Magic Fairy Dust: The Veillette Avante Gryphon

I recently reviewed the gorgeous little Veillette Avante Gryphon for Premier Guitar and liked it so much that I bought one. This was my first opportunity to record it in my studio.

The Avante Gryphon is a relatively low-cost version of Woodstock luthier Joe Veillette’s Gryphon, an 18.5″-scale 12-string designed to be tuned a minor […]

Not About Music: Marvin Gore [1923-2015]

Marvin Gore, 1940

If my blog and video posts have seemed fewer and less fun in recent months, it’s not your imagination. I’ve been shuttling between San Francisco and my childhood home in the LA suburbs, spending as much time as possible with my dad in the wake of a back-to-back broken hip […]

A New Tone Control Concept — or Is It?

Hey, smart people — let me get your take on this. I’ve been playing with a new tone control idea that’s so simple, I can’t believe no one’s done it before. (Chances are someone has.)

Here’s the idea: Conventional electric guitar tone controls employ a single pot and single capacitor connected to ground. As you […]

Frets in Flight, 2015

Here are the new U.S. Department of Transportation rules on flying with musical instruments. Sounds like carriers are required to check instruments.

The key passage, per the DOT site:

The rule requires that each U.S. carrier subject to this regulation allow a passenger to carry into the cabin and stow a small musical instrument, […]

Kitschcaster: An Experimental Fender/Gretsch Hybrid

I just completed my third DIY guitar experiment using Warmoth parts. This one is a wacky Fender/Gretsch hybrid with a semi-acoustic Fender Starcaster body, a reverse, angled Strat neck, and various Gretsch-like elements, including TV Jones Filter’Tron pickups, a Bigsby/Vibramate vibrato, and a vulgar silver-sparkle finish — a tribute to the Gretsch Silver Jet, […]

Taylor 150e: An Affordable 12-String Acoustic

I needed a 12-string acoustic in a hurry for a session, so I picked up a new Taylor 150e for under $700. It wasn’t a review model or anything — I just ordered one online, sight unseen and sound unheard.

This model has been generating much buzz as an affordable yet good-sounding 12-string. It’s […]

18 Wicked Watts

I had a blast building and testing two Marshall 18-watt kits for a Premier Guitar story — and I emerged with new respect for this cool 1965 design.

These mini-Marshalls were neglected in their day, but are now treasured. The oft-heard claim that they provide plexi tones at reasonable volumes is only partially true — […]

Are Tubes for Rubes?

I had a lot of fun putting together an article for Premier Guitar on using non-tube distortion. It features a smorgasbord of digital tones guaranteed to horrify tube purists. (It’s certainly horrifying a few commentators on PG‘s Facebook page.)

iZotope’s Trash 2 — like version 1, only trashier!

It was also a chance […]

Death by Doubling

This photo was originally a line of 137 amps, but I had to crop it to fit this small space.

Premier Guitar has just posted a new installment in my Recording Guitarist column. The topic: doubling riffs for fatter sounds. Using a single guitar part (and a great drum performance swiped from Dawn […]

Museum of Lost Effects:
Interfax Harmonic Percolator

Few guitar pedals can rival the cult cachet of the Harmonic Percolator, a singularly ugly distortion stompbox produced in minuscule numbers in the early ’70s by Interfax, a small company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And guess what? They sound ugly too, though they’re ugly in a cool and useful way.

They don’t get […]