Norse Guitar Feeds

We all know Eddie Van Halen was a great appreciator of classic British rock bands – Van Halen’s cover of You Really Got Me on their debut showed that. But according to Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony, teenage Eddie was so obsessed with The Who, he could replicate Pete Townshend note for note – even as a teen.

In a new interview with Professor of Rock, Anthony recalls Eddie’s impressive skills when he first auditioned to join for Van Halen. “When I jammed with Eddie and Alex that first time, they played some of their original stuff,” the bassist explains. “They were going through these time changes and I’m [thinking], ‘Whoa! What a trip!’”

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“They were great players,” he continues. “They really impressed me… [Eddie] could play the whole Live at Leeds [The Who] album, playing it note for note. It was just as good, if not better than [Pete] Townshend!”

Rather than being intimidated by Eddie and Alex’s talent, Anthony rose to the challenge. “They were putting me through time changes, and I was really digging it because it was something new to me,” he admits.

Anthony would learn over 300 songs, both covers and original tracks, to keep up with the band. “Every day at rehearsal, I’d be learning,” he recalls. “Just cramming songs in because we’d be auditioning for little clubs around the area.”

As Van Halen grew in popularity, their dedication and talent would impress fans and peers alike. In fact, David Lee Roth soon alerted Eddie to the fact that peers were listening in on rehearsals in the hopes of stealing ideas.

“Friends of his that play guitar would sit outside our little rehearsal garage and listen to us,” Anthony says. “They’d be out there listening to what Eddie was doing because they knew that he had something going on that they weren’t doing.”

To avoid artists poaching ideas off of Van Halen, Roth came up with a ploy to disguise Eddie’s talents. “Dave used to tell him, ‘hey, when you play solos… turn your back to the audience because you don’t want these guys to see what you’re doing!’” Anthony explains. “So a lot of times Ed would do that!”

The post The Who album that Eddie Van Halen loved so much that Michael Anthony claims he could play it “note for note, probably better than Townshend!” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

When Shinedown’s Zach Myers gave his John Mayer PRS Silver Sky signature a hot pink paint job and a relic’d finish, it was treated like an act of sacrilege. While Myers loved the final product, inspired by Mayer’s beaten-up BLK1 Strat, the backlash initially made him resent his custom project.

In a new interview with MusicRadar, Myers admits that he once considered destroying the guitar by throwing it into a blaze of onstage pyro. “I was like, ‘One night I’m just going to throw that thing in the fire and let it burn to death because I’ve had [so much] drama around this guitar,’” he reveals

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Though Myers isn’t too sure who got wound up over his custom Silver Sky, Myers notes that Paul Reed Smith himself didn’t seem mad about it. “He didn’t say anything!” he explains. “He notoriously doesn’t like relics – it’s well documented, his hatred of relics. Yet it’s fine. Hey, I would never relic a flame-top guitar – I just felt the Silver Sky lent itself to that kind of cool thing.”

In the past, Myers has hinted that some of the backlash seemed to come from other members of the PRS team. This could potentially be because the company was gearing up to release Mayer’s signature in Roxy Pink in 2021, after Myers had already debuted his pink John Mayer Silver Sky onstage.

Speaking to Premier Guitar in 2022, Myers explained that he received “an upset phone call” after the company heard of the guitar. “I don’t know if it was [Mayer] that was upset – I’ll just say someone was upset that I had my own white guitar painted pink,” the guitarist explained.

“They were like, ‘Well, what if other artists want a pink guitar and you have one?’” he recalled. “If John wants to get mad, I basically just copied the BLK1. That’s really all I did! It’s exactly the same… If you’re a Mayer fan, you can probably tell.”

Myer’s tech, Drew Foppe, has publicly supported Myer’s custom Silver Sky in the past. “For people who don’t quite understand what a tribute relic job looks like, and just want to talk trash about what kind of wear and tear a guitar should or shouldn’t have… you’re missing the entire point in the first place,” he wrote.

His post shows Mayer’s BLK1 Fender Strat alongside the ‘infamous’ relic’d PRS Silver Sky. “I get some people don’t like relic guitars,” he wrote. “But to talk trash on a really, really good relic job is just ridiculous!”

“This is a TRIBUTE to the original, not just a random heavy relic job,” he continued “Some of you people have lost your dang minds to speak on something you know nothing about!”

Nowadays, Myers can look beyond the hate, explaining that his custom Silver Sky is one of his favourite axes. “It’s still one of my coolest looking guitars,” he tells MusicRadar.

The Shinedown guitarist is set to release a new signature guitar of his own very soon. He’s even played a prototype onstage at recent shows – but it’s not too dissimilar to his last signature. Rather ironically, the new release is just a paint job.

“Really, it’s pretty much the same thing as the last one – but it’s a different colour,” he says. “I believe we might have done something different with the pickups. It’s basically a different colour variation of the Myers Blue, of the last version of the Myers. It’s a cool colour, matching headstock. It’s very pretty.”

The post “I’m just going to throw that thing in the fire”: Shinedown guitarist admits his relic’d PRS Silver Sky inspired so much “drama” that he wanted to get rid of it appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

Imagine copping a quality 1960s Fender Deluxe on Facebook Marketplace for under £3,000. You’d already be pretty satisfied – but what if that amp turned out to be a priceless piece of Beatles history?

That’s exactly what happened to 45-year-old James Taylor. When the father of two was picking up his purchase, the seller alleged that the Fender amp was previously owned by John Lennon. “They told me it might have been gifted to someone by John Lennon, but I have heard these stories before and I didn’t pay it much mind,” he tells Manchester Evening News.

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However, after some digging, Taylor started to believe the seller’s claims. Taylor discovered that the Facebook seller did have some ties to Lennon; the seller was friends with Rob Lynton, a songwriter and guitarist who had worked with Lennon on his 1971 album, Imagine.

Taylor reached out to Lynton to confirm whether the amp was once Lennon’s – and Lynton confirmed that it was.

In fact, Lynton went so far as to hand-write Taylor a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’ as proof. “My friend Mal Evans, who was The Beatles’ roadie and general Factotum for many years… initially loaned me the amplified for recording purposes,” Lynton writes. “He advised me that this amp was John’s.”

“In 1971, I was invited to play on John Lennon’s Imagine album,” the ‘certificate’ continues. “Following the recording sessions, I was with John and I mentioned that I had been loaned the Fender amplifier by Mal Evans, as I required a smaller amplifier than the ones I owned at the time.”

“I asked John if I should bring the amplifier to his home, or return it… he responded: ‘No, thanks very much for all the work you’ve done on the sessions. Don’t worry about bringing it back, you can keep it. It’s yours!’”

While Taylor was already happy with his new amp, the news has just made the purchase even sweeter. “I bought the amp because I wanted the amp, and I didn’t pay John Lennon sort of money for it,” he tells Manchester Evening News. “When all the details started checking out, I realised I had something very exciting on my hands. I wasn’t expecting it at all!”

“One of my earliest listening experiences was my parents introducing me to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at a young age… And now I have John Lennon’s amp, which is crazy to think about!”

According to Taylor, the amp still “plays and sounds fantastic”, and he’s already used it for some band practice sessions. Though he does admit he “might have been a bit more cautious had [he] realised the historical importance” of the piece of gear.

Looking forward, Taylor is hoping to further investigate what tracks Lennon might have used the amp on. He’s also thinking he might sell on the piece, as “it would be scary to have something so valuable in the house”.

“There are many parts of me that wish I could hold onto it, but it is a risk to keep in a house with toddlers rushing around,” the father of two admits.

The post Man buys John Lennon’s old Fender guitar amp on Facebook Marketplace… for barely $4,000 appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

$2,599/£2,549, taylorguitars.com

If you’ve been paying attention over the last seven months, you’ll have probably heard the stir caused by Taylor’s Gold Label guitars. After 50 years of defiantly and obsessively looking forward in its guitar designs, the Californian guitar company – now under the watchful eye of master luthier Andy Powers – decided to look back.

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The result was a guitar that somewhat changed the conversation about what we perceive as ‘the Taylor sound’. As Bob Taylor himself told me last year, when it comes to the tonality of Taylor guitars, “You have to like it, to like it” – and that for every person who loved the pristine, bright characteristics that are the brand’s trademark, another person would dislike it for exactly the same reason.

But by Powers’ own admission, the people who don’t vibe with the classic Taylor sounds aren’t wrong for doing so – they just have different tastes. The Gold Label Collection was Powers responding to that: “I’m thrilled that many people do love this,” he told me, “But for those who don’t, well, there can be other sounds too.”

The result was an all-new design in pretty much every way – new body style, new bracing pattern, new neck construction, new visual style and above all else, a new sound. Well, I say new – it was new for Taylor, but it was a sound that sprinkled a sheen of something very old onto the formula, and made our reviewer Michael Watts call the 814e an “important milestone” in the evolution of Taylor guitars.

Evolution doesn’t stand still of course, and there was always the sense that it wouldn’t be long before the Gold Label concept expanded further, and here we have it in the shape of another (sort of) new body shape, and a more accessible price point. Meet the Gold Label Grand Pacific.

Taylor Gold Label 517e – what is it?

Those of you familiar with Taylor guitars will be aware of the Grand Pacific body shape already. Introduced back in 2019, the Grand Pacific was Powers’ take on a slope-shouldered dreadnought guitar. In a classic bit of foreshadowing, the Grand Pacific was the first Powers-designed Taylor that hinted at his desire to expand the tonal recipe in a more old-school direction.

The GP has since become a mainstay of the Taylor line, but for the Gold Label guitar, the body has been tweaked somewhat. The guitar retains the body dimensions of the original, but has upped the depth by ⅜ of an inch to be a full 5 inches at the soundhole. For reference, that’s deeper than a Martin Dreadnought or a Gibson Super Jumbo: a chunky boi indeed.

Otherwise we have much the same basic specs as the Super Auditorium-sized 814e – including the new fanned V-Class bracing, the revolutionary long-tenon Action Control Neck, and another notable appearance of LR Baggs’ Element VTC pickup in place of Taylor’s proprietary Expression system.

Visually it’s got the same tweaked peghead design and inlays, and the same 1930s-influenced pickguard and bridge shape… but elsewhere things are really rather distinct.

For starters, whereas the 814e was available with a torrefied spruce top, and either rosewood or koa back and sides, you can get a Gold Label Grand Pacific in spruce/rosewood configuration in the shape of the 717e. But the guitar we have here has tropical mahogany back and sides, to go with the neck of the same material.

And then there’s the colour of the thing of course – the initial run of Gold Label guitars were either available in natural or a smoky caramel sunburst, but the 517e also comes in this rather lovely gloss Blacktop.

A casual perusal of the festival stages across the world this summer will leave you in little doubt that shade- and painted-top acoustics are very much Having A Moment right now, and this guitar feels right at home in that world. That painted top is also a nice nod to the Depression-era guitars that informed the Gold Label’s sonic and visual character, and I must admit to being rather charmed by the whole package, visually.

Taylor Gold Label 517e – build and playability

Back in that conversation I had with Bob Taylor, he emphasised to me that subjective opinions on sound were not something that concerned him – all he really cared about was that the build quality of his guitars was beyond reproach regardless.

Candidly, that’s often been my experience with Taylor instruments – they are invariably wonderfully and innovatively constructed guitars that reflect the care, craftsmanship and attention to detail that the company has become famous for, regardless of what price point you’re talking about. The 517e is of course far from a cheap guitar, and so you’d expect a first-class degree of build, fit and finish here – and that’s exactly what you get, pretty much.

The satin-finished neck is beautifully applied and supremely comfortable, with Taylor’s ‘Standard’ carve offering a slinky and accommodating palmful that welcomes electric players in the most classic of Taylor ways. It’s a reminder that for all the visual and marketing claims that this is a guitar with an ‘old soul’, it’s still a Taylor guitar first and foremost, and that’s no bad thing from a playability perspective.

String spacing is a fairly generous 38mm at the nut and 55mm at the bridge, giving larger hands plenty of room to operate, while the slim neck and accommodating profile mean it’s comfortable enough playing cowboy chords as it is more deft fingerstyle maneuvering.

I’m not a small guy, but unquestionably the extra depth added to the body here makes the already imposing size of a Grand Pacific feel even more so. Personally, I don’t have an issue with that but it should go without saying that those with smaller frames and shorter arms might want to try one out before you pull the trigger.

Put side by side with the Dreadnought-adjacent Martin HG-28 that I happen to have on deck here at Guitar.com HQ, the 517e looks like something of a kaiju – certainly by the usual svelte standards of Taylor’s instruments.

The general finishing is pretty much flawless all over, though I did notice a small but uncharacteristically rough bit of finishing on the top brace. It’s the sort of thing that will have no bearing on the sound, and I likely wouldn’t have noticed if not for the fact that it was the brace sitting directly below the soundhole. It’s honestly nothing that couldn’t be fixed with 10 seconds of gentle sanding, but it’s also one of those things that once I did notice it, I couldn’t stop noticing it every time I picked up the guitar. It’s also in sharp contrast to every other bit of woodworking on the instrument which is utterly flawless.

Before we get into the sounds of the thing though, it is worth talking about the looks – spending time with a Gold Label guitar you can really get a sense of all the charming and unusual little touches that set these guitars apart from the regular Taylor line.

The subtle angled bevel of the headstock edge, the lovely matt-effect parchment of the pickguard, the appealing dark stain of the peghead and indeed the lovely thin application of the Blacktop finish, allowing the straight grain lines of the torrefied spruce top to catch the light in the way a proper old guitar does… it’s all rather lovely.

Taylor Gold Label 517e – sounds

So does this guitar have the sonic character that can win over non-Taylor fans? Well, before we get to the subjective stuff, a word about the wood choices here. Spruce/mahogany is of course an all-time classic acoustic guitar pairing, but one that brings certain qualities to the party that we have to consider.

Rosewood, the other option in the range, absorbs soundwaves quite differently to mahogany, and without getting too deep into the weeds of the physics of the whole thing, a guitar with a mahogany tends to have an open and more airy tonality versus the deeper and more complex nature of rosewood.

With that in mind, I sit down with the 517e and the extra power and projection offered by that extra body depth is immediately apparent. It’s a similar basic sonic character to the 817e in that it has a warmth and richness I’m not used to hearing from a Taylor instrument.

It’s not exactly vintage in the way an old Martin or Gibson is of course, but there’s something pleasantly old-school in the bass frequencies – the extra air inside and that long-tenon neck presumably giving them a bit more body than I might have expected. It also doesn’t have the roundness and complex overtones that you’d generally get from a rosewood guitar, but it has more depth to the lows than you might expect.

Mahogany’s natural glassiness is also a good fit for the more Taylor-y qualities of the guitar – that Taylor sheen is very evident upon picking, and the string and note separation is further enhanced by the always-impressive V-class architecture under the hood.

As you move partial chord shapes up the neck or take more elaborate fingerstyle excursions, the remarkable in-tune-ness of the V-Class concept really does show its hand wonderfully. Whether you’re in altered tunings or standard, this thing really does stay in tune impressively and offers wonderfully clear and well-intonated single notes all the way up the neck. I can see this being a very fine recording guitar indeed.

The Baggs Element VTC pickup is a tried and true option, and while it doesn’t offer the fancier pseudo-modelling stuff that some of the more high-end modern pickup systems do, as a quality under-saddle transducer it does a nice job of replicating the sonic character of the guitar without too much of the nasty stuff that nobody likes from piezo systems.

Taylor Gold Label 517e – should I buy one?

At this point I should probably confess that I am absolutely one of those people that Bob Taylor and Andy Powers was talking about earlier. I love everything about Taylor guitars – the playability, the craftsmanship, the innovation… the whole bag. But for whatever reason I’ve never truly managed to embrace the sound of them – though I’ll admit I’ve come close with a couple of instruments in the last few years.

From that perspective then, I’m the ideal target for these Gold Label guitars – and I can’t deny that this is the most sonically compelling Taylor guitar I’ve ever played. Part of me wonders if I might personally have preferred the extra warmth and bass response of the rosewood back and sides version, but there’s still plenty to love here for fans of more old-school acoustic guitar tones – and the way it weds that with the precision, clarity and definition that a Taylor V-Class guitar offers is hugely impressive.

Is it going to replace your well-loved old Martin in your arsenal sonically? Of course not, but the Gold Label Collection is still an important and intriguing avenue for Taylor to explore. Because it’s not just about winning over the doubters, though it does a very good job of that. Really, it’s about showcasing that Taylor’s ethos and craftsmanship defies the pigeonholes that we often put brands in, and expands the brand’s future horizons into even more exciting and broad territory.

Taylor Gold Label 517e – alternatives

The sub-$3k market is very much the heavyweight division when it comes to American-made acoustic guitars, so the Gold Label faces stiff competition from all the major brands. One prominent branch of the Bob Taylor coaching tree also occupying this space is Breedlove, and their Oregon Dreadnought Concerto CE ($2,999) – founded by ex-Taylor builders Larry Breedlove and Steve Henderson, the brand offers a smaller but similarly ethos’d approach to acoustic building. If you want a dreadnought guitar with a real retro vibe, Martin’s D-18 Standard Series ($2,899) is a spruce/mahogany monster with unimpeachable credentials. Another 50-year-old acoustic guitar company with a penchant for doing interesting things with bracing, the Larrivee D-44 ($2,899) is a spruce/mahogany dread that’s made in Oxnard, California – a couple of hundred miles up the coast from Taylor.

The post Taylor Gold Label 517e review – “this is the most sonically compelling Taylor guitar I’ve ever played” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.

​Among the many wonderful experiences that playing music gives us is bonding with others who share our passion for creating something that is impossible to define. I have been blessed to be able to make music with more people than I can accurately count. But one person rises above them all, my dear friend and truly my brother-from-another-mother, Andy Groag. 
 
Andy and I met in the late 1970s when both of us were recruited to play in a totally for fun band called the Geotones. Comprised of a bunch of people who worked together at U.S.G.S. in Woods Hole, it was supposed to be a one and done thing. Some folks who were organizing it for the staff at U.S.G.S. and others from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution thought it would be cool to have an “oldies” band play a few tunes, comprised of people who worked at those places. They were lacking a guitarist and a bass player but had no shortage of singers, at least a half-dozen if memory serves. I’m not sure why I was asked to join but Andy’s girlfriend at the time worked at U.S.G.S. and she talked him into doing it. He had a beat up old Guild hollowbody bass and a small amp, basically the only qualification needed to join the band. 
 
From the moment I met him at the first rehearsal we recognized almost immediately that we had a lot in common in terms of taste in music and that came down to one thing: blues! Particularly electric blues by the likes of James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf, all three of the Kings, Muddy Waters, Albert Collins  and others. Andy was very proud of sitting in with T-Bone Walker a few years earlier at a blues bar in Cambridge.
 
The party was a huge success and everyone vowed to make it a yearly event, which it was for a while. The next year a guy named Tim Ling joined, who was a scientist at USGS but also a superb musician with monster chops on keyboard, bass and sax. He was also a GREAT singer. The Geotones were asked to play at the finish line of the Falmouth Road Race, set up on a flatbed trailer. We did it for a few years and it was great fun. Unfortunately, new members became involved and took the Geotones way too seriously so Andy, Tim and I thought: Instead of doing doo-wop tunes from the 1950s, how about we put a band together doing 60s music? That was what we grew up with. We recruited a guy named John Spiesburger to play drums and a woman named Candy Lane to sing. Bit’s ‘n Pieces was born and then and now for me it was the most pure fun I’ve ever had playing music. We played most of the bars in town that featured live rock bands plus many parties and other events. When Tim decided to quit being a poor scientist and move on to get his MBA from Stanford (!) in California to make some real money, Bit’s n’ Pieces was done. Tim's life story is incredible But that's for another time. Suffice to say, I miss him each and every day. Here's an explanation of the photos at the top of this post:

#1:  Bit's & Pieces promo photo. Sadly, (from the left) Tim, Andy, (me) Candy Lane (& John S.) are gone.
#2.: Playing at a cool restaurant in Mashpee Commons (I've forgotten the name but it was in the location now occupied by Bleu, if you're a local please remind me of the name) Played there many times and it was a terrific location. Had to find the owner who was often hiding behind the cooler in the kitchen when it was time for us to get paid, however!
#3: Having fun at one of the many post-Falmouth Road Race parties we held at our house. I'm blocking him in this photo but behind me on the red drum set was my son Matt, then about 16 years old. It was one of only two times Matt played with me in front of an audience and I treasure those times. Hoping we can do more in the future!
#4:  Playing on the Island Queen for an evening "cruise to nowhere" party. We did a dozen or so gigs on the Island Queen. Tons of fun (except for our set up area being directly over the very loud engines) but not so much for Crazy Vinnie. I did not know he was prone to severe sea-sickness and on this particular instance, our first time playing on the Queen I happened to turn around to see Vinnie's head out the window next to him as he proceeded to "chum" the waters! Most amazing part? I swear he did not miss a beat on his congas and kept right on playing!
 
Andy and I stayed close. Somehow we connected with a real character named Vinnie (most likely not his real name) who was a superb player of congas and other hand-percussion instruments. Then Steph Murphy who played rhythm guitar and sang joined us. She was and still is one of the nicest people I've ever met and she was a great addition because her voice was a perfect fit for the Americana type songs we were delving in to. Andy and I loved her; a great voice, good guitar chops but also she was and is a warm and sincere lady. Many gigs followed including a regular summer gig at a local bar/restaurant/hotel, plus New Years Eve. Unlike some bands, there were never any ego issues and it was a blast. If anything started to get a bit “heavy” it was always Andy who would crack a joke and bring us back to our senses. 
 
Andy was a good, solid bass player…most the of the time! His curse was he liked playing very much but hated to have to think about the music and the more fun he was having, the more “adventurous” his playing became. The result was sometimes leaving me to walk the musical plank looking for chord changes that were supposed to happen, but didn’t – something that made my lead breaks a real adventure at times. But really, no big deal because I loved him and his enthusiasm was contagious. My standard joke with him was: If you go before I do I will put on your gravestone, “Here lies Andrew Groag. He was just one fret off !” But he was creative and RIGHT in his musical choices way, way more than he was wrong.
 
As our musical connection progressed it was natural that our personal stories intertwined. We celebrated many shared wonderful, unforgettable experiences unrelated to music with friends and families (and more than a few bottles of good wine!) as the years passed. The last time we performed together was at a picnic held by movie director, writer and producer Alec Sulkin at his beautiful family home overlooking Red Brook Harbor. It was not the best playing we’d ever done but we had fun, Alec and his lovely wife could not have been more welcoming and the guest list was pretty amazing,  as was the food!
 
But after that, try as I might, after that gig I could never get Andy to come over and play some tunes and share dinner and drinks, just for fun. Over the last 15 years I asked him dozens of times to come play and he always has an excuse not to. His jewelry shop in Mashpee Commons and his tennis friends seemed to hold him more than anything else. But on a deeper level I think Andy was in something like mourning our previous musical experiences and the reality that those days were past and gone. The sudden and shocking death of our friend and bandmate Tim Ling (Geotones and Bits ‘n Pieces) hit Andy much harder than I realized at the time. 
 
In early March of this year, my dear friend and brother in spirit Andy Groag passed away due to complications resulting from his two-year battle with cancer. My wife Kathy and I alternated taking him up to Boston every week for his treatments over the three months preceding his passing. He said over and over how much he appreciated us doing that but to us there was no question or hesitation. We loved our friend and I feel so grateful that we were able to be together frequently on those rides up and back to Boston. As his health deteriorated there were times when very few words were spoken on this trips but Kathy and I wanted to be sure he was with friends who loved him deeply. We were heading to Florida for two months and I think both of us knew he wouldn’t last until we returned. 
 
I spoke to Andy a few days before his passing. I am absolutely sure we both knew it would be the last time. I sensed he was ready, if we ever truly are. We didn’t reminisce about the many wonderful experiences we had shared; there was really no need to do that. He again thanked me profusely for what I had done over the months before this conversation. I can’t recall the specifics of our last conversation but he certainly did not sink into woulda/coulda/shoulda territory. He was at peace and I’m sure he knew how many people loved him and that’s all that really matters in the end. His spirit, kindness, generosity, total lack of pretense and most of all, his love made everyone who was privileged to know him a better person. Goodbye, old friend. 
    

If you consider all the ways that the Stratocaster represents perfection, “feel” may not be the very first thing you think of. But while the svelte and curvaceous Stratocaster may be the definitive visual representation of “electric guitar” in a dictionary, and ring like a cathedral chime, the thing that distinguishes a great or priceless Strat from a merely good one is often its ergonomic excellence. Slim, light, contoured in all the right places, it’s a marvel of form following function. I’ve played a lot of old guitars over the years, but the one that I can still feel in my bones almost two decades later was a 1964 Stratocaster. The sight of it was beautiful enough to be forever etched in my brain’s visual cortex. But it was the feel of cradling that instrument, above all other things, that remains.

The Mexico-made Fender Player II Modified Stratocaster does much to underscore the tactile pleasures of Strat-ness. The rounded edges of the maple neck are as comfortable as an old baseball glove. The medium-jumbo frets lend a silky glide to finger vibrato and bends. The tremolo’s sensitivity and stability beckon a player to slow down and indulge in its bouncy precision. But the Player II Modified Strat’s delicious feel is also reinforced and enhanced by the sound of the Player II Noiseless pickups and the way the quiet performance invites deeper exploration of tone detail and dynamics. And the switching, which enables blends of the bridge and neck pickup to offer an even more expansive tone palette. The build quality is just about flawless, the locking tuners are a considerable asset, and at $1,049 it represents a solid deal at a time when new guitar prices are headed steadily northward.

Small Steps Forward, Big Returns

I’m a bit of a Fender traditionalist when it comes to necks. I like the vintage style 7.25" fretboard radius and a profile just on the chunky side. But between owning a few 9.5" radius Squiers that I love, and playing and reviewing enough contemporary Fenders with the same spec, I’ve come to appreciate the feel of the slightly flatter fretboard. For players that prefer the 9.5" radius and know Fender’s modern “C” profile well, this neck might not, at first, feel like much of a revelation. Indeed, Fender’s modern “C” is so ubiquitous it can feel almost generic. But the contoured edges do much to make the neck feel a little more vintage and make the Player II Modified a more inviting instrument in general.

Once you’re hooked on the feel of the Player II Modified, you’ll find the pickups even more alluring. If Fender sacrificed any classic tonalities in making the Player II Noiseless Strat pickups quieter, it’s hard to hear. I sense a little extra warmth and roundness in addition to a lack of 60-cycle hum—and the latter perception may color the former. But the output is anything but suffocated, and the relative quiet means a lot less ear fatigue when exploring overdrive and distortion tones, which are a great match for this instrument.

The real treat, though, is the push-pull switching on the treble pickup knob, which enables the addition of the pretty neck pickup to the bridge pickup and combined bridge/center pickup. And though I dutifully explored every single pickup and combination here (and was smitten with the middle position Jerry Garcia tones in particular), I had a hard time leaving behind the creamy/crispy combination of the neck and bridge together. If, like me, you often go hunting for the perfect crossover of sunburnt surfy top end to brighten up your Curtis Mayfield soul ballad tones, the Player II Modified will serve up this most delicious sonic fruit in abundance.

The Verdict

Fender’s marketplace competition for the very guitar it created has never been more intense. But the Player II Modified Stratocaster offers real, if incremental, improvements that enable Fender to stay at the top of the heap in the circa $1K solidbody segment. It allows players to experience everything that’s great about a Stratocaster without settling for an otherwise capable S-style with a weird-looking headstock. There’s room for improvement here and there: The vibrato could be a little more tuning-stable under heavy use and more softly sprung off the factory floor. And, at least to my eyes, an opportunity to make a really stunning looking Stratocaster was missed by slapping a very ’70s black pickguard on a green that evokes the playful custom colors of the ’60s. But there are plenty of more traditional color options elsewhere in the Player II Modified Stratocaster line. And if they all provide as pleasurable and inspiring a playing experience as our review instrument, Fender is well-prepared to take on all comers in this very competitive segment of the solidbody market.

Legendary rock journalist Steven Rosen was friends with Eddie Van Halen for a long time. And in this time, he learned a thing or two about his relationship with the guitar. Now, in a new interview with Igor Paspalj, Steven recalls how it all began for the “guitarist’s guitarist”, who was only a “local Hollywood phenomenon” when the two first met in July 1977.

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Steven has written a new book Tonechaser on this friendship, providing deep insights into just how far the Van Halen guitarist’s musical obsessions went. It also looks at some of his personal quirks. “[Eddie] was a pretty complex person”, Rosen recalls, and that “the longer I sort of knew him and hung out with him, I realise there were more facets to his personality.” 

“Music was first and foremost and everything for him. I mean, I know you’ve heard it before, but with him, it was everything.”

Steven was able to get to know Eddie on such a personal level because of their proximity: the two only lived eight minutes away from each other. Eddie lived in the luxurious Coldwater Canyon, while Steven lived in the comparatively “funky cheap rent part of Hollywood”. Because of this, it “wasn’t long before he would just sort of come over… Or I’d drive over to his place in Cold Water”, where Eddie lived with his future wife, American actress Valerie Bertinelli.

Whenever Steven would visit Eddie’s Coldwater Canyon home studio, “He was always sitting in the chair and having a talk. He was playing, he was changing strings. It was always about the guitar.”

It was through these studio encounters that Rosen realised that his more musical side was intensely private: “When he was in the musician mode and he needed to work, he needed to be by himself. It was almost an unspoken thing. I mean, I could sense it. He’d kind of be playing, and you kind of look over, and I just knew it. ‘Hey man, I’ll see you later.’”

Because of this key moment, he also discovered how important it was to Eddie that people respected this part of him: “And if you disrespected him, he held on to that for a very long time.”

In other recent Van Halen news, a recently unearthed interview with Ed from 1991 revealed that far from being enamoured with the rise of shred guitar in the 1980s, he seemed to be quite disdainful of the idea – “what’s important to me now isn’t how fast I can solo. It’s the whole picture,” he explained.

The post “There was never a single moment when he did not have the guitar in his hand” Eddie Van Halen’s friend remembers how obsessed he was with guitar appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.