Norse Guitar Feeds

Back in 2012, Jason Isbell realised that he’d never find the solution to his problems at the bottom of a bottle. Following a stint in rehab, the musician swore off booze for good – and made it his personal mission to conjure up a sober record better than anything his drunk counterpart had ever released.

By transforming his sobriety into a game of one-upmanship, Isbell was pushed to pen the best tracks of his career. That’s how 2013’s Southeastern, a record he describes as a “career highlight”, came to be. “I really wanted sobriety to improve my work. It became almost competitive – sober me was competing with drunk me to whoop my own ass at songwriting,” he told Uncut in 2023.

• READ MORE: Jason Isbell thinks his Martin guitars are sort of “like a laptop” – and his justification actually makes sense

“When I was writing before, I’d get up at noon, have coffee, aspirin and some liquor, start writing at one and then at three or four it was time to go to the bar,” he admitted. “With Southeastern I was getting up, making a pot of coffee and working until it was done.”

Without the need to battle a hangover, Isbell’s output increased drastically. He’d work on more tracks in the day, and have more quality tracks to pick and choose between. “That meant that I had 12 great songs instead of just two [on the record],” he explained. “There were Cover Me Up, Elephant and Travelling Alone, but it was an entire record of the best I could do.”

When digging into Southeastern, plenty of tracks see Isbell tackling his boozy demons. For instance, Songs That She Sang In The Shower quite clearly sees him singing “so I pace, and I pray, and I repeat the mantras that might keep me clean for the day”.

Eight years on, Isbell would re-address those early years battling with sobriety with his 400 Unit band. Nearly a decade into his recovery, 2020’s Reunions record saw Isbell appreciating just how far he had come. “There was enough time behind me [and that version of me], so felt comfortable looking at the past on songs like It Gets Easier,” he said.

“I had worried there was risk in romanticising the way my life had been, but now I felt that risk had passed and I was stable,” he continued. “I wanted to look back at my life without romanticising it but also without beating myself around the head.”

In terms of Isbell’s most recent releases, he worked with Martin Guitars at the end of last year on two new signature models, the Jason Isbell 0-17 and the 0-10E Retro acoustics. Both were inspired by his beloved pre-war 0-17 guitar heard across the entirety of his 2025 record, Foxes In The Snow.

The post “Sober me was competing with drunk me to whoop my own ass”: Jason Isbell on why quitting drinking made him a better songwriter appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

David Ellefson has shared his thoughts on the final Megadeth album, and his main critique is that it feels more like a Dave Mustaine solo record.

Ellefson, who these days plays in a number of metal bands, was fired from Megadeth in 2021. Though he says he’s “not on the Megadeth hate train” and is busy focusing on his own work, he believes it doesn’t feel like Megadeth’s retirement, only that of frontman Mustaine.

• READ MORE: Dave Mustaine says he won’t have ex-members on Megadeth’s final tour because some have been “saying bad things in the press”: “Why would I want to play with those guys?”

The final and self-titled album from Megadeth was launched last month, and included their own rendition of Metallica’s Ride The Lightning. Mustaine was let go from Metallica in 1983 but received a writing credit on the song, and has previously said that he wanted to record his version of the song out of respect.

In the latest episode of his own podcast, The David Ellefson Show, Ellefson says he’s rather surprised by it [via Blabbermouth]: “Dave speaks about it now like they were all sitting in the room writing Ride The Lightning together. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the details of it, but it seems to me if it was really a finished song, it would’ve been on [1983’s] Kill ‘Em All. But it wasn’t. It [came out a year] later. Did Dave have a participation? Yeah, but it seems to me more like that song was sort of put together after he was out of the group.”

He later adds, “I, of all people, am not on the Megadeth hate train. I know the fanbase is divided on this new album. I hear about it. Our singer, Chaz Leon from Kings Of Thrash, he’s a big Megadeth fan, big Dave fan, and he tells me the fanbase is a bit divided on it… I don’t care. I’ve really moved on from Dave, from Megadeth.”

Ellefson goes on to add some praise however, calling Megadeth’s guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari “a great player” and “the story of Megadeth right now”. But overall, he feels that Megadeth is not what it once was.

“I still look at it as Dave’s retirement because I still think of Megadeth as our band,” he shares. “I think it’s a sin to just go off and claim it as his own… I hear it and I go, okay, this is a Dave solo record. This is Dave and his new band, Dave and his new guys.

“It says Megadeth, so obviously it gets all the attention, but realistically, I hear it and to me it just doesn’t sound like Megadeth. It sounds like Dave doing what Dave does, but with a different set of guys. And this is Dave’s retirement.”

You can watch the full episode below:

The post David Ellefson shares his thoughts on the final Megadeth album: “I hear it and go, ‘This is a Dave solo record…’ It doesn’t sound like Megadeth” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

In the age of social media, one perfectly executed shredding clip can transform a guitarist’s life. In the cases of Machine Gun Kelly guitarist Sophie Lloyd and The Smashing Pumpkin’s Kiki Wong, going viral even has the potential to skyrocket some to rockstardom.

However, Rabea Massaad believes that the constant pursuit of success has lead to a rise in “fake” guitar playing in online videos.

“What’s the point in writing something so difficult that you can’t even play all the way through?” he asks. “Miming over the technical stuff because you can’t actually play it, I think that that’s fucking shit.”

• READ MORE: “I don’t want to go hear a bunch of C and D tracks”: Should bands play their biggest hits live? Nikki Sixx thinks so – and here’s why

While he doesn’t name any guitarists, he notes how plenty of online riffers have been exposed recently for “faking what they’re doing and getting a big name off it”, whether that’s earning followers, money or even signature guitars.

Of course, miming your way through a guitar solo has its time and place – top tier guitarists have been miming their way through music video shoots for years. However, the difference is when a social media star is pretending to be performing technical licks “off the cuff” live. “Playing insane guitar parts suggesting that it is in the moment… I think that that’s misleading,” Massaad says.

As more impossibly perfect clips circulate, it also raises the standards of guitar playing to unrealistic levels. He notes how this “unobtainable level of technicality that doesn’t really exist in the real world” could have dire consequences on the next generation of guitarists.

To illustrate his point, Massaad imagines a young guitarist watching a perfect viral clip, assuming they “have to reach that level” to be good. Little do they know, Massaad says, the guitarist on their screen hasn’t even “reached that level” of “unobtainable perfection” they’re pretending to perform.

However, that kid might not clock if someone is pretending, leading to them giving up at the first hurdle, thinking “it’s not worth the effort because they’re never going to get that good”.

“It feels shit to basically feel like you’re not good enough, that you have to [re-record something] so many times just to get it right for this one minute clip,” Massaad says. “It’s exhausting.”

As Massaad notes, some of the best guitarists fumble here and there. The imperfections are what add “soul” to your performing. He points to Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt as an example: “There are plenty of live videos out there of him making mistakes and playing bad notes and being a bit sloppy… but it’s cool because he’s performing and he’s loving it.”

“Just embrace the imperfections,” he says. “Some of the best solos and best performances out there have imperfections. It’s part of being human!”

Faking clips for social media has been a hot topic as of late. YouTuber Jacobra Records even released a 40-minute-long video alleging that viral Japanese guitarist Ichika Nito mimes in some of his online performance videos.

Considering Nito is a high-profile guitarist online, with Unprocessed’s Manuel Gardner Fernandes even picking him out as a viral shredder to check out last month, the claims sparked a frenzy online. Fellow YouTuber Charles Berthoud added his own video response musing over the allegations, reflecting on where miming can sometimes be acceptable.

He argues that it all comes down to intention. If you just want to share a track, or show off an interesting riff you wrote, that can be okay. However, if you’re miming and the video is focusing on how impressive your “live performance” is rather than your writing, Berthoud believes it is outright misleading.

“All of this complicated issue just comes down to ‘are you deceiving your audience?’” he says. “There are obvious ways of deceiving your audience, like labelling a video ‘live performance’ even though it’s not actually live.”

However, even if an artist doesn’t try to pretend something is performed ‘live’, they should still consider whether they could actually perform what they’re miming live. “You’ve gotta be very honest with yourself about this [and think] ‘could I play it 90-95% perfect most of the time?’” he says. “If the answer to that question is ‘no’, then I would say maybe don’t post that video, or at least don’t present the video in a way that makes it look like you could.”

The post “Miming over technical stuff cause you can’t actually play it… I think that’s f**king s**t”: Rabea Massaad slams the “endless pursuit of perfection” that grips guitar culture appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Teenage sibling duo The Molotovs have taken the music world by storm over the last year. Despite their young ages, Matt, 17, and Issey, 19, have played more than 600 shows, both in their home town of London and around the world.

• READ MORE: The 12 new guitar albums you should all be excited for in 2026

They’ve shared stages with Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter, Blondie and The Libertines, and last summer won support slots with Iggy Pop and The Damned in the US. Back in the UK, they will tour arenas with YUNGBLUD this summer.

“The name comes from the Molotov cocktail, which was used as a weapon of resistance,” Matt begins, likening the moniker to the raw energy they bring to the stage (they’re currently on a huge headline tour of grassroots UK venues) as much as their confrontational lyrics; “Do I frustrate you like chewing gum stuck in your hair?” from the intense Get A Life is just one example that stands out.

“The fact that it’s a ‘cocktail’ also represents all our diverse influences coming together to create our sound,” Matt goes on to explain of their frenetic riffs, which come from his Rickenbacker 330s and Issey’s Rickenbacker 4001.

Of the former he says, “I have a Special Edition Senior from 2003 – it’s a ‘road worn’ series and came with a Bigsby, but I don’t use it… it just goes out of tune too often.” Issey, meanwhile, says her bass of choice has “a great kind of punchy sound; because we’re a three-piece on stage, the bass parts need to seem like guitar riffs themselves, and this bass is perfect for that.” Paul McCartney used one, too, she points out.

Image: Derek Bremner

The New Wave

The combination of the two – as well as a rapid-fire live drummer – helps them to cross genres and appeal to different generations. “I don’t think we’re really surprised by it,” Matt says of their mixed-age fanbase.

“The older crowd, who were about in the 70s and 80s, remember the energy around punk and new wave and appreciate seeing that same fury and passion carrying on nowadays,” he suggests. “For the young people, it feels like something is really happening for them because it’s the first time they’ve ever seen it.” Taking all of this into account, Matt is confident that “they feel ownership over our group – and that’s exactly the way the gig-going baton is supposed to work”, he attests.

All of his and sister Issey’s hard work has culminated in the creation of their debut album, which has just been released on Marshall’s in-house record label. Rather than sitting down with a specific idea, Matt says the record has come together naturally over the past five years. “I’ve never been writing with an album in mind,” he says. “I was only writing for the band and for me, just songs to play live so that people would take us more seriously as a group.”

Nonetheless, the duo ended up with 11 songs that “summed up the environment I was growing up with”. Issey goes on to say that she wants people to have “a feeling of hope and optimism” when they hear Wasted On Youth. “We want them to feel as though their situation can be changed, that it’s malleable, and that change can come from yourself first.”

Solutions To Your Problems

While she and Matt have high ambitions for the album – they and the label are angling for a top-ten chart position – their goals run deeper than sales and streaming numbers. “We want to re-instill a sense of hope in young people and get them away from drudgery and apathy,” Issey offers…

“A lot of mainstream guitar bands now can be quite insular and more wallowing,” she suggests. “And while we’re still addressing the common problems and frustrations and anxieties of young people in our songs, we want to give them a solution as well, and a kind of way out.”

Despite feeling as though the guitar scene could do with a bit of a jolt, The Molotovs are nothing but positive about the live scene right now. “It’s thriving,” Matt says, adding that some of those who attend their gigs have gone on to pick up a guitar afterwards. “A couple of the old boys have brought their sons along, and they’ve told me they catch their son playing the guitar afterwards trying to learn some of our songs. It’s really nice to see that multi-generational thing.”

Image: Kane Layland

Issey goes on to say that the London scene in particular has “a real vibrancy”, suggesting that, post-lockdown, a lot of young people found the time to harness their craft. “Now what you’re seeing is this new wave of bands – this kind of third wave – with a huge surge of talent coming through. And where do The Molotovs fit into all this?

“We’re one of many bands going at it on the live circuit,” she says, “but we’ve managed to break free of just the London circuit and start to move abroad and to the rest of the UK.” Throughout January, The Molotovs have been storming grassroots venues up and down the country, showing their support for DIY.

As for the future, hers and Matt’s sights are set extremely high. “We’re looking for this album to go into the top ten,” Issey manifests, adding that their main focus will also be live performance. “We’re rooted in that, so we want to constantly increase our audience, meet more people, and play with more bands.”

Image: Aoife Hyland

For Matt, success means two things: growth, and community. “We want to get the gigs bigger, and to be able to spread our message – it’s all about youth, almost like a youth movement.”

“We also want our reputation to get to the point where we can work with other people who are on our same wavelength,” Issey continues, adding that they hope to “build a really good team around us that allows us to execute our creative vision as effectively as possible”. Matt adds: “And we want that team to be on board with the vision as it progresses.”

While there’s no doubt that Matt and Issey know exactly where they want to take the band, it’s also important to look back at the guitarists and bass players who helped shape them:

Steve Cradock

Matt: “It’s just his versatility. He’s played with everyone – Ocean Colour Scene, Paul Weller, Amy Winehouse. The way he rides the toggle switch on his Les Paul Goldtop live is amazing.”

Paul Weller

Matt: “He’s a really good guitarist, not just a songwriter, with a tasteful choice of notes and melodies. He never overdid it; he’s one of those melodic players. The thin Rickenbacker tone in The Jam suited his punky, slashing style perfectly.”

Image: Jeanie Jean

Chet Atkins

Matt: “This is my rogue one. His style is never something I’d play now, but I just really like listening to it.”

Norman Cook (The Housemartins)

Issey: “I love his melodic, quirky basslines that really push the track forward.”

Johnny Marr

Issey: “I love his work with The Smiths—he even wrote a load of Andy Rourke’s incredible basslines. I often play Bigmouth Strikes Again in soundchecks.”

The post The Molotovs want to be the solution to the problem of “insular and wallowing” guitar bands – this is how they’re going to do it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Learn how to use shapes you already know as a practical tool for soloing.

Press Release

Source: Mark Pucci Media

Three of today’s deepest, most decorated acoustic blues masters reunite to summon ancestral spirits with songs both long remembered and newly created on Fight On! True Blues Vol. 2, set for release April 17th on Yellow Dog Records, distributed by MVD Distribution.  Advance music and album pre-orders here: https://yellowdogrecords.com/trueblues.

Even as they step back in time, Guy Davis, Corey Harris and Alvin Youngblood Hart—who won ardent acclaim for their first True Blues project in 2013—prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that African American blues remains as vital and vibrant as ever. These three first met at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1996 and are now coming together nearly 30 years later for a powerful follow-up to their acclaimed first True Blues collaboration. The album features nine tracks blending traditional material (Charley Patton, Rev. Gary Davis, Virginia songsters) with original compositions.

“I have a photograph somewhere of Corey, Guy and myself at the Chicago Blues Festival, 1996,” remembers Alvin Youngblood Hart. “A time when we were being touted by the ‘Blues Establishment’ as ‘The New Saviors Of The Blues.’ So whatever man, it was destiny that we’d end up doing something like True Blues. This new album is a continuation, or reunion of the project we started over a decade ago.”

“The thematic tie of the record lies in the fact that we are three African-American bluesmen who are fighting to maintain our cultural legacy and heritage,” adds Corey Harris. “Each of these nine tracks represents a contemporary image of traditional Black lifeways.”

As for the album’s title, Guy Davis states: “The fight we are waging is to keep this precious music form alive. To us, there is not so much difference between our arrangements of blues classics and our newly created work. It’s all connected to the ancestral spirit.”

Recorded separately in Virginia, Mississippi and New York, these soul-stirring performances include a Jimmy Strother banjo song migrated to Piedmont-style guitar (Harris’s “Fight On”), an inspired reworking of Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree,” reimagined as if Blind Willie McTell were playing the guitar (Davis’s “Everything I Got Is Done In Pawn”), and the first Charley Patton song that Hart ever learned, “Screamin’ and Hollerin’.” Even the original compositions here are steeped in history, albeit personal history. Harris wrote “What’s That I Smell?” with his time spent in New Orleans in mind—specifically, his nights playing in a joint called The Funky Butt. Davis laments the necessity of a life on the road, away from family, in the disarmingly confessional “See Me When You Can.” And Hart drew inspiration from another great bluesman, his friend Henry Townsend (who died in 2006 at the age of 96), to write “If the Blues Was Money,” which he performs here on a Sears Silvertone-branded 1950s Kay flat-top guitar.

Raw, heartfelt and sounding absolutely nothing like a dusty museum piece, Fight On!: True Blues Vol. 2 is a loving celebration of shared music and friendship, a long-dreamed-about project that now, countless tours and conversations later, finally arrives.

True Blues Vol. 2 Album Track Listing and Credits

	1. We Are Almost Down to the Shore (Fight On) (2:34 – Traditional/Jimmy Strother)
	2. Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues (2:57 – Charley Patton)
	3. See Me When You Can (3:23 – Guy Davis)
	4. What’s That I Smell (2:50 – Corey Harris)
	5. If The Blues Was Money (3:43 – Alvin Youngblood Hart)
	6. Deep Sea Diver (1:54 – Guy Davis)
	7. I Belong To the Band (2:06 – Reverend Gary Davis)
	8. Highway 61 (5:23 – Traditional/Fred McDowell)
	9. Everything I Got is Done In Pawn (2:36 – Guy Davis/Elizabeth Cotten)

“We Are Almost Down to the Shore (Fight On)”, “What’s That I Smell”, and “I Belong to the Band”
Performed by Corey Harris; Six-string acoustic parlour guitar by Bob Gernandt; All tracks in standard tuning. Recorded by Chris Whitley, Stable Roots Productions, Virginia.

Corey Harris: “Fight On” is a song by the legendary Virginia songster Jimmy Strother. I chose it because I like the lyrics of the song and the composer lived not far from my home in Virginia. It was written on the banjo, but I adapted it to the guitar, giving it a Piedmont blues vibe. “What’s That I Smell” is an original song I wrote about my time in New Orleans, playing at a local bar called the ‘Funky Butt.’ “I Belong To the Band” is a song I learned from recordings of Rev. Gary Davis, one of my influences in gospel and spiritual music.

“Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues”, “If The Blues Was Money” and “Highway 61”
Performed by Alvin Youngblood Hart; 1950s Kay flat-top guitar (Sears Silvertone-branded), purchased in Tulsa circa 2007; Tuned a whole step down, using standard tuning, Open G, and Open E.
Recorded by Justin Showah, The Voyager’s Rest, Water Valley, Mississippi.

Alvin Youngblood Hart: “Screamin’ & Hollerin’ is the first Charley Patton song I attempted to learn in my late teens, so I’ve been carryin’ it around awhile. “If The Blues Was Money” is a song I wrote in the 20th century. It was inspired by my friend Henry J. Townsend, who made his first records at age 19 in 1929. So much for the ‘old bluesman’ stereotype. Henry was a teenager and rockin’! “Highway 61” I learned from my friend David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards. It was a great joy to be out with him. We worked together on many festivals, both domestically and abroad. I have lived in Memphis, Natchez, New Orleans… US Highway 61 figures prominently.”

“See Me When You Can”, “Deep Sea Diver” and “Everything I Got is Done in Pawn”
Performed by Guy Davis; Harmony Stella 12-String (1960s) on ‘Everything I Got is Done in Pawn’
Harmony Sovereign (1960s) on ‘Deep Sea Diver’ and ‘See Me When You Can’. Recorded by Longma龙马, Home Field Studios, Bronx, New York. Mixed and Mastered by Jason “JJ Boogie” Reichert, Atlanta, Georgia.

Guy Davis: “See Me When You Can” is a song I wrote for my grandmother many years ago, reflecting the difficulty of being on the road and being where I can help out my family. “Deep Sea Diver” is a song I wrote which extols the virtues of a medicine show huckster named Handsome Jack Lodi. “Everything I Got Is Done in Pawn” is a reworking of Elizabeth Cotten’s song, ‘Shake Sugaree.’ I added more verses and tried to imagine the guitar as if played by Blind Willie McTell.”

Hi-res cover: http://www.markpuccimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/True-Blues-Vol.-2-Hi-Res-Cover-scaled.jpg

Corey Harris Photo: http://www.markpuccimedia.com/Corey-Harris-PR-1-by-Craig-Grossman-scaled.jpeg

Alvin Youngblood Hart Photo: http://www.markpuccimedia.com/Alvin-Youngblood-Hart-PR-1-by-Matt-White-scaled.jpg

Guy Davis Photo: http://www.markpuccimedia.com/Guy-Davis-PR-1-by-Martial-Davis-scaled.jpg

Websites:

Corey Harris:                      https://coreyharrisonline.com

Alvin Youngblood Hart: https://ayhmusic.com/

Guy Davis:                          http://guydavis.com

Yellow Dog Records:      https://yellowdogrecords.com/trueblues

By:  Rick Landers

Over the years, blues-rock artist, Linwood Taylor, has forged ahead nailing down gigs, improving his game and building a reputation as an A-list musician in the Washington, D.C. area with a deep music history rarely fully appreciated.

The town and its surrounding areas have been the home of gifted musicians as diverse as: Tim Buckley, Danny Gatton, Roberta Flack, Yasmin Williams, Eva Cassidy, Roy Buchanan, Dave Grohl, the Bad Brains, and as historic as Duke Ellington and John Phillips Sousa.

Linwood performs his own eclectic mix of rock, blues, jazz, and more, inspired by disciplined and talented musicians he heard on local radio, as well as in D.C.’s live music hubs, like The Bayou, Blues Alley, The Birchmere, JV’s, The Twist and Shout, The Wax Museum, The Cellar Door and more. And in his quest to achieve not only success, but credibilty, he would reach out to meet musicians he admired. He’d find himself on stage with the likes of Curtis King, Dave Moore, Luther Allison,  Lonnie Mack, the Blues Brothers, and his friend and mentor, Joe Louis Walker.

Albums would follow as he navigated the music business and stamped out recordings of his own, and was featured on those of others. Head to the grindstone, Taylor released: Live At Colonial Seafood, (1991) Take This and Stay Out Of Trouble (1993), Make Room For The Paying Customer (2000), and his more current, Two Sides, while also being featured on GeminiiDRAGON’s latest, Moonlight Movin’ & Groovin’.

“Explosive guitar solos ….  With a classic rock feel that sounds familiar, and plenty of twists and turns to keep things fresh ….” – Scott Paddock, Mobtown Music Guide

“One of Washington’s Leading Blues Guitarists” – Washington Post Magazine

I met Linwood at one of the D.C. areas longest running and most ambitious live venues, JV’s Restaurant, that has attracted the attention of legendary musicians since it opened in 1947, including: The Seldom Scene, the Steve Miller Band, Tony Rice, the Country Gentleman, who’ve stopped by to enjoy the entertainment and-or to entertain. He pulled out his two guitars, a vintage ’54 Les Paul Gold Top and a ’58 Les Paul re-issue, opening up our discussion about guitars and anecdotes about musicians he’s worked alongside. Afterward, he stepped on stage to nail down some riveting licks to the pleasure of JV’s crowd. And my first thought was, “This guy’s the real deal”.

Guitar International is honored to feature Linwood Taylor, Jr., a treasured musician not only in his local D.C. haunts, but one who’s made a name for himself while on tour at the Sanremo Festival in Italy; the Czech Republic; Australia; and the private Mustique Island in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

******

Rick Landers: Let’s start out from the beginning when you were growing up, what kind of music were you listening to? I know that typically we had the Top 40.  How does that influence you now, as a musician?

Linwood Taylor: Oh, man. No, it just was whatever was around. I mean, I was a kid. My father was a music fan, I still have his albums, as well as mine.  We had  big band jazz, you know, that kind of thing. That was in my house, but we also had rock ‘n roll. We also had jazz, like organ jazz, you know, Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, and all of that. I can remember Chubby Checker and that kind of thing. “The Twist” and “Hound Dog”…Leiber and Stoller wrote that, but Big Mama Thornton had a hit with it first.

And then I read a book about how Lieber and Stoller had their rights stolen by Johnny Otis and “Diamond Jim” Robey (Founder: Peacock Records).

Rick: Well, you know, rock and rock and roll, you know, music, so…

Linwood Taylor: Because they were in high school, they didn’t know about publishing. And FM started and WPGC and WOL would be playing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, then they played James Brown and The Temptations…that kind of thing. It was all mixed up.

Rick: Yeah, it was the Top 40, and they just sort of threw in everything before the FM underground stations.

Linwood Taylor: I listened to WHFS once. I guess I was 12 or so, and my parents gave me a cassette recorder and, oh man, I had it on all night. A cool song would come on and it would wake me up.

Rick: That’s funny. So, who do you think actually influenced you the most as far as buying your first guitar?

Linwood Taylor: Let’s put it this way, a 7th grade teacher played guitar, and an 8th grade teacher played guitar and sang. Sadly, he just passed away. He put himself through school playing coffee houses.  So, he would play, “House of the Rising Sun,” “Sounds of Silence”. He could play all that stuff and I remember he had a 12-string Martin. The 7th grade teacher was a nun and the 8th grade teacher was Brian Fuller.

There was Top 40, but somehow I would hear about other things, like I heard about Jimi Hendrix when he first came out and that wasn’t Top 40. There was also a Baltimore television show called The Kirby Scott Show, and they had everything, the Count Five, “Psychotic Reaction,” Los Lobos, psychedelic stuff came in. You know, ’67.

Rick:  I’m from the Detroit area, so there were venues to go to, there was also the Ed Sullivan Show. People today don’t realize how prolific he was in pulling in The Beatles, the Stones, the Doors.

Linwood Taylor: Oh, yeah, I’m acutely aware of Mr. Sullivan, everybody watched Ed Sullivan.

Rick:  Today, basically we have music from everywhere.  So, now we’ve got access to not only Mali, but Japan, Brazil, where you get beautiful music.
Do you listen to music from all over the world, or do you explore to see what else is going on?

Linwood Taylor: I listen to a lot of different things, but my time is rather limited, um, especially for me, because I’m having to learn other peoples’ repertoire. So, I gotta invest time in that. Then I gotta play my own stuff.

Rick: So, when you’re learning a new band’s original music…

Linwood Taylor: It’s originals. That’s the whole point, you know? The retention is the most difficult thing at this point. It used to be a lot easier. And the thing is this, I can remember it and the hand memory coordination. Takes a moment, you know?

Rick: I have a new keyboard player and he plays our originals hundreds of times, so they’re embedded, so the muscle memory goes with the mental memory.

Linwood Taylor: Absolutely.

Rick: That’s why I would find it very daunting. I’m not a trained musician. Did you take lessons, or did you learn on your own,?

Linwood Taylor: I’m mainly self-taught. I’ve taken a lesson here and there, just to get some basic theory. I even took a music class. The professor told me, “You did A work, but I’m giving you a B. You shouldn’t be in music. What I’ve learned through my lifetime and I’ve heard the expression from the past, “Those who can play, play. Those who can’t, teach.”

Rick: I think that may be true.

Linwood Taylor: Really and truly.

Rick: We met a short time ago and you had, I think, a vintage ’54 Les Paul and a ’58 reissue.

Linwood Taylor: Yeah, yes, yes I did. That was the maple top.

Rick: How’d you find the ’54?

Linwood Taylor: Oh, that’s another story! I used to work at Wheaton Music.

Rick: I remember it, yeah, yeah.

Linwood Taylor: And a guy came in, December 1990, with this Les Paul. The store owner didn’t want it, because the neck had a wonky repair. The next guy didn’t want it for the same reason. I picked the guitar up, I flexed the neck and went, “This is not going anywhere. This would be great to take out and play it. Sold. So, I bought it. Little did I know, the next day a fellow said, “Did a guy come in here?” And they all went, “Yeah”. I bought it and he was furious. I played it like that for 16 years. And by that time I had a Gibson endorsement.

So, I went to the Gibson factory in Nashville and they restored it to complete original. I have the neck with the wonky repair, but they put a new neck on it. They put on the original serial number, and they refinished the back and sides, because it’s an all-gold Les Paul. But it’s not just a gold top, the back and sides are gold, too.

Rick: Oh, I didn’t notice that. There are very few of those.

Linwood Taylor: Yeah, only 5%. So, that’s a super rare one. I’m fortunate to have it, but it’s not so much of a collectible that I can’t take it out and enjoy it.

Forty one years ago, I bought a ’61 SG Les Paul. Okay? It was somebody’s player. But, for me it was clean. I couldn’t play it. I learned my lesson at that point. It’s too clean.  Don’t buy it, and it probably wasn’t that good, because nobody played it.

Rick: That’s true, too.

Linwood Taylor: Everything I have is a player. More or less, or something’s been done to it to devalue it. I can take it out and feel comfortable with it, but…I’m still not comfortable half the time, you know?

Rick: Yeah, I know how that is. What about acoustics? What are you playing acoustically? Do you play 12-strings, or mostly 6-strings?

Linwood Taylor: Uh, no, I have no 12s. I play a (Gibson) J-160E, that’s a reissue. That’s mainly what I use, but then I also have a resonator. It’s actually a Dobro, it’s wooden, not a metal one. And it’s a round neck, so it’s not like one of those squares that I have to lay it down. I can play normal guitar on it. I tune it to open D, and away I go, Elmore James, for days!

You know, I’m an electric guy, I just started doing acoustic because I was turning down too much work. Thirty years ago, my first acoustic gig was opening for the Brian Setzer Orchestra. It was one of those deals and I hated being alone like that. I prefer to work a duo, because we work off of each other.  You know, as opposed to just me, for lack of a better expression, “Kumbaya!” It’s just not my thing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: Who was the first artist that you were impressed with?

Linwood Taylor: That was Muddy Waters, when I was 18.

Rick: Was Electric Mud around that time, right?

Linwood Taylor: No, Bob Margolin had just joined the band. This is about six months after Bob joined the band, so this is 51 years ago. The Nighthawks were back there backstage, we’re all backstage hanging out.

Rick: How much fun. I never went backstage. It just wasn’t in my mind to think that I could possibly go backstage and meet somebody.

Linwood Taylor: I also had a good friend who sadly is gone, but who also hipped me to a lot of, um, vintage gear. I actually bought that SG Les Paul from him. He was a world famous amplifier technician. He worked with everyone…I mean everyone! Cesar Diaz. I met Stevie Ray Vaughan backstage. And nobody knew who Stevie Ray was except real blues aficionados. And Stevie told us, “Yeah, my album is coming out, and I’m on the new David Bowie album.” He was on the album, but he quit right before the tour.

He did Let’s Dance. He did that whole album, Let’s Dance.

Rick: I did have a chance to meet him when I was working , but I didn’t go…he was playing at D.C.’s Wax Museum.

Linwood Taylor: Yeah. That’s where I met him, like the first time he played there, before he played at, I wanna say Desperados right on M Street. Gradually, I met a lot of guys, blues guys. I met all the way up to, like Roger Daltry, Paul Rogers. David Bowie I met several years later, because I was doing a deal with Peter Frampton and Peter was David’s guitar player. I met Robert Plant twice. I was there there the night of the famous fight at The Bayou with Robert Plant. And then, about eight-years ago in Australia in the green room. I meet a lot of guys, and then last year I met Mick Jagger.

Rick: Have you met anyBeatles?

Linwood Taylor: No, no.

Rick: I’ve never met any of them.I met Les Paul a couple times, and a few others.

Linwood Taylor: I met Les. In fact, Cesar Diaz and I, and one of his friends, we went to see Les at the Iridium. And then, the December before my friend passed, Cesar passed, I walked into his hospital room, and Les is in the hospital room.

Rick: Oh, how nice of him to show up. So how’d you find Les? I thought he was funny.

Linwood Taylor: Oh, yeah, he was a riot! He was a total cut-up. If you didn’t know he was a cut-up, you might be offended. But, I’d been a musician for so long, it’s like, “Okay, buddy, your funny,” you know?

Rick: So, have you been on tour often?

Linwood Taylor: Enough to know that it can be a grind. But not enough to discourage me.

Rick: What was the good, the bad, and the ugly of touring?

Linwood Taylor: Well, the only bad thing…to me, was that I got trapped in Hong Kong, behind 9-11. I had to stay an extra ten days.  To me, it was that I got trapped in Hong Kong. I couldn’t get home, but I was able to reach my mother, and I was able to reach my girlfriend, who’s now my wife. The club was like, the act can’t come in, so the room was booked and I stayed, because I had no place to go. But, I had to buy my own meals, which was fine.

Rick: Well, I imagine you had fun.

Linwood Taylor: Well, you know, yeah. I mean, I made friends and whatever, people would show me around, and I really got to explore the city. All I can say is Hong Kong was like New York on steroids. And the thing is, the Chinese had not cracked down at that point. It had just changed over and they realized there was a lot of money there. I mean a lot of money. I mean, in Italy, I had never seen a Lamborghini dealership. But in Hong Kong, I saw a Lamborghini dealership with five different colored Lamborghinis in the showroom. That was like “Wow!” The bass player was driving a big Mercedes. If you ever see that movie, Die Another Day, a James Bond film with Halle Berry in it, where Moore gets out of the water at the Hong Kong Yacht Club, that’s where I played.

Rick: What a great experience. So, it really opens up your mind when you travel around the world. You get a different perspective about our country.

Linwood Taylor: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know there are some things that are really cool and you know that we could do better.

Rick: How does it differ now than when you first went into a studio to record?

Linwood Taylor: Well, I had a friend that had a home studio back in the ’70s, so I did that, but the first time I was in the studio I was in a band. And we were submitting, recording original music to DC 101 for the home tapes contest. We were actually runners up. We wound up going to a big-time studio in Philly, The Warehouse. But to me, it was just one of those things. I just play, you know? Since that time, I played on the H.R. solo album, he was the lead singer for the Bad Brains.

Yeah, I’ve got a consent by them somewhere. I guess they had broken up by this point. This is 1990 and the album came out called, Charge. I recorded in, like, 89, and the album came out in 1990. They misspelled my name, but I’m still there. I’m on Joe Louis Walker’s live album, Blues Conspiracies: Live On The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise.

I’m actually on a cut (“It’s A Shame”) with Johnny Winter, so technically, I recorded with Johnny Winter. Joe Louis (Walker) introduced me to Johnny. I met Joe in 1989 at the Twist and Shout. I opened for them at the 8×10. Joe got me in as his guest for the Kennedy Center Honors for B.B. King!

Rick: Cool.

Linwood Taylor: So, I’m hanging out in the green room with everybody,. It was one of those things. I wanted to take pictures, and I realized, “No, you can’t take pictures.” And, I left my camera in the car. I just said, “You can’t take pictures because, if you take pictures, you don’t belong there.” By this time, I’d met Bonnie Raitt, Steve Martin, Steve Cropper. In fact, I was hanging with Steve Cropper because this was the second time I’d met him. Ed Bradley, Walter Cronkite, Lou Gossett, Jr., Bill Clinton. It was all there, man, it was a total happening.

Rick: I interviewed Cropper a while ago and saw him with Booker T. and The MG’s decades ago.

Linwood Taylor: Which was my favorite band until the Jimi Hendrix Experience came out. They actually had a lot of hits, “Time is Tight,” “Hip Hugger,” “Soul Limbo”. I’m sure a lot of people don’t know that. On Albert King’s “Born Under A Bad Sign” that was Booker T. and The MG’S backing him up.

Rick: I didn’t know that. Cool.

Linwood Taylor: Oh yeah, Booker T and almost everybody at Stax, Booker T. and the MGs backed them up.

Rick: They were kind of the session players for Stax, right?

Linwood Taylor: Yeah. They were the house band, pretty much.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rick: What projects are you working on now?

Linwood Taylor: I’m getting ready, preparing to do some touring next year with the woman, Geminii Dragon, and her husband. They just released an album, Midnight Movin’ and Groovin’, Featuring Linwood Taylor. They have some physical copies, but mostly it’s gonna be on Bandcamp. It’s better than Spotify. People are pulling their stuff off Spotify. Between the guy being kind of right wing and the pay rate. If you want to support an artist, buy the physical copy of the album. Two or three purchases of the physical copy get more than you’ll get for 20,000 streams of a particular song.

Rick: That’s right. They pay about, I think it’s, like.003 cents.

Linwood Taylor: Yeah. This is ridiculous.

Rick: Incredible. And the songwriters don’t get hardly anything.

Linwood Taylor: The technology got ahead of their business. And unfortunately now it’s gonna be next to impossible to get ahead of the laws with the advent of artificial intelligence, that’s even making things worse. People are being recreated, and it’s not even them.

Rick: Yeah, and that may occur in some other countries, so you don’t have much access to sue anybody.

Linwood Taylor: Exactly. I mean, it’s always been kind of a rip-off, and everyone got ripped off. And you just kind of tough it out. You kept working, and hopefully you retained your fame so that down the road, when you had the money to hire a good attorney and sue them to get some back royalties.

Rick: Follow the money.

Linwood Taylor: Well, look, you know Sly Stone? He got, like, $5 million, like, 20 years ago. For all the music that they were making in the late ’60s and so forth, you know? Sly, partially it was his own fault. But at the same time he got ripped off badly, and I think that hurt him too.

Rick: Oh, yeah, yeah, he had some hard times. I think at some time… at one point, he was sleeping in his car.

Linwood Taylor:  Joe Louis and his original bass player, they’re all from the Bay Area. They knew Sly. I spoke to Henry, he said, “Yeah, man, I passed him walking on the street, said, “Hey, man, what’s up? He says, ‘Hey, Sylvester, what’s up, man?’ And he said, “Sly kept on walking.” And then he turned… Sly turned around and said, “Hey, man, I’m sorry, I can’t do you that way, you know?” But it was like, they know.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, what a shame, what a shame. Tell me about some of your most favorite times that you’ve had on stage, like stand-up performances, or when something funny happened, uh, or something you weren’t expecting.

Linwood Taylor: For me to hit all the right notes. With one of them, when I played in the Blues Brothers for the Capitol’s 4th, so it was on national TV, right down on the Mall; that was pretty cool. I got to play, “Soul Man,” with Sam Moore. He was cool.

So, this is on national TV, right down here in the mall, and that was pretty cool. There’s a video of me where I’m playing with Ronnie Earle, he comes to sit with us up in Massachusetts. Joe is playing harmonica and Ronnie’s playing guitar through Joe’s amp and Ronnie’s on my guitar. The next day Joe comes to see me and goes, “Why did you cut Ronnie Earle?”

I’m like, “What are you talking about?” And he said,” Man, you totally cut him!”

I said, “No I didn’t!” And in my mind, I’m not cutting anyone, I’m just playing. And it’s like, “Okay, he did that. I have to do something different!” So I did something different. I mean, appropriate, but…you know, I don’t think like that; cut throat in a competitive way. I think in a creative way. And it’s like, “Okay, he’s done that, I need to do this.”

Rick: Well, and you’re playing for the audience.

Linwood Taylor: Right.

Rick: You know, you gotta get away from the competition idea; we should be collaborating with each other, and I think that what you did was fine, so…and appropriate, you want to give the audience your best.

Linwood Taylor: Well, but the thing is this, Joe said that to me. And I showed my buddy a while later, and he goes, “Yeah, dude, you totally cut him.” I mean, everyone I’ve showed that video to on YouTube, it’s like, “eah, you totally cut him, man.” He said, “When he turns around and starts fiddling with his amp, when you start playing, that’s like you cut him.”  I said, “Really?” And I said, “Oops, sorry!”

Rick: What are you most proud of? You’re looking over your music career, what are you most proud of, how you’ve handled the changes in music, new technologies, experiences? Maybe how you’ve handled, like most of us, dry spells. You’ve reached a plateau, and you’ve got to kind of reinvent yourself somehow.

Linwood Taylor: I will say this, I have been fortunate that whenever I’ve reached the plateau, something out of the blue came my way and elevated me, is the only way I could say it. I keep plugging along, and I keep trying to get better, and sometimes it’s a matter of playing with some different people, or playing with some people who think in a different way than some of the people you play with.

Sometimes I have to readjust my thinking, and I’m saying this as it’s coming out of my mouth, and what I’m thinking it’s like you have to go for and recognize an opportunity that comes your way. You know, like all of us, we’re human. Set in our ways, this and that, but then I realized, you gotta open yourself up to something when it comes your way, because if you’re out there and you’re good, and you’re open enough, things will come your way.

And when you’re unique enough sometimes things will come your way because this is a copycat business, and when you’re are really unique you’re gonna be turned down a bazillion times, until where somebody gets it,. And all of the greats have been turned down. I mean, you think about The Beatles, they got turned down by five different record companies, including the one that signed them, they got turned down twice by them, Decca Records turned him down, then Capitol picked them up, and they just…

Rick: Took off at that point.

Linwood Taylor: Yeah. Well, a lot of people got turned down, multiple times. For whatever reason. Even Prince got turned down, but then he managed to get Warner Brothers to let him produce his own thing at first. Right from the jump, as a teenager.

Rick: That’s amazing. So, what else do you play besides guitar and dobro?

Linwood Taylor: The radio.

Rick: We’ll leave it at that. So, let’s say you’re with a band and you like each other, you mentioned opportunities. When you’re offered an opportunity to go somewhere else, how do you manage the loyalty aspect of leaving friends and going off to some project where you have the dynamic of where you feel, “I’ll stick with these guys. I won’t go for the opportunity, even though it might be better?”

Linwood Taylor: I’m getting more money on this gig.

Rick: Well, I guess we all understand that, so…

Linwood Taylor: If they don’t, too bad. You’re in the wrong business. Everyone I know who has been elevated at some point, if they’re able, they sometimes you just gotta realize you might just be better.

Rick: Yeah, well, that’s true too.

Linwood Taylor: And that’s why you’re being elevated. You know, or maybe you put yourself out there. Which is, frankly, something I have done for my entire career, if you will. If some blues guy was coming to town and I wasn’t working, I would go see them. I’d meet them and say, “Hello.” And I was always very polite and respectful. And eventually, I wound up playing with 80% of them. That’s how… and I would learn something. That’s how I elevate. Bait myself. Even to this day, I still play that game. That’s how Ron Holloway (saxophone) and I met. And I said, “Man, so how’d you get that gig with Dizzy (Gillespie)?” Well, it turns out his plan was my plan.

That’s how I played with Joe Louis Walker, that’s how I played with Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, Johnny Rawls. It’s just… I just go and see them and say, “Hey, how’s it going, man?”

Rick: At what point in your career did you decide or did you always want to be a guitar player, a musician, or was there some other alternative path that you could have, where you vectored off to become a musician rather than being a doctor or something.

Linwood Taylor: Basically, I always wanted to be a musician. I always wanted to be a guitarist. But, I went to school for business and accounting. I transferred to a different school and was told bad information. My credits wouldn’t transfer, so I went fro being one class away from being a junior to starting all over again. It took the wind out of my academic sails. And even doing that, I made a couple of friends, and I played down in North Carolina. I worked at that profession that I studied for a friend of mine’s parents’ company. But then, when corporate took over. I went over to Coca-Cola for 9 months and said, “This sucks. I can’t… I can’t see myself…I don’t want to be an old man and go, I wish I tried.” This is right before I turned 28. I just I quit and never looked back.

Rick: Was that a hard decision?

Linwood Taylor: I come from a pretty conservative family, they really didn’t understand me. But fortunately, they let me be. You know, my neighbor, who is a world-class, keyboard player, he said, “I used to hear you practicing your stuff out the window.” And I was being an obnoxious kid. I had a 100-watt Marshall, and I’m blasting with the windows open.

Rick: That’ll shatter windows.

Linwood Taylor: Oh, and of course, I’m blasting stuff that was not typically heard in this neighborhood. It wasn’t James Brown, it was Jimi Hendrix. My neighbor,  Herb of Peaches and Herb. I knew him when he was a singer the first time, and then when he became a police officer. And then, he had the resurgence when they reunited with the the shake and groove thing and all that. And then we opened for Funkadelic for homecoming and this is before Parliament had their big hit, Mothership Connection (1975). They had one, get off your ass and jam.

Rick: Yeah, do you ever regret not going to places that you wish you’d gone to when you were younger?

Linwood Taylor: No, I don’t have that issue. I went everywhere that I could. Basically, I’ve went to clubs in D.C. since I was 16 years old with a fake ID.

Rick: What are you looking forward to in 2026?

Linwood Taylor: Hopefully, hopefully making it out alive! Making it make it to my next birthday!

Rick: How about any shout outs to people who’ve helped you, pushed your career along, or motivated you, or inspired you to move forward with your career and your life, I guess?

Linwood Taylor: Well, I mean, Joe Louis Walker, for one, he really got me out of D.C..  I really started traveling with him. I got introduced. He was always the big bit of a prankster. In that, when he introduced me to famous people, this is Bob Dylan’s favorite guitar player.

Rick: That’s great.

Linwood Taylor: Because he knew I met Bob. My friend Cesar Diaz and I both met Bob together at the old Twist and Shout.

Rick: Was Bob playing?

Linwood Taylor: No, ee all were there to see the Sun Rhythm section. Paul Burleson, who was from the Johnny Burnette’s rock and roll trio, DJ Fontana, you know, all the guys who backed up Elvis during the sun sessions, we were there to see them and Bob was in town playing at RFK Stadium, he was doing a split bill with the Grateful Dead. But at the time, Bob Dylan’s backup band, get this…Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Rick: Really? I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool. Was Scotty Moore there with the Sun group?

Linwood Taylor: No, he wasn’t there, but I met Scotty Moore at the Gibson factory in Nashville.

Rick: Okay, I met him just outside of Nashville at his house. He had his own home studio.

Linwood Taylor: And Scotty played on one of Joe Louis’s albums, and in fact, Joe had The Jordanaires singing backup on his album, and that was the second time I met Scotty, because I’d met Scotty about six years earlier in Memphis. We had dinner together. Basically, we were backstage at a theater in Memphis. I was sitting at a table. He and his wife came and sat down with me, so that was pretty cool.

Rick: Yeah, talk about a legend.

Linwood Taylor: Oh, absolutely!

Rick: When I… when I talk to him he said when he first saw Elvis come into the studio, he said, he thought to himself. “That’s the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.”

Linwood Taylor: Oh, jeez!

Rick: Do you have anything coming out, like an album or anything that you’d like to talk about?

Linwood Taylor: I’m still talking about Two Sides, I’m still pushing that one. As I say, I have some things noodling…noodling around in my head as to what I want to play coming up and how I’m going to approach it.

Right now, I’m gonna concentrate on the GeminiiDragon thing. They want me to do another album. I’m more than game. I’m just working on some things, trying to come up with some different song ideas that I’m gonna use.

BONUS VIDEO!

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

 

One of the many things that Willie Nelson and his trusty Martin nylon-string, Trigger, have in common is their truly unmistakable voices. And Willie’s laid back, behind-the-beat phrasing applies to both. To break it all down, we called on Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel. The two have been friends for a long time, and in 2009 they released the swinging Willie and the Wheel together. Benson tells us about what it’s like to work with Willie, what it’s like to play Trigger, and when he finally got to put his signature on the latter.

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Revoicing flat-top steel-string guitars is something I’ve practiced for decades. In the early days, once I discovered what scalloping was and how it affected tone, I began reaching inside instruments and carving braces in hopes of improving their sound. The problem was that I had no real idea what I was doing, no sense of targets, and certainly no clear understanding of purpose. Fortunately, I didn’t attempt this on many guitars, and never on anything of real value.

As time went on and I began building my own instruments, I developed the ability to tune tops through scalloping or tapering braces. This gave me valuable insight into what to look for when approaching revoicing later in my career. The process became more disciplined; it included setting air resonance, balancing top and back frequencies, and measuring deflections.

But the question remains: Should we even be revoicing guitars at all?

In the violin world, revoicing is standard practice. Instruments are designed to be disassembled and worked on, and re-graduating tops is one of the most common procedures performed on vintage violins, violas, and cellos. These repairs are done routinely, even on valuable vintage instruments, and often multiple times across their lifespans. This tradition also extends to historical pitch change, such as the move from A=340 Hz to A=440 Hz, where instruments had to be physically altered to remain functional. Violin makers are trained from the very beginning to understand instrument revoicing and the practice is widely accepted.

Flat-top steel-strings are different. We now have guitars, pre-war Martins in particular, that are considered the Stradivari of the flat-top world. These instruments already sound extraordinary, and carving on their braces would not only be unnecessary, but destructive. Still, not all guitars share this level of excellence even within vintage Martin examples. Over the years I’ve encountered many instruments that simply missed the mark, where the relationships between air, top, and back resonances were poorly balanced.

Take, for example, a Guild D-40 from the 1980s that recently came into my shop. Guilds of that era were well-built, sometimes even overbuilt. This particular guitar measured an air resonance of 101 Hz, a top resonance of 200 Hz, and a back resonance of 207 Hz. The problem was obvious: The top was so tight at 200 Hz it had restricted musicality, and its frequency nearly sat on top of the back, only separated by 7 Hz. Worse, the air resonance, at 101 Hz, was far too high for a large-body guitar, which typically falls around 95 Hz or lower.

This guitar was crying out for a revoice. My plan was simple: reshape and scallop the accessible braces on the top, drop the top resonance into the 170 Hz range, and allow the air resonance to settle near 95 Hz. Step by step, I carved, restrung, measured, and repeated until the targets were met. The top gradually dropped: first to 190 Hz, then 180 Hz, and finally 173 Hz. The air resonance followed, landing at 95 Hz. The results were dramatic. The instrument opened up, resonances began to couple, and its musicality increased significantly.

Of course, there are caveats. Any revoicing work voids a warranty, and on a new instrument that can be a serious consideration. In this case, the Guild was decades old, had changed hands multiple times, and carried no warranty concerns. More importantly, the guitar was so overbuilt that there was little danger in loosening the top.

So, what are the ethics of revoicing? Should you attempt it? The answer is clear: Unless you thoroughly understand resonance, frequency targets, deflection values, and how they interact, you should not. For those with the training and experience, however, revoicing can transform a lifeless guitar into something inspiring and enjoyable to play.

In restoration, the golden rule is to enter and exit an instrument without leaving a trace. But sometimes, as with this Guild, the only way forward is to make meaningful change. Done carefully, with respect for the instrument and for the physics of sound, revoicing is not only ethical; it can be a gift to both the guitar and its player.

Fralin Pickups has introduced a line of prewired control harnesses for upgrading your Gibson® Les Paul®, Les Paul Special, or Les Paul Studio.

Each premium prewired harness is built with Emerson® Premier Pro pots, plus USA-made foil-and-oil capacitors, for a smoother taper, consistent control response, and rock-solid reliability. Dial in your setup exactly how you want it—choose your wiring style, capacitor value, and optional push-pull mods—then drop it into your guitar with minimal soldering and maximum confidence.

Key features include:

• Build it your way: Customize your harness to your exact specs—wiring type, cap value, and more.
• Emerson® Premier Pro Pots: Chosen for an exceptionally smooth taper and dependable performance.
• Optional CTS® Push-Pull Pots: Add coil splits, phase options, series/parallel, or other wiring mods (depending on your pickup setup).
• Quick, clean install: Designed for a drop-in fit with minimal soldering required.
• Optional prewired toggle switch: Add a prewired switch to complete the harness and simplify installation even further.

Each Fralin prewired Les Paul harness carries a street price is $150.00. For more information visit fralinpickups.com.

Grammy-winning producer Steve Lillywhite has opened up about one of the toughest studio experiences of his career, describing his time working with The Rolling Stones as “hell”.

Speaking on the Word in Your Ear podcast, Lillywhite reflects on producing the band’s 1986 album Dirty Work – a record made during one of the most tumultuous periods in the Stones’ history.

According to the producer, tensions between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at the time were running so high that the two barely interacted in the studio.

• READ MORE: Gibson uses 3D scanning and period correct materials to create an “exact replica” of Keith Richards’ prized 1960 ES-355

“I worked with Keith and Mick when they were not talking to each other at all,” Lilywhite recalls [via UCR], noting that the pair spoke to one another for “maybe one hour out of the whole time that we were making the record.”

“It was hell,” he adds. “They literally weren’t [in the same room].”

With the band’s two creative figureheads keeping their distance, Lilywhite found himself stuck in the middle, relaying messages back and forth between them: “I would have one come up to me go ‘blah blah blah blah. And I would go and say [the message] to the other one. And he would go, ‘You tell him, blah blah blah blah.’”

“I say I was [American diplomat] Henry Kissinger.”

Despite the challenges, the producer says the experience left a lasting mark on how he approaches recording sessions. One key lesson? Keep the studio doors open.

“I learned this from The Rolling Stones: Never stop people coming into the studio. Always have an open-door policy,” he says.

“When people come in, and they listen to something, I sort of hear it through their ears. So there might be something that I’m, subconsciously, I’m thinking it’s not quite right, but it hasn’t come to the conscious yet. Whereas when someone’s in there listening, and I’m playing them a rough mix, I go, ‘Got it. Now I know what we have to change.’”

The post “It was hell”: Steve Lillywhite on producing The Rolling Stones at their most divided appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Sharon Osbourne has revealed she’s in early discussions about resurrecting Ozzfest, the iconic metal festival she co-founded three decades ago alongside her late husband, Black Sabbath legend Ozzy Osbourne.

Speaking in a new interview with Billboard, the longtime manager – who guided Ozzy’s solo career for decades – confirms she is “talking to [concert promoters] Live Nation” about bringing the event back, with a tentative return pencilled in for 2027. While Ozzfest built its reputation on heavy music, Sharon explains that the revived edition could incorporate artists outside the traditional rock and metal sphere. “I’d like to mix up the genres,” she says.

• READ MORE: “Maybe he felt my part was getting bigger than a band member should be”: Jake E. Lee on contract negotiations for Ozzy’s The Ultimate Sin

“It was something Ozzy was very passionate about: giving young talent a stage in front of a lot of people,” she adds. “We really started metal festivals in this country. It was [replicated but] never done with the spirit of what ours was, because ours was a place for new talent. It was like summer camp for kids.”

Launched in 1996 after Lollapalooza declined to book Ozzy, Ozzfest began as a short run of dates in Phoenix, Arizona and San Bernardino, California. Ozzy headlined the inaugural shows, backed by a bill stacked with heavy hitters including Slayer, Danzig, Biohazard and Sepultura.

From there, the festival quickly evolved into a proving ground for the next generation of heavy acts. Slipknot, Limp Bizkit and System Of A Down were among the now-household names that appeared on the tour around the time of their debut releases.

Ozzfest eventually expanded beyond the US, spawning international editions in the UK, Germany, Belgium and Japan. Its last outing was a one-off event in Inglewood, California in 2018.

Sharon previously spoke about the festival’s disappearance in 2023, attributing its cancellation after over two decades to “greedy” management.

“We made a profit. But it was not like – we couldn’t retire on it,” she said on The Osbournes Podcast. “And managers and agents wanted more and more and more, and it just wasn’t cost-effective anymore. We stopped because it just wasn’t cost-effective.

The post Sharon Osbourne in talks with Live Nation to revive Ozzfest: “It was something Ozzy was very passionate about” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

While most people are tuning into the Grammy awards for the fashion, the celebrities or the chaotic potential for someone to go off-script in an acceptance speech, here at Guitar.com we’ve got our eyes peeled for one thing, and one thing only – guitars.

• READ MORE: Slash, Duff McKagan, Andrew Watt, Chad Smith and Post Malone lead fiery Ozzy Osbourne tribute at the Grammys

Despite the ever-present grumbling about the lack of overt guitar-centric artists in the big hitter categories, the ceremony itself is always a reminder that regardless of how prominent it ends up being in the studio recording, the guitar remains a uniquely potent weapon in the live arena – and there were plenty of eye-catching guitars on stage throughout the many superstar performances.

What was particularly interesting about this year’s crop was how many weird and leftfield instruments we noticed on the Crypto.com Arena stage across the evening – so often the ceremony is wall-to-wall Fender, Gibson and occasional Martin, but 2026 was certainly a little more diverse in that regard.

Let’s dive in to some of our most notable highlights from the show.

Justin Bieber’s Yamaha RGX

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Where else can you start really than with the most eye-catching performance of the night, where Biebs himself decided to pair some blue silk boxer shorts with an… 1980s Yamaha RGX?!

Yep, it’s weird man. We certainly didn’t have Bieber becoming the world’s most notable standard-bearer for obscure Asian-made SuperStrats of the late shred era, but here we are. Nice colour too!

María Zardoya’s Fender Mustang

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

The frontwoman of bilingual indie-pop The Marías is usually seen wielding a Fender Duo-Sonic, but for the band’s performance – a celebration of their nomination in the Best New Artist category – she traded up for a seriously cool black Mustang.

Interestingly, the headstock looks like the ‘Mustang’ part of the decal has been worn or sanded off, implying that this might be a vintage or at the very least well-loved guitar.

Bruno Mars’ Gibson Les Paul Custom

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Mars had the distinction of performing twice during the Grammy ceremony, including opening the festivities with the performance of his Record Of The Year-nominated duet with former Blackpink member Rosé, APT.

Despite being a honoured as a Fender signature artist just over a year ago, Mars opted to perform on the evening using a classic ‘Tuxedo’ Gibson Les Paul Custom – it certainly fit the vibe of the black tie performance nicely.

Leon Thomas’ custom mirror Strat

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Fender has some form for producing custom guitars for artists to use for the Grammys – remember H.E.R.’s transparent Strat for the 2019 ceremony? – and rising R&B phenom Leon Thomas clearly noticed as he traded in his usual sunburst Strats for something altogether more unique to celebrate his six nominations (and two wins).

While the lighting of the performance probably didn’t show it off to its full magnificence, Thomas rocked a custom mirror-finished HSS Strat, with matching headstock and pickguard. Good luck keeping the fingerprints off that one.

Slash’s flamey black Les Paul

Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Gibson’s most loyal and long-term endorsee playing one of the innumerable Les Pauls Gibson have probably sent to him over the years isn’t exactly headline news, but most of the Cat In The Hat’s current signature line-up sit squarely in the ‘autumnal’ colour palette.

The guitar he used to perform in the Grammys tribute to the late great Ozzy Osbourne was certainly not that – instead it was a dark, almost black, burst with a lovely flamed maple top underneath. A fitting guitar to pay tribute to the Prince Of Darkness, but might we see this being added to the Slash Les Paul line-up soon too? Don’t bet against it.

Andrew Watt’s Jaydee Custom

Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Over on the other side of the stage to Slash for the Ozzy tribute was Grammy-winning producer, guitar nut and veteran rock star whisperer extraordinaire Andrew Watt.  But rather than go down the obvious path and pick up a Gibson SG for the performance, Watt came out using something that only true guitar nerds and Sabbath aficionados would recognise.

Back in the late 70s, a Birmingham-based guitar tech and luthier called John Diggins built Tony Iommi a guitar. That SG-shaped guitar – ‘Old Boy’ – would become one of Iommi’s most famous and beloved instruments, while Diggins would continue building guitars and basses under the Jaydee Custom Guitars brand for the next 40 years.

Diggins died suddenly in 2024, prompting Iommi to pay tribute to his skill, and call him “a very dear friend”. For the Grammy performance, Watt walked out with a white, relic’d Jaydee SG – paying guitar nerd tribute both to Iommi himself, but also the luthier whose work he relied on for so many years.

Lukas Nelson’s Gibson Byrdland

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Performing at the In Memorium segment alongside fellow country stars Reba McEntire and Brandy Clark (who was herself sporting a lovely battered old Martin 000), Nelson stole the guitar show somewhat with a suitably classy big Gibson.

The Byrdland is something of a rare duck in the Golden Era Gibson stakes. Introduced in 1955 as a thinner-bodied version of the L-5, it was the basis for the more stripped down ES-350T that Chuck Berry made his own, and then later got a Florentine cutaway and became Ted Nugent’s guitar of choice. Nelson’s black version has the original cutaway, and might be a 1970s version.

Wyclef Jean’s Taylor T5

Photo by Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

One of the highlights of the ceremony saw Fugees legends Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean reunite to lead an all-star tribute to two sadly missed musical legends we lost in 2025 – D’Angelo and Roberta Flack.

Jean was playing guitar as part of the performance and brought out a lesser seen but still revolutionary piece of guitar history – the hybrid electric-acoustic Taylor T5z.

Raphael Saadiq’s Minarik Diablo

Photo by Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

It’s not often that you write the words ‘Minarik guitars’ and ‘Grammy awards’ in the same sentence, but we have former Prince bassist and Grammy-winning producer Raphael Saadiq to thank for this one.

While Minarik’s bizarre shapes and gaudy visuals make the brand great fodder for ‘what the hell is that?!’ videos from the NAMM show floor, Saadiq’s choice to play this for the D’Angelo/Flack tribute was actually a very poignant one. D’Angelo was a fan of the Diablo model, and regularly used a pearled-out custom model on stage – Saadiq’s decision to rock this more demure one in tribute is a lovely way of acknowledging D’Angelo’s guitar impact.

The post In pictures: the stunning, cool and downright weird guitars of the Grammy Awards 2026 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Justin Bieber probably isn’t the first name on your list when you think of celebrity guitar guys, but the pop star’s choice of guitar for his performance at the 2026 Grammy Awards might indicate he’s more One Of Us than you might expect.

• READ MORE: Watch: Slash, Duff McKagan, Andrew Watt, Chad Smith and Post Malone lead fiery Ozzy Osbourne tribute at the Grammys

The majority of the attention garnered by Bieber’s performance of his nominated-song Yukon focused on the fact that it was stripped down in pretty much every way you can imagine – the one-time teen heart throb performing the song solo wearing just a pair of silk blue boxer shorts – but our well-honed guitar sense was more interested in what he had slung over his shoulder.

The Grammys are prime real estate for the big guitar brands, who no doubt bend over backwards to ensure that artists performing at the globally televised event are using their gear – remember Fender producing a custom transparent Stratocaster for H.E.R to use in the Grammys (and later the MTV Music Awards) a few years back? – but clearly nobody told Biebs.

Because for this most high-profile performance, the lefty guitarist chose to use a… purple Yamaha RGX?! Yep, this obscure relic of the pre-Pacifica days of Yamaha courting the 80s shred market somehow ended up on stage at the Grammy awards in 2026.

It’s not like it’s an expensive guitar either – while there aren’t a lot of them still in circulation, you can currently find various examples for sale in other colours in various states of disrepair for sub-$500. It’s hard to fully tell what specific RGX model it is from the performance, but the pickup and knob configuration would imply it’s a RGX 612S.

Primarily made in Taiwan in the mid-to-late 80s – though some models for the Japanese market were made in Japan – the RGX 612S has everything you’d expect a pre-grunge SuperStrat to offer. That meant a HSS configuration (with coil split bridge bucker), bulky Yamaha RM-Pro locking tremolo system, basswood body with maple neck and rosewood board, and of course that eye-catching violet finish.

Bieber has been pictured playing guitars many times of course – but it’s always previously been fairly unremarkable fare from Fender, Martin or Gibson. The RGX 612S is the sort of leftfield curio that implies that he’s at least more of a considered guitar buyer than we might have otherwise expected. Or maybe he just likes the colour, who can say.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

More evidence for Bieber’s guitar interest can also be found on the floor for the performance. In what is probably overkill for a performance where he loops a single 20-second guitar part, he’s got the big boy Boss RC-600 Loop Station – with its ability to playback six simultaneous stereo phrase tracks – holding things down. And as if that wasn’t enough, he’s got it all running into a first-generation Neural DSP Quad Cortex – did you not have time to upgrade to the QC Mini before the show, Justin?!

While playing a random and rare Yamaha guitar from the 80s by no means confirms Bieber as a Guitar Guy of course – but it certainly makes us wonder about it a lot more than we did before the performance. The colour is perhaps the most notable part of it – violet-finished RGX guitars from this era don’t appear very often, and there aren’t currently any for sale on Reverb. We did notice that one sold 10 years ago though that was in SSS configuration – has Bieber been keeping it in the stash all that time and routed it out for a full-sized humbucker?! We just don’t know.

The post Justin Bieber played an obscure, cheap 80s guitar at the Grammy Awards 2026 for some reason appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

The 68th Grammy Awards briefly turned into a metal arena last night, as an all-star lineup paid tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne with a thunderous performance of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs.

Taking the stage at Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena, Slash, Andrew Watt, Duff McKagan, Chad Smith and Post Malone joined forces for the Paranoid classic, complete with towering walls of pyro and an audience that included Osbourne’s wife Sharon and their children.

• READ MORE: “Maybe he felt my part was getting bigger than a band member should be”: Jake E. Lee on contract negotiations for Ozzy’s The Ultimate Sin

Guitar fans were treated to a particularly memorable moment during the solo section, with Slash and Watt trading licks side by side and Malong joining in to help Watt with a burst of finger tapping.

The chemistry onstage felt fitting, given that every musician involved had previously worked with Osbourne in some capacity. Malone famously duetted with the Sabbath frontman on Take What You Want and It’s a Raid; Watt served as executive producer on Ozzy’s final two albums – Ordinary Man (2020) and Patient Number 9 (2022) – while Slash featured him on 2010’s Crucify the Dead. McKagan and Smith also contributed to Osbourne’s later solo work.

As the band powered through the song’s closing section, screens behind them displayed images honouring other recently lost figures from the rock world, including ex-Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley, Mick Ralphs, Anthony Jackson and producer Roy Thomas Baker.

WAR PIGS

A tribute to Ozzy Osbourne – Slash, Duff McKagan, Chad Smith, Andrew Watt and Post Malone#GRAMMYSpic.twitter.com/d8ey3tWfzv

— Jen (@TheGNRGiirl) February 2, 2026

Elsewhere in the ceremony, Osbourne’s legacy surfaced again when Yungblud picked up the Grammy for Best Rock Performance. He shared the award with Nuno Bettencourt, Frank Bello and Adam Wakeman for their rendition of Sabbath’s Changes, recorded at last year’s epic Back to the Beginning farewell concert.

Yungblud, who had formed a close bond with Osbourne in recent years, embraced Sharon Osbourne onstage before delivering an emotional speech.

“To grow up loving an idol that helps you figure out your identity, not only as a musician but also as a man, is something that I’m truly grateful for,” he said. “But then to get to know them and form a relationship with them, honour them at their final show and receive this because of it, is something that I and I think we’re all finding so strange to comprehend. We fucking love you, Ozzy!”

Osbourne died in July 2025 at the age of 76, just weeks after his final onstage appearance at Back to the Beginning.

The post Watch: Slash, Duff McKagan, Andrew Watt, Chad Smith and Post Malone lead fiery Ozzy Osbourne tribute at the Grammys appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$259/£259, strymon.net

The beauty of modern digital effects is that you can recreate the sounds of arcane vintage devices without worrying about operating noise, reliability issues… or having to understand how those kooky old things actually work.

• READ MORE: Strymon EC-1 review: “It does what it needs to do without any of the complexity of the big-box competition”

Take the Strymon Olivera: the online manual even includes an illustrated guide to the inner workings of a real oil-can echo, and I’ve studied it closely, but I still can’t fully get my head around what’s going on in there. What I do know is that, in the hands of Strymon’s engineers, a delay can be grubby and strange without being a pain to live with. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Image: Press

Strymon Olivera – what is it?

This much is clear enough: an oil-can echo is so called because it uses a spinning disc inside a metal can as its medium, lubricated by oil; the record/playback heads, meanwhile, are chunks of conductive rubber. Doesn’t sound like the last word in audio fidelity, does it? But, as with tape delay, it’s the imperfections that make it so appealing – and ripe for digital emulation.

Strymon’s effort follows the compact format of its Brig and EC-1 delays, with the same five knobs and three-way mode switch. In this case the switch is for selecting either or both of the playback heads, and the knobs include modulation rate and intensity. The added modern features include stereo output, MIDI and expression pedal control, plus a range of secondary functions – notably adjustable tone on the repeats, true or buffered bypass, and analogue or digital dry-through.

Incidentally, ‘oil-can’ is being used as a compound modifier here so I’m hyphenating it, if you don’t mind. We don’t have to abandon the basics of grammar just because Strymon has, do we?

Image: Press

Strymon Olivera – what does it sound like?

It’s well made, it’s easy to use and it isn’t unduly hissy – in other words, it’s a Strymon. The effect itself, however, will make you swear you’ve plugged into something cobbled together out of old dishwasher parts in a strange-smelling garage.

The ‘lo-fi’ aspect of this delay is comprised of three separate elements: tonal filtering, overlapping echoes, and a nice bit of wobble. So first of all, while the dry signal stays crisp, the repeats are decidedly dark. You can brighten them up to an extent, but Strymon has elected to stay within the bounds of authenticity here rather than really opening things up.

Some overlapping occurs even with only one playback head engaged, the effect beginning to trip over itself a little after the first couple of repeats. It’s rather nice, and surely won’t clutter up your sound because the attack is so soft. Engaging both long and short playback heads together adds more rhythmic complexity, with the repeats still starting out fairly clean and spaced out but then gradually dissolving into a reverby mush.

The modulation is a gentle pitch vibrato, which sounds more like chorus once it’s blended with the dry signal. This adds a tasty bit of depth to the sound, especially if you’re running the Olivera in a stereo setup using a TRS cable. The stereo picture isn’t hugely expansive, though, and there’s no ping-pong option for splitting the two heads left and right.

There is, however, an option for controlling as many knobs as you want with an expression pedal. The manual includes detailed instructions for setting this up – but I just plugged my Moog EP-3 straight in, maxed out the ‘regen’ knob with my toe down and let the saturated self-oscillating chaos begin. It’s a riot… but, this being Strymon, a thoroughly disciplined riot.

Image: Press

Strymon Olivera – should I buy it?

Let’s take a step back: is this effect different enough from tape delay that you need to own both? I’d say probably not, but it’s certainly a viable alternative with a character of its own. Beyond that question, what you are getting with the Olivera – impeccable audio quality aside – is a bunch of potentially handy added features that cheaper oil-can emulators can’t offer. So if you like playing in stereo, or creating ferociously snowballing squawks and screeches with an expression pedal, it could be a canny purchase.

Image: Press

Strymon Olivera alternatives

More affordable options than the Olivera include the Catalinbread Adineko ($209.99/£199.99) and JHS 3 Series Oil Can Delay ($99/£99); a more expensive one, with some soundscapey skills thrown in, is the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Black Fountain Stereo ($329/£299).

The post Strymon Olivera review – a notoriously lo-fi delay effect gets the hi-fi treatment appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

I’ve always been drawn to the aesthetics of vintage guitar amplifiers. From the control panel details to the Tolex and grill cloth, the visual beauty of old electronics never fails to captivate. British amps in particular catch my eye. Historically, they have played an important role in the evolution of rock ’n’ roll music. Visually, they stand out with bold color schemes and funky textures. I’m thinking of amps from manufacturers like Vox, Selmer, and Orange.

There are a few key factors that sonically differentiate British vs. American guitar amplifiers. British amps often use EL34 or EL84 tubes in the output sections, whereas American amps typically use 6L6 or 6V6. In addition to the tube configuration, the supporting circuit design colors the guitar signal. British amps sound warm with emphasis on the mids, while American amps are clean and sparkly. Think of the Beatles’ saturated guitar tones vs. the twangy, sparkly surf guitar we hear on Dick Dale records.

One British amp that stands out comes from a company named Watkins. Charlie Watkins entered the audio manufacturing world in 1954, when he began producing guitar amplifiers, and later went on to design some iconic PA systems under the name WEM (Watkins Electric Music). One of the most fabulous amplifiers I’ve had on my bench for repair lately has been a Watkins Dominator.

The Watkins Dominator is notorious for its shape and color. The amp is V-shaped in the front, with a pair of 10" speakers angled outward. I believe the intention there was to have a broader spread of sound, and it certainly sets the amp apart. It sports bright turquoise Tolex with cream and gold accents. Many customers of mine have locked eyes on the Dominator as they scan the shop for goodies.

This amp is an early version of the Dominator, which was manufactured into the early 1960s. The best way to tell is the control panel design—earlier Dominators have a black panel with gold stripes. Using a pair of EL84 output tubes, the amp pumps out roughly 17 watts. It has 2 channels, with each channel featuring dedicated volume and tone controls. The second channel has depth and speed controls for the tremolo as well.

This particular amp had been refurbished with new electrolytic capacitors. The original Elac speakers had also been swapped out for Celestion G10s, which is considered an upgrade. Celestion speakers boast dynamic richness and enhance the nuances of the amp’s circuitry. The original Elac speakers are known for their clean headroom and hi-fi accuracy.

The amp needed a new power transformer, which I sourced from Mercury Magnetics. It is a universal power transformer, which means it can be wired up to be used for different input voltages in different countries. The original power transformer for this amp was set up for European 220–240V AC wall voltage. The replacement transformer can accommodate either the 100–120V AC for U.S. voltage or the original U.K. voltage.

The mounting of the power transformer in earlier Dominators is unusual. It’s installed upside-down on the underside of the angled chassis, with a wooden beam attached to the cabinet providing additional support.

Once the new power transformer was installed, I fired up the amp to give it a sound test. Immediately, I noticed how creamy and warm it sounds. The tremolo is surprisingly deep. I heard some intermittent crackling in the tremolo circuit and traced it to a faulty connection on one of the oscillator capacitors. Finally, there were some noticeable microphonics coming from the EL84 output tubes. I have a stockpile of matched NOS tubes, so I picked a lovely pair of Baldwin EL84s to use as a replacement.

The amp’s owner also wanted me to tweak the tone circuit to brighten things up. I don’t always take on modification requests, but in this case adjusting the tone circuit was minimally invasive. This change comes early on in the circuit, after the signal has gone through the first stage of amplification. I installed a 500 pF capacitor between the input and wiper of the volume control to enhance the top end of the guitar signal. This adds some sparkle to the top end and allows the guitar to cut through the mix a bit more.

The Watkins Dominator is not only a visual delight, but also offers some nice versatility for the guitar player. With luscious cleans at moderate volumes and growling distortion at high volumes, it does just about everything that folks look for in British amplifiers. It’s a great example of a well-made amp that can stand the test of time.

Learn to play 23 solo guitar arrangements of beloved standards and overlooked gems

When Japanese engineer Susumu Tamura designed the Maxon OD808 overdrive, he could hardly have known that it and its export twin, the Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer, would become perhaps the most influential and, probably, imitated pedals in stomp box history. In fact, upon its introduction in 1979, the Tube Screamer, whose smooth sound is characterized by a bass roll off, midrange bump, and slight high-end attenuation, was not an instant success. But as the pedal was adopted by players as disparate as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kirk Hammett, it gradually became a ubiquitous presence on pedalboards of all persuasions.

Tumura, a guitarist himself, spent several of the intervening decades working on wireless designs. In recent years, however, he began modifying Tube Screamers for Japanese guitar stores. But now in his seventies, he found the pace—almost 1,000 pedals annually—exhausting. Why not, he thought, just make a pedal that incorporated all his refinements? Enter the TWA SC-01 Source Code, which is exactly that. Handmade in the U.S., the SC-01 features improvements on the TS design, including 18V operation via an internal regulator, a +6 dB boost, an op amp that claims to inject “complex harmonics and an amp-like feel,” and, most importantly, a “Bite” control that can mix in asymmetrical, tube-like clipping to the symmetrical clipping-based sound of the original.

Source in Session

Using a Stratocaster and Fender Princeton Reverb as my test platform—a made-for-Tube Screamer rig if there ever was one—I first determined whether the Source Code could speak traditional Tube Screamer by A/B-ing it with a recent Ibanez TS-9 reissue. It does, producing tones indistinguishable from the traditional circuit when the bite control is at zero. That said, if your take on Tube Screamers has always been, “if it could only just…,” you’ll find that the bite knob opens up a whole new world. Goosing it adds the extra measure of sizzle, zing, and teeth that more common iterations of the design always lacked. And adjusting the balance of the drive and bite controls dials in an enhanced and expanded range of overdrive tones that truly transcend the original TS.

The Verdict

Whether you deploy Susumu Tamura’s latest refinement of the TS circuit to hit the input of an amp that’s already breaking up or as your primary source of overdrive, you won’t be disappointed. It offers all the essence of the original, but it’s the extra oomph and range that impresses.

The velvet-voiced, smooth-slide-playing solo artist details his journey from sideman to frontman, shares the his approach to designing a fresh Strat model, explains how a forced reset reshaped his career path, of course, he and host John Bohlinger share a few jams.