Vid: Ty Goes Through His Current Rig! In terms of Ty Tabor’s “transitional” gear, I won’t go into the gory details here, but for a long while – including King’s X’s latest album, XV – Ty used Yamaha guitars: the Les Paul-like AES series (mostly the 920), and two signature models, one of which had [...]
If you don’t know who Ty Tabor is, or haven’t heard King’s X’s music, please do your ears a favor and buy every King’s X CD right now. Seriously. At the risk of sounding like an uber-fan, King’s X is one of the best American rock bands ever. And although it seems like there’s some [...]
Re-Bias While Playing, Blood on His Guitars… Performing Musician recently posted an interview with Michael Kaye, who is Pete Townshend’s amp/electonics tech and is a guitar tech for other bands (Springsteen, Bon Jovi, others): Alan Rogan has been Pete’s guitar tech since 1977. “Alan takes care of Pete’s guitars — the tuning, the guitar changes, [...]
The middle and right photos above were recently posted on David Lee Roth’s website. Seems obvious they’re from the Van Halen I photo shoot that gave us Ed and the freshly striped Franky guitar on the album cover (left photo). So for gear heads, this raises some interesting questions:
I tripped over this great video of Brian May playing his solo in “It’s Late.” It’s really amazing how Edward Van Halen-esque it is, and it’s interesting that Brian didn’t pursue the right-hand hammer-on technique and didn’t see the possibilities in it that Ed did. From watching the vid, seems like Brian feels that way [...]
…But Still No Intel About Joe and Peavey Is Joe Satriani a Marshall man now? Has he forsaken Peavey or not? To bring you up to speed, here’s a brief, recent history of Joe Satriani’s amps:
Following is from a 1973 interview of Brian May that was in “a guitar magazine” (unnamed) shortly after Queen’s self-titled first album came out: Thanks to BrianMayWorld.com for preserving it. In the first part of the interview he talks about his Red Special guitar, but then he talks about his AC30s and effects. Here are [...]
Didn’t Play Stock LPs, Hated the SG, Tried to Get Zep Back Together? After Les Paul died last week, several sites posted tributes to him. Ultimate-guitar.com had an interesting series of articles, all by Steve Rosen, which are excerpted here but are worth a full read. Les Paul was a brilliant guy, an innovator well [...]
Pre-Show Clinic, Bogner Now in Rig Someone got it wrong. Either Chuck Berry misread the divine inspiration he got, or a couple of young parents in upstate New York picked the wrong name for their son. I’m betting Chuck was mistaken because after seeing Joe Bonamassa Wednesday night at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in [...]
It’s tough to pin down the Aerosmith guys as far as what guitars were used when because they definitely didn’t stick with any one instrument too long, even during any given concert. But amp-wise, after Toys they switched over to the new-at-the-time Music Man amps which had 6L6 power tubes (like Fenders) but solid-state preamps.
The tune ‘Outer Space’ from Ace Frehley’s new album Anomaly (out next month) is available for a listen (below), and sounds like classic Ace. It starts out with ’2000 Man’-like chugging, the vocals of course have Ace’s signature sort of “wavy” style and the lead is backward, like the lead in ‘Speedin’ Back to My [...]
With Aerosmith touring and all the pre-tour talk about playing the Toys in the Attic album live, I wanted to try to nail down what gear Joe Perry and Brad Whitford were using on Toys. Well, good luck: This one has been tough to track down.
There’s been a lot of stuff written about, said about and speculated about regarding Edward Van Halen’s mind-blowing, world-altering Van Halen I setup. Was he running “slaved” amps (one amp into another), was he using some sort of boost and/or distortion pedal, etc. If you read hard and don’t fall prey to speculation (which is [...]
Here’s the New VH Single/Vid: 50w?
Update from a reader (thanks!): Tattoo is is based on an old song, “Down in Flames” – check it below. “Tattoo.” Is it me or have we never heard a Van Halen tune like this before? If Ed used his “grail” Marshall Super Lead on this album, don’t think we’re hearing it on this tune! [...]
Breaking Down the VH NYC Debut
She’s the Woman! Cafe Wha – yeah man! Couldn’t wrangle my son and I an invite, so instead awaited the sure-to-follow YouTube vids. Fingers were crossed that the band would play some new tunes, though had to admit that didn’t make much sense since they hadn’t even released a tune yet. Anyhow, here’s what we [...]
Bonamassa Hears Clapton in EVH: You?
Lots of well-known axe-slingers are quoted in Neil Zlozower’s new (and awesome) Eddie Van Halen book. One is the current white bluesman extraordinaire, Joe “gingers o’ fire” Bonamassa. What he says is interesting, and not sure I can hear what he’s hearing. Bear in mind a couple things: 1. EVH has said many times that [...]
Have You Gone Extra Slinky Yet?
When I recently got an email from a WoodyTone reader – let’s call him Mike because…that’s his real name – I was stoked because I like light strings. I played 10s for years, then went to 9s after getting back into the whole EVH tone quest. With 9s I noticed that the notes “opened up,” [...]
If I ever had a doubt I’m a huge Edward Van Halen fan (never had any doubt, but…), any such insane thought was erased when I finished reading Neil Zlozower’s new Eddie Van Halen book. Yep, reading. Actually got a little emotional at the end of it (*sniff*), reading Nuno Bettencourt’s story about a recent [...]
Did Edward Van Halen have his MXR phaser and flanger modded to boost or not? The initial interviews are inconclusive. Exhibit A, from this recent post: I use a phase shifter, a Phase 90 – MXR, I think. It doesn’t really phase – it just kind of gives you treble boost, which I like. Cuts [...]
Last Cool Stuff From ’78 EVH Transcript
Here’s the last of the interesting stuff from the newly published transcript of the entire 1978 interview of Edward Van Halen that Jas Obrecht did for Guitar Player mag. Wish there was a lot more! Guitar Stuff The Shark/Destroyer Jas: Does it have a standard neck? EVH: Yeah. It’s completely stock, really, except for the [...]
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