Sometimes, you just stumble upon some gems on Youtube. This is a cover of the Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower by Eric Johnson and a killer band. Johnson’s tone or rather tones are quite amazing. He totally nails the Hendrix studio tones at the beginning but on the long solo at the end he’s Eric Johnson again:
Category Archives: Guitarists
About guitarists
Updates: BB Preamp, Satriani’s Boss DS-1 and Pickup Heights
I have a few interesting updates for existing blog posts:
First of all, about the demo of the BB Preamp I did way back, here is an interesting piece of info that came out following the release of the BB Preamp-comp by the Xotic custom shop: the standard BB Preamp was modified to have less compression after serial number 3643. My BB Preamp has a serial number of 526 so my demo shows the “compressed” version. Interestingly enough, the limited Andy Timmons edition of the BB Preamp featured the extra compression of the early BB Preamp. In order to please everybody, The BB Preamp-comp features a toggle switch to go from no compression at all, to a bit compressed (current BB Preamp) and to more compressed (early BB Preamp and Andy Timmons models). You can read all the details here.
Secondly, about my “Joe Satriani Tone” post, I have found this awesome interview on musicplayers.com. It answers a frequently asked question about Joe Satriani’s Boss DS-1, a distortion pedal he used for a good 20 years before collaborating with VOX to produce the Satchurator. The question is: was his boss DS-1 completely stock or altered? The answer in Satch’s own words: “Well, I would use clean channel of the JFX. I’d get a slightly altered, vintage Boss DS-1. I can’t tell you the alteration, though, that’s a secret!“. That settles it but as far as what the alteration is, the question remains.
Finally, a few months ago, I wrote a piece about the relation between pickup height and tone. This piece was missing detailed height guidelines, I have now found some for Fender Telecasters, Stratocasters and Gibson style guitars.
Les Pulverizer
Here is a quite amazing video of the legendary Les Paul showing one his many inventions: the Les Pulverizer. Obviously, Les Paul invented the looper years before it became mainstream.
Daniel Piquê
Imagine a cross between Jeff Beck, Steve Vai and Van Halen who, at the same time, wouldn’t be flashy. This is how I think of Daniel Piquê, a brilliant brazilian guitarist and composer that I have discovered recently. I encourage you to go to his myspace page where you can download lots of his music for free for a limited time. Here is one of my favorite songs, featuring none other than Billy Sheehan on bass:
In terms of Tone, it seems that Daniel Piquê favors a rather “pure” amp tone, featuring effects in a subtle manner compared to his eighties virtuoso predecessors. It is interesting to see that a lot of guitarists have been going down this road recently.
