by Lisa Sharken

Dimebag Darrell is a player who needs little introduction. Bred on classic rock and heavy metal, Dime analyzed the styles and tones of his favorite players, then forged his own signature style and sound with Pantera. Rather than to follow the trends set by others, Dime raised the bar for metal guitarists by creating a sound that was even heavier and more brutal than his predecessors. Dime became the trendsetter–a modern metal god that today’s players venture to emulate.

Dime tells GroundWire about the development of his new signature model pickup, the SH-13 Dimebucker, and gives us the scoop on how he shapes his trademark sound both onstage and in the studio.

GroundWire: Tell us about the creation of the Dimebucker and how this pickup was voiced.

Dimebag Darrell: When I was playing the old Dean® guitars, I found a pickup which fit that guitar. Those pickups went out of production and became hard to find. Since then, I’ve switched over to Washburn guitars and those guitars needed a new pickup that would work well with them and give me the sound I want. I realized that there was not a pickup out there that did exactly what I wanted it to do. I was always trying to find a pickup with super-high output and lots of gain and I’d tried out lots of different pickups. It seemed that distortion pickups were too distorted for me and clean pickups always had a poppy sound that was almost like a Strat®. When I’d add some dirt to the cleaner pickups, it was just a clean sound that was coated with distortion. It wasn’t like it was smushed together, the way I wanted it. That’s what I call a “smushy” tone–like when you’re going “shung, shung, shung” and you get that warm tone with the distortion mixed in and it has the low end that’s kicking you in the butt while the top end is cutting your face off in the right way, but not ripping your face off. It’s not fuzzy distortion or real nasty and gritty sounding, but it’s more of a deep, thick tone with some sizzle on the top.

I’d tried out a lot of different pickups and some of them had the right kind of distortion, but I’d be missing the sustain or feedback I wanted or getting the wrong kind of feedback. When I got together with Duncan, I explained exactly what I was looking for and I gave them one of my old pickups as a starting point. They went to work on it and then sent me two or three samples to try out and they nailed it. We were on tour when all this was going on and I had one guitar that I was using for the testing. Every time I’d get a new pickup to try, we’d swap it out. So I’d be playing all of my other guitars that already had my tone set, then I’d put on the guitar with the new Duncan pickup in it and then I could really evaluate where it was sitting tonally. That’s how we were able to actually hone in on the tone we were looking for. So basically, what we got was a super hot-rodded Dime pickup that’s got the right kind of Dime distortion. It’s really got the smushies–where it’s toned in so that it feels like you’re playing on a sponge. It’s very saturated–not to the point where it’s overly fuzzy–but it has a smooth and crunchy distortion tone. You don’t have to fight to get the guitar to ring out in the way you want. It will give you some extra gain, but it won’t go so far that your sound breaks up and is going crazy. When you pull your volume knob down to 1 or 2, you can still get it sound clean. If you ever listen to a Pantera record, that’s what you’ll hear through this pickup.

GW: Which players influenced your tone early on?
DD: I grew up on heavy metal and everyone I listened to had distorted heavy sounds, but I wanted mine to be a bit more abrasive. I wanted it to tear your face off, but still have a round tone. There were a bunch of people I listened to when I was a kid–everybody from Eddie Van Halen to Randy Rhoads to Tony Iommi. There were certain sounds I would hear that would make me go, “Man, that’s so heavy.” You get an idea in your head of what you’re looking for, but I think you only know that you’ve found your tone whenever you actually stumble onto it. You really just have to keep looking and when you tweak it to where it’s finally unique enough and you know that it stands apart from everybody else, then you know that you’ve found your signature tone.

GW: Describe your live rig.
DD: I have two different setups that I use. If I’m playing through the regular Randall RG100H, then the guitar goes to the Furman 4-band parametric EQ, to the MXR 6-band graphic EQ and into Randall. If I’m playing through Warheads, then I’m pretty much plugged straight in without those outboard EQs, because they’re built in. Aside from that, I do use a few effects in my rig, too. I use a Dunlop 535Q, an old red Digitech Whammy pedal, a Korg DT-7 chromatic tuner and a Rocktron Hush IIC noise gate that’s at the end of the signal chain. I also run an old rack mount MXR Flanger/Doubler through the effects loop in the head. Onstage, I’m also using a Shure UHF wireless system and for picks, I use .88 mm Tortex–the green ones.

GW: How are your guitars set up?
DD: I’m using two different custom-gauged sets of DR strings which will soon be released as signature sets. One set is .009-.046 set and the other is .009-.050. I use the heavier strings on the lower tunings. I like the action to be set decently low, but just slightly higher on
the bass side to keep the fret buzz down. As far as the pickups go, I set my amp how I like it, spend a little time playing each guitar in front of the amp, then raise and lower the pickups until I find that sweet spot. I don’t have them set too close to the strings because if you pull back on a Floyd Rose®, it’ll dampen out on the pickup. But if it’s set too low into the body, then you lose a little bit of the gain and some of the harmonics. So I’ll go through every guitar and set the pickups so that it sounds best. Guitars will all sound a bit different, so you just set everything accordingly.

GW: What advice would you give to other rockers who are trying to develop their own signature style and sound?

DD: I would say to be like Dimebag–sit in your room with a CD player, tape deck or a turntable with your favorite record and learn your favorite guitarist’s stuff inside out. Figure out the songs and riffs by listening to the music and not by reading tablature. I don’t think that using tablature is cheating, but it’s a quicker way to get there. But if you learn by ear, it’ll train your ears to be able to pick things out when you hear them and then you’ll use your ears more. One of the most important things for a player to learn is to use their ears. Go after what you like and once you’ve dominated learning everybody else’s licks, take whatever elements you’ve retained and then use them to forge your own style. Always search to be original.

Lisa Sharken is Seymour Duncan’s New York-based artist relations consultant.

Wes Hauch demoes the Dimebag Set:

Groundwire: Warren Haynes
by Lisa Sharken
Warren Haynes is undoubtedly one of the hardest working musicians around. As a member of the Allman Brothers Band, Gov’t Mule, and Phil Lesh & Friends, Haynes has been regularly touring and recording at a rigorous pace. Though some might call him a workaholic, Haynes simply loves playing music!
Groundwire caught up with the man Rolling Stone Magazine listed as 23rd in its “100 Greatest Guitarists” for the lowdown on his gear, his favorite sounds, and the eclectic mixture of ingredients that make up his musical entity. Haynes also offers up some useful tips on becoming a better sounding player.
In Gov’t Mule news, Haynes discusses the making of the group’s new live DVD and two-CD set, The Deepest End [ATO Records], which was recorded at the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 3rd, 2003. He also shares some inside details on the difficult process of selecting a new bass player to replace the late great Allen Woody.
How do you feel about your ranking in Rolling Stone’s recent list of guitar greats?
Flattered. Honored.
Were you surprised by the people you were rated above?
Yeah, totally. I don’t think my list would have looked anything like their list. But I was honored, nonetheless.
What inspired you to play guitar?
I started singing when I was about seven years old and fell in love with Black gospel music. From there I went to soul music–James Brown, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, the Four Tops, and the Temptations. Then my oldest brother got a Sly & the Family Stone record, and hearing that pushed me towards rock music–hearing the guitar mixed in with the soul music. Then I heard Cream and Hendrix, and that’s what made me want to play guitar.
Which players were most influential to your style and tone?
In my late teens I started listening to a lot of horn players because you can be influenced by other instruments and you don’t have to listen only to your own instrument. I’m a singer and I love instrumentalists who phrase like singers. I listen to a lot of vocalists and saxophones players, too, and take influence from them. Whether it’s Maceo Parker and his amazing understated way, or Charlie Parker and his overstated way, there’s so much to learn from those people and I translate it to guitar.
As far as the non-guitar players, I think Sonny Rollins was most influential for tone, and Cannonball Adderley for phrasing–not to say that they both aren’t amazing for tone and phrasing. Both of those guys influenced me a lot. I always thought Sonny Rollins’ tone was the ultimate big fat tone with a nice spike on top of it. Cannonball’s tone was amazing, too, but Cannonball had that street level kind of soul that a lot of jazz people didn’t have and that churchliness has always been an inspiration to me. The way he phrases is totally amazing.
Of course, you can listen to a lot of great guitar players for tone, too. Starting chronologically, the first two that moved me were Hendrix and Clapton, and then Duane Allman, Billy Gibbons, Santana, Jeff Beck, and David Gilmour. There are so many different ways to get a great sound. For me and my own sound, it was always a humbucker thing. I would always hear people using single-coils and love it, but it never did work for me.
Which players affected your choices in gear?
Well, I guess Clapton in Cream. He was using Les Pauls, Firebirds, and 335s, and to this day I still play all of those. That was such a big sound–as was the sound that he got with John Mayall. Duane Allman, Billy Gibbons, and Carlos Santana all used humbuckers. They all had unique sounds, but they all had that one common ingredient.
What are the essential tonal qualities you strive for?
The richness has to be there. That allows you to relax while you’re playing and not have to fight the guitar. But at the same time, it should be a little bit of a struggle. You don’t want that totally saturated distortion where every note sings and feeds back equally. There should also be a natural acoustic quality to the over all tone. Like Sonny Rollins’ saxophone, it should be big and fat with this little spike on the top end to distinguish one note from another, and each note should be as big as it can be.
Describe your live rig.
Well, it varies from the Allman Brothers to Gov’t Mule to Phil Lesh & Friends. The common denominator is that all the guitars are Gibsons. In the Allman Brothers. I use predominantly Les Pauls, and occasionally a 335. I have a ’61 dot neck 335 that I played throughout the entire new album, with the exception of two songs. In Gov’t Mule, I use a lot more variety of tone, so I’m using Les Pauls, Firebirds, 335s, and an Explorer. They all have that Gibson character, but they all sound different and all have a slightly different top end. In Phil Lesh & Friends, I use SGs and 335s, leaning more toward the SGs because in that band I want a smaller sound and a spikier tone that fits the sound of that band a little more.
Ampwise, the common ingredient for all of those situations is my César Diaz CD-100 which finds its way onto all three stages. In the Allman Brothers, I’m using my new 100 watt Marshall Super Lead Plexi reissue these days. In Phil & Friends, sometimes I use my Custom Audio Electronics head that was made by Bob Bradshaw, and sometimes a Fender Super Reverb. In Gov’t Mule, the additional head is my Soldano SLO-100 which I’ve used forever and ever. Sometimes I use a Gibson Goldtone GA-30RVS 2×12 amp that really sounds cool.
With Gov’t Mule and Phil Lesh, I use effects, but with the Allman Brothers, I don’t, and I just plug straight in. I have a Boss OC-2 Octaver, two-speed stereo tremolo made by Bob Bradshaw, César Diaz Texas Tone Ranger pedal, Centaur distortion, Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere Leslie simulator, Dunlop Crybaby wah, and Guyatone Funky Box envelope filter.
What type of picks do you prefer?
All my life I had been using what used to be called the Gibson Star picks, which are teardrop shape, but not the real small ones like the mandolin picks. They’re smaller than a regular pick and more curved like a teardrop. When Gibson originally made them, they were just called the Star and they used to have a picture of a star on them. It was kind of medium, but kind of not. They’re probably a little heavier than a medium. I grew up playing with those until Gibson discontinued them. Then I had to search elsewhere for picks. Gibson later started remaking them, but they just didn’t feel right. So now I’m using D’Andrea picks that are the same shape and gauge.
How are your guitars set up?
My standard set up is what I consider too low for slide, too high for lead. It’s a compromise where I can play both lead and slide on the same guitar. It’s pretty high, but not as high if I were just playing slide, but high enough to where I could just pull a bottle out and play slide on it at any moment. It’s set up .010-.046, unless I’m tuned down. Then I use .011-.050. I have a few different tunings. I have a couple of Firebirds that are tuned down a half step in standard tuning, and a Les Paul that stays in dropped-D. My Explorer is tuned in open A, which is like open G, but a whole step down. One of my Les Pauls is in this C tuning that I got from Jimmy Page which goes (low to high) C, G, C, G, C, E. I think Page got it from Leadbelly or Big Bill Broonzy, and he used it on some Zeppelin records. I wrote a couple of songs in that tuning and it’s pretty cool. That low C sounds huge. I use .010-.058 on that guitar and I use GHS Strings on all my guitars.
Which guitars are outfitted with Duncan pickups?
Some of the Les Pauls and Firebirds, which are all Gibson Custom Shop guitars built over the past 15 years. My main Les Paul is a 1989 ’59 Reissue that I’ve played for years and it has Pearly Gates in it. I recently got another Les Paul that I like more than that one, but I’m not sure what’s in that one at the moment. My mid-’90s ’58 Reissue Les Paul has an Antiquity humbucker in the bridge position. My 1998 ’59 Reissue Les Paul has a JB in the bridge. My 1964 Firebird III has an Alnico II Pro Mini-Humbucker in the neck, and my 1997 tobacco sunburst Firebird has an Alnico II Pro Mini-Humbucker in the bridge. My non-reverse Firebird has a P-90 in the bridge. The 2000 SG-61 I use with Phil Lesh has two custom-wound humbuckers that Seymour made for me. The neck pickup is a copy of Peter Green’s neck pickup with the reversed coils, and the bridge pickup is a copy of the bridge pickup from Eric Clapton’s SG–the one he played with Cream that was painted by The Fool.
What do you like most about Duncan pickups and the way they complement your instruments?
I think the cool thing about Duncans is that if you want to replicate the sound of the original pickup that came in those old guitars, you can do that. If you want to enhance that sound and make it a little brighter or fatter or midrangier or hotter, you can do that. They’re not like a lot of pickups where they’re trying to reinvent the wheel. They’re taking classic sounds and either recapturing them or enhancing them, but not going totally away from the original concept, which I really like because most of the sounds I prefer are made with pickups that are 30 or more years old. Even when you can find the old pickups, they don’t always sound the way they used to. So it’s great to know that you can get back to that sound if you need to or enhance it.
Do you have a collection of vintage instruments that aren’t taken out on the road?
I have a few of them. I have my ’61 dot neck 335 that I don’t bring out. I’ve also got a ’56 or ’57 Les Paul TV Special. I have at least one more that I’m scared to bring out, but not a lot. I have a bunch of old amps that I collect, too. I have a few Fenders, Epiphones, and Danelectros, and stuff like that, but probably more Gibsons than anything else. When I’m recording, I take the ones that really record well into the studio and mix them in with my big amps.
Which guitar do you consider your favorite?
Well, I think my ’61 335 would be my favorite over all, even though I don’t perform with it, except when I’m in New York. For performance, I’ve been playing my new ’58 Reissue Les Paul which I really like. I think that in the past couple of years Gibson has been making guitars better than they did for a long time. The ’58 Reissue is my favorite performing guitar, but it’s not a ’61 335.
Do you maintain any sort of practice regiment when you aren’t touring?
Since I tour so much and I’m working all the time, I don’t really worry about it that much. I usually have an acoustic sitting around the house, and occasionally an electric and a small amp. I tend to just putz around on the acoustic more than anything when I’m not working.
Do you tend to do more writing on the acoustic?
Yeah, I do, and I really have to make myself write on electric because some songs can only be written on an electric guitar. I just tend to gravitate to the other direction. I think this is backwards from the way a lot of people work, but I’m one of these writers who writes lyrics first. So I usually wait–probably out of laziness–until I’m lyrically inspired. Then as I’m writing the lyrics down, eventually melodies start coming into my head, and then eventually, I put music to the lyrics. For some reason, I like that method better. It’s easier for me to decide what mood a lyric evokes than it is to do the opposite. But having said that, I’ve been doing the opposite just to shake it up and do things a little differently, and not get into a rut. So on a lot of the songs I’ve written recently, I’d written the music first, and then added the lyrics. That works well, too. A lot of my songs do start out on acoustic guitar because that’s what’s laying around at the time of the morning when I usually write, which is typically between 3 and 5 AM.
How do you warm up for a gig? Do you have any kind of routine?
I warm up a little bit vocally. I pick up my guitar at soundcheck and play it a little bit, but I don’t have any regimented type routine that I do. Maybe I should, but I’m not someone that puts a lot of regiment into my daily routine. We usually do a soundcheck and that gets me loosened up.
Tell us about Gov’t Mule’s live performance on The Deepest End DVD and CDs. What are some of the highlights from the show?
It’s almost all highlights in the way that we just had all these amazing people. There were 25 guest and 13 were bass players. Between the DVD and the two CDs, it captures the whole six-hour show. There are a few overlaps with a few songs that appear on both the CDs and the DVD. But for the most part, it’s different material. The concept behind the DVD was to have each bass player represented for at least one song. There were a few bass players like Paul Jackson and Rob Wasserman who only played one song, so we made sure to include their performances on the DVD. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band was there for a couple of tunes, too. Playing with Victor Wooten for the first time was really cool and playing with Bela Fleck was great. It ran the gamut of Gov’t Mule’s influences from bluegrass to blues to jazz to psychedelic rock to R&B to hard rock. By the time you get through with it, you get kind of a glimpse of everything that we’re moved by.
The biggest challenge not only for The Deepest End live concert, but also for the two studio records, The Deep End Volume 1 and Volume 2, was to pick the right songs for the bass players, and also for the special guests. We were predominantly focusing on the bass players. Since each of these bass players has their own voice and plays with their own strong musical personality, it was really important to give them a song which could be a vehicle for that personality. We didn’t want anyone to anybody to feel like they were just playing a song and going through the motions. We wanted everybody to feel like they were being themselves and featuring or showcasing their own musical voice. So a lot of time went into marrying the right song with the right musicians, more than anything else.
How does playing with different musicians affect you as a player?
When players are improvising, you’re responding to what you’re hearing. Each time a different bass player or different musician steps onstage, you have to alter your role a little bit. It’s not so much something you think about, you just do it in response to what you’re hearing. All these people were such wonderful players that there were no “train wrecks.” Everybody there had command over their instrument and the music that can be made in a spontaneous situation like that is limitless. It’s like when you’re on a first date and everybody’s on their best behavior–trying to impress each other, and not do anything stupid. It’s the same reason that first takes in the studio sometimes turn out to be the best take. There’s something that happens the first time you play a song or the first time you play with a certain group of musicians. When it happens, it’s undeniable, and a lot that kind of stuff went on that night.
How did you go about choosing a new bassist to replace Allen Woody in Gov’t Mule?
We played with over 30 bass players over the last three years, many of which are just legendary. Of course, some of these people are not available for full-time gigs. But when we played with Andy Hess, it had that kind of indescribable chemistry that bands are built on in the first place. Where he fills the pulse with Matt is really special, and we like the fact that he doesn’t sound like Woody, but he has that big tone like Woody. He also feels the groove in the same kind of place, which is really important. We didn’t want an Allen Woody clone. We wanted somebody to come in and be authoritative, play with their own personality, and respect what Woody had done, in the same way that the Allman Brothers didn’t want a Berry Oakley clone when they hired Woody in the first place. I think it’s really important that like Allen Woody, Andy listened to all types of music. He’s very schooled in all these different genres. We played with a lot of bass players that would be perfect in certain situations, but not in others. Andy is just one of those guys that fits into all of them.
What advice would you give to other players on developing their own style and improving their tone?
I would say that as far as developing your own style, the method that most of us seemed to grow up with was playing along with records, but eventually playing your own solos. I think you have to start out learning other people’s solos just to have some sort of repertoire and some sort of ammunition to fall back on. But at some point you’re going to want to start playing what you feel. It’s hard to make that step, but you have to in order to create your own style. And I think listening to all types of music is really important. If you limit yourself and don’t listen to any certain genres, then you’re selling yourself short. I think most of the great solos that we hear have at least one, if not many, influences that you would never guess–something that is so strange that it may not make sense to you. When I say that, I think about B.B. King because he made a statement very similar to that at one time when someone asked who his influences were. He said Django Reinhardt. Most people probably don’t realize that he listened to Django Reinhardt. So it’s that little bit of Django that made him different from everybody else. The more people you listen to, the better chance you stand of creating your own voice. You don’t want to be a jukebox, where you just kind of flash upon one style after another after another. You just have to find out what it all means, and take each of these genres, then figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.
As far as finding that tone, that’s a hard thing because it’s easy to plug a Les Paul into a Marshall and get a great sound that tons of other people have gotten before. But it’s not easy to get your own tone. That’s the hardest thing. A lot of it comes from your fingers–your approach and your touch. You have to search for that something different. It’s great to say you want to sound like Duane Allman or Hendrix or David Gilmour, but it’s people that have their own tone that really are the ones in the long run that are respected and revered. You have to find your own voice and that’s a hard thing to do. You just have to figure out whether it’s guitars, pickups, amps, or turning the knobs. Find out what makes the difference and what works for your ear, but it really comes down to playing with a band. You can’t find your own tone by sitting in your room. You have to find it with a band because each instrument covers up frequencies in a different way. When you find a group of musicians that you like playing with, your tone will kind of find itself based on the sound of the other instruments that are surrounding it.
What advice can you offer on becoming a better songwriter?
Don’t just listen to the songwriters in the genres of music that you love. Search out all the greatest songwriters in every genre and try and find something cool in each of them. People probably have no idea that I listen to folk music, and to Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Elvis Costello, and people like that. Most people don’t know that they’ve influenced my songwriting just as much as Otis Redding has influenced my singing, or Jimi Hendrix has influenced my guitar playing. Take influences from everywhere. Seek out the best people and learn from them.
What have you been listening to for enjoyment and inspiration?
Well I try and discover new music, if I can, and there’s a lot of cool new music out there these days. If I get to that saturated point where nothing satisfies me, I always go back to the things that I consider absolute classics–Dylan, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, and Sam Cooke. It’s mostly singers for me, but then I’ll also do the same thing with guitar players. I’ll listen to B.B. King, Albert King, and Freddie King. You can always go back to where it all came from.
The only guitar teacher I ever had taught me for about a month. Then he told me that I should teach myself because he was self-taught. He thought he was just taking my money and that I would do better learning on my own. Well, the most valuable piece of advice he gave me was that if you just listen to the three Kings–Freddie, B.B. and Albert–there’s a world of information there and you can never go wrong.
It’s good to go back and see where it all came from. With B.B. and Freddie, you can see more of the lineage of who came before them and where they got it from. But even though they absolutely established their own voices, and nobody played like them, you can kind of trace it. With Albert King, only God knows where it came from! I’ve never heard anybody play like that before Albert. He’s influenced everyone. I’m not going to sound off about the whole Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Guitarists list, but I am disappointed that Albert wasn’t in the top 100. I’ve always maintained that he is the blues guitar player that influenced rock musicians more than anybody else. He was obviously a huge influence on Hendrix, Clapton, Duane Allman, and eventually on Stevie Ray. There’s no question. So anybody who doesn’t know how important Albert King was needs to go back and discover that.
Lisa Sharken is Seymour Duncan’s New York-based artist relations consultant.

Artist Spotlight: Ben Harper
by Lisa Sharken
California native Ben Harper is undoubtedly one of the most innovative artists of today. Primarily an acoustic slide and lap steel player, Harper’s music encompasses a wide variety of styles outside of traditional blues and folk, and he is as talented a musician as he is a singer and songwriter. A connoisseur of fine instruments and good tone, Harper is always searching for new sounds to increase his tonal palette. Eventually, this quest led him to Seymour Duncan by way of a new custom built guitar.
Groundwire: How were you introduced to Duncan pickups?
I never stop trying to better my tone. When you’re in constant pursuit of a tone that is perfect for you, you end up going through a lot of different guitar makers and pickup manufacturers. The way I came across Duncan was through a friend, Keith Nelson from Buckcherry. He met a guitar builder from New Jersey named Rob Mondell of Justin Saine Guitars who had made him some guitars. Keith called me up when he got his first one and he was floored. He said, “Man, you need to get in touch with this guy!” But it just never happened. Then one day, Keith shows up at my house with two custom lap steels guitars that Rob had made for me. In the past, Rob only made standard roundneck guitars and these were his first lap steels. Rob’s main guitar designs are made with metal and wood in the tradition of the Zemaitis guitars, but they’re very much his own. At the time I hooked up with Keith, I was right in the midst of a tour and was going to be away for the next eight months. Because the guitars didn’t have flight cases and I hadn’t heard them yet, I left them at home. I wasn’t going to take out something that hadn’t been sound tested, and I already thought that I had the best-sounding lap steel.
After the tour ended, I went into the studio to record Diamonds On The Inside, which is coming out in March. When I go into the studio, I bring every single guitar I have because you never know what tones are going to fit each of the songs best. There’s a song on it called “Temporary Remedy” that’s bass, drum, guitar–three-piece in the true Cream/Hendrix tradition. I was plugging in all of my 20 main lap steels, trying to find the right sound, but it just wasn’t happening yet. Then I plugged in one of Rob’s guitars and it just blew up. Everyone in the control room started jumping up and down in that sheer instinctual way that only good tone and good music can bring out, and they were just freaking. That’s the guitar! It was a new sonic step forward.
The pickups in Rob’s guitars are Duncan ’59s that are wired for standard humbucker and split coils. For me, what’s amazing about these pickups is that you can split them to single-coil. Splitting the neck pickup is key because you get into very reverberant rooms where low end takes off and neck pickups naturally have a lot of low end resonance. The ability to split them to single-coil cuts down the low resonant frequency without you having to go to your bridge pickup. It allows you to still use both and get a rich sound without clashing with the bass. So it’s like having four or five guitars in one, being able to split each pickup in different patterns. These pickups are really kickin’ for all my electric stuff. They’re just putting out like none other. The better the guitar sounds, the better you’re going to be playing it, period.
What I love the most about the ’59s is how they’ve transformed my electric lap steel. As humbuckers, they give it a true Les Paul sound and when I split the coils to single-coil, they give me what I consider to be more of a true Strat tone. It’s not sort of like a Paul or sort of like a Strat, it’s nailing them. There’s no compromise. It’s finally brought me to the tone that I’ve heard in my head, as far as my electric slide playing goes and I can control them like no others.
GW: Where do you find that single-coil and humbucking sounds work best?
A single-coil sound is sweeter. If there’s a verse that I want to be sweet, then most likely, I’ll pull the neck pickup up in single-coil. It gives a gentleness that works really well to complement my vocals. Then for a chorus, when I really want to crush or go into overdrive, I can just drop it down into double-coil and it’s just perfect for choruses and solos. So it’s a complement to my verse/chorus style of singing. A single-coil just has got a delicate nature that adds to a ballad, to the softer side of a song. In my music, it’s super important because the dynamics are jumping within the song, as well as from song to song. So I’ve got to be able to have different tones.
GW: You recently tested the Mag Mic on one of your acoustics. How did it rate?
The Mag Mic is great. It’s got a very balanced frequency response from the low wound strings to the plain steel strings. The mic feature is highly functional and it’s positioned in the best place — right up out of the soundhole where there’s the most air movement and it’s in proximity to your fingers. It has a blend for natural acoustic resonance, as well as magnetic pickup. You can blend in more or less mic, which is great for playing live and in the studio because you can dial the sound in depending on how reverberant a room is. It’s very responsive and it’s a very workable microphone sound. You don’t want a mic that’s going to pick up a lot of the slap back from the room and just cause phasing problems. You’ll be getting more of the room sound than the true sound of the guitar itself, which is what you don’t want. What’s great about where this mic is placed on the pickup is that it’s shielded from anything other than the acoustic sound of the guitar. Having a 12-string option also ups the value, as do the adjustable pole pieces. Having as many options to get the sound that you want to get, whether it’s the blending of the mic or the adjustment of the pole position, it’s ideal, really. It’s well put together and I’m a fan.
GW: Describe your backline rig.
I have a couple of different amps. I use a Demeter 100 watt head and what’s great about it is that it’s got very true clean and dirty channels. The dirty channel gets up and kicks ass, and the clean channel is very sweet like a tweed Fender Bassman, which I love. And I also use a ’50s tweed Bassman for some of the clean tones. I plug all of my guitars through that rig, but I can also A/B them to go between the amps. So I can use the dirty or clean channel from the Demeter and I can run a dirty or clean channel through the Bassman. For effects, I have an old Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer, a Vox wah, an old Ibanez Analog Delay, and an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone Phaser.
GW: Tell us about the new record and your plans for the coming year.
The songs range in sound and style from ballads to straight-up rock and reggae style music, blues, soul, and funk. It’s just got the mix of music that I love and feel. The record comes out on March 11th and then I’ll be touring. I usually tour in two-year cycles, so I’ll be out from this March on. The tour will take us through America, Canada, Australia, England, Japan, Europe, Brazil, and South Africa. That’ll keep us busy until the next recording session! punches, you will naturally become the best.
Lisa Sharken is Seymour Duncan’s New York-based artist relations consultant.

Greg Camp of Smash Mouth
by Lisa Sharken
Smash mouth made its mark in ’97 with “Walking On The Sun,” the retro-flavored chartbuster off the San Jose, California group’s debut disc, Fush You Mang. The hot streak continues with the success of its follow-up, Astro Lounge, and singles like “All Star,” “Can’t Get Enough Of You Baby” and “Diggin’ Your Scene.”
Guitarist Greg Camp tells GroundWire about his evolution as both a player and songwriter, and takes us into the studio to reveal the dirty secrets of Astro Lounge.
GroundWire: Who were your main influences as a player?
Greg Camp: Eddie Van Halen was the guy who made me want to play guitar. My mom bought me a guitar when I was nine, but I had no interest in it because I was a drummer. Then a few years later, I heard Eddie and he made me say, I need to be doing that. I don’t think I knew it back then, but Eddie has a really funky vibe about him. He was really innovative. It wasn’t like he was just hauling ass on the guitar, it was all the neat little tricks that he did. It wasn’t the Doobie Brothers or blues, it was just this amazing combination of everything. Then when new wave and punk became popular, I started listening to things that were more eclectic. I got into bands that were really simple and just played, like the Ramones and Devo. I didn’t do solos because I thought solos were stupid mostly because I couldn’t play them. I was into bands like Devo that just did strange things with their instruments. Then I got heavily into surf music. I really liked Bow Wow Wow because the guitarist had a classic rockabilly, kind of surfy influence and the Dead Kennedys because it was a surf guitar player in a punk band. In high school, I got into reggae, jazz, and I just went all over the place listening to different music.
GW: Who influenced you as a songwriter?
GC: I think guys like Elvis Costello and Bernie Taupin had the most influence on my writing people who just write really insane lyrics.
GW: How do the songs typically develop for Smash mouth? Are you the primary songwriter?
GC: Yes, I am the main songwriter. On the first album I felt that everyone should get equal credit because we all have roles in this band and everyone works equally as hard. I wrote most of the songs on the new album, on the back of the bus, while we were on tour. Songs normally just start in my head. I can hear the song and the way I want it to sound, with the instrumentation that I want. Then I sit down with the guitar and try to figure it out. Once I have the song pretty solid, I always make a demo of it. I hate drum machines, so I usually just sit down at a drum kit and play for a little while, then just sample and loop what I did. I do all the parts on the demo tracks myself, including the vocals. Then I just hand the tape to the guys and if they like it, we play it. If they don’t, then it just goes into a shoe box. I’ve got quite a few shoe boxes now.
GW: I read that Walking On The Sun was actually one of those shoe box songs.
GC: It?s an old song. I think I wrote it in ’93. It was on a tape that I had filed in one of my shoe boxes, but it was a lot more Latino-sounding than it is now. I lived in an apartment building and Kevin [Coleman], our drummer, lived upstairs. He came down to my place and asked to borrow a tape to play his drums to. He wanted something that had drum loops and something that he could put a tempo to. I gave him a tape to use and that song happened to be on it. After he heard it, he came back, pounding on my door, and said that we had to put this song on the album. I told him he was crazy. It didn’t sound anything like something we would do. He was so adamant about it that he went to our producer and insisted that we play the song. Our producer agreed, so that was the last song to be added to that first album, and was the one that sold over two-million copies.
GW: How were the tracks for Astro Lounge recorded?
GC: We did both records with the same producer/engineer, Eric Valentine, in a huge warehouse in an industrial park. It’s filthy, dirty and rat-infested, but it’s home. We’ve recorded in other studios a few times before and it?s come out sounding too sterile. There’s just no inspiration in that kind of environment.
We played all the songs straight through, live. Eric usually goes for drum tracks first, so we’d play the songs over and over to get lots of takes down on tape. Then Eric would go back and find the best drum performances. Once he selected the basic tracks, we’d go back and just add things to that. If the guitars came out good on that particular take, then we would leave them alone. Otherwise, I would go back and redo them. The warehouse has really high ceilings that are like 20 feet high, so all the reverb effects you hear are natural just the sounds of the rooms miked.
GW: What are you using in your live rig?
GC: When I play live, I use a 100-watt Marshall JCM900 series head through two 4x12s. I use the distortion from the amp. Next to that, I’ve got a ’70 Fender Dual Showman which goes through a 2×12 cabinet, and a Fender Dual Pro, which I believe was made for pedal steel players because it’s a 100-watt amp that’s clean and just never breaks up. I leave them on all the time and run an A/B splitter box to channel switch between the Marshall and the Dual Showman.
For guitars, I use a Fender Custom Shop Jazzmaster that has two Seymour Duncan Hot Rails. I rarely break strings (Fender .010-.046), so I use it for most of the set. I also have a Guild Starfire hollowbody with a Bigsby for songs like Waste.
GW: What did you learn from your experience making these two records?
GC: I’ve learned a lot from working with Eric. I learned how to use microphones to get the sounds I want, and not just settle for good enough. I really like old ribbon mics. They make everything sound old and because we have sort of a retro thing going on, it’s really important to use that stuff to make it sound old. There’s really no way to simulate it. Every little thing has to be perfect in order for the final product to be perfect and come out the way you hear it in your head.
GW: What advice do you have for other musicians on developing one’s own style?
GC: Do the obvious things, like practicing and listening to a lot of players. Don’t limit yourself to just one kind of music because there’s so much out there. You can always take a classical riff, then turn on the distortion box and come up with something weird.
Lisa Sharken is Seymour Duncan’s New York-based artist relations consultant.