Super 8: Episode 3 In April of 2002 the White Stripes spent two weeks in the studio recording the bulk of what would become their 4th album: Elephant *. The record is a high point in their career and indeed, when it was released a year later, it went on to win a Grammy. It’s a great sounding record as well, both crisp and warm — you’d be forgiven for thinking it was done in one of those big Nashville rooms, through an enormous console with flying faders, into the latest version of one of those high end DAWs favoured by the film industry like SADiE. When actually it was done at Toe Rag Studi ..read more

Super 8: What’s so great about 8-track? As the industry standard, 8-track recording was a relatively short lived phenomenon, probably no more than ten years as the industry standard, during the big league studio era. But for such a short lived professional format, it has captured some ground breaking musical works — and some of them long after it was retired by the major studios as a regular working medium. It’s hard to believe that people would still use technology that old in the 21st century, but hey, The White Stripes won a Grammy with it.  “In his octopus’s garden… ” Multitrack re ..read more

… resonating resin. Whilst researching the The White Stripes’ Elephant album for a blog about 8-track recording, I got somewhat distracted looking into the rig Jack White was using at the time. In the blog I talk about the arch-top Kay guitar that he used to record ' Seven Nation Army ', but the guitar he used in the hypnotic video for the same song — and which was used to record most of Elephant — was his red, two pickup, Res-O-Glas Airline made by the Valco company*. The visual impact of that promo film on the guitar world was such that retro revivalists Eastwood brought out a copy of that ..read more

… getting the juice from Orange. Soldier Of Orange In the war for the hearts & minds (& wallets) of guitarists the battle has always been fought on two fronts, since both sound & vision need to be appealing for anyone with a creative bent. Few brands have done as much to stand out with their visual appeal as the Orange Music Electronic Co. Ltd. When Rhett Shull put out a video on the legendary British amplifier marque last September he concentrated on two Orange models: the OR120 and AD30 amp heads. The former representing those classic ‘hundred watters’ that appeared at the end o ..read more

… The guitar as sandwich board. When Woody Guthrie emblazoned the legend “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar in 1942 he may not have been the first musician to write on his axe but he certainly became history’s pre-eminent guitar graf-writer. Whether anybody in the audience at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go was aware of that heritage, when Rage Against The Machine took to the stage fifty years later, probably isn’t all that important. I’m sure it had no bearing on the impact that early RATM gig had on the audience. But whilst the band’s pivotal performance that night in 1992 was certainly moment ..read more

putting the hex on Surf Metal ceramics. So, here’s a couple of guitars, from different clients, that we had in recently for a variety of jobs; both with fret damage that needed filing out and re-crowning. It struck me that beneath their classic curves both of these guitars were quite savage beasts. Both have high output humbuckers in the bridge position of the kind favoured by Metal musicians — a Bare Knuckle Aftermath and a Seymour Duncan Invader. I know, they both sound like you’d have to order them from Lovehoney don’t they? They're definitely not Surf guitars anymore. But then again ..read more

… Moons, Floyds & sausages   Back on the 7th of April there was a Pink Super Moon, the biggest, or rather closest, we will have this year. In some cultures it is considered an indicator of the end of days; and while it might be a bit superstitious to worry about an approaching apocalypse based on the Moon’s natural cycle, it was certainly a harbinger of a world transformed in ways we couldn’t imagine at the start of 2020. As Nick Drake sang in the Autumn of 1971, “And none of you stand so tall, Pink moon gonna get you all”.  When I first started listening to Nick Drake (and at ..read more

… get in the ring with Thumper’s amps.  I knew nothing about Traynor amps before I bought one, except that it sounded incredible. It was a Traynor YBA-1 Bass Master, and though it didn’t look like much the noise that came out of it was truly phenomenal*. I have never heard an amp that startled me as much as this amp did the first time I heard it. So I did a little research and almost immediately discovered a lot of people calling it “the poor man’s Plexi”. Indeed most of the posts and blogs I found about the YBA-1 were discussions of the best ways in which they could be modded to be clos ..read more

… dishing the dirt on distorted guitar.  Why are there so many fuzz boxes out there? I suppose one might as well ask why there are so many varieties of hot sauce. I’m writing this in Sacramento, whilst on tour, and the range of hot sauces I can buy in this small city is quite dizzying. Everybody likes a little pep, but everyone has different tastes; and people’s tastes change of course, not only from day to day but over their lifetimes. We all had a RAT in 1985 and while some of us still do or have even returned to a clone of it, it’s not what everyone would choose. One person loves the ..read more

… how do you 'harness' that voice?  What is it about “The Burst” that is so covetable? Is it the list of great players who’ve employed it over the years? Is it the tone that could be wrung from it’s neck? Is it the look of the thing? That book-matched maple cap, the shape, the balance? Well of course it’s all of these things and more. And none of these characteristics sit in isolation — all of these factors are connected after all. Many guitarists are attracted to the look of a 1959 Les Paul Standard, particularly one with beautiful flame or quilting in the grain. But for the great playe ..read more