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 I rarely get to get away from the wife and kids and because I knew it would be fun.

Oh yeah: I REALLY wanted to hear Jimmy and Carmen – Wiser Time’s bandleader and lead singer – play through their Sommatone amps. And I really did not want to see or hear The Doors, for whom Wiser Time was opening. No offense, I know The Doors are a legendary band, but just never a band I got into. I always kind of thought they were the 60s version of grunge. So, in order of appearance:

Wiser Time

This is the only decent shot I got of Jimmy with my POS camera phone....

The band sounded stellar. The great PA, Ludwig Vistalite drums (per Bonham) and Fender P bass helped, but the bottom line was I was there to hear woody guitar tones and tasty playing, and was not disappointed.

I made sure to stand right where Jimmy’s amp was projecting so I have to confess that I couldn’t hear Carmen’s guitar so well. But I already knew what Carmen sounded like through his Sommatone Vibe 45 amp (killer) from hearing him play through it at the NY/NJ Amp Show two weekends ago. Mostly I was curious to see and hear what amp Jimmy would choose to play through and how it sounded.

Turned out Jimmy was running one of his Overdrive 35 6L6 heads into what I think was a 2×12 cab. He had what looked like a Roaring 40 combo next to it but he told me later he only played through the Overdrive 35.

A little about the Overdrives: Since I was already familiar with the Roaring 40 a bit, the Overdrive series – in particular the Overdrive 75 – really caught my ear at the Amp Show. That was the Sommatone amp I didn’t want to stop playing. Of course it sounded great, but it also had something I’m not sure I’ve ever heard with any other amp. At the Amp Show, I struggled to describe it to Jimmy. I think the closest I got is that the gain, or overdrive, seems to be “under” or “around” the note rather than on top of it.

You know with preamp gain or an OD pedal, the gain, distortion, overdrive or whatever you want to call it seems to surround or sit on top of the note. But with Jimmy’s Overdrive amps, you get this big woody note and the hair but in a different order somehow. I’m probably doing the amp an injustice by trying to describe it at all but it’s just one of those amps you want to keep messing with because it sounds so good and you know something with your name on it is in there.

(More on this amp coming soon on AmpGAS.)

Anyhow, as I said Jimmy sounded great through that amp and cab. He played a lot of slide, and the notes were big, woody and clear but still with a bunch of sustain and some hair. Jimmy says he loves that amp for slide, and after hearing him I can see/hear why.

I can also say that after hearing Robbie Krieger from The Doors play slide – though it seemed like it was more for effect rather than melodic lines – to my ears, Jimmy slide tone was way better.

So I’m happy to report that Jimmy’s amps sound good in a hotel room and on stage. Jimmy’s a heck of a player too.

The Doors

First of all, a band named The Doors makes communication difficult. Questions like, “When are the doors opening?” get responses like: “The Doors are opening?” I guess it’s tough to communicate capital letters verbally.

(Technically it was Ray Manzarek (keys) and Robby Krieger (guitar), not The Doors, but it’s as close to The Doors as you’re going to get so I’m going to call it that.)

Since I’m not a Doors fan I figured my buddy Alan and I would be out the door before we heard one note from The Doors. But Wiser Time only played a 30-minute set and we’d barely started on our tea and crumpets, so we decided to stick around. I have to admit I’m mostly glad we did. Mostly.

The Doors were a very good band, and it helped that they played songs that I pretty much “knew” from radio airplay back in the day. Ray and Robby were the only two original members in the band and sounded and played very well, as did the drummer (good player, did not dig the drum sound) and bass player.

But the real highlight of the band for me was the lead singer. He had a TON of stage presence, sung the tunes very well and generally brought up the level of the place to make that a gig to remember for the audience. Speaking of which, the audience had quite a few younger folks in their 20s – or maybe even younger (an all ages show) – and many were singing all the words. Pretty mind-blowing.

Robby's DeVilles.

So who was the singer? Miljenko “Michael” Matijevic, a Croatian guy who was and still is the lead singer for the ’80s metal band Steelheart and who also provided the vox for Mark Wahlberg’s character in the movie, “Rock Star.” Think this guy has some pipes?! I’m officially a fan. Love to have that guy in my band…if I had one.

Did he “sound like” Jim Morrison? Enough for me and the most of the audience, it seemed. He made the show, regardless.

In the harsh stage lights Kreiger looked every year of his 65, but so what – you couldn’t tell from his fingers. He played great and sounded good through Fender Hot Rod DeVille combos (he had a pedal board but I didn’t see it). He played old SGs, and we wondered whether those were the ones he played in the ’60s. They sure looked like it!

Just to give you a taste, this was the actual show I was at. Visuals not great, but sound okay.

Here’s a show from a few days before, better video.

More on Robby’s Rigs

From a recent interview with Premier Guitar:

You’re most known for playing a Gibson SG Standard. How did you come to use that guitar?

Before I played electric guitars, I knew nothing about them. But then I saw Chuck Berry and had to get one. I went to a pawnshop and all I could afford was a used Gibson SG Standard—it cost me $180. That was the guitar I used in The Doors. I played ES-335s and ES-355s also, but I always went back to the SG. It’s the most comfortable guitar for me. It does what I need it to do and always has.

Do you still have that original SG?

No, it was stolen a long time ago. I found a ’67 that’s almost identical to the one I had, and I still use that one all the time.

Tell me about Gibson’s recent Robby Krieger SG reissue.

I’m happy with it. They copied the ’67 SG I have now. I didn’t like that guitar’s original neck, so the neck on it is actually a copy of a friend’s ’61 SG Junior that I preferred. Gibson wired the front and rear pickups out of phase like a wah. It was a mistake, but a good one.

What other instruments are you using right now?

I have a Stratocaster that I use once in a while, and I still play ES-355s but only in the studio, not live. I also use an older SG Special with P-90s for slide – I believe it’s a ’75. I have about 30 guitars total.

Robby on his amps:

The first amp I used with the Doors was a Magnatone with two 12″ speakers. Then we got a deal with Acoustic, and I used their 260 model for a while. Ray was using one of their amps too, but we both grew disenchanted with them after awhile. Then I started using a couple of Twin Reverbs that were rebuilt with JBL speakers in them by my friend, Vince Traenor, a crazy genius who also works on pipe organs. He likes to sneak into cathedrals and play the pipe organs. My current rig is two Fender Hot Rod DeVilles, with either 2×12 or 4×10 speaker cabs.

On his board:

I use a Boss ME-10 multi-effect unit, which they don’t make anymore, and I use the gain channel on the amps too. That’s my basic rig. Very simple.

In Conclusion…

If you’re wondering whether I stayed for the whole Doors show, the answer is no. It was surprisingly cool and fun to watch, but then they played some song that sounded like a bar mitzvah tune (several folks backed me up on that), which isn’t the worst thing at all but didn’t seem to fit in a rock show. Time to bolt.

All in all a cool night. If you’re remotely into the Doors, go see Robby, Ray and company. If you ever get a chance to see Wiser Time in NJ or play one of Jimmy’s amps, do it!

Notable

> This is worth noting, from Wikipedia: Steelheart disbanded in 1992 because of a bad stage accident. Near the end of the tour that year, the band was opening for Slaughter in Denver, Colo. During the performance, Miljenko decided to climb a lighting truss, which was not properly secured and fell. He tried to get out of the way, but the 1,000-pound truss hit him on the back of the head. He fell face-first onto the stage and broke his nose, cheekbone and jaw, and twisted his spine. he managed to walk off the stage, but was immediately taken to a hospital. Wow. One tough MF.

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, in part through his relentless use of old gear – amps and guitars yes, but also mic preamps and mixing boards. In this case, he also played most of the guitars on the album, so he’s a great guy to interview. Interesting dude, too. Here’s my interview with him:

WoodyTone: Sounds like old-school AC/DC tones on the album – was that what you were going for?

Dave Cobb: Yes, we love those AC/DC records. They all had very loud, clean, aggressive guitar sounds.

Why was that the sound you wanted for this record? Did you want an older-school feel?

My heroes growing up were Jimmy Page, Angus Young, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend – they all had a lot of aggression with their playing, but it was never super-distorted. A lot of kids crank up the distortion and think it’s heavy, but in actuality when it’s cleaner it has more weight and power to it. It makes you work for it.

I don’t really like modern-sounding records – I actually kind of hate them for the most part. So we weren’t really going after the [tone of the] old records, we were just going after what I like – which happens to be old records (laughs).

It seems like it’s a tough tone to get. A lot of people have tried, but in the modern era, even with all this fancy equipment, I just don’t hear it. Is it a tough tone to get?

Now we might have more stuff available, but it’s not as high-quality. [Back in the day] the guitars were American-made and made at the height of American craftsmanship, the Marshalls were made with quality parts, and you had quality players – you couldn’t record a record unless you had a high level of ability. Plus studios had the best mics in the world [and] they had good consoles and tape.” [He is trying to mimic that approach.]

What equipment did you use to get those tones and why?

A Vox Tone Bender (click to see it bigger).

I used a 1952 Les Paul Gold Top conversion with PAF pickups, a 1967 Marshall 50-watt and a Fender 1960 Tweed Deluxe, a Boss DM2 [analog delay], a vintage Vox Tone Bender and Colorsound Super Fuzz [Colorsound Tone Bender?], 10-gauge Ernie Ball strings and Fender medium picks.

Are they real PAFs?

The one in the bridge is a real PAF from the late ’50s, and the other one is a Gibson T-Top. I tried PAFs – tried a bunch – [in the neck] but nothing could beat the T-Top in that position.

What model of Marshall was it?

It was kind of a transitional year. I also used a 65 Amps amplifier a lot, the Nash Vegas. It’s a one-off they made, a really good amp. They’re one of the only amp companies that do it right.

Did you use the Marshall and Deluxe separately or did you combine them?

I can’t remember what we used on what now, but I like it Marshally.

How loud did you record?

The Marshall was more than halfway pushed. A lot of the secret in getting that tone is to push the amp hard and back the volume down on the guitar. When you hear the solos on AC/DC records, you hear the amp going into overdrive. [Angus] uses the [guitar] volume knob. That’s kind of a lost technique now.

What were the amps running through?

Some were running through a ’70s Marshall 2×12 that had 20-watt Celestions. We also had a Marshall 4×12, a checkerboard with black-back Celestion 25s in it.

For “Cocaine” we used a Jeff Bakos amp [Atlanta, Ga. tech and builder]. It’s real hi-fi, kind of like a JCM800 and a JTM 45 – it really has it going on. It’s called a Plus 45.

What do you like about those old pedals?

The Tone Bender can get an amp at the point of breakup. You throw the Tone Bender on all the way up, then back guitar volume all the way off, that’s how you get this chimey thing. It’s a really cool tone. I used that a lot. I used the Super Fuzz for some crazy effects.

Why did I think you had a Tele thing going on?

It was probably that Tone Bender trick.

What mics did you use?

I used Sennheiser 409s and used a room mic a lot.

You played all the guitars on the album?

I played about 80% of them. Yogi played some as well, and Andy [Andersson] too.

What track is your favorite?

“Cocaine.” I thought the solo on that was pretty hilarious. You can’t get away with making that kind of solo anymore. When I was a kid I read all those magazines and was trying to play like that. It’s been uncool for so long, it was so fun to let it all out. It was kind of, Let’s see how fast you can go, you know (laughs).

Did you learned any new tone secrets working on this record?

I think a lot of the record is kind of plug and play. The amps sound like they sound. There’s not a whole lot of work getting them to sound that way.

The drums – I love that sound. You can’t play a modern kit. You need an old Ludwig snare. Same with the amps. That stuff is still around – you just have to chase it. You can buy a mid-70s 50w Marshall and still get those sounds, whereas you can buy a $2,000 amp and it might not sound as good.

Notable

> Dave Cobb was the producer and co-writer on the self-titled debut album from Black Robot. Dave has worked artists including Shooter Jennings, Waylon Jennings, Chris Cornell, The Oak Ridge Boys, The Strays, Michael Johns,
Jamey Johnson and Nico Vega. Prior to becoming a producer, Dave was the guitarist for the ’90s band The Tender Idols.

> Who’s Yogi? Not a bear. He played guitar in Buckcherry along with Black Robot’s Jonathan “JB” Brightman (bass). Currently Yogi is the touring guitarist for Fuel.

> More on JB and Buckcherry (incidentally, he coined the name Buckcherry after pioneer 6-stringer Chuck Berry) from the Lubbock (TX) Avalanche-Journal: Brightman left Los Angeles-based sleaze-rockers Buckcherry in 2002, just as the band was closing in on mainstream success, for reasons, as Brightman describes them, straight out of Behind The Music. “I wanted to continue what I’d started, but unfortunately for me, when I played with Buckcherry, I just couldn’t tolerate what was going on with the interband politics,” he says. “It wasn’t good for me. In a nutshell, I didn’t have any place to live and was living out of a storage unit, living on a tour bus while a couple of guys were buying homes in the Hollywood hills. [Buckcherry] kind of took what was part of my legacy and kind of redefined what that was all about and I think started making lower-quality music.

“There were three of us that left the band and then they (the two founding members) went and formed a new version of Buckcherry and had this massive hit.” The first time he heard Buckcherry’s Billboard-charting, Paris-Hilton-sex-tape-inspired song? The one with an unprintable title? “I was like, ‘This is a piece of junk,’” he says. “It just sounded like some throwaway track we used to do, but people really locked in on it….”

The Making of Black Robot
> At 2:36 you can see and hear Dave playing the Les Paul. A very cool tone – I gotta try that Tone Bender trick!

Love this guitar (click to see the pic bigger).

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. It’s kind of a tricky thing because if you leave it in there too long. The pickup melts. I take a coffee can and melt down some wax — the same kind that you use for surfboards — and put the pickup in it. See, one of the reasons a pickup feeds back is that the coil windings vibrate, and when the wax soaks in there, it keeps them from vibrating as much. It will still feed back, but it’s controllable. After I dip the pickup in paraffin, I put copper tape around it. You have to be really careful if you do this to a pickup like a DiMarzio. You can throw an old PAF in there and let it soak [wax] up. It doesn’t melt. But with DiMarzio, if you blink, all of a sudden your pickup’s ruined.

How do you keep tuned while using a standard vibrato?

It’s a combination of a lot of things. For one, some manufacturers don’t keep in mind that the distance from the bridge to the machine heads has got to be straight line so the string windings won’t get caught anywhere. A lot of people drill the machine holes off center, and the strings get caught up. I have extra-wide notches in the nut, and string trees for only the high E and B strings. I also set the vibrato bar so I can only bring it down; you can’t pull back on it. See, I rest the palm of my hand on the bridge, so If I use a standard vibrato, I sound like a warped record. Sometimes I’ll bring the bar down before I hit a note and then let it up.

Do you own any stock factory-made guitars?

Yeah, I have a new Gibson ES-335, and two ‘58 Les Paul Jrs — a single-cutaway and a double-cutaway. I’ve got a whole load of Japanese Strat copies [= a lot of experimentation – who knows what parts were swapped where!]. I also just two vintage Les Pauls — a’59 flame top and a ‘58 gold top. These are pretty much in immaculate condition. I bought them as an investment; I don’t play them. My main stage guitars are the ones I build myself for under $200. I have an acoustic, too — the one I used on “Spanish Fly.” It’s an Ovation nylon-string, not the real expensive model. I’ve never owned a steel-string.

How do you hold your pick?

Between my thumb and middle finger. Sometimes when I play fast I’ll put the tip of my index finger on the corner of the pick. [I've come to believe that this is one key component to Ed's attack and rhythm.]

Do you put new strings on every night?

Yeah, Fender 150XLs [these are 9s!]. I stretch them to death. With that new Rose thing, I boil the strings so they stretch, because if you just put them on and clamp it down, the strings stretch out on the guitar. I just take a pack and let it boil for 20 minutes in the hot water. And then I dry them in the sun, because otherwise they rust. But I only use them one night anyway, so who cares if they rust?

Amps and Effects

What’s in [his pedalboard]?

It’s a piece of plywood with two controls for my Echoplex on it, an MXR Phase 90 that I’ve had for years, and an MXR Flanger. They’re all taped to a piece of board with black duct tape [that's the secret! LOL]. And like a lot of big name players laugh themselves silly when they see it, but after they hear me, then they go, “Can I plug in?” Some of these guys have got four out-of-phase switches, and a this and a that, and a biamp crossover, and blah, blah, blah. And I just go, “Is it on? Is it working? What’s it for? What’s it do?” I can’t tell! At least when I use an effect, you know I’m using it. My main tricks are in my amps.

What kind of amps are you now using?

Well, in the studio I use my old Marshall, my precious baby. It gets a slightly different sound. Live I use new Marshalls. I made the mistake of taking my main one out on the road last year and I lost it on the way back from Japan. It was flying around India somewhere and six months later, thank God, I got it back. This is the one I bought when I was a kid. I didn’t even know what I had until now. It’s very old; it has a Plexiglas front. It used to be the house amp at the Pasadena Rose Palace; whoever played there has played through it. It’s a real good amp – unbelievable balls!

How do you modify your amps?

Okay, I use a combination of two different kinds of amps. They’re both Marshalls, but one kind actually has less power than the other, which is boosted. I use them together. The ones that have less power have a giant capacitor in conjunction with the fuse; if anything happens, the fuse blows first. The capacitor has something to do with the computerized ignition system of a car. I can’t give you the exact specs, but it looks like a stick of dynamite, only fatter. What it does is suck juice. I hook it up to the fuse holder and the mains, and it lowers the voltage about ten volts so the amp lasts a little bit longer. It doesn’t really change the sound, but whatever I use, I use to the max. I just turn it all the way up. So this capacitor lowers the voltage and the amp lasts a little longer. I still have to retube them once a week. (Editor’s Note: This is not a recommended procedure for modifying amps and should not be attempted by anyone inexperienced in the field of electronics and amp modification.)

What is done to the other kind of amps?

I use a Variac, which is like a dimmer on a lighting system. It’s an autotransformer which goes all the way from 0 to 160. In the studio I crank it up to 140 and watch the tubes melt! (Editor’s Note: Again, this is not a recommended procedure for modifying amps, as Paul Rivera of Rivera Research and Development points out: “You can cause severe damage to the amp besides melting tubes. Since a Variac is an exposed transformer, by hooking it up incorrectly you could get the hot of the AC line on the chassis of the amp and electrocute yourself. Anyone wishing to attempt this sort of modification should go to a knowledgeable repairman.”) [Ed might have turned up the Variac here and there, but usually kept it at around 85-90.]

- End of part 2 (of 3) -

Fund Drive

Since everyone doesn’t read every post, appending posts with this for a bit. C’mon fellas!

Doing a “keep the lights on and do more cool sh*t” fund drive. If you dig and look forward to WoodyTone, and find the info fun and valuable, pleasedonate! Options for a one-time $20 or $10 below. Gracias!

$20 one-time

$10 one-time

But like anything that gets obsessed over – especially in this Internet age – after a while it becomes pretty much impossible to separate fact from fiction, even if you’re hearing or reading it from the horse’s mouth. Did Ed mislead, lie, fudge, omit or simply tell the truth? Can anyone really know for sure?

With that in mind, here’s just some of the legendary April 1980 cover story from Guitar Player magazine – it’s what Ed actually said at the time. The interview “was conducted while Woman and Children First was in its final mixing stage,” GP wrote in the intro. The intro also said the conversation was SEVEN HOURS – where the F is the rest of that tape?!

Anyhow, here are the most interesting parts. I’m going to highlight the stuff I think sometimes gets forgotten and is just as important as the better-known/remembered “macro” stuff about Frankie, etc.

Guitars

GP: What made you decide to build your own guitars?

EVH: A Les Paul to me was just the cliched guitar, the rock and roll guitar. I liked the sound, but it didn’t fit my body. I’d have to wear it too high to be able to stretch as I do, and it looks funky. So I wanted to get that type of sound, but with tremolo. And Bigsbys have got to be the worst. So I bought a ‘58 Strat years ago when we played high school dances, and Dave and Al just turned and started throwing sticks at me! They said, “Don’t use that guitar — it sounds too thin!” You know, single-coil pickups. They had a real buzzy, thin sound unless I used a fuzz box, and that’s even worse [he did not like anything other than amp distortion]. So I sold that and then two years later I bought a router and dumped a Gibson PAF pickup into a ‘61 Strat. It got very close. All of a sudden the band said, “That’s okay, It doesn’t sound like a Strat anymore.” Then I heard that a company called Charvel made exact duplicates of Fender guitars, but out of nicer wood.

Is this where you got the wood for your first homemade guitar?

Yeah, this very first one was the black-and-white striped one on the first album. I went to Charvel and had them rout a body out for just one pickup and one volume knob. I had to cut my own pickguard to cover everything up because it was originally a three-pickup Strat body. I used the vibrato tailpiece from a ‘58 Strat for that guitar [he recorded with that non-Floyd Rose guitar through Fair Warning]. I also had Charvel make me a really wide neck. I hate skinny necks. I like it bare wood because I hate to slip and slide when I start stretching strings. Now at the same time, I built what I call my shark guitar, which is actually one of the first Ibanez Destroyers [shaped like Gibson Explorer] made out of korina wood [not really]. I made the mistake of taking a chainsaw to it and putting a bunch of weird stuff on it.

Did it lose some tone?

It lost the tonality I want….

Did you make another guitar for your second album?

I made the yellow-and-black Strat. It has an ash body by Charvel. It was my idea to have it rear-loaded so I wouldn’t have to have a pickguard, and Charvel routed it for me. The pickup that’s on the photo is not really what I use — I had just finished slapping it together and painting it when they shot the album cover, and just stuck some garbage pickup in it to look like a complete guitar. Then I took the pickup out of my first guitar and stuck it in there, but it didn’t sound too good. I don’t really go for DiMarzio pickups because they’re real distorted. I like a clean sound with sustain — I hate the fuzz box, real raspy sound. So I put a PAF magnet in a DiMarzio pickup and rewound it by hand, which took a long lime. I actually ruined about three pickups, and by the fourth time it worked. I didn’t count the windings — I just did it by sight.

What are the most difficult aspects of building your own guitar?

Making the neck fit the body. Another problem is that the strings on a Stratocaster are spaced differently than a Gibson’s: If you use a humbucking pickup, the strings don’t line up with the pickup holes. So I’ve tried slanting the pickup so the high E string will be picked up by a front pole and the low E will be picked up by a rear pole. For the sound I like, it is also important to get the space between the bridge and pickup right [very important for an early Ed sound!]. I do it almost like Les Paul. If I put it too far towards the neck I get the Grand Funk and Johnny Winter tone, and if I put it too close to the bridge I get a real trebley Strat sound. So I move it up towards the neck a little bit from the Strat sound to get a beefier tone.

Have you any special methods of refretting necks?

Yeah, I hate the way people refret necks. I do it real simple: I sand them down with some 400 wet-or-dry sandpaper and then use some steel wool. I hate flat frets because the more space you have for the string to rest on, the more room you have for the intonation to be off. I like big frets height-wise, but I make them come to a peak. From a side view, one of my frets would look like the tip of a pick. It doesn’t come to a complete point, but it would be rounded as opposed to flat. Another thing is that you have to put them in from the side rather than from above, and a lot of people take them straight out and rip the wood. I toured the factory and saw how they did it and said, “No wonder I ruined so many fenders by pulling them straight out!”

- End of Part 1 (of 3) -

Fund Drive

Since everyone doesn’t read every post, appending posts with this for a bit. C’mon fellas!

Doing a “keep the lights on and do more cool sh*t” fund drive. If you dig and look forward to WoodyTone, and find the info fun and valuable, pleasedonate! Options for a one-time $20 or $10 below. Gracias!

$20 one-time

$10 one-time

Someone billed Cactus as the “American Led Zeppelin,” which looking back is an enormous statement to make. But at the time (early 1970), it just meant a loud and hard rock blues band with good musicians: Carmine Appice (skins) and Tim Bogert (bass), both from the Vanilla Fudge; Rusty Day (vox) from the Amboy Dukes (which Ted Nugent was in) and Detroit guitar-slinger Jim McCarty.

Cactus’ stuff is great. Hard, sort of fast and of course a vintage rock sound. Can I hear the VH influence? Yes, definitely in the riff/drums interaction.

You can also hear that Jim McCarty has some sort of fuzz box, or maybe is driving a small amp to the point of blowing it up. Looked into it, and it seems to have been curtain number 1: a fuzzbox into a Marshall Super Lead. More specifically: a ‘59 ‘burst Les Paul Standard (since stolen) or a ‘54 Strat (ditto) into an Ampeg Scrambler (info) into a Marshall Super Lead. He also apparently used a Fender Twin, but it’s not clear whether that was separate from the Marshalls or in conjunction with them.

Simple chain, sounds killer.

Looks loud! (Photo from Les Paul Forum)

Also:

> He apparently used two 100w Super Leads that had somehow been “tricked out” to 120 watts, no info available on the mod(s).

> Decades ago, the ‘69 ‘burst, the ‘54 Strat (”probably the greatest single-sounding guitar I ever owned,” Jim said in an interview) and a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic that had belonged to Hendrix were all stolen from Jim at the same time. He never got them back.

> From a thread on the Les Paul Forum: “Halfway through recording the first Cactus album he got the ‘59 Les Paul Standard Burst for $600 from Dan Armstrong (famous for his lucite guitars). The reverse Firebird was purchased in St. Louis for $300 along with a ‘54 Strat for $500…. All of these were acquired around 1970.”

> Cactus didn’t last long for various reasons (drugs, couldn’t get along, same story), reunited a few years ago (different singer) and then disbanded because apparently Tim Bogert was playing too much “lead bass.” From the above Les Paul Forum thread: “After playing a gig in July at the Magic Bag in the Detroit area, McCarty left Cactus for the same reason he left the band 30+ years ago. He can’t deal with Tim Bogert’s going off and playing ‘lead bass’ instead of playing the tunes. Jeff Beck quit Beck, Bogert and Appice for the same reason, just read the Beck biography ‘Crazy Fingers.’ While Tim did great at the B.B.King show, when they played Detroit they did a sound check and everything was fine. The night of the show, Tim went back and cranked up the volume to ‘11′ and began to go wild soloing over everything. McCarty told Tim to turn down and Tim looked at him all wild-eyed and said: ‘It doesn’t get any better than this!’ McCarty was devastated: 30 years later and things hadn’t changed a bit. Tim was still a loose cannon. Fortunately the B.B.King CD preserves a record of what could have been. At the Detroit show the bass was so brutally loud the soundman cranked up the kick drum and the whole night you could feel the bass and drums pounding on your chest – it was a real shame. Maybe they can work it out, but I doubt it – McCarty said he’ll never work with Tim again.”

> Jim is still playing, and now his favorite pedal apparently is a Keeley-modded Tube Screamer.

Vids

Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot of Cactus on YouTube, but here’s a taste:

1971 Live
> Lots of fuzz! (Not as much fuzz on the studio recordings.)

2007 Live, Evil

Fund Drive

Since everyone doesn’t read every post, appending posts with this for a bit. C’mon fellas!

Doing a “keep the lights on and do more cool sh*t” fund drive. If you dig and look forward to WoodyTone, and find the info fun and valuable, pleasedonate! Options for a one-time $20 or $10 below. Gracias!

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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 me somehow, someway (tone, note choice, whatever) and he didn’t. Not that he was bad. Can’t happen. But where’s the fire?

More on that in a future episode (maybe), but it motivated me to go back and try to dig up what Clapton was using and thinking back when he had that fire. I found two interviews, one from June 1967 and one conducted in May 1976, both in old Guitar Player magazines. So here’s the juice:

1967 Interview

Some funny stuff in this interview, like the first line in the article: “Cream is just that—three jazz veterans skimmed off the top of British rock.” Yeah…. The article also says Clapton and Jack Bruce are both guitarists! But hey, it was 1967 and what did anyone know about guitarists back then.

Anyhow, as you can tell this interview was done when Clapton was in Cream, the most recently album being Disraeli Gears. The article says, “The group recorded Disraeli Gears in four days as sort of an ‘impromptu thing.’ Eric calls the album ‘kind of a cross between what we are like in the studio and what we’re like on stage.’

> The article says Clapton was using a “double cutaway Gibson” at the time, and which he also used with Mayall. I assume this is the ES-335?

> When recording they [Eric and Jack] use only one amplifier apiece, a Marshall. But on stage they build a different sound, using two separate 100-watt amps, each amp running through two large cabinets and each cabinet holding four 12-inch speakers. They don’t rely on feedback for intensity. Eric is opposed to feedback because he admits he has never been able to really control it.

> “Our music cannot be categorized because a lot of the material we play is not blues, it’s another thing completely, probably brand new. Our sound is like an old blues sound, but heavily amplified. The sound I’ve always wanted and like is the sound that all those people used on the very early records of Muddy Waters, you get it? It’s that sound, only much louder. I think a lot of people are getting hung-up about getting mechanical sound. They’re trying to invent ways of doing it to hide the fact they can’t do it with their fingers.”

> “I was nineteen when I left the Yardbirds. I intended to give up then. But John Mayall offered me a job and I took it because I needed the bread, and I needed some kind of identity too because I was very down.”

> Eric had started playing the guitar at 16, a Kay electric with an old Vox amp his parents had bought for him.

May 1976

Here's Clapton's and George Terry's rigs just after they finished 'Cocaine'...the song! (georgeterry.com photo, click to see bigger)

At the time of this interview, Clapton was doing the final overdubs for his No Reason to Cry album. We’ll transition with a quote bout Cream, from the 1976 interview:

GP: Did it get tiring playing in bands, like Cream, where you had to solo constantly?

EC: Absolutely, it really did. Sometimes you just end up playing every lick you know before the end of the set, and then you’re f*cked, you know, because you’re just repeating yourself over and over again. I’ve really become more devoted to the song itself and the presentation of the actual music. I think jamming, unless it’s got a goal at the end of it, is pretty much a waste of time. It’s just like exercising or something. If you’re jamming, and something comes out of it and you make something that you can stand hearing again and has a form and turns people on, okay.

By this time he was playing Strats. The article had nothing about anything Eric particularly liked about Strats except they’re good “basic stage guitars.” Some good detail on amps though:

EC: Music Man is my favorite now [HD 130 Reverb] because they have dual volume controls. You can use them in the studio at low volume and still get a fair amount of distortion, just as if it were a really big amp. I also like their sound. They are just like Fenders – in fact, I think Leo had a big part in designing them.

(GP editor’s note: Actually, Tom Walker who worked for the Fender company from 1948 until 1969, was Music Man’s main designer, although many of the ideas were passed on from Leo Fender during their association in Fender’s pre-CBS days.)

GP: Were the amps you used previously more suited to your sound at that time?

EC: They [Music Mans] could have been used with cream. You can get exactly the same sound as you would with a Marshall, but then you can take it down to the same sound as a Champ. It’s really got a wide range.

(GP editor’s note: Roadie Willie Spears reports that Eric’s amps are beefed up, with the bias up all the way, by Walker at Music Man. This HD 130 Reverb has special open-back cabinets, as opposed to the folded horn type, with JBL 120 speakers. Eric also uses Leslie cabinet, with JBL components [and a custom foot switch]. The guitar can go either straight through the amp, through both the amp and the Leslie (fast or slow), or through just the Leslie at either fast or slow speeds – as on “Badge.” The only other effects pedal Clapton uses is a Cry Baby wah-wah.)

Info on strings and playing slide:

GP: Instead of bar chords, you seem to play down at the nut a lot.

EC: Those were the chords I learned. I also think when you’re using light strings, you tend to become a bit insecure about going up the neck too far with big, full chords. Because what will sound right at the bottom of the neck with light strings, by the time you’ve taken out 12 frets, could be out of tune.

EC on playing slide guitar: I approach it more like George Harrison. Duane [Allman] would play strictly blues lines. They were always innovative, but they were always in the blues vein. I’m somewhere in between him and George [Terry, at the time in Eric's band] who invents melodic lines often on the scales.

GP: What do you use for a slide?

EC: A glass tube about the width of the neck of the guitar, so I can get all the strings covered. It’s a thick one [an Isis medium].

GP: Do you have any special guitar setup for slide?

EC: Yes, a Gibson ES-335. But it hasn’t got a high nut – I just raise it at the bridge. I don’t play down at the bottom much. I usually keep it up near the top frets. I use the same strings as I do normally on the other guitars, Ernie Ball Super Slinky [9, 11, 16, 24, 32, 42, same as now].

He said he plays slide in open G tuning, which he prefers because “you get more of a country sound. It’s more melodic.”

‘County Jail Blues’ off No Reason to Cry

Notable

> George Terry on first playing with Clapton: “When we first started jamming, all I wanted to do was help. My primary thing back then was to help him get back into playing guitar because he been slacking off for while and was out of the scene. We’d jam for two or three hours on one set of chord changes – just incredible guitar playing.”

> George wrote “Mainline Florida” (off 461 Ocean Boulevard), and made a mutt guitar using a Strat body and Tele neck, with a Tele bridge pickup right next a Strat single-coil in the bridge, a Strat pickup in the middle and a humbucker by the neck. What did he call his homemade guitar? “Frankie,” short for Frankenstein – sound familiar?

> At the time, George also used Music Man amps along with a Vox wah-wah and Ernie Ball Regular Slinkys (10s).

> He’s a funny guy too: “That’s when you know you’ve made it – when you hear your song on Muzak. It’s always melodies that people pick up, never any off-the-wall R&B thing.”

P.S.

Doing a “keep the lights on and do more cool sh*t” fund drive, will post about it soon. If you dig and look forward to WoodyTone, and find the info fun and valuable, please frickin’ donate! Options for a one-time $20 or $5/mo below. Gracias amigos! Vamonos!

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Mike (right) and Tom.

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 (that’s the way it seemed at the time), the guitar sounded big and hollow (and it was in the MTV vid – not cool at the time) and the guitar player’s sloooooooow use of the trem bar was a 180 from EVH. No thanks, said the 16-year-old me.

Well, times have changed – a little. Now I get it. I may not love it – in a way I kinda do, though – but I get it. It doesn’t make me want to grab my guitar and play all night, but I get it. You get what I’m saying.

The guy who played that solo and co-wrote the song is, of course, Tom Petty’s guitar player – really a band member and co-writer rather than a hired hand. His name is Mike Campbell, and yes, he is a master of understated, toney guitar.

I still…can’t…say that he’s someone I would choose to emulate – I’m thinking about buying a 5150 head, for cryin’ out loud! – but now I can dig what he does. Maybe you can too. Maybe you already do.

Here are some Q&As along the above lines from an April 2008 PremierGuitar.com interview:

PG: You came out of the era of the big guitar hero, but you managed to avoid all the excess wanking that made a lot of their records seem self-indulgent and ultimately sound very dated. I have always likened you to a George Harrison or Keith Richards type of player; someone that was always very sympathetic to playing exactly what fit the song versus showboating.

Mike: We came up out of Florida and at that time, there were a lot of Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd-type bands. And we liked that stuff, but what we loved even more than that was early Beatles and the Stones – three-minute songs, with good guitar parts and not necessarily long guitar solos. We just preferred that style of music, and figured out early on that all of those other bands were trying to sound like the Allman Brothers, and we didn’t want to do that, we wanted to do what we liked. And that’s really always been our approach!

PG: How do you approach soloing? Do you work stuff out beforehand, simply let it flow, or is it a combination of both?

Mike: The song comes in, and the purpose is to serve the song, not the guitar part. You used George Harrison and Keith Richards as examples; really cool rhythm parts played between the vocal, with a short solo that says something then gets out of the way for the next vocal. It’s a challenge to make your statement in a short amount of time, but I prefer that challenge as opposed to just stretching out. We can do that too, and nowadays we will stretch out a few things, but anytime that it starts to drift away from the song, we kind of lose interest.

Mike also said:

“I play the guitar all of the time, but I’m not interested in playing faster, or more technically. I always try to work on my rhythm and my tone and my song sense – that’s just something that I focus on and always try to get better at. But am I better than I was? I don’t know. In some ways I’m the same as I always was. I think I’m more mature and may make better choices in my composition than I might have earlier.”

A couple more Q&As:

PG: Are there any current players you are listening to these days?

Mike: I struggle to think of someone recently – I tend to gravitate toward older players that influenced me originally. I love J.J. Cale, but he’s been around for years, and I like Mark Knopfler, who I think emulates J.J. I do like Derek Trucks, I think he’s amazing. A lot of the new bands, though, have a different approach to guitar than back when I started. I don’t like flashy stuff – I like songs with good melodies and it seems that no one is doing that these days.

PG: What is your take on the state of rock n’ roll today?

Mike: It’s alive – you can’t kill it. When I play with my little band at clubs, there are moments that make me remember why I started doing it, playing in a room with 100 people or whatever, and there are moments that are as pure as anything in its own way. We may not have the songs or the hits, but there is a purity in a room with a band that’s got a sound and is playing to a small group, and it’s all happening in this little room – to me, that is where rock n’ roll is still alive. It’s hard for me to put that into words, but to me it’s like a religion, it’s just gotta be, and it always will be, because there is nothing like it. It’s the best medicine for the soul that’s ever been.

Gear

Mike’s obviously a guy who likes vintage-type tones (who doesn’t!). Here’s some notes on his gear, from the PG article and a 2008 edition of the ToneQuest Report.

Guitars
1950s Fender Broadcaster
1964 Fender Stratocaster
1968 Gibson Les Paul goldtop
1960s 1956 Gretsch Fire Jet
1970s Les Paul Custom
Duesenberg USA DMC TV Mike Campbell model

Amps
Early 1960s Vox AC30 (fawn levant)
Mid-60s Vox Super Beatle
Late 1950s Fender Tweed Deluxe
1970s Fender Super Six
1960s blackface Fender Princeton
1960s Ampeg Rocket
Kustom 200
Early 1960s Fender Bassman (white piggyback)

> “Right now my favorite setup, which I kinda found with my little band in the clubs but I use onstage now with the Heartbreakers, is a tweed Deluxe and a blackface Fender Princeton together behind the [Vox] Super Beatles, and an isolated Vox AC30 that I have backstage in a box. The guy up front can pull up any of those amps that fit the room that night, but mostly it’s the blackface Princeton and the tweed Deluxe, which is a ‘59. Those two amps sound really great together.”

> “Those Super Beatles are on stage now – I’m not actually playing through them but Tom does on a couple of songs. Behind them are the things that we are actually using in the mix.”

> He said he used Vox AC30s a lot during the band’s “middle years” – because the band loved the Beatles and assumed that’s what the Beatles used.

> Here’s the “You Got Lucky” vid (can’t embed). The solo, presumably with the above-mentioned Gretsch Tennessean, starts at 3:03.

> Here’s a live version (also can’t embed), with the solo on a modified Tele, starting at about 2:00.

A store with a door handle like this just has to be cool.

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. A while back that type of inventory used to be commonplace – guitar stores with quality used stuff – but not so much anymore, I guess not with $300 Korean and Chinese guitars (some nice!) in the market.

Here’s how it went down.

A buddy and I plugged a Peter Florance Les Paul Junior copy and a Gibson LPJ Reissue (over $3K!) into a couple of expensive low-watt amps (one was $$$!) – and friggin’ hated it. I still don’t get the whole low-watt thing. They just don’t have the requisite balls, the little speakers – just don’t get it. The Juniors sounded like crap! Thin and wheedly. Juniors! With P90s! We knew it wasn’t the guitars.

So next we plugged into an old-reliable store amp, a used Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, and started to cook. Here are the guitars we played in order, and some comments:

> Gibson RD Artist (used) – I’ve always wanted to play one and dig the funky shape. Played okay, sounded okay – did nothing for us. Wouldn’t call it junk, but wouldn’t call it good.

> Peter Florance LP Junior (used) – Solid light-ish body, thick half-inch maple cap, played and sounded great. Thinner neck than a regular Junior, and sounded brighter because of the maple. Nice guitar, decent price ($1,600). Thought about buying it…and emailed a buddy about it, though kinda hoping he won’t buy it….

Here's the Florance LPJ.

> Gibson Junior Reissue (new?) – Played well, set-up well (all the guitars were set-up well), sounded ballsy. My buddy dug the sound of this one the most. I liked the balls, but thought it was WAY too much for what it was, and the Florance was a nicer geetar.

A Ludlow employee lookin' cool with the Billy-Bo.

> Gretsch Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird (new) – Both of us are big Rev. BFG fans so we’ve both always wanted to play this axe. Light and somehow not neck-heavy, and sounded very good. A kick to play, really easy access to the top frets and just plain looked cool. The TV Jones Power ‘Tron pickups sounded ballsy.

> Reverend Buckshot (new) – Here’s a fact: Reverend guitars ALWAYS sound good. Every time I’m in a music store I try one, and I’m never disappointed. To the contrary, I always end up wondering why I didn’t pick up the Reverend first. They sound great, play great and the bass contour knob I wish was standard on every guitar – so cool, so useful. We both liked the sound of this one. (So I have to ask myself: Why don’t I own a Reverend – particularly the korina V? More on Reverends in a future post.)

Bottom Line

Ludlow Guitars is a cool store. The folks who work there when we were there were cool (not like Manny’s, if you know what I mean), and knew their stuff – and the prices weren’t NYC outta-sight. If you’re ever in New York, check ‘em out.

The only bummers for me were an utter lack of used Les Pauls and any Marshalls at all (no LPs and Marshalls?!), but they had Strats and Fender amps out the gazoo – and even a used Hiwatt, which I didn’t get a chance to play, dang it.

I’ll be bahk!

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 I’ve never read before, maybe you’ll be in the same boat.

Here are some choice quotes – all are Pete’s. If you’re a Townshend fan, the article is worth a full read.

On His Playing

> “The Who worked fairly solidly from 1963 through to 1982, when I felt I had had enough. Over the entirety of those years, I had regarded my stage guitars as tools rather than instruments. I never tried to play eloquently, I didn’t practice much and I didn’t work very hard on my sound.”

> “I would never have been a Who fan.”

> “I’ve never gotten a rush or thrill from performing. I’m good at it, and I find it easy and natural.”

On Hendrix and His Style

> “When Jimi was in London, it just so happened I was using a Strat, and he modeled his entire amplifier rig, apart from a couple of special fuzz boxes, according to my advice. So for a while our sound was similar. But no one could approach what he did with that rig, and I decided to concentrate much more on chordal work, trying to give a beat backbone to Moon’s flailing and undisciplined drumming.”

On Amps

> “It’s interesting to think that the Marshall sound I helped Jim and his guys develop was built around the very low output and thin, surfy sound of the Rick [Rickenbacker].”

> “…let [Jim Marshall] sue me, but I know that the first Marshall amp was almost a dead copy of the Fender Bassman head with some minor changes to boost the level – minor changes that I insisted be major. The [Fender] Vibro-King sounds more like an early Marshall amp than a new Marshall amp. They’re great amps, but they require quite a bit of maintenance, tube biasing, etc. I mix 10″ and 12″ speakers in two cabs.”

> “‘60s amplifiers…look so beautiful. Marshalls look like something from The Munsters. That’s why I put the Union Jack Flag on the speakers. Before I had a Marshall, I had a Bassman and a Fender Pro split-wired. That is the sound I loved. Using two amps was my first trick. Getting Jim Marshall to make them louder was my second.”

PG noted that Pete has four Fender Vibro-Kings each with a 2×12 extension cab. Pete usually uses one Vibro-King and cab with the volume set on 3-3.5. At times he adds the second with the other two spares.

On Guitars

Pete says he still loves SGs.

> “My present guitar tech, Alan Rogan, came to me sometime in the very early ‘70s I think, and after a while I developed the Les Paul Special [Deluxe?] with a middle humbucker set for feedback. Those guitars were heavy. Gibson did a signature Pete Townshend model Les Paul, which works well though it’s still a heavy guitar. The middle pickup is meant to be set close to the strings to allow instant feedback. It is on a separate on-off switch to allow machine-gun staccato effects. The other two small humbuckers are wired in the conventional Gibson manner but with a phase switch. In the studio I could get almost any sound I wanted with that guitar.”

> “From 1971, everything changed. Alan Rogan helped me track down a lot of cool guitars. Joe Walsh gave me a Gretsch and a Fender Bassman combo with an Edwards pedal, to get the Neil Young sound. He also gave me a Flying V that I am sad to say I sold to help buy my first big boat – he’s never quite forgiven me.”

> “When I found the Eric Clapton Strat, I got the best of two worlds: a clean Fender sound when I wanted it, and with the built-in power booster the ability to make the sound dirty for slab-drive chord work. I have often tried SGs again, and I still love them and use them for recording, but I love the Strat-style whammy bar.”

> “…Before I set eyes on a Rickenbacker— still a beautiful sight, I think—I had wanted a Fender Strat. I still believe it to be the most beautifully designed guitar of the modern era.”

> “What is useful to me onstage is that I get a sizzling string sound from the piezo, to give color and detail to the sustain sound I use these days for solos. One of my techniques is banging the bridge and back pickup with the palm and wrist, and I do this quickly to create a kind of thunderous explosive sound – like a heavy machine gun. The piezo plays a big part in this sound because it relays the sound of the body of the guitar being thumped.”

PG noted that the Clapton Stratocaster is modified by Gordon Wells of Knight Guitars with a Fishman Acoustic bridge pickup and an EMG preamp. Half the signal goes to a Demeter DI box to allow blending of electric and acoustic sounds.

On Effects

> “I have a T-Rex delay I use for color, a [old] Boss OD-1 for sustain and distortion, and a Demeter compressor. They are in a box [pedalboard] built by Pete Cornish.”

Notable

> He uses Ernie Ball 11-52s for his electrics and D’Addario EXP 19s (12-56) for his acoustics. His picks are any-brand heavies.

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 rewound hot pickup [rewound by Larry DiMarzio?] through a Marshall stack or old Fender tweed amp on most of the studio recordings. I used an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff to overdrive them sometimes.

“Later I got a cherry-sunburst Les Paul Custom and an old ’59 Les Paul Standard, which dominated my studio recordings in the late ‘70s. My 1978 solo album, Ace Frehley, really shows off what a Les Paul guitar can do in the studio. I recorded almost the whole album exclusively with my 1959 vintage sunburst Les Paul.

“I use Gibson Les Paul Customs live because they’re simply the best guitars for loud rock ‘n’ roll. I’ve always said, ‘Just plug a Les Paul into a Marshall amp and turn it up to 10!’ It’s a no-brainer.”

It’s a little-known fact that live, and possibly in the studio, in the early KISS days Ace’s Marshall Super Leads had 6550 power tubes, not the typical Marshall EL-34s. EL-34s are warmer and get a little more compressed and dirtier than 6550s. So it’s interesting that he would use a hot pickup and a cleaner amp.

On Anton Fig

I’ve said before here that the drumming on the 1978 solo album and on Anomaly is outstanding – really helps the songs. The guy responsible for that is Anton Fig, the Late Show with David Letterman drummer. Here’s what Ace said about Anton in the interview – interesting info:

“I met Anton around the time I was putting songs together for my first solo album when I was with KISS. He had only been in the country for a few years, because he’d grown up in Cape Town, South Africa, and had been around that amazing beat his whole life.

“Eddie Kramer heard his demos and asked if he wanted to work with me. Ironically, I had another friend, Larry Russell, who also heard Anton play and came to me independently and said he had a great drummer for me. To me, that’s karma, so I jumped at the chance to jam with him. We’ve been close friends ever since.

“The greatest things about Anton are his fills and the space he leaves. He doesn’t try to fill up everything, and I really like the fact that he plays slightly behind the beat, à la John Bonham. A lot of drummers play on the beat, and when they get excited and the adrenaline is pumping they play ahead of the beat, which gives some songs a nervous feel. I like to have a relaxed feel, and Anton always holds the song back with a solid rhythm.

“Me and Anton have been playing so long together we almost have this telepathic communication, where I’ll think something and he’ll do it, or I’ll just look at him and he’ll know what I’m thinking. Things come together so quickly, and it’s just a joy to work with him.”

Notable

> For anyone curious about Ace touring – no Anomaly tour in the U.S. yet! – here’s what he said: “I finished a successful European tour, and I’m getting ready to go out again to Australia. Dates in the States will be coming up, and I’ll be doing festivals in Europe this summer. I’ve got a Behind the Player DVD coming out, and I’ve already been writing for the next record.”

> The Ace interview – one of the best I’ve read – was done by Rich Tozzoli, one of the Anomaly engineers.