
Although he's become a leading figure in both jazz and blues guitar, Robben Ford's first instrument was saxophone. He switched to guitar at 14 and was fronting the Charles Ford Blues Band—named after his father—and supporting blues greats Charlie Musselwhite and Jimmy Witherspoon by age 18.
The jazz and blues virtuoso changed his tone palette on the new all-instrumental album, Pure, stepping way from his legendary 100-watt Dumble. After 36 years playing the same rig, the transition was not easy.
"I consider it a real blessing having learned the guitar through the blues medium," says Robben Ford. "I then developed a great love for jazz and, in particular, the tenor saxophone. Those guys—or the guys that I like, I should say—are all very vocal players. They're singers. Miles Davis's trumpet as well is the most brilliant example of a trumpet player using his horn as a voice. It's very much related to speech. Sometimes you speak softly. Sometimes you just groove along. Sometimes you yell. You're always trying to say something as opposed to play something."
Robben Ford's musical conversations date back to the early 1970s and include work with artists as disparate as Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Miles Davis, the Yellowjackets, and Charlie Musselwhite. He's also released more than 30 albums as a leader, with most featuring his songwriting and vocals. However, like many things these days, change is in the air, and his recently released Pure is an all-instrumental album. It's the first time he's done that since Tiger Walk in 1997.
Pure
Ford's playing is a unique hybrid style that incorporates the nuance and sensibilities of the blues with the harmonic complexity of jazz. It's an approach that sounds intuitive and obvious in his hands, and on Pure, he takes advantage of the instrumental setting to showcase those different sides of his musical personality.
Pure's roots date back to 2017, when Ford relocated to Nashville. After years on the road, he was looking for a community with a vibrant music scene. He wanted a place where he could gig regularly with local players, focus on producing albums for other artists, and—for someone who's basically been a road warrior since the early 1970s—somewhat settle down.
"I've always been trying to find it on the guitar as opposed to with an effect."
By early 2020, Ford had racked up a number of production credits and was knee-deep in instrumental projects with people like saxophonist Bill Evans, pedal-steel guitarist Paul Franklin, and guitarist John Jorgenson. But then the world came to a screeching halt, and all that work was put on hold.
Except his psyche was still in a very instrumental zone, because that's what he was busy with when the work dried up. "Ever since Tiger Walk, I've basically devoted myself to really learning how to write a good song and to deliver it on the bandstand as a vocalist," Ford says. "But my head was in the instrumental thing, and I thought, 'Let's just run with it. I am feeling it.' And indeed, that's why I did the instrumental record."
Robben Ford's Gear
Since 1983, Ford had used the same amp on all his albums—the second Overdrive Special built by Howard Dumble, with a 2x12 Dumble cab—until 2018. "It's been a revelation for me to get into the smaller amp thing when recording," he says.
Photo by Joseph A. Rosen
Guitars
- 1960 Fender Telecaster
- 1952 Fender Telecaster
- 1966 Epiphone Riviera
- 1964 Gibson ES-355
- 1964 Gibson SG
- Assorted Paul Reed Smith guitars
Strings & Picks
- D'Addario (.010–.046)
- D'Addario heavy picks
Amps
- Dumble Overdrive Special (100 watt)
- Dumble 2x12 Cabinet
- Little Walter "59" (50 watt)
- Little Walter King Arthur (15 watt)
Effects
- Hermida Audio Zendrive
- Cornerstone Music Gear Gladio preamp
- Strymon TimeLine Delay
- Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
It's a setting that plays to Ford's strengths—the most prominent being his use of dynamics. He doesn't dime his amp and scream at you song after song. He tells a story, mimicking the natural inflections of speech. It's a skill he's mastered and, according to him, is the result of growing up immersed in the blues, followed by developing a passion for horn-centric jazz.
Rig Rundown - Robben Ford
Watch Robben Ford and Nashville luthier Joe Glaser go over his live setup.
Another way Ford changes things up is in the subtle use of his pick. He regularly plays by holding the pick backward and using the rounded end, but switches to the pointy end when aiming softer and lighter. He'll also vary the timbre by intuitively moving his picking hand between the neck end and the bridge, which is more percussive and punchy.
TIBIT: The new album was recorded at Purple House, an intimate studio outside of Nashville owned by Ford's co-producer, engineer, and second guitarist, Casey Wasner.
"I've always been trying to find it on the guitar as opposed to with an effect," he says about searching for the right tone. "That's another deliberate choice. Rather than going to a pedal, I'll try to get nuance using the pick and volume. It's just the way I learned how to play. The blues players and tenor players, man, those guys weren't using effects." But he's not an anti-pedal purist (despite the album's title), and pedals have factored into his tone for decades. "We have so many colors on the new album that I am trying to find them and recreate a little of what happened on the album through effects. This is a new phase for me. I'm using two different overdrives instead of just the one, because I need that other color. I am also working a lot with the Strymon TimeLine Delay. I've been using that for a while, but really just for short and long delays, nothing special."
Ford's main overdrive, for decades, is the Hermida Audio Zendrive. He's been through a number of units, but it's been a staple. He's also added a second overdrive to his pedalboard: the Gladio preamp from the Italian manufacturer Cornerstone Music Gear.
Robben Ford Show 6º Festival de Blues e Jazz
Here's Robben Ford defining great tone in a 2021 livestream show from Nashville, with his 1961 Gibson SG.
"It's basically an overdrive pedal," he says. "The fellow basically designed it trying to capture what he heard me doing with the Zendrive. He sent pedals to my friend Jeff McErlain. Jeff is a guitar player from Brooklyn. I produced his album, and he's been very helpful to me in terms of gear. He's turned me on to things that I was unaware of, and the Gladio was one of them."
Another essential element of Ford's tone has been his Dumble Overdrive Special, which he's been using since 1983. Since all Dumbles are built for specific players, Ford's was made by Howard Dumble with his particular tonal needs in mind. That amp—the second Overdrive Special built—still comes out occasionally when he plays live, but in the studio, since moving to Nashville, his needs have evolved.
Ford's latest album features several guests, but his core band is Casey Wasner on guitar, Michael Rhodes on bass, and drummer Shannon Forrest.
Photo by Mascha Thompson
Ford was recording 2018's Purple House at a studio in Leipers Fork, Tennessee, called—you guessed it—the Purple House, when he realized that the Dumble wasn't going to work. "The Purple House is a studio owned by my co-producer and engineer, Casey Wasner. It's a small house and the rooms are small—the rooms aren't live—and I tried using the Dumble and it was just too big. Everything was being recorded in one room. It was a small, dead room, and the drums, bass, and myself—with my amp and a cabinet—were in that one room. The bass was direct, and Casey was in the control room playing rhythm guitar, along with a second engineer. No matter how hard we tried, the Dumble just didn't fit. I always work in a much more spacious environment. I like larger rooms. When we did that record, it was an experiment. I learned a lot about recording—how to record and how to use the studio—and, in particular, I got comfortable with small amplifiers."
"I don't want to change the way I play. It took a long time to get here."
For Ford, getting comfortable with small amplifiers meant finding a way to adapt to the new situation without changing the way he plays. "That was the journey," he says. "How do we keep the vibe? I don't want to change the way I play. It took a long time to get here. I had to find a way. It was hard for me, and it was a struggle. It took about four months during the making of Purple House to feel like, 'Okay, now I get it.' There were times when we went into a really righteous overdub room where I could crank the amp up. It's a real process and, for me, not one that I ever paid that much attention to. Up until Purple House I had always worked in larger rooms, with the same amp and cabinet, and some great engineer. I've been doing this for 30 years. It was a big change but cool. I am really happy having had the experience and having learned these things."
Back in 1974, George Harrison hired wunderkind 23-year-old guitarist Robben Ford for the George Harrison and Friends North American Tour.
Photo by Jim Summaria/Frank White Photo Agency
Ford took those lessons to heart, and he's continued in that vein on Pure. In the studio, his primary amp was the Little Walter "59," which is a 50-watt head, through a single 12" cabinet, which, despite what he's learned, is still taking some getting used to. "I've literally done every record I've ever made since Talk to Your Daughter (1988) with the same Dumble Overdrive Special and cabinet. [That's a 2x12, also built by Dumble.] It's been a revelation for me to get into the smaller amp thing when recording."
But despite his intensive efforts discovering the right tone—not to mention his years studying the instrument and developing his craft—ultimately, playing, for Ford, is intuitive.
"An analogy that I came up with for the way I play is that it's like finger painting," he says. "You put the color on the paper and then you brush it around. You're not making a square, necessarily, you're free flowing. It's more like clouds and wind. There is freedom in it, and it is never going to be the same way twice—it actually can't be the same way twice—because it's like brush strokes. I made a very conscious effort to take chances in the improvisations. It's always been very key to me, and, once again, it's a product of the people I listened to."
How to Play “That Out Shit”
(For more insight, watch Robben Ford explain—and play—diminished scale blues in this video.)
A big part of Robben Ford's playing is his use of the half/whole diminished scale, which is an eight-note scale that alternates half-steps and whole-steps over the course of an octave. It's a scale that's been in the jazz repertoire for decades and was a huge part of the Miles Davis sound throughout the 1980s. Ford was a member of Davis' band in 1986, although he began using that scale much earlier.
"A long time ago, I was 19, and my brother Patrick, a drummer, and I were playing with Charlie Musselwhite," Ford says. "We were on the bill with Larry Coryell at a club long gone in L.A. called the Ash Grove. At one point, I just asked him, 'How do you play all that out shit?' He said, 'I use the half-step whole-step scale.' And I was like, 'Okay.' I went back to my hotel room and went G, G#, A#, B, and I worked out the scale. That was in 1971."
"We were on the bill with Larry Coryell at a club long gone in L.A. called the Ash Grove. At one point, I just asked him, 'How do you play all that out shit?'"
One aspect of that scale's sound is the b9, which is a note Miles Davis often sat on. "Miles Davis would just play a b9 right on top of a seventh chord as his first note. I heard that sound, and from that time on I experimented with the half/whole diminished scale. Once I understood it through learning chords and realized it was a diminished scale and you could play it right off a #9 chord, that was the sound that I heard. I just got deep into it, and it has been a major quality in my playing."
Ford points out that all of the notes in a dominant 7th chord fit into the scale and says, "So there's my chord and I can play any of these notes. I can play a b9 against a G7—whether anybody likes it or not—and it's legit. I really work with that, and for me, that was the gift of Miles Davis."
Guitarist William Tyler, a restless sonic explorer: “I would get bored staying in the same place.”
The expansive instrumental guitarist/composer pushes himself out of his comfort zone, beyond the boundaries of his neo-Americana wheelhouse on Time Indefinite.
Mastering an instrument and an artistic style—and then being recognized and rewarded for it—is a daunting enough accomplishment that one might be forgiven for feeling that, once reached, it’s the be-all to end-all. Guitarist William Tyler, for all the praise and opportunity that have come his way over the past decade and a half, isn’t content to plow the same furrow. With his evolutionary new album, Time Indefinite, this son of the South is pushing further afield, not completely forgoing his virtuosic neo-Americana lyricism but incorporating it into static-friendly, otherworldly studio experimentation.
The disorienting opener of Time Indefinite, “Cabin Six,” begins with a loop of hovering blare that, lasting nearly a minute, might lead listeners to think something is amiss with their turntable stylus; this gradually dissipates into an eddy of railroad-like whine from which a chiming 6-string hook emerges only to finally sink into a murky, detuned drone. The simple, lovely “Anima Motel” and almost naïve “Concern” are eminently approachable, and “Howling at the Second Moon,” with its alternate, Joni Mitchell-inspired tuning, feels like something that could have appeared on one of Tyler’s previous albums (even if it was recorded on his iPhone then texturized via a bump to a cassette recorder and dosed with added effects). But the distressed sonic sculptures of “The Hardest Land to Harvest” and “Electric Lake” or the sampled, distorted church choir laced through “Star of Hope” have a ghostly resonance unlike anything the guitarist has done before.
SoundStream
“I think it’s important for artists to push themselves into new ways of working,” Tyler says. “Most of my favorites, artists I follow over the long trajectory of their careers, have done that, whether it’s in music, film, visual art, novels. Of course, some people have a method or style that they stick to, and it serves them. And I wouldn’t want to put anything out into the world that I wouldn’t myself, as a consumer, enjoy spending time with and taking seriously. That said, I would get bored staying in the same place. The new record is about making something that was a little less chained to certain kinds of guitar music, where I felt like I might be running up against my creative limitations or enthusiasms in that area. I wanted to reinvent myself for myself, to explore fresh possibilities, even with the guitar as my primary tool.”
Tyler, whose parents were hitmaking Nashville songwriters, made his name early on as a young guitar phenom playing in such alternative-minded, country-influenced bands as Lambchop and Silver Jews, before appearing on the fourth volume of the influential Tompkins Square “Imaginational Anthem” series of new-era American Primitive guitar and then making his full-length debut as a solo artist with the 2010 album Behold the Spirit. As a player and composer, he was recognized for subsuming the early influence of John Fahey and the Takoma style into something vibrantly his own.
Tyler keeps his tools simple and his ears open.
Photo by Angelina Castillo
William Tyler’s Gear
Guitars
- Mid-1950s Martin D-18
- 1974 Gibson SG
Pedals
- Hologram Electronics Microcosm
- Strymon El Capistan
- Line 6 DL4 Mark II
Once Tyler signed to the stalwart indie-rock label Merge, the guitarist released a string of warmly received electro-acoustic albums: Impossible Truth (2013), Deseret Canyon (2015) and Modern Country (2016). There was also a marvel of a solo performance at Nashville’s Third Man Records released as an LP in the “Live at Third Man” series. A few years later came the album Goes West, its title alluding to a pre-pandemic move to Los Angeles, and its arrangements flecked with atmospheric swirls and sunny, almost pop-like touches. Tyler also created an aptly rustic score for First Cow, director Kelly Reichardt’s 2019 art house Western, and the guitarist capped his Merge run in 2023 with Secret Stratosphere, a live album of soaring full-band versions of numbers from his back catalog, credited to William Tyler’s Impossible Truth.
“I wanted to reinvent myself for myself, to explore fresh possibilities, even with the guitar as my primary tool.”
Tyler has released covers of such disparate artists as Alex Chilton, Michael Chapman, Fleetwood Mac, Yo La Tengo and Neu!/Harmonia’s Michael Rother, not to mention classical composers Handel and Dvorák. The broad listening palette suggested by these choices always pointed toward a more intrepid path. But the album that most presaged the spirit of Time Indefinite is New Vanitas, a small masterpiece of pandemic creation that found him threading beautiful, involved guitar melodies through hypnagogic soundscapes, often haunted by lo-fi snatches of radio broadcasts and sotto-voce dialogue, as on the evocatively titled “Slow Night’s Static.” New Vanitas even includes a woozy track called “Time Indefinite,” the foreshadowing title a favorite that he borrowed from a film by documentarian Ross McElwee.
On Time Indefinite, Tyler says, “I was drawn to more ambient music, including by guitarists like Christian Fennesz and Norman Westberg, but also groups like Stars of the Lid and Boards of Canada.”
Another signpost on Tyler’s new road was a collaboration with Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden that yielded the folktronica single “Darkness, Darkness.” Then last year brought the standalone track “Flight Final,” Tyler’s first release for the artist-led imprint Psychic Hotline, and a slice of musique concrète that brings to mind Brian Eno’s association with German “kosmische” pioneers Harmonia and Cluster. That recording, the first fruit of an association with collaborator and co-producer Jake Davis, set the stage for their work together on Time Indefinite. Most of the pieces on this album, whether blown-out lullabies or spectral hymns or folk-art abstractions, feel like memories refracted in a dream diary.
“The process of working on this album helped me get better at tempo, just feeling more comfortable playing slower.”
“The new album started out as a series of experiments, without necessarily thinking that they were going to make for a whole record—though, eventually, Jake and I heard a thematic coherence to what we were coming up with,” Tyler explains. “It took a long while to come together, but the roots of the music are in the Covid lockdown. The emotional landscape of that time changed the things I was listening to as well as the music that was coming out of me. I was drawn to more ambient music, including by guitarists like Christian Fennesz and Norman Westberg, but also groups like Stars of the Lid and Boards of Canada. I had gone back to Nashville and was dealing with a problematic mental state. Among other issues, I can tend to approach things too fast, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Beyond using different recording techniques and learning new ways of creating a piece of music, the process of working on this album helped me get better at tempo, just feeling more comfortable playing slower.”
The guitars Tyler used in the studio for Time Indefinite were his “family heirloom” Martin D-18 and a beloved Gibson SG, both of which are his main live instruments. For effects pedals, he favored a Hologram Electronics Microcosm (“for low-pass filter looping and really weird granular stuff”) and a Strymon El Capistan (“for delays kind of like the old Electro-Harmonix Memory Man”), though Davis also did a lot of processing with an array of his own. One serendipitous piece of gear was a 1959 Webcor Regent reel-to-reel machine deck that Tyler liberated, still new in the box, while helping to clear out his grandfather’s storage space in Mississippi. Davis was inspired to make old-school tape loops with it, including that startling sound that opens the album. Tyler would play arrhythmic, asymmetrical parts that Davis would record and chop up for the loops.
Tyler at this year’s Big Ears Festival with Jake Davis and Cecilia Stair.
Photo by Ross Bustin
Tyler’s recent spate of collaborations, from Davis and Four Tet to pedal-steel guitarist Luke Schneider, “has kept me on my toes, challenged me and recharged me,” he says. “The insularity of being a solo instrumentalist and writing everything by yourself can be freeing at first. And it can be motivating, as when I first started learning how to play fingerstyle guitar, with all the practicing. But I don’t like the isolation of it now. These days, I prefer working with other people. It pushes you into other genres, those different modes of communication.”
Another recent colleague, Marisa Anderson, has credited Tyler for his open, venturesome spirit as a studio partner, with his default attitude of “yes” when they were making their absorbing duo album, Lost Futures. “That was something I really enjoyed about playing with William—he was up for everything,” she said. “I was like, ‘There’s the diving board,’ and he’d say, ‘Let’s go.’”
“These days, I prefer working with other people. It pushes you into other genres, those different modes of communication.”
Tyler is quick to credit artists and albums that have inspired him. Along with the aforementioned players, he namechecks a vast range of others, from Jimmy Page to Jeff Parker, Bill Frisell to Fred Frith, Bruce Langhorne to Nels Cline, William Ackerman to Sandy Bull. Tyler muses about how some of his Nashville session heroes should “have gotten weirder…. I wish Chet Atkins had dropped acid, listened to a Sonny Sharrock LP, and made his own noise record, you know?” Regarding his touchstones for sonic left turns, he points to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as well as Talk Talk’s emotive, avant-minded swansongs Spirit of Eden and Laughingstock.
“Those two Talk Talk albums are beyond masterpieces, with some great guitar playing,” Tyler says. “They were in essence made by an artist, Mark Hollis, who did not care about being commercial anymore and certainly not about being able to replicate the stuff live. When Jake and I were recording ‘Howling at the Second Moon,’ that sort of attitude was a reference point, kind of like, ‘Well, instead of trying to get away from the lo-fi weirdness of my original iPhone demo, why don’t we lean into it?’”
Ever thoughtful and candid in conversation, Tyler has been exceptionally transparent about coping with personal loss and midlife crises, as well as going to rehab for the over-indulgence of alcohol. Knowing that, one can hear grief and anxiety in the whorls of Time Indefinite, with the passages of guileless 6-string representing a nostalgia for less complicated times. “It’s a mental landscape record for sure,” he says. “For fans of my previous albums, it might not hit the same way, I realize. But I hope this record says to people that it’s all right to take chances with how you express yourself, with how naked and raw that can be. It has a purposeful arc and is meant to prompt things that aren’t super fashionable in today’s ephemeral, constant-content culture, like deep listening, emotional ambiguity, self-reflection, you know?”YouTube It
This three-song set from last year showcases the expansive cosmic country sound of Tyler and his Impossible Truth band, which includes a Kraftwerk cover.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A beautifully realized mashup of two iconic guitars.
Reader: Ward Powell
Hometown: Ontario, Canada
Guitar: ES-339 Junior
I’ve always liked unusual guitars. I think it started when I got my first guitar way back in 1976. I bought a '73 Telecaster Deluxe for $200 with money I saved from delivering newspapers.
I really got serious about playing in 1978, the same year the first Van Halen album was released. Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, including how he built and modded guitars. Inspired by Eddie, I basically butchered that Tele. But keep in mind, there was once a time when every vintage guitar was just a used guitar—I still have that Tele, by the way.
I never lost that spirit of wanting guitars that were unique, and have built and modded a few dozen guitars since. When I started G.A.S.-ing simultaneously for a Les Paul Junior and a Casino, I came up with this concept. I found an Epiphone ES-339 locally at a great price. It already had upgraded CTS pots, Kluson tuners, and the frets had been PLEK’d. It even came with a hardshell case. It was cheap because it was a right-handed guitar that had been converted to left handed and all the controls had been moved to the opposite side, so it had five additional holes in the top.
Fortunately, I found a Duesenberg wraparound bridge that used the same post spacing as a Tune-o-matic. I used plug cutters to cut plugs out of baltic birch plywood to fill the 12 holes in the laminated top. I also reshaped the old-style Epiphone headstock. Then, I sanded off the original finish, taped the fretboard, and sprayed the finish using cans of nitro lacquer from Oxford Guitar Supply. Lots of wet sanding and buffing later, the finish was done.
I installed threaded insert bushings for the bridge, so it will never pull out. The pickup is a Mojotone Quiet Coil P-90 and I fabricated a shim from a DIY mold and tinted epoxy to raise the P-90 up closer to the strings. The shim also covers the original humbucker opening. I cut a pickguard out of a blank and heated it slightly to bend it to follow the curvature of the top.
All in all, I'm pretty happy how it turned out! It plays great and sounds even better. And I have something that is unique: an ES-339 Junior.
ENGL, renowned for its high-performance amplifiers, proudly introduces the EP635 Fireball IR Pedal, a revolutionary 2-channel preamp pedal designed to deliver the legendary Fireball tone in a compact and feature-rich format.
The EP635 Fireball IR Pedal brings the raw power and precision of the ENGL Fireball amplifier into a pedalboard-friendly enclosure, offering unmatched flexibility and tonal control for guitarists of all styles. This cutting-edge pedal is equipped with advanced features, making it a must-have for players seeking high-gain perfection with modern digital convenience.
Key Features:
- Authentic Fireball Tone – Designed after the renowned ENGL Fireball amplifier, the EP635 delivers the unmistakable high-gain aggression and clarity that ENGL fans love.
- Two Independent Channels – Easily switch between two distinct channels, with each channel’s knob settings saved independently, allowing for seamless transitions between tones.
- Built-in Midboost Function – Enhance your tone with the integrated Midboost switch, perfect for cutting through the mix with extra punch.
- Advanced Noise Gate – Eliminate unwanted noise and maintain articulate clarity, even with high-gain settings.
- IR (Impulse Response) Loading via USB-C – Customize your sound with user-loadable IRs using the included software, bringing studio-quality cab simulations to your pedalboard.
- Headphone Output – Silent practice has never been easier, with a dedicated headphone output for direct monitoring.
- Premium Build and Intuitive Controls – Featuring a rugged chassis and responsive controls for Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence, ensuring precise tonal shaping.
SPECS:
- Input 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Output 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Headphone Output 1/8”(3,5mm) Jack
- 9V DC / 300mA (center negativ) / power supply, sold separately
- USB C