
Black-metal mensches: Misha Mansoor (left) and Mark Holcomb are the brain trust of Haunted Shores and two-thirds of Periphery’s guitar triumvirate.
The guitar daredevils—wielding their Jackson and PRS axes—bite into the seething darkness of black metal with their soul-searing new album, Void.
As two thirds of the triumvirate of guitarists that provides taste-making progressive metal juggernaut Periphery with its genre-shifting 6-, 7-, and 8-string assault, Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcomb are among the most influential players of their generation.
Mansoor—the band’s founder, a prolific designer of popular signature gear and software, and a busy producer (including working with the influential Animals as Leaders, who consider him a ghost member)—has been a powerful shaping force of the polyrhythm obsessed, post-Meshuggah djent sound that’s swept contemporary metal over the last decade. Mansoor and Holcomb, along with Periphery co-guitarist Jake Bowen, possess an uncanny athleticism and downright lethal picking that makes the churning riffs and fleet-fingered runs that characterize their music seem almost easy. But this article isn’t about Periphery.
While Periphery fans anxiously await the band’s seventh full-length studio record, which has spent over 15 months mired in pandemic complications, Mansoor and Holcomb have found the time to reboot Haunted Shores, the primarily instrumental, black-metal-infused-prog studio project that originally brought them together. Before Holcomb was drafted into Periphery’s guit-army, Haunted Shores was his primary focus. When Mansoor was hired to produce Haunted Shores’ debut, the pair quickly realized their writing chemistry was fertile ground for deeper collaboration. As a duo, they’ve written, played, and programmed nearly everything on Haunted Shores’ recordings. That band released a split EP in 2010 and a fan-favorite eponymous LP in 2011, but when Holcomb joined Periphery that same year, the project was effectively iced.
Between the difficulties of getting Periphery’s impending release made and the excess creative energy caused by pandemic downtime, Holcomb and Mansoor saw a revitalized Haunted Shores as a “much needed outlet,” as Holcomb puts it. With their new LP Void, the pair have not just breathed fresh life into their loser, hairier, scarier side project, but finally closed the circle on some of the earliest material they ever penned together.
Haunted Shores - Hellfire (Official Audio)
“Functionally, Haunted Shores works in every way that Periphery doesn’t, and we get things done super quickly,” Holcomb explains. “It’s a breeze to do, and a fun, easy outlet. Not that Periphery’s not fun, but there are many more checks and balances involved. Haunted Shores is this crazy free-for-all for Misha and I. There’s this band called Archspire, and they play ultra-fast but super tasty and ultra-technical death-metal. Whenever I hear that band, I start laughing because I’m like ‘Jesus Christ! How do they pull this off?!’ That’s the feeling you’re supposed to get when writing Haunted Shores’ music. So as long as it satisfies those criteria, we’ll keep an idea. That’s not to say we don’t consider the process precious, but it’s a nice release from the long game of Periphery, where things tend to take quite a while.”
From Mansoor’s perspective, Haunted Shores provides a space to “scratch all the itches that we can’t within the confines of Periphery’s sound.” And while he admits that “Periphery has quite a bit of breadth stylistically,” what he loves about working in Haunted Shores is that “there’s a sense that we have no responsibility to play any of this stuff live, which allows us to approach things from a purely compositional standpoint and go over-the-top and write things that can’t necessarily be played live.”
The songs on Void put Haunted Shores’ black metal influence front-and-center, though it’s still got a combat boot firmly in prog territory. The duo revels in blackened, trem-picked guitars and turbulent salvos of note-y leads, and album opener “Hellfire” is a blast-beat-driven prog-metal maelstrom that’s colored with frosty-sounding minor chord grips. Mansoor produced the record and programmed all of the drums, and while it’s easy to contextualize this band as just the side project of a mega-influential prog band, it would be a mistake to think of Void’s songs as discarded Periphery riffs with corpse paint on. This record has its own unique personality and compositions, and black metal played a major role in Holcomb’s musical upbringing.
“Haunted Shores is this crazy free-for-all for Misha and I.” —Mark Holcomb
“I sucked at the guitar,” he says, explaining his black metal roots. “It was ’97, and I picked up In the Nightside Eclipse by Emperor, and I didn’t even have to hear the music. All I had to do was see the pictures of them in the forest, and I thought it was the coolest thing! I was 16 years old, and I was like, ‘This is what I want to do! I want to be that, and I want to move to Norway. I want to get a club and put nails in it and pose for pictures with it in the woods.’ It still makes me giddy, and it never lost that for me.”
Beyond the striking visuals of the Norwegian bands that first turned Holcomb onto black metal, the accomplished shredder says he appreciated the punk-rock quality of the music as a fledgling player. “I always liked that you didn’t have to be textbook good at your instrument to play it. The barrier of entry for black metal is not very high, so it’s the same as when people fall in love with the Sex Pistols or the Ramones, in that sense. Black metal had this edge and danger to it that bands like Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse also had … but you had to be really fucking good at your instrument to play that stuff. My favorites in that realm are bands who have evolved—especially Satyricon and Emperor, and Ihsahn [Emperor’s lead guitarist/songwriter], who still have black metal aspects to their music but have grown into prolific prog juggernauts with a lot more to say. I wanted this record to be a love letter to that style of music.”
For Mansoor, black metal came into his life via his Haunted Shores counterpart. However, the same cartoonish visuals that enchanted a young Holcomb have always turned Mansoor off. “There’s a lot about more extreme metal and black metal aesthetically that I’m not a huge fan of,” he says, “so my interpretation is a cleaner, more polished version of it. I love a lot of the playing aesthetics—like trem-picked guitars and blast beats—but I’m trying to tame it in a way and put it in a context that my ears want to hear. So, it’s not pure in any sense, but Mark and I are very happy to meet in the middle because it ends up being its own thing there. Mark showing me Ihsahn and Emperor was what really perked my ears up. When I heard Emperor, I thought ‘Oh wow! This is progressive. This is a guy who’s clearly been raised in the black metal scene but has aspirations of progressive music and is trying to fuse those into something.’ I’m coming at it from the other end, where I’m from the progressive music world but want to infuse it with a blackened thing. Having Mark as a vessel of inspiration and someone that can set a benchmark of what’s appropriate for black metal is nice. It means that the riffs are always flowing when we’re working together.”
Mark Holcomb’s Gear
Mark Holcomb plays one of his PRS SE signature models onstage. Note the guitar’s simple but effective control set: a volume and a push/pull tone dial plus a 3-way blade switch, which bridles a set of Seymour Duncan Alpha and Omega pickups.
Photo by Randy Edwards
Guitars
- 2014 PRS Private Stock Custom 24
- PRS SE Mark Holcomb
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL (.011–.056)
- Horizon Devices strings (various gauges)
- Dunlop .88 mm
- Dunlop Jazz III (for lead tracking)
Amps
- Misha Mansoor Peavey Invective 120
- Omega Ampworks Granophyre
- Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier Revision F
- Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier Revision G
- Mesa/Boogie Badlander
- Peavey 6505 (modded Invective prototype)
- PRS Archon
- GetGood Drums Zilla cab sims
Effects (shared)
- T-Rex Replicator Tape Echo (on “Null”)
- Horizon Devices Precision Drive
The riffs have indeed flowed since the duo first connected. In fact, the incendiary Void songs “When In Oslo” and “Immaterial” are reimagined versions of demos of the first two songs Holcomb and Mansoor ever worked on as a team, but which, curiously, never made it to an official release. The guitarists directly credit this pair of tracks with forging their remarkable chemistry.
“Those are very important songs as far as establishing Misha and I’s creative relationship, and set the table for me joining Periphery,” says Holcomb. “The first time I ever sat down with Misha to write music was 2007, and we wrote ‘When In Oslo.’ The lead lines on that song were something Misha jammed out on-the-spot, over a chord progression that I’d brought him with these wider, darker-sounding minor chords that shifted around. I remember Misha was just dancing around the chords in a way that I thought was so clever, and not something I would’ve done. I didn’t really know Misha yet, but at that point it was like, ‘I think this guy is my musical sibling now.’ That song was this Tinder ‘swipe right’ moment.”
“There’s a sense that we have no responsibility to play any of this stuff live, which allows us to approach things from a purely compositional standpoint and go over-the-top and write things that can’t necessarily be played live.” —Misha Mansoor
“There’s just this electricity that happens between us, and I really look forward to it,” says Mansoor. “It’s one of my favorite things to experience when I’m writing—this flow state where the ideas are coming out and it just feels like everyone’s bouncing off each other and you get momentum going. It’s impossible to replicate unless you’re working with people you have good writing chemistry with.”
The melodic but vicious leads on “When In Oslo” recall some of Opeth’s heavier work—driven home by the decidedly Opeth-esque drum feel. That’s a band Holcomb says is “a big-time touchstone.” So much so that the song “Nocturnal Hours” is named after a lyric in the Opeth number “The Drapery Falls.” However, Mansoor was channeling a much more unexpected energy into the leads on “When In Oslo.”
Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcomb kept their eyes on their highly charged creative partnership during the creation of Haunted Shores’ new album, Void.
“Two words: Final Fantasy,” Mansoor says, name-checking the video game with music by Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu. “People are always like, ‘You sound like you love Meshuggah,’ and I do. They’re like my favorite band, but the person I rip off the most—that I totally get away with—is Nobuo Uematsu. I’m always lifting his vibe because I adore it.”
Holcomb and Mansoor found the creative growth they’ve experienced during the pandemic has less to do with guitar-playing fundamentals (though Holcomb did “force” Snarky Puppy’s Mark Lettieri to give him a guitar lesson via Skype) and more to do with expanding their respective processes as songwriters.
“I want to move to Norway. I want to get a club and put nails in it and pose for pictures with it in the woods.” —Mark Holcomb
Holcomb focused his efforts on getting serious about fleshing out fully formed demos at home. “Composing with a computer in front of me is an approach I’d never done before,” he explains. “I’ve always been able to record myself in a very cursory way, but when I’d write, I’d sit in front of an amp and noodle until something comes out. A lot of my output in Periphery is wordy, with a lot of notes being played, and I think that has to do with it being written without anything else in mind except guitar. When I started to compose in front of the computer, I started to write in sections. It became a very slow, deliberate, methodical process done a few notes at a time. I got proficient at it and that’s how a lot of the crazier stuff on the Haunted Shores record was written. The crazy, run-on-sentence riffs on “Perpetual Windburn,” “OnlyFangs,” and “Hellfire” were written a bar at a time. I don’t think I could’ve done that before I dug in and opened myself up to that different way of writing.”
Misha Mansoor’s Gear
Playing live, or even playing guitar, isn’t as big a priority to Misha Mansoor as his songwriting, production, and search for a creative “flow state.” Here, he’s deploying one of his Jackson 7-string Juggernaut models, with a 26 1/2" scale neck and MM1 humbuckers.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
Guitars
- Jackson Misha Mansoor Juggernaut HT6
- Jackson Pro Series Juggernaut (6-string with EverTune bridge)
- Jackson Juggernaut HT7 7-string
- Jackson MJ Series Misha Mansoor So-Cal 2PT
- Jackson Custom Shop SoCal
Strings & Picks
- Horizon Devices Progressive Tension (.010–.058)
- Dunlop .73 mm
- Misha Mansoor signature Custom Delrin Flow Pick
Amps & Effects
- (see Mark Holcomb’s Gear sidebar)
Mansoor, despite being considered a bona fide guitar hero by many, says he “feels less and less like a guitar player these days and more like a composer and producer.” He breaks his headspace down: “The guitar is just the instrument I’m very familiar with, so it’s easy to get ideas out of it. I don’t play guitar quite as much as I used to, and I almost see it as a means to an end and a tool these days … which I know isn’t the most romantic thing. I’m sure these things ebb and flow.”
However, Mansoor’s guitar work is kept fresh thanks in part to the demo obligations he has for his gear companies: Horizon Devices and GetGood Drums. In fact, Mansoor says he realized through the pandemic that recording demo clips of new products for social media is where some of his favorite recent musical ideas have been born: “I always have to write demo clips for new products, and generally these clips are written with some sort of spec in mind, like a minute long for Instagram or in a specific style to promo a specific product. I don’t put the same sort of weight on those things as I would a Periphery or Haunted Shores song, but those demo clips have generated some really cool ideas. It’s this interesting thought experiment where if I’m not feeling the stress of writing a song, it allows the creativity to flow in a cool way. What I’ve discovered by accident is that afterwards I’m usually like, ‘Hey! This idea is actually pretty cool!’ That’s been my pandemic experience, because I’ve had to do a lot of work for the companies, and that’s been a little bit of a treat, to be honest.
“The interesting thing and the beautiful irony of all of this is that some of these clip ideas have generated Periphery songs,” he continues. “I don’t even care about guitar that much at this point. It’s really about the ideas in your head getting out into the real world somehow, whatever that somehow is. As long as it sounds good and yields a good result. That’s where my head’s at. I’m not that good a guitarist. I’m not even the best guitarist in my band, but I really, really like to write and I’m pretty good at songwriting and I’m pretty good at producing and directing these things. And I really enjoy that work, and a lot of my friends who are very, very good at their instruments need someone like that, so we have this relationship that works very well. Now that I’m a little bit older and more established, I don’t feel like I need to prove myself or show everyone how great I am at guitar.”
“That song was this Tinder ‘swipe right’ moment.” —Mark Holcomb
Mansoor and Holcomb are some of the highest-profile extended-scale players in the metal world, and both have their own signature 7- and 8-string models (Mansoor with Jackson and Holcomb with PRS). However, even for the drop-tuned chug of songs like “Hellfire”—which uses a drop-G tuning Holcomb discovered when writing the 17-minute Periphery riff fest “Reptile”—the pair opted for 6-strings for the lion’s share of Void.
“My tuning of choice for a 6-string is the ‘Hellfire’ tuning,” says Holcomb, “where I take a guitar in C standard and drop the 6th string all the way down to a G, so you get an octave relationship between the 6th string and the 5th string. You can hang your thumb over the 6th and 5th strings to get this really heavy droning octave sound. ‘Hellfire’ was the first song written for the record and one of the things I was most proud of with that song is those chords in the beginning, where you have these wide, minor black metal chords with the thumb handling those octaves. The rest of the album was kind of based off the spirit captured in that song.”
Mansoor’s done more than his fair share to help popularize extended scale guitars, but he maintains that he’s always considered 6-, 7-, and 8-stringed guitars to be “almost completely different instruments. If you have a basic musical idea to start with, that same idea would probably yield completely different songs if you worked it out on a 6-string, verses a 7- or 8-string. Every idea is sort of a reaction, so it’s about finding a tuning that generates riffs for us, and that ‘Hellfire’ tuning seems to be one of them.”
Rig Rundown - Periphery [2017]
See how Misha and Mark's setups differ between Haunted Shores and their "day job" with Periphery.
Being that Void was tracked at Mansoor and Holcomb’s respective home studio spaces, the gear used was largely their signature stuff. For guitars, Holcomb relied heavily on the original PRS Private Stock Custom 24 that inspired his signature model, as well as an SE signature model with an EverTune bridge. When the duo tracked at Mansoor’s space, it was his signature Jacksons they reached for. Mansoor chiefly used a blue USA Juggernaut model he calls his workhorse, as well as a Pro Series Juggernaut that was modified with an EverTune bridge, which Mansoor says saves an incredible amount of time in the studio thanks to its precise intonation. Mansoor also used his most recent signature Jackson, an MJ Series So-Cal, on “a shocking amount of the album.” It’s a Strat-style guitar with a HSS arrangement of Bare Knuckle pickups, stainless steel frets, and a 20" radius. “It looks like a dad rock guitar,” he says, “but the thing shreds! And the versatility is there. You get the fourth position and second position Strat sounds very authentically. That guitar is the one that I instinctively reach for a lot because it’s the everything guitar and I love the fact that it looks the way that it does.”
The amps that handled the heavy lifting on Void were Mansoor’s signature Peavey Invective 120 and Omega Ampworks Granophyre head. Mansoor says that pairing sat in the mix inexplicably well and anything else they used was just for color and variety.
“It’s really about the ideas in your head getting out into the real world somehow, whatever that somehow is.” —Misha Mansoor
With a new Haunted Shores record under their belt and the final stretch on Periphery’s next release underway, Holcomb and Mansoor are excited to continue pushing the envelope. “At the end of the day, I would keep music a hobby if I started to feel like something was expected of me,” Holcomb says. “I don’t want to speak for the rest of the band, but I love artists like Ihsahn and Devin Townsend and Mike Patton and Opeth—who just do whatever the hell they want and hope their fanbase is along for the ride. Luckily, progressive rock or metal fans tend to be open. I hope that never goes away. They’re down to hear bands try something else out. I love that we have the ability in our careers to just try whatever we want. I want to be one of those guys at the end of it all who can look back and be like, “Yeah, that was a hell of a journey and we went to some wild places musically and weren’t afraid to go there.”
Mansoor finds himself in a similarly philosophical place and confesses he’s just chasing flow states in all of his creative pursuits: “Do you like to drive? Have you ever gotten into that flow state when it’s almost like watching yourself drive? It’s those moments that I chase and that’s how I feel when I’m in the zone writing and there’s good chemistry and it feels like ideas are flowing back-and-forth. I feel like I'm watching this song get assembled in front of me. It almost feels like I can enjoy watching the process as much as I’m directing it. It doesn’t feel conscious. That’s a really beautiful thing. That’s what I get out of making music. I’m at the point now where I’ll only really accept gigs that I would do for free anyways. I still have to charge and make sure my time is worth something, but it’s a philosophical thing, where if I wouldn’t be cool with doing it for free, I won’t do it anymore because what I’m trying to get out of it on some level is very selfish. I just want that experience of flow state creativity.”
Haunted Shores - OnlyFangs (Misha & Mark Guitar Playthrough)
Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcomb play through the finger-busting “OnlyFangs,” from Haunted Shores’ new album, Void. Shredding? Heavy rhythms? You got it!
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Elliott Sharp is a dapper dude. Not a dandy, mind you, but an elegant gentleman.
The outside-the-box 6-string swami pays homage to the even-further-outside-the-box musician who’s played a formative role in the downtown Manhattan scene and continues to quietly—and almost compulsively—shape the worlds of experimental and roots music.
Often the most potent and iconoclastic artists generate extraordinary work for decades, yet seem to be relegated to the shadows, to a kind of perma-underground status. Certainly an artist like my friend Elliott Sharp fits this category. Yes, his work can be resolutely avant-garde. But perhaps the most challenging thing about trying to track this man is the utterly remarkable breadth of his work.
I am writing this piece for a guitar magazine, so, necessarily, I must serve up info that is guitar-centric. And I can do that, at least a little bit. But Elliott is also a noted composer, runs his own little record label, plays woodwinds proficiently, is a guitar builder/tinkerer, author, gracious supporter of other musicians’ efforts, family man, and killer blues player—a blues scholar, in fact. So where do we, the public, conditioned to needing categories, pigeonholes, and easy assessment signals, put Elliott Sharp—an artist with a powerful work ethic and a long, illustrious career of making mind-bending sounds and conceptual works? How about putting him in the pantheon of the maverick and the multifaceted? Surely this pantheon exists somewhere! In mind, in heart. To those for whom such things resonate and inspire, I bring you Elliott Sharp.
One can obviously go to the information superhighway to find info on Elliott, and to hear his music, so I won’t go into too many details about where he was born (Cleveland) and when (March 1, 1951; as of this writing, Elliott is 74), or what he is best known for (being a crucial figure in the downtown New York City scene from 1979 to the present). He is Berlin Prize winner and a Guggenheim Fellow (among other honors). And I have never asked him what strings and picks he uses, so maybe I have already blown it here. But I realize now, having taken on this assignment, that inherent in writing about and trying to explain Elliott Sharp is an implicit TMI factor. There is so much going on here, so much diverse information that could be imparted, that I would not be the least bit surprised if some readers eventually glaze over a bit and start thinking of their own life’s efforts and goals as rather paltry. I get that! Although you shouldn’t.
E# @NaturalHabitat
Here, now, is my portrait of Elliott, accompanied by what I imagine is a day in the life of Elliott when he’s at home in New York City.
Elliott Sharp is a dapper dude. Not a dandy, mind you, but an elegant gentleman. He, like so many in New York and in the world of music/art/guitar, favors dark-hued clothing (yeah, a preponderance of black) and is most often seen wearing a classic slouch hat of obvious quality. He relocated from Buffalo via Western Massachusetts to lower Manhattan in 1979 to a zone that was, back then, quite treacherously decrepit, in an apartment that offered only an hour or so of heat in the winter, etc., etc. It was cheap, and things were always happening, and, in fact, it was the 1950s domicile of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.The area became the nexus of an ever-expanding circle of iconoclastic, experimental artists of many stripes.
Sharp plays what passes for a fairly staid instrument in his collection: a bass and guitar doubleneck, in 1992.
Elliott is still in that building in the East Village, though it is now only his workplace and not his living space. I am trying to remember exactly when I met Elliott, but it was probably about 25 years ago, and he still had only the one small, original apartment and a shared music space in the Garment District. I, like countless others before and after me, stayed in that East Village apartment whenever I needed a place to crash and Elliott was elsewhere, and eventually he was able to secure the next door apartment and expand his space. This is where Elliott Sharp works every day that he is not touring, pretty much 9 to 6. The place is a bit funky and dusty, and it is filled with instruments, amps (some classics, like a mid-’60s Princeton Reverb and a tweed Champ), and other tools accumulated over many decades—in spite of the many times that certain ones had to be sold to keep bread on the table.
When he’s not composing, scoring films, recording other artists, or gigging with the bands he has been in or led for the last several decades (Mofungo, Carbon/Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, Terraplane, The Bootstrappers, Aggragat), Elliott tinkers with guitars, pedals, mandolins. Elliott is, to me, the king of guitar transformation, and his tinkering is stunningly Frankensteinian as he guts, rebuilds, and alters all kinds of stringed instruments, both electric and acoustic. He recently told me that in the ’60s he built fuzz boxes out of tobacco tins to make money. How cool would it be to have one of those now?? If one does a search on Elliott Sharp, many photos will reveal what I'm talking about: the handcrafted doubleneck he was most often seen playing in the ’80s (there was maybe more than one), 8-string guitars, modified Strat-type guitars with completely different pickups.. He also has a fancy guitar or two, such as his Koll fanned-fret 8-string, upon which he has played many a solo recital. During Covid time,, things were a little slow in the cash-flow department and, as a family man with twins, a little extra income was needed. So Elliott started building really cool-looking guitars out of cheap
ones and parts from wherever and refinishing them in hip and attractive ways and called them Mutantu. He sold them to friends and friends of friends. Yours truly basically only changes strings on his guitars, appealing helplessly to experts to do any kind of work on his guitars and amps, afraid of costly errors. The maverick and multifaceted among us, like Elliott, possess no such fear.
Even a leader in experimental 6-string gets a little guitar face now and then—especially when he’s playing blues.
Photo by Scott Friedlander
So, back to that promised day in the life of Elliott Sharp (as imagined, with some degree of knowledge, by me): It’s early morning, and there is family to contend with. No bohemian lollygagging! So it’s feed the kids breakfast, do what parents must do. Then it’s off to the office (his studio), so Elliott dons a fine gray shirt (is that silk?), dark trousers, coat, and hat, and walks north from the family apartment on nearly the lowest point of eastern Manhattan to the East Village. The traffic and endless refurbishing of the Williamsburg Bridge roars familiarly overhead, the East River flows, and eventually a river of another kind, Houston Street, is crossed. Up the stairs to the fifth floor and the studio door is unlocked. Espresso is made. (There will be more of this.) The computer is turned on. And then ... who knows? Anything could be on the docket, but some sort of work will ensue for a good eight hours. Maybe a new graphic score for a German symphony is in the works (some of these have become visual artworks, too), or maybe it's time to try another mix of that Terraplane track, the one with Elliott’s friend, hero, and inspiration Hubert Sumlin—the one Elliott recorded not long before the famed Howlin’ Wolf guitarist joined his ancestors in the Great Beyond. Or maybe he’s recording a variation on his trio ERR Guitar (where he was originally joined by Marc Ribot and Mary Halvorson), called ERE Guitar Today, with Sally Gates and Tashi Dorji. Could happen—and it did. You can see Elliott’s studio in the ERE Guitar CD booklet.
Or maybe it’s guitar tinkering/building time. Where’s that delightfully chunky neck from China that would be awesome on that fake Tele body that was just refitted with no-name humbuckers (“sounded good once I removed the pickup covers,” Elliott observes) and a resophonic guitar tailpiece? By 5 or 6 it’s time to go home, maybe cook dinner tonight. And then ... my little imagined epic ends with a tasteful cinematic cliché: the dissolve.
The E# Way
Elliott Sharp has techniques that, in some cases, are all his own. No stranger to open tunings, prepared guitar, and other extended techniques, he often utilizes rhythmic, two-hand tapping to create spiraling, hypnotic patterns. His composing over these many years has employed and embraced genetics, Fibonacci numbers, algorithms, and fractal geometry. Though a mathematics and physics know-nothing myself, I see and hear a relationship between these elements as he has applied them to his uncompromisingly avant-garde compositions and these tapping patterns often heard in his solo work. Once he kicks in signal processing, stand back! What one hears sounds like four people (or other species and life forms), and the sensation is exhilarating. Sure, there could also be evidence of (here it comes) skronk (I can't believe I used that word), but Elliott certainly does not reside permanently in that world. Enjoying all kinds of sounds, from the lonesome moan of a resonator guitar to the aleatoric sputterings and squeals of a tormented electric guitar, is something he and I share, after all. Take, for example, two of his latest recordings on his zOaR imprint, Mandorleand Mandocello, which document his solo work on the two instruments, respectively. Both recordings investigate the instruments’ acoustic characteristics before, about half-way through, switching suddenly to electric, ultra-processed sounds. It’s a bracing experience that explains a few things about this man and the breadth of his aesthetic sweep. The sounds bring up images of recombinant DNA (information on which he has also imbued into his work), roiling lava, and the ever-expanding universe. Recommended!
Sharp applies his wicked two-handed-tapping technique to his 8-string, fanned-fret guitar built by Saul Koll.
Photo by Scott Friedlander
So, this might fit into the aforementioned TMI category, but Elliott Sharp puts out a staggering amount of recordings. Every time I see him (which is not often enough), he has a little pile of compact discs for me, often on zOaR. I saw somewhere recently that he has released 165 recordings, but I think there are probably more than that. It’s hard for even the data lords to keep up! But it’s not always Elliott Sharp pieces or improvisation/collaborations on these albums. Other artists whom Elliott knows and respects can be represented, such as Spanish electric guitarist/conceptualizer A. L. Guillén, late bassist/producer Peter Freeman, Italian voice and guitar duo XIPE, or Hardenger fiddle player Agnese Amico—all articulate and singular musicians whom Elliott assists by releasing their music. I am grateful for this. It’s obviously more “work” for Elliott, and he accomplishes it, along with everything else he takes on or imagines doing, with elegant aplomb. Though obviously a nose-to-the-grindstone worker, Elliott is generally low-key and relaxed, even after those espressos.
The last thing I want to write about is Elliott's interpretations of the music of Thelonious Monk. Are you surprised, even after everything else you have just read, that something like that exists? In 2003, Elliott released a solo acoustic guitar recording called Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk!, and stunned the world (well, those few who pay attention to such things). However, my first exposure to Elliott's Monk interpretations was the more recent Monkulations, expertly recorded live in Vienna in 2007. (You can hear it on Bandcamp). These recordings are, justifiably I suppose, controversial in certain corners, because they do not adhere to Monk's exact written particulars note-for-note. Yet the mood, gestures, rhythmic wonders, and even the harmonic depth of Thelonious Monk often emerges, and frequently in astonishing ways. I understand why some would take issue with this approach because it departs significantly from the jazz tradition, but I find it remarkably fresh, bold, and so delightfully E#. They reveal an aspect of Elliott’s thinking and playing that is surprising in some ways, but also so him. It is clear to me that Elliott has seriously examined and internalized Monk’s repertoire.
Spring(s) in the garden: Sharp can use just about any tool in his improvisations.
Photo by Norman Westberg
Elliott is an artist who plays more than one instrument, plays them all in unique, startling, and often innovative ways, composes rigorous conceptual works from chamber music to operas, makes electronic music with no guitar, plays mean blues guitar like a swamp rat, authors books (I highly recommend his mostly memoir IrRational Music, and a second book is emerging this fall), builds and modifies guitars and other devices, is stunningly prolific, and is an elegant gentleman. The planet is a better place with him and his work in it. The maverick and multifaceted often have a rough road to tread, as we all know. So check out Elliott Sharp's vast world if any of this seems interesting to you. Thanks, Elliott!
YouTube
Watch Elliott Sharp and Marc Ribot deliver a masterclass in free improvisation at Manhattan’s Cornelia Street Café in 2010—Sharp’s two-handed tapping and slide playing included.
Elliott Sharp’s Favorite Gear
This doubleneck guitar accompanied Sharp on many of his ’80s performances and is one of his earlier experimental instruments, as is this 8-string.
Road
Guitars
• Strandberg 8-string Boden
• 1996 Henderson-Greco 8-string
Amp
• Fender Deluxe Reverb or black-panel Twin Reverb (depending on size of venue)
• Trace-Elliot bass amp w 4x10 cabinet
(live rig uses both amps, run in stereo)
Effects
• Eventide H90 w/ Sonicake expression pedal
• Sonicake Fuzz
• Hotone Komp
• Hotone Blues
• TC Electronic Flashback 2
• VSN Twin Looper
Accessories
• Slides, EBows, springs, metal rods and strips, small wooden and ceramic square plates
Home
Guitars
• 1946 Martin OO-18 acoustic guitar
• 2006 Squier 51 (Sharp explains: “On New Year's Day 2007, I took the twins down to the East River in their stroller. They were 15 months old and knew a few words. As we rolled along, they started shouting “guitar, guitar,” and, sure enough, sticking out of a garbage can was a black Squier 51 that someone had attempted to ritually sacrifice. Brought it home and cleaned it, and it’s become a favorite couch guitar.”)
Obviously, any sound that emerges from the Triple-Course Bass Pantar is likelly to be interesting.
Studio
Guitars and stringed instruments
• Fender 1994 ’50s Telecaster built from a Fender-offered kit
• Mutantum lime green metalflake Strat w/Seymour Duncan Little ’59 pickups
• Mutantum solidbody “manouche” Strat w/classical neck
• Saul Koll custom 8-string
• Rick Turner Renaissance Baritone
• 1966 Epiphone Howard Roberts
• 1965 Harmony Bobkat
• 1984/’96 Heer-Henderson Doubleneck
• 1956 Gibson CF-100 acoustic guitar
• 1968 Hagstrom H8 8-string bass
• Mutantum Norma fretless electric
• Godin Multiac Steel Duet
• 2001 Dell’Arte Grande Bouche
• 1958 Fender Stringmaster 8-string console steel guitar
• 1936 Rickenbacker B6 lap steel
• 1950s Framus Nevada Mandolinetto
• Mutantum Electric Mandocello
• Arches H-Line
• Triple-Course Bass Pantar
Amps
• 1966 Fender black-panel Princeton Reverb
• 1980 Fender 75 (Per Sharp: “Cut down to a head and modded by Matt Wells into a Dumble-ish monster! For recording, it plugs into a 1x10 cab with a Jensen speaker or a Hartke Transporter 2x10 cab
• 1970 Fender Bronco
• 1960 Fender tweed Champ modded by Matt Wells
Effects and Electronics
• Vintage EHX 16-Second Delay w/foot controller
• Eventide H3000
• Eventide PitchFactor
• Lexicon PCM42
• ZVEX Fuzz Factory
• Summit DCL-200 Compressor Limiter
• SSL SiX desktop
• Prescription Electronics Experience
• Zoom Ultra Fuzz
• Korg MS-20 analog synthesizer
• Korg Volca Modular synthesizer
• Make Noise 0-Coast synthesizer
• Moog Moogerfooger Ring Modulator
• Moog Moogerfooger Low-Pass Filter
• Softscience Optical Compressor (for DI recording, custom made by Kevin Hilbiber)
Strings
• Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010–.046) or Power Slinky (.011–.048), for conventional guitar.
The least exciting piece of your rig can impact your tone in a big way. Here’s what you need to know.
Hello, and welcome back to Mod Garage. This month, we will have a closer look at an often overlooked part of our guitar signal chain: the guitar cable. We’ll work out what really counts and how your cable’s tonal imprint differs from your guitar’s tone-control function.
Today, the choice of guitar cables is better than it’s ever been, and you can choose between countless options regarding color, stability, plug style, length, diameter, bending strength, shielding, etc. A lot of companies offer high-quality cables in any imaginable configuration, and there are also cables promising special advantages for specific instruments or music styles, from rock to blues to jazz.
Appearance, stability, longevity, bending stiffness, and plug configuration are matters of personal preference, and every guitarist has their own philosophy here, which I think is a great thing. While one player likes standard black soft cables with two straight plugs, their buddy prefers red cables that are stiff as hell with two angled plugs, and another friend swears by see-through coiled cables with golden plugs.
“We often want to come as close as possible to sounding like our personal heroes, but we fail because we’re using the wrong cable for a passive guitar.”
Regarding reliability, all these parameters are important. Who wants a guitar cable making problems every time you are on stage or in the studio? There are also technical parameters like resistance, capacitance, transfer resistance on the plugs, and more. Without making it too technical, we can summarize that, sound-wise, the only important technical parameter for a passive guitar circuit is the capacitance of the cable. Sadly, this information is often missing in the manufacturer’s description of a guitar cable, and there’s another thing we have to keep in mind: Most manufacturers try to offer cables with the smallest possible capacitance so the guitar can be heard “unaltered” and with a “pure” tone. While these are honourable intentions, they are self-defeating when it comes to making a guitar sound right.
Let’s take a trip back to the past and see what cables players used. Until the early 1980s, no one really cared about guitar cables—players simply used whatever was available. In the ’60s and ’70s, you could see a lot of ultra-long coiled cables on stage with players like Clapton, Hendrix, May, Townshend, Santana, and Knopfler, to name just a few. They used whatever was available, plugged in, and played without thinking about it. Ritchie Blackmore, for example, was famous for notoriously using incredibly long cables on stage so he could walk around. Joe Walsh and many other famous players did the same. Many of us have these players’ trademark sounds in our heads, and we often want to come as close as possible to sounding like our personal heroes, but we fail because we’re using the wrong cable for a passive guitar. So what are we talking about, technically?
It’s important not to look at the guitar cable, with its electrical parameters, as a stand-alone device. The guitar cable has to be seen as part of the passive signal chain together with the pickups, the resistance of the guitar’s pots (usually 250k or 500k), the capacitance of the wires inside the guitar, and, of course, the input impedance of the amp, which is usually 1M. The interaction of all these in a passive system results in the resonance frequency of your pickups. If you change one of the parameters, you are also changing the resonance frequency.
”Ritchie Blackmore, for example, was famous for notoriously using incredibly long cables on stage so he could walk around.“
You all know the basic formulation: The longer the cable, the warmer the tone, with “warmer” meaning less high-end frequencies. While this is true, in a few moments you will see that this is only half the truth. Modern guitar cables are sporting a capacitance of around 100 pF each meter, which is very low and allows for long cable runs without killing all the top end. Some ultra-low-capacitance cables even measure down to only 60 pF each meter or less.
Now let’s have a look at guitar cables of the past. Here, capacitances of up to 400 pF or more each meter were the standard, especially on the famous coiled cables. See the difference? No wonder it’s hard to nail an old-school sound from the past, or that sometimes guitars sound too trebly (especially Telecasters), with our modern guitar cables. This logic only applies to our standard passive guitar circuits, like those in our Strats, Teles, Les Pauls, SGs, and most other iconic guitar models. Active guitars are a completely different ballpark. With a guitar cable, you can fine-tune your tone, and tame a shrill-sounding guitar.
“No problem,” some will say. “I simply use my passive tone control to compensate, and that’s it. Come on, capacitance is capacitance!” While this logic seems solid, in reality this reaction produces a different tone. “Why is this?” you will ask. Thankfully, it’s simple to explain. You might be familiar with the typical diagrams showing a coordinate system with "Gain/dB" on the Y-axis and "Frequency/kHz" on the X-axis. Additional cable capacitance will shift the resonance frequency on the X-axis, with possible differences of more than one octave depending on the cable. A cable with a higher capacitance will shift the resonance frequency towards the left and vice versa.
Diagram courtesy Professor Manfred Zollner (https://www.gitarrenphysik.de)
Now let’s see what happens if you use your standard passive tone control. If you close the tone control, the resonance frequency will be shifted downwards mostly on the Y-axis, losing the resonance peak, which means the high frequencies are gone. This is a completely different effect compared to the additional cable capacitance.
Diagram courtesy Professor Manfred Zollner (https://www.gitarrenphysik.de)
To summarize, we can say that with different cable capacitances, you can mimic a lot of different pickups by simply shifting the resonance frequency on the X-axis. This is something our passive tone control can’t do, and that’s exactly the difference you will have to keep in mind.
So, let’s see what can be done and where you can add additional cable capacitance to your system to simulate longer guitar cables.
1. On the cable itself
2. Inside the guitar
3. Externally
In next month’s follow-up to this column, we will talk about different capacitances and how you can add them to your signal chain with some easy-to-moderate modding, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Do you overuse vibrato? Could you survive without it?
Vibrato is a powerful tool, but it should be used intentionally. Different players have different styles—B.B. King’s shake, Clapton’s subtle touch—but the key is control. Tom Butwin suggests a few exercises to build awareness, tone, and touch.
The goal? Find a balance—don’t overdo it, but don’t avoid it completely. Try it out and see how it changes your playing!
By refining an already amazing homage to low-wattage 1960s Fenders, Carr flirts with perfection—and adds a Hiwatt-flavored twist.
Killer low end for a low-wattage amp. Mid and presence controls extend range beyond Princeton or tweed tone templates. Hiwatt-styled voice expands vocabulary. Built like heirloom furniture.
Two-hundred-eighty-two bucks per watt.
$3,390
Carr Skylark Special
carramps.com
Steve Carr could probably build fantastic Fender amp clones while cooking up a crème brulee. But the beauty of Carr Amps is that they are never simply a copy of something else. Carr has a knack for taking Fender tone and circuit design elements—and, to a lesser extent, highlights from the Vox and Marshall playbook—and reimagining them as something new.
Those that playedCarr’s dazzling original Skylark know it didn’t go begging for much in the way of improvement. But Carr tends to tinker to very constructive ends. In the case of the Skylark Special, the headline news is the addition of the Hiwatt-inspired tone section from theCarr Bel-Ray, a switch from a solid-state rectifier to an EZ81 tube rectifier that enhances the amp’s sense of touch and dynamics, and an even deeper reverb.
Spanning Space Ages
With high-profile siblings like the Deluxe, Bassman, Tremolux, and Twin, Fender’s original Harvard is, comparatively, a footnote in Fender’s wide-panel tweed era (the inclusion of Steve Cropper’s Harvard in the Smithsonian notwithstanding). But the Harvard is somewhat distinctive among tweed Fenders for using fixed bias, which, given its power, makes it a bridge that links in both circuit and sound to the Princeton Reverb. The Skylark Special’s similar capacity for straddling tweed and black-panel touch and tone is fundamental to its magic.
Like the Harvard and the Princeton, the Skylark Special’s engine runs on two 6V6 power tubes and a single 12AX7 in the preamp section. A 12AX7 and 12AT7 drive the reverb and the reverb recovery section, respectively, and a second 12AT7 is assigned to the phase inverter. (The little EZ81 between the two 6V6 power tubes is dedicated to the rectifier). Apart from the power tubes and the 12AX7 in the preamp, however, the Skylark Special deviates from Harvard and Princeton reverb templates in many important ways. Instead of a 10" Jensen or Oxford, it uses a 50-watt 12" Celestion A-Type ceramic speaker, and it includes midrange and presence controls that a Harvard or Princeton do not. It also features a boost switch that manages to lend body and brawn without obliterating the core tone. There is also, as is Carr’s style, a very useful attenuator that spans zero to 1.2 watts. Alas, there is no tremolo.
“I’d wager the Skylark Special will be around every bit as long as a tweed Harvard when most of your printed-circuit amps have shoved off for the recycler.”
It goes without saying, perhaps, that the North Carolina-built Skylark Special is made to standards of craft that befit its $3K-plus price. Even still, Carr upgraded nine of the coupling capacitors to U.S.-made Jupiters. They also managed to shave six pounds from the Baltic birch cabinet weight—reducing total weight to 35 pounds and, in Steve Carr’s estimation, improving resonance. Say what you will about the high price, but I’d wager the Skylark Special will be around every bit as long as a tweed Harvard when most of your printed-circuit amps have shoved off for the recycler.
Sweet Soulful Bird
Fundamentally, the Skylark Special launches from a Fender space. But this is a very refined Fender space. The bass is rich, deep, and massive in ways you won’t encounter in many 12-watt combos, and the warm contours at the tone’s edges lend ballast and attitude to both clean tones and the ultra-smooth distorted ones at the volume’s higher reaches. All of these sounds dovetail with the clear top end you imagine when you close your eyes and picture quintessential black-panel Fender-ness. The presence and midrange controls, along with the 50-watt speaker, lend a lot in terms of scalpel-sharp tone shaping—providing a dimension beyond classical Fender-ness—especially when you bump the midrange and turn up your guitar volume.
The tube rectifier, meanwhile, shifts the Skylark Special’s touch dynamics from the super-immediate reactivity of a solid-state rectifier to a softer, more-compressed, more sunset-hued kind of tactile sensitivity. But don’t let that lead you to worry about the amp’s more explosive capabilities. There is more than enough high-midrange and treble to make the Skylark Special go bang.
Anglo and Attenuated Alter Egos
The Hiwatt-inspired setting is still dynamic, but it’s a little tighter than the Fullerton-voiced setting. There’s air and mass enough for power jangling or weighty leads. The differences in the Bel-Ray’s tube selection (EL84 power tubes as well as an EF86 in the preamp) means the Skylark Special’s version of the Hiwatt-style voice is—like the amp in general—warm and round in the low-mid zone and softer around the edges, where the Bel-Ray version has more high-end ceiling and less mellow glow in the bass. It definitely gives the Skylark Special a transatlantic reach that enhances its vocabulary and utility.
Attenuated settings are not just practical for suiting the amps to circumstances and size of space you’re in; they also offer an extra range of colors. The maximum 1.2 watt attenuated setting still churns up thick, filthy overdrive that rings with harmonics.
The Skylark Special’s richness and variation means you’ll spend a lot of time with guitar and amp alone. Anything more often feels like an intrusion. But the Skylark Special is a friend to effects. Strength in the low-end and speaker means it humors the gnarliest fuzzes with grace. And with as many shades of clean-to-just-dirty tones as there are here, the personalities of gain devices and other effects shine.
The Verdict
Skylark Special. It’s fun to say—in a hep-cat kind of way. The name is très cool, but the amp itself sounds fabulous, creating a sort of dream union of the Princeton’s and Harvard’s low-volume character, a black-panel Deluxe’s more stage-suited loudness and mass, and a zingier, more focused English cousin. It can be sweet, subdued, surfy, rowdy, and massive. And it works happily with pedals—most notably with fuzzes that can make lesser low-mid-wattage amps cough up hairballs. The price tag smarts. But this is a 12-watt combo that goes, sonically speaking, where few such amps will, and represents a first-class specimen of design and craft.