In 2021, luthier Carlos Lopez struck out on his own and unveiled Castedosa after leaving Fender’s Masterbuilt shop.
“When people are doing the same thing, I’m gonna do something different. I’ve always had that,” Lopez says, adding “nobody’s doing a high-end baritone.” Inspired by low-end-loving guitarists like Mark Lettieri and Ariel Posen, he saw the instrument as his way to set his new company apart.
It was a bold move, but as Lopez tells it, that’s his style.
Growing up in ’90s East Los Angeles, Lopez felt like he was living near the heart of guitar culture. He witnessed plenty of players ripping at backyard barbecues and was inspired to pick up the instrument. Soon, he was learning Santana songs and reading about Steve Vai and Joe Satriani in guitar magazines, which, along with tales of onetime local-legend Eddie Van Halen that circulated the area, fueled his musical fire. When college approached, Lopez sought a way to be a part of the guitar community, but not as a player. With the encouragement of his mother, he enrolled at Musicians Institute to be a guitar tech.“When people are doing the same thing, I’m gonna do something different. I’ve always had that.”
Upon graduation, one of Lopez’s teachers told him about some job openings on Fender’s assembly line. “I got a job real quick,” he remembers. “The Highway Ones were on the line when I started.” Lopez found something familiar as his passion for guitar-building grew. “I felt real comfortable. All the people that worked there were primarily Latino and Hispanic and were the age of my mom and my aunts. It was a home and it felt like that.”
The foundation of Lopez’s work is his ability to blend classic design into new forms, as seen in this 3511 Lobo.
Photo by Nick Millevoi
He didn’t stay on the line for long, and Lopez says his “false sense of arrogance” gave him the confidence to go for exactly what he wanted. “I’ve always had kind of a chip on my shoulder because of where I grew up,” which he calls “kind of a rough neighborhood.” So, not long into his tenure at Fender, “I went to the director of the custom shop, I showed him my shitty guitar that I made [in school], and said, ‘I should be in the custom shop.’ Within a year, I started working in the team-built custom shop.”
Now on the inside of the “secret lair” where “some of the best builders in the world” were creating high-end Fenders, Lopez remembers that he took advantage of his access, picking the brains of his co-workers at each stage of building, rotating his way through all the positions in the shop, and soaking up as much knowledge as he could.
At the same time, Lopez was active at home, where he’d set up his own workshop in his living room. When he left Fender for the day, the journeyman builder would go home and get back to work doing repairs for local musicians or building his own guitars. “I was always hustling,” he recalls.
After about 13 or 14 years at Fender, a position in the prestigious Masterbuilt shop opened up, and Lopez recalls he was an easy fit. During his time working as apprentice to Todd Krause in the team-built shop, Lopez created instruments for top-level players that include Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Robbie Robertson, and it gave him the confidence to take on the master-builder position and flex his creativity.
“Everybody has their thing. You have to create your own name for yourself.”
“Everybody has their thing,” Lopez says of the Masterbuilt team. “You have to create your own name for yourself.” Lopez saw his ‘thing’ not in the shape of a Strat or Tele, but in the oddball Marauder and Electric XII. “They’re forgotten, so I found something that could separate me, so that was the first thing I did. I knew there was a cool story there.” Auspiciously, he also created the Fender Brawler Baritone model.
Former Chili Pepper and freelance guitarist Josh Klinghoffer has been a supporter of Lopez’s since his Fender days. He got so stoked by his Conchers Baritones that he bought a round of them for his Pearl Jam bandmates.
Photo courtesy of Castedosa Guitars
If you’ve never handled one of Lopez’s Fenders—I haven’t either—YouTube is going to have to suffice. There’s a video of former Chili Pepper and freelance guitarist extraordinaire Josh Klinghoffer ripping the extreme double-neck Marauder/Electric XII beast that Lopez built in 2021. (While taping his demo, Klinghoffer fell so in love with the guitar that he eventually snatched it up for himself when it popped up on Reverb.) If you’re the type of person to get into oddball builds, this is as good an initiation in Lopez’s world as it gets. From there, dive into Carlos’ Instagram feed and have at it. (Good luck.)
As tony as the master-builder job sounds to those of us on the outside, it wasn’t long until Lopez was looking beyond the company. Spurred by a series of close personal losses during the pandemic, Lopez began thinking about his own legacy. Ultimately, he explains, feeling like he wanted to create something of his own and for his family, he left Fender in 2021, and started the family business.
“I need it to be where it’s recognizable but different.”
The foundation of Castedosa—a word that is a combination of letters from Carlos, Stephanie, and their two children’s names—is Lopez’s aesthetic, which by 2021 was well documented in his eclectic and eye-catching creations at Fender. Lopez is one of just a small cadre of boutique builders working today whose designs evoke the timeless feel of classic models and manage to create something that is entirely fresh, innovating within familiar forms. Castedosa’s debut model, the Conchers Baritone, offers an alternate history of baritone guitar, setting a new, high-level standard of building and design. “I need it to be where it’s recognizable but different,” Lopez says. “That’s the goal of the shape. But when you play it, it’s different.”
At Central New Jersey’s Relic Music, a dealer specializing in boutique builders, high-end and hard-to-find brands, and vintage instruments, I had the opportunity to play a Conchers Baritone. (While it wasn’t for sale, Relic’s owner, Mike Nicosia, hooked it up for PG and called in a favor to guitarist Scott Rieger, who purchased the guitar.)
I’ve been looking at photos of Castedosa baritones since they first hit Instagram, and visually, the body style, the finish, the knobs, the headstock design, the entire instrument surpassed my expectations in three dimensions. Upon picking up the guitar, the first thing that caught my attention was the roasted maple neck with rosewood fretboard, which boasts a 1.725" nut width. With a 27" scale length, it’s a substantial instrument. But after a few warmup licks to get a handle on the feel, I recognized the significant V-shaped profile in the lower frets made it easy to navigate and even encouraged longer reaches, gently softening as I made my way up the neck. Somehow, this long bari felt easier to handle than most standard 6-strings.
The Conchers Baritone played for this piece was responsive, resonant, and hard to put down.
Photo by Nick Millevoi
As I sat with the Conchers, I pulled out all my bari-guitar tricks, from delicately plucked arpeggios and faux-Ennio Morricone melodies—meant to coax the twang out of the low strings—to quick, articulated lines that cross strings, extension-heavy chords across the range of the neck, and brute power chording. I was rewarded at each approach as I got to know this responsive, resonant instrument, which sits in a class with some of the finest luthier-built guitars I’ve laid my hands on. (It’s worth mentioning here that Lopez did tell me, “I hate calling myself a luthier, I hate putting titles on things.”)
I was struck by the warm, even voice of Castedosa’s in-house mini-humbuckers. Not entirely unlike a PAF—and visually way cool—they are major contributors to the new-classic vibe of the Conchers. “I did a lot of [research and development] on the pickups—they need to be right. The mini-hums that I did just sounded great,” says Lopez. And once he dialed in the design, he trained Stephanie how to wind them. (She’d never worked in guitar building before, but he says that immediately “she just had the feel. She’s a natural.”) Paired with a Hiwatt Custom 20 head and Hiwatt 1x12 cab loaded with a Fane Purpleback, plus a little reverb from a Mr. Black Supermoon, the bari simply sang. Simply put, I could have written an entire record around the Conchers right there in Relic’s showroom.
Some two-plus years into the company, it’s early to gauge Castedosa’s mark. But it’s obvious the Lopezes have made a strong start.
“Carlos is revolutionizing the use of baritones in music.” —Josh Klinghoffer
“Anything that I saw out of the Masterbuilt shop that I really dug has had Carlos’ name attached to it,” says Nicosia. “What I love about Carlos is there is zero compromise anywhere. He’s building the guitars he wants to build and doing it from an inspired place.” Relic’s customers, he points out, have noticed as well.
With Lopez’s Masterbuilt pedigree, notable players were bound to follow, and some have been especially quick to get hip. Posen and My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero are early adopters, and Lopez cites Klinghoffer as a big supporter. “Everything I needed to know about him was communicated by the fact that he decided to be the guy that starts making Marauders,” says Klinghoffer, who first purchased one of his Fender Marauders, followed by an Electric XII. Then, he says, “I just saved a ‘Carlos Lopez’ search on Reverb.”
When Lopez left Fender, Klinghoffer was struck by the “enormously heartwarming story” of the Lopez family business and he bought Conchers Baritone #3. “I fell in love with that thing instantly. There were baritones on the market, and they were fine and serviceable, but they weren’t sexy. Carlos is revolutionizing the use of baritones in music. Finally having a really well done, well-conceived, beautiful instrument in front of you, how could you not be inspired?”
In the shape of a T-style—in this case a double-humbucker Marianna—Lopez’s aesthetic shines.
Photo courtesy of Castedosa Guitars
Klinghoffer also eventually purchased #13 and #33. Then, following his 2022 tour with Pearl Jam, he purchased a Conchers Baritone for each member of the band. “I can show this person and this business this kind of support and show gratitude to my new home, my new band,” he says. “It all comes down to my love of guitars, Carlos’ love of guitars, all five guys in Pearl Jam’s love of guitars.” For about a year, he adds, Mike McCready sent him a video every month or so of his Conchers Baritone in action.
The guitarist is certainly helping get the Castedosa name out there. (In addition to the Pearl Jam guitars, he purchased a few more as gifts to fill out what he thinks is the entire lot of serial numbers in the 50s.) And with six models now in the catalog—Conchers Baritone; Conchers Standard; the Marianna, Lopez’s take on a T-style; the monstrous double-neck baritone/12-string; the semi-hollow 3511 Lobo; and a short-scale bass—Castedosa seems to have hit its stride. Apprentice Connor Moore also left Fender to join the team, and more models are on the way.
In each Castedosa build, it’s obvious that Lopez enjoys poring over the details, from the obvious aesthetic elements, like body, headstock shape, and finish, to sonic touches, like pickup design. He even mentions approaching his fret ends with a signature flourish—“You’ll see what I mean when you play one,” he tells me. I immediately did. They’re rounded with a distinctive ball-like end that make for a smooth playing experience and sleek look.
And the builder wants to keep his head in the details. He isn’t looking to scale up too much and take over the world. Instead, he plans to stick with the market he knows and build what he wants to build, which will keep Castedosa in the high-end lane.
“I just want to make something special and unique and live in that world,” he says. “I like being in the shadows, being in the limited-quantity, sought-after market, and I want to continue doing what I’m doing.”
YouTube It
Klinghoffer puts a Conchers Baritone with built-in fuzz circuit through a thorough and thrilling sonic evaluation.
The epicenter of that original lineup was founding guitarist, Hillel Slovak. Slovak was an exceptional talent, steeped in the traditions of Jimi Hendrix and the funk stylings of Parliament-Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone. His playing paired the seemingly incongruous sounds of funk and punk and made it seem obvious and natural. His sense of groove was metronome-tight, his note choices were well placed and tasteful, his tone was fully developed, and his phrasing was mature beyond his years.
Slovak didn’t live to see his band’s breakthrough and mainstream acceptance, but his influence was dominant. It was essential to the development of his extraordinary successor, John Frusciante. It defined the sound of his band and the music they made. And it inspired a generation of rockers to dig deep into funk, purchase a wah wah, and get into the groove.
Beginnings
Hillel Slovak was born in Haifa, Israel, on April 13, 1962. His parents were Holocaust survivors who settled in Israel after World War II. They moved to New York when Slovak was 4 and then to Fairfax, a neighborhood just south of the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, two years later.
Slovak’s parents divorced when he was in high school. His mother kept the house in Fairfax and he continued to share a room with James, his younger brother. By that point, he was already serious about music.
Slovak started playing the guitar at 13. He listened to bands like Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, War, Sweet, Earth, Wind & Fire, and others that were popular at the time. According to Jack Irons, Slovak’s childhood friend and future bandmate (and drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eleven, Pearl Jam, and many others), “We talked about playing music when we were in 7th grade and started [playing instruments] later that year.”
Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures) met Slovak and Irons in 8th grade. “Jack and Hillel attended a local music school on Fairfax Avenue,” Johannes says. “I went there for a few guitar lessons too and studied with Robert Wolin, the same guy [as Hillel].” (Wolin was a popular teacher at that time—he also taught Slash.)
Slovak’s first guitar was a cheap, cream-colored Telecaster knockoff. He ran that through a Silvertone amp. “He liked to smack the top of the Silvertone to get the reverb vibrating loudly,” Irons says. At some point Slovak acquired an MXR Distortion+ as well.
Slovak, Irons, and Johannes jammed and wrote music together. They added a bass player in high school. Their band went through a number of names before settling on Anthym (changed from Anthem when they discovered another band from the Valley was using the same name). Slovak also was given a better guitar. “I had a Musicraft Messenger, which was kind of rare,” Johannes says. “Mark Farner [from Grand Funk Railroad] used to play one. It had an aluminum neck going all the way through the body. It was red, with a Bigsby on it, and I gave it to Hillel. That’s what he played in those early years, until he got his Strat.”
In the 11th grade, their bass player decided to focus on schoolwork and quit the band. They recruited another friend, Michael Balzary (better known as Flea), to play bass. At that time, Flea didn’t play bass—he played trumpet—but he knew music and played in the school band. It didn’t take much to get him up to speed. Slovak taught him the basics and got him started. Anthony Kiedis, another high school friend, MC-ed their shows and they were off.
“We graduated high school in 1980,” Johannes says. “In late 1980 or early ’81 we changed the name to What Is This. Our first batch of originals was very much in the classic rock style of the time. Hillel and I were doing dual lead solos and a lot of feedback and heavy playing. Then we started listening to some of the music that was coming up—post punk, new wave. We started to write a little bit more in that vein. We cut our hair and started wearing suits.”
Some of those early influences included the Talking Heads, Gang of Four, and David Bowie. Slovak also gained a deepening appreciation for Jimi Hendrix. “If I would have to pick, Hendrix and [Gang of Four guitarist] Andy Gill are my two biggest influences,” Slovak said about his formative years in a short video interview on Miami Beach in 1987.
Another important influence was ’80s-era King Crimson. “They played the Roxy for three nights,” Johannes says. “We got tickets for all three nights, both shows. We sat right up front and just soaked it in. Hillel definitely got a lot of the Strat manhandling—strumming behind the nut and all that kind of stuff—from watching Adrian [Belew] at that time. Our music became a little bit more unusual. A punk element started to show up, a bit of a psychedelic bluesy thing, more angular, a little more dissonant.”
The L.A. hardcore punk scene was peaking at that time as well, with bands like the Circle Jerks, Black Flag, and Fear in their prime. In 1982, Flea left What Is This to join Fear and Chris Hutchinson replaced him. According to Johannes, Slovak was disappointed that Flea left the band and didn’t speak to him for a while. But it didn’t last.
Slovak lived in a loft space near the intersection of Heliotrope Drive and Melrose Avenue, a commercial/non-residential part of L.A. It was a perfect rehearsal studio—far from private homes and uptight neighbors—and rehearsals were often extended jam sessions that lasted hours. “We were always pushing ourselves, playing things that we couldn’t quite get,” Johannes recalls. “But I think the big secret was the insane amount of hours we spent jamming. We would often turn off the lights and just jam in the dark. We became really good at sensing each other.”
In 1983, while What Is This were still working the local music scene opening for bands like the Minutemen and X, and trying to land a record deal, a local performance artist named Gary Allen invited Kiedis and Flea to perform at the Rhythm Lounge. Slovak and Irons joined them and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were born. Although intended as a one-off performance, the Red Hot Chili Peppers evolved into something much more. “They were pretty amazing straight away and they got a good reaction,” Johannes says. “We would schedule our shows so that we would play the same dates or share the same bill. Both bands were sharing Jack and Hillel.”
Within eight months, both bands landed deals with major labels. What Is This signed with MCA. The Red Hot Chili Peppers signed with EMI. Slovak and Irons opted to stay with What Is This. “We had been playing with Alain since 1976 and we were dedicated to What Is This,” Irons remembers. “The Chili’s were new at the time.” The Red Hot Chili Peppers replaced Slovak and Irons—with Jack Sherman on guitar and Cliff Martinez on drums—and released their first album, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, in 1984.
Photo by Frank White
Red Hot Return
That same year, What Is This went into the studio and recorded Squeezed, a five-song EP, with producer/engineer David Jerden (Jane’s Addiction, Alice in Chains) and shot a video for the song “My Mind Have Still I” with then up-and-coming video director Wayne Isham.
Squeezed is a showcase for the twin-guitar lineup of Johannes and Slovak, who share rhythm and lead duties with complementary individual styles. The songs sound like early-’80s new wave and include funk, ska, and other groove influences. Discipline-era King Crimson is an obvious influence as well. The EP documents a new band on the rise, though in hindsight the production values sound dated. “Unfortunately it does sound a bit ’80s,” Johannes says. “But that’s what everything sounded like back then—we were pretty mental-sounding live—but it was just the aesthetic of the time.”
Slovak’s playing oozes Hendrix—subtle psychedelic-blues riffage, modal inflections, tasteful whammy manipulations, clean single-coil tones via a cranked amp with infinite headroom—it’s all there on those first recordings and remained dominant throughout his career. Slovak played a Strat throughout his career too: a ’60s sunburst with a white pickguard and rosewood fretboard. Slovak kept the tremolo floating so he could raise and lower the pitch.
What Is This toured the U.S., continued to gig locally, and went back into the studio with Todd Rundgren to record What Is This?, their first full-length album. But Slovak was ready to move on. “I think Hillel grew less interested in What Is This,” Irons says. “He left while we were recording our second record in 1985.”
“I noticed that Hillel really started to focus on his songs in a hurry,” Johannes says. “He’d already made up his mind to go back to the Peppers and he wanted to get them done. Once he’d gotten all the overdubs to the songs the way he wanted them, that was when he sat us all down and told us he was leaving.”
Slovak rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in time for their second album, Freaky Styley. Veteran funkmaster George Clinton produced the album. “That was a good time,” James Slovak recalls about his brother’s excitement working with Clinton. “That was when he was his happiest. It was his dream come true.”
Clinton’s personality is dominant on Freaky Styley. The album’s slower tempos, horn arrangements, and unbridled funk stand out as an anomaly in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ catalog—a tempered variation on their supercharged, hyper-sexual, energetic live shows.
Freaky Styley establishes Slovak as a mature, articulate guitarist, and from his exceptional wah work on “Yertle the Turtle” to the infectious rhythm guitar of “Hollywood (Africa)” and “Nevermind,” his tasteful playing shines on the album. Not every song was medium-tempo funk, either. The brazen “Catholic School Girls Rule” served as an outstanding platform for Slovak’s Belew-inspired Strat mangling, harmonics, and picking behind the nut. In his October 1985 review for Rolling Stone, Ira Robbins singled out Slovak’s guitar playing as: “A mix of crazed solos, nostalgic wah-wah, and rhythmic scratching.”
In his book, Scar Tissue, Kiedis noted that Slovak’s playing had changed during his time with What Is This, though Johannes isn’t convinced. “His playing had been slowly evolving over a period of time,” he says. “He became more groove-oriented—he got the wah wah, he had that great Marshall—and he started to develop and find his voice. But that had been happening anyway. He always kept moving forward and getting better.”
Slovak’s amp was a Marshall Super Bass head. He ran that through a handpainted, straight-front 4x12 cabinet. “It was very open sounding and had this great clarity in the midrange,” Johannes says. The Strat plus the Marshall was the foundation of Slovak’s sound. “He knew. It was like one big instrument to him, the way that Marshall was.” Slovak used a number of pedals, including a Univox Super-Fuzz, a Dunlop Cry Baby Wah, an MXR Distortion+, and a Boss CE-2 Chorus. He usually strung his guitars with .010 sets and used gray 1.00 mm Dunlop picks.
Uplift Mofo Party Plan
Irons rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1986. The band—in their original lineup for the first time since signing with EMI—continued touring in support of Freaky Styley before going to work on their 1987 release, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, with producer Michael Beinhorn. “That record was probably the peak of the original lineup,” Irons says. “We were well-oiled and played together a lot. We had a long preproduction and recorded at Capitol Records studios. Michael Beinhorn was very important in getting The Uplift Mofo Party Plan recorded. There was some turmoil at the time. He stayed the course with us from the start of preproduction and was an important influence.”
The Uplift Mofo Party Plan is a punk-funk tour de force—a definitive record in that genre—and it established the Red Hot Chili Peppers as the darlings of the alternative underground. They sold out small venues, played major festivals, and were a fixture on college campuses and radio.
And in contrast to the understated guitar tones on Freaky Styley, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan spewed fuzz with abandon. From the opening notes of “Fight Like a Brave” to the dramatic call-and-response overdubs of “Walkin’ Down the Road,” Slovak’s tone is dripping in dirt. He pulled out a talk box, too—an effect he experimented with previously—for an obvious funk nod on “Funky Crime,” but also to add subtle color to the album’s Bob Dylan cover, “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” “I remember him fucking around with a talk box,” says James Slovak. “He liked that.”
Slovak’s funk comping climaxed on The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. On many tracks, it consisted of just one repeated note or chord—a bold, barebones approach. One particular highlight is the ’70s-style soul slickness he conjured up on the “Special Secret Song Inside.” Slovak’s solos and single-note fills were superb throughout the album as well—they scream bluesy psychedelics and reach a Hendrix-inspired peak with what sounds like record scratching or tape-machine manipulations on “Organic Anti-Beat Box Band.”
But the album’s standout was “Behind the Sun,” a track that foreshadowed what the Red Hot Chili Peppers were to become. Combined with Slovak’s melodic playing and colorful sitar textures, the song’s mellow vibe made it a notable exception to the band’s aggressive early catalog.
The Final Tour
The tour for The Uplift Mofo Party Plan was long and successful, but drug use—something Kiedis and Slovak struggled with—was taking its toll. Slovak was fired at one point (P-Funk guitarist Blackbyrd McKnight filled in) and given time to dry out. He made a failed attempt at drug counseling as well.
Following the final European leg of the tour, the band returned to L.A. The plan was to take a three-week break and regroup to work on the next album. But on June 27, 1988, Slovak was found dead in his apartment from a heroin overdose. The coroner’s report indicated he probably died two days earlier. He was buried in L.A., and his brother James made sure he was interred with his Stratocaster.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers had a strong underground following when Slovak died, but their breakthrough into the mainstream was yet to happen. As the Los Angeles Times noted in Slovak’s obituary, “The Chili Peppers, which have released three albums on EMI-Manhattan Records since forming in 1983, have not gained national stardom. But the foursome’s wild antics onstage have given the group a strong following in the Los Angeles area.”
The Red Hot Chili Peppers went on to become one of the biggest rock bands of all time. They found mainstream success, placed hits on the charts, and their albums sold in the millions. Even so, many fans consider the Slovak period to be RHCP’s golden years—and maybe they were, as their influence was never the same as it was in the late 1980s when every young band wanted to be them.
At Slovak’s 2012 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, James Slovak, accepting the honor on his brother’s behalf, said: “[Hillel] was much more than a musician, he was also an innovator.” That heartfelt statement couldn’t have been more accurate: Slovak’s guitar playing impacted the musical landscape forever.
Slovak played a ’60s-era sunburst Stratocaster with a white pickguard and rosewood fretboard throughout his career. He kept the tremolo floating so he could raise and lower the pitch. Photo by Debra Trebitz / Frank White Photo Agency.
Hallmarks of Hillel Slovak's Style
Hillel Slovak’s funk comping was sparse and simple, and became even more so later in his career. No-frills rhythm guitar playing allows room for the music to breathe while driving the groove forward. A great example of Slovak’s minimal-yet-effective rhythm guitar parts are the repeated figures he lays down during the verses of the “Special Secret Song Inside” from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1987 release, The Uplift Mofo Party Plan.
Slovak sits on just two notes, C and F (technically E-sharp in this context), the top two notes of a D7#9. If felt as eighth-notes, Slovak plays that chord fragment on the downbeat and “and-of-2” in each measure.
And that’s it.
That super-simple rhythmic pattern leaves ample space for colorful guitar overdubs and Flea’s extra-groovy bass line. And because Slovak’s figure is constant and repetitive, it creates a sense of tension that drives the verse forward until its ultimate release at the top of the chorus.
This approach is a common funk device and a tool Slovak applied with precision. Other examples include the funkier sections of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and the verses of “Skinny Sweaty Man” from The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and “Nevermind” off the 1985 release, Freaky Styley.
This live clip of “Fight Like a Brave” at the Pinkpop Festival in 1988 features Slovak on a Les Paul about a month before his death.
Not that the 34-year-old L.A. native spends much time thinking about the big shoes he filled in the Peppers. He’s a close friend and frequent collaborator with the 6-string genius behind RHCP hits like “Under the Bridge,” the Grammy-winning “Give It Away,” and “The Zephyr Song.” And, in general, one of Klinghoffer’s key strengths seems to be his mature ability to chill with musicians from across the creative spectrum—often musicians many years his senior.
In fact, this is a recurring theme in Klinghoffer’s musical story. The bonds he forges with players he falls in with through luck, fate, or brains, all seem to lead to something bigger, better, or at least refreshingly different. His path to the Peppers wouldn’t have materialized had it not been for the friendship he struck with Bob Forrest (frontman for cult post-punk outfit Thelonious Monster) when he was recruited to Forrest’s Bicycle Thief project at the age of 17. Forrest, in turn, happened to be tight with Frusciante, Flea, and Chili singer Anthony Kiedis, so being in that circle eventually paved the way to taking over when Frusciante departed to resume his solo career.
Josh Klinghoffer's Gear
Guitars
Circa-’64/’65 Fender Jazzmaster
Circa-’61 Harmony prototype
Fender rosewood Telecaster
’60s Yamaha 12-string acoustic
Martin D-12
’40s Martin mahogany acoustic
Amps
1960s Danelectro DS-100
Late-’50s Fender Super
Watkins Dominator
Watkins Scout
1960s Marshall Super Lead 100 with matching 4x15 cab
Effects
Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer
Univox Super-Fuzz
ZVEX Fuzz Factory units
Electro-Harmonix Big Muffs
Boss CE-2 Chorus
Boss VB-2 Vibrato
Boss DM-2 Analog Delay
Strings and Picks
D’Addario .010 and 011 electric sets
D’Addario light and medium acoustic sets
Dunlop .60 mm Tortex picks
But Klinghoffer’s abilities and amiabilities led him onward even after he’d landed that coveted gig. In 2006, between Chili engagements, he went on the road with yet more friends—Danger Mouse and CeeLo Green from neo-soul outfit Gnarls Barkley. Just for fun. That’s where he met guitarist Clint Walsh and the seeds of Dot Hacker were sown.
“We became friends pretty instantly,” Klinghoffer says. Walsh adds, “The next thing I knew, we were moving forward with our plans: Josh introduced me to Jonathan [Hischke], our bass player, and I introduced him to Eric [Gardner,
also from a Gnarls Barkley touring lineup]. We had a space, we were writing songs, and it just went really smoothly. Everything felt right about it.”
A cynic might look at all these connections and call it simple networking, but Dot Hacker seems like more than just a band: The four mates are so close they’ve instituted a daily song-sharing regimen to draw closer and understand each other better. The day of our interview, Gardner had suggested Ornette Coleman’s “Humpty Dumpty,” featuring late bass great Charlie Haden. “We sent texts around saying, ‘Let’s learn that and play it tomorrow,’” says Klinghoffer. “The way Clint and I turned up having learned it was totally different—he could play it far better than I could.”
It goes without saying that Klinghoffer’s musical interests are all over the map: He plays in the punk-funkiest band on the planet, yet when asked about formative influences he mentions Depeche Mode and Morrissey in the same breath as Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, and, yes, the Peppers. And then there’s the Dot Hacker sound itself: Falsetto lithium-dream vocals float over soundscapes smeared in manically droning vintage guitars, amps, and synthesizers, each awash in reverb, echo, and tremolo, and each ricocheting off the others one minute, then slithering around and through them the next—all in a way that’s somehow loose, organic, and unpredictable, yet prevented from disintegrating into ambient oblivion by the confines of Hischke and Gardner’s hypnotically pulsating and remarkably dynamic rhythm section.
To get insight into the “process” behind Klinghoffer and Walsh’s work and play—as well as their toys/tools—we spoke to them just after the midsummer release of How’s Your Process (Work), which preceded the (Play) album by three months.
Josh, you’ve been kicking around the phrase “How’s your process?” for quite some time—there are YouTube videos from more than a year ago where you’re wearing a t-shirt that says it. What’s the story there?
Josh Klinghoffer: I heard someone say it one time. Just out of the corner of my ear, I heard someone ask that question, and I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever heard. There were all sorts of things going on in that room that made it a 50-sided question. I love things that have multiple meanings—or could have multiple meanings—and make you look at a thing in a thousand different ways. That name really applies to this band—asking ourselves how our process is and thinking about how we work and want to continue to work. I was so compelled by it when I heard it that I made that shirt and wore it around on the tour. I’m always asking myself if I could be doing what I’m doing better, or whether the term “better” is bullshit. Like, if you’re doing it at all, it might be as good as you could be doing it at the moment. I don’t know … you’re just always looking at yourself and wondering if you’re doing everything you’re doing as well as you can be doing it for yourself, other people, your bandmates, your family, or your friends. I just think it’s a good question to ask yourself all the time.
Photo by Rachel Martin.
Speaking of work/play processes, how do Dot Hacker songs typically develop—do you guys just get together and jam?
Clint Walsh: It’s some of everything. Josh writes stuff and brings it to us, and we react to it. I’ll write stuff and do the same. Sometimes songs are born out of jams. There’s no real rhyme or reason. The only caveat is that you have to hear what somebody brought in—everything deserves a chance to be heard.
Klinghoffer: Sometimes the amount of time we get to spend together dictates how much certain things get worked on, but in the end hopefully they all wind up sounding like this band. Like, I’ll listen to songs that were born out of a jam that sound more constructed and worked on than a song that took five years to complete.
Walsh: Josh is also really good at cataloging. I don't think I've ever been in a band with somebody so on top of rehearsals. Listening to your practices helps so much. I’m really thankful that part is there.
Klinghoffer: Yeah, we record everything. We spent all of the last two weeks rehearsing for this tour, and I’m kind of kicking myself for recording, like, 90 percent of it. But just in the little bit I listened to in order to catalog it in the computer, I heard things that I couldn’t really pick out at practice. It helped me know how to approach the song the next time we played it. I don’t know how—because time is going by very quickly these days—but there are still pieces of music we jammed on at the beginning of the band’s existence that I know will someday be a song. Also, when we jam there are a lot of lyrics and song ideas vocally that I have to dig for and listen to. I’ve become very … “anal”—is that the right word?—about my recording and cataloging. [Laughs.]
Walsh: No, “diligent” is a better word.
Both of you also play keyboards. How does that dynamic work, and how does it affect your guitar roles?
Walsh: Josh is much more proficient as a piano player than I am. We both kind of allow each other the space to do whatever we want to do on whatever instrument. I tend to favor certain types of keyboard sounds and use them more as either a counter-melodic instrument or with a pad-type approach. I think both of us are different musicians on the different instruments that we play, too.
Clint Walsh's Gear
Guitars
’59 Fender Stratocaster
’62 Fender Jazzmaster
Nash T-style
Gibson 120-T
’60s Yamaha 12-string acoustic
Martin D-12
’40s Martin mahogany acoustic
Amps
1968 Fender Deluxe Reverb
Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus
Watkins Dominator
Watkins Scout
Montgomery Ward 50-watt head
Effects
Strymon TimeLine
Fulltone OCD
Boss CE-2 Chorus
Boss VB-2 Vibrato
Boss DM-2 Analog Delay
EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
EarthQuaker Devices Grand Orbiter
EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Reaper
Strings and Picks
D’Addario .010 and 011 electric sets
D’Addario light and medium acoustic sets
Dunlop .60 mm Tortex picks
You mean the different form factor—the different physicality of the instrument itself—makes you approach music differently?
Klinghoffer: Writing songs on piano or coming up with progressions on the keyboard is a lot more exciting to me, because I’m far less familiar with it than I am with the guitar. It still has a really exciting, unknown aspect to it.
Walsh: Yeah, I'd agree with that. It takes you out of your comfort zone.
Klinghoffer: People have been saying it for a long time now, but anything that you can do to change or even slightly modify a general rock-band format [is great] … I mean, we are essentially two guitarists/keyboardists, plus bass and drums. When I come in with a song that’s on piano and Clint looks at the guitar or keyboard, it’s a bit of freedom. If I want to just do one note on the synth and twist a couple of delay knobs, there’s freedom to fill a lot of different kinds of space.
Josh, do you use the same guitar rig you use with the Peppers?
Klinghoffer: Absolutely not, because I would never set that up myself. No, no, no—that rig is built for higher volumes and more arm strength than mine. [Laughs.]
We did a Rig Rundown with your Chili Peppers tech a couple of years ago, and I’m pretty sure you had more pedals than anyone we’ve ever talked to. Was it, like, three or four different pedalboards?
Klinghoffer: I think at that time it was three. I don’t know what I was thinking [laughs]. Not too long after you guys filmed that, I wound up breaking my foot and was sort of confined to a chair and in one place onstage. Since I could only use one foot, we shrunk down to one board and Ian [Sheppard, RHCP guitar tech] controlled a couple of things that were only used in one or two songs from a controller offstage. After that, we realized how much signal I was losing by going through all those pedals. I didn’t really need all of it. A lot of it was just hung over from past Chili Peppers songs that required a certain thing, or from a recollection of a jam that sounded great when I first started playing with them, but that I wound up never using again. I made it through the rest of the tour with the one board I’d shrunk it down to. The next time we go out of town, I’m really going to try and use just what we need.
With Dot Hacker—because we don’t often get the luxury of soundchecks, or because we’re loading the gear ourselves—I really try to have my shit as tight as possible. I use one amp, preferably as small as it can be while still sounding big and good. I try to use as few pedals as possible. I even kicked myself for throwing two extra pedals that I felt like I didn’t need on my board last weekend. I really try to have as little gear and as few cables as possible.
Photo by Rachel Martin.
Let’s talk about the rigs you used for the album.
Klinghoffer: The album is a different story. We just kind of had fun with what was around at the time. I've amassed a lot of cool amps over the last few years, and Clint and I both have a lot of cool guitars. I think that, amp-wise … [to Clint] what did you record through?
Walsh: I used an old Deluxe Reverb.
Like, a blackface?
Walsh: It’s one of the ’68s with the aluminum drip, so silverface I guess—though that year is still technically a blackface. I used a [Roland] JC-120 for a few things. I really liked the combination of those two. Josh brought in a lot of cool stuff that he’d gotten over the last few years. Some of the amps I’d never heard of, and some of it was just like a candy store.
Klinghoffer: When we did the live tracking, the basic tracks were done over a few different sessions. I used an old Fender Super—like, a late-’50s Fender Super. And a Danelectro DS-100—that’s sort of been my secret weapon for Dot Hacker in the studio on this last album. During overdubs, we used a Watkins Dominator and a Watkins Scout a lot.
Walsh: There’s a song called “First in Forever” on the How’s Your Process (Work), and I remember Josh overdubbed his guitar with a Marshall … like a 4x15 or something.
Klinghoffer: I think it was a white Super Lead 100 with matching 4x15 cabinets. We miked it with some room mics. I’ll never forget how that sounded—it was huge.
So that’s yours, Josh?
Klinghoffer: Yeah, I think we found it somewhere in England. Ian and I have been looking for anything interesting. I play the Marshall Major onstage [with RHCP], so we’re always looking for Majors—especially if they’re in different colors. We found that 4x15 cabinet with a matching head….
Walsh: It’s the size of a safe—a refrigerator!
Klinghoffer: Yeah, it’s the biggest cabinet I've ever seen. It has an enclosed back, obviously, but the low end and the clarity of the low end is just unmatchable.
Is it a stock, factory cab or a custom thing?
Klinghoffer: That's a good question. I actually have no idea. Maybe it was a bass thing?
Walsh: [Laughs.] Yeah, maybe it was something made for Lemmy [Kilmister, Motörhead bassist].
strength than mine.
Tell us more about the Danelectro DS-100 that you said was key to this album. Is that, like, a 6x12 cab with a head the size of a small combo amp?
Klinghoffer: Yeah, kind of. It’s very similar to the Silvertone 1485—the one with six speakers that I use onstage with the Chili Peppers, and that Jack White uses.
What do you like about it?
Klinghoffer: It’s just very clear. It’s got great bottom end, great top, and a great clean sound. If you turn it up, it’s huge. Sometimes a certain amplifier or piece of equipment is underwhelming, but with this amp that’s never the case: You plug in and you sound like a champ.
Walsh: I know I said this about the Marshall, but the DS-100—the one that Josh has—is one of the best amps I’ve ever heard. It’s got clarity in all frequencies, it’s really full sounding, and it takes pedals really well.
Which guitars did you guys use most on the new albums?
Klinghoffer: I used an old ’64 or ’65 Jazzmaster quite a bit. There was one session where I used this cool, custom prototype—there were only three made or something. I think it’s called a Harmony Glenwood. I think it was Harmony’s answer to the SG or the Les Paul Custom. If you google, like, 1961—around there—it was Harmony’s three-pickup answer to that, but I don’t think it ever went into production.
Does it have humbuckers and sound similar to a vintage SG?
Klinghoffer: I guess they’re humbuckers—they look like humbuckers. To me, it doesn’t sound too big. It’s actually pretty modest sounding. It has a short-scale neck … it’s a strange guitar. Those are the two guitars I remember using the most, but there were probably others here or there. I’ve been buying a lot of gear over the last couple of years, so whatever caught my eye that morning might have been brought down. I know I used my all-rosewood Tele on a couple songs.
What about you, Clint?
Walsh: Josh has a ’59 Strat with a rosewood fretboard. It’s a two-tone sunburst, and it sounds like no other guitar. I used that for a lot of stuff. I haven’t been partial to Strats for a long time, but I started playing them a little more with this band, and I feel like single-coils—at least on my end—really help with versatility. It’s easier to make the guitar sound less like a guitar when you have single-coils. [Pauses, then laughs.] I don’t really know how much I believe that!
You mean you’re able to get more diverse sounds out of your pedalboard with single-coils?
Walsh: I think so. I don’t know if I’m just looking for an excuse, but I generally use single-coils with this band. I used a ’62 Jazzmaster on this record, and Josh’s ’59 Strat. I have a ’52 relic Nash Tele that I love. That was on it. I think I played another Jazzmaster that Josh has. I basically stuck with those. I think there are a couple of tracks of a Yamaha 12-string acoustic that Josh and I both have, which we love.
Klinghoffer: A red-label from the ’60s.
Walsh: Yeah. I think we also used a Martin D-12.
Klinghoffer: Or one of those little mahogany Martins from the ’40s.
Photo by Rachel Martin.
How about pedals?
Klinghoffer: Um….
Walsh: How much time do you have? [Laughs.]
Klinghoffer: When possible on this album, I tried to dial in my tones—we’re talking overdrives and distortions—from the amp. If we were doing a heavier song, I tried to hike the amp up and leave it at that. But you can’t quote me on that being the case all the way around. With Dot Hacker, I usually use a [Ibanez] TS808—an original Tube Screamer—as my main overdrive. There’s a variety of fuzz pedals laying around—anything from the old [Univox] Super-Fuzz to [ZVEX] Fuzz Factorys to all manner of Big Muffs and weird boutique things. Between Clint, myself, and Jonathan, we have tons of stuff. I used a Boss CE-2 Chorus, and we’re both big fans of the Boss VB-2 Vibrato and the Boss DM-2 [analog delay]. Those are my staples—the Boss DM-2, the CE-2, and the VB-2.
Walsh: Yep, same here.
You can tell there are quite a few effects on the new albums’ guitar parts, but they’re almost mystifyingly subtle—yet powerful and effective. What’s the secret to absorbing your effects into your repertoire without making them be your repertoire?
Klinghoffer: Since all four of us have spent time serving other peoples’ songs, it’s a really nice place for all of us to get serious and explore sounds that we’ve always wanted to hear—like a dying bee, or a choking grandmother. We probably spend too much time trying to choke grandma, but … yeah. [Laughs.]
In this band, one distinction between Clint and myself when we’re both playing guitar is that I’m less effected than he is. It’s usually me who’s playing the chords and being married to whatever is easiest to sing to. He’s kind of more ethereal or colorful. Throughout the course of the band’s existence, Clint has dialed up a couple of amazing cocktails of effects that run in tandem, and I think that answers your question—you’re not jumping to one effect to do one thing, but kind of using a variety of things to serve a song. Also, sometimes the parts and tones aren’t solidified when the song goes down—we wait until the vocals are down and we leave as much space as we can. Sometimes we don’t leave that much, but we try and find sounds that provide the best use of space that the song requires. I might throw down a really simple part at the zero hour, and he might do the same thing at the last minute—throw down, like, a two-note melody you can’t really hear. That’s the beauty of this band: We work for the whole or the team. It’s not about one part. That actually comes back to haunt us when we try and play live—because there are lots of little things in the recordings. I think we just are all about making the song an enjoyable and interesting experience rather than, “Okay, here’s the chorus—now the tone has to change.”
YouTube It
Josh Klinghoffer strums his naked-toned Firebird while Clint Walsh veers from ethereal washes to wailing Strat slapback on this track from How’s Your Process (Work).
What’s that vibrato on the dark, thumpy guitar in “Whatever You Want”? It has this warm, swampy, vintage vibe.
Klinghoffer: There’s kind of a collection of guitars there. We used the Fender Vibratone speaker, a sort of Fender Leslie speaker they put out in the ’60s. And there’s a track of Clint playing guitar and me live-treating his guitar through this amazing Montgomery Ward Supro-like amplifier. All I know is that it’s a Montgomery Ward 50-watt head.
Walsh: With a crazy-responsive EQ.
Klinghoffer: Yeah—the high and low knobs are crazy. It’s kind of like a live vibe pedal.
How about that trippy, Leslie-type effect on the trebly counterpoint lead in the same song—same stuff?
Walsh: I think that’s the VB-2 with maybe some of the Strymon TimeLine delay, which is really good when you go beyond the presets—you can create some really cool sounds. Maybe we even had some [Fulltone] OCD for a little drive.
How about the warbling guitars in “First in Forever”?
Klinghoffer: I wrote the guitar part on a borrowed Gibson 120-T [thinline archtop] with flatwound strings. It has one [Melody Maker-style] pickup and one volume and one tone knob. I wound up having to give that guitar back, but I always said that when we got around to recording that song I would either use my friend’s or get another one. I had to get another one. It’s pretty much a simple, untreated guitar through the amp for the main part of that song.
Josh, is it weird to go from playing funky Chili Peppers stuff to the moody, atmospheric, borderline avant-garde Dot Hacker stuff?
Klinghoffer: I feel like both bands could do either kinds of music if they wanted to. There are things that I bring into a Chili Peppers context that sound more like Dot Hacker, and the Dot Hacker guys all have an appreciation for the kind of music that the Chili Peppers play. It’s only confusing sometimes with the roles: When you’re the guitar player in a band with a very prominent and incredible lead singer, and then you go to another band where you’re the lead singer, that’s the only thing that’s kind of confusing. But I welcome it. It’s amazing to watch my brain have to deal with that stuff. I never really admitted to myself that I wanted to do that until we got this band going. This band taught me how to be comfortable doing that—how to be comfortable with myself—and that you should believe in who you are. I probably can’t not be myself to a fault sometimes, but I think I’ve also learned how to be who I’m supposed to be in certain situations and serve those situations correctly.