
When Yasmin Williams plays her Timberline harp guitar, she uses her fretting hand to strike the low-resonating strings on the upper neck. They're tuned to open G.
An emerging star finds peace and inspiration in the world of 2020 and, with her unconventional style and instruments (including harp guitar and tap shoes), distills it into the beautiful instrumentals of Urban Driftwood, her second album.
Acoustic guitar fingerstylist Yasmin Williams had a wide breadth of musical influences growing up in Washington D.C. Everything from go-go funk to Jimi Hendrix to Nirvana to hip-hop inspired her to pick up an electric guitar, and that amalgamation of styles remains the bedrock of the music she makes. But it's how she translates it all through her acoustic guitar, kora, kalimba, and a pair of tap shoes that makes the 24-year-old's latest release, Urban Driftwood, so captivating.
It also raises a question: How does one go from bashing out Nirvana songs to becoming one of the fastest-rising stars in fingerstyle guitar?
"I wanted to branch off and write my own music," Williams says. "But I felt like the electric guitar was a bit limiting, especially with the percussive stuff I wanted to do. And once I figured out how to do fingerstyle, it was a lot easier for me to write my own tunes. I think the first song I learned was 'Blackbird,'by the Beatles. That pushed fingerstyle into my brain. I fell in love with it.
"But I've always written instrumental music, simply because that's what I'm comfortable with. Even when I listen to music in general, I don't necessarily care about the lyrics most of the time. It's always the instrumentation and arrangements that get me to listen to a track."
Sunshowers
Since the day in May 2018 that Unwind, her debut album, dropped, Williams's acoustic instrumental wizardry and tapestry of influences has been on full display, with her impeccable technique and unique take on fretboard tapping demanding attention.
Inhibited by the bulk of some acoustic-guitar bodies, Williams decided to approach tapping by laying her 6-string horizontally on her lap. This is much more comfortable for her, and offers better access to the whole fretboard, laying it out more like a piano than a guitar. It's just one way Williams expands her musical dialect with a non-traditional approach. It wasn't long after the release of Unwind that Williams started to gain a reputation as an innovator. And, as innovators often do, she already had her eye on something new.
"For Unwind, there wasn't much of a theme," she says. "It was more like a collection of songs I'd written from late high school to the end of college. Whereas Urban Driftwood is definitely about something. It has a theme and an arc to it." In the album's liner notes, Williams explains that all of the songs were written during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the lockdown and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd's killing is reflected in the unfolding of its sequence. She also sought to craft a sonic landscape that communicates a feeling of movement and the natural beauty that persists in urban spaces.
"It is a solo guitar, so the tone has to be on point. I can't have a muddy bass or a buzzing treble."
"It's my first project that shows where I'm from and pays homage to my roots," she continues. "And it was an extremely different process than how I recorded my first album. Since I had already released a 'guitar' album, I didn't want to release another one. I wanted to show my composition skills and show I've grown as a songwriter, composer, guitarist, and musician. That was a huge goal."
She aced it. Urban Driftwood is audibly a step forward—not only in the excellence and emotional depth of its playing, but for her inclusion of new sounds and musical colors. Partly, Williams accomplished this by including guest musicians. Amadou Kouyate, for example, adds djembe to the title track and"Adrift." The latter also features cellist Taryn Wood, and she and Williams create an adventurous topography of melodies that repeatedly interlock and veer apart.
"'Adrift' was me sharpening my composition tools and writing something with counterpoint in mind. It's almost like a fugue. I wrote that song to see if I could write a duet for guitar and another instrument. I thought it came out great and was a good fit with the theme of the album, so I included it."
To give her complete access to the fretboard while tapping, Williams has created her own lap-style approach to playing acoustic. Here, she's weaving a melody on her custom Skytop.
Photo by Umbar Kassa
Like "Adrift," much of Williams' music is carefully calculated. Her debut album was planned to precision before she entered the studio. But Urban Driftwood producer/engineer Jeff Gruber wanted Williams to take a different approach—to open her mind to new influences and new recording techniques. "Jeff got me to open up, in terms of not having to have everything finished before I get into the studio," Williams says. "Being able to experiment while recording was not something I was open to at all. I'm definitely a perfectionist. I want everything already figured out and finished. He showed me that it's okay if it's not. Great things will come out of experimentation, trial and error, and trying different techniques.
"Like, usually I use a looper pedal. And that's what I wanted to do on 'After the Storm.' I thought overdubbing and slicing things was cheating. I don't know why I thought that. It made things way harder than they needed to be. But that's how I wanted to do things. But there are four guitar parts in 'After the Storm.' Thankfully Jeff convinced me that it would sound better if I recorded each guitar part separately."
Put on Urban Driftwood with a good set of headphones and you'll understand what Gruber was after. The broad aural spectrum gives the impression you're sitting in the middle of an acoustic guitar orchestra. But now Williams has to reproduce that onstage. "Unfortunately, I didn't think about that before going into the studio," she says, laughing. "It's extremely hard, especially since my songs are already so technical. But I don't want the live performance to affect the studio recording. Thankfully, I can play most of the songs on the album myself now. Like 'Swift Breeze'—I figured out a way to play it live with the looper pedal. But I definitely will have to use backing tracks on some songs, because the parts are instruments that I don't play."
Yasmin Williams Gear
With its considerable overdubs, the material on Urban Driftwood is challenging to perform live. But with backing tracks and a deep reservoir of technique, Yasmin Williams rises to the task.
Photo by Jan Anderson
Guitars
- Custom Skytop acoustic with James May Ultra Tonic pickups
- Timberline acoustic parlor harp model with K&K pickups
- Sublime Guitar Company acoustic
Strings, Picks, and Accessories
- Shubb capos
- Calton guitar cases
- D'Addario Humidipaks
- GHS Silk and Steel string sets (.011–.048)
- Black Mountain thumbpicks
Effects
- Audio Sprockets ToneDexter
- Strymon BigSky
- Pigtronix Infinity Looper
- Joyo volume pedal
- Hologram Electronics Microcosm
- TC Electronic PolyTune
- Looptimus foot controller (for triggering backing tracks)
- Tap shoes
It's easy to get caught up in the songs and sounds of Urban Driftwood and miss the technical aspect of William's playing. It all seems so natural and seamless. But, watching her perform, you'll see her effortlessly whip through fast tapping passages, explore expansive chords, and reposition her guitar from conventional positioning to her lap for tapping, mid-song, without missing a beat.
"I have to practice that a little bit," Williams admits. "Especially for 'Juvenescence.' That switch is rather difficult because I only give myself a beat to do it. There's a lot of thought put into it. It's like, 'Okay, I'll play a harmonic here, give myself a rest, or something.' Usually, I don't give myself long because it will mess up the continuous motion of the song."
Williams' playing technique is just the tip of the iceberg. She's also known for incorporating additional instruments into her songs, and, in fact, her simultaneous guitar/kalimba performances are one of her trademarks. "I had always liked Maurice White's playing, especially on Earth, Wind & Fire's live versions of the song 'Kalimba Story,'" Williams explains. "Then one day I was writing a song and I wanted to add another timbre that guitar couldn't achieve. I was trying to think of instruments, and that kalimba sound kept popping into my head. I didn't realize it was the kalimba until I found one with no price tag in Guitar Center. I was like, 'That's the sound that I've been hearing! That's the Earth, Wind & Fire sound!' I've been using those ever since.
"Oh, and I use tap shoes, too," she adds, laughing. "Jeff had the two mics in stereo. One was on one shoe, and another mic was on the other, which I've never done before. He also added a plate reverb to it, which gave it the weird ping-pong delay in 'Through the Woods.' It blew my mind!"
Rig Rundown - Yasmin Williams
Thanks to Gruber's passion for capturing sonic detail, every instrument on Urban Driftwood has a beautiful dimensionality. "Jeff was huge on making everything sound spacious and lush," Williams says. "When I listened to it for the first time, I was shocked at how spacious and vibrant the guitar sounded. He didn't use a DI or anything. He used two or three mics on the guitar, close-miked, and that's it. He used pencil condenser mics."
Although this straightforward miking technique puts Williams' performances under a microscope, good luck finding a string buzz or flubbed note on the entire album. Not many players can perform with that level of precision. "I get irritated at myself if I hear any type of note inaccuracies or buzzing," she explains. "The only thing I can accept is [sliding] string sounds, because I like it and there's not much I can do about it. Other than that, I want it to sound as clear as possible. It is a solo guitar, so the tone has to be on point. I can't have a muddy bass or a buzzing treble. It has to be good. That's the standard I set for myself. I practice that a lot. Accuracy is extremely important."
Williams' touch and technique are vital to her tone but playing her beautiful custom Skytop acoustic guitar probably doesn't hurt, either. "The Skytop [tuned to open D] is its own story altogether," she says. "I really loved [Skytop luthier Eric Weigeshoff's] designs, how the guitars look, and the fact that they have the two huge side soundports instead of the one soundhole in the front. It sounds better to me, and it actually projects a lot better, which you may not expect. But because of my lap-tapping technique, his normal side ports can get muffled because they're facing my stomach. So since I do a lot of that tapping, he recommended this wood that had holes in the front called teredo-holed Sitka spruce. The holes are natural and made by mollusks, and I didn't care how it sounded! I just thought it looked cool. [Laughs.] It's like functional art. But those holes do help the sound project when I'm lap-tapping. It does a great job."
The Skytop is on every track on Urban Driftwood except "Adrift."
"I use my old Sublime guitar on that because it sounded better with the cello," Williams notes. Her other trademark instrument is her Timberline harp guitar. In addition to its standard 6-string layout, this parlor-size instrument features six lower-octave strings, tuned in open G. Staying true to her pragmatic approach to technique, Williams prefers plucking the lower strings by reaching over the top of the guitar and picking with her fretting hand. It took some work to master, but the harp guitar is now an indispensable tool in her sonic arsenal.
TIDBIT: Producer Jeff Gruber was Williams' studio guru for her latest album, Urban Driftwood, urging her to experiment with overdubs and capturing every sound in pristine detail.
"I'd wanted a harp guitar for a while, but it always seemed intimidating because of the extra set of sub-bass strings. It's actually not, once you get the hang of playing it. It just has a whole other dimension. I use it on 'Swift Breeze' to play the super-fast tapping part. And I also use the harp guitar on 'Jarabi.'"
Regardless of which guitar Williams plays, she has a beautiful, natural-sounding tone, even when plugged in. But she's not afraid to use pedals to get it. "Gear is very important to your tones, to everything, to how you play," she says. "If you find something that works for you, then use that. I'm getting into pedals more and experimenting with delays and reverbs and all that. I love to use them live and have a pedalboard. I have a Strymon BigSky, a Pigtronix Infinity Looper, and a cool Joyo volume pedal that's miniature, so it fits my foot well. And I got a new pedal by Hologram Electronics called a Microcosm, which is super cool. It's like a granular delay/micro-looper. It has stereo reverbs, too. I also have a ToneDexter, which is important for my guitar tone live." That device uses Audio Sprockets' WaveMaps technology to create an optimized version of an acoustic guitar's voice.
For someone who gave up electric guitar for its tonal limitations, Williams is definitely becoming a pedal junkie. Is this part of another sonic evolution? "Oh, yes, for sure," she admits. "I'm playing electric way more than I have in a long time. My main instrument is still acoustic, but I think electric will pop up at a show or two in the future.
"Nowadays, I'm more aware that I'm in a unique spot in the guitar scene, and I'm not afraid of that anymore," Williams continues. "I'm actually enjoying writing music that includes percussive stuff that pays homage to D.C. or go-go music or West African music or whatever. I like putting something different into the guitar canon, if you want to call it that. That's the point of Urban Driftwood."
Yasmin Williams, “Juvenescence” | New York Guitar Festival sessions
Yasmin Williams performs "Juvenescence" at Dumbarton Oaks Park in Washington, D.C. Enjoy her beautiful, ringing tone and expressive technique, and watch, at 1:34, as she seamlessly transitions to her trademark lap-tapping without missing a beat.
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The Brian May Gibson SJ-200 12-string in the hands of the artist himself.
Despite a recent health scare, guitarist Brian May cannot be stopped. With the Queen reissue project, he’s celebrating his legacy, and with his new SJ-200—a limited edition signature Gibson acoustic guitar—he looks to the future.
Long lasting instrumental relationships are something we love to root for. Neil Young and Old Black, Willie Nelson and Trigger—those are inseparable pairings of artist and instrument where, over the course of long careers, those guitars have been shaped, excessively in both cases, by the hands that play them. Eddie Van Halen went steps beyond with Frankenstein, assembling the guitar to his needs from the get-go. But few rock ’n’ roll relationships imbue the kind of warm-and-fuzzy feelings as the story of Brian May and his dad building Red Special, the very instrument that hung around his neck for his rise to superstardom and beyond.
Together, with a legion of Vox AC30s and a few effects, May and his homemade Red Special have created some of the richest, most glorious guitar sounds that have ever been documented. It is with that guitar in his hands that he’s crafted everything from his velveteen guitar orchestras to his frenetic riffs and luxuriant harmonies to his effortlessly lyrical leads, which matched the dramatic melodic motifs of Freddie Mercury in one of the most dynamic lead singer/guitarist pairings in rock music.
Although it has a smaller role in his body of work, overshadowed by such an accomplished, prolific electric guitar C.V., May’s acoustic playing is a major part of the story of his music. His bold opening strums of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” are some of the most recognizable D-major chords in the classic-rock canon, and his supportive work on “Spread Your Wings” adds lush dimension between Freddie Mercury’s arpeggiated piano chords and his rich electric guitarmonies. The multi-tracked 12-string figure that opens “’39”—his “cosmic folk song”—is among his most recognizable.
It’s a surprise, then, that when I ask May about the acoustic guitars used while recording with Queen, the most notable is his Hallfredh acoustic, a “cheap as hell” guitar from a virtually unknown brand. “My little old acoustic, which I swapped with my dear friend at school,” he reminisces. “The strings were so low on it that everything buzzed like a sitar. I capitalized on that and put pins on it instead of the bridge saddles, and you can hear that stuff on ‘The Night Comes Down’ [from Queen]. I used it all the way through Queen’s recordings, like on ‘Jealousy’ [from Jazz] years later and lots of things.” He also recalls his Ovation 12-string and some others, but the Hallfredh remains in the foreground of his acoustic memories.
The cosmic inlays on the Brian May SJ-200 represent the rock legend’s work in the field of astrophysics, in which he holds a PhD.
In recent years, May has been performing the 1975 ballad and emotional Mercury vehicle “Love of My Life,” which appears on A Night at the Opera, as an acoustic tribute to the late singer. May and his acoustic 12-string sit center stage each night as he leads the crowd through a heartwarming rendition of the song, joined at its climax by a video of Mercury. For that powerful, commanding moment, he’s relied on “a number of guitars we won’t mention, but it just came to the point where I’m thinking, ‘This isn’t sounding as good as I would like it to.’”
At one concert, a Gibson representative who was around piped up and offered to make him a guitar to his specs specifically for this piece. “I was surprised that they would notice me in the first place,” May recalls, “because part of me never grew up.” A surprising take from a rock star of such stature, but he explains, “I’m still a kid who was reading the Gibson catalogs and not able to afford anything, seeing the SGs and the Les Pauls and dreaming of being able to own a Gibson guitar. I now have a couple of the SGs, which I absolutely love, but, of course, I made my own guitar and I now have my own guitar company, so I went a different way. But to me this was a joy that they would offer to make me a guitar, which I could take out onstage.”
After building one for the guitarist, Gibson created a limited edition run of 100 instruments of the new model, called the Brian May SJ-200 12-string. Featuring a AAA Sitka spruce top with a vintage sunburst finish, AAA rosewood back and sides, a 2-piece AAA maple neck with walnut stringer, and a rosewood fretboard, it’s a top-of-the-line acoustic. The most noticeable feature on the SJ-200 is probably the string arrangement, which is flipped—as is most commonly found on Rickenbacker 12-strings—with the lower string above the higher string in each course. May has made that modification on other 12s, because he likes to string the high string first when fingerpicking. “You get an incredibly pure sound that way,” he points out. “‘Love of My Life’ is a good example—if it’s strung the other way, it sounds very different.”
On its pickguard, all seven of the other planets in our solar system are etched. The shaded one, close at hand, is Mercury, a tribute to the Queen singer.
May’s aesthetic customizations draw from his astrophysics work and add a personal sparkle to the large-bodied acoustic. The pickguard features a custom design with the seven other planets in the system, which is to say, not Earth. Mercury sits close at hand, a tribute to the singer. The fretboard and headstock include 8-point star inlays—to give a “more cosmic feeling”—that are made from agoya shell, as are the bridge inlays.
“It became a discussion about art and science, which I love,” May says of the design process. “That’s probably the biggest thread in my life, this path trodden, some people would say, between art and science. But I would say that they’re the same thing. So, I just tread among art and science.”
May’s own Gibson has already appeared in concert during the “Love of My Life” segment of Queen’s show, and occasionally for “’39.” On social media, where May stays active, many fans caught a glimpse of the guitar when he posted a new song for Christmas Eve. “I just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and that’s the way it came out,” he says. “It was incredibly spontaneous. I wanted it to be a gift. I didn’t want it to be, in any way, a way of advertising or making money or anything. It was just a Merry Christmas gift to whoever wants to listen to me.”
“It became a discussion about art and science, which I love,”
While that was one of the first things created with the new Gibson, he has more plans. “I’ve been playing around with it. In fact, we’ve been dropping the D,” he says, hinting at some future plans with guitarist-vocalist Arielle. “I have quite a few songs with the bottom D dropped. I haven’t normally played them acoustic or 12-string, but I’m discovering that some of that sounds really good. It gets such a lovely big clang and a big depth to it.”
Recently, May spent a great deal of time looking back as the band prepped the Queen I box set. The remixed, remastered, and very expanded version of their 1973 debut, Queen—they’ve added the “I” here—which was released last October, encompasses a rebuild of the entire record, plus additional takes, backing tracks, a version recorded specifically for John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show, and a 1974 live concert recording from London’s Rainbow Theatre.May says of his new Gibson: “To me, this was a joy that they would offer to make me a guitar."
Revisiting this early document over 50 years later, it’s amazing to hear how well-developed the guitarist’s sound already was—full of the propulsive riffs and harmonies that would become part of his signature. May concurs, “You go back into these tracks quite forensically, and I hear myself in the naked tracks and I think, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize that I could do that at that point.’
It must have happened very quickly.”
Reflecting on those formative times, he continues, “I think there’s a period of just exploding, knowing what it is in your head, and striving to make what you play match what’s in your head. But I see it in other people, too. Sometimes, I go back and listen to the first Zeppelin album, and they were pretty young when they made that. But I think, ‘My God, how did they get that far and so quick?’”
“I thought guitars do work as primary orchestral instruments, so that’s what I want to do.”
Before Queen, May had already recorded a two-part guitar solo on the song “Earth,” a late-’60s track recorded with his earlier band, Smile, which also featured future Queen drummer Roger Taylor. While that lead certainly points toward the ambition in May’s later work, its raw untamedness doesn’t quite show evidence of his ultimate precision. But he says he had it in mind from early on. “There weren’t any more tracks to do three parts” when they recorded with Smile, he says, “but I always dreamed of it. It goes back a long, long way to hearing harmonies in other ways from the Everly Brothers, from Buddy Holly and the Crickets, from all sorts of things that we were listening to when we were kids.
“I wanted to make the sound of an orchestra just using guitars, and there’s other little inspirations along the way,” he continues. “Jeff Beck was an inspiration because there’s that wonderful track, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ which Jeff hated. But there’s one bit where he double-tracks the solo and in just one point it breaks into a two-part harmony, probably by accident. I guess I should have asked him—damn well wish I had. But that sound echoed in my head, and I thought guitars do work as primary orchestral instruments, so that’s what I want to do. I could hear it in my head for a long time before I could make it actually happen.”
Brian May and his Red Special at a recent concert.
Photo by Steve Rose
Though the Queenrecording sessions gave the guitarist his first opportunity to explore the larger harmonized sections that would become part of his signature, many of the sounds on the record left the band dissatisfied. Recorded at Trident Studios in London, the young band could only afford to use the room during downtime. Over the course of four months, they had sessions, usually at night, with in-house producers John Anthony and Roy Thomas Baker, both early supporters. However, the Trident style and sound wasn’t what Queen had in their collective ears, and they’ve remained unhappy with the sonic quality of their debut all these years.
The drums were the band’s primary issue, which Taylor describes as having a “very dry, quite fat, dead sound.” May’s tone is recognizably his own. “Well, I’m a very pushy person,” he laughs. “But nevertheless, it was difficult for me, too. Because of this Trident style of recording, the intention was not to have room sound on it. I kind of pushed, I suppose, to have a mic on the back of the amp as well as the front. That gave me a bit more air. I did feel a little hampered and the change is more subtle on the guitar, but it’s there.
“Jeff Beck was an inspiration because there’s that wonderful track, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ which Jeff hated. But there’s one bit where he double tracks the solo and in just one point it breaks into a two-part harmony, probably by accident.”
“It’s funny because it changed radically as time went on,” he continues. “And I can remember by the time we got to Sheer Heart Attack, Roy is putting mics all over the room and miking up windows in the booth and whatever to get maximum room sounds. It’s certainly nice to go back and make everything sound the way we pretty much would’ve liked it to sound at the time.”
With Queen I out, a new Queen IIset is in the works, which May calls “a very different kettle of fish.” The drum sounds on their sophomore effort were more in line with the band’s original vision, but the dense layers of overdubs that famously appear on the record came at a cost. “I think it is the biggest step musically and recording-wise that we ever made,” says May. “But there’s a lot of congestion in there. There’s mud because of all this generation-loss stuff [caused by overdubs], and because we liked to saturate the tape, which seemed like a good idea at the time. It made it sound loud. But if you disentangle that and get the bigness in other ways, I think Queen II is going to sound massive.”
The AAA rosewood back and sides of May’s signature acoustic are stunning.
At 77 years old, May certainly seems to keep his schedule packed with music work—not to mention his animal advocacy and scientific endeavors. In May of last year, though, everything came to a halt when the guitarist suffered a stroke. “I couldn’t get a fork from the table to my mouth without it all going all over the place,” he recalls. “It was scary.” Luckily, things began turning around quickly. “After only a few days, it’s amazing what you can get back. By sheer willpower, you just start retraining your muscle.” Not quite a year on when we speak, May estimates he’s regained 95 percent of his abilities, which, he says, “is enough.
“The short answer is, ‘I’m good,’” he assures.
May is in great spirits and appears excited about all his recent projects, finished and in-progress alike. In this time of looking back on his earliest works, I ask him to think about his beginnings, when he would gaze at Gibson catalogs but had to build his own guitar out of necessity, because, as he points out, he “couldn’t afford anything else.”
So, what would young Brian May, stepping into an afterhours session at Trident, making his band’s debut, think about his new limited edition signature model Gibson acoustic? He takes a long pause. “It would have been …” he pauses again, “unthinkable.”
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The National New Yorker lived at the forefront of the emerging electric guitar industry, and in Memphis Minnie’s hands, it came alive.
This National electric is just the tip of the iceberg of electric guitar history.
On a summer day in 1897, a girl named Lizzie Douglas was born on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, the first of 13 siblings. When she was seven, her family moved closer to Memphis, Tennessee, and little Lizzie took up the banjo. Banjo led to guitar, guitar led to gigs, and gigs led to dreams. She was a prodigious talent, and “Kid” Douglas ran away from home to play for tips on Beale Street when she was just a teenager. She began touring around the South, adopted the moniker Memphis Minnie, and eventually joined the circus for a few years.
(Are you not totally intrigued by the story of this incredible woman? Why did she run away from home? Why did she fall in love with the guitar? We haven’t even touched on how remarkable her songwriting is. This is a singular pioneer of guitar history, and we beseech you to read Woman with Guitar: Memphis Minnie’s Blues by Beth and Paul Garon.)
Following the end of World War I, Hawaiian music enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity. On their travels around the U.S., musicians like Sol Ho’opi’i became fans of Louis Armstrong and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, leading to a great cross-pollination of Hawaiian music with jazz and blues. This potent combination proved popular and drew ever-larger audiences, which created a significant problem: How on earth would an audience of thousands hear the sound from a wimpy little acoustic guitar?
This art deco pickguard offers just a bit of pizzazz to an otherwise demure instrument.
In the late 1920s, George Beauchamp, John and Rudy Dopyera, Adolph Rickenbacker, and John Dopyera’s nephew Paul Barth endeavored to answer that question with a mechanically amplified guitar. Working together under Beauchamp and John Dopyera’s National String Instrument Corporation, they designed the first resonator guitar, which, like a Victrola, used a cone-shaped resonator built into the guitar to amplify the sound. It was definitely louder, but not quite loud enough—especially for the Hawaiian slide musicians. With the guitars laid on their laps, much of the sound projected straight up at the ceiling instead of toward the audience.
Barth and Beauchamp tackled this problem in the 1930s by designing a magnetic pickup, and Rickenbacker installed it in the first commercially successful electric instrument: a lap-steel guitar known affectionately as the “Frying Pan” due to its distinctive shape. Suddenly, any stringed instrument could be as loud as your amplifier allowed, setting off a flurry of innovation. Electric guitars were born!
“At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.”
By this time, Memphis Minnie was a bona fide star. She recorded for Columbia, Vocalion, and Decca Records. Her song “Bumble Bee,” featuring her driving guitar technique, became hugely popular and earned her a new nickname: the Queen of Country Blues. She was officially royalty, and her subjects needed to hear her game-changing playing. This is where she crossed paths with our old pals over at National.
National and other companies began adding pickups to so-called Spanish guitars, which they naturally called “Electric Spanish.” (This term was famously abbreviated ES by the Gibson Guitar Corporation and used as a prefix on a wide variety of models.) In 1935, National made its first Electric Spanish guitar, renamed the New Yorker three years later. By today’s standards, it’s modestly appointed. At the time it was positively futuristic, with its lack of f-holes and way-cool art deco design on the pickup.
There’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but that just goes to show how well-loved this guitar has been.
Memphis Minnie had finally found an axe fit for a Queen. She was among the first blues guitarists to go electric, and the New Yorker fueled her already-upward trajectory. She recorded over 200 songs in her 25-year career, cementing her and the National New Yorker’s place in musical history.
Our National New Yorker was made in 1939 and shows perfect play wear as far as we’re concerned. Sure, there’s buckle rash and the finish on the back of the neck is rubbed clean off in spots, but structurally, this guitar is in great shape. It’s easy to imagine this guitar was lovingly wiped down each time it was put back in the case.
There’s magic in this guitar, y’all. Every time we pick it up, we can feel Memphis Minnie’s spirit enter the room. This guitar sounds fearless. It’s a survivor. This is a guitar that could inspire you to run away and join the circus, transcend genre and gender, and leave your own mark on music history. As a guitar store, watching guitars pass from musician to musician gives us a beautiful physical reminder of how history moves through generations. We can’t wait to see who joins this guitar’s remarkable legacy.
SOURCES: blackpast.org, nps.gov, worldmusic.net, historylink.org, Memphis Music Hall of Fame, “Memphis Minnie’s ‘Scientific Sound’: Afro-Sonic Modernity and the Jukebox Era of the Blues” from American Quarterly, “The History of the Development of Electric Stringed Musical Instruments” by Stephen Errede, Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL.
With authentic stage-class Katana amp sounds, wireless music streaming, and advanced spatial technology, the KATANA:GO is designed to offer a premium sound experience without the need for amps or pedals.
BOSS announces the return of KATANA:GO, an ultra-compact headphone amplifier for daily jams with a guitar or bass. KATANA:GO puts authentic sounds from the stage-class BOSS Katana amp series at the instrument’s output jack, paired with wireless music streaming, sound editing, and learning tools on the user’s smartphone. Advanced spatial technology provides a rich 3D audio experience, while BOSS Tone Exchange offers an infinite sound library to explore any musical style.
Offering all the features of the previous generation in a refreshed external design, KATANA:GO delivers premium sound for everyday playing without the hassle of amps, pedals, and computer interfaces. Users can simply plug it into their instrument, connect earbuds or headphones, call up a memory, and go. Onboard controls provide access to volume, memory selection, and other essential functions, while the built-in screen displays the tuner and current memory. The rechargeable battery offers up to five hours of continuous playing time, and the integrated 1/4-inch plug folds down to create a pocket-size package that’s ready to travel anywhere.
KATANA:GO drives sessions with genuine sounds from the best-selling Katana stage amp series. Guitar mode features 10 unique amp characters, including clean, crunch, the high-gain BOSS Brown type, two acoustic/electric guitar characters, and more. There’s also a dedicated bass mode with Vintage, Modern, and Flat types directly ported from the Katana Bass amplifiers. Each mode includes a massive library of BOSS effects to explore, with deep sound customization available in the companion BOSS Tone Studio app for iOS and Android.
The innovative Stage Feel feature in KATANA:GO provides an immersive audio experience with advanced BOSS spatial technology. Presets allow the user to position the amp sound and backing music in different places in the sound field, giving the impression of playing with a backline on stage or jamming in a room with friends.
The guitar and bass modes in KATANA:GO each feature 30 memories loaded with ready-to-play sounds. BOSS Tone Studio allows the player to tweak preset memories, create sounds from scratch, or import Tone Setting memories created with stage-class Katana guitar and bass amplifiers. The app also provides integrated access to BOSS Tone Exchange, where users can download professionally curated Livesets and share sounds with the global BOSS community.
Pairing KATANA:GO with a smartphone offers a complete mobile solution to supercharge daily practice. Players can jam along with songs from their music library and tap into BOSS Tone Studio’s Session feature to hone skills with YouTube learning content. It’s possible to build song lists, loop sections for focused study, and set timestamps to have KATANA:GO switch memories automatically while playing with YouTube backing tracks.
The versatile KATANA:GO functions as a USB audio interface for music production and online content creation on a computer or mobile device. External control of wah, volume, memory selection, and more are also supported via the optional EV-1-WL Wireless MIDI Expression Pedal and FS-1-WL Wireless Footswitch.
For more information, please visit boss.info.
In our third installment with Santa Cruz Guitar Company founder Richard Hoover, the master luthier shows PG's John Bohlinger how his team of builders assemble and construct guitars like a chef preparing food pairings. Hoover explains that the finer details like binding, headstock size and shape, internal bracing, and adhesives are critical players in shaping an instrument's sound. Finally, Richard explains how SCGC uses every inch of wood for making acoustic guitars or outside ventures like surfboards and art.