Table of contents for October 2024 in Guitar Player

What does your rig look like for this tour? Will you be using the things you used back in the day, or is it like what you’re using with Alter Bridge? I’m strictly using my signature [PRS MT 100] amplifier. I’m an amp fanatic, and I’ve bought, sold and traded a lot over the years and kept the best ones. When I go on the road, I miss some of them, so I wanted to make an amp that does it all, and that’s the MT 100. It has a big high-gain channel that does the heavy [Mesa] Boogie thing that I’ve always loved. It’s a great balance between the percussive heavy, high-gain rhythm stuff that I do and the lead at the same time. Because sometimes you can get…

YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for thinking the quest for the perfect speaker concluded several years, if not decades, ago, but the folks at ToneSpeak beg to differ. Made in St. Paul, Minnesota, by MISCO (Minnesota Speaker Company), ToneSpeak is a new venture headed by former Eminence employees Cobi Stein and Anthony Lucas. If the model names imply that they’re tramping the same old British- and American-style sonic ground, it’s definitely with the intention of providing new levels of versatility and performance. Reviewed this issue are the British-voiced Birmingham 1275 and Manchester 1290, and the American-voiced New Orleans 1250, each in eight ohms. (The lineup includes two more speakers in the 12-inch ferrite-magnet range, and one alnico-magnet speaker from each side of the pond.) “They all have the same 50-ounce magnetic motor,…

IF YOU’RE EVER at a sporting event—any sporting event—and they don’t play Journey’s “Don’t’ Stop Believin’,” ask for your money back. The song—the second single from the group’s 1981 album, Escape—is nothing less than a generational anthem. Written by guitarist and original member Neal Schon, frontman Steve Perry and then-new keyboardist and rhythm guitarist Jonathan Cain, it peaked in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, Mainstream Rock and Adult Contemporary charts and is part of the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Inclusions in Glee, Rock of Ages and the series finale of The Sopranos led to sales surges and once again solidified the song’s place in pop culture for new generations. Which Cain believes is only appropriate. “There’s a lot of small-town girls and city boys wanting…

In all likelihood, Dave Navarro was never going to find the world an easy place to fit into. Maybe because, as the child of divorced parents, he was living in two worlds, not one. But through it all, there was one constant: Music. “Yeah… the family dynamic.” Navarro pauses to consider the subject. “My parents were divorced, but music was always playing at both houses. My mom had eclectic taste. She loved funk, which was playing in the house a lot. But my dad loved Gordon Lightfoot, the Carpenters, Jim Croce and stuff like that. I would go from house to house and hear different styles of music. Which made me wonder why my parents were ever married in the first place.” That split, as much as anything, may explain…

“I HAVE THIS ‘ONE EYE ON THE AUDIENCE TO MAKE SURE THEY’RE NOT BORED’ ASPECT TO ME. AND SOMETIMES I WISH I DIDN’T” A MODERN-DAY MASTER of the Telecaster, Jim Campilongo is often lumped into Americana or roots rock, but his modus operandi is just a bit more twisted and way more nuanced to fit neatly into those categories. Think of Danny Gatton in uninhibited Funhouse mode, where he’d play everything from Duke Ellington’s signature “Take the A Train” to TV themes like The Honeymooners, The Untouchables, Perry Mason and Rocky and Bullwinkle. Or Roy Buchanan delivering everything from a crying instrumental rendition of Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams” to the shit-kickin’ anthem “Cajun,” his own profoundly cathartic “The Messiah Will Come Again” or a faithful reading of Hank Williams’ “Hey…

SO YOU THINK your bandmates are happy with your contribution as guitarist? That you’re doing a great job and everything is peachy? Well, I conducted an expansive investigation to find out just what they’re whispering to each other when we guitarists aren’t around. This is information you need to know if your goal is to be a sought-after working musician—or if you just want to stop driving your bandmates crazy. Or even just really impress them. The idea for this piece hit me when an old bass-playing friend contacted me over the holidays to purchase a block of lessons as a gift for the guitarist in his band. He presented a long and well thought-out list of grievances, ranging from “his tones are awful” to “he plays too loud and…

THE LATEST COMBOS from San Francisco, California, amp maker RC Davis include the 30-watt Scirocco on review here and the 20-watt Rite Spot ($1,995). Both are 19.5 by 10 by 15 inches, boast foot-switchable tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo, and share the same complement of tubes—two 12AX7s in the preamp, a 12AT7 phase inverter, an ECC99 reverb driver and a pair of 6L6s running in class AB for power. Both are also hand-built and have top-mounted controls, an aluminum chassis, point-to-point wiring, birch-ply cabinets covered in black Tolex and a silver grille. The Scirocco carries a 12-inch Celestion G12 Neo Creamback speaker while the Rite Spot has a 12-inch RC Davis custom Jensen. The Rite Spot clocks in at 20 pounds and the Scirocco 23 pounds, making them some of…

STRYMON’S BIGSKY MULTI-REVERB pedal has been a staple in my setup since it debuted in late 2013, and for two very good reasons. First, it offers 12 studio-class reverb algorithms that run the gamut from classic to futuristic. Second, those reverbs still sound vibrant, realistic and fresh more than 10 years after BigSky became the gold standard for reverb boxes. I recently reconsidered that second point for one reason: Strymon’s newly released BigSky MX pedal, which delivers new reverb machines, dual-reverb capability, full IR functionality and much more. Strymon didn’t just revise BigSky’s features for this new incarnation; they used the same kind of neural-tweaking techniques behind A.I. to create lifelike virtual spaces that respond to your playing. That power comes via an 800MHz Tri-Core Arm processor (versus the BigSky’s…

PLAYING MUSIC WAS inevitable for McKinley James, even if it took a minute for guitar to become the 23-year-old’s instrument of choice. James grew up in what he calls “a super musical household” in Rochester, New York. His father (and now bandmate) Jason Smay was a touring musician, playing drums for the likes of Los Straitjackets and JD McPherson. “When his band or a musician friend would come through town, they’d always stay at the house,” remembers James, who released his debut album, Working Class Blues (Archive Records), this past June. Mom was also talented, although not in the professional sense. “There was always music and records surrounding me all the time, so from early on I just knew I was gonna do something in music.” James (who performs under…

THE MAN KNOWN as the Deacon has released plenty of his own music—a total of eight albums, including this year’s The Deacon Speaks. But Steve Hunter’s greatest fame comes from playing nice with others on a résumé of collaborations. He’s been a member of Mitch Ryder’s 1970s band Detroit, toured and recorded with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper and Tracy Chapman, and performed session work for Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel, David Lee Roth, Flo & Eddie, Leslie West, Glen Campbell, Jason Becker, Jack Bruce, Dr. John, Tommy Henriksen and many others. “I always just saw myself as a guitar player in a session, or with a band,” Hunter explains. The native of Decatur, Illinois, was inspired to play guitar from watching The Lawrence Welk Show as a child and actually learned to play…

MARK TREMONTI RECALLS the doubts that surrounded the early success of Creed, the post-grunge act he first made his mark with in the late 1990s. Seemingly overnight, the Tallahassee, Florida, quartet had a number two hit with “My Own Prison,” the title track from their debut album. With the song’s quiet-loud dynamics, Tremonti’s meaty-but-melodic guitar work, Scott Stapp’s chest-pounding vocals and the solid rhythm section of drummer Scott Phillips and bassist Brian Marshall, it was hard to tell if the band was catching the end of an old wave or the start of a new one. And journalists weren’t too shy to say so. “Everybody was telling us that,” Tremonti recalls. “Even during all our interviews, it was, ‘Do you worry about being a one-hit-wonder?’” “And then we had another…

GUITARISTS GUTHRIE TRAPP and Tom Bukovac are different in a lot of ways that become obvious just a few moments into a conversation with the pair. Trapp, from the Alabama Gulf Coast, is intense and fast talking, bursting with opinions and ideas. Bukovac, an Ohio native, is calm and thoughtful, speaking in measured tones and chuckling at his friend’s hyperactive mind. Their important similarity is equally obvious: They are two of Nashville’s hottest, most in-demand guitarists and have popular, and excellent, YouTube channels. Now the two longtime friends have collaborated on In Stereo, an album of instrumental music that defies expectations, filled with great playing that causes you to lean in and take note, rather than overwhelming you with waves of notes. As Bukovac puts it, “There’s a lot of…

A COMPRESSOR IS one of the main tools in an acoustic player’s box, but how to use one to best effect can seem mysterious. Go without, and the signal can sound weak. Squeeze the signal too hard and you lose dynamics. So what kind is best for a given application? And what’s the deal with limiting? Universal Audio is famous for its classic studio compressors, which are now available as both plug-ins and stompboxes. The Max Preamp & Dual Compressor [see review in September 2023] offers models of the 1176 Studio Compressor and Teletronix LA-2A, Studio Compressor plus a model of the MXR Dyna Comp and an emulation of UA’s 610 tube preamp/EQ. I checked it out on my quest for a deeper understanding and referred to UA tech guru…

THE 57TH BIRTHDAY of the first wah-wah might not seem an obvious year for an anniversary, but many guitarists will welcome accurate reissues of Vox’s seminal pedals any time they come. Parent company Korg is celebrating the 1967 introduction of this eternally popular tone twister by releasing two variations on the wahs of the first two years—the Real McCoy and V846 Vintage reviewed here—as well as an all-chrome Limited Edition of the former ($299 street). The history of the veritable wah pedal is unusual, to say the least. While working as a Vox gear demonstrator in Los Angeles in 1966, session guitarist Del Casher was captivated by the sound produced by rapid rotation of the interactive mid control on a solid-state Vox Super Beatle amplifier, designed by JMI-Vox engineer Dick…