"Those things still bring me the most fun out of anything," Brian Setzer said of Gretsch guitars in a 2023 Guitar Player interview with contributor Gary Graff. But as he went on to explain, the reason he fell in love with the Gretsch brand in the first place was due to one particular guitarist: Eddie Cochran.

"I bought one in the late 1970s because I wanted to look like Eddie Cochran;" Setzer said. "I didn't even know if they'd sound good. Back then no one knew who Eddie Cochran was, so I found one in the local paper for 100 bucks."

Some two decades earlier, Cochran — who played a Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins hollowbody — had been an inescapable presence on the hit parade as one of the guitarists most vital to first wave of rock and roll. Born in America, Cochran had managed to become a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic with late-1950s hits like "Twenty Flight Rock," "Summertime Blues" and "C'mon Everybody." Artists from the Beatles to the Who celebrated his music, but Cochran was dead well before either group arrived on the scene, his life cut tragically short in a taxi accident in Bristol on the night of April 16, 1960. He died the next day. (More fortunate were his traveling companions: his friend, the rocker Gene Vincent, and Cochran's girlfriend, the songwriter Sharon Sheeley, who wrote hits for RIcky Nelson and Richie Valens, and co-wrote Cochran's own 1959 hit "Somethin' Else.")

Cochran's memory slipped into the distant past as rock and pop grew progressively more advanced in the 1960s and '70s, but Setzer remained hooked to his music, which he'd first discovered as a youngster in the 1960s. He even got to portray the rocker in the 1987 Richie Valens biopic, La Bamba, where he performed "Summertime Blues" in a cameo appearance.

Considering how Gretsch guitars have shaped Setzer's sound — and how he has transformed the brand with his line of signature models — we thought it was high time we spoke with him about Cochran's influence on his guitar tone, music and image. He was only too happy to oblige.

Were you already a 1950s rock and roll fan prior to getting into Eddie, or was he your gateway?

My mom and dad liked ’50s music, but being from New York it was mostly doo-wop, which is great music of course. What I found though is that Eddie Cochran kind of flew under the radar a bit, especially with audiences in later years, where only a handful of his songs were well known. When I discovered Eddie, it was like a whole new world — kinda like, “Now this is what I’m talking about!” [laughs]

The image is a huge part of the appeal of the great ’50s rockers isn’t it?

Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, I saw his reissued album The Legendary Masters hanging up in my local record store, I thought, Oh my god, I want to be that guy! It was the coolest look, and I knew that I wanted to look like that guy before I even heard the music. I had no idea at that point how good he was.

There’s a very subtle nod to Eddie on the cover of Rockabilly Riot – All Original. The clothes you’re wearing are a copy of what Eddie was wearing on the Legendary Masters cover.

Yeah, I copied that outfit exactly. I just couldn’t ever get a good enough picture of the pants. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had them. They got them out for me so I could take some pictures of them. They just seemed kinda handmade, like someone’s mom had made them or something. They definitely weren’t made by Elvis’s tailor. [laughs]

I always wondered how you knew what color they were, as I’d never seen a color picture of him wearing them.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. Fortunately, they had them put away at the Hall of Fame. That was the exact outfit that I’d worshipped growing up. [laughs]

Did you actually work out licks from the records and that kind of thing?

To a degree, but for me it was always about the feeling, and the song — learning the basis of the solo but not worrying about getting it note-for-note perfect. It was about capturing the feel and the spirit.

Eddie led you to Gretsch. Did you ever experiment with the P90 in the neck pickup, at any time?

I think the whole idea of Eddie was good enough. I didn’t feel the need to seek out exactly the sound that he had. The first Gretsch that I got happened to have the Filter’Tron pickups, and to me, at 17, I thought it was the same thing. I didn’t realize there was a difference. By the time that I did become aware of the P90 thing, I’d already established my sound and I was happy with it.

What were you playing before you got into Gretsches?

I was fooling around with a bunch of guitars to try to find a sound that I liked. My first guitar was a Harmony, but that didn’t quite cut it. After that I had a solid-bodied Rickenbacker and a really nice Stratocaster. I liked the sound of the Strat, but I could never quite settle with the feel of it. When I found the Gretsch, that was just meant to be; everything felt and sounded right. To me it was halfway between a Fender and a Gibson; it had qualities of both of them.

What are your favorite tracks of Eddie’s?

When I heard “Somethin’ Else,” that cemented the fact that I knew what I had to do. Enough of school, this is what I’m going to pursue. [laughs]

I think Eddie’s still pretty underrated. Presumably you’d agree.

Yeah, that’s true. When artists have hit records, that’s what people base their assumptions on and most don’t dig down any further than the hits that they know. Of course the idea behind a hit record is not just to feature yourself on guitar, it’s to have a hit. It’s what serves the song best. When you do dig down a little deeper, that’s when you really understand just how great a guitarist he was.

Did you ever get to play Eddie’s Gretsch?

I did get the chance to play his guitar at his mom’s house. I realized when I played it a little that it had what seemed like Slinky strings on there — the G wasn't a wound string. I asked his mom if they’d ever been changed and she said, “Oh no, absolutely not. They are the strings that were on it when he last played it.” I guess he must have used a banjo string for the E so that he could get a plain G string by moving the high E and B strings down to the B and G slots. The way he strung it — he was way ahead of his time .

It must have been a moving moment to actually play the iconic guitar, particularly knowing it was still strung up from the last show he did.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I remember going into his bedroom, which his mom had kept exactly as it was when he was last there, and seeing he had a tweed Fender Bassman combo. That was a revelation for me, as I’d been plugging my Gretsch into a Bassman, but had never known that Eddie had used one. It’s funny, because you have to remember that amps were so expensive in the ’50s, and it makes you wonder what would make a guitar player decide to play through a bass amp back then. He must have experimented and realized that the Gretsch and the Bassman was a great combination.

It is almost the definitive set up for rockabilly isn’t it?

Well it’s worked for me for all these years, that’s for sure. [laughs]

You got to play Eddie in La Bamba. That must have been almost surreal, to go from being a fan to playing the man himself.

The whole movie was surreal. They had rented a high school, and everyone had to be in character. There was nothing from past 1959 anywhere, you know? I remember thinking, Holy cow, this is as close to the real thing as you can get. It definitely was surreal, and a real special feeling to get that chance to play Eddie, especially with him having had such a huge influence on me.

Fender has broken new ground by adding a tweed amp to its Tone Master digital amp collection for the first time, with a 1959 Bassman bestowed with the privilege.  

The Tone Master line was first introduced in 2019, delivering faithful digital recreations of some of Fender's most popular amps, with tubes usurped by DSP modeling. 

The Princeton Reverb and Super Reverb were early additions to the series, which, in the process of delivering historic amplifiers into the digital realm, democratizes their magic by increasing their affordability. 

After predominantly focusing on black panel amps, Fender has now made its first step into digitizing its tweed amp arsenal, with the tone of this new Bassman said to be “virtually indistinguishable from the original.”  

It achieves its aims of modeling the circuitry and 45-watt power output of the original Bassman – which was originally designed for bass guitars but proved a formidable guitar amp – by utilizing a high-performance class D power amp. This helps replicate the headroom and dynamics of a tube amp, without any actual tubes. 

Keen to keep as much of the amp’s essence as possible – indeed, some have cited it as the best Fender amp ever made – it features the “sparkle and touch sensitivity” of four Jensen P-10R speakers. That sees this 21st-century retelling honoring the 4x10” configuration of its progenitor.  

There’s also a spring reverb, a Vintage/Tight switch to smoothen out its bass response, and a post-power amp effects loop.    

An Impulse Response XLR line output for cab sims offers a contemporary twist and greater tone possibilities in the process. 

Its features are completed by a mute switch, an output power selector for full power and five incremental steps down, and a lightweight pine cabinet. 

With new ground broken here, it sets a precedent for what the future of the Tone Master series may have in store. If Fender can convincingly reimagine such a lauded amp in a DSP-powered format, it opens the floodgates for plenty of other tweed model recreations. 

The Tone Master ‘59 Bassman will be available in October for $1,499.

Visit Fender to find out more.

***The following appeared in the May 2019 issue of Guitar Player***

"There's something about rockabilly riffs that makes them different from other kinds of riffs, Brian Setzer says. 

“When I hear a rock riff, I hear something that’s very tied to the drums. There’s a funky aspect to the way it works. But a great rockabilly riff operates on so many levels. I hear blues, country and jazz. I hear big bands and horn melodies. There’s a lot of colors going on. I guess that’s why I’ve found rockabilly so appealing. It’s a limitless art form.”

Some artists are tourists of multiple genres, but Setzer is more like an explorer, going deep into subcategories such as roots-rock, bluegrass, doo-wop, jump blues and hillbilly jazz.

With uncanny prescience, he kickstarted the ’90s neo-swing revival when he formed his eponymous Orchestra in 1994, much as he did a decade earlier when he rebooted the Sun Studio sound of the 1950s with his group the Stray Cats.

Shaking off a first impression is darn near impossible, and to the millions of music fans who first heard him hot-dogging solos with the Stray Cats on early ’80s hits like “Rock This Town,” “Stray Cat Strut” and “Runaway Boys,” Setzer will always be associated with rockabilly.

And he’s cool with that.

“Rockabilly is so near and dear to my heart,” the guitarist says. “There’s just something exciting about it, and it never goes out of style. You can always add your own wrinkle to it and take it somewhere else.”

Setzer formed the Stray Cats with fellow Long Islanders and rockabilly enthusiasts Lee Rocker (upright bassist) and Slim Jim Phantom (snare and kick specialist) in 1979. Sporting greaser duds, colorful tattoos and mile-high pompadours, the band invaded stages at New York City punk clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City – and they went down a smash.

“The funny thing was, we weren’t really different from the punk bands,” Setzer says. “The rockabilly music from the ’50s was basically the punk music of its day. It was essentially I-IV-V blues progressions, with some killer musicians playing it. So I wrote songs in the rockabilly style, but it sounded just as fresh as what everybody else was doing.”

Even so, the band couldn’t get a record deal in the States, and it wasn’t until they relocated to England in 1980 – where they found fans like the Rolling Stones and a sympathetic producer in ex-Rockpile guitarist Dave Edmunds – that they signed with Arista and scored a series of chart hits.

Two years later, EMI in the States took note and compiled the Stray Cats’ first two U.K. albums (Stray Cats and Gonna Ball) as Built for Speed.

With MTV a fixture in living rooms across the nation, the band’s videos were seen 24/7, and Built for Speed became the surprise hit of 1982, selling more than a million copies.

But the Stray Cats quickly flamed out. Their Built for Speed follow-up, 1983’s Rant N’ Rave with the Stray Cats, produced a Top 10 hit with “(She’s) Sexy + 17” but only went Gold, and a year later the group, mired by internal squabbles, packed it in.

Setzer puts the band’s breakup down to the predictable “too much, too soon” syndrome, but he also admits that his outsized ego was the root of the group’s demise. “It was pride and stubbornness,” he says. “When you’re young and full of yourself, you start to think, I don’t need those other guys. Plus, there was a musical aspect to it – I wanted to try something a little different. So I did that.

“But after a while, you kind of grow up. You realize just how silly you were, and you think, Well, maybe we could get back together.”

As it happens, Setzer wasn’t thinking about getting back into the studio with the band when he started writing the batch of songs that eventually became 2019’s comeback album, 40.

As he explains, “I was just messing around with an old Fender Reverb unit, and I just loved the twangy sound of it. I began writing these songs that were like spaghetti westerns – which is really surf-guitar music when you get down to it.

“But then I got on the phone with Jim, and he mentioned that our 40-year anniversary was coming up. I was like, ‘Holy cow, you’re right!’ So that planted the seed. 40 is a big number. You gotta honor it.”

What was the first rockabilly record that made you go, “What is that?”

That’s easy: “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” by Gene Vincent. I was 16 or 17, and I went to Max’s Kansas City. The jukebox was playing new wave and all the current stuff, but suddenly that song came on, and I was like, Wow… What is that? I went over to read what it was. That sound and that guitar solo just jumped out at me. I’ll never forget it.

There wasn’t anything like that around at the time. There was Robert Gordon, whom I found out about. But at the time, it was all new wave and punk – the Dead Boys, the Cramps… That kind of thing.

Cliff Gallup’s guitar on “Be-Bop-A-Lula” just knocked me out. It was so different. The sound of that guitar just went right through me.

At the time, you were also a jazz fan, and what I’ve always liked about your playing is the way you mix jazz chords and soloing with rockabilly. Did that just happen naturally?

Well, see, I didn’t have musical blinders on. On Thursday night, I’d go to the Village Vanguard and see the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. On Friday night, I’d go see a punk band. I liked it all, and that’s what came out of me with chords and riffs.

I had a certain style and played with a thumbpick and flatwound strings. It wasn’t conscious. There was nothing premeditated to it.

When did you get your first Gretsch?

I was 17 years old and found it in this local paper, The Byline Press. It said, “Gretsch guitar, 100 bucks.” I called the guy up and asked, “Is it like Eddie Cochran’s?” He was like, “Who?”

So I went to his house, and there was the guitar, the 1959 orange 6120. It was exactly what I was looking for. He was going to refinish it and make it natural. He had all of the electronics for it in a shoe box. I gave him 100 bucks, took the guitar and the shoe box, and off I went. It was destiny.

What kinds of guitars were you playing before the Gretsch?

Prior to the Grestch, it was a Japanese guitar that my dad got for me at a pawnshop on Canal Street. I had to bug him for it because my parents didn’t have extra money to spend. They were just blue-collar folk.

And then I think I moved up to a solidbody Harmony. Having the right guitar made all the difference. Some people could get a good sound on the Harmony, but I couldn’t figure it out. Although I did have better luck when somebody told me about Slinky strings. Before that, I was using these heavy-gauge strings. You could use those things for bridge cables. Slinky strings were a revelation to me, and, of course, so was the Gretsch.

Did it take a while for you to figure out the right amp to pair it with, the Fender Bassman?

The Bassman was another destiny thing. I thought it was just a really cool-looking amp. I was into my image and wanted to look cool. I saw these blonde amps and just thought, I need one of those. I didn’t even know how great they sounded.

I answered another ad, this one from a jazz bass player in Weehawken. So I bought the amp, and there it was: “Wow, that’s the combination!”

Did having the right combination of guitar and amp change how you played or wrote?

It puts you in the right frame of mind, and you feel better about what you’re doing because you love the sound you’re getting. I’m not saying you can’t write a good rockabilly song with a Les Paul through a Marshall or some other non-rockabilly setup, but because the whole writing thing is so elusive, it just helps to have the right tools.

Like on [40]: I couldn’t have written it without a Fender Reverb unit. That thing really inspired me to get going.

The Stray Cats formed in 1979, the same year that Queen had a surprise hit with their own take on rockabilly, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” What did you think of that song? Did it bother you at all?

Oh, no, I wasn’t bothered by that in the least. I thought it was fantastic! I thought it was great. Brian May really stepped outside his signature sound on that one. What a great solo he played, you know? I thought the whole thing was terrific.

After leaving the Stray Cats, your first solo album, The Knife Feels Like Justice, explored more of a roots-rock/Americana sound similar to what Springsteen and John Mellencamp were doing.

Yeah, that’s right. I really wanted to explore that area. I changed my guitar tones and wrote some different songs, played different guitars through different amps. That album was transitionary for me. There were some really good songs on it.

If that album had been a big hit, would you have stayed with that sound?

That’s hard to say. I don’t know. It was a Top 10 album, but it didn’t cross over enough, I guess. I’m not embarrassed by it. I just had to see if I could do it, you know? If you wear Levi’s your whole life, you want to try on something new. So I did that. I tried it, and then when I was done I wanted to try something else.

Over the years, you’ve reunited periodically with the Stray Cats, but you’ve also toured with another outfit, the Rockabilly Riot Band, and you’ve turned your Orchestra into a big live attraction. Is there any kind of plan to it all?

A plan? No way! [laughs] I really just do what I want. That’s the level I live on. Let’s say I do something that’s not as popular as the other things. If I can’t get through that month, I sell a guitar, or I get rid of a motorcycle. And then, for some reason, it always comes back. I’ll do something that does really well.

I’ve always done what I’ve wanted, and it’s worked out. I never had to slog through some tour I hated or anything like that.

Have you incorporated the Fender Reverb unit into your live set-up?

As far as the live rig goes, every time I try to vary what I’m using, it never seems to go over. That Bassman has to be there – it’s just the right sound – and I use the Roland Space Echo.

The Fender Reverb Unit doesn’t work so well live. You put that thing on certain stages, and if there’s a slightest bounce, it’s gonna go off. And man, let me tell you, that’s like an explosion! [laughs] So live, I use the reverb in the Space Echo. It’s not as good as the Fender, but it’s more convenient.

You’ve released several lines of signature Gretsch guitars. What did you use on 40?

Well, I can’t stray too much from that ’59 Gretsch. I love that sound. I’ve got a green sparkle Hot Rod that I used on quite a few tracks.

It’s thin sounding, which I like. People always say it’s too thin, but to me, thin sounding is good because it cuts through everything.

I also used a ’56 White Penguin. That could be the first time a White Penguin has ever been recorded.

So I used those guitars and a few different amps. A lot of the reverb you hear is from an old Fender Deluxe [Reverb.] I don’t use that on “Desperado” – on that I used a Supro. But I still go back to my ’63 Bassman. That’s the ticket for me. There was just something about those things. The one I have is pretty much like the amp I bought at 17. You get a stock Bassman that hasn’t had its transformers replaced, and you’re good to go.

If a young player wanted to study rockabilly, who would you direct him to?

Besides yourself, that is. Oh, there are a few cool guys. As far as modern players go, there’s Jim Heath from Reverend Horton Heat. He puts a real punk spin on rockabilly.

And there’s a Canadian gent, Paul Pigat, from Cousin Harley. He’s really great. And Darrel Higham, he’s a U.K. guy – another good one!

Those are probably the best modern rockabilly players out there. They each bring their own style to it. But I have to go back to the original guys: Scotty Moore and Cliff Gallup. They’re my favorites.

Is there anything about your playing style you wish you could improve?

Hmm… That’s a good question. If anything, I think I could leave some more holes. It’s not like we’re patching a roof, you know? I could leave a little more space sometimes. When I hear some of my older playing, I like it, but sometimes I think I overplayed.

So I could probably slow down a bit, play a little less. But you know how it is. You get onstage and you’re all excited, and you just wanna keep playing. But I’m getting there. I’m getting more seasoned. [laughs]

Order Brian Setzer's latest solo album, Gotta Have the Rumble, here.

***The following article appeared in the May 2019 issue of Guitar Player***

Like most great guitar techs, Tyler Sweet’s main goal during a show is to be onstage as little as possible. But when your boss is rockabilly rebel Brian Setzer, you can’t always predict what’s going to happen when the house lights go down, as Sweet discovered during one of his first European tours with the Stray Cats.

“It was 2007 or so, and we were doing rehearsals in Balboa, Spain,” Sweet says. “I had finally succeeded in getting Brian on a wireless, which meant I wouldn’t have to run out onstage to chase cable anymore while he was performing. And I had that wireless working perfectly.

“But the day before the first show, Brian says, ‘Hey, Ty, I’ll be on a cable tomorrow, right?’ I guess he likes things the way they were when he first started the Stray Cats. So the next night, there I am before the show, once again gaffing down the cable in strategic places to prevent it from getting caught when he moves around.

“In the middle of the concert, Brian suddenly hops through his two vocal wedges and then starts heading left along the front of the stage, knowing full well that the cable dragging behind him is about to get snagged.

“I run out and fix the situation just in time and then, over the music, I kind of say to him, ‘What the hell? You did that on purpose.’ And he says back, ‘Ty, you’re part of the show!’ I tell him, ‘I don’t want to be part of the show!’”

Sweet was also pulled into the show during a stint in Japan several years ago, when the Fender Bassman Setzer was plugged into suddenly failed. “As soon as that amp blew up,” Sweet says, “Brian announced to the audience, ‘Watch how fast Ty can fix this,’ and the whole audience started chanting, ‘Ty! Ty! Ty!’

“It took me about a minute and a half to get a backup rig out from side stage and powered up in center stage. These days, I keep an identical rig – amp, cab and Roland RE-301 tape echo – set up right behind the first rig as a backup. If you’re looking straight on, you probably can’t even see that there’s a backup there. Now, if the first amp blows, I can get Brian up and running again in as little as 30 seconds.”

Since the Japan meltdown, he has yet to have another amp go down. “That’s because the Fender Bassman is such a stable circuit,” says Sweet, who typically brings four of Setzer’s treasured early- ’60s Bassman heads (including matching 2x12 cabinets) out on the road.

“They’re the ones from about ’62 to ’63 that have the 6G6-B circuit with the nice midrange. Brian loves the way those sound. And as long as you do a little maintenance on them, such as testing the tubes and cleaning the sockets, they’re going to work. And if anything blows up on that simple point-to-point board, it’s easy to fix. The Bassman is like a diesel car engine – it’ll run forever.”

Setzer’s sound naturally starts in his hands, where he uses signature medium-gauge cellulose PickWorld picks to strike .010–.046 sets of D’Addario strings. Shockingly, Sweet changes Setzer’s strings only about once a year. “I used to change strings every night,” he says.

“But there was a Montreal Jazz Festival gig we did where Brian’s main guitar” – the orange ’59 Gretsch 6120 Setzer has been playing since he was a teenager – “for some reason did not arrive until right before the show. The strings were kind of dead, but the gig was going to be filmed, so I made a game-time decision to not change them, because there just wasn’t time for me to fully stretch them and get them settled enough that they’d stay in tune for a full show. I knew I’d have to come out there after four or five songs and give him a different guitar. Brian was not thrilled.”

The ensuing concert, however, proved to be “incredible,” Sweet says. “Brian called me into his dressing room after the show and asked me what I had done to the guitar, and I told him, ‘Nothing.’ He said, ‘Well, don’t ever change the strings again unless absolutely necessary, because that’s the sound.’

“Now, I hardly ever change them. The current set has about 70 shows on them. One reason they last so long is that Brian has a surprisingly light touch. Even with those bends he does, it takes forever for pits to develop in his frets.”

Sweet’s preferred “leash” – his term for the instrument cable he puts Setzer on – comprises 30 feet of Belden cable and a SwitchCraft Silent Plug (enabling noiseless guitar swaps), and it goes from the guitar straight into one of Setzer’s early ’80s Roland RE-301 Chorus Echo units, which he runs straight into the input of the active Bassman head.

“We have about 10 RE-301s working right now, and we keep four more around for parts,” explains Sweet, who has a love/hate relationship with the devices. “You learn different tricks to keep them working, but they’re tape echoes, so they are a bit delicate, which can be frustrating. I once had a bad dream where 10 of them fell on me.”

Growing up in Boston, Sweet began in the music business at age 13, when he got a job helping to refinish pianos. He soon learned to play guitar and went on to tech for a range of headliners, including Carlos Santana, Chrissie Hynde, Robert Randolph, Susan Tedeschi, Jefferson Starship and Yngwie Malmsteen.

Sweet’s longest gig by far, though, has been with Brian Setzer. “When the job came up to work for Brian, I jumped at it, because I’ve always been a fan of his,” Sweet says. “He’s both a great guitar player and a great guy.

“No matter what happens, he is never negative to me or angry with me. Even if his number-one guitar gets scratched, he says, ‘Big deal. Battle wound.’ Or if a tape echo goes down in the middle of a song, he doesn’t get upset – he understands that things get smacked around on the road and break.

“When that happens, he always tells the audience the same thing: ‘What can I say? I like old shit!’”

Order Brian Setzer's most recent solo album, Gotta Have the Rumble, here.

The growing family of UAFX pedals from Universal Audio now includes three amp-emulator models that join the Astra Modulation Machine, Golden Reverberator and Starlight Echo Station we previously reviewed.

As with those pedals, the new Dream ’65 Reverb-Amp, Ruby ’63 Top Boost Amplifier and Woodrow ’55 Instrument Amplifier feature stylish metal housings, stereo ins and outs, dual foot switches, and the ability to activate and manage factory and user presets via the UAFX Control mobile app (iOS and Android), where you can download artist sounds, edit amp tones and even change the functions of the foot switches. (Eight foot-switching combinations are available on all but the Woodrow, which has three combinations.)

Bonus! These amp-emulator pedals also offer the ability to use 4-Cable mode with any amplifier that has an effects loop, allowing for switching between the amp’s preamp section and sounds in the pedal (or all three of ’em if you like), with 4-Cable mode being one of the foot-switching options.

For testing I plugged in either a Strat or a Les Paul and ran the three UAFX pedals daisy-chained together into either a compact live rig with a small power amp and a 1x12 cabinet, or direct into a PA, usually in mono.

Dream ’65 Reverb-Amp

On all three pedals, the controls follow the standard UAFX format of six knobs and three mini toggle switches. However, they perform different functions depending on the model.

Starting out with the Dream ’65 Reverb-Amp there’s volume, reverb, output, bass, treble and boost, the latter two doubling as speed and intensity when tremolo is active.

The three toggle switches perform several functions: The speaker switch selects the mic’s speaker cabinets – GB25, Oxford and EV12 – and pressing the switch down cycles though all six cabinets, plus bypass, which may be prefereable when running into your own amp/speaker rig.

The middle switch has Alt, Amp and Store functions. When Alt is selected, the tremolo speed and intensity controls (a.k.a. treble and boost) are active. In Amp mode, the standard amp controls are available. To store a preset, hold the switch in the down position until the green LED blinks rapidly.

The right-hand mod switch selects Lead (OD Special mod), Stock (standard Fender circuit) and D-Tex (SRV mod).

With pedal set clean in the Stock position, it was easy to get very realistic Fender Deluxe Reverb tones that sounded excellent, with lush reverb adding a beautiful wash of airiness.

Now you have the convenience of grinding things up via the boost knob, which can deliver up to 10dB of clean level to the front end.

For heavier grind the Lead setting (which cuts out the bright cap) sounds formidable when boost is turned up to 10 o’clock and higher, where midrange from the tone stack is added to yield increasing amounts of fat, juicy distortion.

Lastly, D-Tex (the aforementioned SRV mod) has both more gain and midrange. It’s a sweet setting that has a mildly compressed response at low boost numbers and a good deal of gain as the boost is turned up – which also reduces the effect of the tone stack (down to zero effect at maximum boost) – yielding a richly detailed and vocally inflected distortion tone that’s really satisfying for lead.

As per the original circuit mod, vibrato is only available when the boost knob is off.

Ruby ’63 Top Boost Amplifier

Based on a Vox AC30 platform, the Ruby ’63 Top Boost has a control layout consisting of volume, cut, output, bass, treble and boost.

The left-hand speaker switch has Silver, Blue and Green settings, and here too you can cycle though all six mic’d cabinets (or bypass) by holding down the switch.

The middle switch’s Alt position selects room amount (ambience), vibrato intensity and speed, which are available, respectively, on the bass, treble and boost knobs.

The Amp position activates the standard control complement for an AC30, while the Preset position is used to store custom sounds.

The channel switch on the right side selects the following: Brilliant, based on the Brilliant channel of a ’63 top-boost amplifier (the boost knob adds gain from the preamp of an EP-III tape echo); Normal, based on a ’61 non-top-boost amplifier (the boost knob adds gain from a germanium treble booster circuit); and Vibrato, based on the vibrato channel of a ’63 top-boost amplifier (the boost knob adds clean boost to the amp’s input).

The Ruby’s Brilliant channel is a blast to play through, as it models the original “top boost” circuit’s extra tube to deliver more gain and treble.

The cut, bass and treble knobs work in the usual fashion and provide plenty of range to dial-in tactile, “blizzard of nails” tones from humbuckers and single-coils alike.

You can summon more dirt via the boost knob, which adds front-end gain from the preamp section of an EP-III Echoplex, but even with boost all the way up there’s not a huge amount of distortion here.

UA recommends the combination of the Blue speaker selection with the Brilliant channel as a pairing used by the Beatles and U2, which is certainly a good start for exploring the other five mic’d-speaker combinations, a good one for distortion tones being “Match,” a 2x12 Matchless cabinet with Celestion G12-H speakers mic’d with a Shure SM-57.

True to form, the Normal channel is a relatively clean affair that sounds awesome for smashing out big kerranged chords, and cranking up the boost knob ups the dirt factor with fat grind that sounds great for blues and anything needing a dirty-sweet rhythm sound.

And although the cut control is the only EQ for the Normal channel, it accommodated guitars with single-coils and humbuckers with no fuss, yielding killer tones with a selection of distortion pedals that included a TWA SH9.

Here too, UA’s recommended pairing of a Silver speaker with the Normal channel for a classic Brian May setup will inspire you to check out the other mic’d-speaker combinations on offer here.

With the Vibrato channel selected, the treble and boost controls are used to adjust speed and intensity respectively, and it’s interesting with the intensity knob set low, as you get a more pitch-shifty, harmonic-tremolo sound.

In addition, the Ruby can go slower than the stock circuit, which makes for some happening in-between textures as it transitions into choppier, volume-modulating tremolo when the intensity (a.k.a. boost) is turned past noon.

This is also where added input gain from a germanium-style treble-boost circuit gives a bump to the midrange and treble without increasing distortion.

Woodrow ’55 Instrument Amplifier

Designed to deliver American tweed amp tones, the Woodrow ’55 Instrument Amplifier features yet another different control set that includes instrument volume, mic volume, output, room (ambience), tone and boost.

Starting on the left side is the speaker switch which has settings for Blu15, JP12 and GB25, and you can cycle though all six mic’d cabinets by holding the switch down.

The middle switch is only for storing presets, while the right-hand boost switch has positions for KP-3k, Stock and EP-III.

The Woodrow takes you straight to the ’50s zone by virtue of its two channels, which are internally jumpered to facilitate blending the brighter more aggressive instrument channel with the cleaner-, bassier-sounding mic channel.

The three selections on the right-hand Boost switch play a big role in shaping tones.

At the top is KP-3k, which models a preamp boost from the Korg SDD-3000 digital delay as famously deployed by The Edge. It uses the lower-gain mic input to provide a clear, bright sound that’s cool for rhythm playing with the boost knob set low (turn it up for more grit), or to push an overdrive pedal into meaty sustain.

The Stock position uses the instrument input and adds clean gain at low settings, although there’s plenty of graininess available when the instrument volume knob is turned up. And while the boost knob increases gain too, it’s more of a tone shaper that adds midrange and treble.

The bottom setting is EP-III, which models the preamp from a solid-state Echoplex tape echo. It uses the instrument input for extra gain and sounds great for lead, with the boost knob bringing on some fuzzy edge at higher settings.

As with all the UAFX amp emulators, the various cabinet pairings greatly affect the Woodrow’s tones, as it can go in a warm, vintage direction via Blu15 (15-watt Celestion Blue in a 1x12 tweed combo, mic’d with a Nuemann 67 condenser), veer into muscular rock tones courtesy of Vee30 (Marshall 4x12 with Celestion V30 speakers, mic’d with a Sennheiser MD 421), or cop a more hi-fi attitude with B-Man selected (Fender 4x10 Bassman with Jensen P10R speakers, mic’d with a Shure SM-57).

The tones provided by these pedals makes one appreciate the ears and engineering of the UAFX developers to create pedals that accurately replicate the best-sounding vintage amps that were cherry-picked for each model.

The Dream ’65 Reverb-Amp, Ruby ’63 Top Boost Amplifier and Woodrow ’55 Instrument Amplifier are stompboxes, sure, but they are painstakingly rendered amps in their own right, each capable of standing in for the real thing while providing sonic options galore, and they all receive an Editors’ Pick Award.

Specifications

• FOOT SWITCHES: On/off, preset
• EXTRAS: True bypass. stereo inputs and outputs, USB Type-C, pair button (activates Bluetooth for UAFX Control mobile app), 9VDC adapter jack (400mA, adapter not included)
• SIZE: 3.5” deep x 5.5” wide x 2” tall
• WEIGHT: 1.8 lbs
• BUILT: Malaysia

Visit Universal Audio for more information.

***The following interview extract originally appeared in the December 2018 issue of Guitar Player***

Recording artists tend to get locked in a cycle. An album is followed by a tour, which is succeeded by a break that leads to another stint in the studio. And on and on it goes.

Kurt Vile has found his own way out of that rut.

The guitarist and songwriter cut his 2018 studio album, Bottle It In (Matador), at various studios in between road dates with his band, the Violators, travelling with his wife and daughters.

During those more than two years on the road, the Philadelphia native also recorded an album of duets with Courtney Barnett (2017’s Lotta Sea Lice), opened for Neil Young and saw his single “Pretty Pimpin” (from 2015’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down…) go to number one on Billboard’s Adult Alternative chart.

If life has been busy for Vile, it hasn’t hampered his productivity.

“Touring is a big part of why you end up anywhere in the world,” Vile explains. “So it’s fun to utilize that moment. You play a gig in a random place where they booked you, and then you could start your adventure from there and travel a little bit.”

The guitarist has become something of an indie-rock god in recent years. Following a brief stint in the War on Drugs, which he cofounded in 2005 with Adam Granduciel, Vile went solo in 2008, signed with Matador Records and began releasing a string of ever-better-selling albums.

Through discs like 2011’s Smoke Ring for My Halo and 2013’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze, he became known for his droll vocal delivery, riff-oriented songwriting, and a musical range that stretches from lo-fi folk to sprawling electric guitar jams.

Back in 2018, the guitarist took time out from a European excursion to talk with Guitar Player about the making of his eighth studio album, Bottle It In, his deep love of acoustic guitar tones and his longing for simpler times.

What’s the appeal of mixing studio dates in with your touring schedule?

You know, even if I play just one show and go into the studio, it feels more natural to me.

In what way?

When you play live, it’s the most in tune with the music you can be. When you record while you’re on the road, you can carry that energy into the studio.

Obviously, most artists cut records between tours.

There’s no way I could do that. I do everything all in together. I like to go into the studio even for a day or so, in between things. I think you can get just as much done that way as you can if you stay in there for two weeks and work on the same song.

The more time you have, the more you waste. I just figure if I go in and out of the studio while I’m touring, it makes it more natural.

I imagine that also gives you time to listen to what you’ve done and tweak things if you want.

We would definitely tweak the recordings later on and add some things. But ultimately what I wanted was for it to be as live in the studio as possible – get the basics down and then figure the rest out later, if I had to, if it wasn’t, indeed, already figured out.

Your way of touring and recording makes me think about Jackson Browne’s album Running on Empty, which he recorded live, at soundchecks, in hotel rooms and even on the bus while he was on tour.

Wow! I respect Jackson Browne, for sure. That’d be cool to actually record on the stage at soundcheck.

In some ways, when you’re traveling, you’re more relaxed. Somebody can just put a microphone on you at any point, and you’re more comfortable with it. For me, it’s a constant battle of trying to make things feel as laid-back as possible, even in the studio for this record.

Things like, if you can get away with not wearing headphones, don’t wear ’em – sing live while the band’s playing. There are all kinds of ways to make it feel more natural.

Todd Rundgren has recorded his vocals from behind the mixing console for years. He’s like, “I can do it right from here while listening off the monitors.”

Yeah, I did that for “Bottle It In,” while my buddy Stella [Mozgawa], the drummer from Warpaint, was playing drums in the next room.

That’s what this record’s all about, just interacting when I’m with somebody or, when I’m by myself, just getting the part down, like an organic moment captured. That’s what I shoot for.

It’s about knowing your town like the back of your hand. And I really do things like that in my hometown, where I can pull up to the record store and there’s a loading zone across the street, one of many in the city where I know I can just run in, get what I’m looking for and get out before I get a ticket. [laughs]

You have your own way of doing things. The leadoff song, “Loading Zone,” seems to be about that – about making the system work in your favor. What inspired that tune?

And that’s a way of life, in general. It’s like getting by on the backstreets. It’s like you’re just sticking it to the man a little bit – ’cause, obviously, the man’s always sticking it to you anyway.

Why did you choose to name this album after “Bottle It In”?

“Bottle It In” is definitely the album’s centerpiece. I’m definitely proud of it, and it’s like some kind of new territory that I stumbled onto.

When I name my albums – like Smoke Ring for My Halo was named for my favorite song on that record. I had a feeling it needed to be highlighted, otherwise it would just be a song passing by. It’s an important song.

And you know, if you get back to the heart of the matter with artists you respect, usually their classic albums are named for a song on the album. Like Neil Young: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, On the Beach. And those songs are such classics in themselves that you don’t forget them, because they’re each like a statement on their own.

So “Bottle It In” – I just had to roll with it, and I just didn’t want the song to go unnoticed.

Your songs are almost inevitably built on catchy riffs that could stand on their own, without vocals. Do you think in terms of riffs when you’re writing?

Yeah, I like blues licks and melodic folk-tinged riffs. They’ve got to be melodic, a little bit pretty, but like with the blues in there. I like to make them as hypnotic and as melodic as possible. I get lost in most of the riffs that I find myself coming back to.

On a lot of your songs, acoustic guitars provides the structure while heavily effected electric guitar adds sonic interest. Do you prefer one instrument over the other?

Well, if I had to pick a main tool, it would be the acoustic guitar. In fact, certain electric guitars that I fall in love with – and even new electric guitars that I buy – I won’t even plug them in for days sometimes after I get them. I’ll just sit on the couch and listen to how they sound acoustically and how they feel.

I kind of like the idea of sitting on a couch and hearing all the nuances. Acoustically, you can’t beat that. But then, in the studio, you can put it through an amp and all these effects – filters, phasers, delay or any kind of weirdness. Or just a punchy amp sound. It’s just an option to the guitar itself.

What are some of the effect pedals that you used on this album?

I’m not as particular with effects as I used to be, but I tend to just like to put some kind of filter or phaser on there if I can get away with it. One pedal I used was the Moog MIDI MuRF. It’s kind of an envelope filter, but a little more than that.

And the amps are really important too. These days I’m into these little brown ’50s Fender Champs. Just crank those up.

What effect are you using to make that strange vocal-like guitar sound on “Loading Zones”?

It’s a Ludwig [Phase II] guitar synth. It’s the same one used on “The Diamond Sea,” which is one of my favorite Sonic Youth songs.

Do you own that or did you borrow it from Kim Gordon?

No, I’m pretty sure their’s got stolen back in the day. I bought one. It wasn’t cheap.

What’s your main acoustic guitar on this album?

I used these little custom-made 00 Martins that Vintage Instruments in Philadelphia had made. They’re based on their favorite vintage guitars of the day, but they’re made really well.

The first one I had, I’ve been using since “Wakin on a Pretty Day” [from Wakin on a Pretty Daze]. I used it on that song, in fact. It’s a Philadelphia Folk Festival 50th Anniversary guitar. And then I have another custom 00 from later.

You have some great electric guitar tones on the record as well, like those solos on “Skinny Mini.”

That was the last song I wrote for this album. I was on tour with Courtney Barnett for Lotta Sea Lice and I developed a real sound with my pedalboard.

I was using the Moog Minifooger Chorus pedal, which I really love, and there’s something about that with my most recent white 1966 Fender Jaguar. But I’m also getting some really good sounds out of just an old green Big Muff and another crazy pedal called the [Wren and Cuff] Box of War.

For “Skinny Mini,” I played that setup through a 1950s Fender Bassman that we borrowed from a guy. He said it was an original speaker, so be really careful, and we just completely cranked it. So that’s basically just a loud 1950s Fender Bassman with a Big Muff.

You seem to have a fondness for the past. The cover photo for Bottle It In looks vintage, and you even have ringwear on it. In “Mutinies” you sing, “I think things were way easier with a regular telephone.” Other songs describe a fear of flying, and the video for “Loading Zones” is full of old cars. Do you have issues with the modern world?

Yeah, I yearn for simpler times. I’m a victim of my psyche being shocked by a million things at once. I definitely remember, in the old days, we could memorize things, like phone numbers and everything. Now my mind is much more scattered.

I always like to be surrounded by vintage gear with multicolored buttons. And I like the way guitars look when they’re old and used. When I get a new guitar it feels weird. I almost want to throw it against the wall, just to make it look normal.

I like old amps, and I have a lot of old Korg synthesizers from the ’70s. They all look so good, and they all sound good. “They don’t make ’em like they used to” is certainly true in a lot of ways. I like things to be a little worn.

Kurt Vile’s latest album, 2022's Watch My Moves, is out now on Verve.

British blues-rock legend Paul Kossoff (1950-1976) would have turned 72 this week.

Although the Free guitarist’s untimely death at the age of 25 was a great loss to the guitar world he remains one of the most influential ‘Burst slingers in music history.

Synonymous with the Les Paul Standard, Kossoff’s tone is a touchstone for many – including Guns N’ Roses guitarist Richard Fortus who cites him as one of his biggest influences.

Yesterday, on Kossoff’s birthday, Fortus shared an audio clip of an inspired guitar solo he recorded for a tribute album in aid of Melia Clapton’s Turn Up For Recovery.

To record this outstanding guitar solo, Fortus ran his recently acquired 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard into a pair of rare vintage tube amps – a mid-’60s Park and a ’59 Fender Bassman.

A dream guitar for decades, the purchase of this Holy Grail of tone was funded by the guitarist’s gargantuan gear sale at Chicago Music Exchange that comprised over 200 items including amps, acoustic guitars and electric guitars.

“My initial goal was to buy a ‘Burst, but I figured I’d get a refin or a headstock repair – something more affordable,” Fortus told Guitar Player.

“I went through everything and sold anything that I didn’t use. It was an interesting process. I’d amassed this collection over the years because I never sold anything; I only bought stuff.”

A discerning musician with an ear for great tone, the GnR guitar twin carefully set about finding the perfect ‘Burst. It was, however, as if the guitar found him instead.

“As soon as I played it, I knew it was the one,” he recalls. “I played eight different ‘Bursts that were up for sale and when I plugged this one in, I was like, ‘Fuck. This is definitely the one.’ 

"They vary. Wildly. But I knew straight away. It's absolutely perfect."

At that point, Fortus was certain he had found exactly what he was looking for and became the second custodian of a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard.

“It’s had one previous owner who owned it from new,” he tells us. “It's in great shape. It’s definitely been played but it’s been really well taken care of. It's completely faded but there's no scratches or anything.”

Right now, Fortus is out on the road with Gun N’ Roses, although his beloved ‘Burst won’t be making an appearance on stage any time soon. Like Slash, he intends on keeping it safely locked up at home in the vault.

“I use it all the time in the studio to record with,” he enthuses, “and I've played live with it once. But I'm not going to be taking it on out with Guns.

“Slash takes his Derrig on tour, but he doesn’t take his old ones out either.”

Browse the Guns N' Roses catalog here.

Although it became one of the hottest guitar amps among pro players from the mid-1970s to the ’80s, the Mesa/Boogie seemed utterly designed to propel the singing, sustainful tone and playing style of Carlos Santana, who adopted it as his amp in the 1970s.

For that matter, Santana literally named the thing.

Mesa/Boogie founder Randall Smith was working as an amp repairman in 1969 in the small San Francisco shop Prune Music when he decided to play a trick on Barry Melton, lead guitarist with Country Joe and the Fish.

Smith gutted Melton’s Fender Princeton, installed a modified 50-watt Fender Bassman-style tube amp, squeezed in a 12-inch speaker and took it to the front of the shop, where Carlos Santana was hanging out.

“He just wailed through that little amp until people were blocking the sidewalk,” Smith later recalled.

“When he stopped playing he turned and said, ‘Shit man. That little thing really boogies!’”

As demand grew, Smith continued modifying Princetons. When the supply dried up, he began making the amps – eventually known as the Boogie Mark I – from the ground up.

The key to the wailing, saturated tone lay in Smith’s chaining together of several tube stages in the preamp, a technique known as “cascading gain,” and under Santana’s fingers the result was sustain that could last for days.

The ‘70s also proved fruitful for Santana on the gear front when he began a collaboration with Japanese guitar building titan Yamaha.

After a somewhat uncomfortable bedding in period (“I sat down with them and said, ‘Look, I can’t play the guitar, man,” Santana told Guitar Player in 1978) the team eventually settled on a design that was not only befitting for a guitarist of Santana's caliber but progressive also.

“I asked them to put a big chunk of metal right where the tailpiece is," recalled Santana. "You hit it and it’s like hitting a grand piano – it really resonates.”

Boasting fine tonewoods and a neck-through construction, along with the tone- and sustain-enhancing T-Cross System and brass Sustain Plate (the aforementioned “big chunk of metal,”) the new SG2000 model firmly established Yamaha as a bona fide pro level guitar builder.

Yamaha guitars were later played by the likes of John McGeoch who famously used an SG1000 with Siouxsie and the Banshees.

More recent proponents of the SG series include Ed O’Brien, Johnny Marr and John Frusciante.

In this 1977 clip, Santana is seen playing his custom built Yamaha with a Mesa/Boogie rig. Evidently, the guitarist is a great deal happier with his instrument by this stage.

“[Yamaha] go out of their way to make good instruments,” he told Guitar Player in the same 1978 interview. “You can feel it when you pick up that guitar.”

Although a Twin by name when it first arrived in 1952 with two 12-inch speakers, Fender’s would-be flagship amp wasn’t a Twin by nature until 1958, when Leo Fender and company massively increased its output power to achieve the outsized wattage-to-size ratio that the model has boasted ever since.

Come the 5F8 and 5F8-A update of 1958, Fender was showing the world the future of the professional amplifier for the big stage, and stepping up to a whole new level of performance – which is saying something for a company that was already setting the standards for high-quality guitar amps.

The 4x10 5F6-A Bassman combo gets a lot of plaudits for “best guitar amp ever,” and for inspiring some of the other best guitar amps ever: the Marshall JTM45 and the Plexi models that followed, as well as countless others from the past 60-plus years.

However, the 5F8-A Twin was really kind of like a JTM45/100 in a 2x12 combo, and just a few ticks away from being a 100-watt “Plexi” Super Lead at that.

It had all of Fender’s next-level thinking packed into a design that was only equaled in some respects by the 5F6-A Bassman, except that the Twin – boasting around 85 watts – also had twice the power. It would be several years before amps from other major manufacturers would reach similar power levels.

Fender released the first Twin Amp, model 5C8, in a so-called wide-panel tweed cabinet in 1952. Like many of the company’s other dual-6L6 tube amps of the early ’50s, it put out only about 25 watts, but it was a big amp for its day and got the ball rolling toward an industry standard.

By the latter mid ’50s, the 5E8-A Twin delivered 35 to 40 watts in its updated narrow-panel cabinet, with features akin to the 1x15 Pro, 2x10 Super and 3x10 Bandmaster, although it boasted a slightly larger output transformer for a gutsier sonic delivery, and a few inexplicable differences in the preamp.

The reason these amps are often seen as second-tier to the Bassman, however, is that they employed several elements that made them a little less robust sonically.

All shared the split-load phase inverter configuration, which was less efficient and more prone to distortion than the long-tailed pair used in the Bassman, and none had the Bassman’s middle control, among a few other things.

The high-powered Twin of 1958 changed all that by taking on these circuit advances, and in doing so it arguably became the world’s most formidable guitar amp.

The ’58 Twin arrived first as the model 5F8, which was fairly quickly tweaked into the 5F8-A. Relatively minor changes between the two included different values and configurations of grid resistors on the output tubes, a move toward a more conventional presence control that was no longer tied to the middle control, and a more reliable GZ34 rectifier tube (similar changes were made from 5F6 to 5F6-A Bassman).

In the Twin, Fender was also reaching the point of maximum capacity for what could be squeezed into the relatively compact tweed-era chassis that the maker used.

The power transformer – bolted to the back of this long, rectangular steel box – was an enormous chunk of iron. The output transformer was even bigger – and there was a lot to cram inside the thing, too.

The two Jensen P12N speakers mounted in the open-back combo cabinet play a big part in the Twin’s sonic splendor, but they were barely up to the amp’s full fury, and certainly unequal to it with the volume fully wound up to a roaring tweed-era 12 on the dial.

These were among Jensen’s sturdiest speakers of the day, and while ratings vary, they were generally about 30 watts RMS in the late ’50s (the current P12N reissues are rated at 50 watts apiece).

You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that won’t cut it with the amp cranked.

Why the inadequate drivers?

For one thing, these were among the highest-rated speakers available at the time – at least before Fender moved over to JBL speakers to handle the Showman’s massive power in 1961-’62 – and delivered an acceptable performance while ensuring a bottom line that Fender could tolerate.

For another, amp makers of the day were moving to higher-wattage amp designs to ensure more headroom earlier in the volume range. They didn’t really expect guitarists to throw the full 85 watts into the game.

Unsurprisingly, many amps have survived beyond the lifespan of their original speakers, or have been reconed, at the very least.

A number of big guns have turned to the glories of the high-powered Twin of 1958-’60 for their tonal needs. Keith Richards owns several and has toured with multiple examples for several years, and Eric Clapton has often used one (and reproductions thereof, in addition to also using the earlier 40-watt iteration).

Joe Bonamassa added a pair of vintage high-powered Twins to his rig in 2014, and Fender reissued the 5F8-A in 2018 as the ’59 Twin JB Edition.

“I plugged in a Les Paul,” he says of first hooking up his dual-HP Twin-loaded rig, “and we were just like, ‘Wow, that is just optimized sound!’ Then we plug the Strat in, and, ‘Well, if that ain’t the best Strat tone I’ve achieved in a while!’ And then the Tele, and the 335, and you go, ‘There’s your sound!’”

Acquiring the real thing has gotten harder and harder for your average workaday guitarist. Original 1958-’60 tweed Twins have been rare at the best of times, and now good examples are pushing $20,000 on the vintage market.

Fortunately, Fender’s JB reissue and other reproductions can get players close to the mighty potential of a raging 85-watt amp stuffed into a pine box with two 12-inch speakers – which is something every guitarist should experience at least once in life.

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS

• Approx. 85 watts from four 5881/6L6GC output tubes
• One 12AY7 and two 12AX7 preamp tubes
• Bright and Normal channels with volume on each; shared treble, bass, middle and presence controls
• Cathode-follower tone stack
• Two 12” Jensen P12N Alnico speakers
• Finger-jointed pine cabinet covered in diagonal-striped tweed cloth

This is a 1958 Fender Precision Bass. It has a white transparent blond finish over an ash body with a solid maple neck. It comes with its original tweed case and a matching 1958 Fender Bassman amplifier – both in impeccable condition.

This bass has a gold anodized pickguard, which Leo Fender started using in 1954 on special orders. They thought a metallic pickguard had good shielding properties, but the 60-cycle hum continued to be a problem.

In ’59, the [gold anodized] pickguard was replaced by the more familiar tortoiseshell [cellulose nitrate] ’guard and rosewood ’boards became standard.

In the late '50s, a variety of custom colors were available, but the regular Precision Bass finish was sunburst, moving from a two- to three-tone sunburst in February 1958.

This beautiful guitar has had two owners before me, both of whom are still alive. The instrument was originally purchased in Vermont. And it has virtually no wear at all. The case and the amp, too – they have barely a scuff.

The headstock and neck are completely straight, and it’s never needed any fret-dressing or filing. A lot of the time on these instruments the headstock will lean [forwards] because of the tension on the neck over the years. But this P-Bass has been stored properly.

It even has the original Fender flat-wound strings that it was shipped with. Suffice to say it’s in virtually ‘as new’ condition.  

The original receipt shows it was bought along with the [narrow panel 50-watt/4x10 tweed] ’58 Bassman from the same store. It was a ‘swimming supply and music store’. Back in the day, travelling salesmen would walk into stores and ask, ‘Would you be interested in selling Fender instruments?’ That’s kind of how things happened back then.

I’m not really old enough to remember stores like that, but I’ve seen many receipts over the years that had a mixture of different types of businesses under one roof, like furniture stores that also sold Gibson instruments, for example.  

The blond/ash body, maple neck and gold anodized ’guard spec P-Basses are kind of the Holy Grail pieces for some people. As are the Stratocasters. In fact, I recently sold a blond ’56 with a black anodized pickguard.

The [1957] prototype Jazzmaster was a Desert Sand finish with a black anodized pickguard. And I personally own an early ’59 Stratocaster with an anodized ’guard and Fullerton Red finish – the predecessor to Fiesta Red.

It’s very Pee Wee Crayton-looking. His was also Fullerton Red, although people often call it Fiesta Red. ’59 was the year Fender transitioned to Fiesta Red.  

This P-Bass is one of the scarce colored ones you’ll see from the era. Blond Fender guitars have an ash body, even after they switched to using alder in ’56, because the grain just looks so much better.

And with the gold ’guard it’s a super, super look, although I love them with tortoiseshell ’guards, too.

Blond is such a great color. There’s something specific about ’57 and early ’58 blond finishes; it’s a very white blond and very translucent looking.

If you look at, say, an earlier Blackguard, it’ll probably have much more of a honeyed color, and if you look at a ’59, they have much more white in the color and are less translucent. On this guitar, you can see the ash grain as if you’re looking through a slightly foggy window.

It made sense for Fender to move the P-Bass design away from the original slab-body ‘Telecaster’ bass to the Stratocaster-style contoured body [in 1954].

The Stratocaster was very popular in the late 50s – way more popular than the Tele. When the P-Bass changed again in ’57 [to also include a Strat-style headstock] it was because of the Stratocaster.

Similarly, the Jazz Bass [released in 1960] exists because the Jazzmaster’s offset body design was such a huge hit after it came out in ’58. By 1960, that was their number one-selling electric guitar, so they figured their next bass should mimic the look of the Jazzmaster.

Fender basses kind of followed that logic. Then, of course, the offset VI came out in ’61, followed by the Jaguar in ’62.  

I think the P-Bass is the quintessential rock ’n’ roll bass. The split-pickup design was a really interesting thing to do at the time [from 1957]: the location of the pickup on the body and the way it accentuates the bass in the lower two strings, while the coil for the higher two strings that sits further back towards the bridge gives it its unique voicing.

They even carried that split-pickup design on to the Electric XII model [released in 1965].  

The Jazz Bass pickups maybe do more tricks, but the P-Bass is often the instrument of choice for the person who wants that real thump and bottom-end.

That’s what makes the Precision Bass special for so many.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.

info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221- 0563

On this day in 1994, Nirvana played their final show. A little over a month later, the world would receive the devastating news that Kurt Cobain had passed away aged 27.

While this tragedy may have signaled the end of a groundbreaking period in music history, Cobain’s era-defining legacy lives on as generations of electric guitar players continue to find inspiration in his life’s work.

In addition to audio and music videos, some of Nirvana’s best live footage can be found on the band’s official YouTube channel.

Such gems include cuts from the iconic MTV Unplugged concert released in 1994; the Live and Loud video recorded in Seattle in 1993; the unforgettable appearance at the UK’s Reading Festival in 1992; and the Live At the Paramount show recorded in Seattle in 1991.

Also available are clips from the Terminal Einz show filmed on March 1, 1994 – including an explosive performance of “Drain You” from Nirvana’s watershed 1991 album Nevermind. 

Although he was diagnosed with bronchitis and laryngitis, Cobain’s voice remains strong throughout this rendition of a song he once described as a personal favorite.

Commenting on “Drain You,” Cobain told Rolling Stone he thought the song was, “as good as ‘Teen Spirit.’ I love the lyrics, and I never get tired of playing it.”

“Drain You” is believed to feature the most guitar overdubs on Nevermind. 

In the 2005 film Classic Albums: Nirvana – Nevermind, producer Butch Vig explains how the song’s five-track “orchestral” guitar sound was achieved using a combination of Mesa/Boogie and Fender Bassman amps along with a “super grunge” pedal/Bassman combination.

According to Vig, however, Cobain was somewhat reluctant when it came to recording multiple overdubs. 

He therefore had to use some 'creative psychology' in order to convince the guitarist he needed to repeat performances, claiming previous takes weren't captured properly or that the tuning was off.

“I don’t know how I got Kurt to do all those guitars,” says Vig. “I think I was lying, basically... He thought he was doing the same part and, meanwhile, I just kept putting him to new tracks.”

Get Nevermind on vinyl here.

Jackson Browne is wandering the backstage caverns of San Francisco's Cow Palace looking a bit worried. "Where's Lindley?" he asks his road manager. "We're onstage in 15 minutes!"

A door at the end of the hallway is seeming blasted open by a torrent of beefy sustained lap steel licks. Inside, Lindley is squatting precariously, his Hawaiian guitar balanced on his knees. Crunching chords and crystal-clear single notes are pouring out of a crude-looking amplifier about a foot in front of his face.

"I want this one, Howard," David says to a large man who is smiling like a proud father. "Not this model, not one like this, but this one, OK?"

"It's just a prototype." Howard Dumble points out.

"Fine," nods Lindley. "I'll take it."

David Lindley, of course is notorious for using a vast array of exotic guitars from an instrument collection that number well over 100. But on the road, he uses only one brand of amplifier, a fact that makes Howard Dumble understandably proud.

As Lindley told Guitar Player in a July '77 interview, "I've got a lot of little amps, but on the road, I always use Dumble amps because they never break down. We went about getting the sound in those amps by taking an old Fender Deluxe to Howard Dumble and saying, 'We want this, but bigger and louder.' And Howard got the closest of anybody I've heard."

Howard Dumble grew up in Bakersfield, California, and began building transistor radios from scratch at age 12. He took up guitar at 16 (he later did his fair share of studio dates in Hollywood, which included working with songwriter Jim Webb), and in 1965 built a series of amplifiers for Mosrite that were used by the Ventures.

An extensive tour backing Buffy Sainte-Marie financed Dumble's first "out of the backyard and into a building" amp shop in 1968, in Santa Cruz, California. The following year, Dumble came out with his Explosion model amplifier (his original prototype still works), which later evolved into the Overdrive Special.

As well as the Big Tex reverb unit his line of amplifiers currently includes seven basic models: the Overdrive, the Steel-String Singer, the Winterland and the Dumbleland for bass and electric guitar, the rack-mount Phoenix, a no-frills 50-watt Dumbleman, and the Dumblelator.

From the beginning, he has remained a one-man operation, personally building every one of his amplifiers by hand.

In spite of their steep price tags – a standard 100-watt Overdrive head sells for $1,925; the Steel-String Singer and Dumbleland each go for $5,000 before options ­– Dumbles are always in demand, and Howard has his hands full keeping up with orders.

Besides Lindley and Browne, the impressive roster of Dumble users includes Larry Carlton, Bonnie Raitt, Graham Nash, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jay Graydon, Ry Cooder, Tom Verlaine, Eric Johnson, Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, Dean Parks, Carlos Rios, The Beach Boys, Christopher Cross, Tiran Porter, Jimmy Haslip, Jerry Miller, Thom Rhotella, Randy California, Terry Haggerty, Rick Vito, Kenny Loggins, and many others.

In discussing what's so special about his amplifiers, Dumble uses aesthetic more than technical terms. "That's the bottom line," he stresses. "It's the emotional influence that's really important; technology is secondary – it's just a vehicle. The idea is to have lots of fun."

Improvisational specialist Henry Kaiser elaborates on what sets the Dumble apart from the rest of the amp crowd: "Number one, you could drop the thing out of a four-story building, replace any tubes that break, and it'll work fine. It does appear to be the most durably built amp possible.

“Number two, it seems to me that Howard, through a long intuitive working process, tunes the amps and designs by ear so that they're very sophisticated machines for producing a wide variety of tones and distortion colorations. Because of my specific avant-garde bent, I'm really interested in tone and timbre, and I need to have a really wide palette of tonal color available to me, and I've got about four times as many colors available on the Dumble. Any other amp sounds awful to me. I feel terrible if I play anything else – except for a Fender Champ."

In an August '77 Guitar Player feature, the late Lowell George of Little Feat was more succinct. "It's like a Fender made right," he said of his Dumble. "It's the best amp I've ever played through."

Your amps have a reputation for almost never breaking down. How do you build them with such durability?

Those are absolute guarded secrets. In fact, if you take the amplifier apart, you can't detect how I do it. I definitely have secrets that make the amp perform and last the way it does. With most companies, it's just a misapplication of technology. You don't have to destroy the product – you don't have to get a Variac and turn it up to 170 volts – to get good results. An extreme amount of attention is paid to every connection. Plus, I found which parts last and which ones don't.

What made you gravitate towards electronics in the first place?

I loved music, for one thing. Music's always been a passion. I used to listen to Les Paul and Mary Ford as a kid. Also, I come from an engineering family; my father developed one of the first automatic transmissions.

It wasn't hard to absorb the technology; it was just there to do. I also saw that I could make some bucks at it. I started making small pocket radios from scratch for the kids in school for $5 a pop. I was doing real well until one day everybody had one, and there were enough radios in the class that you could hear the local rock station at a small din through all the earpieces. So, the teacher finally busted me.

What inspired you to first build an amp?

I was a junior in high school, and this guy named Jack Smith came over and wanted me to build a piece of equipment for the junior baseball association. He said that he had access to a "mountain of parts" – I said okay!

We went down to this big warehouse, and there were heaps of parts, so we gleaned as many as we could – all free. We built this huge 200-watt power amplifier so they could announce to nine baseball diamonds.

As I understand it, it still works today. Then, Jack and I made some Dual showman-type amps, although we couldn't get Fender transformers – they were very tight about what they'd send you – so we used David Hafler transformers, which made the amp sound quite extraordinary.

Prior to building your own amps, had you taken apart other amps such as Fenders and Gibsons?

I can draw some of the those schematics from memory [laughs]. Of course, I had to absorb other approaches. In fact, my old Fender mods I did in the late '60s were exactly the same as the schematics a lot of the later high-gain amplifiers used.

How did you come to make amps for the Ventures?

I was an 18-year-old kid in school in Bakersfield, and I went to see Semie Moseley, who was the only person I had access to there. I walked in and just bold-faced said, "I've got something that sounds like nothing else. You better hear it." And it flipped him out; he said, "This is the best thing I've ever heard."

He offered to go in with me to build 10 amplifiers. He bought the parts and paid me $90 a week – for about four weeks, and then I had to work for free. But I still got to build 10 amplifiers on a production basis when I was only a kid. They were called Mosrite amps, but they were my design. Actually, I built 11, so I still have the original one I built.

The Ventures played through them and were really interested, but it was a little too much rock for them. They wanted me to go into business with them, but I decided against it, and went back to playing in studios and in rock bands.

Did your early amps have certain qualities lacking in commercially available amps of that period?

Yes, I definitely made sure they had more frequency bandwidth. One thing I noticed about the early guitar amps was that they were real limited, especially in the lower end. But you have to be careful to make sure you still keep the proper midrange and treble response. I found that out early on.

You can't build a hi-fi circuit and expect it to be a good guitar amp – it just doesn't work out. You need a whole different response curve. But I did notice that if I put a little more low end into the preamp circuitry, it was much more tasteful and fun to play.

Once you got started, did a Dumble philosophy evolve?

I try to be flexible. I've always been aware that whatever I make has to be crafted with the best intentions. Never have anything shoddy. Always make sure that it works and looks perfect. The actual techniques I use to get the sound that I go after have evolved extensively. It's a growing process. That's the toughest thing about staying with one thing. You're always thinking of new ways to do it. Basically, I've kept the Overdrive the same but the other models are open to flexibility.

What changes did the Explosion undergo before it became the Overdrive Special?

The active circuitry changed quite a bit, and the tone circuitry did also. But the concept of processing the signal post preamp stayed the same. Most other high-gain amplifiers use a pre-preamp gain boost, but I broke away from that quite early in the late '60s. I found that trying to build the signal up before the preamp had a tendency to really overload the preamp, and you got nonharmonic tones and a very unmusical end result.

Plus, you ran into a lot of vacuum-tube problems with harmonics. So, what I wanted to do was get all that wonderful oomph and beautiful sustain and harmonic richness without the electronic troubles.

Were you making what was to become the Overdrive before you made the Steel-String Singer?

The Steel-String Singer came later, but I actually started making a series of amplifiers called the Dumbleland in about '66, and I still make them. That was the forerunner of the Steel-String Singer. I didn't change a whole lot about that; it was a design way ahead of its time. It was too much power and too silky clean for people. It's perfect for Stevie Ray, though. He has a hard time playing an Overdrive.

Why is the Overdrive so sensitive?

It's a different kind of signal handling. In the Overdrive, I approach gain levels that are extremely intense; within the linear region, I have a signal gain capability of one million. So if you stuck 10 microvolts in, you'd get 10 volts back. And I do it with stability, and it's still very musical.

The best way to approach an Overdrive is real slow. Walk up to it, look at the knobs, have it turned down real low, and then get a feeling for it. Learn what to do with your fingers to make it respond well. If you walk right up to it, it has a tendency to absolutely frighten some people.

The secret control on the Overdrive's panel section is the ratio control, which controls how much overdrive is fed back into the circuit. If you turn that up, it's Rock City.

How different is the Overdrive Special you customized for David Lindley from a standard model?

I might have changed the value of a capacitor to some extent, so that it has a different treble response, but the circuitry is basically the same.

Lindley says that for certain sounds he's looking for, you sometimes borrow his guitar and Dumble for the weekend to match the amp to the guitar?

That's true. The amplifier responds so differently to each guitar that to get some effects, I need to use the player's guitars, instead of my own. That's one of the great things about the amplifier; it doesn't modify any guitar into any one sound or homogenize it. It expands whatever you start with.

The amplifier is a real important part of the sound regeneration system, but it needs to be very responsive to whatever the guitar is delivering. The philosophy I try to keep in the amplifier is that whatever you can hear in your head, this will help you get it.

Stevie Ray Vaughan calls his Steel-String Singer the "King Tone Consoul."

There are some different things about Stevie's. His is set up more like a bass amp, modified to accommodate the guitar range. It's not the usual lead guitar "Singer" approach. One thing he liked was that he could turn the volume control all the way up and it didn't distort – it just got louder.

He does make it distort sometimes because he has about 50 megatons of pressure when he attacks the strings [laughs]. He gets an incredible amount of signal out of his guitar, and most amplifiers can't take it. He did his first album with a bass amp I'd made for Jackson Browne.

Some players describe Dumbles as different, more powerful, more durable more efficient versions of a Fender Deluxe

That's a good way to describe it – in a limited fashion. There are some great qualities to a small Deluxe. You get a great harmonic structure at a small acoustic volume. It's real pleasing, especially when you're playing by yourself. But that sound is not convertible into a group ambience – it's gone.

So, in the respect that I try to get something comfortable and very musical, only in a bigger fashion, that's a good analogy. But the circuitry is not even close. I use vacuum tubes, and transformers and knobs, but the similarity stops there. To get the result I want, I have to use unique circuitry. It's my tone circuits and coupling circuits and the way I process phase-inversion.

Can you "Dumble-ize" a Fender amp to the point that it shares the Dumble philosophy and sound, or would it be a compromise?

It's a compromise. The actual physical construction of the Fender limits what can be done. In fact, after the last Steel-String Singer mod I did to David Lindley's amps, he no longer uses the Fender Bassman I Dumbleized for him. He wanted this luscious transparency and response – like floating in white clouds – and I came up with special circuitry.

I can use a Fender chassis, but you have to rip everything off of it, fill in all the holes, and re-drill it. They're just a little bit too squashed. A distance of half a centimeter makes a big difference in the way something sounds. It's a science involved with what's called circuit constants.

Instead of a single bright/deep switch, most of your amps have separate bright and deep switches. Can you use both at the same time?

Oh, you bet. It gets luscious low notes that you could float on and beautiful, crystalline highs that are silky as glass.

How many watts are the various models?

The overdrives are 100 watts, but they're switchable down to 50, and I do make a special 150-watt Overdrive, which is a lot of fun. The range in power goes from a 25-watt recording amp called the Hotel Hog up to the 450-watt Winterland, named after the concert hall in San Francisco.

Could there be an ultimate amp for you, or are the Overdrive and Steel-String Singer too distinctive to be combined?

Well, the Phoenix series is where I've done that – so you can combine things – because it's a rack-mounted affair. You can buy all the separate preamps, with or without overdrive, and a choice of 50-, 100-, or 150-watt power amplifiers, and hook them together. The overdrive section is expanded – instead of two overdrive controls, you have four.

After experimenting with various speakers, what do you favor?

I've gone with everything. There are a lot of things I still like. The most versatile is the EV. But all manufacturers, including Altec and JBL, make wonderful speakers that do specific jobs other speakers can't do. I divide speakers into two classifications: the efficient and the low-efficient. Both are very useable.

Low efficiency speakers are things like Celestion and Jenson and PAS. Usually because of the physical construction, they don't get the same acoustic level per watt as the Altecs, JBLs, and EVs do. There's an advantage to that, because you can make the amplifier work harder to get the same acoustic level, and a whole different kind of harmonic structure results.

I love the sound of JBLs, especially for chords, but I had a lot of trouble with 4" voice coil not traveling in a linear fashion. The actual coil would short out against the magnet structure. The Altecs didn't do that, so I was using them up until '79, when EV started coming out the the EVM series.

How does your philosophy on speaker enclosures contrast with other companies?

I think mine's different. I just don't believe in a baffle board with a couple of sides. Everything is designed to respond tonally. Even my open-back enclosures use air to the optimum. It's an ongoing process; I'm still finding out things that are useful.

There's a definite technique to developing enclosures. Instead of increasing the output all from the front by feeding more watts in, I designed a special series of open-back enclosures so that there's actually an air pole inversion process – I make the air respond in an in-phase relationship, both in front and in the rear of the enclosure. So, from the same amount of speakers, it's almost a doubling of sound.

Does that change the tonal quality?

Yes. The low end is absolutely luscious. You feel like you're floating on a football field filled with marshmallows. And it gives a singe to the midrange that puts solos right out there. It works great for chords and solos, but especially well for slide. It's the kind of enclosure that Lindley and Lowell George used.

Is there a single emotional aim you're shooting for, or many?

It's a whole panorama. I don't believe in being confined. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands or millions, of valid guitar tones. When the air becomes electric, that's the right sound, no matter what the one is. It's that sound exciting the senses.

After morphing from maker of high-end audio cables to hand-wired tube amps a few years back, Cutthroat Audio achieved significant acclaim for its debut model, the Down Brownie. This updated rendition of the brown early ’60s 6G3 Deluxe added contemporary conveniences, such as a master volume, alternative voicing switches, internally jumper-able channels and more.

With his flagship release having been so well received, Cutthroat founder Ron Westwood decided he’d bend the format to answer his own burning question: “After basing the JTM45 on the Fender tweed Bassman, what if Marshall had designed their following 18-watt combo after the Fender 6G3 Deluxe, rather than the Watkins Dominator?”

The Francene is the answer to that question, created on the foundation of the ’61-’62 brown-panel Deluxe reinterpreted through British-style circuitry and construction. It still uses a pair of 6V6GTs in the engine room with three 12AX7s upfront, and the front-panel lineup is similar per knob and input count (as was that of the original Fender 6G3 and Marshall 18-watters), other than the addition of a post-phase-inverter master volume.

Inside, though, components are distinctly Brit-leaning in their style and sonic integrity, including SoZo NextGen Yellow Mustard signal capacitors, a Mercury Magnetics output transformer based on the legendary early ’60s U.K.-made Radio Spares units, a custom aluminum chassis, and British-made sockets, jacks and switches.

The first channel – dubbed ’65 – presents a JTM45-voiced preamp with a pull switch on the volume to jumper the two channels and one on the tone for Lean voicing. Channel two is a ’68 JMP-50–voiced preamp that’s brighter and tighter, with pull Warm and pull Fat on the volume and tone, respectively.

The tremolo speed and intensity controls that both vintage amps included have been moved to the Francene’s back panel. In their place are presence and NFB, the latter providing continually variable levels of negative feedback (which changed throughout the classic Marshall years).

Like the Down Brownie, the Francene starts with a GZ34 rectifier tube for a relatively firm voltage delivery, but you can go one notch bolder by flicking the Rec switch to ’68 for solid-state rectification, as used by bigger Marshalls from the Plexi onward, and by the smaller so-called 20-watt combos and heads that followed.

The Francene clearly flies its Union Jack wide and high on the front, arriving in a sort of mini Bluesbreaker cabinet that’s utterly regal in the standard purple Tolex with checkered grille cloth. Custom E.C. Collins pinstripe cloth is available for a $275 upcharge, and other Tolex colors are optional.

Our review sample embodies the standard 2x10 combo configuration, housing a mixed pair of Weber 30-watt Alnico and Ceramic Silver Bell 10-inch speakers in the open-back 24- by 20- by 10.5-inch cab custom crafted to Cutthroat’s specs by acclaimed maker Peter Mather.

A 1x12 combo is also available, as is a top-mounted head. The chassis’ back panel also includes a three-way impedance switch for four-, eight- and 16-ohm outputs and a jack for the included single-button foot switch that operates the bias-modulating tremolo circuit. Those needing an effects loop can have the Metropoulos “Zero Loss” loop added for $195.

The Francene’s construction is first-rate inside and out. The circuit layout and wiring are things of beauty, all neatly executed on a thick, red, Marshall-style perf-board using top-notch components. To top it all off, Cutthroat even includes a 10-foot heavy-duty 14 AWG power cable. Our only significant observation regarding layout and feature set is that it might have been more convenient for some players to have the tremolo controls on the top panel and the presence and NFB moved underneath, since those are likely more set-and-forget, but it’s a minor quibble.

We tested the Francene with a Telecaster, a Les Paul, and a Novo Serus J, and found it wonderfully dynamic and responsive with each electric guitar, letting the respective single-coils, humbuckers and P-90s shine through alongside the very different personalities of each instrument.

It’s really rather amazing how the close relationship to the early ’60s Deluxe translates to a distinctly British voice via the circuit and component tweaks Westwood has applied, and if we hadn’t known the design’s springboard in the first place, we’d have simply chalked up the Francene as a superbly simplified lower-wattage Plexi emulator.

The amp’s overall character leans thick and juicy with plenty of midrange body, while the 2x10 format also enhances snap and immediacy, with pin-point articulation even amid the onset of amp-generated overdrive. Cleans are impressively full and toothsome – something we don’t often say of Marshall-style circuits short of breakup. Pushed to the edge of breakup, though, a delectable touch sensitivity segues in with lots of bloom and just a little compression, plus a slight edge of grittiness to help bring on the aggression.

For an amp with a seemingly simple volume- and tone-control layout, the pull switches provide a lot of added light and shade, as do the presence and NFB knobs. And once we’d pulled the first channel’s volume to internally jumper the two preamps, it was hard to turn back, the ’65 channel’s thickness and the ’68’s brightness blending into a “just right” soundstage.

Get the Francene roaring with either or both volumes past one o’clock or so – where it really sings with the Les Paul – and the amp presents its best self with the master up at least past halfway. Down lower, it’s just a little fizzy and constrained, but that’s the nature of the beast, and it still yields very usable lead tones for basement jams or smaller club gigs. Push the output higher, though, and all that chime, kerrang and upper-midrange bite is there in spades, along with a chewy touch sensitivity that makes it all extremely infectious under the fingers.

If the drive levels don’t take you far enough, the amp also responds great to a range of boost or overdrive pedals, eating up both a Wampler Tumnus Deluxe and a JHS Angry Charlie, which likewise served well for faux channel-switching into a clean Francene for rhythm/lead selections. Dial in the throbby tremolo for swampy atmospherics, and there are a lot of first-rate tones here.

All in all, we can’t say enough about the sonic veracity of this sweet-looking combo from Cutthroat, which earns an Editors’ Pick Award for its achievements. As the result of a fun “what if” experiment, it has succeeded in adding another bold and beautiful variation of that beloved British sound, and will likely make a lot of classic-rockers, blues guitar explorers and garage kerrangers very happy indeed.

Specifications:

• BUILT USA
• CHANNELS Two
• CONTROLS ’65 volume (pull-jump), tone (pull-lean); ’68 volume pull-warm), tone (pull-fat); shared presence, NFB, master; ’65/’68 rectifier switch; tremolo speed and intensity on back panel
• POWER 20 watts
• TUBES Three 12AX7s, two 6V6GTs, one GZ34 rectifier
• EXTRAS Foot switch for tremolo, solid-state/ tube-rectified switch, NFB negative feedback rotary control, rotary switch for 4/8/16Ω speaker output, optional buffered FX loop ($195, not on this amp)
• SPEAKERS Two 10” Weber Alnico and Ceramic Silver Bell speakers (1x12 combo optional)
• WEIGHT 49 lbs

For more information visit cutthroataudio.com

Jimmie Vaughan’s reputation as a premier electric guitar slinger stretches way back to the ’60s, when he found regional success in Texas, crossing paths with many of the big names of the time, including Jimi Hendrix.

For most listeners outside Texas, Vaughan first came to prominence in the late ’70s as the killer guitarist in what was arguably the first really cool blues band in eons, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. After seven albums of no-frills, down-and-dirty blues guitar, Vaughan left the group, made an album with his brother Stevie – 1990’s Family Style – and settled into a solo career playing blues-rock songs of his own and mixing in acclaimed collaborations with numerous blues luminaries, including a pair of albums with Omar Dykes.

In recent years, though, Vaughan has made several return visits to the music he loves best: the rare and frequently arcane recordings of R&B artists he grew up with, like Jimmy Reed, Jimmy Liggins, Bobby Charles and Nappy Brown.

He released his first R&B covers album, Plays Blues, Ballads & Favorites, in 2010, and followed it up in 2011 with Plays More Blues, Ballads & Favorites. His third album in the series, 2019’s Baby, Please Come Home is a righteous celebration of blues, while last year saw the release of The Pleasure's All Mine (The Complete Blues, Ballads & Favorites Sessions).

Earlier this year, fans were treated to The Jimmie Vaughan Story – an encyclopaedic 96-track 5-CD epic release. Showcasing Jimmie’s distinctive take on the blues these recordings comprise rare and unreleased gems from the initial part of Jimmie’s career, including his early bands Storm and The Fabulous Thunderbirds.

Back in 2019, GP caught up with the man himself shortly after the release of Baby, Please Come Home.

Baby, Please Come Home is your third album of blues covers. Is this the plan going forward?

At this point, I’m just doing stuff that I like. That’s the truth of it. I just like those songs. Basically, when I write my own stuff, it sounds like the same kind of thing, and nobody knows these songs. And I really enjoy making this music with my band. We get to play blues, we can swing, and we can rock out.

Are you no longer interested in writing original material?

Well, if you’re gonna write, you have to get up in the morning and write something every day and really work on it. I am gonna make an album with songs that I’ve written at some point, but this is where I’m happiest at the moment.

It’s interesting to hear how your vocals have developed over each album and how you’ve really found your voice.

For years, I didn’t want to sing, until finally I got into a position where I had to sing or go home. When I was a kid – maybe 15 or 16 – you couldn’t tell from my playing how old I was. I think my voice has gotten deeper, maybe partly from getting old and also from just doing it.

Does the singing change your phrasing on the guitar?

I think when you play for many years, your phrasing will always change as you try to reproduce the stuff that you hear in your head. I always think of myself as a sax player. I like the way the sax player expresses himself, and, especially if you’re singing, you kind of express your song in the voice, then you go back and do it on the guitar. I suppose that makes it sound pretty simple!

Guitarwise, are you still using your signature Strats into Grammatico amps?

Yeah. I use Fender Bassmans as well. A Grammatico is really just a hand-wired Bassman. I like the way 10-inch speakers sound. I used to really enjoy the Matchless, but they quit making them. It’s hard to beat a Fender Bassman though.

You keep your guitar volume low but run your amp high.

That “hots” the amp up, gets it on the edge. That’s the sweet spot where you get the best from the amp. I like it where it sounds like it’s going to blow up. It sounds present.

From the first Fabulous Thunderbirds, it was obvious that you put thought into the spaces between notes – that what you didn’t play was as important as what you did play.

That was a “call and response” style that I learned from my heroes, even those who didn’t play guitar. When you first start to play as a kid, you want to fill up all the holes, but then you realize that the reason why you like certain people is not only because of their tone but also their phrasing.

Just the idea that you can have phrasing that sounds like jazz or blues is pretty intriguing to me. When I hear a sax player like Gene Ammons – he’ll play a phrase and then he’ll wait. And it’s the wait that gets you. That space to breathe. That space to give you time to feel what you just heard.

You had a great way of sitting in behind the harp on Kim Wilson’s solos and not taking up too much space.

I listened to Jimmy Rogers with Little Walter and Eddie Taylor with Jimmy Reed… All those guys. I loved the way they play. I’m a real big fan of that approach.

The first four Fabulous Thunderbirds albums were in a more traditional blues vein. Starting with Tuff Enuff, the music became more mainstream and the group had its greatest success.

Tuff Enuff was more rocky, but it was still true to what we’d been doing. We didn’t feel like we changed that much. The increased level of success had its good and bad points: You never get to come home, and you have too many gigs. Life starts getting in the way of all that.

We did have a fabulous time though, ’cause we were doing what we wanted. You know, when we started out playing covers of old rhythm and blues songs, record companies would say to us, “You can’t get a record deal. That’s a bunch of old shit that no one wants to hear.” We did it anyway, and we had to fight hard each step of the way.

So when we made Tuff Enuff, we just did it the way we wanted to. And we made them take their words back.

You really introduced a lot of those old blues players from the Excello label to a wider audience. Was that deliberate?

Well, what a great thing to do if we could do that. We were just playing what we wanted to hear. I never get tired of the Excello players: T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Reed…all the guys I’ve always loved.

Given the demands of success, did you split from the T-Birds because you felt burned out?

What happened was that the record company kept asking me and Stevie, would we do an album together, and we’d been thinking about it since we were little kids. We’d play at home for the guests. My dad would say, “Go get your guitars!” and we’d play for the people, and the guests would say, “Well that’s pretty good, kid. Maybe you guys could make a record someday.”

We ended up making Family Style. Then Stevie got killed before it came out, which really screwed everything up. I didn’t know what in the world to do, and everybody was just flipped out. I still can’t believe what happened, and I’m talking about my feelings and the way it still feels. It took me a long time to really get back. He was my little brother.

When we were kids, I was supposed to get him to school and back. Protect him. So it felt like I’d failed, even though there was nothing I could do about it. It took me a while to process everything.

Stevie never got to have a family or anything like that. I’ve been blessed. I have a wonderful family, I get to play guitar, I have a great band. I have all the wonderful things in life.

Had Stevie not died, do you think you would have followed a very different path and perhaps worked more closely with each other on a regular basis?

I think we would have done a tour and probably another album. But it’s all speculation. I might have done more with the T-Birds as well. It wasn’t like I was trying to quit the group to be with Stevie or he was leaving his band. This was just something different for us. We were just trying stuff.

Afterward, you came out with your first solo album, 1994’s Strange Pleasure. Did you feel under pressure to match the T-Bird standard once you were out on your own?

Well, you always feel pressure to try to make a better record next time. You have to follow yourself. What happens is, once in a while you just screw around with ideas and you get something really good. But you don’t know how that happens, ’cause if you could figure it out, you would do it every time.

It’s that “lightning in the bottle” moment.

Yeah. The gypsies call it duende. If you can find that in yourself, that’s the fun of it. I just love to play so much. If you keep playing everyday, and you keep working on it and your sound, I think it comes to you.

Buy Family Style here.

You know a design is special when it attains “classic” status not just in its most iconic iteration but in several revamped versions. 

Such is the Fender Bassman. First introduced in 1952 as a 1x15 combo, the tweed Bassman hit its stride in the late ’50s as the narrow-panel 4x10 5F6A combo, which achieved major crossover success with six-stringers and became known as one of the greatest guitar amps of all time. 

By 1961, however, the Bassman had evolved beyond all recognition into an amplifier that was very different both inside and out. It was bigger, bolder, and more accurately bass-intended. And it proved yet again to be another classic design for electric guitar. 

At the turn of that decade, Fender’s tweed combos evolved into two new lineups, both very different from anything that had come before and boldly signaling the way forward for modern guitar-amp production. 

Aside from the top-mounted Champ, all models had forward-facing control panels enameled with a dark-brown background. The combos were covered in light-brown Tolex, at the time a new, durable vinyl product (the Vibrasonic and Concert in this range actually debuted in 1959), while the head-and-cab models received flashier blonde Tolex cosmetics.

The latter comprised what Fender called its Professional Series, a range of “piggyback” sets that helped establish the standard for bigger amps intended for larger venues. It included the powerful Showman, Dual Showman, Bandmaster, Tremolux, and Bassman models.

The 1962 Bassman, shown here, is the 6G6B, the third of three rapid iterations of the model following its introduction as the 6G6 a year earlier, and it’s nearly as different inside from its predecessor, the tweed 5F6A Bassman, as it clearly appears outside.

Some people like to call the brownface Fenders of the early ’60s a cross between tweed and blackface amps, but as we’ll see, they’re really a lot closer to the latter. Chief among this Bassman’s evolved characteristics is the new preamp design that all of them carry. It points to the one that Leo and company were moving toward and has relatively few traces of the tweed topology from just a year or two before.

Part of the key to “the tweed sound,” for the bigger amps at least, was a signal chain that hit the volume control right after the first gain stage (which comprised half of a preamp tube), followed by a full tube configured as a gain stage and cathode follower, which drove a tone stack placed after it.

The setup in these brownface amps, and those with black control panels that followed, is almost the reverse of that. The signal hits the tone controls after the first gain stage, then passes through the volume control before entering another half-a-preamp tube used as a gain-makeup stage to bolster signal levels depleted on the journey through all the circuitry thus far. More important than how it’s all done, though, is the tonal shift that results from the circuit change.

In place of the chewy, midrange-pronounced sonic signature of the tweed amps, the Fenders of the early and mid ’60s sounded tighter, glassier, and more mid-scooped.

They ushered in a whole new classic that was still entirely Fender. The new Bassmans also replaced the tweed Bassman’s tube rectifier with solid-state diodes, a change that helped firm up the low end and the amps’ overall punchiness and tightness.

It’s worth noting that this analysis (rectifier aside) applies primarily to the Bassman’s Normal channel. Its Bass channel was an entirely different beast and quite an oddball, representing an early effort to enhance the low-end. 

Plug a six-string electric guitar into the Bassman’s Normal channel, though, and you’re tapping into a simple three-knob sensation that countless players have recognized as a toothsome and inspiring tone generator.

With all that said, the blonde 6G6B Bassman was still a little like its tweed predecessor in its use of a 12AX7/7025 preamp tube in the phase inverter and a presence control common to both channels, which provided a final means of adjusting the signal’s high-end content at the output stage. 

The former drives the output tubes a little harder than the lower-gain 12AT7 that Fender switched to for the blackface amps of ’64, inducing a slightly earlier breakup and a little more grit even in so-called clean tones.

The latter provides a broader and smoother tweaking of the amp’s overall brightness, and feels very different from the all-or-nothing (and often brittle-sounding) bright switches Fender moved to as the brownface designs fell by the wayside.

There were several other changes between the 6G6B of late ’62 and ’63 and the AA864 Bassman circuit of ’64, but these two alone helped to make the blonde head a little more approachable and “just right” to some players’ ears.

And we haven’t even mentioned the tremendous change made by running all this tubular goodness into a closed-back extension cabinet with two 12-inch speakers rather than the tweed Bassman’s open-back combo cab with four 10-inch speakers, which is generally heard as a shift to more lower-midrange meat and low-end thump, a tighter upper midrange, and more directionality. Former Stray Cat and eternal rockabilly sensation Brian Setzer is likely the most famous proponent of the blonde Bassman.

Pete Townshend also gave a similar head a good workout with the Who before moving to Marshall and then Sound City/Hiwatt amps, and Michael Bloomfield frequently used one in the latter part of his career. The slightly changed-up black-panel/black-Tolex Bassman of ’64–’67 also became a go-to for several noteworthy players, Mike Ness of Social Distortion among them.

A used ’60s Bassman’s relative affordability on the used market in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s made the amps popular with lots of punk, grunge, and alt-rockers through those decades as well. All that, and a few bass players used them now and then, too.