Well-known fact: Joe Perry loves gear. Or more correctly, he loves gooooood gear. (That reminds me: There’s an interview with an ex-Gibson guy somewhere on the web where he tells how the Gibby folks would bum out whenever Joe and Brad went down to Nashville

Cool riff, cool tune, cool lead and a WET tone. That’s what I hear and have always heard in the Judas Priest tune “Another Thing Comin’,” off 1982’s Screaming for Vengeance.
While I of course know it’s a two-guitar band, I always think of the chords/riff and Glenn Tipton’s solo on this tune, hence the look [...]

I have a few buds who still laugh at me for digging Journey. I think it’s the Steve Perry, Jonathan Cain-driven “Don’t Stop Believin’” stuff that gets them laughing because after the chuckle they’re always like, “Neal Schon, great player.”
“F-in A right!” as they say, or used to, in Patterson, N.J. Neal is a stellar [...]

And the Skinny on Robby Krieger’s Rigs
So there I am at New Jersey’s infamous Starland Ballroom, in scenic Sayreville NJ, on Friday night. I’m there to see the band Wiser Time, with Jimmy Somma of Sommatone amps on lead guitar. I’m there because Wiser Time is a very cool classic rock, Black Crowes-ish band, because [...]

More Volume, Less Volume Knob…
What is Black Robot? If you guessed a Japanese comic book, you’d be…wrong. It’s an LA-based band, a new one but made up of veteran players who wanted to make classic-sounding rock. And they did, thanks in large part to producer Dave Cobb.
Dave is a kung fu master of old-school tones, [...]

Here’s part 2 of highlights from the legendary April 1980 Guitar Player cover interview of Edward Van Halen.
Do you do anything special to your pickups?
I usually use old Gibson PAFs, and I always pot them. I submerge the whole thing in paraffin wax, and this cuts out the high obnoxious feedback. [...]

Edward Van Halen’s tone has been dissected, obsessed over and pursued to the ends of the tonal universe maybe more than any other single guitarist’s. That’s no surprise because the man is the Beethoven (gifted substance-abusing composer of the popular music of the time), Paganini (virtuoso) and [some other classical reference having to do with [...]

I didn’t know much (anything) about the band Cactus until a few years ago. Somehow I tripped across the fact that the Van Halen brothers loved this band, so naturally I had to check Cactus out. Bought the Cactus Anthology CD – great.
Someone billed Cactus as the “American Led Zeppelin,” which looking back is an [...]

‘Cocaine’ Rig Photo!

I’ve been sort of back-of-the-mind obsessed with (really more like “puzzled by”) Eric Clapton for a bit now. Ever since I saw him play on Joe Bonamassa’s Albert Hall DVD. I mean, there’s ERIC CLAPTON! – the fact that he’s Eric Clapton is cool on its own, but I wanted him to thrill [...]

Heard the Tom Petty tune “You Got Lucky” on the radio the other day, and had a flashback – about the solo on that song. It was 1982, and I was all about Van Halen, Randy Rhoads and all the rest of it. When I heard the solo back then, I laughed!
It was comically slow [...]

The second part of my recent NYC geetar adventure was a visit to Ludlow Guitars, which amazingly enough I’d never been to (I think – can’t exactly remember).
A super-cool store with lots of USED GUITAR INVENTORY! Yeah! And used and boutique amps! Yeah! That’s the stuff I want to play.

Advised Hendrix On His Rig?

Pete Townshend could never be accused of understating things. In some ways he always seems like the classic artist, in the “here’s the way I see it and F you if you don’t like it” sense. In a new-ish and excellent PremierGuitar.com interview, Pete is all that and says some stuff [...]

Already Writing Next Record!
Premier Guitar recently posted an interview with Ace Frehley in which Ace FINALLY talks with some specifics about what he used in the studio back in the early KISS days. Not a lot, but some. Here it is:
“On the early KISS records, I used my tobacco-sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard with a [...]

…and Three Van Halen Connections

Montrose, the 1973 self-titled debut album by the band of the same name, is one of those tone-pillar albums – “a pillar of tone that holds up the house of rock” (or pick a different metaphor). It likewise stands on its own as a monument of great tunes and great tone.
I [...]

As a kid in high school in the ’80s (early ’80s!), Jake E. Lee was on my list of favorite guitarists – another one of the seemingly endless supply of amazing, cool-looking axemen coming out of LA. I wondered how Ozzy found these guys: Were they lined up on street corners? Hanging out under palm [...]

You might. It would probably be a mid-70s Fender Stratocaster, which Lowell (of Little Feat) was favoring at the time, but could be something else.
Why am I asking? Here’s why, from the August 1976 issue of Guitar Player magazine:
GP: How many guitars have you had?
Lowell: I’ve had 50, 20 of which I no longer have [...]

All Fender Except the Joe Walsh Rig
I recently subscribed to Guitar Player’s GP2 on-line mag (subscribe here – it’s free) because this time I saw Pete Townshend on the cover. Had to read it, and glad I did. Following are some cool tone-making and tone-recording excerpts from the interview.