
When Louis Cato received this Univox LP-style as a gift in high school, it needed some major TLC. A few years later, it got some practical upgrades and now makes regular appearances with Cato on The Late Show.
The self-described “utility knife” played drums with John Scofield and Marcus Miller and spent time in the studio with Q-Tip before landing on Stephen Colbert’s show as a multi-instrumentalist member of the house band. Now, he’s taken over as the show’s guitar-wielding bandleader and is making his mark.
It’s a classic old-school-show-biz move: Bring out the band, introduce them one by one, and build up the song to its explosive beginning. It’s fun, dramatic, audiences love it, and that’s how every The Late Show with Stephen Colbert taping starts.
By this time, us audience members have been sitting in Manhattan’s chilly Ed Sullivan Theater for about 90 minutes. We’ve gotten our seats, had a bathroom break after getting settled, and had some fun with warm-up comic Paul Mecurio. The first musician summoned by announcer Jen Spyra is drummer Joe Saylor. Wearing his trademark cowboy hat, he jogs out, gets behind the kit, and kicks off an up-tempo second-line groove. Next comes upright bassist Endea Owens and percussionist Nêgah Santos. The band’s trumpeter, Jon Lampley, is introduced, and he’s brought along his bandmates in the Huntertones as guests, so saxophonist Dan White and trombonist Chris Ott come out as well.
Louis Cato feat. Stay Human "Look Within"
The multitalented Louis Cato leads the Stay Human band through a special rooftop performance of his song “Look Within,” from his album, Starting Now.
The audience is now on its feet, the band’s pocket is thick, and the energy is building. When bandleader Louis Cato charges onstage, he reaches his mic on the bandstand and shouts, “I feel good today!” with explosive enthusiasm and a big grin, and the band launches into Jon Batiste’s “I’m from Kenner.” Cato sings the catchy and gleeful refrain: “I feel good, I feel free, I feel fine just being me / I feel good today.” And the audience is feeling the love. Almost everyone is bouncing and clapping along.
A couple minutes in, when it seems like the song has reached its super-positive-vibe, high-energy climax, Cato shouts into his mic, “How do you feel today, Stephen?” And with that, Colbert comes running out from the middle of the set. Cato leaps from the bandstand toward the host as the crowd explodes. The two grab hold of each other and attempt to spin around, but the bandleader, holding his black-sparkle Tuttle T-style, loses his grip and goes sliding across the shiny stage. There’s a second where both are comically stunned—Kevin McCallister Home Alone-expressions on both of their faces—but Cato quickly jumps to his feet, both he and his guitar unharmed, and runs back to the bandstand, where he keeps the song moving along with his bandmates, who haven’t missed a beat.
All this excitement isn’t even for the TV audience! Colbert is coming out for the un-televised pre-show Q&A. In a few minutes, they’ll do a new taped intro that looks more like what we see every night. But they’ve gotten the crowd energized, and we need to keep it up. They need our energy to do their jobs.
The Late Show Band welcomes a lot of guests up on the bandstand. Here, Cato and Joe Walsh boogie down.
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
As Cato sees it, that’s what his role as bandleader is all about: keeping the audience engaged and amplifying the drama and action of the show. “That translates to the energy that the viewers get at home,” he explains. “For all of us here, we’re able to feed off that energy and do the best possible show that we all can.”
Colbert agrees with that job description and adds that the bandleader himself has the same contagious effect on his players. “Louis is an extraordinarily gifted multi-instrumentalist,” he says, “whose spirit of creativity and collaboration not only elevates everything the band does musically but inspires me to be better at my job.” He adds, “I’m so happy to call him my friend.”
Beyond his infectious energy and charisma, there are a lot of ways Cato keeps the Late Show Band invigorated from night to night. For one, he keeps the music fresh by tackling a new cover song every day. That doesn’t mean running down rote note-for-note charts. Cato and the band take a reconstructionist approach that fans of his work—whether from his collaborations with artists such as the Huntertones, Scary Pockets, or Vulfpeck, or from his regular Instagram cover-song posts—will recognize.
“Louis is an extraordinarily gifted multi-instrumentalist whose spirit of creativity and collaboration not only elevates everything the band does musically but inspires me to be better at my job.”—Stephen Colbert
On this evening, the band runs through a host of multi-genre reinterpretations during the two-episode taping, including a slow-burning and soulful “Smokestack Lightning,” a New Orleans-style “Down by the Riverside,” and a fingerpicked, acoustic-led take of Joni Mitchell’s “Free Man in Paris” that gets Colbert lip syncing along off camera. On a horn-driven arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s in Need of Love Today,” there’s a re-worked bridge that creates a generous feature spot for the guest horn players.
Every arrangement brings a new and unique perspective to a classic track, to ensure the band is “not just a wedding band doing a cover of a song on the radio.” Cato adds, “We’re arranging it and making it our own—because that’s the sonic fingerprint of our show.”
St. Vincent jams with Louis and crew.
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
A Lifelong Path
Listening to the story of Cato’s musical life, it seems that this job—with its demand for a blend of careful strategizing and on-the-fly creative thinking, as well as effortless instrumental skills and charismatic showmanship—is what he’s been training for since the beginning.
On the morning of the taping I attended, I meet Cato in his dressing room. Painted with sky-blue walls and a cloud mural on the ceiling, it’s a comfortable place to hang. The bandleader is wearing slim-fit floral pants, a hoodie over a black T-shirt, and a long necklace. He sits across from me on his couch, next to a guitar stand that holds a few instruments—including his Tuttle, a Jesse Stern-built baritone acoustic, and his Univox LP-style—and a ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue with a Universal Audio Dream ’65 pedal plugged into it.
“There’s not a time in my brain when I was not making music in some way or form,” Cato says. His mother, a pianist in the Church of God in Christ, bought her son a Diamond drum kit that he recalls having paper heads when he was just 2 years old, and she started teaching the toddler to accompany her. “I marvel at my mom,” he laughs. “Like, who buys their 2-year-old a drum kit?” After playing those drums every day for a year, he started accompanying her at services.
The family moved around a lot. Cato’s father was in the Air Force, and Louis was born on a base in Lisbon, Portugal, before moving to Dayton, Ohio. Not long after he started playing in church there, they moved again to Washington, D.C., and when Louis was 5 they settled in Albemarle, North Carolina. A few years later, Louis started playing guitar on a “little burgundy sunburst acoustic. Eventually, I busted a string and busted another string and just kept playing with four strings. I delved more into bass from playing bass lines on the acoustic guitar. So, for my 9th birthday, my dad bought me a 4-string bass.”
“I’d show up to Tip’s and we’d do a week of writing sessions with John Legend or have André 3000 in the studio for a couple of weeks.”
While it was strictly pragmatic reasons that initially drew him to the bass, he says his biggest inspiration was the bass player he knew best: his mother’s left hand. Her playing, rooted in the COGIC (Church of God in Christ) style, “involves heavy left-hand bass. I wasn’t as psyched to play bass in church since the way my mom plays is very defined. But eventually I kind of had to learn how she plays. It was always just her and me playing. And I had to learn to move with that and follow that. She’s a great bass player.”
Along the way, Cato picked up more instruments. By the time he headed to Berklee, he was playing drums, guitar, and bass as well as tuba, trombone, and euphonium. “I was going from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a large pond of super-talented people who had heard oodles of music I had never dreamed of,” he recalls. So, he decided to focus his studies on the instrument he’d played the longest.
Louis Cato's Gear
A glimpse at Cato’s pedals and amp, which mostly live outside of the camera’s eye, behind his stage monitor.
Guitars
- Univox LP-style
- Tuttle Custom Hollow T
- 1961 Gibson SG reissue
- Martin OM-28
Amps
- ’65 Fender Princeton Reverb reissue
Effects
- Boss FV-500H Volume Pedal
- Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
- Dunlop Cry Baby
- 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre
- J. Rockett Archer
- Truetone Jekyll & Hyde
- Xotic RC Booster
- MXR Carbon Copy
Strings and Picks
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012-.053)
- D’Addario EXL110 (.010-.046)
- Dunlop Max Grip .88 mm
Cato completed just two semesters—fall ’03 and spring ’04—before deciding to concentrate on playing the gigs that were paying his bills. “My rationale was, much to my parents’ chagrin, here’s an opportunity where I can keep learning on the job and be working my way out of the debt I went into in this year.”
Gigging with wedding and church bands gave the multi-instrumentalist an opportunity to keep all his instrumental and vocal skills alive. “My oldest daughter was born soon after that,” he recalls, “so I felt really, really aware of how lucky I was, how lucky any of us are, to make a living and support a family as a musician.” Cato spent five years in Boston, playing various instruments in gigging bands, and he frequented local institution Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club, just two blocks down the street from Berklee, “for self-education and inspiration. When that felt like I hit a ceiling, I looked at where I could go to continue my inspiration and working on the kind of projects I wanted to be working on, and that led me here.”
By that time, Cato’s friend Meghan Stabile, had moved to New York and created the promotion and production company Revive Music, which was dedicated to the kinds of jazz and hip-hop collaborations he wanted to pursue. Cato moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn, with his band Six Figures— “There were six of us; we did not make six figures!”—and would head back to Boston each weekend for the gigs that were paying his bills. Eager to soak up the New York scene, he’d return to New York on Sunday nights and go directly to jam sessions.
All that time back and forth on the Northeast Corridor paid off. A self-described musical “utility knife,” Cato’s multi-instrumentalism, as well as his talents as a songwriter, arranger, producer, and engineer, made him a major asset as a collaborator, and the New York scene took notice. Soon, he established essential connections that would affect his career, forming “an instantaneous brotherhood that continues to this day” with producer Kamaal Fareed, aka Q-Tip. “Through that, I ended up really delving into a lot of relationships and credits.”
The two artists worked on high-level collaborations that not only bolstered Cato’s reputation but served as a major piece of his education. “I’d show up to Tip’s,” he explains, “and we’d do a week of writing sessions with John Legend or have André 3000 in the studio for a couple of weeks. Sometimes things would come from it, and sometimes nothing would come from it. But being in the creative process on that level in a trusted space was invaluable for me. I learned so much.”
Outside of Q-Tip’s studio, Cato was learning from plenty of masters, mostly from behind the kit. “It’s really special when you find yourself learning things you connect to,” he says about his work alongside artists such as bassist Marcus Miller, keyboardist George Duke, and guitarist John Scofield. “And I learned so much about myself from connecting to some of these people.”
Staying Human
Back in 2015, Cato received a phone call from pianist Jon Batiste. The two had never met, but Batiste rang him up about a mysterious project—a theme song for a TV show that he couldn’t disclose. “I had a wisdom tooth appointment back in Boston, and I got a random call,” Cato remembers. “I think his exact words were, ‘I’d love to have your ears on it.’ And I followed my gut, rescheduled my trip, stayed in New York an extra day with an abscessed wisdom tooth.”
The two got together to co-write and produce “Humanism,” which would become the theme song for the Stephen Colbert-hosted Late Show. Batiste played piano, Cato played the guitar, bass, and drum parts and “put on my editing hat.” They brought in Joe Saylor—who would become the show’s drummer—to play tambourine, as well as saxophonist Eddie Barbash. “After the session,” Cato remembers, “I went back, got my wisdom tooth out, and went back on the road with John Scofield.”
Three of the four go-to guitars Cato uses on The Late Show: a black Tuttle T-style, a cherry-red Gibson SG, and a Martin OM-28.
At first, Cato played the multi-instrumental role of his dreams, attempting to surround himself with every instrument he could play. “That lasted about three days before reality set in,” he laughs. “Slowly, one by one, things started disappearing—a floor tom going away here, a Pro Tools setup going offstage there. Eventually, as the band formed out, I moved around to what was needed. I was the utility guy—played a lot of kazoo, a lot of cowbell.”
While on the road drumming with Sco’, Cato got the invite from Batiste to join the show’s band, Stay Human. “It was a huge life shift for me,” Cato explains. “I was making really good money on the road with really good musicians, which was really fulfilling. And I took a chance. I loved the idea of being a part of something creatively from its inception.”
Eventually, Cato settled into a more consistent electric bass role, until Batiste brought in upright player Endea Owens, and he moved to guitar, where he’s mostly stayed. When Batiste left the show last year, Cato took over as bandleader—officially starting this season, back in September—and decided he’d lead from his role as guitarist. “Of all the places I occupied,” he says, “guitar was the easiest and most natural to me to lead the band, in the energy. From behind the drums, it’s a different thing, and we’ve done it when Joe was out. But it just was a really natural progression.”
Same Show, New Job
In just a few months, Cato’s new role as bandleader has had an impact on the show. The renamed Late Show Band’s engine seems to be burning on a new kind of fuel. And it feels as though that energy is coming directly from Cato.
When we talk, the guitarist is deeply engaged, in a kind of hyper-focused way that is not intense but more casually un-distractable. He brings that same focus to the show. While Colbert delivers monologues, Cato is zoomed in on the host, listening to every word, often riffing around on his guitar to contribute musical commentary. During interviews, he’s taking cues and following the tone of the conversation, looking for ways to adapt.
The bandleader gig requires loads of big-picture improvisation, but also lots of prep. Cato explains that each week he makes a set list, but the band will react and make changes in the moment. “My job ends up being a lot of judgement calls that affect the flow of the show,” he says. “We have a group of compositions we wrote for the show that can complement different moments. If there’s a major energy shift in an interview that takes a turn or something happens in the day, like a tragedy, we’ll call one of the songs we wrote for the show for a moment such as that. Recently, we had a guest on that started improvising a song. So, I have on our in-ear mic and call out the key and start playing, and we all jump in, and now we’re doing this instead.”
Cato poses with his black-sparkle chambered T-style, made by Tuttle. “When I’m checking off core priorities in sound,” he says, “if I’m going for rhythmic things, I go to the Tele.”
Photo by Scott Kowalchyk
Watching the Late Show Band in person, I see this play out as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explains the steps the U.S. can take to avoid a recession. It’s a heavy and heady conversation, and, frankly, it’s anything but fun. Cato knows he’ll need to pick the audience back up. As he watches from the bandstand, he gives tempo cues to the band, who nod along, so they can effectively shift the energy and get the audience re-focused for the next guest, actor/director Sarah Polley.
As a guitar player, Cato says he sticks to playing things that feel most natural to him so he can concentrate on his bandleading duties. He adds that he considers himself more a rhythm guitarist than a lead guitarist. (It’s worth noting that his delineation is more conceptual than musical: Cato is an inspired and dynamic melodic lead player, but his deeply rooted phrasing and feel is at the forefront of everything he plays, so the rhythm-first thing applies to it all.) “This is not a space as a guitar player where I’m jumping out of the box trying any and everything and exploring,” he explains. “You get to some of those places. But for me, it always has to start from something I can do while leading the band and reading the energy and making judgement calls.”
“We’re arranging it and making it our own—because that’s the sonic fingerprint of our show.”
That rooted, pragmatic ethos applies to the gear he chooses as well. “I never was a big gear person,” he admits. Luckily, he has Late Show Band tech and informed gearhead Matt Mead to help him keep his pedalboard well-stocked. “There’s so many things I’m learning about the job and trying to keep straight in my head that this ends up getting the short end of the stick, and it wouldn’t work if there was not a Matt Mead to make up the rest of that stick and make it sound good.”
“The show throws a lot of curveballs,” Mead points out. “He steers the boat as far as the tones he’s looking for and if there’s a particular sound he’s looking for. Sometimes, I’ll recommend stuff and say, ‘Hey I notice you’re doing this, maybe we should try this.’”
Cato’s collaboratively curated pedalboard is pretty simple at its core: It starts with a Boss FV-500H volume pedal, a Boss TU-3, a Dunlop Cry Baby, and 3 Leaf Audio Octabvre. Cato shows me how he uses the latter for more traditional, Hendrix-style playing, but he points out that the band plays a lot of montunoes, and he tends to use the octave pedal for those. For drive, he uses a J. Rockett Archer and a Truetone Jekyll & Hyde, which are followed by an Xotic RC Booster and an MXR Carbon Copy, all into a Fender ’65 Princeton Reverb reissue, and powered by a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power Plus.
In live performances outside of The Late Show, Cato uses various guitars, but says that the studio’s cold temperature doesn’t do many favors for instruments such as his Gibson Luther Dickinson ES-335 or some of his acoustics, so he’s careful when selecting which guitars come on stage at the Ed Sullivan Theater. The three guitars that most commonly appear on the show are his black Tuttle Custom Hollow T, a cherry red Gibson SG 1961 Reissue, and a Martin OM-28.
Another guitar that sometimes appears on the Late Show is his LP-style Univox, which I ask Cato about in his dressing room. “If I need to be altogether comfortable,” he explains, “I pull out the Univox, because it’s my earliest guitar. I’ve had this since high school.”
Cory Wong "Lunchtime" - The Late Show's Commercial Breakdown
When musical guests visit The Late Show, they get the full-band treatment from Cato and company. Here, Cory Wong sits in for a rhythm guitar showdown of the highest level.
Back when he first got the guitar, Cato remembers, it was in rough shape, desperately in need of wiring and pickup repairs and a new set of tuners. It stayed that way until he was in Boston. When he picked up a wedding band gig playing trombone and guitar, he was lucky enough to have a roommate who could get the Univox performance-ready by replacing the original tuners with locking units, cleaning out the electronics, and swapping the pickups for a pair of Seymour Duncans.
“I didn’t even know there was a such thing as a professional musician.”
But Cato says that even before those repairs, he’s always “loved it because it’s all I had. I remember I was playing a little Vox amp, and this guitar had a feeling out of that amp. This guitar just became home base and felt super natural to my fingers. If I need to just not be thinking at all, this is home.”
Did he ever dream he’d be on television every night, holding this Univox and chumming with a late-night host? “Never! Not once!” he says. “It was just a product of my nurture growing up in a small town. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a professional musician.” And yet, Cato pursued music as fully and single-mindedly as he could. “I just knew that I liked it and felt connected to it.”
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Epiphone 1962 ES-335 Reissue Semi-hollow Electric Guitar - Vintage Burst
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Epiphone 1960 Les Paul Special Double Cut Reissue Electric Guitar - TV Yellow
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Made in collaboration with Gibson Custom, now with a rosewood fretboard and a new Vintage Gloss finish
Epiphone and Gibson™ Custom have once again teamed up to create the updated Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird V Reissue With Maestro Vibrola – an authentic replica of the guitar designed by legendary automotive designer Ray Dietrich. When it was launched in 1963, the Firebird™ was Gibson’s first neck-through-body guitar, and it went on to be used by players in a wide range of genres, including blues legend Johnny Winter, Keith Richards and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, to name a few.
The updated Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird V with Maestro Vibrola delivers vintage Firebird specifications at an accessible price. The vintage-inspired features include a 9-ply neck-through- body made of mahogany and walnut with mahogany body wings to either side of the neck. This construction method results in the tuners, pickup, and bridge all being anchored into the same pieces of wood for exceptional resonance, sustain, and tonal transfer between them. The neck features a SlimTaper™ Rounded C profile with soft fretboard edges for a comfortable, played-in feel. The rosewood fretboard is adorned with mother-of-pearl trapezoid inlays and equipped with 22 medium jumbo frets. Even the side dot position markers are the same size as on vintage Firebirds and placed in historically accurate locations. Kluson® planetary geared “banjo” tuners anchor the strings at the headstock and further add to the historic Firebird look, while an Epiphone ABR-1 bridge and Maestro™ Vibrola™ with an engraved Epiphone logo hold things down at the other end. The electronics are also premium and include Gibson USA Firebird mini humbucker™ pickups with Alnico 5 magnets, CTS® potentiometers, Mallory™ capacitors, and a Switchcraft® 3-way pickup selector toggle switch and 1/4” output jack, giving this remarkable recreation not only the look but also the sound of a classic Firebird V. An Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom hardshell case is also included.Epiphone 1963 Firebird V Electric Guitar - Polaris White
63 Firebird V Maestro Vibrola Reissue, Polaris Wht1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue:
A 1959 vintage-style Les Paul Standard Reissue Inspired by Gibson Custom, now with a rosewood Fretboard
The 1959 Gibson Les Paul™ Standard is one of the world’s most coveted–and valuable–vintage guitars. It has been embraced by numerous famous players, including Peter Green, Kirk Hammett, and Joe Bonamassa. The 1959 Les Paul Standard is very similar to the 1960 model year that followed it, but with a few differences, most notably, a somewhat beefier 1959 Rounded Medium C neck profile that many players prefer over the thinner SlimTaper™ profile found on the 1960 Les Paul Standard models. Now, Epiphone is proud to introduce the Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue, a beautiful recreation of those rare 1959 Les Paul Standard models. Made in partnership with Gibson Custom, the Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue delivers vintage Les Paul looks and performance at an accessible price. All of the classic appointments the 1959 Les Paul Standard model is known and loved for are present here, including a one-piece mahogany neck with a long neck tenon for increased stability and sustain, an authentic 1959 Rounded Medium C neck profile, and a bound rosewood fretboard. It also features mother-of-pearl trapezoid fretboard inlays, an aged mother-of-pearl Epiphone headstock logo, and the words “Les Paul Model” silkscreened in gold on the Gibson-style “open book” headstock.
Even the side dot position markers are the same size as on vintage 1959 Les Paul Standard models and are placed in historically accurate locations. The genuine mahogany body features a carved maple cap that is topped with a beautiful AAA flamed maple veneer. The electronics are first class, with two USA Gibson Custombucker humbucking pickups with Alnico 3 magnets that are hand-wired to CTS® potentiometers, Black Beauty paper-in-oil capacitors, and a Switchcraft® pickup selector toggle switch and 1/4” output jack. The Vintage Gloss finish gives the guitar a vintage appearance without looking overly aged and is nicely complimented by the nickel hardware, including the Epiphone Deluxe “Single Ring” Keystone button tuners. A Brown hardshell case with Inspired by Gibson Custom graphics and a pink plush-lined interior is also included. This is the perfect Les Paul for players who love the vintage appeal of the classic 1959 Les Paul Standard, but don’t want to sell the house to afford one.
Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue Electric Guitar - Deep Cherry Sunburst
59 LP Std Reissue, Deep Chrry Sunburst1963 Firebird I Reissue:
Made in collaboration with Gibson Custom, now with a rosewood fretboard and a new Vintage Gloss finish
Epiphone and Gibson™ Custom have once again teamed up to create the updated Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird™ V Reissue With Maestro Vibrola – an authentic replica of the guitar designed by legendary automotive designer Ray Dietrich. When it was launched in 1963, the Firebird™ was Gibson’s first neck-through-body guitar, and it went on to be used by players in a wide range of genres, including blues legend Johnny Winter, Keith Richards and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, to name a few.
The updated Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom 1963 Firebird V with Maestro Vibrola delivers vintage Firebird specifications at an accessible price. The vintage-inspired features include a 9-ply neck-through-body made of mahogany and walnut with mahogany body wings to either side of the neck. This construction method results in the tuners, pickup, and bridge all being anchored into the same pieces of wood for exceptional resonance, sustain, and tonal transfer between them. The neck features a SlimTaper™ Rounded C profile with soft fretboard edges for a comfortable, played-in feel. The rosewood fretboard is adorned with mother-of-pearl trapezoid inlays and equipped with 22 medium jumbo frets. Even the side dot position markers are the same size as on vintage Firebirds and placed in historically accurate locations. Kluson® planetary geared “banjo” tuners anchor the strings at the headstock and further add to the historic Firebird look, while an Epiphone ABR-1 bridge and Maestro™ Vibrola™ with an engraved Epiphone logo hold things down at the other end. The electronics are also premium and include Gibson USA Firebird mini humbucker™ pickups with Alnico 5 magnets, CTS® potentiometers, Mallory™ capacitors, and a Switchcraft® 3-way pickup selector toggle switch and 1/4” output jack, giving this remarkable recreation not only the look but also the sound of a classic Firebird V. An Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom hardshell case is also included.1957 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue:
An Inspired by Gibson Custom reissue of the classic humbucker-equipped ’57 Goldtop
1957 was the year that the Les Paul™, as most players think of it today, truly came into its own. It was the first full year that it had Patent Applied For humbucker™ pickups installed. The humbuckers, along with the ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic™ bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece that first appeared on a Les Paul with the introduction of the Les Paul Custom in late 1953 and on the Goldtop in late 1955, were defining features
that many players still prefer over the earlier models that had a wraparound bridge/tailpiece and P-90pickups and made the Les Paul into a true fire-breathing rock icon. Now, Epiphone, in collaboration with Gibson Custom, is very proud to introduce the 1957 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue, a stunningly authentic Inspired by Gibson Custom reissue of those early humbucker-equipped Les Paul Goldtops that delivers vintage Les Paul looks and performance at an accessible price. It has a genuine mahogany body with a carved, plain maple cap. It is finished in a new Vintage Gloss version of the classic Gold color that gives it a vintage appearance without looking overly aged. The one-piece genuine mahogany neck has a 50s Rounded Medium C profile and a long neck tenon for excellent stability and sustain. The bound rosewood fretboard is adorned with mother-of-pearl trapezoid inlays and equipped with 22 medium jumbo frets, just like the original models from 1957. It has an aged mother-of-pearl Epiphone logo and the words “Les Paul Model” silkscreened in gold on the Gibson-style “open book” headstock. Even the side dot position markers are the same size as on vintage 1957 Les Paul Standard models and are placed in historically accurate locations. The hardware is nickel-plated, including the ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge, historical aluminum Stop Bar Tailpiece, and the Epiphone Deluxe “Single Ring” Keystone button tuners. The electronics are also first-class, with two USA Gibson Custombucker humbucking pickups with Alnico 3 magnets that are hand-wired to CTS® potentiometers, Bumblebee paper-in-oil capacitors, and a Switchcraft® pickup selector toggle switch and 1/4” output jack. A historic-inspired hardshell case with a Brown exterior and pink plush interior and Inspired by Gibson Custom Graphics is also included. The 1957 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue isn’t just a guitar; it’s a bridge to a symphony of possibilities, willing and ready to help you make your own mark on music history.
Epiphone 1957 Les Paul Goldtop Reissue Electric Guitar - Goldtop
57 LP Goldtop Reissue, Goldtop1960 Les Paul Standard Reissue:
A 1960 vintage-style Les Paul Reissue Inspired by Gibson Custom, now with a rosewood fretboard and new Vintage Gloss finish
The 1960 Gibson Les Paul™ Standard is one of the world’s most coveted vintage guitars. It has been embraced by such luminaries as Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, and Joe Walsh. The 1960 Les Paul Standard is very similar to the famous 1959 model year that preceded it, but with a few changes, most notably, a thinner and faster-playing SlimTaper™ neck profile that many players prefer over the somewhat beefier 1959 Les Paul Standard neck profile. Now, Epiphone is proud to introduce the Epiphone 1960 Les Paul Standard Reissue, a beautiful recreation of those vintage 1960 Les Paul
Standard models. Made in partnership with Gibson Custom, the Epiphone Les Paul Standard 1960 Reissue delivers vintage Les Paul looks and performance at an accessible price. All of the classic appointments the 1960 Les Paul Standard model is known and loved for are present here, including a one-piece mahogany neck with a long neck tenon for increased stability and sustain, a comfortable, fast-playing SlimTaper™ profile, and a bound rosewood fretboard. It also features mother-of-pearl trapezoid fretboard inlays, an aged mother-of-pearl Epiphone headstock logo, and the words “Les Paul Model” silkscreened in gold on the Gibson-style “open book” headstock. Even the side dot position markers are the same size as on vintage 1960 Les Paul Standard models and are placed in historically accurate locations. The genuine mahogany body features a carved maple cap that is topped with a beautiful AAA flamed maple veneer. The electronics are equally impressive, with two USA Gibson Custombucker humbucking pickups with Alnico 3 magnets that are hand-wired to CTS® potentiometers, Bumblebee paper-in-oil capacitors, and a Switchcraft® pickup selector toggle switch and output jack. The Vintage Gloss finish gives the guitar a vintage appearance without looking overly aged and is nicely complimented by the nickel hardware, including the Epiphone Deluxe “Double Ring” Keystone button tuners. A brown hardshell case with Inspired by Gibson Custom graphics and a pink plush-lined interior is also included. This is the perfect Les Paul for players who love the vintage appeal of the classic 1959 Les Paul Standard but who want a more comfortable neck profile.Epiphone 1960 Les Paul Standard Reissue Electric Guitar - Washed Cherry Sunburst
59 LP Std Reissue, Washed Chrry SunburstEditorial Director Ted Drozdowski’s current favorite noisemakers.
Premier Guitar’s edit staff shares their favorite fuzz units and how and when they use them.
Premier Guitar’s editors use their favorite fuzz pedals in countless ways. At any point during our waking hours, one of us could be turned on, plugged in, and fuzzed out—chasing a Sabbath riff, tracking menacing drone ambience, fire-branding a solo break with a psychedelic blast, or something else altogether more deranged. As any PGreader knows, there are nearly infinite paths to these destinations and almost as many fuzz boxes to travel with. Germanium, silicon, 2-transistor, 4-transistor, 6-transistor, octave, multimode, modern, and caveman-stupid: Almost all of these fuzz types are represented among our own faves, which are presented here as inspiration, and launch pads for your own rocket rides to the Fuzz-o-sphere.
Ted Drozdowski - Editorial Director
My favorite is my Burns Buzz, a stomp custom-made for me by Gary Kibler of Big Knob Pedals. Gary specializes in recreations of old circuits, and this Burns Buzzaround-inspired box has four germanium NOS transistors and sounds beautifully gnarly. It improves on the original, which Robert Fripp favored in early King Crimson, by adding a volume control. I went a little stir-crazy acquiring fuzzes during Covid lockdown and now have an embarrassing amount. My other current darlings are a SoloDallas Orbiter (which balances fuzz with core-signal clarity), a Joe Gore Duh (a no-nonsense, 1-knob dirt shoveler), and my Big Knob Tone Blender MkII 66, which taught me how smooth and creamy fuzz can be with carefully calibrated settings. These pedals allow me to cover all of my favorite fuzz sounds from the past 60 years. I do have one more secret weapon fuzz that only travels to the studio: an original Maestro FZ-1 that I picked up used for about $20 in the early ’90s. It’s banged up but functional, takes two 9V batteries, and is righteously juicy.
Nick Millevoi - Senior Editor
The two greatest fuzzes I’ve ever played are a Pigdog Tone Bender build and a Paul Trombetta Bone Machine. Both experiences will stick with me for decades to come. But creations by those two masters of fuzz come with a price tag high enough to keep my time with those pedals fleeting.
Instead, my favorite fuzz is an inexpensive, mass-produced pedal that hasn’t left my board since I reviewed and subsequently purchased it in 2021: the Electro-Harmonix Ripped Speaker, designed to emulate the distorted tones on ’50s and ’60s records that were created with broken or misused gear.
Retro inspiration is not all it has to offer though. The rip knob, which controls transistor bias, is the star of the show, interacting with the fuzz level to deliver everything from a smooth, mild fuzz to sputtery mayhem that can evoke a faulty channel strip or old tube combo that’s been set ablaze. I prefer to crank the rip knob and feed it to a phaser and slapback analog delay, which gives me a bit-crushed-like gnarliness. Pull back on the rip or add a boost in front of the pedal, and it has a more organic but still gated sound, which, for me, can be just the thing to set my sound apart in a more traditional setting.
For a cool $116, the Ripped Speaker, which seems to fly under most fuzz freaks’ radars, might be the special something that complements the rest of your board or just a tone you turn to on occasion. Either way, it’s a great deal.
Luke Ottenhof - Assistant Editor
You could give me the most powerful-sounding fuzz in the world, but if it was in a stupid-looking enclosure, I don’t know if I’d give it a second look. This is just how we operate: Vision is the sense we privilege most, even in matters of audio.
Luckily, the most seismic, monstrous fuzz I’ve ever heard also happens to come in a beautiful package. The Mile End Effects Kollaps, built by Justin Cober in Montreal, measures an elephantine 7 3/8" x 4 5/8" x 1 1/2", and its MuTron-meets-’60s-Soviet aesthetic matches the sounds its guts produce. The Kollaps is modeled after the nasty Univox Super-Fuzz circuit, and carries a few of that pedal’s hallmarks, including its use of germanium diodes and midrange boost control. Cober added a switchable Baxandall active EQ circuit, with up to 12 dB of boost and cut to both low and high frequencies. Coupled with the mid-boost toggle, this gives the Kollaps a shockingly broad range of tonality to play with.With the mids off, the Kollaps is jagged and ruthless, a deafening turbojet of upper mids and chest-vibrating lows that yanks me toward the darker, less commercially successful corners of ’90s doom and noise rock. Kicking on the EQ circuit and boosting the lows turns it titanic. With the balance (volume) and expand (gain) controls maxed, the Kollaps starts to live up to its name, crumbling into a thick, overextended chaos in a way more polite fuzz circuits rarely do.
My favorite Kollaps sounds occur when the mids are engaged, for an articulate, deeply textured fuzz sound that retains your attack. Playing with your guitar’s volume knob, you can coax a range of EQ profiles and take advantage of the upper- and lower-octave content in the fuzz. With guitar volume lower, you can access some unbelievably emotive and sensitive sounds that still teeter on the edge of chaos and violence. It’s a rich, volatile circuit that gets as close as I’ve heard to a sound and physical feeling I’d call “planet-destroying.”
Charles Saufley - Gear Editor
My first fuzz, A Sovtek Big Muff, remains tied for first place among many favorites. The pedal’s most famous virtues—corpulence and sustain—are among the reasons I treasure it. But the way the Sovtek pairs with a Rickenbacker 330 and Fender Jaguar, which were once my two primary guitars for performance and recording, made it invaluable in various projects for a long time. Neither the Ricky nor the Jag are sustain machines, but the wailing mass of theBig Muff makes their focused voices an asset—inspiring tight, concise fuzz phrases, hooks, and riffs as well as articulate chords.
A silicon Fuzzrite clone built by good pal Jesse Trbovich (long-time member ofKurt Vile’s Violators) runs second place to the Sovtek in terms of tenure, and is a very different fuzz. It’s a piercing, hyper-buzzy thing, but a perfect match for a squishy 1960s Fender Bassman head and 2x12 I adore. Perversely, I sometimes couple it with a Death By Audio Thee Ffuzz Warr Overload or Wattson FY-6 Shin-Ei Super-Fuzz clone. These tandems create chaos and chance, but sing loud and melodiously too—at least when I’m not intentionally bathing in feedback. The Jext Telez Buzz Tone, a clone of the mid-’60s Selmer circuit, is often my go-to now. It’s a low-gain affair compared to the other fuzzes here, and I use it in its even-lower-gain (and vintage-correct) 3-volt setting. It’s pretty noisy, but it is thick, dynamic, detailed, raunchy, and plenty trashy when the occasion demands it. It’s also a very cool overdrive when you back off the gas.Jason Shadrick - Managing Editor
I rarely need fuzz in my everyday gigs, but it's one of the most fun effects to explore when I'm noodling around. At a NAMM show a few years ago I plugged into Mythos' Argo and as soon as I hit a note my eyes lit up. The sound of the fuzz wasn't unwieldy or hard to manage. It gave me the illusion of control while the octave was the magic dust on top. I knew right then I wasn't leaving the show without one. After I spent some time with it, I became enamored by how much more the Argo can do.
It's inspired by the Prescription Electronics C.O.B. (Clean Octave Blend), so the control set is similar. The octave is always present in the signal path, but you can dial it out with the blend knob. The fuzz and volume knobs are self explanatory, but dialing the fuzz and octave knobs all the way down gives you a killer boost pedal. I find my favorite settings are at the extremes of the fuzz and blend ranges. Typically, both are either all the way up or all the way down. Another great experiment is to turn the fuzz down and then pair it with a separate drive pedal. And in octave mode, Argo is one of those pedals that inspires you to head directly for the neck pickup and stay above the 12th fret.
Columnist Janek Gwizdala with heroes Dennis Chambers (left) and Mike Stern (right).
Keeping your gigging commitments can be tough, especially when faced with a call from a hero. But it’s always the right choice.
Saying “yes!” to everything early on has put me in a place now where I can say no to almost everything and still be okay. That wasn’t without its challenges. I’d like to share a story about a “yes” that would haunt me for years.
As bass players, we can, if we choose, quite easily find ourselves in a wide variety of situations without having to change much about our sound or our playing. If your time is good and you’re able to help those around you feel good and sound better, the telephone will pretty much always ring.
Playing jazz as an electric-bass player living in New York City from 2000 to 2010 was somewhat of a fool’s errand in terms of getting work. No one wanted electric bass, and bandleaders would go to the bottom of a list of 100 upright players before they would even think about calling you. Not only that, but I wasn’t even at the top of the electric list when I first moved there. Not even close. Anthony Jackson, Richard Bona, Will Lee, Tim Lefebvre, James Genus, Lincoln Goines, Mike Pope, John Benitez, Matthew Garrison—that’s a who’s who of the instrument when I first moved to town, and I was very much a freshman with almost no experience. Almost…
I’d been lucky enough to play extensively with Kenwood Dennard (Jaco’s drummer), and a little with Hiram Bullock (Jaco’s guitarist) before moving to NYC which helped create a little momentum, but only a VERY little.
This is where the story begins:
I’d sent Mike Stern a demo back in late ’97. He’d not only taken the time to listen to it but had called my parents’ house right after I moved to the U.S. to tell me he loved it and wanted to hang. I missed the call but eventually met him at a clinic he gave at Berklee.
Of course, I was buzzing about all of this. It helped me stay laser-focused on practice and on moving to NYC as soon as possible. I got the typical “look me up when you get to town” invitation from Stern and basically counted the seconds through the three semesters I stayed at Berklee until I could split town.
I arrived with a ton of confidence but zero gigs. And nothing happened overnight. It really took saying yes to literally everything I was offered just to keep a roof over my head. Through that process, I felt like I was getting further away from playing with my jazz heroes.
The early gigs were far from glamorous—long hours, terrible pay, and sometimes, after travel expenses, they cost me money to play.
“Whenever I have a single moment of doubt, I think about the time I had to say no to my heroes—the reasons I moved to America, the reason I do what I do.”
When Stern finally called, a few years into living in NYC, things started to move pretty quickly. I began playing a lot of gigs at the 55 Bar with him, and short road trips became a thing—a four-night stint at Arturo Sandoval’s new club in Miami, gigs in Chicago, Cleveland, and upstate New York, and then some international work, including a tour of Mexico and a trip to Brazil, if I remember right.
But the hardest phone call of my career came from Mike not long into my time touring with him. It went something like this:
“Hey man, what’s your scene in April? Lincoln can’t make a trip to the West Coast. It’s just one gig. Trio… with DENNIS CHAMBERS.”
Mike didn’t shout Dennis’ name, but that’s how I heard it. My all-time hero. Someone I’d been dreaming about playing with for over 15 years. And here’s the kicker: I had to say no.
I’d just committed to six weeks with Jojo Mayer’s band Nerve in Asia and Europe, and there was no way I could bail on him. And there was no way I could afford to ditch six weeks of work for a single gig with Mike. To say that haunted me for years is an understatement. I was destroyed that I had to turn it down.
The tour with Jojo was amazing—the posters hang in my studio as a reminder of those times to this day. And thankfully, I was able to go on some years later and play dozens of shows with Mike and Dennis all over the world—truly some of the highlights of my career.
I still think about that phone call, though. Whenever I have a single moment of doubt, I think about the time I had to say no to my heroes—the reasons I moved to America, the reason I do what I do. I get emotional writing and thinking about it even now. But I've learned to never have regrets and understand you just have to believe in the process and maintain the willpower to continue—no matter what.
On our season two finale, the country legend details his lead-guitar tricks on one of his biggest hits.
Get out the Kleenex, hankies, or whatever you use to wipe away your tears: It’s the last episode of this season of Shred With Shifty, a media event more consequential and profound than the finales of White Lotus and Severance combined. But there’ll be some tears of joy, too, because on this season two closer, Chris Shiflett talks with one of country music’s greatest players: Vince Gill.
Gill’s illustrious solo career speaks for itself, and he’s played with everyone from Reba McEntire and Patty Loveless to Ricky Skaggs and Dolly Parton. He even replaced Glenn Frey in the Eagles after Frey’s death in 2017. His singing prowess is matched by his grace and precision on the fretboard, skills which are on display on the melodic solo for “One More Last Chance.” He used the same blackguard 1953 Fender Telecaster that you see in this interview to record the lead, although he might not play the solo the exact way he did back in 1992.
Tune in to learn how Gill dialed his clean tone with a tip from Roy Nichols, why he loves early blackguard Telecasters and doesn’t love shredders, and why you never want to be the best player during a studio session.
If you’re able to help, here are some charities aimed at assisting musicians affected by the fires in L.A:
https://guitarcenterfoundation.org
https://www.cciarts.org/relief.html
https://www.musiciansfoundation.org
https://fireaidla.org
https://www.musicares.org
https://www.sweetrelief.org
Credits
Producer: Jason Shadrick
Executive Producers: Brady Sadler and Jake Brennan for Double Elvis
Engineering Support by Matt Tahaney and Matt Beaudion
Video Editor: Addison Sauvan
Graphic Design: Megan Pralle
Special thanks to Chris Peterson, Greg Nacron, and the entire Volume.com crew.