I just tried an interesting tone comparison, one I’ve never seen attempted. It concerns the search for loud amp sounds at low volumes. Have any of you ever experimented with speaker attenuators — the passive load boxes that reside between your amp output and speaker input, which let you crank the amp while maintaining […] I just bought 500 germanium transistors.(Yes, as a matter of fact, I am insane. Why do you ask?) UPDATE: My Dunlop Fuzz Face Mini review is live at Premier Guitar. Audio clips included! How and when did it get so frickin’ easy to procure great-sounding germanium transistors? I’ve been building stompboxes for four […] Soloist, Sideman & Steely Dan’s Guitarist of Choice One unexpected pleasure of my recent Marianne Faithful mini-tour was getting to hear guitarist Jon Herington at the Kate Wolf Music Festival. Jon Herington with his Gibson ES-336. [Photo: Tony Kukulich.] Since 1999, Herington has been best known to audiences as Steely Dan’s touring […] So smooth. So sexy. So frickin’ expensive! Hi. I’m Joe, and I’m a flatwound addict. It took me a long time admit it. “What wrong with a little recrational flatwound use?” I used to ask. “I can quit anytime I want.” Sure, I’d sometimes put flatwound strings on my Guild archtop. And sometimes […] UPDATE: My apologies if this page failed to load properly before. After a much screaming and crying some careful troubleshooting, it seems to be working correctly now. I put together a little slideshow of some of the interesting things I saw last week at the 2013 NAMM show in Anaheim. I covered some of […] Since New Year resolutions expire at midnight, January 7th, I’m racing to realize my goal of finally becoming fluent with music notation software before the sands run out. A new way to feign productivity in cafes! I’d like to share some initial impressions about Notion. This isn’t a full-fledged product review — […] 
Is it just me, or do many guitarists these days find themselves alternating between separate analog and digital setups? I’m posting some pics of my current pedalboards (bearing in mind that, for reasons I’ll get into in a sec, my pedalboards only tend to stay “current” for a few days at a time). Both were […] 
Would this be anything less than awesome? I think not. As I gloated last week, Jane Wiedlin gave me her Hello Kitty Stratocaster — the most bitchin’ $99 guitar ever conceived! I finally had a chance to destroy/customize it yesterday, in what will no doubt be the first of many desecrations/enhancements. I’d ordered […] 
Does this guitar LOOK like it has over a hundred settings? Just a quick follow-up on the Pagey project, which first recreated the original Jimmy Page wiring scheme, and then explored an even more extreme version using Seymour Duncan Triple Shot Mounting Rings. Once I’d finished the project, I had to decide whether […] 
Just how many colors can you coax from one guitar? This post is about a guitar wiring scheme that only geeks and tweakers could love. I think you’ll dig it. In Phase 1 of this project, I recreated the original Page wiring scheme using an ’82 Paul, a pair of Duncan ’59 […] |
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