
title (40 Trips Around The Sun), this is a live look back over a splendid career from one of rock vocalist Joe Bowie, appeared
’n’ roll’s truly great bands. Available in an array of formats, we can recommend the two-CD/DVD in 1980. Joe – brother of Lester Bowie of Art
version as you’ll get the best of both worlds. Lukather and co positively romp through 26 tracks Ensemble Of Chicago fame – had been part
in front of an enthusiastic audience at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome in March last year, marking their of the NYC scene since the early 70s and had
40th anniversary with a frenzied performance. Luke’s playing is, of course, faultless throughout, played alongside the likes of Cecil Taylor, Sam
never more so than on the extended Rosanna solo. [DM] Rivers and Ornette Coleman before joining in
Standout track: Rosanna the punk/funk scene in New York and playing
For fans of: Foreigner, Journey with James Chance & The Contortions.
Out of all this comes Defunkt, with this,
their ferocious debut album. Playing an
Anne Briggs Wes Montgomery exuberant high-energy blend of funk, rock,
Anne Briggs Back On Indiana Avenue: The jazz and everything in between, this album
Topic 9 Carroll DeCamp Recordings grooves along in a ‘tight but not too tight’ way.
Resonance Records 9 It’s led by Joe’s cooler-than-cool vocals and
Folk recluse’s first album revisited dynamic trombone playing, with razor-sharp
Originally released in 1971, folk artist More gems from the jazz archives interjections from the horn section and
Anne Briggs’ debut album has enjoyed When unknown recordings surface years infectiously scratchy rhythm guitars. Then,
a re-release courtesy of Topic record label’s 80th after an artist’s death, it will often fill in holding down the bottom-end, it features
anniversary Treasure Series. Discovered by Ewan gaps in their careers. This find was down to pianist fabulous finger-popping bass player Kim
MacColl in the early 60s, Briggs has the distinction of and composer Carroll DeCamp who captured some Clarke. Finally, for the icing on the cake, it
having taught Bert Jansch the song Blackwater Side, live performances in Indiana and still had them includes the funkiest jazz drummer ever:
which opens this LP – Jansch’s version, of course, tucked away some 60 years later. The recordings Ronnie Burrage. It’s a potent mix topped off
going on to, ahem, influence Black Mountain Side were made in the late 50s before Wes sprang to with solos from the ensemble players that
on Led Zeppelin’s first album. Briggs and Jansch fame when he signed with Riverside Records in 1959. always leave you wanting more. Check out
went on to write together, but after the release of her What’s surprising here is that the recording quality Melvin’s Tune for two and a half minutes of
second album she stopped performing altogether, is very good for what would have essentially been marvellous uninhibited invention. It’s brilliant,
citing displeasure with the sound of her voice as a ‘bootleg’ enterprise. What’s not surprising is that timeless music with an irresistible free-
the reason. A shame, because what we hear on this Wes was playing magnificently back then. 60 years flowing stream of ideas.
album contradicts that opinion absolutely. [DM] on and the magic’s still there. [DM] Further Listening: Thermonuclear Sweat
Standout track: Go Your Way Standout track: Jingles (1982), Avoid The Funk… (1988)
For fans of: Linda Thompson, Eliza Carthy For fans of: Joe Pass, Barney Kessel

46 GUITARIST MAY 2019

feature John Renbourn

48 GUITARIST MAY 2019

REMEMBERING
RENBOURN
John Renbourn’s death sent shock waves throughout the acoustic guitar world
when he passed away in 2015. We asked Clive Carroll, who toured with John
extensively, for his reminiscences about the man and his music

Words David Mead

fter touring in the south west of the Newport Folk Festival and Carnegie Hall. Parallel

A
England in the early 1960s, John
Renbourn first came to prominence
when he formed a duo with Bert
Jansch, riding the wave of the great
English folk revival, but blazing
a trail for what became known as ‘folk baroque’. The
pair’s intricate and exacting instrumentals already
had a flavour with Renbourn’s interest in medieval
music, something he had come into contact with
while studying classical guitar at school. Jansch and
Renbourn went on to form the band Pentangle with
vocalist Jacqui McShee, fiddler Sue Draheim, bass
player Danny Thompson and drummer Terry Cox. The
band’s unique blend of influences – which included
blues and traditional folk, with the occasional foray into
pop – reached American ears, leading to appearances at
to this was an increasingly fruitful career for Renbourn
as a soloist, recording many albums that would go on to
become pioneering landmarks of acoustic playing.
Clive Carroll first encountered John Renbourn when
he supported him at his local folk club. Renbourn was
so impressed with this young performer that he
decided to take him under his wing and, over the years,
the pair toured extensively both here in the UK and in
the United States.
The opening track on Clive’s latest solo album,
The Furthest Tree, is an affectionate memorial to
Renbourn. Titled The Abbot’s Hymn after a memorable
occasion when John discovered Greene King’s Abbot
Ale, it forms a touching tribute to a man who acted
both as mentor, friend and guide in Clive’s formative
years as a musician.
JAMES FRAHER/GETTY

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 49

feature John Renbourn
What was it like when you first began
touring with John?
“It was a real eye-opener, because I’d just
come out of college and I was playing
straight-down-the-line classical repertoire
at college, pieces like The Cathedral
[La Catedral] by Barrios. For my final recital
I played Nocturnal by Benjamin Britten,
and I’d just recorded the Rodrigo Guitar
Concerto with the college orchestra – I was
well into that world. But as welcome breaks
from those heavyweight pieces, I was also
writing solo tunes that worked well on
steel-string guitar, and then I asked for a
support slot at the local folk club where
John was playing. I had a few cassettes, but
I didn’t really know too much about John’s
music because I was fully immersed in
contemporary music.
“When you leave college, it’s just the start.
It takes a lot of work and you have to be in
the right mindset to play a decent final
recital, but walking out in front of 150 John
Renbourn fans at Stamford Arts Centre is a
whole different kettle of fish. And I stood
there at the wings and watched how he did
50 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Clive Carroll on Renbourn:
“He’s like the Dante Gabriel
Rossetti of the guitar, in
more ways than one”
“He was pretty laid-
back and always
started his gigs with
Sweet Potato by
Booker T & The MG’s”
it. There were two guitarists that took me
under their wing, one was John Renbourn
the other one was Tommy Emmanuel, and
I learned a lot from both of them.”
What kinds of things did you pick up from
John at the beginning?
“I really appreciated the vibe he had. You
know, he was pretty laid-back. He always
started his sets with Sweet Potato by
Booker T & The MG’s. A pretty groovy start
to a set. Then he might go into something
like Lord Franklin and the audience were
settled. He settled before he was on stage,
to be honest; while I was playing my
opening part, he’d be in the green room
smoking a cigarette and just chilling out.
VIDEO EXTRA http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PHIL BARKER
1. John Renbourn’s 2. The guitar was built
trusty Bown OM in 1985 and has seen
model acoustic guitar some considerable
featured on many gigs action over the years –
and recordings but it still sounds sweet!
“When you’re on the stage as a solo
performer, you’re wholly exposed. There’s
no-one to hide behind like you can in a duo
or a five-piece band; you’ve got to carry
the whole show. So I was intrigued by his
storytelling. He was one of the people that
I met who had the strongest command of
the English language – and he was funny.
The way he told stories, he was full of
details and he had good timing. A lot of
people gravitated towards that, including
me. I found him fascinating.”
He took you on tour in America, didn’t he?
“Yes. He was the first person to bring me
to the United States and our first concert
was in Floyd, Virginia. I think it was there
where we were asked to give a blues guitar
workshop and I asked John what would be
a good number to cover. He suggested the
Mississippi Blues by William Brown, and
gave me a sheet of music, or tab – I think
it was from a Stefan Grossman book. It was
funny travelling to the US for the first time
and the first piece of work was teaching
Americans how to play blues guitar. I’m
feature John Renbourn VIDEO EXTRA http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

“He had the strongest

command of the
English language –
and he was funny.
The way he told stories,
he was full of details”

DAVID REDFERN /GETTY

from Chelmsford in Essex and John
Renbourn was born in Marylebone! So, yes,
life on the road in America started out in
Floyd, Virginia. It wasn’t as well organised
as a lot of other tours have been, in the sense
that we rocked up to some motel by the side
of the freeway and John would negotiate
the price. So I thought, ‘Okay, this is the
setup’. I soon realised it was a good idea to
get to sleep first because the snoring wasn’t
quiet. We’d be straight out of the gigs, John
would be talking to some old friends of his,
I’d say, ‘Right, I’ll see you later,’ and I went
back and got straight to sleep, otherwise you
wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Did John have an established fanbase in
the US at that time?
“He had a lot of fans over there. People
would turn up with stacks of LPs for him to
sign. One of the most memorable concerts
was in Rockport in Texas at the Maritime
Museum. The after-show party was really
interesting. The gig was great and then
afterwards we went back to this guy’s house
and he lived way out there… I think we
“He was fascinated by
legends and medieval
tales and romances”
maybe even crossed some wooden boards
over swampland to this place. There were
about 20 or 30 people there for this party
and they all sat around the room. It was
a special event, so not only was his wife
there, but I think they’d invited some kids
and grandkids – they were asleep in baby
carriers – and they had a couple of dogs.
“Some other characters, probably from
hearing John the first time round in the late
60s, were there, too, and I think a lot of them
will openly admit they had proceeded into
an advanced state of refreshment or
medication. I remember one guy’s hat had
an inchworm living on it. He described how
he picked it up and it had been living on the
rim – apparently they retrace their scent,
these little inchworms, so he’d been making
his way round. Once he finished the
circumference, he caught a sniff of where
he was before and just kept going round
and round and round.
“There was also a strong smell of gas in
the room, which had an old three-piece
suite set up with a few chairs scattered
about. It was one of the highlights of the
tour because it turns out that our host, John
Grimaldo, played guitar and his wife sang.
So about one o’clock in the morning the real
gig started. All the old boys started nodding
their heads and the kids woke up. They
were screaming, the dogs were barking, it
was about 98 per cent humidity with a
strong smell of gas… you really felt you were
in the South.”
What were John’s main interests,
outside of music?
“He dabbled in all sorts of things and he
was fascinated by legends and medieval
tales and romances. He reminds me of the
pre-Raphaelites – you get people like Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, or later on Waterhouse
and Edward Burne-Jones, Millais and all
those kind of characters, where they really
felt passionate about art, pre-Raphael, and

52 GUITARIST MAY 2019

feature John Renbourn VIDEO EXTRA http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

then they bypassed that formalised classical

period. For me, John Renbourn shared
some similarities with the pre-Raphaelites
in that he was fascinated by that early music
but from a 1960s perspective. As a musician,
he’s like the Dante Gabriel Rossetti of the
guitar, in more ways than one.”

Did John ever share much about his

writing process?
“No, he didn’t talk about it, but he’d be
working on things. He worked with the
guitar and those landscape A3 manuscript
pads – that was his composing board.
He’d write out tons of ideas. He wasn’t
short of ideas in that he had huge storage
containers, groovy-looking things. He had
trunk-loads of unfinished scores and lots of
them finished, too. After he died, one of the

“He had trunk-loads of

scores. After he died,
one of the questions
was, ’What’s going to
happen to this lot?’”
big questions was, ‘What’s going to happen
to this lot?’ It was a treasure trove and he
wanted it all to be sent down to a university
in Exeter, but that wasn’t possible. So it’s

DAVE PEABODY /GETTY

now being held at Newcastle University,
waiting to be sifted through and catalogued.
I think the idea is to catalogue it all and
make it available to anyone who wants
to come and see it, or see the microfilm
version, I guess, so there aren’t too many
hands touching it.”
So, there are finished pieces that have
never been recorded?
“Well, there’s a lot of music there that hasn’t
been played. John had a very specific way
of arranging for the guitar so it wouldn’t
always be like an open E, for example, it
might be a harmonic E on the fifth string at
the 7th fret. He was into slipping in these
harmonics and he worked quite slowly.
He hummed melodies and he wrote those
down, but when it came to the arranging
side of things, he’d be playing one part
and singing ideas over it until a voice felt
right. So it was quite a slow process that
he enjoyed and that’s why they sound very
detailed, I think, because he was working at
that speed.”
What would you say are John’s most
representative albums?
“Well, I’d say the first one would probably
be Sir John Alot [1968]. He was absolutely
into full swing then – his early-music
fascination really came through and it came
to fruition in Sir John Alot, and then after
that you’ve got The Lady And The Unicorn
[1970]. So I would say probably those
two albums, though a lot of people would
argue for Another Monday [1966], which is
another great record.
“But then, by the end of his life, he was
also fascinated by the works of Erik Satie,
for example, and he ventured from the
Renaissance period into the Baroque world,
because in the last project he also included a
Bach cello prelude. The last album is called
Palermo Snow [2011], and if you listen to the
opening track, there’s a kind of southern
Mediterranean undertone alongside
decades of fascination with Medieval
Renaissance music and blues and folk.”
If you had to pick a single memory from
touring with John, which one stands out?
“I was 27 when I was on tour with John in
the USA and a lot of people die when they’re
27, don’t they, in the music world? You’ve
got Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse and
Jimi Hendrix. We were in a car crash on
my 27th birthday. We were driving from
Washington to Philadelphia, we picked up
a hire car and we could hear this rattling
and we didn’t know where it came from. We
slowed down in a traffic jam and I opened
the window, spoke to a guy in a truck to my
right and asked him could he see anything
wrong and he just chuckled saying, ‘You
must have a tin can in your hubcap, son.’
“What actually happened was the bolts
had sheared off the axle because they were
done up too tight from the factory, so it was
just bolts jangling in the hubcap. The wheel
had come detached from the axle and we
were flying at 60mph and all of a sudden
there was this crash, bang and sparks flying
up the right side of the car and John pulled
over to the 45-degree angle slope at the side
of the freeway. He said, ‘What’s going on?
Have we got a blowout?’ I looked out of the
window and said, ‘John, there’s no tyre.’ He
said, ‘What about the wheel?’ I said, ‘There’s
no wheel,’ and at exactly the same time this
wheel came flying past down the exit. But
we survived, so what does that mean?
I haven’t made it. Just got to trudge on!”
Watch Clive Carroll play Renbourn’s Bown OM on
our special video at http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

54 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 O S
Words Jamie Dickson & Rod Brakes Photography Neil Godwin
he year is 1949. The
T
Second World War
had ended just four
years previously but
already a shining new
technological age
was beckoning. Jets streaked across the
California skies – and down on terra firma,
in Fullerton, California, Leo Fender was
building the first prototypes of a guitar that
would propel six-string design into the
wide blue yonder.
These early testbed instruments were
blocky, even crude looking. The body
materials, pickups and control layout were
experimental. But they had one pioneering
feature that set them apart from every other
guitar then available: a solid body. Even
the name of this jet-age instrument was a
kind of prototype back in ’49. Leo planned
to call it the Esquire, but – as we shall see –
the guitar would gain a pickup and change
names twice before it assumed the historic
R
moniker that became famous for the next
seven decades: Telecaster.
One man who has researched the early
evolution of Leo’s first electric guitar in
forensic detail is David Davidson, a hugely
experienced vintage guitar trader and
curator of the Songbirds Guitar Museum in
Chattanooga, Tennessee. He says that the
solidbody concept was born of Leo Fender’s
practical outlook and desire to carve out
a niche for himself in a guitar market that
was still dominated by the old guard of
tradition-steeped American guitar makers
such as Gibson and Martin.
“Leo had been thinking for a period of
time about coming up with an inexpensive
alternative to the very expensive Gibson
and Gretsch models,” David says. “He
was laughed at when he came out with
a solidbody instrument. Mostly because
people thought, ‘How could that possibly
sound good?’ But he was a pretty diligent
guy who just kept on trying to perfect it.”
feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster
Even in 1949, Fender had a few successes
under his belt that suggested a solidbody
electric might be the way forward. He’d
launched a range of wooden-cabinet valve
amplifiers including the Princeton, Deluxe
and Professional the year after the war
ended. These were designed for the electric
lap-steel players of the era’s country bands.
He’d also built a twin-neck steel guitar for
Noel Boggs of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys
Western swing band – a huge act that played
to 10,000 people every week. This had a
slab-like horizontal body supported by legs,
like a table. But despite its dissimilarity to
a conventional guitar, it – and the range of
multi-neck electric Fender lap steels that
followed – offered compelling evidence that
stringed solidbody electric instruments not
only worked but sounded great and were
well-liked by the musicians who used them.
Crucially, Leo’s clients on the country music
scene provided a ready-made focus group
helping him to design and refine his next
and boldest innovation – a conventional
‘Spanish’ guitar with a solid body that made
use of the lap-steel technology he’d been
perfecting since 1946.
“He used his core group of local talent
players to bounce instruments off,” David
Davidson explains. “He experimented with
parts that were basically lap-steel parts in
the beginning: pickups and such. And he
experimented with different types of wood,
primarily pine. He also experimented with
chambered bodies and solid bodies to try
58 GUITARIST MAY 2019
and find the right combination. He would
use everybody, from Rex Gallion to Bill
Carson and other local players, to go out and
experiment with these guitars. Sometimes
he’d gift those guitars onto those people;
sometimes he’d modify them many, many
times over and hand them back out again to
be used, until he could come up with what
he thought was the perfect formula.
“The guitar takes shape in drawings in
1948, and becomes a guitar, a working
specimen, in 1949. It would be hard for me
to nail down a date and, in fact, you can only
date [the earliest prototypes] by pot dates;
they weren’t putting neck dates on these
guitars yet. The earliest pot date I have is a
late-1948 pot date, but I’m sure the guitar
itself was put together in 1949. We really
don’t know exactly when, because there
“Leo Fender was laughed
at when he came out with
a solidbody instrument…
People thought, ‘How could
that possibly sound good?’
But he was a diligent guy
and kept trying to perfect it”
DAVID DAVIDSON
Custom Shop
recreation of the
‘Snake Head’ Esquire
prototype of 1949
are no other markings inside these guitars.
They weren’t up to that level of production.”
EARLY EVOLUTION
The early prototypes of what Leo initially
dubbed the Esquire had a single pickup and
these experimental builds tell a story of a
guitar that evolved quickly from a rather
crude initial design. As successive versions
were built, the nascent ‘Esquire’ soon
acquired hallmarks of Telecaster design
DNA that we can recognise today.
“There’s kind of an evolution that takes
place, from the so-called ‘Snake Head’
guitar, which everyone’s fairly familiar
with, that had three tuners on each side of
the headstock and a small pickguard. And
that guitar was joined by a couple of cousins
that have six-tuners-to-a-side headstocks.
There is one that is stripped down to its
original finish, pine, and then there was one
with a pine body, six-on-a-side headstock,
small pickguard, controls perpendicular
to the neck… and that guitar is white. The
original finish was an opaque white finish.
The translucent blonde came later, after
experimenting with different things.”
As well as the basic outline of the guitar,
the electronics and switching system was
also revised several times as the guitar, still
named the Esquire, neared readiness.
“At the museum we acquired the actual
Esquire that appeared in the catalogue,
which Leo shot himself. He was kind of a
photo buff, so he actually photographed the
Leo Fender was tenacious in his
search for the right sound and
design, and sent his prototypes
out into the wild to be test-driven
by local guitar talent
feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster

“It took years for Gibson

to get the Les Paul right,
but Leo basically modelled
himself after Henry Ford.
Whatever the prototype is,
the [production] guitar is
going to be really close”
DAVID DAVIDSON

guitar with the case and the strap himself.

It’s a very famous photo that’s in the 1950
Fender catalogue, introducing the electric
Spanish guitar. We have that guitar, and that
guitar has unique features, which are not
featured on other instruments. One of them
is that they had yet to come up with the idea
for the three-way switch. So this guitar has a
push-button switch, which is actually just a
regular Leviton lamp switch that he would
have picked up at Fullerton Hardware and
installed in the guitar. And the control cavity
is still shorter than what would become the
production Esquire/Broadcaster. We call it
the Lamp Switch Guitar.”
It says something of the haste with which

Photography by Joby Sessions

Leo wished to bring the Esquire to market
that some of its features were provisional
and would change further before the guitar
was available for sale in earnest.
“That guitar is an ash body, but it’s
sandwiched together like some of the pine-
body prototypes,” David says. “It’s probably
one of the first – if not the very first – ash-
body guitar. But it has a pancake body
and, interestingly enough, it has a white
pickguard made of fibreglass. I think they
were experimenting with materials. This
is before they made the decision to go with
Bakelite on the guitar. They were probably
weighing different things in the prototype
stage. They simply laid out several layers of
fibreglass matting and cut it to shape and
attached it with five screws.
“There is no decal on the headstock,
and the reason for that is if you look at
the original catalogue photograph of the
guitar, the word ‘Fender’ is actually an
artist rendering in the photograph, so the
Fender name is made larger and bolder in
the photograph, but it’s not on the guitar.
It’s also a no-truss-rod guitar. The pot dates
to late 1948. The serial number is 0075,
which is interesting because it was most
likely made after the twin-pickup prototype
number nine that I have, the red one, which
is a pine body and has a lap steel pickup
in the neck cavity. So that’s an early piece
A one-off Sunburst twin-pickup ‘double
Esquire’ built in 1950 for early adopter
Verlin Whitford. It now resides in the
Songbirds museum in Tennessee
in itself. I think he was just trying to get
it right, you know? Where the pine body
prototype is super, super light, it didn’t have
the same sustain as the ash body.”
FROM ESQUIRE TO BROADCASTER
David’s mention of twin-pickup prototypes
ushers in the start of the modern Telecaster
story. While the Esquire would be produced
for many years in single-pickup format,
it was clear early on that many musicians
wanted more tonal variety than the
standard Esquire’s brash bridge pickup
could provide. And so, ever keen to give
musicians what they wanted, Leo soon
began manufacturing twin-pickup versions
of the Esquire. Mike Lewis of Fender’s
Custom Shop takes up the story…
“Fender made single-pickup versions
and double-pickup versions of Esquires.
So there were some early 1950 ‘double’
Esquires that were, to all intents and
purposes, what would later be called a
Broadcaster and then a Telecaster, except
it said ‘Esquire’ on the headstock at first.
Possibly, when the single-pickup Esquire
hit the market, people said, ‘Hey, this is
great, but we want two pickups.’ So Leo
makes them with two pickups as well. Then
they’re out there trying to sell this guitar
and somebody says, ‘Well, which is it? One
pickup or two?’ Maybe it got confusing.
So they discontinued the ‘double’ Esquire
and reintroduced it as a twin-pickup guitar
called the Broadcaster. In fact, the double
Esquire actually pre-dates the Broadcaster.”
It was a lightning-fast development,
but because it was guided by extensive
developmental feedback from musicians,
it’s remarkable how many features of the
twin-pickup Broadcaster model of 1950
have carried through to present-day Teles.
“It took years for Gibson to get the Les
Paul right,” says David Davidson of the
Songbirds Guitar Museum, “but Leo
Fender basically modelled himself after

60 GUITARIST MAY 2019


Henry Ford. Whatever the prototype is,
the [production] guitar is going to be really
close to that prototype. Leo’s research
proved to be correct.”
Nonetheless, Mike Lewis of Fender’s
Custom Shop says that the details of the
early Broadcasters wandered around a little
as Fender strove to settle on a definitive
spec, yielding some early quirks that are still
being rediscovered – and enjoyed – today.
“Some of those early, early Blackguards
have a 7¼- to 9½-inch radius: what I call
a ‘vintage compound radius’. It either got
that way over the years of being refretted,
or maybe they didn’t have the right tooling
and jigs to begin with and it was done by
hand, you know? The early pickups also
had larger diameter magnets in many cases.
For example, the bridge pickup in the early
guitars sometimes had a .195 diameter
magnet as opposed to a .187. The Double
Esquire [reissue] in our Vintage Custom
series is really that: it has a 7¼- to 9½-inch
70 Years Of The Telecaster feature
THE
EVOLUTION
OF THE FENDER
TELECASTER
1949
Leo Fender and George
Fullerton complete the
‘Snake Head’ prototype
solidbody electric guitar
SPRING 1950
Single-pickup Esquire model
first appears; dual-pickup
Esquire built
AUTUMN 1950
Dual-pickup Broadcaster with
black ’guard, ‘butterscotch’
blonde finish and brass
saddles released
1951
Broadcaster name dropped;
Telecaster born
1954
White plastic pickguard;
off-white blonde finish;
This 1953 Fender Esquire from steel bridge saddles
ATB Guitars is testimony to the
survival of the original single-
pickup design into the Tele era
1955
Staggered bridge pickup
radius and those pickups with the larger polepieces; neck profile
magnets and the wiring. It’s really cool.” changes to ‘V’
The final stage in the development of the
Esquire prototype into the Telecaster proper
is well documented but bears repetition
here. Perhaps nettled by the success of
1958
‘Top loading’ bridge replaces
Fender’s all-new solidbody, Gretsch lodged ‘string-through body’ type;
a complaint about the name Broadcaster, on shallower neck
the basis that it sold a drum kit named the
Broadkaster. The chance of confusing the
two products might seem remote, but as a
fledgling company, Fender elected to avoid 1959
any possible legal entanglements by taking ‘String-through body’ bridge
reintroduced; slab rosewood
the Broadcaster decal off the headstocks of
fretboards introduced
its production guitars for a period during
1951. Guitars made during this interregnum
are today dubbed ‘Nocasters’ due to the
absence of a formal model name. Finally, 1969
around August 1951, Fender renamed its Optional maple-cap ’board
twin-pickup single-cut the Telecaster discontinued; fretted maple
– and a legend was born. Join us now as necks reintroduced
we walk through some of the milestone
evolutions of the model that followed…
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 61
feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster
THE SOUL OF A
TELE
he Telecaster has seen
T many updates and
changes over its 70-year
design evolution. But
like many great designs,
the Tele retains a striking simplicity at its
heart, which, ironically, has made it more
evergreen and versatile than feature-
packed 50s and 60s guitars, overladen
with superfluous gadgets, that have dated
less gracefully. However, the simple tonal
elements that make a Tele can nonetheless
be endlessly tweaked and adjusted to yield
new sounds, as Mike Lewis – who heads
up Fender’s Custom Shop – has discovered
over the years. We joined him to examine
the building blocks of Tele tone, reminisce
about some outstanding Teles he’s played
from Fender’s past – and learn where the
Custom Shop is heading next with this
ageless platform.
NOTHING WORKS IN ISOLATION
“The beauty of the Telecaster design – I like
to call it the purity of the design – was that
everything works together,” Mike reflects.
“The form followed the function. There
wasn’t anything going on with those guitars
that didn’t have a purpose. Everything
works together… the maple neck combined
with the original ash body. And, to me, the
difference from guitar to guitar, where you
wonder why does this one sound so great
and this one sounds good but not as good,
it’s generally how those two pieces of wood
work together.
“For example, the density of a body, versus
the density of a neck, is gonna produce a
certain type of tone, regardless of what
pickups you have in there,” Mike continues.
“Some people like a lighter-weight body
with a big, fat neck. They feel like that
62 GUITARIST MAY 2019
gives them a big, punchy, open sound. By
contrast, a heavier body is gonna give you a
more focused sound, less ambient… maybe
more sustain, if that’s what you’re looking
for. So, in the Custom Shop at the Master
Built level, the builder will consult with the
customer and determine that body-to-neck
balance based on what the customer is
looking for sonically.”
ASH VERSUS ALDER?
“Well, obviously an alder body Tele [from
the 60s] versus an ash body from the 50s is
going to be a completely different sound.
The alder’s gonna give you a little bit more
midrange, to my ears. And the pickups, to
my ears, got brighter sounding as the years
went by. I don’t know if that was because
of artist feedback or the types of amplifiers
that were also current. If you think about
the amplifiers that existed in the early 50s,
they were tweed amps, right? But when
the Blackface Fender amps came, you plug
the same guitar into those and it’s a whole
different animal. So you also have to think,
what were the amplifiers that went along
with the guitars in the different eras?
“Everything works “Nonetheless, the 60s-style alder body
together… The form is going to make a huge difference – and
followed the function. There the pickups, to my ears, got brighter. The
rosewood fingerboard is also a completely
wasn’t anything going on different sound to a one-piece maple neck;
with those guitars that some people think that it’s a warmer sound.
didn’t have a purpose” And if you’re comparing a round-laminate
rosewood ’board with a flat-laminate [slab]
MIKE LEWIS one, you’re going to get less rosewood
and more maple in the mix. All the same,
to me, the biggest factor determining the
way something sounds is the player – it’s
in the hands. So if you put it in the hands of
a particular player, you may not be able to
instantly say, ‘Oh, that’s a 60s Tele.’ You’re
 70 Years Of The Telecaster feature

An alder-bodied
1963 Telecaster in
rare Sonic Blue
custom colour
Photography by Olly Curtis

gonna hear that player and they’re gonna

make it sound like them.”

MIKE’S FAVE TELE PICKUPS

“I’d go for a fairly new pickup in our offering
– they’re called ’50-’51 Blackguard pickups,”
says Mike when asked what configuration
he’d choose. “It’s a neck and a bridge set and
the bridge pickup has 0.195-inch diameter
Alnico 3 [rods], with 43-gauge enamel
wire dipped in shellac. The neck pickup
has .0195 diameter Alnico 5 magnets and
43-gauge enamel wire dipped in shellac.
They’re just raw, loud, expressive, dynamic
great-sounding pickups. The shellac just
really opens everything up. It holds the
pickup together and does a fine job to keep
it from being microphonic. But the whole Custom creation: a ‘bowling
thing just sounds like the door’s just wide ball’ finish Tele by Master
open, you know?” Builder Dennis Galuszka

BACK TO THE FUTURE

“Many of our current orders for Thinline
Teles specify ash bodies, and [as a result]
they’re actually more a ‘50s style’ Thinline
– which, of course, never existed back in the
day,” Mike explains. “The Thinline officially
came in ’68, but we do what you might call
50s-style ones, with a one-piece maple
neck, which is a really awesome guitar.
“Right now we’ve got a Thinline Nocaster:
it’s a Nocaster but it’s also Thinline. It’s got
that same-shape Thinline pickguard but in
one-piece single-ply black phenolic. The
sonic difference is that it adds that quality
that a Thinline gives you – you’re gonna get
a little bit less sustain and more of an open,
hollow sound. Especially when you’re in
the middle position combining the two
pickups. But with the rest of the Blackguard
appointments and stuff, it adds up to a new
sound. A little bit of both.”
TOPLOAD VERSUS THROUGH-BODY
THE TOPLOAD TELE BRIDGE SOMETIMES
GETS A BAD RAP – BUT IT’S A KEY PART OF
THE ZEPPELIN SOUND, SAYS MIKE LEWIS
“I’ve played some topload Teles [where
the strings anchor at the rear of the bridge
rather than passing through the body] that
really didn’t have much sound going on.
And I’ve played some that were as big as a
house, tonally. So it’s not just that bridge, it’s
the whole guitar. But, you know, I took that
topload Jimmy Page Tele that we’re doing
right now and plugged it into a Deluxe Reverb
and turned it up really loud and played the
intro to Good Times Bad Times – and that’s
the sound. Sounds just like it. And you can’t
get it exactly like it without that.”

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 63

feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster

1950 FENDER
BROADCASTER

his, the godfather of all Telecasters,

T was fiercer and fatter in tonal terms

than nearly any other that followed.
The model here belongs to the Seven
All dimensions in millimetres
unless stated
Decades show, which tells the story of rock in live
performances with period-correct instruments. SCALE LENGTH 25.5”
The Broadcaster appears to be identical to NUT WIDTH 41.6
the later 1952 Blackguard Telecaster. So what STRING SPACING (NUT) 34.2
are the unique features of the earliest models? STRING SPACING (BRIDGE) 54
David Davidson, curator of the Songbirds Guitar
12TH WIDTH 51
Museum and a veteran vintage guitar dealer, walks
us through some of the main points. “The fact 1ST DEPTH 21.65
there was no truss rod in some of the early guitars 12TH DEPTH 25.2
is a big point of difference. I’ve had five guitars that WEIGHT 4.4kg/9.68lb
were made without truss rods and each one played
FRETBOARD RADIUS 184 (7.25”)
perfectly. A truss rod added a tremendous amount
BODY DEPTH 45
of steps to the build, and [Fender] probably could
have gotten away without it.” FRET SIZE (W X H) 1.88 x 0.7
While many ’Casters have chunky necks, David PICKUP DC (POSITION 1)
cautions against the idea there is a quintessential 8.55 kohms (blend fully clockwise)
neck profile. “I’ve had 30 Broadcasters go through 6.83 kohms (blend fully anti-clockwise)
my hands, and I can’t tell you I’ve felt two necks PICKUP DC (POSITION 2) 7.75kohms
that were the same,” he says. “Also, the tuners on PICKUP DC (POSITION 3) No reading
the earliest guitars have no point of lubrication.
PICKUP SCREW POLE FROM NUT
The tuners are sealed with the factory grease
(NECK) 489.5
inside – and when that was gone it was gone and
the tuners wouldn’t function properly. PICKUP SCREW POLE FROM
“One of the biggest differences I see, is on the NUT (BRIDGE)
614-597 (treble to bass)
routing in the earliest days. On the Broadcaster,
there was no channel rout, so the neck pickup
leads had to be put down this small hole, which
only just fit the wire, down to the control cavity.”

With thanks to Seven Decades

TELE-TONES
ROY BUCHANAN
The Messiah Will Come Again
Roy Buchanan (1972)
1953 FENDER TELECASTER

Buchanan’s virtuoso Telecaster

workouts were hugely influential.
This track shows the singing
emotion Roy could conjure with
his Tele ‘Nancy’; a classically inspired melody
builds tension before an explosion of 16th-note
triplets up the E string for a last 3rd that
rings with expression.
NB: This pre-’52 wiring gives the following control functions and pickup selections from the three-way switch:
Position 1 – volume/lower control acts as a pickup blend. With the lower blend control fully clockwise, the
bridge pickup is voiced; by turning the blend control anti-clockwise, the neck pickup is introduced
Position 2 – volume/lower control inactive. Neck pickup
Position 3 – volume/lower control inactive. Neck with capacitor roll-off

64 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 70 Years Of The Telecaster feature

DON’T GET YOUR

WIRES CROSSED
ROD BRAKES UNTANGLES THE
CONFUSING STORY OF THE TELE’S
TONE AND PICKUP CONTROLS

he standard controls of dual-pickup

“The bridge pickups in Broadcasters
had a steel baseplate instead of a
copper baseplate,” says David Davidson
Blank original neck
plate on the 1950
Broadcaster
T Esquires, Broadcasters, ‘Nocasters’ and
the early Telecasters are quite different
to those of later Telecasters. On instruments
built from 1950 to 1952, the rear knob acts as
a blend control between both pickups when
the three-way selector switch is in the rear
position, while the middle position selects the
neck pickup alone. With the selector switch
in the front position, a heavily filtered and
non-adjustable bass-heavy sound was produced
by the neck pickup.
In 1952, Leo Fender revamped the Telecaster’s
switching system to do away with the blend
function and replace it with a conventional tone
control. However, this revised layout eliminated
the player’s ability to use both pickups at once.
With the selector switch all the way forward,
the ’52 Tele produced the same dark and
woolly ‘bass’ tone as before. However, moving
the pickup selector to the middle position
now activated the neck pickup on its own,
while moving the switch all the way to the rear
selected the bridge pickup on its own. Tone
adjustment was via the guitar’s rear knob.
Towards the end of 1967, the configuration
changed again to what is now the classic switching
arrangement, where the three-way selector
engages either the neck on its own, both pickups
at once or the bridge alone, with tone control for
all positions provided via the rearmost knob.
On single-pickup Esquires, the three-way
selector switch operates as a tone selector
exclusively. The front position produces a heavily
filtered and non-adjustable bass-heavy sound
similar to that produced by the (pre-1968)
dual-pickup guitars, while the middle position
provides full control over both volume and tone
via the front and rear knobs respectively. In the
rear position, however, a powerful lead sound is
achieved by routing the signal to the jack via the
The sealed-back tuners volume control only, thus bypassing any form of
on Broadcasters had no tone control whatsoever. A popular mod involves
point of lubrication or routing the pickup directly to the jack, for the
distinguishing marks
liveliest and most unfettered tone achievable.

Complex lacquer
checking on the
Seven Decades
Broadcaster

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 65

feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster

1952 FENDER
TELECASTER

or many, it’s the quintessential

F Tele. A touch more refined than the

Broadcaster, yet still snarling and
girthy, this variant was, from mid-’51
All dimensions in millimetres
unless stated

on, the first of the breed to wear the definitive SCALE LENGTH 25.5”
Telecaster name on the headstock. The example
NUT WIDTH 41.5
pictured comes from the Seven Decades
collection. It plays beautifully and is considerably STRING SPACING (NUT) 34.5
lighter than their Broadcaster (see Tech Spec, STRING SPACING (BRIDGE) 54.5
opposite). But the difference two years made to 12TH WIDTH 50.69
the design itself was subtle says David Davidson
1ST DEPTH 21.6
of the Songbirds Guitar Museum – although
12TH DEPTH 24.7
there was at least one landmark innovation:
“In August of 1951, when they started with the WEIGHT 3.185kg/7lb
first Telecaster, there were no big changes,” David FRETBOARD RADIUS 184 (7.25”)
explains. “The only significant update that year BODY DEPTH 45
is the first Bigsby-equipped Tele, which was
FRET SIZE (w x h) 2 x 0.99
a collaboration between Leo and Paul Bigsby,
who were not on the best of terms. However, Mr PICKUP DC (POSITION 1) 6.64 kohms
Bigsby provided Leo with a fixed-arm vibrato PICKUP DC (POSITION 2) 3.28 kohms
with a specially made pickguard.” PICKUP DC (POSITION 3) 5.96 kohms
The attribute so many players love about a PICKUP SCREW POLE FROM NUT (NECK) 488
standard ’52 Tele, however, remains its workhorse
PICKUP SCREW POLE FROM NUT (BRIDGE)
utility. “People offer me Blackguard Telecasters
614-597 (treble to bass)
where there’s maybe 20 percent of the original
finish on the guitar. And yet the electronics are
perfect. The solder is perfect. I always say, ‘How
could you drag a guitar through the mud, hit the
cymbals with it and throw it across the stage for
70 years and nothing broke? It just got wear and
tear but nothing broke?’ Fender was trying to
build something bullet-proof, and it succeeded.”

With thanks to Seven Decades

TELE-TONES
BILLY GIBBONS | ZZ TOP
Jesus Just Left Chicago
Tres Hombres (1973)
1952 FENDER TELECASTER

Though tone-king Gibbons is

synonymous with his Pearly
Gates Les Paul, ZZ Top’s third
album is his Fender moment, with
righteous high gain. The often purposefully
vague Gibbons revealed that he used a ’52
NB: This Tele has been rewired to modern (post-1967) wiring and gives the following control functions and pickup selections from the
Broadcaster on this slow blues (although three-way switch: Position 1 – volume/tone, bridge pickup; Position 2 – volume/tone, both pickups; Position 3 – volume/tone, neck pickup
Fender changed the ’Caster’s name in ’51).

66 GUITARIST MAY 2019


TWANG TONE
TIM MILLS OF BARE KNUCKLE PICKUPS ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE TELECASTER’S PICKUPS...
“The whole thing starts
off with pickups wound
with 43-gauge plain
enamel wire, which
gives those Broadcaster
and Nocaster coils a
really big, throaty sort
of sound,” Tim Mills of
Bare Knuckle explains, adding that the
spec of early pickups jumped around
a lot. “And then you see that move to a
42-gauge wire in the bridge. Very briefly
in 1952, for about six months, you see the
neck coil wound in 42-gauge wire as well,
before it drops back to a 43-gauge again.
“The bridge coil in those days would
have had flat magnets, up to about 1955,
so it was quite a blocky-looking thing.
All the flat work would have been black
at that time. For the first couple of years
the baseplate underneath the bridge coil,
that actually allows it to mount to the
bridge plate assembly, was made out of
a zinc-plated steel. And then as you drift
towards ’55, you see less of that, and
more of a slightly thinner copper-plated
steel baseplate.
“In terms of what kind of magnets are
being used, you see a lot of reporting of
it being Alnico 3 rod magnets, back in the
early days, pre-1955. I have to be honest
and say I’ve never actually found any
Alnico 3 in any of the ones I tested. I don’t
mean that they weren’t used, but I’ve
found Alnico 2, derivatives of Alnico 5, and
I’ve even found different types of Alnico
all being used in one coil. There was a
generic grade of [uncategorised] Alnico, if
you like, that was around in the 50s and a
lot of it seems to be very much like that.
“A colleague of mine spent a lot of time
having those magnets analysed... trying
to get the actual chemical composition
out – and, in fact, [that generic Alnico] is
closer to Alnico 3 than anything else in
particular. These days, you tend to find a
lot of boutique winders, and even Fender,
using Alnico 3 to replicate Broadcaster
and Nocaster-type winds, primarily
because Alnico 3 has a very low string-
pull. So it has an aged type of feel to it –
it’s a good choice to go to if you want to
replicate something that’s been played for
60, 70 or so years.
“After 1955, you see a move to
staggered magnets on the bridge, and
also the wind drops considerably at this
point. So we’ve moved right away from
the big, muscular 43-gauge winds, and
some pretty hefty 42-gauge winds as well,
to a lower 42-gauge plain enamel wind
on the bridge and a copper-plated steel
baseplate. It is also most definitely an
Alnico 5 rod by this point.
“You’ve also got a bevel on the top,
which will have helped set each rod in its
flatwork. Flatwork all the way through is
a black four-bond. There’s also the fabled
cloth pushback wire, which was primarily
yellow and black in those days, with black
and white nearly always on the necks.
Tone-wise, this is when you really get the
70 Years Of The Telecaster feature
The bridge pickup
of a Telecaster
contributes to its
characteristic sound
classic Tele ‘twang’ coming in big-time.
But it’s a real woody twang, with a nice
snap to it as well. The neck pickup had
a deep-drawn brass cover, which pretty
much covered the whole of the coil to
protect it, and it’s still got the 43-gauge
wire – so that neck is still nice and warm
and mellow sounding.
THE FUTURE
So that takes us up to the CBS era, when
they take over in 1965. And there is a big
change around that time. Tim explains:
“Up to that point, we’ve got small teams
of winders hand-winding the pickups.
CBS take over, and we see a move to more
automated machinery, and an auto-
shut-off sort of procedure. Somebody
at that time must have made a decision
to unify what was going on in the way
they made their pickups, because you
see the Stratocaster, Telecaster pickups,
even the bass pickups at that time, all
move to virtually the same type of wind.
About 7,500 turns is what you tend to
find. That’s still with 42-gauge [wire] on
the bridge, 43-gauge on the neck – and
that has the result of making the Tele
bridge become really fierce. This is where
you start seeing the reference to ‘ice-
pick’ highs, and this very brittle, biting
Telecaster tone. There are some fans of
those 70s pickups, but by and large, most
people don’t like them. So the magic era,
for me, seems to be up to around when
CBS take over.”
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 67
feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster

1956 & 1958

TELECASTERS

harp yet sweet, the voice of the

S Telecaster gave rock ’n’ roll its bite

and snap in the hands of guitarists
such as James Burton, who joined
Ricky Nelson’s band and played one of the finest
solos of all time on Nelson’s Susie Q in 1957, later
going on to be a pillar of Elvis’s Taking Care Of
Business band from 1969. This duo of beautiful
‘Whiteguard’ Teles dates from around the time of
Burton’s seminal tenure with Nelson, which was
also a golden period for Leo Fender’s firstborn.
The white plastic pickguard fitted to both guitars
was introduced in late ’54, while staggered-height
polepieces on the bridge pickup came in shortly
afterwards, along with the distinctive ‘top hat’
pickup-selector switch, which both these
beauties sport.
From mid-’56, the Fender ‘Spaghetti’ logo was
moved to sit more visibly above the butterfly-
style string guide – a change in position that
clearly distinguishes these otherwise very similar
siblings. Steel saddles followed for Teles that
were made from late ’58 onwards, completing
the transformation of the burly Blackguard-style
design into a brighter, lighter machine altogether,
in which mid-rich bark and brute power was
traded for sweetness of timbre, lower output and
country-style twang, which most people now
associate with the Telecaster.

With thanks to New Kings Road

Vintage Guitar Emporium

TELE-TONES

JIMMY PAGE |
LED ZEPPELIN
Stairway To Heaven
Led Zeppelin IV (1971)
1958 OR 1959 FENDER
S TA N D A R D T E L E C A S T E R

The ‘Dragon Tele’ was used on the

first Led Zep album in ’68, but the Twang machines:
guitar’s star moment would come post-1955 Teles had a
when it was plugged into a Supro classic, brighter sound
amp for its owner’s greatest guitar solo.

68 GUITARIST MAY 2019


1958 TELECASTER
CUSTOM
This same Telecaster Custom
appeared in Fender catalogues
upon the model’s release in 1959
70 Years Of The Telecaster feature
ebuting at the June 1959 NAMM
D Show, the Telecaster Custom was,
to all intents and purposes, a fancier
looking version of the humble
Telecaster. As Fender’s 1959 catalogue states:
“The new Telecaster Custom dual pickup and
Esquire Custom single pickup guitars offer all
the fine playing and design features of the regular
Telecaster and Esquire models plus custom
treatment of the body and neck.”
‘Custom treatment’ included a rosewood
fretboard, a three-layer (white/black/white)
pickguard, single top and back binding, and a
Three-Tone Sunburst finish. Tending to reserve
its heavier grained ash stock for transparent
blonde finishes, Fender opted for alder as the
standard tonewood for Custom Telecaster bodies,
although exceptions can be found occasionally.
The guitar pictured is one such rare example
featuring an ash body and is the same Telecaster
Custom that originally appeared in Fender’s
1959 catalogue upon the model’s release. Its
serial number and neck date point to 1958 as
the year of manufacture, making it one of the
earliest known Telecaster Customs in existence.
It is also one of the first Telecasters to receive a
rosewood fretboard, prior to the standardisation
of rosewood ’boards on Fender guitars in 1959.
This version of the Telecaster Custom was
in regular production until 1972 when it was
eventually dropped from the Fender catalogue.
With thanks to Mike Long of ATB Guitars
TELE-TONES
STEVE CROPPER |
OTIS REDDING
(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay
Single (1968)
1 9 6 3 A M E R I C A N S TA N D A R D
TELECASTER
Following the session, playing
acoustic on the song he had
finished with Redding, Booker T
guitarist Cropper overdubbed the
weaving electric fills on a white Tele with two
pickups through a little Fender Harvard amp.
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 69
feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster

1 9 6 8 PA I S L E Y R E D
TELECASTER

he heady days of the late 60s

T were marked by a colourful period

of psychedelic experimentation
that even stretched into Fender’s
Aside from finish, the only
difference between these
guitars and a regular Tele
was the clear pickguard
boardroom. In 1968, while endeavouring to
embrace the zeitgeist of flower power, the
company released two distinctly lysergic
Telecaster finishes in tandem with the
Telecaster Bass: Paisley Red and Blue Flower.
It was, however, just a brief stop at the love-in,
as both finishes went on to be discontinued the
following year.
The unorthodox appearance of Paisley Red
and Blue Flower Telecaster finishes were
accomplished via the equally far-out method
of gluing wallpaper to the guitars’ bodies and
spraying them either pink or blue (respectively),
before coating the entire lot in a thick layer of
polyester. Unfortunately, many of these guitars
soon began to suffer the woes of extreme lacquer-
checking due to the instability of the wallpaper
base, although the example featured is in
remarkably clean and original condition.
“Paisley Red pulsates with every beat and
swirls in a blinding carousel of colour forms
and tones. Fender shines again,” proclaims an
advert for the Paisley Red Tele. While its Blue
Flower counterpart reads, “Blue Flower bursts
forth in a dazzling array of subtle purple and
green patterns. Never before has such an exciting
profusion of colour been offered.” Hey, it was
the 60s, after all!

With thanks to Adrian Hornbrook

TELE-TONES
BRAD PAISLEY
Me Neither
Who Needs Pictures (1999)
1 9 6 8 PA I S L E Y T E L E C A S T E R

Seconds into this up-tempo love

song, Paisley twangs himself into
the heart of country picking. His
Tele goes through 1962 and 1960
Vox AC30s, with a little slapback echo from a
Way Huge Aqua-Puss delay. Immense hybrid
picking with snap and bounce aplenty, plus a
touch of vintage-style overdrive from the amps.

70 GUITARIST MAY 2019


1969 ROSEWOOD
TELECASTER
Although rosewood is
comparatively heavy, this
guitar is surprisingly light
having been chambered to
provide weight relief
70 Years Of The Telecaster feature
ender came late to the Beatlemania
F party in 1968 while presenting
George Harrison with his custom-
built Rosewood Telecaster for the
recording of Let It Be in January 1969. Taking
heed from the likes of Rickenbacker and Gibson/
Epiphone, it was a move that undoubtedly
raised the Fender Telecaster’s profile, because
George also famously used this guitar later that
same month during The Beatles’ final public
performance, which took place on the rooftop
of their Apple firm in London. However, priced
at $375 upon its release later in 1969, it was the
most expensive Telecaster to date and was soon
discontinued in 1972 after being produced in
relatively limited numbers.
The regular production Rosewood Telecasters
were initially constructed using a 50s-style
one-piece fretted rosewood neck and a one-piece
rosewood body. However, this proved to be
uncomfortably heavy for most people and the
design was soon amended to a weight-relieved
laminate ‘pancake’ body construction featuring
a maple strip sandwiched between a rosewood
top and back.
A three-ply black-plastic pickguard further
distinguishes the Rosewood Telecaster from its
peers, and although it features the same dual
pickups and controls as a regular Telecaster, being
constructed chiefly of rosewood (as opposed to
ash/alder and maple), it is noted to have a slightly
softer and more well-balanced tone.
With thanks to Adrian Hornbrook
TELE-TONES
GEORGE HARRISON |
THE BEATLES
Don’t Let Me Down
B-side to Get Back (1969)
1969 ROSEWOOD TELECASTER
While the album’s title track
with that famous Leslie solo
is also wonderful, here we are
treated to George Harrison’s
legendary ability to sculpt the perfect part.
Telecaster. Neck pickup. Sliding 6ths…
What’s not to like?
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 71
feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster

1969 TELECASTER
THINLINE

uring 1967, Fender began

D investigating the idea of a semi-

acoustic model and it soon turned
to the faithful Telecaster as an
ideal testbed. In addition to producing a hollow
prototype Telecaster – featuring a spruce top with
no f-holes – Fender was, for a short while, also
experimenting with weight-relieved Telecasters
in the form of the so-called ‘smuggler’s
Telecaster’, although the cavities in these guitars
are hidden underneath the scratchplate.
The classic form of the single f-hole Telecaster
Thinline eventually took shape early the
following year when ex-Rickenbacker wood-
shop maverick Roger Rossmeisl and his assistant
Virgilio Simoni developed a unique method
whereby the bodies were routed via the rear and
the back glued on later.
Released in 1968, the Telecaster Thinline came
with a two-piece maple neck and was offered in
a natural ash or mahogany finish (a Three-Tone
Sunburst option was added later that year).
In 1969, rosewood fretboards were optional,
by which time 50s-style one-piece maple necks
had made a return.
Originally equipped with the same single-
coil pickups and controls as a regular Tele, the
Thinline was updated in 1971 with dual Seth
Lover-designed Wide Range humbuckers in
a similar vein to the top-of-the-range Deluxe
Telecaster (appearing from 1972 to 1981).
The Thinline Telecaster remained in
production throughout the remainder of the 70s
until its discontinuation at the end of the decade.

With thanks to Mike Long of ATB Guitars

TELE-TONES
JEFF BUCKLEY
Grace
Grace (1994)
1983 TOPLOADER
TELECASTER

Proof of how expressive a Tele

can be with creative chordwork is
here. Jeff’s Tele was loaded with a
Seymour Duncan Hot Tele Lead This example features a one-piece
pickup in the bridge position. In the studio he fretted maple neck and a heavily
chose the chiming cleans of a Fender Vibroverb grained ash body with Natural finish
’63 reissue with Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier.

72 GUITARIST MAY 2019


1974 TELECASTER
CUSTOM
The classic 70s Walnut finish as seen
here is often confused with Fender’s
Mocha Brown finish (available from 1981)
70 Years Of The Telecaster feature
rom the tail-end of the 60s and
F throughout the early 70s, several
models were dropped from the
Telecaster line, while custom colours
became a thing of the past and were eventually
(by 1975) superseded by a choice of six standard
finishes: Black, White, Natural, Blonde, Sunburst
and Walnut. Not content to rest on its laurels,
Fender had moved with the times and embraced
the sound of hard rock by inviting Seth Lover
– inventor of Gibson’s PAF pickup – into the
Tele fold. The result was Fender’s Wide Range
humbucker and from 1973 three out of the four
Tele models featured the pickup including the
Thinline, Deluxe and Custom, while only the
regular Tele retained the dual single-coil pickups.
While the original dual single-coil/bound-
body Telecaster Custom was axed in 1972, that
same year a radically overhauled design appeared
(advertised as the Telecaster Custom, although
often referred to as the ‘Custom Telecaster’)
sporting the configuration of a single-coil
bridge pickup and a Wide Range humbucker
in the neck position. Featuring Les Paul-style
controls including a three-way toggle on the
upper bass bout along with independent volume
and tone knobs for each pickup, the Custom
offered players a unique combination of sounds
that precariously straddled both classic Gibson
and Fender tones. The ‘second version’ of the
Telecaster Custom was available throughout
the 70s and was discontinued (along with the
Telecaster Deluxe) in ’81.
With thanks to Adrian Hornbrook
TELE-TONES
DANNY GATTON
Funky Mama
88 Elmira St. (1991)
1990 TELECASTER
S I G N AT U R E
Gatton’s versatility meant
he always pushed the Tele’s
capabilities. This is rockabilly
jazz-blues on a higher plane, with
organ-like rhythm thanks to hybrid picking
and tone control towards the end of the live
Austin City Limits version creating a wah effect.
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 73
feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster

1 2 3

4 5 6

SIX OF THE BEST MODERN TELES

CONTEMPORARY POWERHOUSES OF TWIN-PICKUP TONE, TO SUIT ALL POCKETS

1. SQUIER CLASSIC 2. FENDER PLAYER 3. FENDER CLASSIC

VIBE TELE CUSTOM
£479
Traditionally styled, this double-bound,
60s-style Tele from the well-liked Classic
Vibe range is essentially an affordable
vintage reissue. The asking price buys
you a vintage-tint maple neck with laurel
fingerboard, Alnico 5 pickups, a traditional
Tele bridge with three saddles, as it should
be, and a mint ’guard.
TELECASTER
£559
Drawn from the new ‘standard’ Mexican-
built Player Series, we like the vibey finish
options and spec of this Tele, especially
the Tidepool blue, maple-neck variant.
Standout features include Tim Shaw-
designed Alnico 5 pickups, gloss-front/
satin-back neck, plus some nice vintage
touches such as the ‘spaghetti’ logo.
PLAYER BAJA ’60s TELE
£859
So many players have turned on to
Fender’s Baja Teles because they punch
well above their weight, spec-wise. The
Custom Shop-derived spec includes a
four-way switching system that gives you an
‘extra’ pickup selection of neck and bridge
in series, plus an S-1 switch that allows you
to use two-pickup voices in or out of phase.

4. FENDER AM-PRO 5. FENDER AMERICAN 6. FENDER EU

TELECASTER DELUXE
SHAWBUCKER
£1,599
Tailored for the contemporary player, the
American Professional series, to give it its
full title, offers a thoughtfully updated take
on the Tele platform. We especially liked
this ballsy twin-humbucker version with
pickups designed by Tim Shaw.
ORIGINAL ’50s TELE
£1,559
If you want a classic Blackguard with a
nitro Butterscotch finish at an attainable
price, this is it. The Pure Vintage ’52 pickups
are a joy, clear yet characterful, while the
neck is a satisfyingly chunky ‘U’ profile.
The flatter 9.5-inch radius only makes the
package more usable for modern players.
MASTER DESIGN
’53 TELECASTER
£3,999
It’s undeniably pricey, but this gutsy Tele
designed by Master Builder Paul Waller
is a real firecracker. Its soft-V profile neck
feels authoritative, while the mid-boost
circuit gives the hand-wound Broadcaster/
Nocaster pickups incredible fire and punch.

74 GUITARIST MAY 2019

feature 70 Years Of The Telecaster
CONCLUSION
THE TELECASTER GOT SO MUCH, SO RIGHT, SO SOON… SO WHAT?
very now and then the staff
E of Guitarist get into one of
those ‘what if?’ conversations
about what guitar you’d choose
if you could only play one model for your
entire life. It’s not clear what kind of strange
dictatorship would have to be in place for
that to be a legal requirement, but never
mind. On aggregate, we’d probably have
to declare the Telecaster the winner of
those speculative shootouts. If pressed,
it’d probably be a Blackguard, too.
Such is the strange nature of electric-
guitar design that pretty much the first
solidbody six-string electric to be invented
is still, arguably, the world’s most tireless all-
rounder. It’s pretty much the only Fender
single-coil electric that commonly gets used
by jazz guitarists, such as John Scofield and
Julian Lage, for example. At the other end
of the spectrum, hard-rock shredders such
as Richie Kotzen have also found their ideal
partner in the Tele. You could argue that the
Les Paul has both those attributes, too, but
you’ll find Teles at the heart of pop, punk,
country and classic rock in equal measure,
which is arguably less true of Lesters.
A 1952 Telecaster that
formerly belonged to
Lenny Kravitz, now at ATB
Guitars in Cheltenham
76 GUITARIST MAY 2019
So, what’s the root of the Tele’s timeless
versatility? The most plausible explanation
is simplicity. It offers just enough and not
a penny more than what you need to make
glorious electric music. The single-pickup
Esquire that came before it is so spartan
as to be a little limiting. The Tele adds a
warm and smooth neck pickup to that stark
configuration and instantly multiplies its
potential uses. The Jazzmaster that came
after it in the late 50s overloads the player
with one too many knobs and switches.
By contrast, the Tele gives you only what
you need, ready to hand. Nothing is wasted,
nothing is missing. Heck, you can even have
a trem if you plump for one with a Bigsby.
The Strat, of course, is the Tele’s main
rival as the ‘Goldilocks’ Fender design that
gets everything just right. But debatably the
Strat’s very charisma and distinctiveness
makes it less timelessly versatile than the
Tele. The spring-like bounce of the Strat’s
neck pickup is lovely – but it’s also a calling
card that comes with connotations of
Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi and other icons.
By contrast, the Telecaster is almost like
an acoustic guitar in that it gives out only
“The Telecaster gives you
only what you need, ready
to hand. Nothing is wasted,
nothing is missing”
what you put into it. There’s no sonic mask
to hide behind with a Tele.
That same simplicity has also proven to
be a great jumping-off point for variations
on the theme. The twin ’buckers and Les-
Paul like controls of the Tele Deluxe have
their devotees, while the new Acoustasonic
Telecaster (see review, p90) holds out the
promise of a new form of ultimate versatility,
in which the roles of acoustic, electric and
pseudo-modeller have been rolled into
one. The Tele is also a superb platform for
modding, its simplicity an open invitation
for owners to get creative with a soldering
iron, as Dave Burrluck discovered on
p134. But as useful and interesting as these
branches from the Tele tree continue to be,
we’d still be confident taking an original
Blackguard to almost any gig in our diary.
At 70, it ain’t too old to rock ’n’ roll – and it’s
definitely too young to die. Nice job, Leo.
historic hardware Fender Finishes
TRUE
COLOURS
From the whites of early prototypes and 50s hot-rod colours, through
the many shades of Fiesta Red and beyond, we take a look at Fender’s
colourful history with David Davidson of Songbirds Guitar Museum
A
lthough we marvel at the sound
and feel of vintage guitars as
tools to make music with, in
the eyes of many, their primary
function and worth is often
surpassed by the rarity of their beauty and
historical significance. A vintage Fender in
its standard finish, such as a Blonde Tele
or a Sunburst Strat, is no modest sum, but
a standard 60s custom colour can send
the equivalent guitar’s value upwards in
multiples. Even rarer are those custom
colours from the 50s. For over a decade
prior to the appearance of Fender’s first
custom-colour chart in 1960, the company
was experimenting with finishes for
reasons as varied as the colours themselves.
Scattered across the globe for the last 70
years, most of these instruments have now
found their way to the Songbirds Guitar
Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where
their history will likely be preserved for
many years to come.
“There are so few pre-1960 custom
colour guitars in existence and I can tell
you that [we] own around 80 per cent of
them,” begins David Davidson, curator of
Chattanooga’s Songbirds vintage guitar
78 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Words Rod Brakes
museum, whose unparalleled collection
extends into Fender’s pre-production years
of the 40s. “Fender’s earliest [prototype]
guitars were not painted in a blonde
colour. Experimental pieces like the
‘Snake Head’ are white and there’s another
white [prototype] guitar that has a small
pickguard and perpendicular control plate,
just like Nacho Baños’s one that is stripped
to natural.
“We have a factory black 1949 [pre-
production] Esquire that has a pancake
body. Thinner woods were cheaper, so it
would cost them less to make prototypes
out of sandwich wood. It’s probably the
· finish they were going to use,” says David.
“[Fender] would buy
the same black or white
nitrocellulose lacquer
that was used in the
furniture shops”
· was made to show the grain. And I think
first ash prototype, but the very first ones
were made from pine. Ash is a much harder
wood to work with. They could sculpt
pine more easily, kind of like a clay model
in an automotive studio. It’s what they call
‘furniture black’ – they would buy the same
black or white nitrocellulose lacquer that
was used in the furniture shops.”
Following much experimentation,
Fender’s inaugural solidbody electrics – the
Esquire and Broadcaster – were officially
released in 1950 with a Blonde finish that
remained standard on Telecasters until the
70s when custom colours became obsolete.
“The finish you see on the Esquire,
Broadcaster and Telecaster varied starting
in 1950, when they finalised Blonde as the
“It varies from a creamy white to a yellow,
but most of those guitars have a somewhat
yellow hue. Even under the pickguard and
inside – there is a yellowish colour to it.
Over time, the patina turns more yellow
because the clear [coat] yellows as it ages
and darkens the guitar. That’s why you see
them an almost amber colour half the time.
“The Blonde finish, being translucent,
Candy Apple Red was
reportedly Leo Fender’s
favourite finish
historic hardware Fender Finishes
that’s one of the biggest reasons why Fender
created custom colours in the first place; the
fact that they were throwing away a lot of
good wood that just wasn’t perfect enough
to be Blonde was another reason they used
opaque colours. The earliest custom colour
we have at the museum is one of the very
first known and is a white Nocaster dated
to August of 1951 that belonged to [Nat King
Cole guitarist] Oscar Moore. We also have
a ’54 Stratocaster in Desert Sand, which is
the earliest Desert Sand I know of. It was
applied to the guitar so it would show up
well on television, but, generally speaking,
Desert Sand was made to be an opaque
undercoat for pastel colours.”
In the post-war economic boom of 1950s
America, the future appeared increasingly
brighter as popular automotive paints
began to be spotted on more than just
Cadillacs and Corvettes.
“Pastel automotive paints were really
big in the 50s and there were a lot of pastel
80 GUITARIST MAY 2019
pinks, blues and greens,” says David. “We
know them now by different names, but
the early variants that were made before
Fender standardised custom colours in
1960 were colours that were just taken
out of automotive [paint] catalogues.
Fender would send somebody down to the
autobody supply and they’d tell them, ‘Hey,
I need a can of pink paint,’ or, ‘I need a can of
blue paint,’ or, ‘I need a can of green paint.’
· into their catalogue in 1960. They still called
“Pastel automotive
paints were really big in
the 50s and there were a
lot of pastel pinks, blues
and greens”
· custom colours, with descriptive terms
HARD LACQUER
Joe Dobson of Joseph Kaye
Guitars explains why Fender
rebuffed its nitro finishes
Joe Dobson: “CBS took over Fender
in 1965 and because they cut corners
and rushed the finishes, they had a
lot of guitars returned within months
due to checking [a pattern of small
cracks]. If it’s a really good finish, they
tend to check after a number of years,
but people were complaining that the
nitrocellulose was checking and wearing
too soon. By ’68, CBS were focusing on
poly[ester] finishes, and most people
loved how they looked at the time. Poly is
pretty tough, and that was their motive
to move away from nitro; it was about
having finishes that were harder wearing.
It took much longer for checking to
appear, if at all. Plus, they could get their
guitars out of the door within a week.
“With a poly finish [as on the Tele
Deluxe, left], you can do the whole
process within days. However, if you
use nitro, it can take several weeks
before you can sell a guitar. Fender’s
concerns were to sell something quickly
and for it to be tough. Poly was exactly
what they needed and they didn’t think
about how it might affect the guitar’s
tonal qualities so much. The early
guitars sound so good partly because
of the nitro finishes, but it’s great old
wood anyway. It’s possible that the
best-sounding guitars are without any
lacquer on them at all!”
“At that time, there were no specific
names – Fender may have just called it
‘turquoise’, for example – but there may be
a more specific name for that colour. It’s
easy enough to reference the colour charts;
I have automotive charts from 1943 to 1973
at my shop [Well Strung Guitars, formerly
We Buy Guitars] in New York and I’ve
used those colour chips to ascertain what a
colour was. The Shell Pink they used in the
50s is not the same Shell Pink Fender put
it Shell Pink, but it’s different. The earliest
Cadillac Shell Pink colour is much more of a
salmon colour… But don’t get that confused
with Fiesta Red – it’s definitely pink! Shell
Pink made from 1960 onwards is very, very
pale – like a drop of pink paint added to
white. Similarly, a 50s Fiesta Red is very
different from a 1960 and after Fiesta Red.”
Over the years, much confusion has
arisen around the subject of pink and red

such as ‘salmon pink’ and ‘coral pink’
often being mistaken for bona fide Fender
custom colour names.
“There’s no confirmation that a ‘coral
pink’ guitar exists,” reveals David. “There
is a colour called Tahitian Coral, which
is a Chrysler Imperial colour from 1958,
and a variant of that paint may have made
it onto a couple of guitars. I have looked
at a couple of guitars that were claimed to
be Tahitian Coral, or ‘coral pink’, but they
were just slightly lighter versions of Fiesta
Red. Fender mixed Fiesta Red in-house –
they would add a certain amount of white
to a red paint similar to a Ford Dakota
Red and try to get it close. They were
experimenting. There was no precision.
Fiesta Red looks different on virtually
every guitar. I have around 30 Fiesta Red
guitars in the collection and they all look
slightly different. Sometimes they’re a
little more orange, sometimes they’re a
little more pink.
1 2
“There are other reds, too – some
undocumented colours like Roman Red,
which is a Chevrolet Corvette colour from
1958. Fender used it more frequently than
you would think. Then there’s Mandan
Red and Fullerton Red, which was George
Fullerton trying to come up with a red that
was slightly darker than Fiesta [Red]. We
have a ’57 Strat and a matching Telecaster
and a matching Precision Bass, all in
Seminole Red. They were made for a band
called Ricky and the Red Wings. Ricky
was Ricky Nelson from [The Adventures
of ] Ozzie And Harriet fame, and he went
on to become a successful recording artist.
He had a band as a teenager, and they all
played these red guitars. That finish was
different from Fiesta [Red]; it is much more
of an orange colour.”
Such stories are typical of 1950s custom
colour Fender guitars.
“My belief is that every 50s custom
colour guitar is a special-order made either
Fender Finishes historic hardware
1. The custom finish white
1951 Nocaster that was
made for Oscar Moore,
now resides at the
Songbirds museum
2. Metallic hues, such as
the classic Lake Placid
finish on the 1966
Stratocaster below,
proved more popular
than pastel shades
such as Surf Green
for someone who was a star of their time,
or that had some kind of ‘in’ at the factory,
or for a trade show,” reasons David. “In
my mind, that’s always been the deal. Up
until 1960, they would only make colours if
you were a famous person, or if you had an
inside-connection to the factory.”
Primary Shades
As custom colours became more accessible
to the general guitar-buying public in the
60s, certain colours proved to be more
popular than others.
“The most popular custom colours
were the colours of the flag,” David tells
us. “Red was the most popular, white was
the second most popular and blue was the
third most popular. The toughest colours
are the most [traditionally] feminine
colours. Shell Pink is the hardest colour to
come by. Burgundy Mist is one of the harder
colours to come by. Anything that might
have been deemed effeminate – y’know, the
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 81
historic hardware Fender Finishes

REALITY CHECK
Vintage Fender finish expert
Clive Brown shares his
insight on lacquer checking
“Certain guitars started checking
virtually as they left the factory – they
certainly did while they were on the
dealers’ walls, but I don’t think it’s
just a matter of temperature change.
I think checking’s got a lot to do with
the amount of castor oil or plasticiser
in the lacquers and paints. It also
depends on how much moisture there
is in the wood and how much the wood
moves. It’s not any one specific thing.
Checking is down to a combination of
things that keep moving all the time
and I don’t think you can pin it down.
“As to whether the checking goes
across or along the body, there doesn’t
seem to be any sort of set pattern. I’ve
even had it go both ways on the same
guitar. I’ve just had a ’59 Esquire and a
’51 Nocaster in the workshop and the
checking on both of those has gone
[along the body], but I’ve had similar
guitars where it goes across. I don’t
think there’s any rhyme or reason to
it. You think you’ve got it nailed at one
Lacquer checking, like
point, then all of a sudden, it’s ‘No,
that seen on our cover
I haven’t!’ But that’s how it was on the star 1950 Broadcaster, is
originals. You do see different checking.” caused by many factors

pastel colours like Surf Green, Foam Green
and Sonic Blue are rarer.
“The metallics were definitely where
the boys wanted to be. Fender’s first [1960]
custom-colour chart was revised in 1963
when they added Candy Apple Red and
took away Shell Pink. Candy Apple Red is a
homemade colour. That was Leo Fender’s
favourite colour. They manufactured
it in giant amounts. The red paint they
used over the silver is translucent, so the
‘candy apple’ look comes from the metallic
coat underneath. Starting in mid-1964,
they changed the silver undercoat to a
gold undercoat, and it changed the way
the guitar looked. The gold undercoat
Candy Apple Red is much more subdued –
it doesn’t pop as much.
“Metal flake paint was a big, big deal. The
60s sparkle finishes are very interesting
because Fender did not create the sparkle
finishes themselves; they would just send
the bodies and necks out to be painted by
local hot-rod shops. It was the middle of the
hot-rod era, so sparkle paint was a big thing.
Buck Owens had one and Don Rich had
one, and George Fullerton had one made for
himself. Surf music was big at the time, so
you mostly see sparkle finish Jazzmasters
and Jaguars – guitars that were used during
the surf era. The most famous is probably
Dick Dale’s guitar, but many people played
sparkle guitars. The guys that played in The
Challengers had sparkle guitars, as did The
Astronauts. They are pretty scarce if you
compare them to a common custom colour,
but, believe it or not, they did make many.
They were made for television, movies, TV
commercials and print advertising.”
By the late 60s, Fender guitars were in
such high demand that a new approach to
· from cloth wire into using plastic wire.
“Candy Apple Red is a
homemade colour. That
was Leo Fender’s favourite
colour. They manufactured
it in giant amounts”
· Strung Guitars and the Songbirds Guitar Museum,
completing finishes with more speed and
efficiency was called for by the company’s
new owners, CBS. Although Fender carried
on making custom-colour guitars into the
70s, the transition to using harder-wearing
and quicker-drying materials marked a
turning point and the end of an era.
“It didn’t happen overnight,” says David.
“For the first three months of production
in 1968 they were still using nitro and
then they started to make the transition
[into polyester]. As a matter of fact, I have
a Thinline Tele that was made in March
of ’68 that is nitro. It was right around the
same time they made the transition away
It all happened around the same time,
but the evolution took a little while longer
than they first thought. I’ve seen a Fender
memo from ’67 about the change in the
paint, but it doesn’t take place until several
months later. They just wanted to use up
everything they had. At the end of the day,
it was a factory!”
Guitarist would like to thank David Davidson of Well
Joe Dobson of Joseph Kaye Guitars, and Clive Brown

82 GUITARIST MAY 2019

interview The Darkness

THE
DARKNESS
15 years ago, Justin and Dan Hawkins of The Darkness swept the board at the
BRIT awards. Catapulted onto the world stage, they arced high then crashed back
to earth in flames when the band split in 2006. With the band now firmly back
together and making joyous, hard-edged rock once again, we join the brothers to
hear their advice on how to squeeze top performance from Marshall amps – and
learn why they “didn’t come here to ride the teacups…”

Words Jamie Dickson Photography Will Ireland

JH: “No, you mean the other one…”

I
t’s a bright morning in West London
and Dan and Justin Hawkins, the
brothers behind The Darkness’s
double-pronged guitar sound, are
putting off the inevitable. Before them
is a large table laden with hundreds of
CDs to sign for fans. It’s task they’re glad
to undertake, but not perhaps the most
exciting duty in the diary of a rock star.
So they’re happy to chat for a while before
getting stuck in and reminiscing about
some of the craziest excesses they enjoyed
– and sometimes endured – at the height
of their fame.
Older and more savvy than they were in
the delirious days of the early Noughties,
when their hit single I Believe In A Thing
Called Love leapt with ecstatic energy from
radios around the world, they’re still as in
love with the sound of Marshalls at full tilt
as the day they started. Deceptively deft
songwriters, Dan and Justin also have a
store of hard-won knowledge to share about
how to write melodic rock guitar hits. So we
put the pens to one side a little longer, grab
a coffee and request permission to lounge…
You’ve been a twin-guitar team for nearly
two decades now. How do you divide up
guitar duties for best effect?
Justin Hawkins: “I don’t do a lot of
writing on the guitar. That’s mostly Dan’s
department – he does 99 per cent of the
riffs. We work together on the melodies
and I do all the words. And then when
it comes to creating solos, we work on
those together because there’s often bits
where we’re either harmonising or an
approximation of each other’s lines.”
’Lizzy-style harmonised guitar lines are
a hallmark part of your sound. What are
your tips for nailing them?
Dan Hawkins: “Sometimes it happens
when we’re in rehearsal, before the lyrics
have been written, really. And there’ll
be a guitar line and we’ll just work out
the harmony there and then. It’s really
dull for the other guys, because what
we’ll do is put that section of music on a
loop and then we’ll both play until we’re
there. There’s a solo section in Lay Down
With Me, Barbara, which is quite a long,
harmonised piece…”
· the main melody line was.”
“I flatly refuse to go
past the 12th fret…
whereas he doesn’t like
coming down below it!”
DAN HAWKINS
· above the 12th fret [laughs].”
DH: “Oh, sorry: I Wish I Was In Heaven –
yes, so we had to practise that one and it
just involved going round it and round it.
It’s quite funny because it’s almost like a
video game like Donkey Kong or whatever,
where you’ll get so far up the level and
then you make a mistake and then the
whole thing turns to shit and so you have
to wait until you’re back to the beginning,
and then you get the section right up to
then and you get past that bit and the next
bit fails and you go, ‘Fuck!’”
JH: “But most of the time it is only like
a 3rd over. That’s usually how we do it.
And if it slips into 5ths, it’s because it’s
convenient [laughs] or something’s wrong
with a 3rd…”
DH: “It’s basically done with what sounds
the best – we don’t work it out, because it
can go anywhere. Because, sometimes, if
it’s not really working we’ll change what
JH: “Also, there are certain areas on the
neck where Dan’s more comfortable and
certain areas where I’m more comfortable.
So sometimes you have to switch it.
It sounds like we’re being clever, but really
it’s the product of laziness.”
DH: “I flatly refuse to go past the 12th fret.”
JH: “…Whereas I don’t like coming down
below it… [laughs].”
DH: “Even his rhythm work will remain

84 GUITARIST MAY 2019

interview The Darkness
Could you get a custom guitar made that
only has frets above the 12th fret?
JH: “Yes – and fretless below it, like
Jaco Pastorius.”
What’s your backline like?
JH: “Mine is two Wizard amps and that’s it.”
DH: “On that album [Pinewood Smile],
Justin’s playing 100-watt Wizards, both
Modern Classics. And, yeah, basically he
has a rhythm sound that is slightly less
saturated and then the lead sound, which is
heavily saturated – and that is really it.”
JH: “That used to be my goal, to just have
nothing really, and then I think when I was
playing Marshalls, the tech was sneaking
things in to get the response that I wanted
from it. So I ended up with a lot of pedals
I wasn’t even aware of.”
Did you just open a cupboard and find
them one day…
JH: “Yeah, I was devastated [laughs].”
DH: “Yeah, ‘What is that hissing noise?’”
JH: “[Pretends to be confronting his
guitar tech] ‘Yeah, what are all those
lights flashing? And why do you keep
buying batteries?’”
DH: “Justin’s a proper endorsee of
Wizard now…”
JH: “Not an endorsee of Wizard amps
– international ambassador…”
86 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Les Paul devotee Justin has favoured Customs in the past, but also
has a thing for Standards, like this beauty he brought to our shoot
DH: “Basically, depending on the size
of the gig, we switch between 50-watt
heads and 100s. So Hammersmith was a
100-watt show, but at other times when
we’ve been squashed to the front of the
stage right in front of our amps, it’d be
50s. Also, funnily enough, at festivals –
where you’d think there’d be the least
problem [with playing loud] – because
the amps are so directional with sound
and it’s such a harsh sound, it can really
mess with the overall sound. You can
easily project way over a PA’s volume
with 100-watt Marshall stacks.”
JH: “When Rick St Pierre [AC/DC tech
and Wizard amps designer] brought
me my new Wizard, it sounded like a
spaceship taking off it was so loud. Even
then, it still wasn’t as loud as [Dan’s]…”
DH: “We also try not to use power brakes
or attenuators any more. We angle the
cabs off instead.”
How do you like to EQ your amps?
DH: “I don’t, really… you can do more
with the sound of a Marshall by turning
it up, to be honest. I’ve found the EQ
doesn’t really do anything, though I’ve
been knocking Presence off, mostly,
trying to get rid of some of the harshness.
But my advice with a Marshall is to get
it turned up and turned away from you
– because then you don’t need anything.
You turn it up and it sounds great.
“I’ve thought about having all the knobs
removed, and having just the master
volume on there. But, mainly, the problem
is finding places where you can turn it up
so loud that you can get it so it sounds the
way it should, because it starts to compress.
The other thing is splitting Marshalls out
to two cabs. I used to struggle with how
aggressive my Marshall sounded – but I
don’t any more because I split the head out
to two cabs, on full, and it suddenly sounds
less harsh.
“Generally, when people go on about
[fine-tuning tone], it makes me feel a bit
ill, really. But we were at a gig in Romania
and we didn’t have our own gear, and so
we had what we had and it was basically
a brand-new Marshall head – 100-watt –
and then two sets of Greenback cabs. Up
until then I’d never really run two cabs off
one head before with no power brake. But
we had no choice, because that’s all we
had. But then it was like, ‘Oh my God, this
is it: this is what I’ve been doing wrong.’
So yeah, now we turn them up and point
them away.”
JH: “Was that the time when we played
the town square?”
DH: “Yeah, and you ordered a McDonald’s
from the stage.”
 The Darkness interview

Was that order delivered over the PA?

Justin’s onstage
JH: “Yeah, I said, ‘Could someone bring essentials: leopard
me some fries…?’” print, Les Paul…
and a side of fries
Did they arrive?
JH: “Yeah. The guitars sounded great, but
at the end of the day we were playing the
town centre…”
DH: “…in the arse-end of Romania.”

Why did you go with Wizard amps, Justin?

JH: “Dan started off with them and then
one day, through necessity, I had to borrow
one and just really liked it. I’ve always
been a bit of a sloppy player, so I used to
like Mesas because they used to do a lot of

“When Rick St Pierre

brought me my new
Wizard amp, it sounded
like a spaceship taking
off it was so loud”
JUSTIN HAWKINS

·
the work and I didn’t have to fret things
as carefully. But then when we reformed
we started playing through Marshalls,
because they made me try a bit harder,
made me a better player. Having made
that adjustment to my playing, to go to
something like a Wizard, it made me feel
like a real pro. Like, I was really doing
something special with my fingers. It’s
important to feel like that, isn’t it? Like
when you hit a note and you just get exactly
what you were hoping it would sound like.
With no fuss or pedals or anything like that.
That made me feel good.”
DH: “We’ve got a nice selection of amps
now. We’ve got a Friedman small-box
version of the Brown Eye. That’s just a
phenomenal amp.”
JH: “I used that Friedman for all the solos
on the last album, because I did them all
at the weekend when nobody else was
around and I didn’t know how to plug
Photo by Rick Kern/WireImage/Getty Image

in the other ones [laughs]. I didn’t know

anything about how they were patched or
anything like that. So I just used that one
and I liked it.”

You’ve tasted full-throttle fame and

survived it. How did the reality of that
compare to what you thought it’d be like?
DH: “When you’re a kid, you have this
image of it being about driving Ferraris

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 87

interview The Darkness

and riding around in helicopters…

JH: “…which we did do. I was driving a
Ferrari that we wanted when we were
kids, a 328…”
DH: “And I bought a DeLorean [laughs].”
JH: “It’s like a mid-life crisis without the
looming spectre of old age. Every day is
like a stag do – but without the looming
spectre of marriage…”
DH: “It takes a while. When you get that
hammered for that long, you start to
lose huge swathes of time and memory.
I certainly did. And then after a few years
it starts to come back to you. So I’d say
that the main thing is what a blur it all is
at the time.”
JH: “When you think about live music
and touring when you’re a kid, for us,
there was a live album called Live Magic
DAN’S GUITAR
A Page/Angus hybrid ’Paul
“This was originally made for Jimmy Page, but it was too heavy for him, so basically
I phoned Gibson in 2003 and said, ‘I want one of these, can you get me one?’ And
Pat Foley, who was the head there at the time, he said, ‘Well, you’re in luck, because
I’ve just had one come back in.’ So Jimmy Page had his ’57 stolen in 197-whatever.
So he had one made to the exact same spec, because he wanted one of those again
for when they reunited for that show. So they did it, sent this to him – but it was too
heavy because it wasn’t chambered because they did it to the original spec. And it’s
a monster, because it’s got so much hardware on it, it’s not chambered, and it’s got a
big neck. So they built him a chambered one and they gave this one to me.
“The bridge pickup is out of one of Angus Young’s SGs, so the original Burstbucker
can’t compete with the 498s or whatever they are in my [main Les Paul] ‘Dune’. It’s
already a much brighter guitar because there’s so much metal on it. But one of my
techs was given the pickup by them, so it ended up in here. I use it for Love Is Only
A Feeling and the Christmas song, when we play that.”

“We didn’t come here to

ride the teacups, as
I often say. We came
for the rollercoaster”
JUSTIN HAWKINS

[by Queen], and you open up the gatefold

of that and there’s a picture of Queen’s
helicopter flying over the crowd, and you
think, ‘Okay, so that’s what [big-time fame]
is then: it’s helicopters with your band
logo in decals on the side of it. It’s private
jets. It’s fast cars. It’s anything you want to
make happen of an evening, just happens.
People fawning over you.’ And, you know,
at a certain level I think it is like that. We
did experience that for a bit.
“But the reality is that now you have to
be so much more aware of the business
side. I mean, we would never have a
helicopter now – because we know how
much it costs [laughs]. You have to be
business people and smart and be able
to sustain it when you have moderate
success like we have now. When you have
extreme success, like we did before, you
can do whatever the fuck you want and
nothing matters. It’s just a great time.
It’s an awesome experience. But it can be
quite dangerous, I suppose, if you’re not
prepared for it. But we didn’t come here
to ride the teacups, as I often say. We came
for the rollercoaster.”

The Darkness’ current album, Pinewood

Smile, is available on Cooking Vinyl

88 GUITARIST MAY 2019

review FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER

90 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER review

Tele Vision
A highlight of this year’s NAMM show and one of the most
discussed instruments we can remember for a while, Fender’s
latest Telecaster provides quite the future vision

Words Dave Burrluck Photography Phil Barker

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 91

review FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER
FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC
SERIES TELECASTER £1,799
CONTACT Fender Musical Instruments EMEA
What You Need To Know
Not one of those horrible plastic-
1 backed acoustic Teles again?
No! That was the Telecoustic. Fender
has done an Acoustasonic Telecaster
before (see Prior Art, p95), but this is
a very different proposition.
What’s different about this one?
2 Well, it’s a Tele-sized acoustic guitar
with a braced spruce soundboard
and sound port. From its small
acoustic voice, via a heap of Fender/
Fishman-designed processing
gubbins, you can voice some classy
acoustic voices when plugged in.
But it seems to have a bridge
3 pickup, doesn’t it?
It actually has three pickups: a
Fishman under-saddle transducer
that takes the output to the onboard
‘Acoustic Engine’; a soundboard
transducer to bring some of the top
into the sound for any percussive
tap-style players; plus that visible
Fender fourth-generation Noiseless
single-coil-sized humbucker for a bit
of electric, too. Intrigued? Read on…
92 GUITARIST MAY 219
PHONE 01342 331700 WEB www.fender.com
ou don’t need us to tell you that
Y there’s a huge chasm between
a steel-string acoustic and a
solidbody electric guitar. But that hasn’t
stopped a considerable number of designers
trying to bridge that gap, some with more
success than others. For many, adding
a piezo-loaded bridge and associated
circuitry to offer acoustic-like sounds to
a solid or semi-solid electric has been the
chosen path; bold attempts such as Parker’s
Fly truly pushed the boundaries of sound
and taste. Many more conventional-looking
piezo/magnetic ‘hybrids’ continue to
plough that furrow with greater success.
But start with a more acoustic-like
platform and offer magnetic electric
sounds alongside more conventional
electro-acoustic sounds, and we have
This walled soundhole acts
as a port to maximise the
acoustic resonance from the
small body of the Telecaster
a whole different ballgame. It’s little
surprise that large-scale acoustic makers
such as Godin and Taylor have had
significant success with this route. It’s
also the starting point of this new Fender
design: an acoustic guitar with a range of
plugged-in electro-acoustic voices and an
added magnetic electric surprise.
It’s certainly a different-looking
Telecaster, and is available in five top
colours – the sides, back and neck remain
natural mahogany on each along with the
distinctive small sound hole, or sound port,
which Fender’s Brian Swerdfeger describes
elsewhere in this feature (see p98). It’s
interesting, too, that the actual colour of
the spruce top and what appears to be inset
purfling and soundhole rings are applied by
a printing process. Under a loupe, you can
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
see that on the ‘purfling’. In theory at least,
this means that any image could be printed
onto the face of the guitar.
Maybe it’s the combination of that sound
port and the colours of the body that
suggests the ‘modified Tele’ shape is smaller
that the real deal (the inset spruce top of our
review sample is an opaque black colour
that contrasts with the mid-brown of the
natural mahogany). In reality, it’s not. Not
only are the flanks below the waist slightly
chubbier, the body length is extended –
both areas by between 6mm and 10mm.
The 44.5mm body depth is identical to our
reference American Professional Telecaster
Deluxe Shawbucker.
Thanks to the walled design of the sound
port, you can’t peer inside the guitar, but
removing the central backplate, you can see
This is very much
an electro-acoustic
guitar with some
added magnetic
electric flavour
the hollow construction – the mahogany
body is cut out leaving relatively thick sides
and back, approximately 10mm to 12mm.
There are two longitudinal braces that
extend beyond the bridge – not dissimilar
to an archtop – but no transverse or cross
braces, although there’s a thin reinforcing
plate under the bridge. One consequence
of the hollow construction is the weight, or
lack of it: at 2.2kg/4.9lb, it’s way lighter than
even a lightweight Telecaster.
FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER
As to the mahogany neck, it’s certainly
very close to the ‘modern deep C’ of the
American Professional, around 0.5mm
thinner than our lacquered maple-’board
Deluxe, with a nut width of 42.7mm, slightly
broader string spacing of 36.5mm, and
depth at the 1st fret of 20.5mm filling out
to 23.65mm by the 12th. Despite the thin
sealer-like polyurethane neck finish, you
can feel the grain (equally thin polyester is
quoted for the body finish). A light rub with
0000 wire wool accelerates the wear for a
slightly silkier feel, and while the streaked
brown/black ebony ’board has a flatter
305mm (12-inch) radius compared with the
Am Pro’s 241mm (9.5-inch) measurement,
it still feels like a contemporary USA
Telecaster. Ditto the frets.
But there are plenty of nice touches: the
rib-cage contour and the rounded edge to
the lower bass-side bout; the Elite-style
sculpting of the otherwise square-nosed
heel; the back plates and even the heel
plate are recessed and flush with the body
surface. And even though we have an
acoustic-style bridge, there’s the Micro-Tilt
adjustment and nut access Bi-Flex truss rod
that make setup considerably easier to dial
in than the majority of acoustics.
What’s Onboard?
The onboard sounds are selected, firstly, by
a five-position lever switch called the Voice
Selector and, secondly, by the lower of the
two rotaries, the Mod knob. In what we
know as neck position (position 5) and with
the Mod knob rolled fully anti-clockwise
(voice A), we have the quoted sound of
a Sitka spruce/rosewood dreadnought.
Rotate the Mod knob fully clockwise
review
1. The Acoustasonic is
primarily an acoustic
guitar, hence the ebony
bridge with its Black
Tusq saddle that’s
compensated for
acoustic strings. Even
the magnetic bridge
pickup is compensated
for bronze strings
THE RIVALS
While no other mainstream hybrids we’re
aware of step into the digital domain,
Fender is moving into a market with
well established American competition,
primarily Taylor’s T5z, the downsized
version of the original T5, with three
onboard pickups for both acoustic and
electric voices. The range kicks off with
the satin finish mahogany-topped T5z
Classic (£2,219 with gigbag), while the T5z
Standard, with gloss finished Sitka spruce
top, moves up to £3,059 (with hard case).
Godin launched the new Multiac Steel
(£1,999) at this year’s NAMM with an
LR Baggs Lyric (with slider volume and
EQ controls) and Seymour Duncan Lipstick
Tube neck pickup controlled by top-
mounted volume and tone controls.
MAY 219 GUITARIST 93
review FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER

UNDER THE HOOD A look inside the Acoustasonic…

hat’s inside the Acoustasonic Tele

W will alienate the diehards even

more than the look of the guitar.
Firstly, along with the Fender fourth-generation
Noiseless pickup (with the B string magnetic
pole removed to improve string-to-string
balance), there’s a Fishman under-saddle and a
soundboard transducer under the bridge plate.
Even if just those three were applied, we’d have
some interesting potential, but the guitar’s own
acoustic response via that under-saddle goes
through some significant digital processing
to create its sounds.
If you remove the control cavity, there’s a large
PCB crammed with surface-mount components.
Fender isn’t forthcoming about what is going on
here, but, of course, we suspect Fishman’s Aura
Imaging Technology, fundamentally different
from modelling, is the starting point and plays
a big part in what we hear when it comes to the
Acoustasonic’s acoustic voices. Larry Fishman
was president of Parker Guitars and designed 1 2
the bridge transducer system and electronics for
the Parker Fly. There’s little the guys at Fishman
1. This large Fishman-designed PCB with some 380 2. Alongside the under-saddle transducer, there is
Transducers don’t know about transducers and components illustrates the extensive development also a bridge plate transducer and that Fender fourth
pickup systems for acoustic instruments. involved in the Acoustasonic. It ain’t your normal Tele! generation noiseless single-coil-sized humbucker

and we have voice B, an Alpine spruce/
rosewood auditorium. Pull the selector
back to position 4 and we have Englemann
spruce/maple small body (A) and a Sitka
spruce/mahogany dreadnought (B). In
position 3 on the Voice Selector, we have
a slightly different proposition: a Sitka
2. Charging the onboard spruce/Brazilian rosewood dreadnought
battery necessary to (A) and as you move the Mod knob
power the Acoustasonic clockwise it introduces the body sensor
is dead easy via USB.
pickup for those percussive tapping
A four- to five-hour
charge gives you 20 techniques and, says Fender, “enhanced
hours of playing time harmonics that pop”. Position 2 is a similar
blend with another Sitka spruce/mahogany
dread (A) and the ability to blend in the
magnetic pickup as it moves to position B.
Finally, position 1 is just the magnetic
pickup (A), but as you move it clockwise
towards position B, a light crunch is added.
The output is simply a mono jack. This
is not the dual-voice-style hybrid where
you can simultaneously run the piezo and
magnetic outputs to different amps. There’s
no onboard tone control, either, just volume.
Of course, all that internal circuitry
needs powering and there’s a rechargeable
Lithium-ion battery inside that is charged
via USB to a small connector on the jack
output, which also has an LED indicator.
If you’ve come across Fishman’s Greg
Koch Fluence pickup set before then
you’ll be familiar with this. To fully charge
the battery, Fender quotes four to five
hours (note that you can charge and play
simultaneously) and that should give you
20 hours of playing time. Apparently, that
small LED will flash red when you’re down
to around two hours of charge.

Feel & Sounds

Not only is this a superbly comfortable
guitar that disappears on a strap, played
seated it melds to your frame and is quite
possibly the near-perfect sofa noodler.
It does have an acoustic voice that is
2 considerably louder than a solidbody,
though obviously a lot less than even a small

94 GUITARIST MAY 219

VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
To match the thin open-pore
finish and general acoustic vibe,
the headstock features a simple
laser-cut Fender logo
parlour acoustic. It’s not designed to have
a microphone stuck in front of it, but if you
did then you’d get an almost an acoustic
archtop-like sound with plenty of quick
attack and a trim low-end. And although
our left hand is telling us we’re playing an
electric, it’s also moaning a bit because
these are acoustic strings.
Hooking up the guitar to our usual stage
acoustic pedalboard and both an AER
Compact 60 and Line 6 StageSource, there’s
little doubt we’re hearing good-quality
‘mic’d acoustic’ voices, more studio-like
Played seated, the
guitar melds to your
frame and is quite
possibly the near-
perfect sofa noodler
than if we run an old-school piezo-loaded
electro into the same system.
The acoustic voices are rather good,
although, to be fair, the subtle differences
are quite marginal – not to mention if you’re
blending them in position 5 and 4. You
hear slightly more definition to position 5’s
auditorium and a trimmer bass than on
the dreadnought; likewise, there’s a subtly
‘smaller’ voice to the maple parlour in
position 4 compared with the really quite
FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER
classic spruce/mahogany dreadnought.
The Sitka/Brazilian rosewood dreadnought
in position 3 is surprisingly valid with
a strong defined voice, and although
adding the soundboard transducer doesn’t
exactly make the harmonics pop, it does
give a slightly roomier ambience perhaps
and is a nice nod to the more progressive
percussive/looper players out there.
The spruce/mahogany dread in
position 2 gives a very similar flavour
to that in position 4, but adding in the
bridge magnetic pickup – the only
‘electric’/’acoustic’ mix – gives another
texture. On the one hand, it suggests an
older electro-acoustic sound, but this
is where the guitar takes off into a more
creative path blurring the lines between
acoustic and electric, especially if you run it
through your electric pedalboard.
While position 1 is not the sort of sound
you’d expect on an electro-acoustic guitar,
don’t dismiss it. It’s a slightly compressed
Tele but with noticeable clarity, and
bringing in a little crunch via the Mod knob
is surprisingly useful. It’s a pretty rootsy
sound, too, that gets you into a very Stones-y
Street Fighting Man kind of territory where
electric and acoustic worlds morph, even
though the sustain envelope from the
acoustic-like response is different to that
of a real Telecaster.
Compared with a conventional Martin
electro, it does feel a little tighter, perhaps
revi
s
sonic Telecaster
ap ck in 2010. It was a short-
lived Mexican-made model that had a
chambered ash body with spruce wedge
centre block, an acoustic-style rosewood
bridge, a Custom Shop single coil at the
neck position, and featured an onboard
Fishman Aura IC preamp with two
standard preamp controls, volume and
tone, which also enabled you to select
four sound images – dark folk, bright folk,
dreadnought and jumbo.
On the magnetic side was a Fender
Custom Shop Twisted Tele pickup at the
neck (with stacked volume and tone).
A three-way lever selector switch offered
piezo acoustic, both piezo and magnetic,
or electric alone. A supplied stereo ‘Y’ cable
allowed either dual ‘stereo’ outputs for
both systems or mixed mono (selected
via a switch on the back of the nine-volt
battery compartment).
“[From] articulate fingerstyle sounds,
big strummy washes, then mellow jazz and
blues soloing – all without the worry of
acoustic feedback,” we said of the original
Acoustasonic Telecaster back in issue 334.
lacking a little sweetness. There’s less of
that almost piano-like bass string response
from what we hear from a Tacoma
rosewood dread, too. Also, our sample had
a slightly light top E string response – it’s
certainly not the first under-saddle with
that issue and we doubt it’ll be the last.
Strings, too, will make a big difference.
We restrung with Martin’s new MA175T
LifeSpan 80/20 Bronze treated – and
there’s little reason why you can’t use
electric strings, although the saddle is
compensated for a wound third, of course,
and the magnetic pickup is magnetically
compensated for bronze not nickel.
This is very much an electro-acoustic
with some added magnetic electric flavour.
It has enough acoustic volume for enjoyable
unplugged practice. For pretty instant
recording, you have a good vehicle here
MAY 219 GUITARIST 95
review FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER
and plugged in to a full-range acoustic
amp or PA it’s a very credible sound. The
magnetic electric sound might seem a bit
of an add-on, but it works, and having the
ability to just dial in or out a little crunch
is actually quite a revelation. We gigged it
into our standard pedalboard and electric
amp to test its electric side and had zero
issues, and while we wouldn’t want to
head off for a function set with this guitar
alone, on some rootsier numbers it added
a dimension we didn’t normally have. That
said, the lack of a tone control is a drawback,
particularly because the magnetic sound is
quite pristine and this writer really missed
the depth of a neck pickup voice.
Yet there is a rather inspiring ‘where can
I take this?’ aspect to the guitar that may
well seal the deal for the creative player.
In basic terms, there’s the range of the easy-
access 22-fret neck, not least for high capo
positions if you need some mandolin or
cavaquinho-like sounds. It’s an exceptional
slide guitar, too. Then there is the ‘no rules’
to what amp or outboard gear you use,
not to mention specific patches from your
Helix, for example. It is also a guitar that
you really have to play to appreciate what
it can actually do.
Verdict
With the same full list-price as the Fender
American Elite Telecaster, you might think
this Acoustasonic Telecaster is over-priced.
However, it has a tactile thin finish over the
more conventional gloss body/satin neck
96 GUITARIST MAY 219
The key to the Acoustasonic is its simple
controls. Along with an overall volume
and the five-way Voice selector, the Mod
knob lets you mix the onboard acoustic
voices and that magnetic pickup
ENDER AM CA
C
ACOUSTASONIC
SERIES TELECASTER
PRICE: £1,799 (inc gigbag)
ORIGIN: USA
TYPE: Single-cutaway, solidbody-
sized electro-acoustic
BODY: Mahogany (hollow) with inset
Sitka spruce top
NECK: Mahogany, modern ‘deep C’
profile, bolt-on
SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”)
TUNERS: Fender standard cast/
sealed staggered tuners
NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Black
Tusq/42.7mm
FINGERBOARD: Ebony, ‘clay’ dot
of the Elite and presents a quality build, not markers, 305mm (12”) radius
to mention the substantial development in FRETS: 22, narrow/tall
its considered and intelligent physical and BRIDGE/SPACING: Ebony
electronic design. The Acoustasonic comes w/ compensated Black Tusq
with the nicely rugged FE1225 electric saddle/52mm
guitar gigbag, not the Elite’s smart moulded ELECTRICS: 3-pickup configuration:
case, but its five colour options are only one Fishman under-saddle transducer
short of that Elite Tele, and while any design and bridge plate body sensor, Fender
that alters a classic guitar’s iconography will Noiseless N4 magnetic, master
always have its detractors, it wouldn’t be a volume, Mod knob, 5-way Voice
deal breaker to us. selector lever switch. Single mono
So long as you understand what it can output with USB battery charge
and can’t do, as a modern electro-acoustic WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.2/4.9
with a very credible magnetic electric OPTIONS: Colour only
voice it offers plenty for the performing or LEFT-HANDERS: No
FINISHES: Black (as reviewed),
Natural, Sonic Gray, Sunburst, Surf
The inspiring ‘where Green – colours over inset spruce
can I take this?’ top only. Polyester satin matt body;
satin urethane neck and headstock
aspect to the guitar
may seal the deal for
the creative player 9
recording musician, particularly if you feel PROS Smart design, build and
happier with a more electric-like guitar. execution; very credible plugged-
Aside from some classy plugged-in acoustic in acoustic voices; an inspired
sounds, the potential to shape new ones clean-to-crunch magnetic voice;
both onboard and with effects and outboard lightweight Tele platform
processing is more than evident. That isn’t
entirely new, of course, but the way Fender CONS Our sample had a low-output
has rejoined the party is – from a player’s high E on the acoustic voices –
perspective – extremely straightforward it would be nice if Fender supplied
in use with considerable potential. Don’t another saddle compensated for
knock it till you’ve tried it! an unwound third string
feature FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER

A New Voice
Just when you thought guitar design was irrevocably stuck in the past, along comes the
Acoustasonic Telecaster. We chart its development with the designers behind the concept

Words Dave Burrluck

nless you were on the inside, the

U first thing you’d have known about

the new American Acoustasonic
Series Telecaster was its appearance at
Fender’s pickup guru Tim Shaw (centre)
and R&D VP Brian Swerdfeger (right)
worked closely with Larry Fishman to
bring the Acoustasonic vision to life
the 2019 NAMM show or the subsequent
(and substantial) exposure on social
media. From nothing – to bang! But this
wasn’t a simple refresh of Fender’s original
solidbody. It started with an idea and a
blank sheet of paper.
“I had the idea three years ago and enlisted
Tim Shaw and Larry Fishman to help bring
it to life,” states Brian Swerdfeger, Fender’s
VP of research and development.
Tim continues the story: “Brian flew out
to me and [designer/engineer] Josh Hurst
here in Nashville and we literally started
work. Josh already had a slightly larger Tele
design, but the three of us literally sat and
figured out how the bracing was going to go.
Over the course of three days, we actually

how ‘acoustic’ or how ‘electric’ they are; it’s

“I’ve been building hybrids for a really long a continuum. At this point, things like the
Taylor T5 leans towards the electric side;
time and on all of these instruments you’re the Acoustasonic that Fender did in 2010,
balancing how ‘acoustic’ or how ‘electric’ which I also worked on, slots closer to the
centre line, so to speak. But on all these
they are; it’s a continuum” Tim Shaw instruments you’re trading stuff off.”

made the ‘proof of concept’. It didn’t have
the soundhole port or a bridge; it was
basically a pretty good Telecaster-shaped
cajón with a neck.
“The next time Brian came out we
created the port and basically tuned the
cajón,” continues Tim, referring to the
patent-pending ‘Stringed Instrument
Resonance System’ (SIRS), which involved
not only refining the bracing of the
acoustic-like top but effectively maximising
the acoustic response of the relatively small
body cavity.
The guitar’s bracing looks more like an
archtop than a flat-top steel-string, we
suggest: “It’s not parallel bracing,” says Tim.
“Basically, the braces lock into the head
block, then they splay out a little and extend
past the bridge, then trail off to nothing.
They’re not very big; they don’t have to
be. But you’re right, it’s a flat archtop-type
bracing. I started with the braces that were
initially a little bit big, tapped the top and
planed them – actually, I used a belt sander.
I did that until the top woke up.
“The port, which was referred to early on
as the ‘doughnut’, is a block of mahogany
and we had this top assembly that I was
sticking into the guitar, whacking it with
my finger and sanding off a little of the
doughnut, and there was a point it went
from click to boom. We ended up with
something that got more acoustic volume
out of the small hollow space.”
“The design, size, location and depth [of
the port] all contribute to the voicing of the
instrument,” reinforces Brian, “and give it
a fuller voice on your lap. This voicing, in
concert with the movement of the top, are
major components of what you hear when
the guitar is plugged in. What you hear
from the output jack is 55 per cent from the
guitar and analogue circuit, and 45 per cent
shaped by the electronics.”
“Early on in the project we knew the
electronics were going to be a bear,” says
Tim. “Brian had had this idea of absolutely
minimal controls. I’ve been building what
I called hybrids for a really long time and
on all of these instruments you’re balancing
Making The Magic
“That 2010 Acoustasonic Tele had an early
version of what Fishman called Image
Casting, or IC, in it and, of course, that
technology has advanced,” Tim continues.
“We actually talked to quite a few people on
how to amplify this thing, but pretty early
on it became apparent that Fishman had the
infrastructure and skill set to do this.
“Brian basically went to them and said,
‘I want this and that and I want to be able
to sweep between the sounds,’ which Larry
Fishman refers to as ‘knitting’. Fishman
knows how to make this sound and that
sound, but all the weird and wonderful
blending stuff in the middle they had never
done. No-one has ever done it and, for me,
that’s where the money is.”
Brian doesn’t want us to get bogged
down in the science, so when we ask for
an explanation of the architecture of the
‘Acoustic Engine’ – what is digital and what
is analogue – this is his response: “Hmm…
Would it be okay if we didn’t say? The board
inside the guitar has over 380 components

98 GUITARIST MAY 2019


on it doing all sorts of magic and mayhem.
The ultimate goal of the technology
was to be powerful enough to drive the
performance, yet transparent enough to
get out of the way of the player and let
them enjoy a great guitar… There are no
simulations or models, just the real guitar
being voiced by powerful filters to achieve
the different performance experiences.”
Larry Fishman and his team are seen as
equal partners in crime, as Tim explains:
“Fishman really got involved and they
enjoyed the collaboration: it was very much
a partnership. The process certainly wasn’t
like going to a sub-contractor and saying,
‘Make me this and I want to pay you this
much.’ I think we pushed them and they
pushed themselves to do stuff they hadn’t
been able, at that point, to do. They were
more than equal partners.”
“There was,” picks up Larry Fishman,
“a big leap in the electronics. We were
knocked out by the performance of the
guitar; it far exceeded out expectations.”
And he confirms that while they had
most of the technology to do what Fender
wanted, they didn’t have it all when they
began work on the project.
While you’d expect some good acoustic
sounds on what is obviously a modern
electro-acoustic guitar, the angled bridge-
placed magnetic pickup (which mirrors
that of the T5, in which Brian was involved
FENDER AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC SERIES TELECASTER
“There are no simulations or models, just
the real guitar being voiced by powerful
filters to achieve the different performance
experiences” Brian Swerdfeger
when he was with Taylor Guitars) is quite a
surprise, particularly with the ability to add
in a little crunch from the Mod knob.
“From day one I wanted the electric voice
to go from clean to Keith Richards,” laughs
Brian. “I wanted to be able to play the guitar
direct into a PA system, or DI recording,
or an acoustic amp and have a real electric
experience – and we delivered. The mix of
analogue and DSP gave us the ingredients to
craft a signal chain for the magnetic pickup
that transforms the guitar to fully electric and
allows the player to plug into anything and
get a great sound. It’s happy being played into
any rig, pedalboard, desk, interface et al.”
The simplicity of the drive impressed us,
as it did Tim: “I think that’s the genius of the
whole Mod knob concept: if you just shut
up and play it you’ll find stuff that works
and no two people necessarily find the same
stuff. Early on, I found that on position 3
of the Voice selector, with the body sensor
rolled about a quarter of the way up, I
had this awesome big acoustic sound that
didn’t feed back. But then I could go up to
feature
The sound port was referred
to in the early design
stages as the ‘doughnut’,
and its size, depth and
location all influence the
Acoustasonic’s sounds
position 5 or down to position 1 and have
perfectly workable sounds, too.
“I honestly don’t understand everything
that’s going on,” Tim admits. “I understand
the basis behind Fishman’s Aura concept,
but a lot of what Larry was doing, well… But
it’s not a parlour trick: it actually does some
stuff that’s never quite been jammed into
the same instrument before.”
Conversation Starter
As the word ‘Series’ in the Acoustasonic’s
product name suggests, the guitar we see
here could well be just the start, although
Fender isn’t letting on just yet…
“Over time, as we continue to develop
both the guitar and technology, then you
may see other models and price points,
but there is nothing specific to promise at
this time,” says Brian, though Tim’s answer
to the same question is a little different, as
he laughs and says: “Nudge-nudge, wink-
wink… Know what I mean?”
As we’ve stated, hybrid guitars themselves
are far from new, but, suggests Tim,
“I think we can now have a conversation
about a food group that this guitar has
done its part in legitimising. It’s created
a new conversation about things that
were marginalised. It could well be that
in the future you and I can have another
conversation about the differences between
A and B. It was viewed at the beginning as
a platform, not as a one-off.”
Fender was certainly showing some
exotic wood samples of the guitar at
NAMM and, Tim says, “if we go with those
it spreads up in price and maybe at some
future point it spreads down, but it could
certainly spread wider – there’s a lot of sonic
ground [the Acoustasonic] doesn’t cover.
You look at what we’ve chosen to voice on
the guitar and there are food groups that
have not been played.”
It seems there’s plenty of life in the good
ol’ Telecaster yet – and more to come.
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 99
review SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD

brand Shergold was relaunched

back in 2017 under the careful eye of
Patrick James Eggle, and this year sees
the launch of a new single-cut

Words Dave Burrluck

Photography Neil Godwin

100 GUITARIST MAY 2019

SHERGO TEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD review

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 101

review SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD

SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD

& PROVOCATEUR SP02-SD £829 & £809
CONTACT Barnes & Mullins PHONE 01691 652449 WEB www.shergoldguitars.com

ringing a far-from-classic brand Masqueraders from 2017, we only have two

What We Want To Know

So, Shergold relaunched the

1 Masquerader two years ago.
What’s different here?
The difference is primarily in the
body shape. As you can see this is a
single-cut design, although much of
that new Masquerader, in terms of
style and features, is retained.
Provocateur? That wasn’t an
2 original Shergold model, was it?
As far as we’re aware, no. This
single-cut goes for a more
mainstream shape but also a more
Gibson-like vibe with a shorter scale
length compared with the 2017
Masquerader model.
Why should we play one?
3 There’s a strong Eggle-inspired
boutique vibe to the new Shergolds,
especially with this new design, but
as they’re made in Indonesia they
have a far-from-boutique price.
They feature USA-made Seymour
Duncan pickups, quality hardware
and on-trend features such as the
specified torrefied mahogany neck.
A lot of guitar for the money.
B such as Shergold back to market
was always going to be an uphill
struggle. Slavishly recreating the original
designs – which were, at best, functional –
clearly wasn’t an option for any kind of
modern mainstream success. And while the
new-design Masqueraders have been doing
rather nicely and certainly bring some
serious quality and style to the market,
some have dismissed the guitar as a rather
ugly duckling. Who’d be a guitar designer
in 2019, eh?
Enter the Provocateur, a new design
that employs much of the style of the
re-enlivened Masquerader but comes
in (dare we say?) an easier-on-the-eye
single-cut outline. Unlike the original four
1
Provocateurs, identical save for the pickup
configuration with the SP01 sporting a
P-90 at the neck and humbucker at the
bridge, while the SP02 goes for a pair of
’buckers. Each is offered in three demure
colours: Black and Dirty Blonde, which are
both very slightly translucent, with black
scratchplates, and the solid Battleship
Grey, which has a vividly contrasting
cream scratchplate.
This new design looks less like an adapted
blast from the past yet it has a more than
stylish retro-vibe. The mahogany body is
45mm thick like a Telecaster (although,
oddly, our Dirty Blonde SP02 is thinner at
40mm), and save for some light chambering
around the top edges, it’s a relatively simple

102 GUITARIST MAY 2019

VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD review

1. USA Seymour Duncan

pickups power the
Provocateur. Here, we
have a direct-mount
Pearly Gates at the bridge
with a DCR of 8.02k and
4.10kohms when split
(measured at output).
At the neck we have an
Alnico 5 Vintage P-90
with a DCR of 7.72k

2. This cut-off Tele-style

bridge with through-body
stringing really adds a
vibrant ring to the design.
The brass saddles are
compensated for more
accurate intonation

3. This headstock is the

same design as the new
Masquerader’s, except
here we have a black
face. Note, too, the black
keystone buttons on
the locking tuners –
2 the other models have
cream buttons

This new design 3

employs much
of the style of the
Masquerader but in
a single-cut outline
slab-body design. There’s no rear rib-cage
contour and there is a little ‘student
model’ about it that’s reflected in a slight
downsizing, measuring approximately
325mm wide by 406mm long from the
flattened base to the almost Telecaster-like
shoulder. A Les Paul, for example, has a
similar width, but its body is 30mm longer.
It’s little surprise, then, that the oddly
thinner Dirty Blonde model is the lightest
of our test samples at 2.91kg (6.4lb), while a
second SP02 in Battleship Grey, supplied to
illustrate the third colour, increases that to
3.71kg (8.16lb). Our Black SP01 sits midway
at 3.2kg (7.04lb). Conclusion? If weight is
important to you, try before you buy.
Another fundamental change is the scale
length of the Provocateur, which drops
down from the Masquerader’s Fender-style
648mm (25.5 inches) to a more Gibson-like
625mm (24.6 inches).
While the original trio of Masqueraders
featured bolt-on rosewood necks, the
guitars launched just as the new CITES
restrictions on the export and import of
certain rosewoods came into force. The
subsequent SM04 therefore went for a
mahogany neck and that’s what is chosen
here, although it’s classified as ‘torrefied’
on the spec sheet. A 305mm (12-inch)

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 103

review SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD
4 5
4. Unlike the Masquerader, fingerboard radius is retained, as are the
the Provocateur uses a relatively narrow/tall frets along with the
shaped metal neck plate
aluminium line inlays to both the face and
5. These are the same the side. As before, it’s a very tidy job and
rear-lock tuners that the attractively striped ebony fingerboard
were used on the is actually edge bound with ebony binding
Masquerader, although
here we have cream creating a very neat job. And while a little
keystone buttons more edge rolling to the fingerboard
(used on the Blonde wouldn’t go amiss, the fret edges are
and Grey finishes only).
Note the handwritten
extremely well rounded.
serial number Both Shergold’s Masquerader and the
Provocateur use four screws to hold the
neck to the body; the former uses metal
washer inserts to support the screws on a
relieved heel area. Here, there’s a Shergold
logo’d chromed metal neck plate with a
slight curved corner on the treble side top
edge to match the shoulder of the body as it
curves towards the cutaway.
The lollipop three-a-side headstock –
parallel to the face of the fingerboard like
a Fender, not back-angled – is likewise
retained, although its face here is black,
as opposed to the natural neck colour of
the Masquerader, which offsets that inlaid
Shergold badge even more effectively.
Another difference is the plastic tuner
104 GUITARIST MAY 2019
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
buttons that are keystone-shaped here and
also colour dependent: the Black finish has
black buttons; the Blonde and Grey’s are
cream. As before, these are rear-lock tuners
with staggered height posts, necessary
to create enough rear angle for the D and
G strings behind the well-cut black Tusq
nut. Unlike the Masquerader, which uses
a similar style three-saddle bridge that
differs depending on its humbucking or
Tele-style bridge pickups, here, just the
one type is used: a cut-off walled Tele-style
bridge, with a choice of through-body
or top string loading. As before and in
keeping with Telecaster style, we have
three compensated brass rod saddles.
Seymour Duncan pickups are a big
draw at this price and they’re controlled
by a three-way toggle switch on the upper
shoulder and a simple master volume and
tone circuit, the latter with a pull/push
switch to engage a coil-split on either
the bridge pickup only (SP01) or both
(SP02). The bridge humbuckers are direct-
mounted to the body, but along with the
controls, both neck pickups are suspended
on the scratchplate, which seems to draw
 SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD review

A classy addition
first seen on the
Masquerader are these
aluminium lined inlays
to both the face and
its inspiration from a Tele Thinline-meets- side of the striped
Deluxe. It’s a more standard plastic ’plate, ebony fingerboard
too, not Bakelite like the Masquerader.
The side-mounded jack on a rugged
chromed metal plate is retained, too, and
we get those very nice, if small, Japanese
turned aluminium strap buttons that
really are going to need a couple of Grolsch
bottle-top rubber washers in order to keep
your strap on.

Feel & Sounds

As we mentioned, there is quite a range in
the weights of the guitars we had to test and
the two lighter models seem to suit the style
better. That said, although the Grey SP02
is noticeably heavier, it remains substantial
in feel rather than boat-anchor-like silly.
Each neck has a light red/brown slightly
open-pore-like thin satin sealer finish,
and in terms of shape feels slightly more
V’d than the Masquerader’s, and slightly
deeper, too, with a depth that averages at
just over 22mm at the 1st fret to a fuller
24.7mm by the 12th. It’s also slightly wider
at just over 43mm at the nut, but really not
by very much and it all fits with that shorter
Gibson-like scale, feel-wise. Swapping

The bridge design and

neck joint seemingly
clean up some of the
thickness and add bit
of Fender sparkle
between these new Provocateurs and our
Masquerader SM04, they do feel more
compact and definitely have more of a
Gibson Jr/Special vibe.
The neat thing here, however, is the
through-strung Tele-like bridge where you
might expect a wrapover. Aside from the
differences in feel that it brings, it seems
to help to produce a highly vibrant, bright-
edged acoustic resonance across all three
samples. Before we plug in, we’re definitely
hearing a little more ‘Fender’ than the
design might suggest. Each sample was
sharply set up, too, so aside from a truss
rod tweak on our Blonde model, we didn’t
touch a thing.
If the design seems purposeful and well
considered, that’s certainly reflected in
the pickup choice. The uncovered zebra-
bobbined ’59s on the SP02, for example,
sit very well on the platform, a vintage-y
’bucker voice with quite a modern clarity.
The mix is especially good, particularly
with some denser effects. Straight into
your amp, it might be a little too clear for
older styles and the coil-splits do sound
a little thin and stringy, not least that the
very effective treble bleed (see Under
The Hood, over the page) keeps the highs
virtually untouched as you turn the volume
down. But add some crunch and gain
and the articulation is surprisingly good.
Interesting, too, how the heavier Grey
guitar seems to have a little more sizzle;
the Blonde is very slightly softer.
The SP01 isn’t a million miles away, of
course, but the Pearly Gates at the bridge
does have a little more going on in the
midrange – a really nasty (in a good way!)
snarl on a gained Marshall-y rock voice
is one example. There’s still good clarity,
although it seems a little rounder, especially
when we kick back to cleaner voicings, or
you select the mix with the neck P-90. On
its own, that neck single coil veers on the
flubby side, but reducing the height of the
poles and raising the whole pickup a little
seems to improve things, and this proved
our favourite, sound-wise.
So, while there’s a pretty broad palette
here, we can’t help thinking that the bridge
design and neck joint become quite key
elements, seemingly cleaning up some of
the thickness compared with a Les Paul and
THE RIVALS
PRS’s Indonesian single-cut SE 245 (£475,
no gigbag) goes for an all-mahogany build
and 635mm scale with bound rosewood
fingerboard. Typically, we get a wrap-over
bridge with twin 245 ‘S’ humbuckers and
four-control layout.
Twin-humbucking Teles are a rarity, but
Fender’s Mexican-made Player Telecaster
HH (£599, no gigbag) has a 648mm scale,
maple neck and fingerboard, six-saddle
through-string bridge and dual Player Series
humbuckers. Also, check out the Classic
Series ’72 Telecaster Deluxe (£799) and the
Chris Shiflett Telecaster Deluxe (£839).
Godin’s Canadian-made Summit Classic
SG (£659, inc gigbag) uses a Canadian
basswood body, 629mm-scale glued-in
maple neck with rosewood fingerboard,
Graph Tech’s Resomax Sonic 1 wrapover
bridge, and its own-design Godin Custom
Zebra humbuckers with four-control
layout. It channels slightly more of a
Les Paul Special vibe.

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 105

review SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD
The simple circuit
includes a treble bleed
circuit with a capacitor
and resistor in parallel
1 2
1. The cleanly machined and tight-fitting neck 2. The bridge humbucker sits on this small spacer,
pocket with no finish denotes a quality build which directly connects the pickup to the body
UNDER THE HOOD
We delve into the guts of the Provocateur to
find the impressive build continues inside
ere’s a very straightforward guitar
H that does exactly what you’d expect.
That said, pulling the guitar apart
we’re impressed with the careful build, not least
the tight-fitting neck pocket and the cleanly
machined and finished pickup routes and cable
channels. The channel for the neck pickup is
clearly large enough to accept either the P-90,
which is screwed directly to the body with a
pair of springs to allow height adjustment, or
the scratchplate-suspended humbucker of the
SP02 model.
The pots are Alpha 500k, the tone, of course,
with a pull-switch. There’s a treble bleed circuit
(0.001microfarad capacitor and 150kohm
resistor in parallel) and the tone cap is possibly
rather high at 0.047microfarad, giving quite a
woofy voice fully anti-clockwise; if you rarely
use your tone control, this is not a problem.
The wiring is smart, with insulating sleeves
106 GUITARIST MAY 2019
on any bare single wires – we’ve seen much
scrappier wiring on far higher-priced guitars.
As we mention, the coil-splits are very standard,
just taking the coil junction point to ground
and voicing the slug coils of either the bridge
humbucker (SP01) or both ’buckers on the
SP02 model.
One word of warning is in regard to the direct-
mount bridge pickup. It’s screwed down to the
body over a mahogany spacer (approximately
2.8mm thick). As supplied, the pickup sits just
over 1mm from the surface of the screw coils to
the underside of the top E string fretted at the
22nd fret; the bass-side is just over 2mm. If you
want to back off the pickup a little, you can’t,
unless you reduce the thickness of that spacer.
We mention this to Patrick. “Maybe we should
supply a little bag of different height spacers
for those you might want to adjust the height,”
he considers. “Watch this space!”
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
adding a bit of Fender sparkle compared
with a smoother-sounding SG style.
There’s some Jr-like attitude here, too,
perhaps a result of the direct-mount bridge
humbucker, and the overall lively resonance
is as valid for early-era Van Halen as it is for
punkier drain-pipe drive.
We might be tempted to use a less vicious
tone cap and experiment (or lose) the treble
bleed circuit, but, hey, that’s a modding
decision and in all honesty both of these
models not only cover a lot of ground but
definitely have their thing going on: a raw
resonant power that takes a little taming
(don’t forget that direct-mount bridge
pickup really picks up handling noise at
higher levels). Yes, the P-90/Pearly Gates
combo sits very nicely in older, cleaner
styles, but it’s when you up the wick a bit
that these really seem to sing.
Verdict
While no-one is pretending these are
UK-made guitars, they retain some of the
quirky original Shergold DNA that’s been
tastefully distilled by Patrick Eggle and
the new Shergold team into a design that

The quirky original
Shergold DNA has
been distilled into a
very current design
seems very current. These are very nicely
made with plenty of retro-y, vintage vibe,
and they’d be perfect gigging tools whether
you’re ‘on stage’ at your local boozer or
higher up the food chain.
Yes, the voicing of the SP02 with its
ubiquitous Duncan ’59s does sound a little
generic, but it covers a lot of styles with
ease – although we couldn’t help but be
drawn to the SP01, which just seems to have
a little more character, particularly for older
rootsier styles. The direct-mount bridge
humbucker won’t be liked by the pickup
tweakers among us and we’d be tempted to
experiment a little with the circuit – but, let’s
not forget, we’re all different. With chassis
that work as well as these do, it’s game on.
Classy guitars with an eye on budget that
feel, play and sound anything but.
SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD
6. The SP02 uses a
matched pair of
Seymour Duncan
’59s, a modern classic
combo used by many
brands. They use
Alnico 5 magnets and
are fully wax-potted
with a measured DCR
of approximately 8.34k
(4.24k when split) at the
bridge and 7.26k (3.67k
when split) at the neck
SHERGOLD
PROVOCATEUR
SP01-SD
PRICE: £829
ORIGIN: Indonesia
TYPE: Single-cut solidbody electric
BODY: Mahogany
NECK: Torrefied mahogany, bolt-on
SCALE LENGTH: 625mm (24.6”)
NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Black
Tusq/43.2mm
FINGERBOARD: Ebony, hand-inlaid
aluminium line markers, 305mm (12”)
radius
FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
HARDWARE: PJE-designed
Shergold Custom hardtail bridge
w/ 3 compensated brass saddles,
staggered height locking tuners –
chrome-plated
STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 54mm
ELECTRICS: Seymour Duncan Pearly
Gates (bridge), P-90 (neck), 3-way
lever pickup selector switch, master
volume and tone (with pull/push
coil-split)
WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.2/7
OPTIONS: A Shergold gigbag costs £59
RANGE OPTIONS: The double-cut
Masquerader range offers the
humbucker/P-90 SM01 (£765), the
H/S/S SM02 (£835) and the S/S/S
SM03 (£809). All have Seymour
Duncan pickups and solid rosewood
necks
LEFT-HANDERS: No
FINISHES: Black (as reviewed), Dirty
Blonde, Battleship Grey – high-gloss
body, hand-burnished satin neck
9 9
PROS Quality build, hardware and
pickups with excellent range of
sounds; Pearly Gates/P-90 combo
CONS Direct-mount bridge pickup
doesn’t allow easy adjustment;
coil-split on bridge humbucker is
rather thin-sounding; no gigbag
review
SHERGOLD
PROVOCATEUR
SP02-SD
PRICE: £809
ORIGIN: Indonesia
TYPE: Single-cut solidbody electric
BODY: Mahogany
NECK: Torrefied mahogany, bolt-on
SCALE LENGTH: 625mm (24.6”)
NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech Black
Tusq/43.1mm
FINGERBOARD: Ebony, hand-inlaid
aluminium line markers, 305mm (12”)
radius
FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
HARDWARE: PJE-designed
Shergold Custom hardtail bridge
w/ 3 compensated brass saddles,
staggered height locking tuners –
chrome-plated
STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 54mm
ELECTRICS: Seymour Duncan ’59
(bridge & neck), 3-way lever pickup
selector switch, master volume and
tone (with pull/push coil-split)
WEIGHT (kg/lb): See copy
OPTIONS: A Shergold gigbag costs £59
RANGE OPTIONS: The double-cut
Masquerader SM04 with twin
Seymour Duncan humbuckers and
mahogany neck costs £799
LEFT-HANDERS: No
FINISHES: Black, Dirty Blonde
(as reviewed), Battleship Grey
(as pictured) – high-gloss body,
hand-burnished satin neck
PROS Quality build, hardware and
pickups with wide range of sounds
CONS As before, direct-mount
bridge pickup doesn’t allow easy
adjustment; coil-splits on both
humbuckers are rather thin-
sounding; no gigbag
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 107
feature SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD
Going For ’Gold
Designing a new guitar is one thing. Getting it made in a factory across the world is another
matter entirely, even for the likes of Patrick James Eggle and the Shergold team…
ou might think that once you’ve
Y created a new guitar design, the
work is done. You hit the send
button to your factory of choice and a few
months later a shipment of shiny guitars
arrives ready for sale. If only. Shergold’s new
Provocateur is a typical example of the often
convoluted process involved.
“I think we started about 18 months ago,”
remembers Patrick James Eggle, one of the
UK’s most celebrated guitars makers and
also the brains behind both the Shergold
and Faith acoustic guitar designs (both
brands are owned by Barnes & Mullins
here in the UK). “I put the design down on
paper and one of the guys I work with put it
into a CAD drawing programme. Then we
made basic prototypes and sent them to our
workshop in Indonesia.
“But when we got the samples back,
they just weren’t right. We went through
this process a few times and, to cut a long
story short, in the end the guitars were
really good – but they were still missing
something. It was all the little things, you
108 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Words Dave Burrluck
Patrick James Eggle and
the single-cut Shergold
Provocateur, which went
through a painstaking
18-month build process
know? The feel of the neck, the way the fret
ends were finished, how the fingerboard
edges were rolled or not. Annoying little
things like the two per cent at the end that
can make a guitar or kill it.
“And all this was after we’d been out to the
factory and spent a few days trying to get
all this done,” continues Patrick, trying not
to sound as exasperated as he clearly felt.
“In the end, we got two of the guys from the
workshop in Indonesia to come here to my
workshop where we spent a week making
a guitar from scratch. It was tight: at about
4.30pm on the last day they were here,
we got the strings on and it was playing
and then they took it back with them.
We said, ‘This is exactly what we want.
Do everything the way we showed you:
make this guitar.’ That’s the way it went.
The next samples we received, well, they
are the ones that you’ve got there.
“The problem is that if you’re working
in a ’shop in Indonesia,” Patrick continues,
“you don’t get the exposure to really cool
guitars that we have here. You sort of live
in the bubble of your own workshop. They
haven’t got a store down the road full of
Master Built Fenders and old Gibsons; they
just don’t have that. So you’ve got to show
them: try this, hold this. Then they get it.
And these aren’t the sort of things you can’t
get across over Skype or email.”
Even to our inexperienced ears, this is
all sounding like a time consuming and
therefore expensive process.
“Well, this is where I’m lucky to be
working with Barnes & Mullins, and I have
to say that Brian Cleary [co-managing
director and the drive behind the return
of Shergold] really takes the long view. He
doesn’t throw his toys out of the pram if it
doesn’t go right first time. He really sticks
with it, which is amazing, because I don’t
think you’d get that with too many people.
He takes the long, long view and insists we
get it right before it goes to market.”
It’s little surprise, then, that many
companies working in a similar way choose
very safe designs, something that really
can’t be said of Shergold whose initial

The revitalised Masquerader
(models 1, 2 and 3 shown
here) split opinion when it
was released in 2017
Masquerader – redrawn and completely
updated by Patrick and the team – was not
seen as being so easy on the eye as all those
fabulous classics made before 1965.
“We have to accept that the Masquerader
is a bit of a Marmite guitar and I think that’s
down to that original-inspired shape,”
considers Patrick. Which is why, when the
subject of a new-design Shergold came
up all those months ago, he was quick to
voice his suggestion. “I just wanted to
do a single-cut,” he laughs. “I think the
conversation went that we needed to do
another model and I just said, ‘Please, let it
be single-cut,’ and that was that.”
Even so, the new Provocateur – an
all mahogany bolt-on with a Tele-style
through-strung bridge – is hardly a clone of
someone else’s design. As with the original
Masquerader, which featured a rosewood
neck usually reserved for higher ticket
builds, the Provocateur boasts a torrefied
(aka ‘roasted’) mahogany neck.
“Last time we were in Indonesia we were
having a lot of conversations about roasted
SHERGOLD PROVOCATEUR SP01-SD & SP02-SD
“When [the neck
wood is] roasted, it
seems easier to get
this sort of slick feel
just by using an oil
or some wax”
this and roasted that and they had some
samples of roasted mahogany. Roasted
maple necks [used by Patrick on many of
his own boutique-style builds] have the
effect – when you have it unfinished on
the back – that it’s less kind of fuzzy to the
touch. When it’s roasted, it seems easier to
get this sort of slick feel just by using an oil
or some wax.
“So, my initial thought was that we’d
try and go for that sort of finish with the
torrefied mahogany, just the back of the
neck like it’s been worn through. That was
one of the reasons I wanted to go for the
roasted mahogany. Normally, roasting has
feature
a beneficial effect on the tone, so, yes, that’s
why we’ve changed.”
For production, a compromise had to be
made, though, and the necks, says Patrick,
“have a thin sealer coat, which, when dry,
we smooth with wire wool”.
Another more unusual feature is the
direct-mount humbuckers on both models.
“I use direct mounting on my own guitars,
which don’t have scratchplates. I just think
it has a positive effect on the sound. The
fact that the pickup is held solid and isn’t
moving around, held by a pair of screws
and springs, is beneficial. I can’t prove it
and I can’t say hand on heart that I’d pass
a blindfold test; it’s just something I do.”
Intuition, practicality and experience play
a big part in Patrick’s designs, and that Tele-
style bridge is a good example.
“We didn’t want to rake the neck to allow
us to use a Les Paul-style setup,” he explains,
“so we stayed with the low-profile choice.
But I do agree with you, it definitely impacts
the sound I think. Along with the bolt-on
neck joint, it does sound a little zingier.”
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 109
review HEADRUSH GIGBOARD

Model
Behaviour
HeadRush shrinks its Pedalboard’s amp- and effects-modelling
capability into a more compact package

Words Trevor Curwen Photography Phil Barker

110 GUITARIST MAY 2019


HEADRUSH GIGBOARD £599
CONTACT HeadRush PHONE 01252 896040
What You Need To Know
HeadRush: I’ve heard that name
1 somewhere before…
Yes, we reviewed its Pedalboard back
in issue 422. The company is one of
inMusic’s brands, which also includes
Akai and Alesis.
So, how does this one relate to
2 the previous Pedalboard?
It’s pretty much the same thing but
in a more streamlined package for
those who don’t need masses of
footswitches or a built-in treadle.
There aren’t many knobs on it…
3 That’s because you don’t need them:
there’s a really good touchscreen that,
when combined with a single data
encoder knob, does everything you
need swiftly and efficiently.
1. You can assign one
of nine available
colours to each of
your blocks and that
will be reflected in
the colour of the
LED strip above the
footswitch that the
block is assigned to
WEB www.headrushfx.com
he only HeadRush product we’ve
T reviewed to date has been the
Pedalboard, a large floor-based
processor featuring modelling from the
team behind Digidesign’s Eleven amp and
effects simulation software for Pro Tools,
as seen in the Eleven Rack rackmount
processor/audio interface. With a treadle
and plenty of footswitches, the Pedalboard
is an obvious competitor to large floor
processors such as Line 6’s Helix LT. Now,
though, the trend to put this technology into
a smaller unit for those who find big floor
processors unwieldy and/or don’t need
the full set of facilities these units provide
has seen the release of the Gigboard, which
makes the business end of the HeadRush
Pedalboard available to those wishing for
something a bit more compact underfoot.
While it may have lost its big brother’s
treadle, eight of its footswitches and some
connectivity (notably XLR outputs and a
second send/return loop), the Gigboard
still has a seven-inch touchscreen to take
care of all its business and its sonic ability
is in no way diminished. It’s powered by
the same quad-core processor, running the
Eleven HD Expanded DSP software. What
this gives you is 270 presets and a range
HEADRUSH GIGBOARD review
of models that number 34 amps, 15 cabs,
10 mics and 48 effects, as well as the ability
to load impulse responses (IRs).
A preset that’s known here as a ‘rig’ is
constructed from a chain of 11 blocks. These
blocks can be placed in any order in a single
linear chain or a choice of two parallel split
chains. Besides hosting the onboard models
and any IRs you care to import, a block can
be used to bring any external pedals into
the signal chain via a connection through
the rear-panel send and return loop. Other
onboard features include a looper with a
capacity for 20 minutes of audio in up to
50 layers, and a four-channel 24-bit 96kHz
audio interface for recording to your
computer via the USB port.
In Use
The touchscreen with its drag-and-drop
functionality is an excellent way to set
things up and it’s really easy to build a
rig containing all your models and their
stored settings from scratch, plus assigned
functions to the four footswitches. Of
course, with just four of these footswitches,
there isn’t the ability to have individual
switching for all of the effects in your rig,
but there can still be plenty of flexibility
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 111
review HEADRUSH GIGBOARD
2 3
2. Hold the footswitches 3. Alongside the Master here. You can assign individual blocks
down and they’ll call volume, the encoder to footswitches, but the Gigboard also
up what the legending ‘Push To Enter’
below them says. In knob works with the
supports ‘scenes’ whereby a number of
normal switching, they touchscreen to scroll blocks in a rig can be lumped together and
can be assigned to such through available menu assigned to a single footswitch. This means
things as bypassing options and adjust you can, for example, bring in overdrive
blocks and selecting rigs parameter values
and delay at the same time. Stomp mode
has individual effects and/or scenes on all
four footswitches, and is just one of three
THE RIVALS practical modes.
If your preferred method of working is to
The most obvious rival to HeadRush’s switch from preset to preset, then there’s
products is Line 6 and, more specifically in Rig mode where the first two footswitches
terms of facilities, price and size (although it call up rigs in a bank and the second two
is smaller), the three-footswitch HX Stomp scroll through the banks; alternatively, all
(£558), which offers over 300 models and 126 four footswitches can be assigned to rigs.
presets each made up of a chain of 6 blocks. A flexible option for many users would be
For an alternative small amp modeller with the third mode, Hybrid, which combines
effects in a similar price range, there’s the six- the two so that the first two footswitches
footswitch Atomic AmpliFire 6 (£529), and for can be assigned to blocks or scenes in a rig,
a lot less outlay (£297), you can get the three- while the second two scroll through and
footswitch plus treadle Mooer GE-200, which call up rigs. Switching between modes
has 55 amps, 26 cabs, 70 effects and a looper, takes two footswitch presses and a couple
plus a drum machine for good measure. of seconds, so can easily be done between
songs in a set.
112 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Sounds
Looking at the factory rigs and putting
together some of our own, it’s quite evident
that the Gigboard can deliver a classy, fully
produced sound with effects, amp and
cab for those situations where you’re not
plugged into a guitar amp. The amps all
play well and cover a range of scenarios,
with Fender and Marshall particularly
strongly represented alongside AC30s and
a smattering of Soldanos, Mesa/Boogies
and more. While there are plenty of decent
cabinet/mic’ing options, the ability to load
IRs in all formats means you’re not limited
by the onboard sounds and can build unique
tones. Seamless switching between rigs
is aided by a Reverb/Delay Tail Spillover
function, which can be enabled for rigs or
individual effects.
There aren’t the massive numbers of
effects found in some processors, but all
the bread and butter stuff is covered here,
including some tasty modulation effects, a
nice selection of rotary speaker options and
a very useful Doubler that helps create some

really powerful expansive tones. Although
there’s no built-in treadle, plugging in an
expression pedal gives you control over
numerous parameters and brings wah
and Whammy effects to life. If you want to
use the Gigboard on stage for effects only,
it’s easy to set up a bunch of rigs without
a modelled amp, and in Stomp mode you
can always have it set up so you have, say,
an overdrive, modulation effect and a delay
underfoot, plus whatever you want on the
fourth footswitch. A useful Setlist facility
lets you save and recall collections of rigs,
so you can have easily managed setups to
suit a particular set of songs or for different
bands that you might play in.
There is a strong
argument that the
smaller iteration
of the genre is
more practical
HEADRUSH GIGBOARD review
If you double-tap one of the
blocks in your rig (pedal, amp
or cab), a page will open with
its editable parameters
HEADRUSH
GIGBOARD
PRICE: £599
ORIGIN: Taiwan
TYPE: Amp modeller/multi-effects
pedalboard processor
FEATURES: Tap tempo, tuner, looper,
4-in/4-out USB audio interface, LED
backlit display with touch interface, IR
loading, external amp switching,
global 4-band parametric EQ at the
output
PRESETS: 270
MODELS: 34 amps, 15 cabs, 10 mics,
48 effects (6 distortion, 7 dynamic/
EQ, 13 modulation, 7 reverb/delay,
8 rotary, 7 expression)
CONTROLS: Master Volume, Push
To Enter, ‘soft’ knob, 4x footswitches
CONNECTIONS: Standard guitar
input, minijack stereo aux input,
standard main outputs (L/Mono, R),
standard stereo phones output,
standard external amp output,
standard Send, standard Return, MIDI
in, MIDI out/thru, USB, expression
pedal, Toe (expression pedal toe
switch)
POWER: Supplied 19V adaptor
3.42 amps
DIMENSIONS: 330 (w) x 220 (d) x
Verdict 65mm (h)
The modelling processor by its very
nature is a flexible beast with many uses:
in front of an amp as a self-contained
effects pedalboard; for gigging without
an amp direct into the PA; for recording
and headphone practice; and so on. The
HeadRush Pedalboard, and now the
Gigboard, do all those things.
There is, however, a strong argument that
the smaller iteration of the genre, as well as
being more cost-effective, is more practical
– certainly so in terms of transport and for
sitting happily on a tabletop next to your
computer, but also as something that could
be at the heart of a conventional pedalboard
supplying effects in tandem with other
8
pedals. Whether the Gigboard is a little on PROS The HeadRush Pedalboard
the large size for that role (it’s almost twice sound in a smaller footprint; easily
the size of the Line 6 HX Stomp, which operated and intuitive touchscreen;
measures in at 170mm by 120mm) depends flexible range of sounds
on what else you want on your pedalboard,
but it will without doubt provide plenty
of footswitchable firepower should you
CONS The inline power adaptor is
less practical than a standard IEC
choose it. mains cable
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 113
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MAY 2019 GUITARIST 115


PEDALBOARD
MAD PROFESSOR
Loud’n Proud
Mad Professor’s latest sounds and behaves like a vintage Marshall amp
Words Trevor Curwen Photography Phil Barker
S
ince it made its debut in the 1960s,
the four-input Marshall amp has
been a major component in some
iconic tones, particularly in the classic
and hard rock genres. As you’ll probably
know, ‘four-input’ refers to the designs
Marshall produced prior to its master
volume models that first appeared around
1976 – famously including, of course, the
‘Plexi’-era from 1965 to 1969 when the
amps had plexiglass front panels. These
amps didn’t have the master volume
models’ easy ability to produce driven
sounds at quite low volumes; they had
to be turned up, so a fair amount of their
character came from the output valves
being driven. The four inputs fed two
independent, differently voiced channels
and you could get extra variation by
116 GUITARIST MAY 2019
M A N U FAC T U R E R
MAD PROFESSOR
MODE L
LOUD’N PROUD
plugging a guitar into the first channel’s
upper input, running a jumper cable from
the lower input into channel 2, and using
both of the volume knobs in proportion.
The Loud’n Proud is designed to be a
vintage four-input Marshall-in-a-box that
sounds and also behaves like a real amp.
To that end, Mad Professor tells us that
it’s replicated a complete amp signal path
including the preamp and the power amp
with phase inverter, push-pull stage and
output transformer simulation. Taking
things further, the boffins have added a
second footswitch that can put either a
boost or a fuzz circuit in front of the ‘amp’.
SOUNDS
To create your amp sound, you have
controls for gain and output volume, plus
PR IC E
£225
C ON TAC T
ANDERTONS 01483 456 777 / WWW.MPAMP.COM
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
tonal shaping via Bass, Middle, Treble
and Presence knobs that react just as they
would on the real thing. But first there’s a
choice, via a Character switch, of a slightly
compressed tone with tighter bass, or
something with a looser bass end that’s a
little less screwed-down and feels a touch
more responsive under the fingertips.
Both modes sound great and have the
typical crunch of a well-sorted vintage
Marshall. We had the pedal plugged into a
Fender combo on a clean setting – and also
had our own 1969/’70 vintage JMP50 head
and a cab connected via an A/B switcher
for direct comparison. The Loud’n Proud’s
Gain knob runs from clean Marshall
tone to fully driven – a more moderate
period-accurate distortion than a modern
high-gain model, but perfect if you happen
01. CHARACTER
SWITCH
Tighter bass and slightly
compressed tone on the left,
with a looser bass and maximum
dynamics on the right
02. FUZZ/BOOST
SWITCH
You have a choice here of
whether the second footswitch 1 2
brings in a boost of up to 13dB
or puts vintage fuzz at the front
of the chain
03. FUZZ KNOBS
Getting the right amount of fuzz
is a balancing act between these
two knobs. One knob sets the
amount of fuzz, the other sets
its output level
04. TONAL
CONTROL
The tone knobs reflect the tonal
setup on a vintage Marshall amp;
the Presence knob adjusts the
high-frequency amplification in
the power amp section
05. FOOTSWITCHES
These are independent of each
other so you can use the fuzz
(or boost) on its own
5 9
to play AC/DC, Cream or Free songs or
styles, to name a few, and it all cleans up
really well with guitar volume.
For a bit extra, there’s a history of
boosters of one kind or another used
in front of Marshalls: Jimmy Page’s
use of the preamp of an Echoplex tape
echo, and Ritchie Blackmore’s Hornby-
Skewes treble booster, for example,
all of which provided a degree of tonal
shift. The booster here offers up to 13dB
via the Boost/Fuzz knob but also has
some tonal shift, notably bolstering the
midrange frequencies that can give you a
handy rhythm-to-lead kick-up. If you’ve
bypassed the pedal’s drive section, you
can use the boost independently to drive
your amp if desired, and the same goes
if you’ve selected fuzz rather than boost.
4
Tech Spec
ORIGIN: Finland
TYPE: Drive pedal
FEATURES: True bypass,
2x different amp voices,
3 Fuzz or Boost options
CONTROLS: Bass,
Middle, Treble, Gain,
Volume, Presence,
Fuzz Volume, Boost/Fuzz,
Character switch,
Fuzz/Boost switch,
Boost/Fuzz footswitch,
Bypass footswitch
CONNECTIONS:
Standard input,
standard output
POWER: 9V battery
or 9V adaptor
(not supplied) 27mA
DIMENSIONS: 94 (w) x
120 (d) x 53mm (h)
What you’ll be getting is the sound of bonus that you can use the boost or fuzz
classic 1960s-style two-knob (volume and independently. That, however, may be an
fuzz) germanium fuzz. unlikely occurrence as the drive side of
Of course, there are more classic things is unlikely to be bypassed. This is
Marshall-based tones to be had from a pedal designed to shape your tone for a
putting a fuzzbox in front of the amp – specific result and, as such, may very well
Jimi Hendrix with his Fuzz Face is the be an always-on component in your signal
obvious example – and the Loud’n Proud chain rather than kicked in for drive when
pedal can tap right into that, delivering needed, even though it can perform that
some instantly familiar tones. There’s a task admirably.
whole host of classic rock sounds in this If you covet that vintage Marshall
pedal waiting to be discovered. sound but don’t possess the real thing, the
Loud’n Proud is an ideal way to get it into
VERDICT your signal chain.
First off, let’s just say that the idea of
giving you Marshall amp-style drive with PROS Authentic vintage Marshall sound
the option of a kick-up via boost or fuzz all in a stompbox; reasonably compact size;
in one pedal is laudable and that it’s been independent fuzz or boost
very nicely implemented here, with the CONS Not much we didn’t like, really
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 117

P EDALBOARD
WAMPLER
Fuzzstration
A do-it-all fuzz with EQ that goes from classic rock to hell-breaking doom
Words Trevor Curwen Photography Phil Barker
W
e all love a good fuzz pedal,
but since each has its own
character, finding exactly
the right one can lead to frustration or,
according to Brian Wampler, Fuzztration:
“The torturous feeling of desperation
when searching for the perfect fuzz.” The
obvious solution would be a fuzz pedal
with a wider than usual scope, going
beyond a standard two- or three-knob
unit’s limited sonic possibilities. How
about two distinct fuzz voices to start off
with, separate bass, middle and treble
controls to tweak them with, plus an added
footswitchable upper octave that can be
pre- or post-fuzz? Yep, that’ll do nicely.
The Fuzztration’s Tight voicing covers
the typical Big Muff territory of fuzz that
verges on distortion with a scoop in the
midrange. In an A/B test, it shows itself a
more than capable substitute as the three
tone knobs offer extended nuance over
the Pi’s single Tone knob. The EQ knobs,
in fact, have a massive part to play in the
pedal’s versatility; moving from the neutral
12 o’clock settings offers emphatic cut or
SOURCE AUDIO
Kingmaker Fuzz £159
Source Audio’s offering features three different
fuzz voicings (Normal, Heavy and Octave), plus
Bass and Treble knobs. More versatility can be
accessed via the Neuro Editor and app.
118 GUITARIST MAY 2019
M A N U FAC T U R E R PR IC E
WAMPLER £189
MODE L C ON TAC T
FUZZSTRATION FIRST LINE DIST 01626 853019 / WWW.WAMPLERPEDALS.COM
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
boost in the relevant range. Switch across
to the Open voicing and you’ve got thicker,
responsive fuzz with a full midrange that
can offer smooth sustain but can also get
raspily unkempt around the edges with
judicious use of the treble knob.
The Octave in its Pre setting offers
shades of the Octavia that should please
Jimi fans. Open Fuzz plus Pre Fuzz Octav
gets you close to the Octavia/Fuzz Face
combination, although be aware that the
fuzz here does not clean up nicely like
a Fuzz Face with volume control. Place
octave after fuzz and all hell can break
loose: if you’re looking for spluttery
mayhem or just something a little wilder the Fuzztration: this is a pedal that revels
than the norm, there’s loads to be explored. in plenty of pizzaz while ticking the (fuzz)
Incidentally, the octave can be used boxes of many, encompassing classic rock
independently of the fuzz and is great for tones, familiar to all, as well as more ‘out
giving single-note lines a sitar-like effect. there’ stuff for the iconoclasts.
VERDICT PROS Two distinct fuzz voices cover many
Any attempt to create everyman’s fuzz options; footswitchable octave; powerful EQ
pedal inevitably runs the risk of lacking any really shapes the sound
character of its own. Fortunately, that’s not CONS Probably wouldn’t suit players
the case here. There’s nothing bland about seeking smooth volume knob clean-up
A L S O T R Y. . .
EARTHQUAKER DEVICES DOD
Hoof Reaper £319 Carcosa Fuzz £85
With two separate or stackable fuzzes in one box, There’s no octave on DOD’s Carcosa pedal, but it’s
EarthQuaker’s Hoof Reaper pedal puts Big Muff a less expensive yet versatile option that has two
and Tone Bender-style fuzzes together with a different fuzz voices with plenty of tweaking via the
switchable octave up. After knob, which controls bias.
 Tech Spec
ORIGIN: USA
TYPE: Fuzz pedal
FEATURES: True bypass, soft switches,
2x independent clipping circuits,
independent octave – can be put
pre-/post-fuzz/used on its own
CONTROLS: Volume, Bass, Mids, Treble,
Fuzz, Octave Pre/Post switch, Tight/Open
switch, Octave footswitch, bypass footswitch
CONNECTIONS: Standard input,
standard output
POWER: 9V battery or 9V-18V adaptor
(18mA at 9V and 23.3mA at 18V)
DIMENSIONS: 120 (w) x 95 (d) x 55 mm (h)

8

P EDALBOARD
BOSS
DC-2W Dimension C
This knob-free 80s flashback recreates its forebears’ spatial sounds
Words Trevor Curwen Photography Phil Barker
F
rom 1979 onwards, it wouldn’t have
been uncommon to hear, “Can we
have a bit of grey button on that?”
in high-end recording studios. That grey
button was setting number 4 (the strongest)
on the rackmount Roland SDD-320
Dimension D (settings 1, 2 and 3 had white
buttons). What you’d be getting was a
spatial effect adding a dimension to the
sound – chorus-like but somewhat different
from the more obviously mobile chorus
effect. Stevie Ray Vaughan apparently
favoured a Dimension D to thicken up
guitar sounds on his album mixes.
That Dimension D was a large and
expensive studio box, but in 1985 Roland
put some of its essence into a compact
pedal, the Boss DC-2 Dimension C, which
it produced for four years. That Dimension
effect is now back in a new Waza Craft
pedal with two voicing options: one that
replicates the Dimension C pedal and one
designed to mimic the original SDD-320.
The new pedal has the same user
interface as the previous incarnations,
with not a knob in sight, just four buttons,
although you can select two buttons at a
time allowing 10 different settings for each
voicing. While dual inputs and outputs
BOSS
CE-2W £202
If you’re looking for the more traditional Roland/
Boss chorus sound with adjustable rate and depth,
you’ll find it here in a pedal with modes recreating
the vintage CE-1 and CE-2 pedals.
120 GUITARIST MAY 2019
M A N U FAC T U R E R PR IC E
BOSS £202
MODE L C ON TAC T
DC-2W DIMENSION C ROLAND UK 01792 702701 / WWW.ROLAND.COM
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
offer full stereo operation, the pedal also
works well in standard mono setups.
The Dimension effect is very similar to
chorus, although you don’t get the obvious
perceptible cyclic modulation that you’d
hear with higher levels of chorus rate and
depth. In an A/B test, the ‘button 1’ setting
on the DC-2W was pretty comparable
to a classic ‘10 to 2’ knob setting on our
vintage CE-2. Other settings offer richer
variations providing depth, shimmer and a
sparkle that works brilliantly with chordal
arpeggios and strumming parts. And it’s not
just good for clean sounds – the pedal also
takes drive and distortion extremely well,
and is well suited to tasks where you might
have opted for a flanger or rotary effect.
VERDICT
If you’ve been aware of the Dimension D
and C units but didn’t fancy the high PROS Some sought-after vintage effects
secondhand prices and unreliability, this recreated; two modes cover all possibilities;
Waza iteration offers you the chance to easy user interface; usual ergonomic
buy into it. For anyone coming new to this, advantages of the Boss Compact format
think of it as a fresh modulation flavour to CONS Not really a criticism, but the Boss
add to your arsenal – particularly if you’re MD-500, featuring a Dimension D recreation
running a stereo rig, as there aren’t many alongside a comprehensive set of other
pedals that can widen and enrich your modulation effects, may be more cost-
sound in such a pleasing manner. effective at a £306 street price
A L S O T R Y. . .
TC ELECTRONIC HOTONE
3rd Dimension £51 tomp & tomp Mini
i i ((£175 & £99)
Behringer is now in the driving seat at TC The Xtomp (and its Mini sibling) is a chameleon-
Electronic, facilitating less expensive pedals such like pedal into which you load an effect from a
as the 3rd Dimension, which features that familiar library via an iOS or Android app. The Liquid C
four-button interface and BBD technology. effect is Hotone’s take on the Dimension C sound.
 Tech Spec
ORIGIN: Japan
TYPE: Dimension/
chorus pedal
FEATURES:
Buffered bypass
CONTROLS:
Mode Selector (1, 2, 3, 4),
S/SDD-320 switch,
bypass footswitch
CONNECTIONS:
Standard inputs A (mono)
and B, standard outputs
A (mono) and B,
POWER: 9V battery or 9V
adaptor 65mA
DIMENSIONS: 73 (w) x
129 (d) x 59mm (h)

9
 P EDALBOARD TO N E MAK E R S
Simon Jarrett
The founder of valve pedal innovators Kingsley talks high voltage
and the joys of having the world of valve amp tone at your feet
1 What was the first pedal you built
and how did the design come about?
“Before I started making amplifiers,
I experimented with some valve-based
pedals that were one-off things I made
for myself and a few local musicians in
the Vancouver area. But the first pedal
I made under the Kingsley brand was the
Jester [valve overdrive and boost]. That
was loosely based on the preamps from
a couple of amps I was making called the
ToneBaron and the Deluxe 32.”
2 What do you think makes Kingsley
products unique?
“I’ve not tried to be different consciously
in any way, but I was a gigging guitar player
and just wanted stuff I liked the sound of.
I was making amps and I ended up making
a few different valve stompboxes that also
ran at high voltage, which is a pretty rare
thing in general. A lot of manufacturers
have probably stayed away from using that
kind of design because of the hassles of
using high voltage and high current draw,
but I didn’t let that put me off because
I liked the sound of it.”
3 What’s your best-selling pedal and
why do you think that is?
“These days, it’s either the Page [valve
boost] or the Harlot [valve overdrive]. The
Page is a low-gain valve boost/overdrive,
122 GUITARIST MAY 2019
which is something a lot of musicians
appreciate – it excels in pushing amps into
the sweet spot at a much lower volume.
I used a JFET transistor to push the Page
circuitry harder and that then became the
Harlot pedal.”
4 Which notable players have used
Kingsley pedals?
“Ed O’Brien has a couple of Pages and a
Harlot. The Page was featured on a bunch
of tracks on the last Biffy Clyro album –
that’s probably Dan Steinhardt’s influence!
– Pete Townshend, Matt Schofield, Joey
Landreth and Noel Gallagher all own
Kingsley pedals. And David Gilmour’s
guitar tech called me up a few years ago to
order a pedal. I later saw a picture of it on
[David’s] ’board.”
5 Is there anything new on the
horizon with Kingsley?
“I make a trio of pedals: the Maiden [valve
preamplifier], the Page DS [preamp
overdrive channel] and the EQ Lift
Boost. The Maiden and Page DS form a
Dumble ODS-style preamp, and those
two, combined with the EQ Lift Boost,
are coming out in a single box called the
Juggler Version 3. I also have another
new preamp pedal that’ll be based on the
Marshall model 2203/2204 circuit. I’m
tentatively calling that the Chief Inspector,
Kingsley’s valve-based
stompboxes run at high
voltage, which offers
advantages in both sound
and performance
because the ‘Plexi’ [valve preamplifier
pedal] is called the Constable.”
6 Tell us a secret about effects
that you’ve discovered…
“Like a lot of players, I can end up with a
lot of pedals, but I’ve found less is often
more. Sort out your rig to the point where
you’re happy with the basic sound, rather
than trying to fix something by turning a
pedal on.”
7 What’s your best tone tip?
“I’m a Strat player, but the single-
coil pickups can sometimes sound a bit
glassy, and if you roll back the tone with a
0.022uF tone cap, it takes off the mids as
well as the highs, so you often end up with
a muddy sound. A simple tip is to reduce
the size of your tone cap. If you use a tone
cap with a smaller value, it shelves off
the brittle high-end but leaves your mids
intact. I use a 0.0022uF, but if that’s a bit
much, try a 0.0047uF.”
8 What new pedal triggers your
GAS most now?
“I recently got a Source Audio Ventris
Dual Reverb. I like the fact it’s got two
reverb engines in one pedal, so I can have
two totally independent reverbs either in
parallel or series. My reverb requirements
are fairly simple, and I tend to leave it on
a spring reverb sound, but I can also use
that to play over an ambient, washy reverb
sound, which is fun.”
9 What’s your favourite vintage
pedal and why?
“One of my favourites is the Electro-
Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man. It’s an
analogue delay, but it’s got some clarity to
it. It doesn’t have the dark, murky repeats
you often find with a lot of other analogue
delays, and I love the modulation.”
10 If you had a three-pedal ‘desert
island’ pedalboard, what would
be on it and why?
“I’d be happy with my Pigtronix
Echolution 2 [Ultra Pro], the Source
Audio Ventris Dual Reverb, and one of my
valve preamps like the Juggler – it’s got a
clean channel and an overdrive channel,
so that way I’d be covered.”
http://kingsleyamplifiers.com
 PEDALBOARD BOARD GAMES YOUR PEDALBOARD
PROBLEMS SOLVED

Dishing The Dirt

Not all overdrives as made equal, says Adrian Thorpe as he
demystifies the marketing jargon associated with drive pedals

THE BACKGROUND THE QUESTIONS

NE I L C LARK, 1 WHAT DO THE

GU ITARI ST REA D ER MARKETING TERMS
ASSOCIATED WITH
I’m trying to put together a really small and versatile ’board for a set of small gigs I have GUITAR OVERDRIVE
coming up. Ordinarily, I would use my amp’s overdrive, but I’m looking to maximise PEDALS MEAN?
the different types of sounds I can achieve. I have space for two overdrives, but I’m
confused by some of the terminology used to describe them. So far I’ve come across
terms such as: transparent overdrive, low-gain overdrive, natural overdrive, dynamic
overdrive, high-gain overdrive, ‘amp in a box’, organic overdrive, mid-boost overdrive… 2 WHAT TYPES OF
I want to play blues, jazz and rock. My amp is a Hamstead 20+RT Combo and I play OVERDRIVES SHOULD
a mix of guitars using humbuckers and single coils as the mood takes me. Can you help I BUY FOR BLUES,
me decipher the terminology? And what two overdrive pedals should I buy? JAZZ AND ROCK?

K NOW YOU R G AI N

Pedals such as the

Keeley D&M Drive and
ThorpyFX’s The Dane
provide both low- and
mid-gain sounds and an
additional boost facility

THE ANSWERS

Neil, you’re not alone. I get asked this
question a lot and, to be honest, I’m as
guilty as the next pedal company in using
some of these terms. I guess every field has
its marketing speak to contend with, but
once understood all becomes clear.
01 It makes sense to group the terms you
mentioned together by ‘gain range’, or in
other words, their capacity to produce
driven sounds. Starting with low-gain
pedals, this describes a pedal that sounds,
to my mind, like a mostly clean amp with
a hair of overdriven sounds overlaid.
The drive increases as you play harder
and responds to your inputs. It can be
described as feeling natural, organic
and dynamic. Transparent drives also
fall into this category and they typically
do the same thing with little to no EQ
adjustments. A mid-boost drive focuses
on boosting the mid frequencies and is
usually centred on 700Hz to 1,000Hz.
The guitar is typically an instrument
that sits in the mid frequency space, so
boosting mids in a pedal pushes your
guitar sound to the fore.
I’d describe mid-gain pedals as starting
off lightly overdriven and moving towards
cranked JTM45 levels of saturation
(saturated). To confuse things, a mid-gain
pedal can also be described as natural and
dynamic – referring to its ability to ape
an amp in its feel and response.
As for an ‘amp in a box’, this can refer
to any pedal that’s seeking to emulate a
specific amp-like sound both in EQ and
overdrive character.
02 Which should you buy? For your
needs, I’d recommend a good low-gain
pedal and a good mid-gain pedal – that
way you can stack them together to give
you more options. If you fancy having
both effects in one box, something like my
ThorpyFX The Dane Overdrive/Booster
or the Keeley D&M pedal will do all you
could need from one box.

EM AIL US YOUR QUES T IONS: GUITARIS T@FUTURENET.COM

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 123

 ORIGIN
EFFECTS
This issue, we venture to the leafy outreaches of Buckinghamshire
to discover more about an effects manufacturer whose pedals are
turning up on the ’boards of top players all around the world
hen guitarists as diverse
W as Joe Walsh, Josh Smith,
Ed O’Brien and David
Gilmour start clearing
space on their pedalboards for the effects
output of a particular company, it’s time to
sit up and take notice. Such is the case with
Origin Effects. Its compressors – the Cali76
and SlideRIG – and the RevivalDRIVE
have quite literally been getting under
the feet of a whole host of players, the
common denominator between them being
superlative tone. So, what exactly is the
lure? We thought the best way to find out
was to pay the company a visit and talk to
its designer-in-chief, Simon Keats.
Simon began his fascination with effects
pedals in his teens, the intention being to
attend music college and turn professional.
“I decided I was probably never going to
get a job being a session player or whatever,”
he tells us as we’d settled in a room lined
with some jaw-droppingly awesome
vintage amps and guitars. “So I ended up
doing a degree in electronics.”
After leaving university, Simon began
working in Vox’s R&D department, where
he designed some of the Cooltron effects
range and assisted with the company’s
Brian May signature AC30. He went on
to work for companies such as Nokia and
124 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Words David Mead Photography Olly Curtis
Audio-Technica as an analogue designer
before deciding it was time to strike out on
his own. As a fan of slide guitar – and Little
Feat legend Lowell George, in particular
– a plan began to form while he was
maintaining some 1176 studio compressors.
“I’d read about how Lowell George, in
the studio, chained two 1176s together,” he
says. “I had two. I had my Strat and put the
right strings on it – flatwounds – and got the
same slide that he used and I chained them
together. I was just blown away by how
good it sounded.
“Running the two 1176s in this
configuration, it just made my guitar feel
more tactile to play and it really enhanced
the qualities of the instrument. It was then
that I really understood what compression
could do for guitar. If I could take the sound
and transfer it into a pedal, that would be
“Compression can
enhance everything
you like about the
instrument and
suddenly you like it
four times as much”
something that I would enjoy, just from a
selfish perspective. I wasn’t really thinking
about selling them at that point. It was just
something I wanted to do for myself.”
Dubbing his creation the SlideRIG, Simon
began making prototypes and taking them
out to local jam sessions.
“I plugged it into a clean Valvestate
that no-one ever wanted to use,” he says.
“But with the SlideRIG, the sustain was
better and it was loud and clear and clean,
and everybody just turned round and
looked. At that point, I realised I was onto
something, and I thought, ‘I’ll have to start
selling these!’”
We suggest to Simon that compression
is a much-misunderstood effect among
guitarists, mainly because compression
doesn’t appear to do anything as spectacular
as, say, chorus or distortion.
“I think it is misunderstood because it’s
not as easy to explain like, ‘You switch this
on and everything gets really distorted and
sounds cool.’ It’s a tougher thing to convey,
particularly with a decent compressor,
where it can enhance everything you
already liked about the instrument and
suddenly you like it four times as much
because it’s more tactile and sensitive.”
If the whole idea of chaining two
compressors together started in recording
Designer Simon Keats sits beside his
treasured early 60s SG/Les Paul at
Origin Effects’ Buckinghamshire HQ
 1 2 3

1. Simon’s first 3. Origin is currently

compressor model
involved chaining
two studio 1176 units
together to reproduce
Lowell George’s
4. Various classic amps
legendary slide sound
2. The company recently
relocated to a new
Buckinghamshire
workshop where all
Origin effects units are
hand-assembled
developing a new
tremolo pedal that
will go into production
later this year
have been pulled
apart to reveal their
innermost secrets in
order to ensure the
Origin Effects range
embraces classic
vintage tone

studios, we wondered how this might have
come about in the first place.
“For people plugging straight into a desk
in the days before SansAmps and things like
that, applying a lot of compression made
it feel like playing through a guitar amp,
because a note would sustain. It would
make the guitar more sensitive so you could
do things like pull-offs and hammer-ons
and stuff and it would be easy, rather than
the guitar just feeling dead under your
fingers. You could also hit the front end
of the compressor quite hard and get it to
break up a little bit; I think Led Zeppelin’s
Black Dog guitar tone was two 1176s.”
DIRT TRACKS
The other side of the Origin Effects
coin is its overdrive pedal range, the
RevivalDRIVE in particular – so, in a way,
we’ve gone from enhancing a clean tone and
producing transparency with the Cali series
to raising some good old-fashioned dirt.
“Even before I worked at Vox, I was
building my own amps,” says Simon, “so the
challenge has always been there, in the back
of my mind, to make a non-valve device
sound like a valve device. It’s something
that people have been trying to do for a long
time. It’s a challenge that appealed – and
I’d identified the ghosting aspect of a valve
amplifier’s breakup as being something that
my ear particularly latched onto.”
Ghosts in the machine? We might need
a quick explanation here, Simon…
“In the 50s, guitar amplifiers used parts
that were available and they consisted of a
preamp, a power amp that would drive the
speaker, and a power supply. The power
supply takes the AC mains signal, which
is like a sine wave, and converts that to
something that can drive the power amp
and preamp stages. You have to get rid of
that cyclic aspect of the mains and turn into
a nice, clean DC voltage source, which is,
in basic terms, what could be compared to
something we get off a battery.”
Okay, we’re with you so far, but we have
the feeling that some serious science is not
too far off…
“In the 50s, compared with the way
it’s done today, it was done quite crudely,
“The challenge has
always been in my
mind to make a non-
valve device sound
like a valve device”
using the cheap components that they
could get to make guitar amps affordable.
So it was done imperfectly and you would
get DC with an element of AC still there.
Most guitar amplifiers use what’s called
an AB output stage where you’ve got two
complementary electronic active devices:
one mainly handling the positive peaks
of signal, one doing the negative. And
when the amp’s not producing any audio
signal, the valves are just conducting a bit
of current, which is called bias – everyone
knows you’ve got to bias your valves. If
they’re biased the same, which they ought
to be, then it cancels out the AC component
on the mains, so you don’t hear it. If you
don’t have them matched, then you hear
some hum, and that’s an indicator that your
valves aren’t matched.
“But when you overdrive an amplifier –
and, again, this is more to do with 50s and
60s amps – you’ll push it to the point where
these devices clip, and they can’t turn on
any more. You get a square waveform; if you
looked at the waveform of an overdriven
guitar sound, it’s a square wave. So when
one device is switched on and the other
one’s not, what it means is that cancelling
this AC component on the power supply is
no longer happening, so the AC component
is, in effect, reintroduced into the output

126 GUITARIST MAY 2019

After assembly, each pedal
undergoes rigorous testing
before being sent off for
dispatch to customers

stage and combines with the guitar signal,
and the two modulate each other.”
Where would we have to go to hear this
ghosting in action?
“If you play something like an AC15, that
does it a lot; that’s probably quite an easy
way to hear it. If you wanted to punish your
ears, a Twin Reverb – if you turn that all the
way up, that does it a lot. With vintage guitar
tones, it’s just a cool thing that is niche,
but, for me, I just thought, ‘I don’t know
whether anybody’s done this before…’”
And so Simon set out to build this
particular vintage amp phenomenon into
his RevivalDRIVE unit.
“That’s right. And it wasn’t easy – it took
me two years! The other thing that pedal
does is replicate the output stage of the
amplifier, the AC mains stuff going on, and
also the reactive load, so that it replicates
all what I consider to be the key parts of any
non-master volume valve amplifier.”
Once the pedals were on the market,
word spread rapidly, with Simon employing
a tactical social media campaign, as well as
the usual word of mouth between players.
“I didn’t have to try that hard. I would
receive phone calls from the guitar techs
of people like David Gilmour, or from Gary
Lucas, who worked with Jeff Buckley; he
128 GUITARIST MAY 2019
Each workstation is specially
grounded and employees wear an
anti-static wrist band to avoid a
random charge from static electricity
just phoned up from New York, and these
things started to happen more frequently.
“We don’t have the largest range of
pedals, but everything we produce is as
good as we could have possibly made it and
so we take a lot of time to get stuff right.
We haven’t paid anybody to use them, we
haven’t given the product away; people
have come to us and used it, and that’s a
real honour. But it works, and I’m really
happy with it. It took two years because I
was being ridiculously fussy, which is why
we’ve got a room full of vintage amplifiers.
I opened them up, took measurements of
gains, looked at waveforms, looked at how
the power supplies sagged and how the
ripple – the AC component on the power
supply – changed as the amplifier was
driving a load. Then did audio tests where
I had an A/B switcher and could switch
“We haven’t paid
anybody to use our
products, we haven’t
given any away;
people come to us”
5
5. Word of mouth and 6. It took Origin’s Simon
social media were key Keats two years of
elements in the growth painstaking research
of Origin’s popularity and development
among some of the in order to produce
world’s top players the RevivalDRIVE
between the pedal drive and the speaker
through a power amp, and then the real
amplifier. I kind of got a bit carried away.”
IN THE PIPELINE
Existing users and converts to the brand
alike, will be glad to know there are some
exciting products coming soon.
“The Cali76 Stacked Edition allows
you to apply different attack and release
parameters to each compressor: how much
you drive the input of the first compressor
and how hard the first compressor drives
the second. We’re doing a RevivalDRIVE
LE, which is the size of one of our smaller
compact pedals. It removes the ghosting;
a lot of the cost of that unit is making
that ghosting feature work. So for people
where that sound doesn’t appeal to them
or they’ve never picked up on it, the
compact one is probably more suited. It
also generally cleans up the panel so there’s
not so many switches and dials and stuff.
It’s more of a kind of, ‘Right, I’m going to
tweak a few things and get the sound more
quickly,’ so that’ll be out in the summer.
“Meanwhile, we are currently working
on some tremolo pedals, too – a more
earthy, harmonic-rich tremolo.”
www.origineffects.com
 Longtermers
A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it –
welcome to Guitarist’s longterm test report

Fender American
Professional Deluxe
Shawbucker
with Dave Burrluck

130 GUITARIST MAY 2019


Writer
DAVE BURRLUCK
Guitarist, Gear Reviews Editor
With the Acoustasonic
Telecaster taking the
headlines at this year’s
NAMM show, our reviews
editor gets reacquainted with one of the
first altered Telecasters
trolling around the stands at this year’s
S NAMM show, more than ever I was
struck by just how many makers seem
to be, ahem, borrowing other brands’ classic
designs. I’m not referring to lazy low-end
lookalikes, either. It just seems that ‘new’
design is more likely to be a rerun or mash-up
of fewer and fewer elements and styles. Sign
of the times or ever the way? A bit of both.
Someone at Fender in the early 70s
clearly decided they needed to offer a more
Gibson-style guitar and the Tele Deluxe was a
relatively early example – originally released
late in 1972 – of one company ‘doing’ another
company’s style and coming up with a guitar
that’s far from a copy. It wasn’t the first
Tele with humbuckers, that was the second
version of the Thinline released a year earlier
along with the Keef-fave Custom (again, the
second version), which kept the Tele’s bridge
pickup but added a Wide Range humbucker
at the neck. Like the Deluxe, it included a
four-control layout. But the Deluxe not only
borrowed from Gibson, it added in the Strat’s
big headstock and rib-cage contour, too.
A few even came with a Strat’s vibrato. A
cut-and-paste design if ever there was one.
Today, Fender offers quite a few dual-
humbucking Teles: the Player Telecaster
(£599), Classic Series ’72 Telecaster Deluxe
(£799), Chris Shiflett Telecaster Deluxe
(£839), Classic Series ’72 Telecaster Thinline
(£979) and, topping the production range,
the American Professional Shawbucker
Deluxe (£1,559). If you prefer the bridge
single coil/neck humbucker Custom style,
there’s less choice with just the Classic Series
’72 Telecaster Custom (£799) and the new
American Performer Telecaster Hum (£999).
But for the full-fat ‘Gibson’ experience from
a Fender, it’s got to be a Deluxe. I’ve never
owned one, but I spent quite a bit of time
reviewing the American Professional version
when it was released a couple of years back.
Reviewed 421 Price Currently £1,559 (inc case) On Test Since Early 2017 Studio Sessions No Gigged Yes Mods No www.fender.com
The three-way toggle pickup selector switch (above left) is joined by individual volume and tones for
each pickup. The fingerboard material is colour-dependent: this Natural Ash model has a maple ’board
“What is a twin-
humbucking
Telecaster mash-up
supposed to
sound like?”
I was quite fond of that one; it had a nice
light weight and a lively, relatively low-output
’bucker voicing. Could I persuade Fender to
re-loan me one? The answer was yes.
As we reported in the review, Tim Shaw had
redesigned the original and larger Wide Range
humbuckers for a standard humbucking-
sized ‘Wide Range’ style. We also get a
standard Tele headstock, not the 70s-era big
Strat head of the original. There’s still the not-
everyone’s-favourite Micro-Tilt adjustment,
though here it comes with a standard four-
screw neck attachment and the current style
nut-end truss rod adjustment. Importantly,
the frets have much more height to sit
above the much thinner gloss finish of the
fingerboard face to end any ‘fretless wonder’
slippery nightmares of those 70s models. It
makes you wonder what success this guitar
would’ve had back in the day?
But plonking a pair of humbuckers on a Tele
was never going to get you close to Gibson’s
finest solidbody. The scale length is wrong,
like the bolt-on neck, not to mention the
materials and the bridge with its through-
body stringing. If some boutique maker had
This Deluxe’s pair
of Shawbuckers are
in the style of Seth
Lover’s original
‘Wide Range’ design
come up with such a design today, we’d call
it inspired. In truth, history hasn’t been kind
to the Deluxe, largely due to the weakening
reputation of Fender in that post-Leo 70s ‘bad’
period. That time still carries baggage, too,
not least that my maple-’board Natural Ash
Deluxe with its huge black scratchplate really
does recall that period and receives a “Ugh,
what’s that?” from my bandmates. It’s not
just that, though: we all look at a guitar and
immediately a sound – good or bad – springs
to mind. But what is a twin-humbucking
Telecaster mash-up supposed to sound like?
I brave it out, plug in and get reacquainted
with the sounds. It’s a little less strident than
any good Tele I’ve previously strapped on,
and it certainly isn’t over egged in the output
department. It comes across far less as a
Les Paul beater, more a slightly rounded
and thicker Tele, certainly on its bigger sized
and sounding neck pickup. A Telecaster for
players who don’t like Teles? Well, perhaps not
‘don’t like’, but a Tele’s bridge pickup, a good
one at least, is so distinct. The Deluxe does
a pretty good grab at that, but it has a little
more journeyman about it and seems to sit in
more styles where the often uncompromising
Telecaster can really stand out.
First gig done and I’m enjoying this Fender/
Gibson fusion. There’s a lot of mileage to be
had, especially if you use your volume and
tones, and from memory there’s quite a bit
going on under the hood that is very different
from a Deluxe of old or a Les Paul. Time to
take a closer look…
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 131
 Gibson Memphis
2013 ES-330
with Jamie Dickson

Writer
JAMIE DICKSON,
Guitarist, Editor-In-Chief
The 330 is Jamie’s new The mid-rich sounds of
main-squeeze guitar – the 330’s P-90s present
but that means ringing a new challenge for Jamie
the changes with the and his pedalboard setup
rest of his rig, too

s readers who have followed
A previous instalments of this
Longterm Test will know, I sold
an ES-335 that I was using for a Hendrix/
Cream tribute gig, plus used a bit of extra
savings, to get a reissue ES-330. As I use a
fair amount of effects, the change of voice
from Strat-and-335 to 330 has prompted
a rethink of what drive pedals I use. For the
Jimi/Cream gig, my main drive pedal was
the excellent .45 Caliber by J Rockett Audio
Designs. The .45 Caliber is designed to sound
like a JTM45 and, in terms of my earlier gig,
it worked a treat. What I was looking for there
was something with a clear, mid-rich voice
that kicked the amp in the pants and fattened
up the Strat’s single coils without being over
the top on the gain side of things. As it turned
out, it worked h the 335, too, and really
helped me k th nd of two legendary
Plexi-play g bands.
The 330, though, has P-90s and they have
plenty of midrange honk already. The 330
is also fully hollow, so it doesn’t like clear,
punchy drives so much – they tend to make
it wobble a bit, in terms of feedback. Finally, I
want to start a new musical project, recording
some psychedelic R&B tracks that I’ve written
in the style of Shuggie Otis. So it’s out with the
bright, muscular Marshall tones and in with
warm, swampy, bluesy grit. That means it’s
time to delve into the cupboard for my box of
effects – trying to find a really sweet match
with the 330.
First, I try the excellent Broadcast by
Hudson Engineering, which was also on my
’board for the Cream gig’s cleaner tones. It’s
certainly warm and gritty enough – but I fancy
using something completely new for a new
project. An fa
favourite, Free The Tone’s low-
gain Red pe ove ive, is next up, but, for
once, fai to inspire It y mid-rich voice
“The 330 doesn’t like
clear, punchy drives
so much – they tend to
make it wobble a bit,
in terms of feedback”
feels a bit OTT when paired with the 330, to
my ears at least. And, again, I’ve used it in
other bands, other music. Delving a bit deeper
brings up another J Rockett, unpromisingly
named the Hooligan. It’s a fuzz, which is
probably why I haven’t used it much yet as
I tend to gravitate more towards amp-like
overdrives. However, the people at J Rockett
say they designed it to be a little more organic
and touch-sensitive than traditional fuzzes.
That sounds in the right ballpark, so I decide
to give it an audition. And, would you know
it, it’s perfect: rich in harmonic overtones
that enliven the woody voice of the 330
very nicely but with plenty of dirt and chewy
compression to swamp things up. Sorted.
y problem is, my regular amp, a Dr Z
Ja is still broken, having conked
ou in ud of smoke a few weeks ago.
Having p put it off for fear of what I might find,
take the chassis out of the cab and inspect
the circuitry, keeping fingers carefully away
any components that may still hold
a dangerous charge. There’s no smoking
ruins, but some fragments of heat-scorched
metallic ribbon rattling around in the chassis
give a clue. A friendly tech takes a look and
confirms what I’d feared: a capacitor has been
fried so comprehensively it has pretty much
disintegrated. At least it’s not a cremated
transformer! When I get the amp back from
repair, I’ll be able to start my recording project
– and hope my new pedal choices suit it as
much as the Victory V30 I’m playing through
while I wait.

Review 2 (sort of)) ic 19

995
95 (used) On Tes
Test
Te
estt ince rch 20 ud Sessions No Gigged
Gigge No Mods Not yet www.gibson.com
Gig

132 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 s

“I want to start a
new psychedelic
R&B project, so it’s
out with the bright,
muscular Marshall
tones and in with
warm, swampy,
bluesy grit”
 TELEBRATION!
Dave Burrluck celebrates the first, and still the best,
modding platform: the Fender Telecaster

y the time you’ve got to these pages,

B you’ll have been treated to a lot of

words and pictures about some of
the most desirable Telecasters you can
A ‘simple’ update to the
saddles caused more work
than Dave bargained for…

imagine. And while you can spend a pretty

penny on a vintage or new Fender Custom
Shop Tele and the like, the Telecaster’s
brutally simple modular design – conceived
for mass production in a factory, not in
the workshop of a luthier – means that
the Telecaster is a perfect platform for us
DIY modders and kitchen-table makers.
Get yourself a good body and neck and all
you need is a little knowledge, a couple of
screwdrivers and a soldering iron to create,
if perhaps not the Tele of your dreams, one
that’ll be more than functional.
Back in issue 432 I assembled a £118
Boston Teaser KIT-TE-10. To be honest, it

“The £118 kit guitar’s

playability and
acoustic sound
punched above
its lowly origin”
was to prove a point that we don’t always
write about guitars that cost £3k upwards.
But with a budget that was pretty much
as low as you can go, I was determined
to put together a giggable guitar. As ever,
I underestimated the amount of work
involved, particularly having to cut a
headstock from the paddle-head of the kit
neck using only a G-clamp to hold it to the
kitchen table and a fret saw. Maple is quite a
hard wood, you know. There then followed
plenty of filing, scraping and sanding – all by
hand, of course. If I’d had a bandsaw, not to
mention a sander, that job would have been
done in minutes, while a pin-router jig or
indeed a modern CNC would add accurate
replication and consistency. But my slightly
thinner Tele headstock shape is unique,
imbued with quite a bit of sweat, swearing
and elbow grease. All mine.
The downside of such an undertaking is
that the cheap-as-chips DIY kit is hardly
standard when it comes to fitting new parts.
A Mexican-made Fender Tele – of which
there are trillions on the secondhand
market – would be a much better choice
to start your project.
For example, unplugged, after paying
considerable attention to the geometry
(neck pitch and so on) and string choice
(heavy), the top-load bridge, as wonky as
it looked, was certainly helping to give a
pretty good ringing sustain, less zingy than
a good Tele and to my ears a little smoother.
But what should be a simple mod to replace
the saddles with some compensated brass
types proved stupidly time consuming as
I had to find much longer bolts to hold the
saddles in place. And because I’d jacked the
saddles higher than normal to get as much
back angle as I could, I needed taller saddle
height screws. Oh, and I wanted stainless
steel. Going off-grid has its drawbacks.
Thanks to a company called Westfield
Fasteners, however, I found what I needed,
although due to the sizeable minimum
order required, I now have enough to go
into production…
While it’s important to give yourself a
pat on the back once your mod project is
complete (let’s face it, no-one else will), it’s
equally important to be your own judge.
As for my Lowcostacaster, with those new
saddles and now accurate intonation, not to
mention a little more rigidity to the bridge, it
played surprisingly well. But its plugged-in
sound still had the sort of quality you’d
expect from such lowly components. While
I was pretty impressed that I’d managed to
get a sound out of it at all, it wasn’t one that
recalled any Tele I could remember. The
bridge pickup redefined the word ‘piercing’,
and the neck pickup sounded like I’d put my
amp in a cupboard and shut the door. With
respect to those at Clothear Sound Inc, or
whoever made ’em, I was thinking a fridge
magnet might be of better use.
Pickup Perk-Up
But as we’ve written countless times,
finding a replacement pickup set can be an
exhaustive, frustrating and often expensive
quest. It was also a good time to consider if
the actual ‘chassis’ was worth continuing
with as an ongoing project. I left it alone
for a few weeks and then came back to it.
No, nothing had changed, but it passed the
‘there’s something going on here’ test that,
personally, I always look for: its playability
and acoustic sound punched above its lowly
origin. Discussing my pickup dilemma over

134 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 TheMODSQUAD
This Boston kit guitar
received a Guitarist
Choice Award back in
issue 432, but there were
still plenty of modding
opportunities to be had

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 135

 TheMODSQUAD
a pint with an equally addicted modding
mate, he mentioned a set of Bare Knuckle
“Blackguard somethings” that he was
happy to lend to the cause. Now, if this
Lowcostacaster didn’t sound more like an
electric guitar with these pickups installed,
I’d be off down the dump. They turned
out to be a Flat 52 set and, loaded onto the
Lowcostacaster, vastly improved what I was
hearing. Good pickups need a good circuit,
so I simply wired in proper CTS 250k pots,
a Sprague tone cap and a used but perfectly
functional three-way switch.
For The Love Of Teles
Time for evaluation. Comparing the
Lowcostacaster with an original ’69 Tele
and a contemporary Tele Deluxe (see
Longtermers in this issue, p126), it was
pretty obvious that I wouldn’t be putting
Todd Krause or any of Fender’s Master
Builders out of work any time soon. Weight-
wise, it sits between the two Fenders, and
with its different response, a sort of slightly
tamed, compressed but still very Tele-ish
character gave a pretty valid third voice.
But to further take the now not-so-
Lowcostacaster into its own unique realm,
a bag of Tone Up bits arrived from Bill
That should keep you busy till next issue.
In the meantime, if you have any modding questions or suggestions, drop us a line at: guitarist@futurenet.com
136 GUITARIST MAY 2019
“The simplistic
genius of the Tele
is illustrated when
it comes to its
electronic circuit”
Quinn at Tonetech Luthier Supplies here
in the UK, specifically a Telec-vtb-t Tele-
control plate with unusual pots, a brilliant
chrome-tipped three-way toggle switch
and the ability to fine-tune the volume
treble bleed circuit and the value of the tone
capacitor all without getting your soldering
iron out. This piece of gubbins is certainly
nicely done and costs £74. It’s designed
and manufactured by Server in Slovenia
and, despite asking, I didn’t get any specific
information on how the components
actually worked together in terms of their
values and the actual wiring scheme. But
you can change the value of the tone cap to
have less or more effect by simply adding or
removing three jumpers; likewise, the value
of the treble bleed capacitors that are wired
in parallel with a variable trim-pot resistor
and one fixed resistor that’s permanently
With new pickups loaded, Dave
updated the circuit to suit with
CTS 250k pots, a Sprague tone
cap and a three-way switch
wired onto the board. All you need to do is
experiment. I’ll get back to this specific mod
in a future issue – once I’ve sorted out what
is actually going on!
Once again, though, the simplistic genius
of the Telecaster is illustrated when it
comes to its electronic circuit, which you
can simply access by removing two screws.
Yes, changing the bridge pickup means
you need to remove the bridge itself, and
if you have a more vintage-y spec style
then you have to remove the scratchplate
to alter the neck pickup height. In praise
of the Lowcostacaster, however, that neck
pickup is scratchplate-suspended, which
makes any adjustment dead easy, and those
extended saddle screws – not to mention
the top-load design of the bridge – means
that it’s a lot easier than a standard Tele’s
bridge plate to remove if you need to swap
out the bridge pickup (even with the strings
still attached).
One thing that has to be said about Teles
– or even things that look like them – is
we just love ’em. Get the basic components
right and you’ll have hours of fun with
your modding. Not just that, you’ll learn
loads along the way on this somehow
still-modern 70-year-old platform!
 PICKUP
LI N ES

Tailoring Your Tone

In the fourth part of our PAF focus, Mark Stow of OX4 Pickups explains how
customised PAF repros can help you achieve the ultimate tone

aving explored the PAF humbucker’s

H essential components of magnets

and coils in the past two instalments
of Pickup Lines, we caught up with Mark
Stow of OX4 Pickups in Oxford, as he took a
break from winding to help us deconstruct
the bigger sonic picture.
“Tone is completely subjective,” begins
Mark, “and a person’s interpretation of a
PAF is personal to them depending on
where they got their inspiration. The first
PAF I tried was in an ES-345 with a Varitone
and in every position it sounded spanky,
tight and warm. But every PAF ES-[series]
guitar or ’Burst I’ve tried since has been
different. When it comes to PAFs, I like to
think it’s the guitar you’re hearing as much
as anything else, as if they were mics picking
up the sound of the wood.”
Natural variations in materials,
construction and ageing provide all guitars
with an inherent uniqueness and, according A matched set of OX4
Pickups’ humbuckers
to Mark, the same is true of PAFs.
with black and white
“No two PAFs are the same, mainly ‘zebra’ bobbins
because of the way the coils were wound,”
he explains, “and, in my opinion, that’s
where the true PAF tone lies: that offset “With regards to the magnets, I stick turns on the bobbin, I suggest an Alnico 5, so
can create a nice unbalanced sound that to what I know sounds good in terms of that when you’re at gig level you’ve got that
gives you those typical PAF characteristics. gauss and charge my magnets to the same top-end. You can lose a bit of top-end with
The main characteristic of a PAF is its measurements taken from good-sounding Alnico 2, 3 and 4 in those situations, but
dynamics, and it’s up to the player to really original PAFs. Some Alnico magnet types that’s all part of the character.
bring that out. With a good PAF, you can generally work better for higher gain “Several customers have asked me to
really dig in and it’ll bite down hard, but and some work better for lower gain, use Alnico 5 because they want more top-
it’ll always stay nice and sweet, with plenty but on the whole, I think Alnico 4 is the end. Jason Isbell has had quite a few sets
of harmonics, good string definition and perfect magnet because it seems to cover where we’ve changed the magnets in the
clarity in the notes, and it’ll have a sparkly everything. It’s not as bright and harsh as an neck pickup to Alnico 5,” says Mark of the
top-end that’s not harsh. Alnico 5, but it’s stronger than an Alnico 2. country music player’s setup, “because
“I think the magnet and the winding are Alnico 4 has good midrange and, although the Alnico 4s he was using weren’t cutting
the most important things when it comes to Alnico 3 has a bit more of that, you tend to through as much as they should. We put
PAFs – particularly the way the bobbins are get a little more top-end with an Alnico 4. an Alnico 5 in a low wind, which might be
wound. I hand-wind my pickups with 42 “If I was doing a pickup for a jazz guitar too bright for some. But as he’s generally
[AWG] plain enamel wire while controlling where the player wanted a particularly playing flat-out at gig level, it gives him that
the speed of the wind, along with the warm tone, then an Alnico 2 can take off little bit extra in the neck.
tension and the scatter of the wire onto the some of the top-end. And if somebody “The main bulk of my clientele are
bobbin. The way the wire goes onto the has an especially bright guitar, like a professional players, but I’m happy to
bobbin is important. You don’t want it too korina [tonewood] guitar, for example, accommodate everybody. People can order
tight or too loose. With the right tension, the it might be a good idea to use Alnico 2 from the website, but it’s also a bespoke
scatter gives you more harmonics and a bit because the wood is so naturally bright. An service and I get all kinds of requests.”
more sparkle and openness, because there’s Alnico 5 might be overkill with that wood
more air between the coils [therefore less combination, but if someone wants a hotter Guitarist would like to thank Mark Stow
distributed capacitance and high-end loss]. PAF replica where there’s generally more of OX4 Pickups (www.ox4pickups.co.uk)

138 GUITARIST MAY 2019

PHOTO BY ERIC FRAZER/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES

“No two PAFs

are the same…
and that’s
where the true The Alnico 5 magnets in

PAF tone lies” Jason Isbell’s OX4 Pickups

neck humbucker allow his
’57 Goldtop to cut through
Mark Stow the live mix at stage volume

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 139

classicGear
Gibson enters a new era of signature models with the giants of jazz guitar…

Gibson Barney Kessel Regular

lthough Gibson has accumulated

A a rich history of artist signature

models to date, when the Barney
Kessel Regular and Barney Kessel Custom
electric archtops were released in 1961, such
guitars were few and far between. The very
first Gibson signature model guitar, the
Nick Lucas Model flat-top, appeared in 1927,
followed by the Roy Smeck Radio Grande
and Roy Smeck Stage Deluxe flat-tops in
1934. Both Nick Lucas and Roy Smeck were
big-name stars of radio at the time, as was
Les Paul prior to the release of Gibson’s
now iconic range of signature solidbodies
(beginning in 1952 with the Les Paul
Model/Goldtop).
Household-name status appeared to be
a rare prerequisite for would-be Gibson
co-branded models, but as guitars became
an ever more prominent part of popular
culture throughout the 1950s, a new Florentine double-
generation of highly influential ‘guitar cutaways were a first
heroes’ appeared to the masses on stage, for a Gibson archtop
and mirrored the new
film, television, radio, vinyl and newsstands. Les Paul/SG body
Barney Kessel was one of the era’s most shapes of the early 60s
prominent guitarists and was frequently

Barney Kessel was in the media spotlight. Often regarded as

a musical successor to fellow Oklahoma
one of the era’s most resident and electric jazz-guitar progenitor
Charlie Christian, Barney began to leave
prominent guitarists his mark in the annals of jazz history
and was frequently during the 40s, appearing in the short film
Jammin’ The Blues and recording with Beat
in the media spotlight Generation icon and bebop jazz trailblazer
Charlie Parker. In the 50s, Barney rose
to fame as one of the jazz world’s most
in-demand musicians, appearing on
several Billie Holiday albums in the latter
part of her career, as well as recording an
impressive body of work under his own
name on the Contemporary Records label.
By the early 60s, Gibson was in talks with
jazz guitar contemporaries Barney Kessel,
Johnny Smith and Tal Farlow regarding
the development of signature electric
archtop models, culminating in the release
of the Gibson Johnny Smith in 1961 and the
Gibson Tal Farlow in 1962. The company
had already developed a prototype dual-
humbucker electric archtop in 1960 for
Tal, featuring a double Florentine cutaway
The large Super (reminiscent of the newly introduced
400-style headstock pointed double-cutaway 1960/1961
has single-line Kluson
Les Paul/SG body shapes), and it was this
Deluxe tuners with white
plastic keystone buttons example that Barney lent his name to as
the basis for both signature models, rather
than embarking on a fully collaborative
design effort from the bottom up. In turn,
the same body profile was assigned to the
Trini Lopez Deluxe signature model, which
was released in 1964.
Originally, the Barney Kessel Regular and
Custom versions were priced at $395 and
$560 respectively. Both were finished in
Cherry Sunburst and feature a large 17-inch-
wide/three-inch-deep body with a laminate
construction of spruce top and maple back
and sides, along with dual-humbucking
pickups incorporating individual volume
and tone controls and a three-way selector
switch. Although both versions have a
bound rosewood fretboard, 25.5-inch scale
length and large Super 400-style headstock,
the Regular features a crown peghead inlay,
while the Custom is easily differentiated
by its large musical note inlay. Additionally,
whereas the Regular sports a one-piece
mahogany neck, double-parallelogram
fretboard inlays, nickel-plated hardware
and a rosewood bridge, the Custom boasts
a three-piece maple neck, bow-tie fretboard
inlays and gold-plated hardware (including
a tune-o-matic bridge).
Both guitars remained in production until
the early 70s, with 1,117 Regulars and 740
Customs being manufactured in total. [RB]

140 GUITARIST MAY 2019


1961 Gibson Barney Kessel Regular
1. SERIAL NUMBER
R tone controls; Switchcraft
Five digits on headstock
rear correspond with five
digits ink-stamped onto
orange soundhole label
2. HEADSTOCK
Large Super 400-style
profile; holly veneer; single
binding; m-o-p logo/inlay ys
3. BODY
Hollowbody archtop;
double Florentine
cutaway; f-holes; 17-inch
width, three-inch depth;
laminated spruce top,
maple back/sides;
three-ply (w/b/w) top/
back binding; Cherry
Sunburst top, back, sides
4. PICKUPS
Dual-humbuckers with
independent volume and
three-way selector switch
5. HARDWARE
Single-line Kluson Deluxe
tuners; nickel-plated
pickup covers and trapeze
tailpiece, raised diamond
and wooden shield insert;
adjustable rosewood
bridge; side-mounted jack
6. PLASTICS
Two-ply (b/w) tailpiece
plaque – ‘Barney Kessel’
‘crossword’ logo and
motif; two-ply (b/w)
laminated ‘bell’ truss
rod cover; four-ply
(b/w/b/w) laminated
bevelled pickguard;
rubber selector switch
grommet; four ‘bonnet’
knobs; white selector
switch tip
3
4 Black/opaque ‘witch hat’
6
5 1973
classicGear
7. NECK
One-piece mahogany;
25½-inch scale; 1 11/16-
inch nut width; 20-fret
single-bound Brazilian
rosewood ’board with
double-parallelogram
m-o-p inlays; elongated
heel; 14th fret body join;
shallow ‘blade’ profile 1960
Double Florentine-cutaway electric
archtop prototype developed
2
1961
First released ($395 list price);
1 laminated spruce tops; 111/16”
nut width; PAF humbuckers
1962
Patent number sticker (‘Patent No
7
2,737,842’) humbuckers introduced
1964
Short/non-elongated
neck heel introduced
1965
Laminated maple tops;
chrome hardware; 19/16” nut width
Mid-60s
Some with solid spruce top
and solid maple back
1967
knobs introduced
1970
Last appeared in Gibson Catalogue
1972
Last models manufactured
in Kalamazoo
Last models shipped
MAY 2019 GUITARIST 141
 Techniques

Things You Can Learn From…

Kenny Burrell
A peek at the tasteful phrasing and bluesy style of the legendary jazz guitarist
Now into his late 80s, Kenny
Burrell has been active in the
jazz community since his
recording debut at age 20

PHOTO BY DAVID REDFERN/REDFERNS

142 GUITARIST MAY 2019

VIDEO & AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra Techniques

Difficulty | 10 mins
Tutor Phil Hilborne | Gear used: Private Stock PRS ‘Hollowbody II’, Fender Blues Deluxe (mic’d with Royer 121 and Beyer M201 N
(C)). Small amount of reverb added in the mix via Logic X

KENNY BURRELL was born in
1931 in Detroit, Michigan, into a
very musical family. Like many
others of his generation, he
originally wanted to play the saxophone,
but there weren’t any to be found in the
local music shops because all the available
brass had been used up by the military to
make weapons for the war. So, luckily for us,
his second choice, the guitar, became the
instrument he ended up playing.
Stylistically, Kenny embraced the blues,
classical guitar and bebop jazz pretty much
in equal measure and quickly developed
a very distinctive and individual musical
style. In terms of his direct guitar influences,
Muddy Waters, Charlie Christian, Django
Reinhardt, T-Bone Walker and Charlie Parker
were all mentioned over the years.
He made his debut recording playing
with jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie at
the age of 20 and his first big-record-label
solo album at 25. During his long career, he
has played on several hundreds of albums
as a session musician and on over 100 as
a bandleader. The list of artists with whom
he’s collaborated is long and includes: Tony
Bennett, Oscar Peterson, Billie Holiday, John
Coltrane, Benny Goodman, Jimmy Smith,
Gil Evans, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis,
Louis Armstrong and Quincy Jones. BB King,
Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington, George
Benson, Pat Metheny and Jimi Hendrix have
all cited Kenny as being a particular favourite
of theirs. Indeed, after hearing Kenny play,
Jimi Hendrix was quoted as saying, “That’s
the sound I’m looking for!”
Kenny is also a renowned music educator
and, since 1978, has been heavily involved
as a distinguished professor of global jazz
studies at UCLA in Los Angeles.
There is so much that can be learnt from
Kenny Burrell. For the purpose of this article,
however, I’ve narrowed things down a lot
and will be looking at the bluesy side of his
work, in particular his playing style during his
landmark 1963 Midnight Blue period.
www.philhilborne.co.uk

Example 1 Head/Main Theme

THE TRACK I’VE COME UP WITH for this issue is heavily influenced
by the track Chitlins Con Carne from the Midnight Blue recording.
It is essentially a Latin-style jazz blues – great fun! A well-known
cover version of Chitlins Con Carne is on the posthumous Stevie Ray
Vaughan album, The Sky Is Crying. Example 1’s 12-bar blues ‘head
section’ has the theme appropriately doubled by saxophone on all
the single-note parts. These are then ‘answered’ by short guitar
chord stabs or motifs. The phrasing is question and answer in nature
throughout and for it to be played effectively it needs to have just the
right amount of ‘swing’ feel. It’s harder to perform swing phrasing
than you might think – it is definitely best absorbed by careful
listening and then slowly and critically reproducing for yourself.

Ex 1 Head/Main Theme

©»¡£™ Bluesy Latin Jazz qq=qce

–
A7#9 A7 # 9
.
### 4 Œ
N.C. (A7)
~~~~ n n œœ œœ œœ œœ N.C. (A7) n n œœ ¿¿ œœ
& 4 œœ œœ ‰ œœ œœ ‰ œœ ¿¿ œœ
œ œ j
#œ  J œ œ nœ œ œ œ
œ œ œ n œ 
F
E
~~~~ 8 8 8 8 X 8
B 8 8 8 8 X 8
G 6 6 6 6 X 6
D 7 7 7 7 X 7
A 7 5 3 4 3 5
E 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
1

œ N.C. (A7)
~~~ œ .
D9
œœ œœ ~~~ j n œœ œ
A7

# # # œœ ‰ n œœ .. œœ œ ‰ œ ‰
j
#œ
& œ œ¿ œ œ n œ
n œ œ
J œ œ nœ œ #œ œ  œ . ¿ œ #œ œ .
j
J J œ œ œ nœ
E
~~~ 5
B 5 5 8 7
G 5 5 9 7 5 6
D 4 4 7 5 5
A 3 4 5 5 X 7 5 3 4
E 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
4

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 143

 Techniques

~~~
E7 D7 A7 # 9
nn œœœ œœ œœ
### œ œ n œ b œ œ œ
& œ n œ œ bœ nœ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ . œJ œ œ ‰ œ
œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ
E
~~~ 12 12 12
B 8 13 13 13
G 7 9 8 7 5 7 12 12 12
D 5 8 9 7 7 7 11 11 11 11
A 3 5 7
E 5 5 5 5
8

Example 2 Solo Entry Phrase

IN THIS SOLO ENTRY PHRASE we have a great Burrell phrasing
device in which two successive licks contain exactly the same notes
but the rhythmic phrasing changes. The solo pick-up in bar 12 is
mostly played using eighth notes and the following phrase is mostly
in a 16th note (dotted eighth rhythm). This is a great device to use in
solos and can add a real sense of continuity as well as repackaging/
presenting melodic material in a familiar yet fresh way.
Be very careful to observe the symbols for dynamics for the entire
solo: all the solo lines should be played forte (loud) and the chord
stabs should all be piano (soft). The whole idea here is to make it
sound as though there are two guitarists playing – one taking care
of soft rhythm and the other being a louder lead player. It’s a great
skill to have, but it is somewhat counter-intuitive, and as a result
it’s actually pretty hard to master. Kenny really does make it sound
effortless, though! A good way of making sure the chord parts are
quieter is to not play them with a pick. Try using either fingerstyle
or a pick/finger combination. Experiment with all methods and use
whichever works dynamically best for you.
One final point worth mentioning here is how the G-A notes are
deliberately played on different strings in each phrase and are picked
the first time and connected via a slide the second time. It’s attention
to this kind of detail that creates interest.

œœ ..
A7 Ex 2 Solo entry phrase

# # # œœ .. œ œ n n œœ œœ œœ œ œ . n n œœ œœ
œ j œœ n œ œ . n œ œ . j
& nœ œ nœ œ œ œ ‰ œœ ‰ ‰ œœ
J J
œ œ œ ‰ œœ ‰ ‰ œœ
J J
f p f p
E 3 5 8 8 8 8
B 8 8 8 10 8 8
G 5 7 6 6 5 7 6 6
D 5 7 7 7 7 7 5 7 7 7 7 7
A
E
12

Example 3 The IV Chord And Back

AS WELL AS THE SWING EIGHTH and dotted rhythms already of the IV chord (D7) bang on the start of bar 17. In bar 18, the phrase
mentioned, Kenny also tends to play a lot of triplet-based licks. In this leads back to the I chord (A7) via a short lick containing both the
IV chord approach in bar 16, we have a three-beat A blues scale lick minor and major 3rd of A (C and C#). Then in bar 19, things round off
comprising four 16th notes followed by two triplets that hit the root by going back to the soft chord ‘stabs’ again.

œ bœ œ œ œ œ œœ ..
# # # œœœ œ œ
Ex 3 D7

œ b œ œ n œ # œ œ. œ ‰ œœ ‰ ‰ œœ œ. œ œ œ œ #œ
& œ J J J J
p
3
f
3

E 10 11 10 8
B 10 8 13 13
G 9 8 7 11 11 7 5 5 6
D 10 12 12 12 12 7
A
E
16

144 GUITARIST MAY 2019

VIDEO & AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra Techniques

n œœ œœ œ œ b œœ œ .. ~~
Ex 4
œ ~~~ n œ # œ œ
A7 E7 D7

### nœ œ œ
J œ œ œ nœ œ
œ œ Œ œœ ‰ ‰ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ
& J J
p f
E 8
~~~ 5
~~
B 8 8 10 10 10 10 6 7
G 6 6 9 9 8 7 7 5 7 5
D 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 5
A
E
19

Example 4 V To The IV Chord

BAR 20 SEES A QUICK ‘ONE-FIVE-ONE’ LEAD up to the E7 organ-style lick in bar 21. In this, we have some typical tension with the use of
the major 7th (D#) that quickly moves down to the b 7 (D) against an 11th (A) pedal note. This all gets very quickly resolved in bar 22 by a D7
lick that, after the initial cliché b 3 (F) - 3 (F#) move, is played very much around chord tones.

Example 5 The Ending

THIS ENDING IDEA is simply a descending A blues scale line that ends up on a final ‘raked’, or slowly strummed, Amaj6/9 chord. It’s always
appropriate to end a jazz piece on a hip-sounding chord voicing and this one certainly fits the bill! There are lots of others that would also
work – why not experiment and try to find a few others yourself? Enjoy.

###
A7
~~~~
Ex 5
3

œ nœ œ bœ
3
'gg www
Amaj 6/ 9
ww
ww
& 
œ nœ ggg w
w gg ww ww
gF
~~~~ 'gg
gg
E 4
B 5
G
D 7 7 5 ggg 4
4
A
E
23
7 6 5 3
5 g 4
5

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 145

 Techniques

Blues Headlines
Richard Barrett is on a mission to make you a better blues
player – with full audio examples and backing tracks

Out Of The Box Pentatonics Part 2

Difficulty +++++ | 10 mins
Tutor: Richard Barrett | Gear used: Knaggs Choptank, JHS AT, Vox AC15 C1
PHOTO BY FIN COSTELLO/REDFERNS

Ritchie Blackmore’s
head-throwing solos
combined the pentatonic
scale with melodic ideas

146 GUITARIST MAY 2019

VIDEO & AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra Techniques

IN THE SECOND part of this
series, I’ll be concentrating on
the minor pentatonic scale – or
perhaps I should say, exploring
alternatives to using the minor pentatonic
in an obvious way. Though it would be fair to
say most classic blues (and rock) repertoire
is based primarily around this pattern, it’s
also correct to point out the art of creating a
great solo or riff is in adding a little twist here
and there, to make music from what might
otherwise be deemed just a scale.
However, it can be challenging to pull
ourselves away from ‘practice style’ patterns
that have served their purpose and look at
these groups of notes on the fretboard in
a purely musical way, and it certainly isn’t
something that we just decide to do, then
hey presto – here’s my new style!
The process begins with the intention of
playing what we would like to hear if we were
the listener, rather than being completely
governed by where our fingers fall habitually.
It’s absolutely fine to focus on and around
the pentatonic, though. This is blues (well,
blues-rock), after all. This solo, and the licks
I have transcribed from it here, tread a fairly
fine line between what many might call
‘position’ pentatonic playing and slightly
more adventurous approaches, such as
string skipping, playing horizontally along a
string, mixing pentatonic shapes and adding
in a couple of notes that aren’t actually in
the scale at all. Though all the greats have
their own way of interpreting these ideas,
this backing track put me in mind of classic
Deep Purple and the way Ritchie Blackmore
would combine pentatonic and melodic
ideas in his epic solos. There are no plans
as yet for a neo-classical influenced Blues
Headlines, but we’re open to suggestions…
See you next time!

Example 1
AFTER AN APPARENTLY CLASSIC pentatonic pick-up phrase, we’re going straight for a minor 3rd (C) to reinforce the melodic intent.
You could say that we’re simply playing from the natural minor scale, which would be absolutely correct, but the idea here is to use the
minor pentatonic as a basis for further experimentation. The same can be said about the 9th (B) that appears during the next phrase.

©»ª
Swung œ œ œ œ œ œ~~~~~~

Am7
j
œ œ œ   œ œœœ œ
j œ œ
j œ œ œ œ œ œ ~~~~ .
& 44 Ó ‰ œJ œ J J œ œ Œ
3 3 3 3

E
BU BD ~~~~~~ BU BD BU BD
~~~~
B 10 12 (13 ) (12 ) 10 10 8 10 (12 ) ( 10) ( 12 ) (10 ) 8 10 8
G 7 9 9 12 5 9 9 9 7 9
D
A
E

Example 2
SHIFTING TO D MINOR, this shape 1 pentatonic idea incorporates E and B, essentially adding in notes we would expect to find in
the D Dorian scale. In the context of the solo, I was simply looking to resolve back to A for the next phrase, so while this was a
calculated move, it came from a more intuitive place than analysing this would suggest.

œ œ œ œ œj œ ~~~~ œ œ œ œ œ ~~~œ œ j
Dm7 Am7
j 
4 œ œ œœ œ
œ œ œ œ b œ œ œ œ ~~~ Ó
&4 Ó ‰J œ
3 3 3 3 3
3

E
BU BD
10 12
BU ~~~~ 10
~~~ ~~~
B 10 13 (15 ) (13 ) 13 ( 15 ) 10 13 12 10
G 10 12 12 12 12 9
D 12 12 13 12 10 12 10
A 12
E

MAY 2019 GUITARIST 147

 Techniques VIDEO & AUDIO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra

Example 3
STAYING EXCLUSIVELY WITHIN SHAPE 1 of the A minor pentatonic until the very last moment, this idea makes use of some
selective palm muting, wide vibrato and occasional non-adjacent strings (string skipping). The F# in bar 3 is another nod to the
Dorian mode (A Dorian, in this case), but is, again, more about melodic context than thinking in scale patterns, so you should take
that on board, but don’t think that detailed modal knowledge is necessary here!

~~~~~ ~~~ œ œ # œ œ ~~~

œ œ œ œ œj œ œ œ œ œj œ œ œ
Dm7
j
œ œ œœœœœœœ œœ œ
3
œ
&4 œ œ œœœ
4 œ j
1/4

œ 
3 3 3 3
3 3 3 3 3

E
1/4
PM
BU ~~~~~
PM
BU BD BU BU ~~~ ~~~
5 5
B 5 8 (10 ) 8 7 5
G 5 7 5 7 5 ( 7) 5 7 5 ( 7) ( 5 ) 5 7 ( 9) 7 5 7 5 5 7 9
D 7 7 7 7 7 7 5 7
A 7
E

Example 4
THE TONE AND A HALF BEND is manipulated here in the way David Gilmour might, outlining A, B and C for an A natural minor type
ascending pattern before shifting down to the shape 1 pentatonic for a moment. Round about here, I remembered that Ritchie
Blackmore often adds in a bit of unpredictable whammy vibrato, so here’s some, too! Ending much as we began, the triplet lick is
followed by a bend to B, which ties in nicely with the E minor chord.

~~~~ œ œ œ œ œ œj œ  ~~~~
Em Dm A m7 E m7

œ œ œ œ œ œ
j œ œ œ œœœœj ~~~~ œ .
œ
& 44
œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ
3 3 3 3 3
3

E
~~~~ BU BD BU BD ~~~~ BU ~~~~
B 8 10 8 10 (12 ) (10 ) (13 ) (10 ) 8 10 8 13 15 13
G 9 9 7 5 5 2 14 14 14 (16 )
D 7
A
E 12

Hear It Here
DEEP PURPLE DEEP PURPLE RITCHIE BLACKMORE
Machine Head Made In Japan Take It! Sessions 63/68

Though the Machine Head
album may not be in every blues
aficionado’s record collection,
Blackmore cites Eric Clapton
as a big influence. He certainly uses many
blues-based patterns in both his riffs and
solos. Space Truckin’, Maybe I’m A Leo and
Lazy from this record all showcase a mastery
of blues inflections (such as the quarter-tone
bend) mixed with genuinely original and
inventive lines that stretch the repertoire
without losing that classic feel.
Blackmore’s solo on Child In
Time is another example of
how it’s possible to stretch
pentatonic ideas to create
imaginative lines while still tracking a clear
line back to the blues. It’s interesting to
compare the live and studio versions of Lazy,
for example, while Strange Kind Of Woman’s
shuffle feel and manic solo still use the
pentatonic shapes as a framework (or can
certainly be viewed in this way). Well worth
picking up a few ideas from here!
It’s always interesting to hear the
earliest recordings of a major
player like this, so this selection
of early session appearances
shows that Ritchie Blackmore has had an
attention-grabbing flamboyant style from
a very early stage. Listening to this in the
context of other recordings from the 60s
is actually an eye-opening experience,
particularly the opening track, Shake With Me.
And how about Getaway, credited to the
Ritchie Blackmore Orchestra!

148 GUITARIST MAY 2019

 THE M
BY THOSAK
E WHO W XTR
ERE HE
PLUS
Mar
DIRE STR k Kno
!

AITS,
THE RETICFAME AND TAKIN
pfler
RIST OPENG THE TUBE
ENT GUITA
L e e
“I’M SMIL Kersla
S UP

OZ
ING BECA
ZY, SHARO U S
ke
N, RANDY E I’VE SEEN LIFE
D MORE ”
, HEEP AN
& M ORE
 ON
SALE
NOW

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154 GUITARIST MAY 2019