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 [...]

The latest of the perennial debates about Edward Van Halen’s early tone/rig, the post You Too Can Sound Like Angus and this AmpGAS! post got me thinking: Can anyone with decent chops – say, “Running With the Devil,” “You Really Got Me,” “Dance the Night Away,” maybe “Everybody Wants Some” and “Unchained” – get close [...]

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 [...]

Today we continue with John Suhr “talking” – actually posting, in a looooong thegearpage.net thread – about his experience with EVH’s magical Marshall Super Lead amp. We pick it up with John’s comments to some doubters:

John Suhr!
A hundred years from now there will be mythology about Edward Van Halen’s early VH signal chain. But right now the unending discussions about it (which I am not denigrating!) are largely rumor or misinformation resulting from some version of the telephone game: someone heard/read something, told someone else, etc.
Mostly. But once in a [...]

Close-up pics of the prototype Slash signature Marshall AFD100 amp were recently posted by user “stoof” at mylespaul.com. Veeeeeery interesting, especially if you’re a Slash fan and maybe an amp builder – or just want to try his knob settings.

Voodoo!
I had another satellite radio inspirational moment yesterday when Sabbath’s “Voodoo” came on in the car. What a tune. Great singing and what a frickin’ nasty guitar tone. Sounded like uber-preamp gain with a cocked wah but not too fizzed out or mushy. So I went on the info hunt…
…and of course since no one [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

And finally, here are the final highlights from the April 1980 Guitar Player cover interview of Edward Van Halen.
Is [having a lot of Marshall heads live] to refine the sound?
It’s to make a good tone even louder. Some people get a sound like an amplified AM [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]