From the Land of the Rising Sun, Providence pedals have been building an audience among players in the Western Hemisphere thanks to a buzz regarding their versatility and stout construction. Indeed, two of Providence’s more popular overdrive/distortion units, the Silky Drive (SLD-1F) and Stampede DT (SDT-2), generate wide swaths of tones that most electric guitarists find useful.
At first blush, the Silky Drive is reminiscent of the classic Ibanez Tube Screamer TS9, with three potentiometers (Level, Tone, and Drive) laid out in a similar pattern. The first key difference that becomes apparent, however, is a Gain Boost button that pushes the Silky Drive from a medium overdrive sound to chunky distortion. In addition, the Silky Drive offers something called “Vitalizer,” a noiseless switching circuit that adapts to the instrument’s output, ensuring that the original signal is uncompromised. Gain Boost and Vitalizer result in a stompbox with higher fidelity and more transparent sound than a TS9, ideal for pushing the front end of a vintage amp into smooth, natural distortion.
The Stampede DT picks up where the Silky Drive leaves off. A four-knob design, it features more of a butt-shaking bottom end (think 4×12 cabinet) and a wider range of distortion, from medium overdrive to all-out, end-of-the-world fuzz. Inside, the Stampede’s up-converter circuitry creates an internal operating voltage that is higher than the output of the battery (all Providence pedals are shipped with a specially made 9-volt), resulting in a greater dynamic spectrum, less background noise, and sounds that range from gritty to explosive (but which are all very usable). While many overdrive or distortion pedals are great for lead work, they can mush out when pressed into rhythm service, muddling arpeggiated chords. This is not the case with the Silky Drive or Stampede DT, both of which retain the definition of individual notes in chord work, making them ideal for rhythm and lead.
The Silky Drive and Stampede DT also feature a double-contact grounding circuit that provides two points of contact to the pedal’s ground circuit for 1/4″ jacks. The pedals are AC adapter-compatible and come encased in heavy-duty MXR-size boxes.
This article originally appeared in VG March 2013 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
1913 William A. Cole Eclipse Professional Special. Photo: Michael Wright.
Straight-from-the-catalog instruments are fun – and reassuring – because you know exactly what you’ve got. But there’s another kind of thrill – and satisfaction – when you find something that’s totally off the radar, something that presents a mystery to be solved, like this circa 1913 Cole’s Eclipse banjo, which sports a Washburn headstock and atypical decoration!
The Cole brothers, William A. and Frank E., were based in Boston and played a very important role in the first golden age of “classic” banjos at the end of the 19th century. The city was, according to many banjo enthusiasts, one of the two key centers of banjo-making during that period (the other being Philadelphia; New York and Chicago were important more for manufacturing prowess than design innovation at the time).
The Philly school was led by Samuel Swaim (with an “m”) Stewart, who probably did more than anyone to popularize – and legitimize – the banjo. He famously favored wood-rimmed banjos with metal-clad “spunover” construction where a sheath of shiny metal was wrapped around the outside and curled or rolled over the top edge to let the head sit atop a kind of hollow tube.
The Boston school (likely preferred by modern players) was more into developing various types of “tone rings” – metal rings of various designs that sit on top of the rim, between the head and wooden shell. They can be round or scalloped, solid or hollow – whatever the particular inventor thinks will improve the banjo’s sound. The evolution of tone rings is one of the central themes in modern banjo history. The main leaders of this arena were Albert Conant Fairbanks and the Cole brothers.
Banjos, invented by slaves, became popular in white America (and England) in the two decades preceding the Civil War, when blackface minstrelsy was created and spread, marking the beginnings of what would become Vaudeville. They came on even stronger following that conflagration, eventually invading the parlors of even the most polite society.
One of those parlors was that of a family in Sterling, Massachusetts, where A.C. Fairbanks (born 1852) was attracted to the banjo. He moved to Boston and began building banjos in 1875.
By the 1890s, W.A. Cole was performing as part of the successful Imperial Quartet, and teaching in Boston. As frequently happens, Fairbanks (the manufacturer) figured it would be convenient to team with a popular performer who could help promote his wares. In 1880, they formed Fairbanks & Cole to make banjos. During this partnership, the legendary banjo designer David L. Day joined the company. Just as Cole was ready to strike out on his own, Day invented the famous Electric tone ring. Basically this was metal ring with a flat surface that rested on the rim, and an upper edge with wide scallops with points spaced about the same as the brackets. A round steel rod sat atop the scallops and carried the skin head.
Cole continued to perform and in 1890 left Fairbanks & Cole to start W.A. Cole, Manufacturer with his younger brother, Frank, who was a cabinetmaker. Frank was in charge of banjo production, and was awarded three patents – one for a mandolin (1891), one for the Eclipse tone ring (1894) and the Cole bridge (1899).
Frank Cole’s Eclipse tone ring was no doubt a competitive response to Fairbanks’ (Day’s) highly successful Electric tone ring. The Cole’s Eclipse tone ring was equally elaborate. A square metal ring with tiny little posts sticking up (again, about the same spacing as brackets) was laid into the top of the rim. A round steel ring then sat on the posts, bearing the skin head.
Structurally speaking, the banjo you see here is regulation Cole’s Eclipse Custom Professional Special – one of their better grades. It has the Eclipse tone ring, a black-lacquered laminated mahogany rim, and one-piece mahogany neck with the so-called boat heel. The floral abalone headface inlay and pearl-diamond inlaid ebony fingerboard are also typical of that model. The head is a modern pre-mounted calfskin, and the head tuners are replacement two-band style. The dual-bridge arrangement was the Cole style, here with two reproduction Cole bridges made by Missouri bridge maker Don New. Serial number is 3951, which would place it around 1913.
Dating would tend to be confirmed by the mysterious presence of an atypical Washburn-style headstock. This anomaly may be explained when we realize that Lyon & Healy’s new line of banjos introduced in 1913 included a number of banjos sourced from Rettberg & Lange in New York and a version of the Cole’s Eclipse, albeit a different model than this banjo. However, the Cole-made Washburn banjos were badged “Washburn.” This banjo’s dowel is stamped “Cole’s Eclipse,” so the Washburn-style head mystery is unsolved.
The beautiful band of abalone dots around the bottom of the pot also remains a mystery, but thank goodness they’re there! Cole may just have wanted to differentiate this from its catalog models. Could this have been a sample or prototype made for Lyon & Healy, with dots to lend appeal and help close the deal? We’ll likely never know.
In 1904, A.C. Fairbanks burned down. Its trade names and patents were purchased by The Vega Company and became the basis of that company’s banjo line. W.A. Cole died in 1909, and Frank soldiered on until 1922, when he sold Cole to the drum maker Nokes & Nicolai, which continued to make Cole banjos. The Liberty Musical Instrument Co. of Chicago bought Cole in 1926, briefly producing Liberty (not Cole) banjos until it was taken over by Slingerland, though by that time the banjos had little resemblance to Cole’s designs.
If you had a catalog-perfect Cole’s Eclipse – even one of the Washburns – you have a handsome, fine-sounding, professional-grade banjo. But having one that’s all that plus an alluring mysterious back-story, well…
This article originally appeared in VG July 2013 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Two of the finishes offered on the EP-200B, circa 1966. EB-200 and EP-200B: Rick Malkin.
Teisco Del Rey basses from the 1960s are exemplary of the Japanese-made instruments that swept into the American market like a tsunami during the “guitar boom” – and were the primary contributor to the demise of America’s budget-guitar industry.
Which means, of course, that an untold number of American teenagers played instruments like these.
During that era, Teisco instruments were imported from Japan by Westheimer Sales, a distributor that, for the U.S. market, changed the brand name to Teisco Del Rey.
One of the more-seen Teisco Del Rey basses thumped in garages across the country was the solidbody EB-200, a simple, short-scale instrument with practical (and interesting) aesthetic features. The headstock has an oversized silhouette that exudes an Egyptian-pharaoh vibe, and the crown on the logo plate alludes to the “Del Rey” (Spanish for “of the king”) portion of the name. The 21-fret rosewood fretboard was shown with rectangular position markers along the bass side and double blocks (one along the treble side) at the 12th fret. The bridge/tailpiece was under a plate that attached with a single screw. Under the top edge of the plate was a piece of grayish-green foam that muted the strings.
(LEFT) The Teisco Del Rey EB-200. (RIGHT) An EB-220 with brushed-metal pickguard. EB-220: courtesy of Mike Gutierrez.
A four-page Teisco Del Rey brochure from early 1965 described the two rocker switches as “individual noiseless velvet touch on/off switches” that controlled “Two ultra high sensitive pickups.” The text further notes that, “Brushed satin metal plates protect the body finish,” a reference to not only the pickguard, but a plate on the headstock (which, on some instruments, was white plastic).
By the following year, many Teisco Del Rey solidbody guitars and basses (and associated brands) were given striped brushed-metal pickguards; their matte finish applied to reflect light in two directions. By ’66, the headstock of most Teisco basses (solidbody and thinline) had been given a three-plus-one tuner configuration, while most electric guitars in the line had a four-plus-two layout.
Other solidbody basses with different body silhouettes, such as the EB-220 (seen here in metallic blue) also appeared by that year; note the partial German carve around the top of the body. The “stripes” on the pickguard are faded but still visible.
In ’66, Teisco introduced the EP-200B, a short-scale thinline hollowbody with offset body waists and offset cutaway horns, a la Fender’s Jazzmaster and Jazz Bass. Newer models began to exhibit ordinary dot markers on the fretboard instead of edge-mounted blocks. The EP-200B had 21 frets, like its peers and predecessors.
The top of the 200B’s body was a bit crowded, with two pickups, f-shaped sound holes, a thumbrest, a finger rest, master Volume and Tone controls, and a three-way rotary switch on the treble cutaway. The separate bridge was still covered by a plate that included foam for muting, and the trapeze tailpiece had an oval-shaped portion where the strings anchored.
Teisco Del Rey guitars and basses were marketed in the U.S. only briefly, as the company adapted to pursue emerging trends. Still, they stand as great examples of cheapo models that umpteen babyboomers played as kids.
The EB-220 in sunburst, from a 1966 catalog.The EB-200 (middle) as seen in a 1965 brochure. Catalog images courtesy of Steve Brown.
This article originally appeared in VG‘s October 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Photo: Kelsey Vaughn, courtesy George Gruhn.This Gibson RB-3 five-string from 1925 is a rare piece, as is any five-string banjo from the era dominated by tenor banjos. But it’s more important as a representative of one of Gibson’s first steps in a desperate attempt to develop a competitive banjo.
Gibson recognized the impending popularity of the tenor banjo as early as 1918, when the first Gibson banjo was introduced. But unlike the innovative and prestigious Gibson mandolins and guitars, the Gibson banjo featured a relatively primitive design – with no tone ring – and was not at all competitive, with the instruments made by Vega, B&D, Paramount, Epiphone, and other companies that specialized in banjos. According to a 1924 letter from Gibson’s general manager Harry Ferris to the company’s board of managers, “The Gibson banjo had the worst reputation of any banjo on the market.”
Rather than fight the banjo makers head-on, Gibson had given “acoustic engineer” Lloyd Loar the task of creating an improved mandolin that would revive interest in the instrument. Loar came up with the Master Model family, headed by the F-5, which is legendary today but was a commercial failure when it appeared in mid 1922.
Fortunately, Gibson did not put all of its eggs in the Master Model mandolin basket. In March, 1923, Gibson introduced a new line of banjos called (not coincidentally) Mastertones. They had a hollow metal tone ring drilled with holes on its inner and outer sides. The ring was raised off the rim by a series of ball bearings.
The Mastertone name would forever associate the banjos with Loar and his mandolins, but the extent of Loar’s involvement in the ball-bearing tone-ring design is unknown. The photo in Gibson catalogs of Loar at his workbench shows him mired in mandolins, but there’s an old-style Gibson banjo propped against the wall at the end of his bench. A more likely suspect is Ted McHugh, who designed and patented the adjustable truss rod (still in use today in all Gibsons) and co-designed the adjustable “coordinating rod” for Gibson banjos. Since tone rings were metal, McHugh was probably involved. On the other hand, the concept of suspending the tone ring on ball bearings, and the odd configuration of holes in the ring (more of them on the inside than on the outside) would seem to be more akin to Loar’s “tuned” F-5 bodies than to the pragmatic designs of McHugh, who did not play an instrument. McHugh was pictured in a late-1928 banjo brochure with the title “chief engineer,” so the credit (supervisory, at least) for such post-Loar innovations as the archtop and flat-top tone rings goes to McHugh.
Prior to the Mastertones, Gibson’s top banjo was its original model. It had no model number. The tenor was model TB, the five-string was RB (for regular banjo), plectrum was PB, etc. Cheaper models, introduced in 1922, were called Style 1 and Style 2. With the introduction of the Mastertone tone ring, the number-less model gave way to three versions, designated Styles 3, 4 and 5.
The early Styles 3, 4, and 5 all had pearl-dot fingerboard inlays, and pegheads were the tapered “moccasin” shape. Their resonators set these Gibsons apart from the competition… but not in a good way. Players had the option of a hinged-back “trap-door” style or a shallow dish-like Pyralin (plastic) unit that fastened with a single screw. Compared to the Mastertones we’re familiar with today, these were rather primitive in design, and despite their official name, banjo aficionados today generally do not consider them true Mastertones.
By the end of 1924, Gibson’s chances for survival appeared to be dwindling. Lewis Williams, a founding partner and the general manager who had hired Loar, had resigned at the end of ’23. His replacement, the bluntly honest Harry Ferris, was forced to resign in late ’24. And by the end of the year, Lloyd Loar, too, was gone.
Nevertheless, the innovative Mastertone movement continued to pick up speed. In 1925, the Mastertones received a makeover, with a new “fiddle-shaped” peghead and a modern-style “cupped,” flange-mounted resonator. Style 3 got a bound fingerboard and diamond-pattern inlays. The new styling also brought changes on the inside of the instrument. This example from early ’25 has the second-generation ball-bearing tone ring, with the bearings sitting on springs rather than on the rim itself.
With the new design, Gibson finally had a banjo to be proud of, and they added the Mastertone name to the peghead in block pearl letters below the Gibson logo. To today’s banjo enthusiasts, that marks the beginning of Mastertone era. By mid 1925, the name was moved from the peghead to an engraved pearl block at the end of the fingerboard, where it remains today.
Although it was a professional-quality model, the 1925 Style 3 was still far from what are today considered classic specifications. It had a maple neck and resonator, as did the newly introduced Granada, while Style 4 was mahogany and 5 was walnut. It wasn’t until 1929 that Style 3 went to mahogany neck and resonator. At the same time, all the Mastertones got the “double-cut” peghead shape. Style 3’s resonator was also upgraded with the addition of two concentric rings on the resonator. Gibson changed the inlay pattern on Style 3 from diamonds to a fancier pattern (that still had some diamonds), although the 1925 diamond pattern continued to appear on some examples for a few years.
Gibson continued to improve functional designs, as well. By the end of 1925, a tone ring with no outer holes was implemented, and the rim was enlarged slightly (but with no change in the head diameter). The “raised-head” or “archtop” tone ring, with no inner holes, appeared in 1927, followed later in the year by a ring with 40 holes drilled on the inner edge. By late ’29, the 3 was available with the new one-piece flange, which replaced the earlier tube-and-plate design. Also in the late ’20s, Gibson had developed the “flat-head” tone ring and begun offering it as an option on Styles 3, 4, 5, and Granada. Two decades later, Mastertones with the one-piece flange and flat-head tone ring would become the Holy Grail for bluegrass players.
In 1937, the mahogany Mastertone model was renamed Style 75. Ironically, the most famous Gibson RB-3s were officially Style 75s. In the late ’40s, bluegrass banjo legend Don Reno traded a Granada to another legendary banjo player, Earl Scruggs, for a Style 75, and Reno will forever be identified with that instrument. Innovative stylist J.D. Crowe also played an RB-75, and in 1997 Gibson introduced a Crowe signature model based on his Style 75. The RB-3 returned in ’97, with the ’30s-style inlay as standard, though wreath-pattern is the only fingerboard inlay available on the model today.
This article originally appeared in VG‘s June 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Calling any player “the hardest working guitarist in the business” is rather like referring to one as the “best guitarist” – do it, and you’re just asking for trouble. But if output equates to effort, there’s no doubt Joe Satriani works his as… err, fingers off! The rock shredder has been doing what he does on a top-tier professional level for about 30 years, and shows no signs of slowing down; he still organizes and stages the renowned G3 tours, which for the last 20 years or so have seen him grab a couple other stalwart players for an ocassional summer-long thrill ride, and for the last four years he has satisfied his group jones with Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, and Chad Smith in Chickenfoot.
He also continues to lend his talents as a guest player on various recordings and performances, and in 2010, hip-hop vocalist Nicki Minaj sampled his “Always With Me Always With You” in her song, “Right Through Me” from her multi-platinum debut. On top of it all, “Satch” regularly cranks out solo albums that have sold more than 10 million copies and garnered 15 Grammy nominations.
His 14th such effort, Unstoppable Momentum, was released earlier this month. Produced by Satriani and Mike Fraser, it was created with the help of friends old and new, including drummer extraordinaire Vinnie Colauita, super-versatile bassist Chris Chaney, and keyboard wizard Mike Keneally. The album’s 11 songs, he says, go “in different directions… touching on a variety of musical influences.” We asked him to help us dig into it a little deeper.
To make the new album, you went back to Skywalker Sound studios?
Yeah, I love that place. I live in the middle of San Francisco, so it takes about 45 minutes and it’s a beautiful drive over the Golden Gate Bridge, through the hills of Marin County, into Lucas Valley, and then you pull into this little village and drive through organic farms where there are sheep and lamas and horses and cows, baseball fields, vineyards, and every once in a while some sort of building that looks like a bed and breakfast, but you walk in and there’s a room that’ll hold a 100-piece orchestra. It’s amazing! And every other day or so, George [Lucas] walks by and says, “Hi.”
I find the whole place artistically stimulating, plus it gets me out of the city, where I forget about domestic stuff and business and everything. And, after 10 hours in the studio, I also love the drive home in my convertible – no matter how cold it gets, the top is down! I put on a sweatshirt, leather jacket, scarf, and hat, even if it’s 45 degrees. There’s something bracing about it. It’s fantastic.
Even though you’ve got a lot going on – Chickenfoot and various other things – you managed to record the new album just 2½ years after Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards.
I could’ve done it earlier, but I think it’s good to take a few months to see if I really like what I’ve done. The artistic life is such that you’re never satisfied; you deal with the chaos of your own creativity. So it’s good for me to have a schedule because I’m not really good at deciding what to do next. I hate to say that – I’m supposed to be a professional (laughs)! But after all these years, I realize that my audience has the proper perspective, and that I, as an artist, should just do what I do then move on while other people figure out whether they like it.
Was there anything different about the way the songs for Unstoppable Momentum came together, and were any of them “leftovers” from previous album sessions?
There were two of what I call “catalyst songs” that had their start in 1988… but they’re not on the record! Sometimes, I work on a song, maybe even finish it, before I realize it was there to help the other songs – perhaps put certain things in perspective, melodically, harmonically, or recording-technique-wise. And some things are great because they’re cathartic for the process with the band. In this case, since we had two new players, it was nice to have more songs to see where we were as a rhythm section. We also got to think about which ones we all liked best.
Speaking of, how did the band come together?
Well, I met Vinnie Colauita many years ago at a Les Paul birthday party in L.A. He’s a tremendous musician and a fantastic individual. We clicked, and started talking about playing together. I ran into him again at a Jeff Beck show in the Bay Area, when Chickenfoot was recording its first album, then a few months later at a festival in Belgium. When I finished the G3 tour last fall, I booked studio time and gave him a call. He was working with Sting through Christmas vacation, but had 10 days in January. Then, I was speaking to Mike Bowden, who has done a lot of editing for me over the last 10 years, and he told me Chris Chaney had just been in another studio where he was working and people were raving about him. I thought, “Of course!” And it turned out Chris was perfect because he plays with Jane’s Addiction, where he brings a wonderful sense of rock and roll, which is extremely important to me, musically and personally! I knew he was a first-call session player and does a lot of film and TV work, so he’s very flexible.
The last piece of the puzzle was Mike Keneally; Mike and I were looking forward to making another record, but you always kind of roll the dice when you put together a new unit – you don’t know how everybody’s going to get along, musically. But we started playing and it was a party – a lot of fun. Every song took five to seven takes and they were all extremely different because the guys kept giving me interpretations. They’d nail the parts, but play it so differently. It was great.
The Marshall JVM410JS Joe Satriani signature model is a 100-watt/four-channel, EL34-based head. Its clean channel was designed to replicate that on the Marshal 6100, while its Crunch channel includes Marshall’s AFD circuit. Its overdrive channels offer slightly less gain and have two Master Volume knobs, effects loop, and MIDI implementation.
Did you send the guys demos beforehand, so they had an idea of song structures?
No. We went in cold. And credit goes to Mike Keneally for that. I asked, “Do you want demos or do you want to be surprised?” And he e-mailed back, “I like surprises.” (laughs) During the sessions, on some evenings I’d know which song I wanted to do the following day, so I’d give everybody an MP3. Most of the time they’d put on their earbuds there at the studio, listen, then change gear to what they felt would work. We gave everybody the freedom to explore; Mike had a grand piano, an organ, a Wurlitzer, a Rhodes – everything – and he’d wander around and figure out what would be fun on a take. Same thing with Vinnie and his drums and Chris picking different amps and basses. It was good – a lot of fun, and everybody had room to improvise.
Did you stick to a handful of guitars and amps, or mix it up?
I didn’t use the entire complement I brought, which was an impressive-looking layout of about 100 guitars and 50 amps (laughs)! But I wound up using my Marshall signature JVM410JS heads for most of it. I brought about a dozen vintage Fender amps – Champs from the ’50s, my ’53 Deluxe, Princetons, Princeton Reverbs, Vibrolux, Vibrolux Reverb, my ’59 Twins. And if I go down the song list, I can pick places where I played one chord or one solo bit on, say, the Champ. I also had a Fargen, my old 5150, and I had a bunch of old Marshalls – 100-watts, 50-watts, 6100s – but they were generally there for complements. By coincidence, most of the vintage amps wound up on songs we left off the record.
The guitar was pretty much my prototype JS 2410, which is the Muscle Car Orange JS 1000 with an alder body and bubinga stripe in the neck. It gave a different sound – a bit more sustain and vibe in the midrange than the standard JS 1000 with a basswood body and a straight maple neck with rosewood fretboard. I also had a couple of 1000s with Sustainiac pickups, along with two or three JS guitars with Evertune bridges and in C tuning, which I used for “A Celebration.” Those tunings don’t stay very well, but the Evertune bridge allowed me to be aggressive with the rhythm and play like Ritchie Havens! And when we’d layer it with standard-tuned guitars and piano, it blended beautifully. I think there’s one bit – a four-bar melodic piece – where I used this beautiful ’83 Gibson 335, all-maple with action that’s way too low – the thing’s a buzzmeister – but I plugged in to a Strymon vibrato pedal, the JVM410JS head, and we put some delay on it; sometimes, when you lay a bunch of guitar on an instrumental where guitar is in your face, you get something great and go, “Could we add anything else?” I don’t care what it is – a Broadcaster, a Rickenbacker, something to make us go, “Oh, what’s that sound?”
It’s funny, I brought a bunch of old Strats and Les Pauls, and we’d pick them up and try them, then put them down. But I did use my Fender Electric XII for eight bars in the second verse of “Shine On American Dream,” and the guitar is swimming in delay with an open D string while I’m playing the melody on the G for a part tucked under a bunch of other guitars as support. But it was an important moment when we figured out that was what it needed. It’s a bit Spinal Tap to say, “A 12-string – that’s what this song needs!” but…
What did Chris bring for basses and amps?
He brought one of his favorite Fender Bassman amps and we rented from SIR two SVT full stacks and another little piggyback Ampeg. He would go direct and into one of the amps – he and Mike Frasier would pow-wow on every song, and I stayed out of it. I told him, “Just make sure your bass is big and fat all the time. Don’t be afraid to jump in front of everybody and leave the riff.” I like that kind of bass playing.
A couple of Ampeg SVT stacks would definitely help push him to the front…
It’s a great sound, and you ask him, “Can you do that with your fingers?” or “Can you do it with a pick?” and he can. He’s got a bunch of basses – P basses, Jazz basses, Rickenbackers, all sorts of stuff. He had five or six instruments ready, and sometimes he’d play different ones on different takes just to see if it would shine extra light.
Apologies if you’ve been asked this a quadzillion times, but how do melodies come together for you?
It’s great when you’ve got your guitar on and the recording rig is running and you can just push the Record button. But sometimes it happens in the car or when you’re raking leaves – doing something mundane, you know? You go, “Oh, man… Now?” But really, anytime it happens, it’s a wonderful thing and you do whatever you can to get it down. If I’m not near a recording device, I’ll jot it down, but most of the time it’s easier to hum into the phone as a voice message to myself. Then, every couple of weeks I gather the scraps of paper or the digital notes and see what I’ve got.
There are two songs on the album, “Jumpin’ In” and “Jumpin’ Out” that I had been working on for quite a while. “Jumpin’ In” grew as an arrangement over time; one day I opened the file and realized I had another piece of music associated with it – I think it was called “A Harmonic Minor.” I thought, “What is that?” So I opened the file and it was a really cool drum-and-guitar track where I was making believe I was a tenor-sax player in a swing band in the ’40s. I liked the imagery, and though it was just a digital “scrap,” it was a complete song that I’d improvised and forgotten. So I added bass and keys and brought it to the band to bookend “Jumpin’ In,’” but later decided the two songs should be back-to-back since they borrow that swing idea.
Where does the syncopation come from in those songs?
My parents grew up in the jazz age, they loved music and played it all the time. So I grew up hearing great horn players. My parents had great stories, living in New York City and seeing the greatest bands of that era. They could walk into any club, get a beer for a nickel and see the Dorsey Brothers or Benny Goodman. So, I was playing drums at nine years old, and the drum teacher, Mr. Patrikus, was a full-time jazz drummer – one of the funniest and coolest guys I’ve ever met. He used to come to the house with a sharkskin suit like he walked out of a black-and-white TV show about jazz cats. My parents enjoyed having him over for coffee, and then he’d give me lessons for a few minutes! But he taught me how to swing as much as he could. I was not destined to be a drummer, but I did understand that swing was the thing. There’s a million ways to swing, and drummers – good ones – can swing differently at the same time with each of their four limbs. The swing thing is part of my musical DNA; I started to pick up on it once I got into Hendrix, who created this groove, and with Mitch Mitchell it was so deep because they had this blues/R&B and heavy-jazz background. I found them extremely interesting, and it resonated with me.
Where on the new disc does that influence manifest itself?
I think “Three Sheets To the Wind” is the most obvious, because the swing in the verse is very different from the swing in the choruses. It’s interesting; the song was originally written as a single-coil-through-a-vintage-amp kind of thing, but I realized the melody was too strong to leave on just guitar – it needed to be blown out to a lot of instruments. Then I thought, “I should allow myself the space to swing in different places, to play with the backbeat a little.” Throw all those elements in, and the song still feels comfortable, which is important. “Jumpin’ In” and “Jumpin’ Out” are focused on swing, that’s so obvious.
It’s funny, the opposite happens on songs like “Weight of the World,” “A Celebration,” and to a degree, “Unstoppable Momentum,” which have more-modern views of time. “A Celebration” is like a locomotive – straight ahead – everybody’s right on time, completely opposite of “Jumpin’ Out.” I mean, you can’t play “Jumpin’ Out” like that, you have to think of the timing as a huge two-lane highway and the four band members are weaving in and out. In “A Celebration” it’s a country road and everyone’s going really fast (laughs), so they have to stay in line, you know (laughs)? It’s fascinating, how music works like that. And for a year, “A Celebration” was done at less than half the tempo you hear on the album. It was on acoustic guitar and a combination of two songs I had written on a new Republic resonator I had just taken out of its box. I immediately wrote two pieces of music on it – one I called “Texas” because it had a bit of a Texas feel, the other I called “India” because it had an Indian-type melody. After a couple days, I thought, “These two should go together,” but I wasn’t sure how. So I put them together in a way where the “Texas” part was the verse and the chorus was the “India” part. It had a verse and a solo section, and was six minutes long. Then, one day I thought, “This song doesn’t need a bridge and I should get rid the solo section, then make it more of an ensemble thing.” Then the idea was to add acoustic piano and tom-toms. I had a demo for months, then on the day after Christmas, I thought, “I’ve been doing that song all wrong.” So I recorded a version where the tempo more than doubled, I got rid of the acoustic instruments, and it became an iron horse charging through the plains – a big, uplifting thing. Then, the two melody sections, the verse, and the chorus came together with one purpose.
There are a lot of instances on the album where the melodies have a lyrical quality, like “Shine On American Dreamer,” where the root melody and chorus all but sing the title.
One of the themes I set for myself on this record was to be super melodic. So, if I had a song that had a good groove and an impressive guitar part, I didn’t want it. I kept thinking, “It’s got to have a melody that’s so strong, first, then I can figure out the rest later. Once I’m in studio or making a demo, the great melody will present opportunities for playing.” I was just not in the mood to work on songs that didn’t have big melodies. I wouldn’t say they had to be singable, but they had to have a vocal quality that reached me, first of all, and that would reach people and resonate the way a great vocal can. Sometimes, that changes the songs you do, and I realize if I’m going down that path, the album is going to have a lot of diversity. But then I thought, “That’s great, because my favorite albums are like that.” I generally don’t listen to albums where every song is the same as the one before it, just faster or slower.
I figured that approach would keep me engaged, keep me changing and moving forward and trying different things. And the cool thing is how you realize, “I have artistic license. I can have an orchestra behind me…” or “I don’t need drums on this song” or “I need a honky-tonk piano and a horn section” and “…on this song it’s just going to be guitars.” Just charging ahead. You realize that you’re free and not forced to fit into any specific context.
Satriani’s 14th solo album is titled Unstoppable Momentum.
Do you ever write a song with the intent to give it lyrics, then later leave it instrumental? I ask because a track like “A Door Into Summer” seems ripe for lyrics.
I don’t know, but I took that song to the Chickenfoot III sessions and was so excited about it. At the time, I hadn’t figured out all of its melody, but I thought, “Well, it’s too long for just a guitar. It needs words.” So I played it for everybody, and they had this funny look, like the way a dog or a cat looks at you (laughs) when they’re trying to figure out what you’re telling them. I thought, “Maybe I’m playing the song the wrong way, or picked the wrong moment.” I kept saying, “Sammy, you could tell a story – you don’t have to sing, you can kind of talk or do a Sammy Hagar rap in the verse.” And he was looking at me like, “What planet are you from?” And Mike and Chad played around with it for a while, then were like, “I don’t get it.” So I put the song in my pocket and thought, “Those guys are nuts!” you know?
I have to give them some credit – I did bring about a dozen songs and we had a lot to do in very few days, so we moved on. But I kept thinking, “Every time I hear that melody, I feel good,” which was weird because not many songs make me feel overwhelmingly happy or sad, but this one had this salubrious effect.
But yes, the benefit of lyrics is you can be repetitive with musical phrases, and with different words, tell stories. But how does an instrumentalist do that? The biggest challenge was deciding where to put a bridge, and I figured it should come at the end of the song. Then, once I wrote the bridge I thought, “That should start the song…” So there was a lot of discovery. Months later, I did a pass one day with a melody and solo, then went to the studio and told Mike, “Let’s keep the solo, but I’ve got to figure out the right approach; it’s gotta be heavy and sort of cavalier.” So I played the melody six times before he said, “You got it. Leave the room, please…” (laughs)! Like a dutiful musician, I said, “Thank you, sir,” and left. So I’m not sure which of my takes makes up the first verse or last verse, but he found the best phrases and stitched them together. When I came back 20 minutes later, I was like, “That’s it!”
While we were listening to the tape, we realized that Vinnie wasn’t playing to the bass or the rhythm guitars – he was actually playing around the melody, which was brilliant because we were tracking the melody live. As we played, I was trying to edit the melody to its essentials, with the intent to double or triple the guitars on the chorus. But it wound up being unnecessary and we maintained that soul-singer image, like Aretha Franklin telling a story while the band was playing a beautiful soul beat. It just so happens to have really huge electric guitars in it.
Still, though, do you wonder if there might be lyrics floating around that could make it a hit?
Well, that would be great. I’m always waiting for somebody to come along and do that. You know, when we were touring behind Surfing with the Alien, we used to get tapes of people singing weird lyrics over songs like “Surfing…” It was so funny, and I was touched by it, but at the same time it was a little ridiculous. But, a couple years ago, when Nicki Minaj reached out and asked if she could use a bit of “Always With Me, Always With You” for a single, I thought, “That’s fantastic. First of all, thanks for asking first…”
Because artists don’t always do that…
No, they don’t (laughs)! But she did, and I thought it was great. In the last couple of years, I’ve heard a few renditions of people rapping over songs and I think, “This is cool. The music is growing in different genres, and different generations will hear it.” So I’m open to that. I’d love to hear people do it. I get really caught up in songs, and if one has deep meaning, I may put words to it to help connect with the melody.
Speaking of connecting, there’s a timelessness to the tunes on Unstoppable Momentum. A lot of them would have fit right in on Surfin’ With the Alien.
I think everyone who makes music aspires to that. There’s always a push to be timely, but actually being timeless is the quality you want. You want your music to be special to itself and not rely on trends. A lot of credit goes to my team – the musicians, co-producer and engineer Mike Fraser – they helped tremendously steering the project toward that kind of end result, where it’s got a timeless quality. You don’t want people to say, “Hey this is the latest thing and we should jump on it,” and make your whole album appeal to this or that group of people. Credit also goes to the people at Epic and Sony, who let me do what I wanted. No one there ever tells me to follow a trend, and that helps us focus on the music. Hopefully, the compositions and the performances take on that timeless quality.
This article originally appeared in July 2013 issue of VG. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Preamp tubes: two 12AX7, one 12AY7, two 6BJ8, two 6SK7, one 6V6 (used as a voltage divider) Output tubes: two 6550 Rectifier: GZ34 Controls: Ch1: Volume, Treble, Bass; Ch2: Volume, Treble, Bass, Compressor Speakers: two 12″ Norelco/Phillips twin-cone speakers Output: approximately 60 watts RMS
We generally love amps of the tweed era for their ability to go all chewy and juicy when hit with some attitude, but most makers of the day were trying their best to maximize headroom and clean punch within the parameters of price point and product size. When we think “vintage clean” in pre-1960 terms, our thoughts often go to the Fender Twin and Bassman, and maybe some of the larger models by Standel or Magnatone, but Gibson had it going on in this department, too. Taken at face value, the GA-200 Rhythm King might even be too clean for some tastes.
The model was introduced in 1957’s two-tone range, when only 22 were shipped, and phased out after the (somewhat altered) Crestline rendition of ’63, and our feature subject sits right in the center of that span, a pristine example of one of Gibson’s turn-of-the-decade tweed amps. Rated at 60 watts from two 6550 output tubes, with a closed-back cabinet housing two 12″ speakers and no bells and whistles other than the guts of what was necessary for loud, clean amplification, the Rhythm King was very much a professional product for the big stage. An amp that might have seemed a little behind the times already in the age of rock and roll (if ahead of the times in its inventive design), it was intended to partner the big professional archtops like Gibson’s L-5CES and Super 400, enabling them to belt out a rhythm on the bandstand.
That’s a pretty hefty output rating back in the day for two tubes fed by tube rectification, but it is all aided by some boat-anchor-sized transformer iron and substantial operating voltages on those 6550s. Given this heft in the back end and a preamp circuit tuned more to high fidelity than to tweedy grind, the Rhythm King stays clean way up on the dial, and really only gives in to a little softening crunch when you push it way hard. It was a tone that did the trick for late blues ace Sean Costello, who often pumped his vintage goldtop through a GA-200 Rhythm King, and, until recently, a model of a similar vintage to this one was also among the playing collection of J. Geils. For a lot of today’s players, “tweed tone” is more likely to conjure the sound of a 5E3 Deluxe or 5F4 Super, maybe a Bassman for something stouter, or a Gibson GA-40 Les Paul or smaller GA-20 – meaning the loud, tight performance of the GA-200 Rhythm King just won’t light the right fires. For a bold effort with good texture and depth, though, for big-stage jazz chops, cleaner blues excursions, or spanking country twang, this is an amp to put a smile on your face.
A circa 1960 Gibson GA-200 Rhythm King.
While the GA-200 lacks tremolo and reverb, it is equipped with a real rarity in guitar amps of the day: a circuit labeled “Compressor,” available on Channel 2 only. Using half each of 6BJ8 and 6SK7 tubes, and tied to the output stage via a 6V6 tube used as a voltage regulator (somewhat in place of a traditional bias circuit) this oddball extra was different from anything guitarists conceive of as a compressor today. Its job seems to have been to further ensure a smooth performance with maximum headroom, overload protection when needed, and the squelching of feedback when your big archtop started to howl. All in all, a very unusual approach to the problem and, while there might be something similar out there somewhere, we can’t think of another maker who ever used such a circuit.
Taken in its entirety, the Rhythm King also provides another fascinating example of how Gibson’s amp line resisted conforming to any particular template through the ’50s and early ’60s. The lack of a uniform format across the line, as seen with Fender amps and many others of the era, for example, might have dented Gibson’s staying power in this market, and contributed to their fading from the spotlight in the mid ’60s. But it also let the company’s designers take a pot-shot now and then, and occasionally hit something that was worth the effort. Between the angled, trapezoidal control panel with rear-facing input jacks; dual-chassis design with top-mounted preamp circuit and rear-facing power and output chassis; aforementioned compressor circuit; chunky closed-back cabinet with angled upper-rear quarter; and dual Norelco/Phillips twin-cone (a.k.a. “whizzer-con”) speakers, there was nothing else quite like it – other than, perhaps, its big brother GA-400 Super 400, which had three channels and some other differences.
As Costello, Geils, and a few other latter-day players discovered, a big, clean beast like the GA-200 Rhythm King certainly has its applications in a broad range of genres and playing styles. Conventional or traditional it is not, but it will present the bold, bare tone of whatever you put into it – and loudly – or provide a fat and sturdy platform for whatever pedals might help generate your own playing voice. As for its intended audience, it was already becoming something of a dinosaur in 1960, with the needs of the jazz-guitar market changing, and ultimately diminishing relative to those of the rock and pop boom. The Rhythm King shipped in its greatest numbers in 1960, selling 265 units. After selling 263 in ’61 – again, not bad, but not sensational – the GA-200 evolved into the Crestline styling, quite a different amp when put in a piggyback configuration with a head that tucked into the speaker cab for carting. After that, the “big clean” professional combos moved to a different, usually more-conventional form, but you can bet few if any ever sounded quite like the Rhythm King.
This article originally appeared in VG March 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Epiphone’s ES-339 PRO
Price: $400 street
Info: www.epiphone.com.
The Gibson ES-335 quickly revealed its versatility and tone following its introduction in 1958 – all warm ’n’ woody like a jazz archtop, or nasty and rude for blues and rock. The design got an added shot years later when Gibson scaled the 335 into a more manageable solidbody-sized axe. Now Epiphone has grabbed the scaled-down concept, offering the ES-339 PRO.
The China-made Epiphone ES-339 PRO features classic ES-335 body lines at about three-quarters the size. It has a laminated maple body and top, like most every other guitar in the 335 universe, and a mahogany SlimTaper D-profile neck with a 22-fret rosewood fingerboard. Hardware includes a LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop tailpiece, and Wilkinson TM 14:1 vintage-style tuners. Controls include the expected Tone and Volume for each humbucker, plus a three-way toggle. The addition of Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with push/pull coil splitting for single-coil tones is a nice tweak (see below). The test guitar came in a sweet retro Vintage Sunburst, though it’s also available in Ebony, Natural, Cherry, and Black (the latter with a white pickguard).
In hand, the ES-339 PRO’s neck is slim, but substantial – not like those super-skinny vintage Gibson 335 necks. Though neither is it one of Epiphone’s occasionally chunkier necks. The guitar also has more heft than might be expected, but then again, the ES-339 PRO does have a solid center block to control feedback.
Plugged into a 1×12″ combo, this semi-hollowbody covered a lot of territory. Starting clean, it readily offered blues, country, and jazz. The push/pull knobs proved useful and fun. Use the bridge humbucker for clean blues or rock, then pull the volume knob for P-90 twang. Do the same on the neck pickup and go into single-coil mode. Now dial back the tone knob for pre-humbucker ’40s jazz and blues – wicked tones reminiscent of cats like Charlie Christian, T-Bone Walker, and Tal Farlow.
Of course, the amp’s overdrive can be ramped up to make the Epiphone work for a living – try some gritty blues soloing or British Invasion chime. Stoke it up even more – the 339 proved reasonably feedback-resistant and rolled into AC/DC and Bad Company territory with plenty of big, clean overdrive tones perfect for old-school hard rock. Add in the coil taps for favorite Southern rock licks.
The Epiphone ES-339 PRO is a mighty fine axe for only four bills. It’s classy, delivers sweet semi-hollowbody tones and good playability, and has the added benefit of split-coil pickups. That’s a great value.
This article originally appeared in VG December 2013 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
(LEFT) This Masterworks CS-1 is a prime example of the work being done by the Schecter Custom Shop. (RIGHT) Guitars like this wenge-bodied Banshee 8 helped resurrect Schecter in the late 1990s.
Riding high after 35 years with an array of original instruments, an impressive artist roster that started early with Pete Townshend and Mark Knopfler, and a line of high-gain amplifiers, Schecter Guitars has come full circle.
Established as Schecter Guitar Research by David Schecter in 1976, the company began repairing guitars and selling parts to fit the latest offerings from Gibson and Fender, which were largely failing to strike players’ fancies. An innovator in pickup winding and coil tapping, Schecter eventually began selling replacement bodies, necks, and all the parts a player needed to assemble their own guitar. The concept shifted the guitar zeitgeist and helped push customizing to the forefront – Eddie Van Halen used a couple of well-known “parts guitars” – and a few repair shops even became quasi builders, using parts from Schecter (or Warmoth, et al) to help those who didn’t have the time, tools, or inclination to assemble a guitar on their own.
By ’79, Schecter Guitar Research was building its own instruments, widely viewed as better variants of Strats and Teles. Production was initially limited, but demand pushed the company to establish more than a dozens retail stores in North America. That growth caught the attention of a group of investors from Dallas, and in 1983, production (sans most of the builders from California) moved south. Still offering Fender copies, the company shifted to all-out mass production, and its reputation suffered somewhat from the same ills of its big-brother predecessors – quality control being the primary knock. Sales lagged, and by ’87, the boys in Big D decided to bail, selling the brand to Hisatake Shibuya, owner of ESP Guitars. Grabbing the reigns, Shibuya did an immediate about-face, initially taking Schecter back to just a couple guys building high-end customs in L.A. One of the brand’s remaining few retail outlets was another Shibuya interest, Sunset Custom Guitars, which employed a guitarist named Michael Ciravolo.
“I had been working at Lab Sound, a music store on The Strip,” he recalled. “But, when it changed ownership, I was suddenly in need of a day job! I was hired to manage Sunset Custom, which was the sister to the famous store on 48th Street in New York City. We carried racks full of guitars with brands like Tom Anderson, Schecter, and Valley Arts. We were also Schecter’s U.S. headquarters at the time, so I split my time between the store and doing sales for Schecter International.”
Ciravolo was in the right place at the right time as the company began a return to significance. Its director resigned not long after his arrival, and Ciravolo was chosen as his successor. Though he had no formal business training, Ciravolo brought knowledge and ideas, and Shibuya let him run with it. Coincidentally, Ciravolo’s wife, Tish, was expecting a baby.
“Until then, my life had been about chasing the illustrious record deal,” he said. “But, it struck me that I had to take advantage of the opportunity, and I am eternally grateful to Mr. Shibuya for giving a longhaired guitarist from New Orleans the opportunity to reinvent a brand.”
(CLOCKWISE TOP LEFT) Michael Ciravolo has guided the Schecter ship since 1995. Harkening to the company’s earliest days, a worker winds pickups. Shigeki Aoshima in the spray booth.
In the years that followed, Schecter expanded its operations and staff, and introduced several original models beginning with the S series, then – with considerable input from Ciravolo – the Tempest, Avenger, Hellcat, and others. In the late ’90s, the brand experienced a resurgence thanks to its guitars finding favor with players in the heavy, post-punk music of the era, propelled by its seven-string models and others suited to the look – and especially the sound – of the genre’s alternate/lower tunings.
More recently, Schecter began elevating the profile of its Custom Shop. The renewed focus started with machinery and the hiring of John Gaudesi, who for a decade had been a key player in research and development of guitars at Yamaha. “I had known John for a long time, and he brought a wealth of knowledge,” said Ciravolo. “He started in the early ’80s at Charvel, and the moment John joined, we no longer simply dabbled in custom building – we had the basis to build a real, true guitar factory.”
“I had speculated on taking on a venture like this for many years,” Gaudesi said. “It’s exciting, being part of this team, especially under the leadership of someone who is not afraid to do things right the first time.”
In March of 2012, Schecter moved the Custom Shop to a dedicated 14,000-square-foot building in Sun Valley.
“It is really inspiring to walk through that shop now,” Ciravolo said. “It looks, smells, and feels like what I imagined the Schecter facility did in the early Van Nuys days – a cool combination of high-tech and low-tech, with all the work being done by guitar players.”
The Custom Shop is divided into two sections – one for the USA Production line, which includes several models that can be dressed with a handful of custom options, and the Masterworks division, where a Master Builder creates one-off, custom-order guitars from start to finish using more-traditional techniques and machinery. “Masterworks can provide the discerning player with their dream guitar – bolt-on, set-neck, neck-through, six, seven, eight or more strings, doublenecks, chambers – the options are truly endless,” said Ciravolo.
The USA Production side, meanwhile, employs craftsmen skilled in many aspects of the process along with specialists who focus on various phases. Gaudesi uses two computer numerical control (CNC) machines to rough-shape bodies, carve routes, and rough-in neck blanks, fingerboards, and inlays. Necks are sanded, and inlays and frets installed before the pieces move to Jose Rosas, who does final prep on bodies for finisher Rafael Barrajas, who applies paint and a thin polyester finish in the spray booth. Once dry, finishes are leveled and buffed before the bodies and necks move to Shigeki Aoshima, in assembly. “This is where the real magic happens,” said Ciravolo.
He also still points proudly to the company’s hand-wound pickups. “They were really the birth of Schecter Guitar Research,” he said. “Many features pioneered by David Schecter in the mid ’70s are standard on many of today’s popular pickups. It’s truly exciting to be able to reverse-engineer and re-create some of the classic pickups from our past – the SuperRock, MonsterTone, and Z-Plus – and design new and innovative models.”
(LEFT) John Gaudesi inspects the neck of a Masterworks guitar. (RIGHT) Schechter’s USA Production CET guitars offer a healthy dose of vintage appeal.
The staff includes about 40 guitar players that serve as an essential built-in focus group. “There really aren’t any models, pickups, and custom touches we have not tried ourselves,” Ciravolo said.
There was a time where Schecter was perceived as merely building “expensive Strats” (or Teles). How does Ciravolo react when someone tosses that generalization in the direction of his Custom Shop instruments today?
“In the genius of David Schecter, that wasn’t just perception, it was fact,” he said. “Schecter Guitar Research spearheaded the golden era of hot-rodding guitars – at the time, no self-respecting guitarist would play a stock, off-the-shelf instrument, and ’70s instruments were not looked at as collectors’ items, but as sub-par guitars in need of replacing everything.
“When I took over as President, I knew we had to shed the image of ‘kit’ guitars and ‘expensive Strats’ if we were going to compete. And we never stopped building U.S.-made instruments; for awhile it was essentially a two-person operation building two or three instruments per month, but the inception of our Diamond Series instruments in 1997 overshadowed those efforts while simultaneously changing the industry standard of what an ‘import guitar’ could be. We set the bar high with innovative designs and the addition of high-quality U.S.-made components like Seymour Duncan, EMG, and TonePros.”
“I am very honored to be a part of this new venture for Schecter Guitars,” added Gaudesi. “It’s a nice combination of the right team, state-of-the-art technology, and hand craftsmanship that truly brought high quality and an affordable custom instrument, made in the USA, back to the forefront.”
“To set our new path, I purposely distanced us from Schecter’s superstrat era. Now, with the rebirth of our Custom Shop, we are giving a nod to our early history and the guitars that have spawned a lot of other well-known brands.
“In my 20 years of knowing Mr. Shibuya, even with the success we have had in putting Schecter in the ranks of the world’s top electric-guitar companies, I have never seen him light up like he did when he first saw our new shop in Sun Valley. He said, ‘This is something I always wanted to see!’ For me, that was enough!”
This article originally appeared in VG March 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
1968 Vox Saturn IV bass. Photo: Rick Malkin. Instrument courtesy of Sean Smith.
In the mid 1960s, England’s Vox company was in the right place at the right time. Buoyed by frontline British Invasion endorsers such as the Beatles and American bands such as Paul Revere & the Raiders, the instrument/amplifier maker signed deals with almost every popular band. Even one-hit-wonders such as Music Machine (“Talk Talk”) brandished Vox guitars.
Through most of the ’60s, Vox made instruments in the U.K. and in Italy; those made in the U.K. were mostly sold there, rarely crossing the Atlantic. Those made in Italy (first by Crucinelli, then beginning in ’66 by Eko) were mostly exported to the U.S. and included the Phantom, the famed “teardrop-shaped” instruments, and unusual items like the model V251 Guitar Organ and V257 Mando-Guitar. By 1968, Vox’s influence in the market was beginning to wane, and it responded by offering instruments with more traditional shapes.
Coincidentally, ’68 was the only year the V281 Saturn IV seen here appeared in a Vox catalog. A hollowbody short-scale bass with a bolt-on neck and a silhouette that referenced the Gibson ES-175 or ES-125C (with two f-holes and a Florentine cutaway), the Saturn IV had Vox’s paddle-shaped headstock atop a super-slim laminated bolt-on maple neck with binding and a 21-fret rosewood fingerboard (with zero fret) measuring 13/8” wide at the nut. The neck joined the body at the 15th fret on the bass side, 18th fret on the treble side. The body measured 20” long, 12” wide on the upper bout, 16” on the lower bout, and 111/16” deep; overall length of the instrument was 461/2” and it had single-ply binding front and back, as well as bound f-holes. The single-coil pickup had non-adjustable polepieces. And though this example is missing its three-ply (white/black/white) pickguard, its Tone knob, and the silver insert on its Volume knob, its bridge still has the snap-on cover. Underneath it are four multi-grooved/radiused bridge saddles, which could be individually intonated.
The pearl-dot markers on the fretboard are two sizes; on the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth frets they’re 5/16” in diameter, while beyond the 12th they’re 3/16”. Another curiosity is a snap-on vinyl pad measuring 111/2” diameter on the back of the body. Also on back is a neckplate that plays host to a serial number, Vox crest logo, and a sticker bearing the model name.
A diagram in the ’68 Vox catalog touted the brand’s Double T neck support. (BELOW) 1968 Vox Saturn IV bass.
Other single-pickup Voxes sported the same body style, including the Saturn guitar and the Apollo guitar and bass. All were available in sunburst or cherry finishes.
Even on short-scale basses, a hollow body can infer neck-heavy ergonomics. However, Vox enthusiast Jim Rhoads describes the balance of this particular bass as “…not too bad, since it has the smaller headstock and smaller tuners, which were also used on the (Bill) Wyman bass and some others. The Sidewinder IV, Constellation IV, Astro IV, and a few other basses used huge ‘elephant-button’ tuners on huge headstocks, which made them really neck-heavy.”
To say that the Vox instrument lineup in the ’60s was “diverse” is an understatement. This Saturn IV is just one of many examples of where the company was trying to be everything to every player.
Special thanks to Jim Rhoads.
This article originally appeared in VG May 2010 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
In 1961, Gibson’s Johnny Smith model not only associated Gibson with one of the most popular guitar stylists of the day, it also brought high-quality amplification and high-quality acoustic sound together for the first time.
From Gibson’s first electric “Spanish” guitar, the ES-150 of 1936, Gibson had fashioned an electric guitar by cutting a hole in the top of an acoustic archtop guitar. The ES-150, with its 16″ body width and flat back, obviously wasn’t designed with acoustic sound in mind, and the heavy pickup, secured to the top with three screws, killed most of the instrument’s acoustic capabilities. Nevertheless, until the late 1940s, Gibson continued to go through the motions of making electric guitars as if they could be good acoustics, too, as evidenced by the carved spruce top.
The ES-5, introduced in 1949, indicated that players did want a classy-looking electric, but its laminated maple back and sides represented a farther departure from good acoustic quality. Gibson made another cosmetic concession in 1951 with electric versions of the L-5 and the ultra-deluxe, 18″-wide Super 400, but as usual, the holes for the pickups were cut through the top – even through top braces – which all but destroyed acoustic capabilities.
In the meantime, many players were amplifying their acoustic archtops with a non-invasive pickup. The most popular aftermarket pickup of the 1940s, the DeArmond Rhythm Chief, was mounted on an arm that attached by screws to the side of the fingerboard. A volume control attached to the strings (behind the bridge) or the tailpiece. When Ted McCarty came in as president of Gibson in 1948, one of his first moves was to design a pickup with the entire unit – pickup and controls – built into a pickguard. While it was moderately successful, it allowed too much pickup movement, and fell out of favor by the mid 1950s.
Through the ’50s, Gibson focused its attention on battling Fender in the new solidbody electric market. At the end of the decade, Ted McCarty sought to boost Gibson’s hollowbody electric with the help of influential guitarists, and he landed one of the most popular and respected guitarists of the 1950s – Johnny Smith.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1922, Smith came of age musically in Maine, where he played with a hillbilly band and then started a jazz trio. By the early ’50s, he had developed a “chord melody” style that featured the melody on the highest string and lush, jazzy chords on the lower strings. In ’52 – the same year Gibson introduced the Les Paul Model – Smith released what would become his best-known recording, “Moonlight in Vermont.”
Smith’s working guitar was a 17″ D’Angelico New Yorker Special with a DeArmond pickup. In ’55, the Guild company, which had been founded only four years earlier, engaged Smith to design a model, but Guild’s factory foreman refused to follow Smith’s instructions to carve the top before the cutaway area was removed. Guild introduced the Johnny Smith Award in ’56, but Smith never played it. Two years later, he went into semi-retirement, settling in Colorado and opening a music store. (After his contract expired in 1960, Guild continued the model as the Artist Award.)
Smith would gain considerable notoriety for his composition, “Walk Don’t Run,” after The Ventures turned it into a number two pop hit in 1960 (though it didn’t sound much like Smith’s 1955 version). It’s unknown whether anyone at Gibson was influenced by – or even aware of – the fact that Smith had written the hit, but Gibson president Ted McCarty visited Smith at his home in Colorado in ’61, where Smith drew up the plans for a new Gibson signature model.
The Gibson Johnny Smith had a 17″ body modeled after Smith’s D’Angelico, which was slightly – but significantly – different from Gibson’s L-5. With body depth of 31/8″, the Smith was a 1/4″ shallower than the L-5 and Super 400. The Smith was different under the top, too, with an X brace instead of the tone bars Gibson introduced along with f-holes in 1922. (The X brace was not exactly foreign to Gibson, as the L-5 had been X-braced from 1934-’38.) The neck of the Smith was also slightly wider than that of the L-5.
The neck ornamentation of the Johnny Smith clearly placed it in the upper echelon of Gibson’s line. Its slashed-diamond fingerboard inlays and peghead ornament, along with elongated peghead shape, were the same as Gibson’s top archtop, the Super 400. The tailpiece is the same design as that of the L-5CES, except that Smith’s has his name on it.
The Smith had a floating pickup that set it apart from all the DeArmond equipped guitars. Gibson had developed the double-coil humbucking pickup in ’57, and humbuckers were standard on high-end electrics. The Smith’s pickup was actually a mini-humbucker, which would soon find its way onto Gibson’s high-end Epiphones. The ’65 blond pictured here sports a two-pickup version of the floating mini-humbucker that Gibson began offering in ’63.
The Smith gave archtop players an instrument with the best-quality amplification without visibly altering its acoustic persona. The Smith’s Venetian (rounded) cutaway was an acoustic feature, as Gibson’s electric versions of the L-5 and Super 400 had a Florentine (pointed) cutaway during this period. And it sported an acoustic player’s traditional ebony, height-adjustable bridge rather than the Tune-O-Matic on the L-5CES and Super 400CES. But the top is slightly thicker than the standard Gibson archtop, so despite all appearances, the Smith really was designed for electric play.
Smith’s smiling face appeared with the guitar in Gibson’s ’62 catalog. The model was priced at $795 with sunburst finish and $810 for natural, including a deluxe case with a zippered cover. The only model above it was the Super 400CES at $825 and $850 for sunburst and natural, respectively. Curiously, the case and zipper cover were not included in the price of the Super 400 and L-5, and the extra $86 made the L-5 more expensive than the Smith by $6.
Through the Johnny Smith’s first decade, Gibson sold a total of 873 guitars, almost the same as the L-5CES’ total of 895 and significantly more than the Super 400CES’ total of 555. In its second decade (’71-’80), Smith sales fell only slightly, to a total of 771, while the L-5CES and Super 400CES fell more sharply to 468 and 260.
The Smith model endured Gibson’s move from Kalamazoo to Nashville in ’84 and the acquisition by its current owners in ’86. However, Smith’s loyalty stayed with the crew in Kalamazoo, and in ’89 he moved his endorsement to Heritage. In 2004, he returned to endorse the Guild Johnny Smith Award, by Benedetto (produced through ’06). Still, Smith’s legacy remains strong at Gibson, where the model that once bore his name is still offered, but as the LeGrand.
This article originally appeared in Vintage Guitar magazine’s January 2008 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
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In 1961, Gibson’s Johnny Smith model not only associated Gibson with one of the most popular guitar stylists of the day, it also brought high-quality amplification and high-quality acoustic sound together for the first time.