I’ve worked on many projects by many artists, but this is my first release under my own name. And it only took me 50 years! It’s a back-to-the-roots project for me, though I have some fairly strange roots. When I was a teen I wanted to go into academia, specializing in early music […] Fender’s Telecaster Deluxe has had an interesting and checkered history. Once regarded as yet another mediocre product from the company’s era of CBS ownership, these turn-of-the-seventies instruments now fetch huge prices on the collector’s market. I’ve never owned own. But when singer/songwriter Greer Sinclair loaned me one of Fender’s 2010 reissues, it was time for […] I haven’t posted any new video in months and months. It’s not just laziness or business, though I suffer from both. I’ve just been locked away in my studio, trying to create a new live looping system. I still haven’t nailed it down, so I’m not going to get into a complete run-down […] Okay, the funky gold foil pickups found in cheapo Japanese and American gutiars in the 1950s and ’60s are popular again. And trend slut that I am, I’m smitten with them. But they do this one really weird thing …. It has to do with the capacitive relationship between the guitar volume knob, pickups, […] 
You know what sucks about attending NAMM as a manufacturer rather than a gear writer? I was epoxied to my booth all day, and I barely saw anything other than my guitar pedals. But on one rare break, I got to hang out with Jannis Anastasakis and his crew from JAM Pedals of Athens, Greece. […] Here’s a new guitar I put together using Warmoth parts and Lollar Gold Foil pickups. Around the time I started assembling the Resistocaster, I reviewed the cool new Supro Westbury — another guitar with gold-foil pickups — for Premier Guitar. It was an interesting juxtaposition, because the Lollar pickups are cloned from the […] This doesn’t qualify as any kind of NAMM report. I was imprisoned behind the desk at my Gore Pedals booth, relieved only for bathroom breaks and a couple of visits with old friends. Even so, I saw some lovely and inspiring things, especially the visionary instruments at the Boutique Guitar Showcase and the ravishing stompbox […] As threatened, here’s a closer look at Strat with PAF humbuckers used for my recent “God Only Knows” cover. Most parts are from the long-suffering guitar used for all the Mongrel Strat Project experiments. And this one is especially mongrel-ific, with its blend of vintage Fender and Gibson. Obviously, Gibson pickups is a Strat […] I just posted 50 “new” guitar performance videos to YouTube. See, I recently finished the 100th video for my YouTube channel. Not quite ready to face the second hundred, I spent a few days reviewing all those clips. Some stuff I’m proud of. Some makes we wince. And I thought a few bits might stand […] 
I’ve long been obsessed with Sam “The Man” Taylor’s epic sax solo on the Chords seminal 1954 rock ’n’ roll hit, “Sh-Boom.” But I never got around to learning, transcribing, and analyzing it till now. I heard it about 100 times while making and editing this video, and it still thrills me on every […] |
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