
To stay grounded—metaphysically speaking, that is—while playing, White always removes his shoes. While it helps with pedal control, there are indeed some negative effects: “If you play a smaller place with grounding issues, you get electrocuted that much more if you’re not wearing shoes.”
The psychedelic brothers duo get hi-fi on Petunia—creating a swirling universe of expressionistic sound—but 6-stringer Andy White still won’t put on a pair of shoes.
“I get nervous if I have my shoes on when I am playing,” says Andy White, the guitar half of the psychedelic, krautrock-style, jam-centric duo Tonstartssbandht [pronounced: tone-starts-band]. “For some reason, playing with shoes on just feels weird.”
How weird? That’s hard to say, but playing barefoot has helped the guitarist figure out a few tricks and use it to his advantage. “I want to be able to know I have the option to do what I need to do on the fly or, at the very least, feel myself grounded,” he adds. “It all comes down to pedals at the end of the day. Even if it’s not tweaking them, but just activating them, or turning them off.”
A duality—part mystical, part practical—describes White’s musical ethos as well as the history and evolution of Tonstartssbandht, which he founded in 2008 with his older brother and drummer, Edwin. The duo’s most recent release, Petunia, marked a new phase in their development, as they eschewed fuzz and lo-fi sonics in favor of cleaner tones. Despite capturing live instrumental takes, the album is very much a studio creation. The brothers took advantage of the downtime afforded by Covid—holed up together in their hometown of Orlando—and experimented with gear, holding out for perfect takes, and even built an iso booth.
“It definitely felt alien,” White says. “It was very weird, and I’ve second-guessed myself a lot of the time. ‘Should it be taking this long? Should it sound so high fidelity? Are people going to hate us or think we sold out?’”
Tonstartssbandht - Pass Away (Official Video)
Relative to the rest of their work, Petunia sounds like it was captured with Steely Dan-like precision. Their previous effort, Sorcerer, was recorded under completely different circumstances that illustrate the brothers’ ability to embrace serendipity and circumstance. “Sorcerer was recorded at our old place, when Ed and I were both living in Brooklyn in a big, shared living and art space called Le Wallet, in Bushwick,” White says. “If you could build a vocal booth within a vocal booth, you would not be able to escape the noise, because the building was surrounded on three sides by the elevated M train. I didn’t mind sleeping there, but you would not be able to get a quiet take unless you timed it perfectly for when the M wasn’t running for five minutes or so. We knew we were working with the ambient noise of a train going by, or a roommate making dinner across the room who wants to shout or something. There was no avoiding that.”
The much more delicate sound of Petunia is a fresh entry to the band’s discography. The album opens with “Pass Away,” a dreamy, spacious, falsetto-laden jam that grows and grows, and yet never forgets it’s supposed to groove. White layers chord extensions over an ostinato bass figure that’s played with his thumb and—check it out—isn’t overdubbed. In fact, none of the guitar parts are. Even the hypnotic, uneven delays that complement the melodic, upper register double-stops on “What Has Happened” were recorded as one complete take. White was able to create a rich, detailed sonic image by carefully dialing in his amps, plus mixing.
“I’ve second-guessed myself a lot of the time. ‘Should it be taking this long? Should it sound so high fidelity? Are people going to hate us or think we sold out?’”
“I have trouble sometimes,” he says. “If I set up mics in a room and I think, ‘This sounds nice and heavy for a two-man band,’ when I listen back to the recording, I can be disappointed because it doesn’t quite capture how heavy it sounded. If I am left to my own devices to mix—like we were on our previous albums—it’s just a lot of trial and error with EQ in post. With Petunia, we had all the carefully recorded takes to work with, and that’s why we brought it to other people to mix. It took us long enough to figure out how to record it how we wanted to, and we didn’t want to fuck up what we worked on so hard by trying to mix it ourselves.” That also paid off by showcasing the haunting qualities within White’s voice, which spins warm melodies and charms in airy falsetto for most of the album, but can drop into a growling attack when it’s time to bare teeth.
White uses two solid-state Lab Series amps—he has both the L5 and L6 models—which he finds break up to his liking and cover a broad tonal range. The Lab Series is from Gibson’s Norlin era, the 1970 to 1986 period when the company was producing some of its wackiest products, including offbeat guitars like the Marauder and Corvus, and solid-state amps that featured, for the time, cutting-edge electronics designed by sister Norlin company Moog. You don’t see Lab Series amps around that often, and for White, they’re perfect. “Some guitar guys tell me they have a tube sound without the finicky-ness of tubes, and I’ve always found them to be very reliable. I try to get a nice boost-y heavy bass from the amps, and when it comes to recording it, it’s luck and trial and error.”
The brothers White: Edwin (left), drums, and Andy (right), guitar.
White runs the two amps simultaneously and bounces his signal between both—not a dry signal in one amp and wet in the other—creating a ping-pong effect and fattening the sound. You can hear that in action on Petunia, especially on songs like “All of My Children” and the aforementioned “What Has Happened,” where he also leans heavily on an Electro-Harmonix Super Pulsar.
“It uses a quarter-note tremolo really hard—like a strobe—and then one repeat 100 percent wet and dry delay on the dotted quarter,” White says. “I used to dial that in on the fly on a live show and it would take forever to get it exactly right tuning the tremolo ratio and getting the delay to hit it just at the right swing. Now I just adjust the Super Pulsar and tune it to make it exactly how I like, and then save it as a preset.”
Andy White's Gear
Seen here at Brooklyn’s Market Hotel, Andy White splits his Strat’s signal into two vintage Gibson Lab Series amps to achieve maximum tone density and psyched-out ping-pong effects.
Photo by Tod Seelie
Guitars
- Danelectro 12-SDC
- Early ’70s Gibson SG with Bigsby
- Fender American Elite Stratocaster
Amps
- Lab Series L5 2x12
- Lab Series L6 1x15 bass combo
Strings
- Ernie Ball Power Slinky (.011–.048, for 6-strings)
- Ernie Ball (.010 sets, for 12-string)
Effects
Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
Boss GE-7 Graphic Equalizer
Boss OC-3 Super Octave
Electro-Harmonix Little Big Muff
Electro-Harmonix Super Pulsar
Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai
DigiTech X-Series DigiDelay
Boss RV-6 Reverb
TC Helicon VoiceTone Create (for vocals only)
White’s recently developed pragmatic approach to gear applies to his guitars as well. He relies on three: an SG and a Danelectro 12-string that are tuned to D standard, plus a Strat tuned to a hybrid C# tuning of his own invention (C#–G#–C#–F#–G#–B), with its bridge stopped up with cork to disable the tremolo.
“I went to the local guitar guy in Orlando and had him set up my guitar in that C# tuning,” he says. “I can’t believe that I am 32 and I just figured out that may be a smart thing to do. It was very rewarding. I took three guitars on the road. I just couldn’t be bothered spending so much time tuning and retuning on stage, and it paid off. I think my brother really appreciated not sitting on the drums whistling to himself while I tuned in the middle of a live show.”
The guitarist fingerpicks with a raw style, using just his thumb and index finger, with his other fingers anchored to the pickguard. He plays with the flesh, or pads, of his fingers and doesn’t use his nails or fingerpicks.
TIDBIT: The White brothers made the best of the dearth of gigs incurred by the pandemic and took their time recording Petunia, creating the most high-fidelity and detailed recording in the band’s extensive discography
“I got into fingerpicking on an old nylon-string that was my first guitar,” he says. “I don’t remember a specific moment when I was like, ‘This is what I am going to do now,’ but I do remember that playing guitar for me was about using a pick—playing power chords or big open chords—and then one day I tried playing around with fingerpicking and realized I could use my thumb and index finger and that it wasn’t that hard. I started writing and fingerpicking as much as I could, and then I got into John Fahey and Davey Graham and that kind of British folk and blues fingerpicking. A few years later, when I was playing with my brother in Tonstartssbandht—our music, at first, was like noise and drone and vocal-looping based. Slowly but surely, and maybe it had to do with being able to express myself with tuning the amps correctly or finding the right guitar, fingerpicking became something we could comfortably do together. He could rip on the drums and I could fingerpick, and it wouldn’t sound too much like a hot mess. It was cohesive.”
Cohesion aptly describes the duo’s improvisations. They don’t jam in the soloist/accompaniment sense, but rather more in the group-focused style of ’70s-era krautrock bands like Can and Popol Vuh. “There are only two of us,” White says. “If only one of us is soloing, it’s going to sound pretty fucked up. We do our best to sound like a full band. If I am not playing chords and singing, I want to play leads like Michael Karoli. That feels funny—saying that Michael Karoli is my favorite guitarist—because you don’t listen to Can records for the guitars; you listen for the whole sound.”
“If only one of us is soloing, it’s going to sound pretty fucked up. We do our best to sound like a full band.”
Similarly, thanks to their combination of a practical, work-centric focus and just letting things happen, you listen to Tonstartssbandht for the whole sound. But the comparisons end there, because the members of Can, for the most part, usually wore shoes—you knew that was coming back—which, as White said, isn’t his M.O. He prefers the spiritual high and knob-twisting practicality of keeping his shoes off even if that does have its share of problems.
“It has come back to bite me,” he says. “If you play a smaller place with grounding issues, you get electrocuted that much more if you’re not wearing shoes. My dad has told me in the past, ‘Before you go on the road, go to Home Depot and get an insulated rubber mat to stand on in case you’re playing a place that has bad electricity. But as one is wont to do with their father, I hear his advice and think, ‘Shut up dad! That’s a stupid idea.’ But it’s actually quite a good idea. I should probably do it someday.”
“Falloff” by TONSTARTSSBANDHT live at Market Hotel, Brooklyn, NY, October 28, 2021
Witness the full effect of Andy White’s fingerpicked stereo sound in this vibe-y take of “Falloff,” from 2021’s Petunia.
- The Black Angels: Left-Handed Path - Premier Guitar ›
- Ty Segall: Manipulation Man - Premier Guitar ›
- Forgotten Heroes: Can - Premier Guitar ›
See and hear Taylor’s Legacy Collection guitars played by his successor, Andy Powers.
Last year, Taylor Guitars capped its 50th Anniversary by introducing a new guitar collection celebrating the contributions of co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug to the guitar world. The Legacy Collection revives five of Bob Taylor’s classic acoustic models, curated by the legendary luthier and innovator himself. “To imagine that we’re doing guitars that harken to our past, our present and our future all at the same time,” Bob says, “I really like that.”
In developing the collection, Bob preserved the essence of his originals while integrating performance and playability upgrades introduced during his tenure as designer-in-chief. “It’s an up-to-date version of what those guitars would be,” Bob explains, “but with the same sound.”
Visually, these guitars feel classic—clean, understated and unmistakably Taylor. While Bob’s original aesthetic preferences are showcased in his Legacy models, the nod to the past runs deeper than trade dress.
From his earliest builds, Bob favored slim-profile necks because he found them easier to play. That preference set a design precedent that established Taylor’s reputation for smooth-playing, comfortable necks. Legacy models feature slim mahogany necks built with Taylor's patented New Technology (NT) design. “My first neck was a bolted-on neck but not an NT neck,” Bob says. “These are NT necks because it’s a better neck.” Introduced in 1999, the NT neck allowed for unprecedented micro-adjustability while offering a consistent, hand-friendly Taylor playing experience.
What makes this collection unique within the Taylor line is Bob’s use of his X-bracing architecture, favoring his time-tested internal voicing framework over more recent Taylor bracing innovations to evoke a distinctive tone profile. Since Andy Powers—Taylor’s current Chief Guitar Designer, President and CEO—debuted his patented V-Class bracing in 2018, V-Class has become a staple in Taylor’s premium-performance guitars. Still, Bob’s X-bracing pattern produces a richly textured sound with pleasing volume, balance and clarity that long defined the Taylor voice. All Legacy models feature LR Baggs VTC Element electronics, which Bob says “harkens back to those days.”
The team at Taylor thought the best way to demonstrate the sound of the Legacy guitars was to ask Andy Powers, Bob’s successor, to play them. A world-class luthier and musician, Andy has spent the past 14 years leading Taylor’s guitar innovation. In addition to V-Class bracing, his contributions include the Grand Pacific body style, the ultra-refined Builder’s Edition Collection, and most recently, the stunning Gold Label Collection.
Below you’ll find a series of videos that feature Powers playing each Legacy model along with information about the guitars.
Legacy 800 Series Models
First launched in 1975, the 800 Series was Taylor’s first official guitar series. Today, it remains home to some of the brand’s most acclaimed instruments, including the flagship 814ce, Builder’s Edition 814ce and new Gold Label 814e.
The Legacy 800 Series features the 810e Dreadnought and two Jumbos: the 6-string 815e and 12-string 855e. Each model serves up a refined version of the Dreadnought and Jumbo body shapes Bob inherited from Sam Radding—the original owner of the American Dream music shop where Bob and Kurt first met. “I was making my guitars in the molds that Sam had made at American Dream,” Bob recalls. “There was a Jumbo and a Dreadnought. That’s all we had.”
All three Legacy 800 Series guitars feature one of Bob’s favorite tonewood combos. Solid Indian rosewood back and sides are paired with a Sitka spruce top, yielding warm lows, clear trebles and a scooped midrange.
Aesthetic appointments include a three-ring abalone rosette, mother-of-pearl Large Diamond inlays, white binding around the body and fretboard, and Bob’s “straight-ear” peghead design. Both Jumbo models also showcase a mustache-style ebony bridge—a nod to Bob’s early Jumbo builds.
Legacy 810e
The 810 Dreadnought holds a special place in Bob Taylor’s heart. “My first 810, the one I made for myself, was a thrilling guitar for me to make,” he says. “It’s the one and only guitar I played. It didn’t matter how many guitars we made at Taylor, that’s the one I took out and played.” The Legacy 810e brings back that bold, room-filling Dreadnought voice along with the easy playability expected from a Taylor.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 810e | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 855e
Taylor’s first 12-strings found an audience in 1970s Los Angeles. “I was making guitars that would find their way to McCabe’s in Santa Monica and Westwood Music,” Bob says, “and these guitars were easy to play. Twelve-strings were a popular sound in that music. It was a modern country/folk/rock music genre that was accepting our guitars because they were easy to play. They also liked the sound of them because our guitars were easier to record.” The Legacy 855e, with its resonant Jumbo body, slim neck and gorgeous octave sparkle, carries that tradition forward.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 855e | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 815e
The Legacy 815e revives Taylor’s original Jumbo 6-string, delivering a big, lush sound with beautifully blooming overtones.
Legacy Grand Auditoriums
In the early 1990s, Bob Taylor heard a consistent refrain from dealers: “Not everybody wants a dreadnought guitar anymore.” Players were asking for something with comparable volume but different proportions—something more comfortable, yet still powerful. This feedback inspired Bob to design a new body style with more elegant curves, more accommodating proportions and a balanced tonal response. The result was the Grand Auditorium, which Taylor introduced in 1994 to celebrate its 20th anniversary.
Thanks to its musical versatility and easy playability, Bob’s Grand Auditorium attracted a wide variety of players. “We came into our own with our Grand Auditorium,” he says. “People were describing it as ‘all around.’ It’s a good strummer and good for fingerstyle, but it’s not totally geared toward strumming or totally geared toward fingerstyle.” Also referred to as the “Swiss-Army Knife” of guitars or the “Goldilocks” guitar, the GA quickly became a favorite among guitarists across playing styles, musical genres and different playing applications including recording and live performance. “That guitar made studio work successful,” Bob says. It gained a wider fanbase with the debut of the “ce” version, which introduced a Venetian cutaway and onboard electronics. “That became one of our hallmarks,” says Bob. “If you want to plug in your guitar, buy a Taylor.”
Today, the Grand Auditorium is Taylor’s best-selling body shape.
The Legacy Collection features two cedar-top Grand Auditoriums inspired by past favorites: the mahogany/cedar 514ce and rosewood/cedar 714ce. Both models incorporate Bob’s original X-bracing pattern for a tonal character reminiscent of their 1990s and 2000s counterparts. Shared aesthetic details include a green abalone three-ring rosette, ebony bridge pins with green abalone dots, a faux-tortoiseshell pickguard and Taylor gold tuning machines.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 815e | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 514ce
The Legacy 514ce features solid mahogany back and sides paired with a Western Red cedar top, yielding a punchy midrange and dry, woody sonic personality that pairs beautifully with cedar’s soft-touch sensitivity and warmth. It’s a standout choice for fingerstyle players and light strummers who crave nuance and depth. Distinct visual details include faux-tortoise body and fretboard binding, black-and-white top trim, and mother-of-pearl small diamond fretboard inlays.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 514ce | Playthrough Demo
Legacy 714ce
The Legacy 714ce also features a cedar top, this time matched with solid Indian rosewood back and sides. The result is a richly textured sound with deep lows, clear trebles and a warm, mellow response. Inspiring as it is, this specific wood pairing isn’t currently offered in any other standard Taylor model. Additional aesthetic details include green abalone dot fretboard inlays, black body and fretboard binding, and black-and-white “pinstripe” body purfling.
While the Legacy Collection spotlights Taylor’s past, newer models from the Gold Label, Builder’s Edition and Somos Collections show the company’s legacy is always evolving. Explore the Legacy Collection at taylorguitars.com or visit your local authorized Taylor dealer.
Taylor Guitars | Legacy 714ce | Playthrough Demo
Detail of Ted’s 1997 National resonator tricone.
What instruments should you bring to an acoustic performance? These days, with sonic innovations and the shifting definition of just what an acoustic performance is, anything goes.
I believe it was Shakespeare who wrote: “To unplug, or not to unplug, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of acoustic purists, or to take thy electric guitar in hand to navigate the sea of solo performing.”
Four-hundred-and-twenty-four years later, many of us still sometimes face the dilemma of good William when it comes to playing solo gigs. In a stripped-down setting, where it’s just us and our songs, do we opt to play an acoustic instrument, which might seem more fitting—or at least more common, in the folksinger/troubadour tradition—or do we bring a comfy electric for accompaniment?
For me, and likely many of you, it depends. If I’m playing one or two songs in a coffeehouse-like atmosphere, I’m likely to bring an acoustic. But if I’m doing a quick solo pop up, say, as a buffer between bands in a rock room, I’m bringing my electric. And when I’m doing a solo concert, where I’ll be stretching out for at least an hour, it’s a hybrid rig. I’ll bring my battered old Guild D25C, a National tricone resonator, and my faithful Zuzu electric with coil-splitting, and likely my gig pedalboard, or at least a digital delay. And each guitar is in a different tuning. Be prepared, as the Boy Scouts motto states. (For the record, I never made it past Webelos.)
My point is, the definition of the “acoustic” or “coffeehouse” performance has changed. Sure, there are still a few Alan Lomax types out there who will complain that an electric guitar or band is too loud, but they are the last vestiges of the folk police. And, well, acoustic guitar amplification is so good these days that I’ve been at shows where each strum of a flattop box has threatened to take my head off. My band Coyote Motel even plays Nashville’s hallowed songwriter room the Bluebird Café as a fully electric five-piece. What’s key, besides a smart, flexible sound engineer, is controlling volume, and with a Cali76 compressor or an MXR Duke of Tone, I can get the drive and sustain I need at a low level.
“My point is, the definition of the ‘acoustic’ or ‘coffeehouse’ performance has changed.”
So, today I think the instruments that are right for “acoustic” gigs are whatever makes you happiest. Left to my own devices, I like my Guild for songs that have a strong basis in folk or country writing, my National for blues and slide, and my electric for whenever I feel like adding a little sonic sauce or showing off a bit, since I have a fluid fingerpicking hand that can add some flash to accompaniment and solos. It’s really a matter of what instrument or instruments make you most comfortable because we should all be happy and comfortable onstage—whether that stage is in an arena or theater, a club or coffeehouse, or a church basement.
At this point, with instruments like Fender’s Acoustasonic line, or piezo-equipped models from Godin, PRS, and others, and the innovative L.R. Baggs AEG-1, it’s worth considering just what exactly makes a guitar acoustic. Is it sound? In which case there’s a wide-open playing field. Or is it a variation on the classic open-bodied instrument that uses a soundhole to move air? And if we arrive at the same end, do the means matter? There is excellent craftsmanship available today throughout the entire guitar spectrum, including foreign-built models, so maybe we can finally put the concerns of Shakespeare to rest and accept that “acoustic” has simply come to mean “low volume.”
Another reason I’m thinking out loud about this is because this is our annual acoustic issue. And so we’re featuring Jason Isbell, on the heels of his solo acoustic album, a piece on how acoustic guitars do their work authored by none other than Lloyd Baggs, and Andy Fairweather Low, whose new solo album—and illustrious career—includes exceptional acoustic performances. If you’re not familiar with his work, and you are, even if you don’t know it, he was the gent sitting next to Clapton for the historic 1992 Unplugged concert—and lots more. There are also reviews of new instruments from Taylor, Martin, and Godin that fit the classic acoustic profile, so dig in, and to heck with the slings and arrows!Ernie Ball, the world’s leading manufacturer of premium guitar strings and accessories, proudly announces the launch of the all-new Earthwood Bell Bronze acoustic guitar strings. Developed in close collaboration with Grammy Award-winning guitarist JohnMayer, Bell Bronze strings are engineered to meet Mayer’s exacting performance standards, offering players a bold new voice for their acoustic guitars.Crafted using a proprietary alloy inspired by the metals traditionally found in bells and cymbals, Earthwood Bell Bronze strings deliver a uniquely rich, full-bodied tone with enhanced clarity, harmonic content, and projection—making them the most sonically complex acoustic strings in the Ernie Ball lineup to date.
“Earthwood Bell Bronze strings are a giant leap forward in tone, playability, and durability. They’re great in any musical setting but really shine when played solo. There’s an orchestral quality to them.” -John Mayer
Product Features:
- Developed in collaboration with John Mayer
- Big, bold sound
- Inspired by alloys used for bells and cymbals
- Increased resonance with improved projection and sustain
- Patent-pending alloy unique to Ernie Ball stringsHow is Bell Bronze different?
- Richer and fuller sound than 80/20 and Phosphor Bronze without sounding dark
- Similar top end to 80/20 Bronze with richer low end than Phosphor Bronze
Brent Mason is, of course, on of the most recorded guitarists in history, who helped define the sound of most ’90s country superstars. So, whether you know it or not, you’ve likely heard Mason’s playing.
Professional transcriber Levi Clay has done the deepest of dives into Brent Mason’s hotshot licks. At one point, he undertook the massive project of transcribing and sharing one of Mason’s solos every day for 85 or so days. Mason is, of course, on of the most recorded guitarists in history, who helped define the sound of most ’90s country superstars. So, whether you know it or not, you’ve likely heard Mason’s playing. Levi shares the insight he gleaned from digging deep, and he tells us what it was like when they shared a stage last year. Plus, Levi plays us some great examples of Mason’s playing.