Bruce Kulick, who was the lead guitarist for KISS spanning 12 years, has returned to Australia for a series of clinics celebrating the music of KISS and bringing some great songs from Revenge and other albums that were never played live in Australia.

Bruce is seen here signing autographs for fans.

Jamming out a KISS song for the crowd.

Upcoming clinics:
Melbourne, Australia – Thursday, February 2, 2012: Concert at The Corner Hotel
Fri February 3, 2012, 7pm, Allans Music + Billy Hyde 130 Pyrmont Bridge Rd Camperdown NSW (Limited tickets available at the door)
Sydney, Australia – Saturday, February 4, 2012: Concert at The Factory Theatre

Tone Fiend has just announced a new website designed to be a place where you can share and learn closely guarded tone secrets. In preperation of its launch, Joe Gore went out to many well known artists and asked them to share some of their closely held tone secrets.
Once players submit a secret, they get access to all the other exclusive secrets. They can also comment on the secrets and rate them. The highest rated secret between now and March 1^st, 2012, will receive a Godin Summit CT, a lovely and versatile carved-top solidbody electric guitar that sells for around $1,000.

Click the link to submit your tone secret at The Secret Room

After nearly 30 years since his last national TV appearance, blues legend Johnny Winter has returned to television with his guitarist Paul Nelson for a performance on the Late Show with David Letterman. Check out the video below to watch the performance.

Johnny Winter uses SM-1n and SM-1b Vintage Mini Humbuckers in the Firebird®, SSL-1 Vintage Staggered for Strat® in neck and SH-1B ’59 Model Humbucker in the bridge position for his Lazer.
For more information, visit:
www.johnnywinter.com
www.paulnelsonguitar.com

The Seymour Duncan Custom Shop has teamed up with blues-rock virtuoso Joe Bonamassa to produce the Joe Bonamassa Signature Pickup Set. This immaculately crafted and calibrated dual-humbucker set accurately replicates the P.A.F. pickups in Joe’s beloved 1959 sunburst Les Paul®. Their rich, dynamic, and nuanced voice will appeal to all tone connoisseurs who cherish the passion and power of the original humbucker.

Wound on the historic Leesona machine that created humbuckers for Gibson back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the set features an Alnico 2 magnet in the neck pickup and Alnico 3 in the bridge. Period-correct butyrate bobbins, lightly antiqued nickel covers, wooden spacer, and retro-style “Bonamassa” P.A.F. stickers heighten the vintage vibe.

Only 1,959 Custom Shop sets will be sold. Each will be hand signed by Seymour Duncan and Joe Bonamassa and include a special USB flash drive with video interviews, special features, and more.

To order from the Custom Shop go here.

A special thanks to the members of the Seymour Duncan User Group Forum, especially ‘BachtoRock’ whose experimentation, testing and our forum members intense interest, has helped to make this possible.

Seymour Duncan recently took on a project to restore John Oates (Hall & Oates) original Fender Stratocaster to all its ’80s glory. After taking detailed measurements, pictures, and studying old photos of the guitar, Seymour took to bringing the tone, look and feel back to where it was when John Oates was jamming out “Maneater”, “Private Eyes” or “You Make My Dreams Come True.” Check out the video below to see the whole process, including John Oates’ reaction to playing the restored guitar.

Prestigious music publication Vintage Guitar has announced that our co-founder, Seymour W. Duncan, will be the 2011 Hall of Fame inductee in the “Innovator” category. The results will be announced in the magazine’s March, 2012 issue. Seymour is joining the ranks of such industry pioneers as Leo Fender of Fender Musical Instruments, Orville Gibson of Gibson Guitars, and Marshall Amplification founder Jim Marshall. The award is bestowed by the magazine’s readers, who voted overwhelmingly for Seymour.
Seymour is widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on pickups — the guitar components that translate the vibration of the instrument’s strings into meaningful electronic signals that can be amplified and recorded. Pickups define the sound of an electric guitar — they are a crucial component of its “voice.“
“Seymour W. Duncan didn’t invent the electromagnetic guitar pickup,” observes Vintage Guitar publisher Alan Greenwood, “but he has done more than anyone to make known just how critical the pickup is to guitar tone.”
Seymour has created pickups for many of the world’s leading rock guitarists, including Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, Slash, Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, David Gilmour, and many others. Meanwhile, the company he started in 1976 with Cathy Carter Duncan has provided countless players with great-sounding pickups and unrivalled technical expertise.
A lifelong tinker, Seymour began experimenting with pickups as a preteen, initially winding their intricate wire coils using a record turntable. Throughout his teens Seymour played in bands and repaired instruments, first in his native New Jersey and then in Cincinnati, Ohio. By the end of the ’60s he’d relocated to London, England, where he worked as a session player and repaired guitars for the leading lights of British rock. In one particularly memorable collaboration, he created a custom guitar for Jeff Beck, who used it to record the Grammy-winning Blow By Blow album.
The pickups in that legendary guitar exemplify Seymour’s magic: They could only have been crafted by someone with extraordinary insight into vintage designs, yet they were not literal replicas. They boasted the warmth and musicality of classic pickups while offering increased output and clarity. Eventually one of these pickups was recreated as the Seymour Duncan JB model, and it became world’s best-selling replacement pickup.
Seymour eventually returned to the States and together with Cathy Carter Duncan started the Santa Barbara-based Seymour Duncan Company in 1976. By then, the quality of guitars was in decline as the major manufacturers cut corners and lost touch with their former craftsmanship. But thanks to Seymour Duncan pickups, players could customize their guitars and obtain tones rivaling those of classic instruments. Seymour and his team safeguarded the expertise of the past while unveiling innovation after innovation, from noise-free pickups to louder, more aggressive pickups suited to emerging hard rock and heavy metal styles. He also worked with his crew of tone engineers to create bold new designs for bass and acoustic guitar pickups, as well as cutting-edge amplifiers. Meanwhile, Seymour’s Antiquity line introduced the idea of artfully aged pickups and parts suitable for installation on old guitars — or for giving new guitars a cool vintage look. Today many other manufacturers have copied Seymour’s lead, offering cosmetically distressed instruments and parts.
Seymour still spends most days in the Custom Shop, experimenting relentlessly and refining new ideas. And he still gets a thrill from collaborating with musicians and helping them obtain the sounds of their dreams.
“I can’t tell you how honored I am to receive this award from Vintage Guitar’s readers,” says Seymour. “I just feel like the luckiest guy in the world, getting to work with such a great team of talented people, and doing what I’ve loved to do ever since I was a kid.”

Last week in our continuing search for brutal tone, we talked with Suffocation’s bass player Derek Boyer. In this weeks edition, we turn to Guy Marchais, the brutally fast guitarist for Suffocation.

How did you get started playing guitar?
“I started playing guitar when I was 16, so about 27 years ago. I was always attracted to guitar and metal music, I listened to Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Slayer, Metallica, Frank Zappa, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd and many others.
I saved up $200 dollars and bought my first guitar –  it was an explorer shaped Takamine electric that I bought from my local mall. I didn’t have an amp so I somehow found a way to hook it up to my home stereo and used that until my mom bought me a combo amp for x-mass later that year. I taught myself for about 6 months then took lessons for 6 more months and then quit lessons and taught myself again ever since then.”
How did you come to be in Suffocation?
“In short, back in like 1988, another friend and myself placed an ad in a local magazine as two guitarists seeking a Death Metal singer, bassist, and drummer. Well, Frank Mullen(vox) and Josh Baron(bass) answered the ad and we started a band! We had a “fill in” drummer, just to jam with in the beginning. And now to make this story even shorter – Mike Smith joined the band and I left to start the band Pyrexia. Suffocation then proceeded to get Terrance Hobbs and Doug Cerrito, they went through a few line up changes and put out some of what I believe to be the best Death Metal ever before breaking up in like 1998. So when they reformed in 2003, they asked me to play and I said yes! The rest is history.”

Your sound has some serious intensity and brutality, which guitars, amps and pickups do you use to get your tone?
“As for guitars, I use my signature model B.C. Rich and my hand made B.C. Rich Guitars. As for amps, I use Peavey models, 3120 and XXX with a Maxon OD808, Boss NS2 and a Sonic Research ST-200 Tuner. I use Kahler Guitar trems, Vader Guitar cabs, Line6 wireless, Intune guitar picks and the BEST guitar pick up in the world! Duncan Distortion Humbucker SH-6b.”
How many B.C. Rich Guitars do you have?
“Right now I own 9 B.C. Rich Guitars. Six are USA hand mades. I have four Warlock guitars one of witch is a Signature Guy M model, one BC Rich Bitch and four ASM Signature Guy M Assassins Models.”
What are your current plans for recording/touring?
“As of right now we are still writing the new Suffocation CD which will be released in 2012 and we have a few shows and tours lined up for 2012.”
For more information on Suffocation and tour dates, please visit: http://www.facebook.com/suffocation

We would like to welcome our new artists for November who have joined the quest for perfect tone.
Brandon Ellis (guitar): Arsis

Eddie Heedles (guitar), Eric Morgan (bass): A Pale Horse Named Death

Rob Espinosa (guitar): It’s a Beautiful Day