
The early metal innovator talks about dropped-B tuning, heavy tone, building solos, renovating songs, and his pioneering doom outfit’s improbable resurrection.
Many bands spend an eternity waiting for their mythical day in the sun. Pentagram is among them. The group, who emerged from Arlington, Virginia, in 1971, pioneered the doom metal genre alongside Black Sabbath and was pegged to be the next big thing. But drug abuse and inner turmoil plagued the band, and their day never came.
In recent years, with the mainstream’s rediscovery of early ’70s rock, Pentagram has returned to the spotlight with more cultural capital than ever. In 2009 Jack White’s supergroup, The Dead Weather, covered Pentagram’s “Forever My Queen”—first recorded in a warehouse during the winter of 1972-’73—as the A-side of a 7" vinyl single. They included the song in concerts and performed it on TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Hank Williams III also plays the grinding love pledge onstage. And Pentagram showcased at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin and has mounted several international tours.
After the band’s plight was chronicled in Last Days Here—an award-winning 2011 documentary that focused on the drug-ravaged life of singer Bobby Liebling—Pentagram became hip in an “I-want-to-marry-Charles-Manson” way. In addition to the expected aging, bald metal dudes, everyone from PBR-drinking 20-somethings to 6-year old European toddlers are coming to Pentagram’s sold-out shows.
Sadly, a second chance at stardom hasn’t changed much for the seemingly indestructible Liebling, who continues on a 40-year habit ingesting every drug imaginable and has been at death’s door for decades. So severe is his addiction that he scratched the skin off parts of his body—leaving his limbs ravaged by gaping, open wounds—because he believed he was being eaten alive by parasites. When he’s not on the road with Pentagram, he lives on the couch of his parents’ Maryland home.
Guitarist Victor Griffin, however, has aimed for a more stable lifestyle. The man who created dropped-B tuning decades before most metal mavens even thought about twisting their tuning pegs counterclockwise, and has been dubbed the American Tony Iommi, straightened himself out by seeking salvation not from Satan but, ironically, The Man Above. Griffin maintains a clear head by partaking in many adrenaline-junkie activities. In addition to stints with various bands, including fronting the Christian heavy doom trio Place of Skulls, he’s a pro racecar driver, former semi-pro BMX rider, and runs a custom motorcycle shop out of Knoxville, Tennessee, where he lives. Since his influences go beyond metal to embrace first-generation punk outfits like the Dictators and the Dead Boys, Griffin’s playing in the current edition of Pentagram—with the rhythm section of bassist Greg Turley and drummer Pete Campbell—is also defined by a vocabulary plucked from the haunted corners of blues and rock, and a remarkably low tone achieved with modded amps.
Given Liebling’s moribund state and the impossibility of actually having writing sessions, it’s no surprise that many of the selections on Pentagram’s new release, Curious Volume,had to be unearthed. Cuts like “Lay Down and Die,” “Earth Flight,” and “Sufferin’” were written way back in the ’70s.
But contrary to what you might think, Curious Volume isn’t just a perfunctory reheating of old leftovers. Many of the songs were deconstructed, then reconstructed, and given a contemporary shine. “With our style and tones, it kind of jacks everything up and they become whole new songs compared to how they were back in, say, the mid-to-late ’70s,” proclaims Griffin.
But the question remains: Is Pentagram’s day finally on the horizon?
The guitarist who created dropped-B tuning decades before most metal mavens even thought about twisting their tuning pegs counterclockwise has been dubbed the American Tony Iommi.
How did you create the dropped-B tuning?
I learned dropped D from some early Sabbath stuff. One day I was feeling creative, but also feeling kind of blocked. I sat around with my guitar and thought, “There must be another tuning besides just dropped D.” As I began to play around with the low E string, I kept down-tuning to see what would happen when I would make a fifth chord on the 6th and 5th strings. When I finally got it down to B and hit a fifth shape, it was octaves, and I’m plugged in and cranked up, and was just blown away by the thickness of it. You’re only dropped on that 6th string.
How do you keep the strings from getting too floppy with that detuned E-string?
People think that if you tune it down you have to go to heavier gauge strings, but I don’t. I use custom lights, from .009-.046. We only tune a half-step down for our standard tuning, so a .046 gauge low E-string tuned down to B is really not that bad. But you do have to play it gingerly. You can’t play it really aggressive like you would a standard tuned guitar because it will vibrate out of tune before the vibration slows down, and then it will fall back into tune. I’ve kind of cultivated my stage thing. It might look like I’m hitting it really hard onstage, but I’m not hitting that string very hard at all. The music drives you to want to play hard, but you have to restrain yourself.
Many of the songs on Curious Volume were written decades ago. Did you take creative liberties or play them verbatim, as on the original demos?
Sometimes we had to restructure a little bit. Sometimes the songs were very short. I would use the original recording enough to learn the song and everything beyond that I’d just put out of my mind and start playing as if it’s a new song. If it needs another part or an extension, I noodle around with different riffs and come up with a part that feels like it goes with that song. But I’m not necessarily trying to capture the effect that this song was written in 1970. By the time I learn a song and play it through my rig with my tone, it basically becomes a whole different animal and I can fit my new part into it based on how that song now feels to me.
“I’ve never stopped trying to cultivate my tone. I get it to different levels where it’s like, ‘This is the best I’ve had,’
but that’s not where I stay.”
How did you write with Bobby, given his precarious condition?
A lot of times we ran the ideas past Bobby, if it was his song. Sometimes he’s open to extending or restructuring the songs a little bit, depending on how much in love with the songs he is. If it’s some song that he’s just adamant about keeping exactly the way he wrote it back then, we try not to mess with that too much. We don’t want him to lose his perspective of that song.
Bobby and I write so similarly that it’s almost seamless when we put our songs together. If I come up with a new part for a song, Bobby digs it and understands where I’m coming from. If it’s a part where we decide that we could put some lyrics there as well, then he’ll write some lyrics. We try to give each other leeway and freedom. And if one guy says, “I don’t know about that,” we don’t necessarily just throw it out right away. Sometimes you have to get used to a riff. I’ve probably thrown away a million really killer riffs because I got so over-judgmental and over-analytical about my own stuff. Like, I’d think a riff was killer, then the next day I’ve played it so much that I decided that it sucks, you know?
Some of the notes of the melodic figure in the intro to “Because I Made It” seem to ring into each other, almost like a piano. Are you holding chord shapes and playing the melody through that, or fingering in a way where notes on adjacent strings briefly ring into each other?
I’m just doubling that part. I did it on two different guitars with slightly different tone settings, and it was just the way the double came out. We recorded all the guitars at [Knoxville, Tennessee’s] Lakeside Studios with [producer/engineer] Travis Wyrick, and I tell you, man, he does some stuff with tweaking knobs that just amazes me.
Often on a double like that, he’ll slide the doubled track a little bit one way or the other. And, of course, with digital recording it doesn’t even have to be the whole thing. He might just pull a few notes and slide those a little forward or a little back. I’ve called him and asked, “What was the effect you used on this? I would like to be able to get that live. Is there a pedal that I can do that with?” Right now I don’t have a setup that can do that, so if we play that song live, I’m going to have to do a bit of research because I want to be able to tweak my guitar to make it sound just like that.
The interlude of “Because I Made It” from around 1:36 to 1:50, and the outro solo from around 4:04 to 4:09 feature phrases that suggest a broader palette—beyond blues scales—that we don’t hear often from you.
Maybe [laughs]. That’s almost an enigma because I’m a self-taught player. I never had lessons and I don’t know music theory. I learned to play by ear. I listened to albums by my favorite bands and kept putting the needle back and forth, back and forth. I never felt like I was a natural. I knew guys, growing up, that would pick up a guitar and in six months, smoke. I was never that guy, man. It took me years before I would even play solos because I really didn’t have it. When I was in my teens I determined that, “Okay, if I’m not a good lead player, I’ll be a really good rhythm guitar player,” and I didn’t even know what that statement meant at the time. But I did learn much later whenever I would jam with other guitar players, there would be guys that could just burn leads but could hardly play rhythm. And you’re standing there trying to play a solo over this really bad rhythm player and, of course, it makes you look like the one that sucks.
Victor Griffin’s Gear
Guitars1991 Gibson Les Paul Standard
1987 Gibson Les Paul Standard
1994 Gibson Les Paul Standard
1984 Gibson Les Paul Studio Standard
Amps
Laney Tony Iommi Signature TI100
3 Laney GH100L heads, modded by Voodoo Amps
3 Laney GH100TI Tony Iommi signature heads, modded by Voodoo Amps (all heads have Tung-Sol EL34B power tubes)
8 Fender Showman 412S cabinets
Effects
Carl Martin Boost Kick
Way Huge Angry Troll boost
Budda Budwah
Dunlop Q-Z1 Cry Baby Q-Zone fixed wah
Mooer Ana Echo delay
TC Electronic Flashback delay
American Loopers 8-channel programmable looper
Electro-Harmonix Nano Clone Chorus
Ernie Ball volume pedal
Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2
Voodoo Lab 4-channel Amp Selector
Korg Pitchblack tuner
Strings and Picks
D’Addario EXL125 sets (.009-.046)
Planet Waves American Stage cables
InTune heavy picks
In the solo on “Dead Bury Dead,” at around 3:35, you repeat a melodic phrase several times, developing it along the way. It sounds like you’re almost taking a vocal approach to phrasing.
If you go back with Pentagram or any of the stuff I’ve recorded outside of Pentagram, I always do a solo to stylistically be like a vocal—like you can sing the solo. Ripping off a really fast lick is cool, too—it has its place—but all my favorite solos, growing up and still to this day, are the ones that just sing and are full of soul, where the notes hang and there are techniques like bending and vibrato.
The album’s opener, “Lay Down and Die,” features a ton of crazy wah playing in your solo. There’s a cool run where it sounds like you’re having a convulsion.
It’s almost ridiculous. It’s really completely accidental. I normally wouldn’t play the wah pedal that way. I played the solo and for some reason, man, I was having a really tense day. You know how you’ll sometimes sit besides somebody with that leg thing? Well, for some reason, I just could not keep my foot still on the wah pedal. It was just like “wah, wah, wah, wah, wah,” and I would stop and try to get my head together and calm my nerves, and I never really did get it. I kept playing through the solo—and the thing is, you don’t want to go too much. If you don’t get it within a few takes, a lot of times you start going downhill no matter how hard you try. I did a few runs, maybe four or five, and I never could stop my foot on the wah pedal. It’s a little bit tripped out. I didn’t like it at all at first, but it was the best that I had. It’s kind of grown on me now. Maybe I drank too much coffee.
Along those lines, with Bobby’s decades-long crack addiction, how does the band maintain the doomy, plodding tempos that mark Pentagram’s live sound? I’m guessing crack doesn’t necessarily lead to slow and steady.
It’s kind of funny, man, because we’ve always been considered this doom band and people describe it—especially the earlier albums—as being very doomy, dark, and slow. But if you go back and listen, even to the first album, it’s really not that slow. It’s almost like an illusion of slowness because of the heaviness of the guitar tone, the songs, and the types of riffs and chord progressions. We have a lot of medium-tempo stuff. A lot of times, it all comes down to having a good drummer—a drummer that doesn’t want to play the song to show what he’s capable of, a drummer who is satisfied with keeping the backbone of the song together. You need a drummer that is into playing this kind of music and is into playing slow, if it’s required to play slow. We have a few upbeat things, but we don’t really have a lot of fast stuff. There’s a song called “Live Free and Burn” on [1994’s] Be Forewarned that might be one of the fastest songs we’ve done. It’s about having what I call a blues-based rock drummer, not someone whose influences might be blast beats and speed metal. You can try to pull the drummer back, but a lot of times everybody has to be in the same groove, you know? We’ve played with guys that just wanted to throw blast beats in and double time things. Our music is just not that.
You’ve developed a distinctive tone that works equally well with low, bluesy riffs and high-register solos.
I’ve never stopped trying to cultivate my tone. I get it to different levels where it’s like, “This is the best I’ve had,” and then that becomes my standard. But that’s not where I stay. I continue to try to get better tone. With the low tuning and the thickness of the tone that I like, I have to play around with different pickups and things like the tone control. Depending on what part I’m playing on the guitar and where the frequency range is, I might roll the tone knob up on the guitar or I might roll it completely back.
to restrain yourself.”
So are you using the guitar’s tone control almost as an effect pedal, to shape your tone depending on whether you’re playing lead or rhythm?
Yeah, I constantly use the tone knob on the guitar. For rhythm, 80 percent of the time it’s completely rolled off with the bridge pickup, which is generally what I use unless it’s a quiet, maybe bluesier part. And then on the neck pickup, I’ll have the tone control all the way up because you’re already getting the low end just because it’s the neck pickup. And I work with that and my amp settings. I use boost pedals to push, because I don’t use any sort of distortion pedal for gain. I use the gain from the amps, because all the amps I use have a gain knob.
How do you set your amp EQs?
On a stock head of any kind, I usually run the mids pretty low, about 2 or 3. I turn the bass on 10, treble around 5 or 6, and then the presence around 5 or 6. I had my Laney amps modded by Voodoo Amps for more bass, because different rooms have different acoustics, and I would go into a room and—even though my bass was already on 10—it would feel like the sound was really thin. What I wanted was to have more headroom on the bass control.
YouTube It
Pentagram is best onstage—rippin’ it on this live version of “Forever My Queen” from Germany’s Rockpalast TV show in 2012. Check out Victor Griffin’s thick-as-molasses tone and his killer wah-drenched solo at 1:58.
How do you keep things from sounding too woofy with the bass jacked up like that?
[Laughs.] I know, I know. I tell people the bass is on 10 but it’s not woofy enough. It’s just what I hear, man. Voodoo Amps added to the bass to where I can now roll the bass back to around 6 or 7, so I have all this bass headroom. On a couple of my heads they also did a gain mod, which didn’t give me more gain, but smoothed out the gain I already had even more.
Bobby and I have been together for about 35 years, but within those 35 years I’ve really been in there for about 18, and that’s because of leaving a couple of times to go pursue other opportunities—especially back in the ’80s and ’90s when we didn’t have much opportunity. We would beat ourselves to death and we couldn’t get on the road, and had other problems along the way. It was frustrating being stagnant. The thing is, Bobby and I always had a pretty good relationship. Our songwriting, like I said before, meshes together, and we perform well together. We both made these life commitments to music and at this point, in our 50s and 60s, we need to do what works best regardless of the circumstances or the situation. Bobby and I do better together than we do apart.
The Melvins' Buzz Osborne joins the party to talk about how he helped Kurt Cobain find the right sounds.
Growing up in the small town of Montesano, Washington, Kurt Cobain turned to his older pal Buzz Osborne for musical direction. So on this episode, we’re talking with the Melvins leader about their friendship, from taking Cobain to see Black Flag in ’84 to their shared guitar journey and how they both thought about gear. And in case you’ve heard otherwise, Kurt was never a Melvins roadie!
Osborne’s latest project is Thunderball from Melvins 1983, something of a side trajectory for the band, which harkens back to this time in Osborne’s life. We dig into that and how it all relates and much more.
Intermediate
Intermediate
How David Gilmour masterully employs target notes to make his solos sing.
When I was an undergraduate jazz performance major struggling to get a handle on bebop improvisation, I remember my professor Dave LaLama admonishing me, “If you think playing over the fast tunes is hard, wait until you try playing over the ballads. What Dr. Lalama was trying to impart was that playing fast scales over fast changes could get you by, but playing melodically over slow tempos, when your note choices are much more exposed, would really test how well you could create meaningful phrases.
Although getting past the “this scale works over these chords” approach to improvisation generally requires hours of shedding, aiming for particular target notes (specific notes over specific chords) is an optimum strategy to maximize your practice time. In the realm of rock guitar, I can think of no greater master of the melodic target note technique while playing ballads than David Gilmour.
For the unfamiliar few, Gilmour was first enlisted by fledgling psychedelic rockers Pink Floyd in 1967, when original guitarist/vocalist Syd Barrett began having drug-induced struggles with mental health. The band experimented with various artistic approaches for several years before refining them into a cohesive “art rock” sound by the early ’70s. The result was an unbroken streak of classic, genre-defining conceptual albums that included Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. Although bassist/vocalist Roger Waters assumed the role of de facto bandleader and primary songwriter, Gilmour was a significant contributor who was praised for his soulful singing and expertly phrased lead playing that seemed to magically rework pedestrian blues phrases into sublimely evocative melodies. His focus on musicality over excessive displays of technique made him a musician’s musician of sorts and earned him a stellar reputation in guitar circles. When Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in the mid ’80s, Gilmour surprised many by calmly assuming the leadership mantle, leading the band through another decade of chart-topping albums and stadium tours. Although Pink Floyd are not officially broken up (keyboardist and founding member Richard Wright died in 2008 while Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason joined forces with Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk on the one-off single “Hey Hey Rise Up” in 2022), Gilmour has mostly spent the last few decades concentrating on his solo career. His latest release, Luck and Strange, features his wife, novelist Polly Sampson, as primary lyricist and daughter Romany Gilmour as vocalist on several tracks. His recent tour filled arenas around the world.
Let’s take a page from Gilmour’s hallowed playbook and see how incorporating a few well-chosen target notes can give our playing more melody and structure.
For the sake of simplicity, all the examples use the Gm/Bb major pentatonic scale forms. In my experience as a teacher, I find that most students can get a pretty solid handle on the root-position, Form-I minor pentatonic scale but struggle to incorporate the other four shapes while playing lead. One suggestion I give them is to work on playing the scales from the top notes down and focus on the four highest strings only. I believe this is a more logical and useful approach to incorporating these forms into your vocabulary. Try playing through Ex. 1, Ex. 2, Ex. 3, and Ex. 4, which are based on the top-down approach of the Form I, Form II, Form IV, and Form I (up an octave) shapes respectively.
Ex. 1
Ex. 2
Ex. 3
Ex. 4
Once you’ve gotten a handle on the scales, try playing Ex. 5, which is loosely based on the extended introduction to Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” We begin by soloing over a static Gm chord for four measures. As target notes, I’ve chosen the root and 5th of the G minor chord ( the notes G and D, respectively). In the first measure, we’re starting in a minor pentatonic Form I with a bend up to the root of the Gm chord. A flurry of notes on beat 4 sets us up for the bend to the D in the second measure. The D note is again targeted in measure three—this time up an octave via a shift into the minor pentatonic Form II shape. Measure four aims for the G tonic up an octave, but ends with a bend that targets a C—the root of the IVm (Cm) chord in the final measure. By focusing on target notes and connecting them with embellishing licks, your lead lines will have a much better sense of direction and melodic narrative. Also, by only targeting the root and 5th of the chord, the target note approach will be easily transferrable to songs in a G blues context (G pentatonic minor over a G major or G dominant tonality).
Ex. 5
A further exploration of this approach, Ex. 6 begins with a two-beat pickup that resolves to the scale tonic G. This time however, the G isn’t serving as the root of the Im chord. Instead, it’s the 5th of Cm—the IVm chord. Employing the root of the pentatonic scale as the fifth of the IVm chord is a textbook Gilmour-ism and you can hear him use it to good effect on the extended intro to “Echoes” from Live in Gdansk. When approaching the C on beat 2 of the second full measure, bend up from the Bb on the 6th fret of the 1st string then slide up to the C on the 8th fret without releasing the bend or picking again. In the final measure, I’ve introduced two Db notes, which serve as the b5 “blue note” of the scale and provide melodically compelling passing tones on the way to the G target note on beat 4.
Ex. 6
Exclusively positioned in the Form-IV G minor pentatonic shape, Ex. 7 is based on a bluesy lick over the I chord in the first and third measures that alternately targets a resolution to the root of the IV chord (C ) and the root of the V chord (D7#9) in the second and fourth measures. Being able to resolve your lead phrases to the roots of the I, IV, and V chords on the fly is an essential skill ace improvisers like Gilmour have mastered.
Ex. 7
Now let’s turn our attention to the Bb major pentatonic scale, which is the relative major of G minor. Play through the Form I and Form II shapes detailed in Ex. 8 and Ex. 9 below. You’ll see I’ve added an Eb to the scale (technically making them hexatonic scales). This allows us a bit more melodic freedom and—most importantly—gives us the root note of the IV chord.
Ex. 8
Ex. 9
Channeling the melodic mojo of Gilmour’s lead jaunts on Pink Floyd’s “Mother” and “Comfortably Numb,” Ex. 10 targets chord tones from the I, IV, and V (Bb, Eb, and F) chords.
The muted-string rake in first measure helps “sting” the F note, which is the 5th of the Bb. Measure two targets a G note which is the 3rd of the Eb. This same chord/target note pairing is repeated in the third and fourth measures, although the G is now down an octave. For the F and Eb chords of measures five and six, I’ve mirrored a favorite Gilmour go-to: bending up to the 3rd of a chord then releasing and resolving to the root (an A resolving to an F for the F chord and a G resolving to an Eb for the Eb chord.) The final measure follows a melodic run down the Bb scale that ultimately resolves on the tonic. Be sure to pay attention to the intonation of all your bends, especially the half-step bend on the first beat of measure seven.
As a takeaway from this lesson, let’s strive to “Be Like Dave” and pay closer attention to target notes when soloing. Identify the roots of all the chords you’re playing over in your scales and aim for them as the beginning and/or ending notes of your phrases. Think of these target notes as support beams that will provide structure to your lead lines and ultimately make them more melodically compelling.
This legendary vintage rack unit will inspire you to think about effects with a new perspective.
When guitarists think of effects, we usually jump straight to stompboxes—they’re part of the culture! And besides, footswitches have real benefits when your hands are otherwise occupied. But real-time toggling isn’t always important. In the recording studio, where we’re often crafting sounds for each section of a song individually, there’s little reason to avoid rack gear and its possibilities. Enter the iconic Eventide H3000 (and its massive creative potential).
When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
A live editor and browser for customizing Tone Models and presets.
IK Multimedia is pleased to release the TONEX Editor, a free update for TONEX Pedal and TONEX ONE users, available today through the IK Product Manager. This standalone application organizes the hardware library and enables real-time edits to Tone Models and presets with a connected TONEX pedal.
You can access your complete TONEX library, including Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, quickly load favorites to audition, and save to a designated hardware slot on IK hardware pedals. This easy-to-use application simplifies workflow, providing a streamlined experience for preparing TONEX pedals for the stage.
Fine-tune and organize your pedal presets in real time for playing live. Fully compatible with all your previous TONEX library settings and presets. Complete control over all pedal preset parameters, including Global setups. Access all Tone Models/IRs in the hardware memory, computer library, and ToneNET Export/Import entire libraries at once to back up and prepare for gigs Redesigned GUI with adaptive resize saves time and screen space Instantly audition any computer Tone Model or preset through the pedal.
Studio to Stage
Edit any onboard Tone Model or preset while hearing changes instantly through the pedal. Save new settings directly to the pedal, including global setup and performance modes (TONEX ONE), making it easy to fine-tune and customize your sound. The updated editor features a new floating window design for better screen organization and seamless browsing of Tone Models, amps, cabs, custom IRs and VIR. You can directly access Tone Models and IRs stored in the hardware memory and computer library, streamlining workflow.
A straightforward drop-down menu provides quick access to hardware-stored Tone Models conveniently sorted by type and character. Additionally, the editor offers complete control over all key parameters, including FX, Tone Model Amps, Tone Model Cabs/IR/VIR, and tempo and global setup options, delivering comprehensive, real-time control over all settings.
A Seamless Ecosystem of Tones
TONEX Editor automatically syncs with the entire TONEX user library within the Librarian tab. It provides quick access to all Tone Models, presets and ToneNET, with advanced filtering and folder organization for easy navigation. At the same time, a dedicated auto-load button lets you preview any Tone Model or preset in a designated hardware slot before committing changes.This streamlined workflow ensures quick edits, precise adjustments and the ultimate flexibility in sculpting your tone.
Get Started Today
TONEX Editor is included with TONEX 1.9.0, which was released today. Download or update the TONEX Mac/PC software from the IK Product Manager to install it. Then, launch TONEX Editor from your applications folder or Explorer.
For more information and videos about TONEX Editor, TONEX Pedal, TONEX ONE, and TONEX Cab, visit:
www.ikmultimedia.com/tonexeditor