It’s generally accepted that, rock star-owned guitars possibly excepted, the priciest guitars in the world are 1959 ‘burst Gibson Les Pauls. Apparently they sound great, feel great, play great, and they’re old and rare – all amounting to guitars worth a few hundred thousand dollars each. At times I’ve seen prices quoted in the half-mil [...]
Leaving the Allmans Soon? Lots of slide typically doesn’t do a whole lot for me. But I do love what Duane Allman, Sonny Landreth, Derek Trucks and a few others can do with a slide. They are truly expressing themselves, not just playing the guitar. And they’ve got TONE – of a Woody nature, of [...]
Before the Chickenfoot show last night, my buddy and I hit the guitar stores on 48th Street – the three of them that remain, anyway.
Have you ever seen and heard Jimmy Page talking about his number-one Les Paul? Well now you can. I’m sure Pagey fans will know this info already, but may not have seen this video, dug up from YouTube by the good folks at fretbase.com. A few quick highlights of the video:
‘An Angry Moore….’ California’s Contra-Costa Times newspaper took the time to pursue this story as far as it can be pursued right now. It managed to get in touch with both parties, so there’s some good stuff in the article. Bottom line: It still looks like Ronnie Montrose will have a tough time getting “his” [...]
Part 1: Blackfoot and Skynyrd Gear I love Blackfoot. One of the best bands ever to be on a stage, period. If you missed ‘em, I feel for you. It was all good ‘ol rock ‘n’ roll: loud, fast, Les Pauls and Explorers through Marshalls, hitting the skins hard. No BS, no ballads – during [...]
What if you owned a 1959 ‘burst Gibson Les Paul, one of the most valuable and sweet-sounding guitars ever, and found out that decades ago it had been stolen from a famous player – and now that famous player wanted it back? What would you do, presuming you had bought it in what you thought [...]
No Les Paul for the Dead Gibson.com continues to make every effort to do justice to musicians who play their instruments, the latest being an interview with Warren Haynes. Warren, as we all know, is a player’s player – meaning a working musician with lots of talent, a thirst for playing and an ear for [...]
No One Touches Sykes’ Les Paul! I happened upon a cool, recent interview on PremierGuitar.com of Scott Gorham. Good stuff there, but not a lot on his Thin Lizzy-era gear, maybe because it was Les Pauls and Marshalls and that’s it. But I had to find out, which led me to a Performing Musician interview [...]
Pearly Replica! And the Band Was Named After… Gibson.com recently published a so-so interview with Billy Gibbons. It’s always cool to hear from the Rev, but there isn’t much new in this piece. Still, it’s always good to read what comes from famous guitarists, if for no other reason than to see if it matches [...]
Meant to post this when the May issue of Guitar Player came out – just found it again. Here’s the Scorpions’ Matthias Jabs – whom I always liked, playing-wise more than tone-wise) – on how he seasoned one of his Les Pauls. And for the record, I did search for a photo pf him playing [...]
The folks at PremierGuitar.com recently had a good interview with Alex Lifeson, who after using Les Pauls back in the early days of Rush (Alex is a huge Jimmy Page fan), went to Gibson ES-355s, then did the super strat thing for a while, then played PRSs and now is sporting a sweet-looking Les Paul [...]
After doing that research about Joe’s gear for Wednesday’s post, I realized there wasn’t anything about his guitar. I know he plays a custom Gibson Les Paul now, but didn’t know the specs. Nor, importantly, did I know why he switched from a huge arsenal of Fenders to Les Pauls. Luckily someone at Gibson.com asked [...]
Here’s a vid of Ace Frehley tracking a solo for the song “Pain In the Neck,” a new tune off his upcoming Anomaly CD. Not the greatest vid or sound quality, and it would’ve been nice to see Ace close up, but it’s better than nothing! The style is all Ace, which is cool, and [...]
Treble Booster Was Key, Paranoid on a Les Paul Tony back in the day, with ample Laneys. There’s some good stuff on the Gibson.com website (are you listening, Fender?), though you have to spend time surfing to find it. Recently I tripped over a mid-2008 interview with Tony Iommi about recording Paranoid, a classic album [...]
Plus a gear explanation! Another good find by the folks at Gibson.com, this time of rare Jeff Beck vids on YouTube. Gibson is promoting the new Jeff Beck signature oxblood Les Paul, so they’re naturally doing quite a few Beck-related items of late. This one is way cool for any Beck, Les Paul or tone [...]
From the folks at Gibson.com – who do a heck of a lot better job with their website than their Fender counterparts – are these tidbits of WoodyTone detail about Duane Allman, Eric Clapton (his Gibby-related “woman tone”), and fleet-fingered tonemeister Joe Bonamassa.
Gibson must be doing well with their reproductions of famous guitars because it just announced another one: the Jeff Beck “blow by Blow” Oxblood Les Paul. Very cool if you’ve got the $$$. Gibson.com has the full story and specs but here’s the story behind Jeff acquiring the heavily modded guitar, which I didn’t know:
Gotta admit, the vid looks pretty cool – in a techy kind of way. What the heck is the Gibson Dark Fire? Until today, I had no idea other than it was a newfangled $3,499 MSRP Les Paul crammed with electronic gizmos, the shipping or QC (quality control) of which caused delays in shipping the [...]
Stairway on a Tele? In the category of “how the hell did I miss this” is a semi-recent interview published on Gibson.com titled “Jimmy Page’s Recording Secrets.” Say what? Didn’t want to get my hopes up about learning some cool tidbits from one of rock’s masters of recording and composing, but I guess I did [...]
Full Wolfgang specs below! It’s almost time for the winter NAMM convention, so details about new gear are starting to come out here and there. One of the hottest items in terms of buzz is of course Edward Van Halen’s new EVH Wolfgang guitar. What Ed said about it to Guitar World’s fawning staff has [...]
Do you subscribe to Guitar Player? I did for a long time, and then didn’t for many years. I clearly remember – as clearly as I can remember these days – an issue with a guy from The Cure on the cover. That was it for me. That was diversity for the sake of it, [...]
If you’ve heard the long solo at the end of Freebird, you’ve probably tried to figure out how to play it. And since that piece was recorded and played in the days before video ubiquity, you might have assumed – like I did – that that outro solo was split between Skynyrd’s great axemen, Allen [...]
Ace Frehley, one of my heroes (my first guitar hero) and a guy who always seemed to want to do high-tech stuff even before there was such a thing as high tech, finally has a website. Yeah! But… …while it’s very cool to go to acefrehley.com and hear his tune Ozone auto-play (as well as [...]
Hear a Pat Travers tune on the internet radio recently, one I hadn’t hear in a long while: Gettin’ Betta. Awesome tune (YouTube links to it below). Reminds me a lot of Extreme, so Nuno Bettencourt obviously borrowed liberally from Pat. Back in the day Pat used a Gibson Melody Maker with full-size Gibson humbuckers. [...]
I went surfing and found some info on Audley that WoodyToners will enjoy. The excerpts were taken from two articles: here and here. The articles are a bit old, so some of the info might be dated. If you know where to find more or more-current Audley info or interviews, please let me know. Influences [...]
Mel Galley of Whitesnake fame died on the 1st. He died of cancer, knew he was going out soon, and handled it like we all probably wish we would in the same circumstances: fearlessly and at peace. He was 60 years old, and in my opinion is responsible for one of the woodiest and well-recorded [...]
I’m talking about the pre-Faithfully, pre-uber-ballad Journey, which toed the line between old-school rock, blues and just a little pop. To this day, Departure is one of my favorite albums — uh, CDs. The guitar work is great (Neal Schon, of course), the keyboards are great (Gregg Rolie — great), the vocal melodies are great, [...]
I’ve started looking into Tommy Bolin. I’ve heard the name for years, but never looked into him. Still haven’t much, but when researching Bolin on YouTube, I found out that he must have replaced Joe Walsh in the James Gang, and my reaction was: Wait a minute. Joe Walsh? James Gang? There HAD to be [...]
Did You Read the Esquire EVH Piece Yet?
We’re going to have to wait yet another week for the interview with Kevin Holbrook of YMI5150 guitars because we have yet another newsworthy event. This time it’s the recent Esquire interview with Edward Van Halen. Now before you EVH fans get to getting your hopes up, let’s bear in mind the same ol’s: 1. [...]
Show ‘Review’: Van Halen at the Garden
Took my 10-year-old son to see Van Halen at Madison Square Garden in New York City on March 1. I think he was more excited to see them than I was – not that I wasn’t, but this was the mighty Van Halen whose tunes the both of us have copped, jammed to and listened [...]
Thoughts On Van Halen’s New One
Been listening to Van Halen’s A Different Kind of Truth over and over and over for a while now. Couple reasons: 1. It’s great, and I’m a teenager again (minus a bunch o’ hair), running up to my room to put 1984 on the turntable. 2. Sometime after X listens (X = 1,000? 10,000?) things [...]
So everyone’s asking me, “Where the F is your review of the new Van Halen?” And I’m like, “I’m workin’ on it, man!” One reason it took a little bit is I wanted to catch up with Pete Thorn to get his comments on the tracks. If you haven’t heard of him, Pete is an [...]
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 [...]
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