Many players who are known worldwide are often American or British, with some notable exceptions. The Scorpions’ six-string hitters Matthias Jabs and Rudolf Schenker are German and Henrik Freischlader is a Swiss guitar player who’s slowly yet steadily rising to fame. But there are many amazing players from my country, too. In 1973, Jan Akkerman was awarded the title of Best Player of the Year, and in the beginning of the 1980s Adrian Vandenberg climbed to the top of the charts with his band Vandenberg and from the mid-80s with Whitesnake, not to mention the living legend Eddie Van Halen, who was born in the Netherlands too! Unfortunately, since the beginning of the 90s not many Dutch players managed to punch through to mainstream audiences, which is quite a shame in my opinion. Continue reading “Rising Dutch Guitar Slinger Timo Somers”

Even after 36 years Peter Frampton carries on with great energy, a love for live shows and an attitude that makes everyone enjoy talking and being around him. 36 years ago his passion for live recordings led to one of the most successful live albums of the time – Frampton Comes Alive. Featuring hits like “Do You Feel Like We Do”, “Show Me The Way” and “Baby, I Love Your Way,” he hasn’t stopped for a moment and continues to push into new territory when it comes to live performances and recordings. At the beginning of this year, word spread throughout the tight-knit community of guitarists: the incredible story of the return of Peter Frampton’s iconic Black Beauty that was thought to have been destroyed in a plane crash. There’s something amazing about both the story and how a single, unique guitar could cause people to turn in their seats. In the interview below we speak with Peter on the return of his prized guitar, his gear, his live shows and advice for musicians. Continue reading “Frampton and The Phoenix Comes Alive”

Varying on an already proven theme (the venerable Seymour Duncan Custom), the Custom Custom features the familiar Duncan Custom coil-wind with an Alnico 2 magnet as opposed to the standard ceramic magnet for a sweeter, more subtle yet no-less deadly variant on the Custom tone. If the ceramic Custom were a hacksaw, the Custom Custom, or “CC” as it’s known, is more like a surgeon’s scalpel. It’s far more cutting and precise, but in a smooth, pleasant way that’s never harsh or overbearing. Continue reading “The Stealth Brutality of the Custom Custom”

Few things make me happier than a great song played on a fine acoustic guitar.  The shimmer of the strings and the resonance of the body fill the room and warm my heart.  I’m most definitely an electric player first and foremost, but there’s just something fundamentally satisfying about playing a well-built acoustic.  This is probably why I used to get so frustrated when recording the acoustic; the sound I got on “tape” was never as good as the one I heard in the room.  Always thinner, lacking in body, and often requiring gobs of post-processing to sound halfway decent. Continue reading “Make Tracks: Recording Acoustic Guitar”

I’m not typically a big user of single coil pickups. All of my guitars are equipped with either H-S-H or H-H configurations, and if I engage the single it’s usually in conjunction with a split bridge or neck humbucker. Being a prominent humbucker pickup user I’ve always found single coils to be too weak on their own for what I play. I started looking for a middle single coil option that might be able to keep up volume-wise on it’s own with humbuckers, and asked for advice from Seymour Duncan. The recommendation was for the Quarter Pound Flat. The specifications certainly sounded good to me, so I went with it.

Continue reading “Rollin’ Fat And Heavy With The Quarter Pound Flat”

The easiest thing in the world to do with a seven-string is to go straight for those lowest two strings and simply chug out. And it’s fun too! But there’s a lot more you can do with them, whether you’re into metal or not. So I’m gonna show you some of my favourite seven-string chords – chords which can be useful no matter what style you’re in. After all, doesn’t the extended low range of a seven-string make sense in a context like country, for instance?
Continue reading “Making Sense of Seven-String Chords”

Back in the old days, making a record could be an incredibly expensive process, with only a handful of record studios across the country and the only real distrubution of your music being radio (some of which required payola). These days, a 14 year old kid with Pro Tools, an audio interface, microphone and a DSL connection to the internet can produce crisp recordings full of effects and market them directly to the world without the need for agents, marketing departments and distribution channels. While few bands online are getting “rich” there are thousands that have been able to take advantage of digital music to get some income to help sustain their music. Here is a list of some of the more popular services for selling your music online.

CDBaby is a one-stop distribution service to save musicians the hassle of uploading and managing various accounts on different music selling sites. By uploading your song or album it is quickly put into iTunes, Amazon’s MP3 store, Spotify, Google Play and others. Continue reading “Selling Your Music Online”

“A Les Paul into a Marshall”. It’s an accurate description of Slash’s signature sound, and it seems so simple. So why is it so hard to get that famous tone? In search of the answers to this and other questions about Slash’s rig, I interviewed Ace Bergman, Slash’s guitar tech on the Apocalyptic Love tour. Continue reading “In Search of the Secrets of Slash’s Sound”

One thing 7-string guitarists continually cite as an attraction to the extended range of the instrument is that they can still play everything that they could play on a six-string guitar – as well as getting down into much lower territory when they need it. And that’s true of tone too: the sounds you get out of your six-string pickups are also available from 7-string versions. Many of our popular models are available in versions for 7-string players, and even if we don’t offer a production 7-string version of a six-string pickup that you’ve just gotta have on your seven, the Custom Shop may be able to help! Check out this video putting our 7-String pickups to the test:

Continue reading “Seven-String Pickup Options”

As technology advances, it’s becoming easier and cheaper for the semi-pro and hobbyist guitarist to have his or her own high-quality recording rig in their own home. Long gone are the days of futzing about worrying about losing fidelity from too many bounced tracks on your 4-track (or if you were really a big-shot – your 8-track cassette, reel, or ADAT)! Recording interfaces and software are becoming ever more affordable, while amp and speaker emulation software is progressing to the point where it’s becoming difficult for all but the untrained ear to differentiate between emulated tones and actual recorded amps. As a result, a guitarist without the benefit of a degree in recording engineering can produce their own demos with surprisingly decent-sounding results, and the convenience factor and overall cost-savings can’t be overstated. Not to mention it’s FUN! Continue reading “The Recording Guitarist”