F the iPod, my brothers. Nothing sounds as good as blasting tunes out of speakers, particularly in the car. I don’t know what it is – the enclosed space, the audio engineering, the proliferation of high-end audio stuff in vehicles…. Don’t know and don’t care. The bottom line for me is that when I crank [...]

Part 1
By now no one’s exactly sure what Edward Van Halen really said or didn’t say about his tone and technique over the years. Even though lots of folks on this-here Internet thingy act like they know fo’ sho’, they either don’t or are misremembering. You really have to go back to what the man [...]

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 [...]

This March the Free Forever DVD was re-released in expanded form, this time as a 2-DVD set – which is the first I’d heard about Free Forever. I couldn’t wait to get, watch it and tell you all how it is.
Overall, it’s great. GREAT. What’s not to like? The songs are great, the singing is [...]

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, [...]

…Including Why He Slagged Gibson
Vivian Campbell has definitely left his mark on hard rock history

Long Live Dio! \m/ \m/
As a tribute to the recent passing of Ronnie James Dio (RIP RJD), I thought it would be good to take a look back at the gear a young and fiery Vivian Campbell used on the classic early ’80s Dio albums Holy Diver and The Last in Line. Tone-wise not the [...]

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 [...]

Having Less Older Gear = Better Tone?
We live in an era of guitar gear nirvana. We can literally get any piece of gear at any price point, today, overnight, whenever. If you buy from one of the big boxes, you can even get something, try it out and return it! Cool…but has all of this [...]

England’s excellent Guitarist magazine recently had a decent interview with Foreigner’s Mick Jones. It’s always great to read an interview with one of the “older” players, even if there isn’t a whole lot of gear detail – which unfortunately was the case with this interview. But there were a few details, some of which confirm [...]

Part 2: Gibson V > Tube Screamer > Soldano, Blackstar
Part 1 of this WoodyTone interview with former Quiet Riot and current Ratt guitarist Carlos Cavazo was about Carlos joining the band and writing the new album. Here in part 2 it’s all about the gear details – interesting because Carlos’ Ratt tone is quite different [...]

‘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 [...]

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 [...]