Neal Schon famously toured with Santana when he (Neal) was 15. He then bolted with a couple of bandmates and co-founded one of the biggest U.S. rock bands, Journey. He has chops and feel, plays great blues and apparently is a cool dude. What’s not to like about this guy?
Here’s more about his experience, gear [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Part 1 of this interview was about the music Joe Bonamassa has been recording lately. In part 2 below, it’s all about tone and gear (yeah!). Joe has a great ear for tone (for woody tone), so it’s always interesting to see what he has to say.
WoodyTone: There’s Black Rock, Black Country and now I’m [...]

I’m a Rush fan, particularly since I came of guitar age during the Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures era, still two of my favorite albums. I did fall away from Rush a bit over the years as they got more into synths and Alex Lifeson got more into washy, ultra-chorused, ambient sounds instead of riffs.
But [...]

…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 [...]

In September we posted that a new Slash Les Paul was in the works, along with new signature pickups. Well, with the winter NAMM show just weeks away, details about lots of products are beginning to trickle out, including the new Slash pickups. Here’s what we know.

Here’s a tip for web-minded musicians: Do a blog about your recording process. A good one. Detailed, daily, with lots of photos.
That’s what Bruce Kulick did for the recording of his BK3 CD, and if you’re at all a gear head – and what musician isn’t – after reading Bruce’s blog you’ll want to heard [...]