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 [...]

Part 2 (Here’s Part 1)
Warren DeMartini is yet another example of the fact that much of someone’s tone is in the hands. I say that because Warren played an alder/maple/maple super strat with a Floyd Rose bridge and Seymour Duncan JB humbucker through a 100w Marshall head into Marshall cabs. A typical setup for the [...]

Plaid Blues, 4xEL84s, Know Anyone Who Owns a Hiwatt?

I’m surfing around, minding my own bidness, when I come across this line: “What do you call an amp that has 10 tubes, five transformers, user-controlled variable feedback, variable bias and a built-in Variac?”
I’m thinking, I don’t know…a science experiment? The last act of a tone-desperate man? [...]

As a kid in high school in the ’80s (early ’80s!), Jake E. Lee was on my list of favorite guitarists – another one of the seemingly endless supply of amazing, cool-looking axemen coming out of LA. I wondered how Ozzy found these guys: Were they lined up on street corners? Hanging out under palm [...]

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.

Even though it’s the Year of the Tiger, here’s another Ratt post – this time on Robbin Crosby, who died some years ago of drug addiction. This info, from the April 1987 Guitar Player, is not comprehensive gear-wise but sheds some light on his sound and on what he and Warren used on Dancing Undercover.
All [...]

I remember the Guitar Player magazine with Warren DeMartini on the cover – because it never arrived. I remember looking forward to it, I remember seeing it in guitar stores, but it never arrived at my house even though I was a subscriber. That’s how guitar-crazy the ’80s were: someone at the post office stole [...]

New ‘Signature’ Pickup…
You may be aware that Gibson recently announced two new signature Angus Young Gibson SGs. One is a custom shop model – the Angus Young SG Standard – and the other is a Gibson production model that has the same name minus the Standard. We can learn about what kind of tone Angus [...]

If you follow all things Seymour Duncan, you will have seen a couple weeks ago that the company announced that Seymour himself has been working on Angus Young’s guitars. Here’s what was said:
“We’ve been working behind the scenes with Angus Young for the past year. His tech, Takumi Suetsugu, contacted Seymour Duncan about dialing in [...]

And Why Hatchet’s First Album Sounded Like Skynyrd
I still love Molly Hatchet’s tune “Flirtin’ With Disaster”…and I know I’m not alone! A great song, fast tempo, some great guitar-playing, multiple leads – separated by the southern lead singer whistle which means “c’mon and play something” – harmony leads, it’s all there.
Tone of the woody variety [...]

Slash signature Les Pauls must be selling pretty well because word is that the Gibson Custom Shop is working on another one, Slash’s fifth by my count. I believe that would make Slash the guy with the most signature Les Pauls ever:
> In the late ’90s the Gibson Custom Shop produced the Slash Snakepit Les [...]

Vid: Ty Goes Through His Current Rig!
In terms of Ty Tabor’s “transitional” gear, I won’t go into the gory details here, but for a long while – including King’s X’s latest album, XV – Ty used Yamaha guitars: the Les Paul-like AES series (mostly the 920), and two signature models, one of which had a [...]

Lots of websites have been jumping on the recently issued, and “lovingly crafted,” Gibson Pearly Gates replica, but haven’t mentioned the most important stuff: specs and pics! So here they are.
But first, the MSRPs of the three versions of this bad-boy:

Based on a Jeff Beck Prototype

Updated 7/3/09, 9:10 am EST at bottom of story
Finally some closure (understanding of) the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop George Lynch Signature Super V pickup. The below info is from a recent thread on the Seymour Duncan forum, which referred to the following language from this post:

Wayne Charvel Suggested an Ash Body to Ed?
Here are some more Edward Van Halen “back in the day” tidbits, though not as far back as last week’s article. We’ll go from farthest back to most recent. As with all Ed-related info, it’s best taken with a grain of salt because there’s been so much mis- [...]

Too Nervous to Meet Clapton?!

George Lynch is a gain maniac. Always has been, WAY before the Mesa crowd stormed the gates of rock. He was using solid state Randalls before anyone even heard about Dimebag Darrell (RIP, bro).
So I read with interest recent comments he made in a Guitar Center interview. In it he also [...]

New Mob CD, Super V Pickup Info, T&N Trivia
Surfed around a little and picked up the following about George Lynch, for all the fellow Lynch-heads out there.
The New Mob
If you don’t have Lynch Mob’s first CD, Wicked Sensation – recorded after Dokken bit the dust – you should get it. The songs are great, if [...]