
In the past decade alone, Colin Linden has played on, produced, or engineered at least 60 albums, for a diverse cast of artists ranging from Lucinda Williams to Fantastic Negrito. Here, he picks his trusty goldtop from the Gibson Custom Shop.
How an eclectic, blues-fueled guitar hero took a spark from Howlin’ Wolf and put fire in his music. Plus, the vintage guitars and amps he used to create his swampy, stomping new album, Blow.
Some guitar heroes explode across the stage or erupt from recordings. Think Hendrix or Jimmy Page. Others, like Colin Linden, have a quieter brilliance. They play to support fellow musicians and their own songs with a perfection that extends beyond service into art, dancing a characterful line between the sacred and the profane, the beguiling and the dramatic. They have a visionary approach, distilled from years of surveying their craft and shaping what they’ve learned into diamonds. And with those jewels they can refract complex emotions or simply cut like the patient, intuitive, and exacting badasses they are.
Linden, who has a wonderfully raucous and spacious new album called Blow, is a crucial ingredient in the glue of Nashville’s—and, therefore, the world’s—roots music scene. And while the ability to write songs that turn life into an open book, create sounds that wallow in the dirt or glide toward heaven, or illuminate the wisdom and heart in the work of those he supports or produces seems part of his DNA, it all traces back to a magical encounter with a giant.
By age 11, Linden was already a guitar prodigy. He’d seen Hendrix and other major performers of the day and had traced the rock he loved back to its blues roots. When he learned that his favorite artist, Howlin’ Wolf, was playing a matinee as part of a six-night stand at Toronto’s Colonial Tavern—just a bus ride away—he begged his mom to take him. “The show started at 3:30, but I was so eager to make sure we had no trouble getting in, we got there about three hours early,” Linden recounts. And there was Wolf, sitting on a staircase near the stage. Linden raced down to the 6'6", 300-pound bluesman and explained that he had to stay in the balcony due to his age, so wouldn’t Wolf come up to talk with him? “Of course,” Wolf growled, and their friendship blossomed and flourished for five years, until Wolf’s death in 1976.
Ain't No Shame
Wolf, who was a remarkable judge of character, saw something in the kid. “One of the things that he said—to an 11-year-old—is you got to do your best and you got to play the same if you’re playing for three people or if you're playing for 3,000,” says Linden. “I know that it’s kind of corny, but it does speak to the idea that the calling of being a musician is greater than the success you may achieve in a public sense. That idea is something that sustains you when you are playing for three people—and not just when you’re a 15-year-old kid, but when you’re 35 or 45 … or maybe 55. Being blessed to be able to make music is a wonderful calling, and I reflect on Wolf’s generation—and the earlier generation of musicians like Sam Chatmon and Son House—and think about what those people went through and yet still kept a sense of wonder about playing music.”
“Being blessed to be able to make music is a wonderful calling, and I reflect on Wolf’s generation—and the earlier generation of musicians like Sam Chatmon and Son House—and think about what those people went through and yet still kept a sense of wonder about playing music.”
That sense of wonder, and the engagement it engenders, has been at the core of a storied career—even if everyone doesn’t know Linden’s story. A year after meeting Wolf, Linden started playing coffeehouses and radio and TV shows, and began developing the deft fingerpicking that’s one of his signatures. Canadian blues guitarist David Wilcox became his slide guru, hired Linden as co-guitarist in his group, and gave him 140 blues albums he considered essential building blocks. “David showed me the possibilities of what was there,” Linden relates. “I already loved Elmore James, Fred McDowell, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson … that whole generation of great slide players. And I was aware of open D and open G, and some related tunings. David really showed me how to play ‘Terraplane Blues.’ I’ve spent the last 47 years still hearing him every time I play it, and almost every day I listen to some Robert Johnson, and every time I hear something I haven’t heard before. I keep digging deep into it. Of course, I loved roots music at the time, which had so many elements of blues in it: Ry Cooder, Little Feat with Lowell George, and I can’t underestimate the influence of David Lindley playing on the Jackson Browne records. I also loved all kinds of singer-songwriter music. The Band were always there for me, too. [The Band recorded Linden’s song “Remedy” on 1993’s Jericho.] Almost all the music I love was very informed by blues.”
November 27, 1971—the fateful day that 11-year-old Colin Linden met and was befriended by his idol, blues legend Howlin’ Wolf, aka Chester Burnett.
Photo courtesy of Colin Linden
In 1979, Linden played his first recording sessions, for 80-year-old Mississippi Sheiks’ guitarist Sam Chatmon’s final album. His own debut, Colin Linden Live!, came a year later. Since then, Linden’s ridden the swells and shallows of the business, yet there’s always been a tide of albums, bands, and gigs to surf. In the ’90s, he played guitar and co-produced for legendary folk-rock artist Bruce Cockburn, and, since his move to Nashville in 1997, has produced albums by Keb’ Mo’, Paul Thorn, Colin James, Lindi Ortega, Eden Brent, Gina Sicilia, and a passel of other roots performers. He’s played gigs and recorded with many of the above as well as Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, T Bone Burnett, John Prine, Gregg Allman, Rhiannon Giddens, the Pistol Annies, Buddy Guy, and Bob Dylan. (Linden’s 2013 summer tour with Dylan is his favorite: “All my life, he was the person I wanted to play with the most. I loved playing with him, I love the other guys in the band, and the crew. It was an absolutely unforgettable, wonderful experience.”)
In addition, Linden has made 11 albums with the heralded Americana trio Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, with fellow songwriters and friends Tom Wilson and Stephen Fearing, and has 14 solo albums under his belt. Along the way, he’s earned a Grammy and nine Juno Awards, several Maple Blues Awards, and dozens of other awards and nominations.
TIDBIT: In the vintage photo on the cover of his latest album, Linden is playing one of his first electric guitars: a 1964 Fender Mustang that was given to him on his 17th birthday by Canadian bluesman David Wilcox.
There’s even a good chance you’ve seen Linden and not known it. T Bone Burnett drafted him for the TV series Nashville a decade ago and he’s appeared onscreen many, many times as the ubiquitous guitarist in black—his everyday choice of monochrome. Off screen Linden’s served as the show’s bandleader, one of its key songwriters, music producer, and eventually music director during the series’ six years. He’s also been the music director for a series of U.S. and European tours featuring Nashville’s stars, and continues to perform and record with Charles Esten, who played the brilliant but troubled songwriter Deacon Claybourne.
Linden also has a track record on the big screen—not only as Father Scott, the singing preacher in the Coen Brothers’ rom-com Intolerable Cruelty, but as a soundtrack artist whose contributions include O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Everything’s Gone Green, Please Kill Mr. Know It All, and Inside Llewyn Davis.
Onstage, Linden effortlessly ricochets between original songs, traditional blues and gospel, and textural playing based in traditional roots music that reaches for the cosmic.
Photo by Art Tipaldi
His new album Blow ignited as a soundtrack project. Linden was asked to do stock music for Hap and Leonard, a dark TV buddy comedy about two rule-bending fixers-for-hire. “I kinda did it on spec,” he recounts. “I didn’t even pick the other musicians, but they were people I knew and admired very much: bassist Dave Jacques and drummer Paul Griffith. And we recorded with a fantastic engineer named Mark Rubel, over at Blackbird. It was very inspiring. Over the course of a couple days, I came up with maybe 18 pieces of stock music. And because the show was set in the Texas/Louisiana border area, I wanted to draw upon sounds that were kinda from there. I was so happy with the sounds that Mark got on my guitar, and so happy with the way it all turned out. Part of the deal was that I could take the tracks and use them for whatever purpose I wanted. And among those 18 pieces, maybe eight or nine felt like songs—just the structure that I’d improvised my way through.”
Sliding on a Truly Regal Regal
Linden’s most treasured guitar is this wonderfully voiced 1937 Regal Angelus, outfitted with both a gold-foil and a piezo pickup. Note his wrench-socket slide.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
If you’ve seen Colin Linden onstage, you’ve likely heard him play his holy grail instrument, a 1937 Regal Angelus resonator guitar. It has a beautifully burnished natural tone, a bit lower and mellower than many resonators, and when Linden steps on a digital delay there are seemingly no limits on its ability to create honeyed textures that are transporting and transcendent.
The 5-pound wood-and-metal guitar with a solid, V-shaped neck is also perfect for his fingerstyle-with-slide approach. Linden says he keeps his slide, a no-foolin’ Mastercraft 5/8" socket, á la Lowell George’s 11/16", “on my finger almost all the time, no matter what I play, just cause I’m better at making certain notes sing with the slide than I am with my fingers. I’ll play a melody, and the first three notes of the melody will be the slide, and I’ll just go back and forth.
“Life changed tremendously for me when I got that 1937 Regal Angelus,” he continues. “It was gifted to me by [Canadian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist] Linda McRae, whose first album I produced in 1997. She had that guitar at her apartment, and we were doing pre-production for the album, and I didn’t have an acoustic with me, so she said, ‘just play this.’ And it was the greatest guitar I had ever played. I asked her, when she was going to come to Toronto to record, ‘Would you mind bringing that guitar with you? I’d love to play it on your record.’ And she did, and I played it a ton on her record, and when the record was finished, she gave me that guitar.”
By then, Linden had been experimenting with combining acoustic and electric tones, including putting a piezo pickup and a magnetic pickup on the same acoustic guitar, “because there are elements of both of those things that I really value having.” He also uses heavy strings on all his guitars, “so the gauges were not a lot different between the electrics and acoustics for me. It was easy to go back and forth.”
One day, his luthier made him an offer: “I know you love gold-foil pickups. I have one that would fit right underneath the strings, and I can just affix it to the face with tape and see if you like it.” That gave Linden “a world of sound, and I put a McIntyre pickup on the cone. I eventually hardwired the magnetic pickup into the guitar, and that combination gives me a sound I love. I’ve played it, certainly, on over a hundred records. I’ve played that guitar with Bob Dylan, with Emmylou Harris, for President Obama at the White House. I played it at Carnegie Hall, the Ryman, Royal Albert Hall, Massey Hall in Toronto. That’s the guitar that comes with me everywhere.”
And here’s a fun fact. Linden’s worn a slide on his left-hand pinky so often and for so many years that his finger has permanently bent to accommodate it. That’s something he’s seen before. “When I was 15 years old, I met Tampa Red. He was living in a nursing home in Chicago, but me and my friend Doc MacLean visited him on a journey that we took to the Southern states. Doc was a few years older than me, so he could drive. Even though it had been many years since Red had played, his pinky was permanently extended and almost looked dislocated from the rest of his hand from all of his years of playing slide.”
Now Hear Colin and His Regal Regal
Drink deep in Colin Linden’s magical resonator tone as he performs a solo version of the title track from his 2015 album, Rich In Love, at Nashville’s 3rd & Lindsley.
During pandemic downtime, Linden got the itch. “I thought, ‘I’d like to make an album where this is the backbone, and I’ll add whatever songs need to come.’ I was feeling so creative. As with a lot of other songwriters I know, I ended up being on fire writing, just ’cause we weren’t out playing and stuff. So, I finished those songs and wrote a bunch of others and co-wrote a few new ones. It was an interesting process for me, because some of those pieces were just a few bars that I’d loop and build a song around.”
Colin Linden’s Gear
Linden’s No. 1 amp: a cat-scratched 1957 Fender Deluxe that he’s nicknamed the Pig. “I bought it for $175 when I got off the road with Leon Redbone, out of somebody’s garage in Berkeley,” he says.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
Guitars
- 1937 Regal Angelus with DeArmond Gold Foil and McIntyre pickups
- Various Fender Telecasters
- 1963 Fender Stratocaster
- 1952 Gibson Les Paul
- Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul goldtop
- Harmony Stratotone
- Nash T-style with Bigsby
- National Resolectric
- 1951 Gibson CF-100 E
- 1966 Gibson B-25-12
- Martin 000-18
Amps
- 1957 Fender Deluxe called “the Pig”
- 1954 vintage 5A3-circuit Fender Deluxes
- Fender Deluxe tweed and ’65 reissues
- Analog Outfitters Sarge
Strings & Slide
- D’Addario (.012–.014–.016–.030–.040–.050)
- D’Addario flatwounds (.011–.053)
- John Pearse Phosphor Bronze Lights (.012–.053) for the Regal
- Martin Mediums (.013–.056)
- Mastercraft 5/8" socket
Effects
- Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler
- Xotic EP Booster
- Analog Alien Rumble Seat Overdrive/Delay/Reverb
- Fulltone Custom Shop Tube Tape Echo
- Fender Reverb Tank
- Boss DD-5 Digital Delay
For the most part, he worked alone in his backyard home studio in a quiet Nashville neighborhood, just 10 minutes from the Ryman Auditorium, one ofTV-Nashville’s real-life locations. Maybe that solitude is why he was able to crawl so deeply into his guts and give Blow a raw, personal sound. It’s raucous tones and mostly hard-boiled arrangements sound as if they were cultivated in a sweaty juke joint or a swamp-side roadhouse rather than a studio. It might also help that he was joined by some old friends: a host of Fender Deluxes (including a ’57 named “the Pig” that’s had much of its tweed shredded by a nonetheless beloved cat) that he sometimes runs in stereo, a Nash T-style, a flock of Fender Teles (including a ’71 re-fin that gets him into Robbie Robertson’s tone zone), his Gibson Custom Shop goldtop Les Paul and another from 1952, a 1963 Fender Stratocaster, a Harmony Stratotone, several acoustics, and the crown jewel of his extensive guitar collection—a 1937 Regal resonator with a voice that’s pure emotional Esperanto. (See sidebar.)
Blow’s 11 songs also sound like the past rushing toward the future. Linden’s writing is focused and poetic, whether celebrating love in the Wolf-flavored stomper “Angel Next to Me” or diving into the urban demimonde in “Until the Heat Leaves Town,” which includes a guttural, dark, and wobbly slide solo that slouches toward the avant-garde but fits the song perfectly. That’s a one-two punch he first encountered hearing Hubert Sumlin push the envelope with Howlin’ Wolf. Linden’s guitar tones are full of muscle and blood and skin and bone, with their rawness often drawn into relief via modernist mixing techniques, like pushing the drums to the fore in “4 Cars” and in the soaring slow blues “Change Don’t Come Without Pain,” where flourishes of drunken bent notes and slide, and rotary and octave effects, plunge into psychedelia with mad abandon. On the trad side again, “Boogie Let Me Be” sounds borrowed from John Lee Hooker’s ’40s/’50s catalog, and “Right Shoe Wrong Foot” is about as Bo Diddley as even Bo Diddley ever got, with Linden’s guitar dealing out a reverb-drenched, 3-2 clave-fueled beat.
“Almost all the music I love was very informed by blues.”
“I kind of went with what made me happy,” Linden says. “My ear for sounds and my own aesthetic of mixing records is so informed by my heroes, Chess Records, Sun Studios, and the great Excello recordings, so that’s what I go for. It makes me smile when I hear that stuff. But I’ve also worked with T Bone Burnett a lot, ever since he produced an album for Bruce Cockburn called Nothing but a Burning Light in 1991. I love how T Bone transports something timeless and otherworldly into something that’s immediate. It’s so appealing. He’s had such a gigantic impact on my life.”
Linden’s fingerpicking on Blow is also a joy, allowing him to literally dig into licks and make his guitars’ strings snap and howl, layer rhythm lines with melodic counterpoint, and shift seamlessly between slide, chords, and single notes. “I was 13 and had been performing for a year or more when a couple people told me, ‘If you wanna learn country blues, you should maybe learn how to fingerpick. Those guys are fingerpickers,” he recalls. Older artists, like Ken and Chris Whiteley from the Toronto folk scene, became his mentors, and then working with Wilcox was his master class. “When he got me into combining slide and fingerstyle, it made me feel like there were no limits,” Linden says. “He was and is a wonderful improviser, with an incredible imagination, and he’s gifted in a lot of genres. After that, fingerpicking really was it for me. And then, I realized that a lot of stuff I wanted to play—like Steve Cropper licks—would really sound better with a pick. So, I started to use one when I formed my first band at 17. Then I got into hybrid picking. But fingerpicking is really where I feel at home. It’s like breathing.”
Another instrument that appears on Blow is this 1963 Fender Stratocaster, which is a recent acquisition. Note the interior of the slide, revealing its identity as a socket wrench.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
Like the committed artist he is, Linden constantly works to evolve his playing and his tonal palette. “Over the years, that’s really meant focusing on the fundamentals,” he says. “It’s having better time, playing more in tune, and being more economical. I’ve learned so much from so many of the great guitarists here in Nashville … people like Richard Bennett. [Mark Knopfler’s longtime sparring partner and a session and studio ace.] I got the chance to do a few sessions with Richard. He’s a hero of mine, and he would play a Telecaster through a Deluxe Reverb, and I’d have my pedalboard and I’d have everything on. I’d do everything that I could to get the greatest sound, and it would sound maybe 25 percent as good as him just playing guitar into an amplifier. He served the song always, in a really focused and committed way. So, the things that I’ve learned from my heroes, like that, continue to be drummed into me. I got a chance over the last few years to play on the Grand Ole Opry a lot of times, and I would see the guys who were in the Opry band, especially Jim Capps, who was the sweetest guy, and Kerry Marks. They were always serving the song and they would be very economical, but put fire in it, too.
“When you’re touring a lot, your chops have to be in great shape,” Linden continues. “Even here in town, when I’m playing with Whitey Johnson”—the parodic blues persona of songwriter Gary Nicholson—“I’m taking maybe 30 solos a night. During the pandemic, I felt like that part of my life, which had been a constant for 40 years, became … well, it was gone. And not only did I crave it, but I wondered if I was playing as well as I should or could. I noticed that on a couple albums I played on and produced, I put so much effort into making every note as emotional as possible, playing with as much soul and fire as I can. I mean, I can practice Blind Blake and Charley Patton and all the stuff I do really well, but you can’t really simulate being a soloist in front of a big crowd. So, you focus on something different in your playing and hopefully the good things about you that you keep close will all be there when you get back to playing live. That’s what I’m hoping for. [Laughs.] I’ll let you know.”
YouTube It
Colin Linden plays his 1937 Regal Angelus on his dream gig, supporting Bob Dylan. Here, Linden’s fingerpicking and slide provide the backbone for Dylan’s tribute to Delta blues legend Charley Patton.
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AI, which generated this image in seconds, can obviously do amazing things. But can it actually replace human creativity?
Technology has always disrupted the music biz, but we’ve never seen anything like this.
AI has me deeply thinking: Is guitar (or any instrument) still valid? Are musicians still valid? I don’t think the answer is as obvious as I’d like it to be.
As a professional musician, I’ve spent the vast majority of my days immersed in the tones of tube amps, the resistance of steel strings under my fingers, and the endless pursuit of musical expression. Each day, I strive to tap into the Source, channel something new into the world (however small), and share it. Yet, lately, a new presence has entered the room—artificial intelligence. It is an interloper unlike any I’ve ever encountered. If you’re thinking that AI is something off in the “not-too-distant future,” you’re exponentially wrong. So, this month I’m going to ask that we sit and meditate on this technology, and hopefully gain some insight into how we are just beginning to use it.
AI: Friend or Foe?
In the last 12 months, I’ve heard quite a bit of AI-generated music. Algorithms can now “compose,” “perform” (with vocals of your choosing), and “produce” entire songs in minutes, with prompts as flippant as, “Write a song about__in the style of__.” AI never misses a note and can mimic the finer details of almost any genre with unnerving precision. For those who are merely curious about music, or those easily distracted by novelty, this might seem exciting … a shortcut to creating “professional” sounding music without years of practice. But for those of us who are deeply passionate about music, it raises some profound existential questions.
When you play an instrument, you engage in something deeply human. Each musician carries their life experiences into their playing. The pain of heartbreak, the joy of new beginnings, or the struggle to find a voice in an increasingly noisy and artificial online world dominated by algorithms. Sweat, tears, and callouses develop from your efforts and repetition. Your mistakes can lead to new creative vistas and shape the evolution of your style.
Emotions shape the music we create. While an algorithm can only infer and assign a “value” to the vast variety of our experience, it is ruthlessly proficient at analyzing and recording the entire corpus of human existence, and further, cataloging every known human behavioral action and response in mere fractions of a second.
Pardon the Disruption
Technology has always disrupted the music industry. The invention of musical notation provided unprecedented access to compositions. The advent of records allowed performances of music to be captured and shared. When radio brought music into every home, there was fear that no one would buy records. Television added visual spectacle, sparking fears that it would kill live performance. MIDI revolutionized music production but raised concerns about replacing human players. The internet, paired with the MP3 format, democratized music distribution, shattered traditional revenue models, and shifted power from labels to artists. Each of these innovations was met with resistance and uncertainty, but ultimately, they expanded the ways music could be created, shared, and experienced.
Every revolution in art and technology forces us to rediscover what is uniquely human about creativity. To me, though, this is different. AI isn’t a tool that requires a significant amount of human input in order to work. It’s already analyzed the minutia of all of humanity’s greatest creations—from the most esoteric to the ubiquitous, and it is wholly capable of creating entire works of art that are as commercially competitive as anything you’ve ever heard. This will force us to recalibrate our definition of art and push us to dig deeper into our personal truths.
“In an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener can’t tell the difference?”
Advantage: Humans
What if we don’t want to, though? In an age where performed perfection is casually synthesized into existence, does our human expression still hold value? Especially if the average listener can’t tell the difference?
Of course, the answer is still emphatically “Yes!” But caveat emptor. I believe that the value of the tool depends entirely on the way in which it is used—and this one in particular is a very, very powerful tool. We all need to read the manual and handle with care.
AI cannot replicate the experience of creating music in the moment. It cannot capture the energy of a living room jam session with friends or the adrenaline of playing a less-than-perfect set in front of a crowd who cheers because they feel your passion. It cannot replace the personal journey you take each time you push through frustration to master a riff that once seemed impossible. So, my fellow musicians, I say this: Your music is valid. Your guitar is valid. What you create with your hands and heart will always stand apart from what an algorithm can generate.
Our audience, on the other hand, is quite a different matter. And that’s the subject for next month’s Dojo. Until then, namaste.
Our columnist’s bass, built by Anders Mattisson.
Would your instrumental preconceptions hold up if you don a blindfold and take them for a test drive?
I used to think that stereotypes and preconceived notions about what is right and wrong when it comes to bass were things that other people dealt with—not me. I was past all that. Unfazed by opinion, immune to classification. Or so I thought, tucked away in my jazz-hermit-like existence.
That belief was shattered the day Ian Martin Allison handed me a Fender Coronado while I was blindfolded in his basement. (Don’t ask—it’s a long story and an even longer YouTube video if you have time to kill.) For years, I had been a single-cut, 5-string, high-C-string player. That was my world. So, you can imagine my shock when I connected almost instantly with something that felt like it was orbiting a different solar system.
Less than 5 minutes with the instrument, and it was all over. The bass stayed in Ian’s basement. (I did not.) I returned home to Los Angeles, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I kept playing my beloved semi-chambered single-cut 5-string, but I sent its builder, Anders Mattisson, a message about my recent discovery. I asked if there was any way we could create something with the essence of a Coronado while still suiting my playing and my music.
That’s when everything I thought I knew about bass—and the personal boundaries I had set for myself—came crashing down.
When we started talking about building a bass with a fully chambered body, much like the Coronado, I was adamant about two things: It needed to have active electronics, and I would never play a headless bass.
Fast-forward three months to the winterNAMM show in California. Anders arrived for dinner at my house, along with a group of incredible bass players, includingHenrik Linder. I was literally in a chef’s apron, trying to get course after course of food on the table, when Henrik said, “Hey, let’s bring the new bass in.”
He came down the stairs carrying something that looked suspiciously like a guitar case—not a bass case. I figured there had been some kind of mistake or maybe even a prank. When I finally got a break from the chaos in the kitchen, I sat down with the new bass for the first time. And, of course, it was both headless and passive.
I should mention that even though I had made my requests clear—no headless bass, active electronics—I had also told Anders that I trusted him completely. And I’m so glad I did. He disintegrated my assumptions about what a bass “has to” or “should” be, and in doing so, changed my life as a musician in an instant. The weight reduction from the fully chambered body made it essential for the instrument to be headless to maintain perfect balance. And the passive nature of the pickups gave me the most honest representation of my sound that I’ve ever heard in over 30 years of playing bass.
I’m 46 years old. It took me this long to let go of certain fundamental beliefs about my instrument and allow them to evolve naturally, without interference. Updating my understanding of what works for me as a bass player required perspective, whereas some of my most deeply held beliefs about the instrument were based on perception. I don’t want to disregard my experiences or instincts, but I do want to make sure I’m always open to the bigger picture—to other people’s insights and expertise.
Trusting my bass builder’s vision opened musical doors that would have otherwise stayed bolted shut for years to come. The more I improve my awareness of where the line between perception and perspective falls, the more I can apply it to all aspects of my world of bass.
Maybe this month, it’s playing an instrument I never would have previously considered. Next month, it might be incorporating MIDI into my pedalboard, or transcribing bass lines from spaghetti Westerns.
No matter what challenges or evolutions I take on in my music and bass playing, I want to remain open—open to change, open to new ideas, and open to being proven wrong. Because sometimes, the instrument you never thought you’d play ends up being the one that changes everything.
Genuine, dynamic Vox sound and feel. Plenty of different tone-sweetening applications. Receives other pedals as nicely as a real amp.
Can get icy quick. Preamp tube presents risk for damage.
$299
Tubesteader Roy
tubesteader.com
The Roy is an exceedingly faithful Vox box that brings genuine tube dynamics to your pedalboard.
This is an interesting moment for amp-in-a-box pedals. It used to be novel to have a little box that approximated the tone signature of an iconic amp. Nowadays, though, modeling pedals and profilers can give you many digital emulations in one package. Nevertheless, there are still worlds of possibility in pedals that copy amp topology in discrete form—particularly when you add a real preamp tube to that mix.
That’s what Montreal builder Tubesteader did with the Roy, their entry in the Vox-Top-Boost-AC30-in-a-box race. The Roy is a 2-channel preamp and overdrive built around a 12AX7 vacuum tube—a design gambit that is relatively uncommon if not totally unique. The tube makes the Roy look much more vintage in spirit at a time when sleek, black Helixes and Fractals are overtaking stages. In some ways, it looks like an antique. It can sound like one in the best way too.
Riding the Tube
The Roy comes in a handsome brownish-red enclosure, with an unsurprising control layout. The rightmost footswitch turns the pedal on and off, and the one at left switches between the identical channels. Each channel has an output volume and gain knob; the controls on the right are assigned to the default channel, and when you tap the left footswitch, you engage the left-side control tandem. The treble and bass controls between the two volume and gain knobs are shared by the two channels, but a post-EQ master tone cut control, which rolls off additional treble frequencies, is mounted on the crown of the pedal beside the power input. The input and output jacks occupy the left and right sides, along with a 3.5 mm jack for external operation. The Roy runs at 12 volts and draws 350 mA, and the included power supply can be reconfigured easily for a range of international outlets.
Tubesteader’s literature says the pedal’s tones are generated via a high-voltage transistor in the first gain stage coupled with the 12AX7, which operates at 260 volts. That preamp tube is nested at the top of the enclosure’s face, underneath a protective metal “roll bar”. Trusty as it looks, when there is a glass element on the exterior of a pedal’s housing, there’s an element of vulnerability, and transporting and using the Roy probably requires a more conscientious approach than a standard stompbox.
Royal Tones
Compared to the Vox's own Mystic Edge, an AC30-in-a-box from Vox powered by Korg’s NuTube vacuum fluorescent display technology, the Roy feels warmer, and more dynamic, proving that the 12AX7 isn’t just there for looks. The Mystic Edge could sound positively icy compared to the Roy’s smooth, even breakup. The Roy is very happy at aggressive settings, and in my estimation, it sounds best with output volumes driving an amp hard and the pedal’s gain around 3 o’clock. That recipe sounds good with single-coil guitars, but with a P-90-loaded Les Paul Junior, it achieves roaring classic-rock greatness. I’ve always felt Voxes, rather than Marshalls, are better vehicles for dirty punk chording. The Roy did nothing to dissuade me from that belief. And the pedals' midrange punch and bark in power-chord contexts lent authority and balance that makes such chords hit extra hard.
Though the Roy creates many of its own tasty drive tones, it really comes to life when pushed by a boost or overdrive, much like a real amp. When I punched it with a Fish Circuits Model One overdrive, the Roy was smoother and less spiky than a cranked AC30, yet there was plenty of note definition, attack, and the harmonic riches you’d turn to an AC for in the first place. A JFET SuperCool Caffeine Boost also brought additional depth and color to the output and broadened the pedal’s voice.
If you’re most comfortable with a real Vox amp, the Roy is a reliable and familiar-feeling stand-in when managing a different backline amp. In at least one way, though, the Roy is, perhaps, a bit toofaithful to its influence’s design: There’s a lot of treble on tap, and it’s easy to cook up tinnitus-inducing frequencies if you get too aggressive with the treble control. Noon positions on the cut/boost tone knobs sound pretty neutral. But I found it difficult to push the treble much past 2 o’clock without wincing—even with the tone cut control set at its darkest. (This quality, of course, may make the Roy a good match for squishier Fender-style designs). The relationship between the Roy’s treble and bass controls also takes time to master. The two don’t just add or boost their respective frequencies, but also add or subtract midrange, which can result in intense and sudden gain-response changes. As a general guideline, a light touch goes a long way when fine tuning these frequencies.The Verdict
The Roy isn’t exactly a bargain at $299. Then again, this Vox-in-a-box can stand in for real-deal Top Boost tones and the 2-channel design means you can move between an AC’s chimey cleans and ripping cranked sounds in a flash. If you’re squarely in the Vox amp camp, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more authentic means of achieving that range of clean-to-crunchy sounds.