Most guitar players suffer from bass envy. They crave low-end mojo and want to be cool in that detached, understated, bass-player way.
On the other hand, some bass players are frustrated guitarists and long for glory and a chance to step out of the shadows. Well, maybe not out of the shadows, but at least for an opportunity to play above the 7th fret. In most cases you’re stuck with your instrument and the role you’re assigned.
Unless you’re in the band Slightly Stoopid. Founding members Kyle McDonald and Miles Doughty prove you can have it all. Both McDonald and Doughty play guitar and bass, and both players take each instrument seriously. They play bass like a bass player—with their fingers, sans pick—and weave endlessly groovable lines that sit deep in the pocket. But watch out: Either player can just as easily strap on a guitar, step up to the front of the stage, grab a pick, and add layers of color and madness like you’d expect a guitarist to do. And their transition between instruments is seamless.
McDonald and Doughty founded Slightly Stoopid in 1994. Back then, they were eager young San Diego teens, lived near the beach, surfed, played guitar, listened to music, went to shows, and were basically inseparable. “We’re brothers from other mothers,” Doughty says. “We’ve been around each other more than we have most of our family—because we’re always on the road together and whatnot—even growing up, we hung out every day when we were young.”
They were still in high school when they met Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell, who became a big brother, mentoring them and taking them under his wing. Under his guidance, Slightly Stoopid signed to Skunk Records, recorded their first album, hit the road, and built up a massive and loyal following for their infectious blend of punk-influenced reggae and groovable jams.
More than 20 years later and on the heels of their eighth studio release, Meanwhile…Back at the Lab, Slightly Stoopid haven’t stopped touring and show no signs of slowing down. “Most people can’t say they get to do what they love, travel around the world, uplift people through music, and uplift themselves every day,” McDonald says. “It’s a pretty big blessing.”
PG caught up with the duo to discuss their unique working relationship, the secrets of writing great bass parts, the deceptive simplicity of difficult reggae feels, their new custom Fader guitars and basses, and—in the spirit of their SoCal roots—glass guitars that double as bongs.
When did you first get interested in music?
Kyle McDonald: I’ve always been into music but what really got me into wanting to play music was Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Def Leppard—I think I was 9 or 10 when I got into those bands. Those were the kinds of bands that made me want to play guitar.
Miles Doughty: I started playing guitar around 12 years old. Kyle and I both started playing around the same time and it just took off from there. We started on the acoustic guitar and then slowly started to play the electric. We started a band in high school. Obviously, we’re still doing it.
How did you meet up with the guys from Sublime?
Doughty: We met them when we were young at a show in San Diego. It was at this place called Green Street. My mom had convinced Brad [Nowell], Miguel [Michael Happoldt], and Brad’s girlfriend to come back to the house the next day—my mom was pretty convincing back in the day. We had guitars and a 4-track set up, started jamming, and became buds. I was just a kid but Brad took on that big brother role and came down and jammed. I would cruise up to Long Beach and cruise with all the guys and go to the shows. I was a 16-year-old hanging out with all these cats and it was pretty rad man. It was a whole experience.
What did you learn from them about playing and recording?
McDonald: We learned from them to take it on the road. No matter how many records you have out or how great a record is, you have to take it to the road, tour, and be a road dog. It will take about five years from the time you start to get anything off the ground. We’ve seen people that have been coming out to shows for almost 20 years now. We see them every year, they’re like family to us.
You both play guitar and bass, which is unusual. Why is that?
McDonald: I think it’s a little easier to sing and play the guitar than it is to sing and play the bass. We do a little bit of both, but for the most part, the guy who is singing has the guitar.
Is it obvious who is going to play guitar and who will play bass on a particular song? Do you ever have to fight it out?
Doughty: No. Usually if I write something on guitar, I play it on guitar. If Kyle writes something on guitar, he plays it on guitar. There’s no fight about it. If he has ideas about what he wants to do for a bass line for the song, I just learn what he wants to play. And vice versa. If we have different ideas about what we want to hear on bass, we both just learn what the other guy wants to hear and make it happen within the music.
McDonald: Really it’s just whatever is more natural. We feel it out.
Both of you play the bass with your fingers but use a pick for guitar. Why is that?
Doughty: That’s the sound you want on the bass. You don’t want to play the bass with a pick if you’re playing reggae, blues, funk, and all that stuff. You’re not supposed to use a pick. You need that warmth from the fingers.
Most guitarists are horrible bass players—they overplay and their tone is lacking. How do you switch hats so quickly when you take on the bass role?
Doughty: It’s just the vibe that you have to pick for each song. Obviously, as a guitar player you always want to add extra stuff. When you’re playing bass you have to be with the feel of the drums and of the other instruments onstage.
McDonald: I think if the drums are cracking and you have a really strong foundation of a drum beat—that’s what the bass line revolves around. Also, less is more. You have to know where not to play. Where you do play, keep it bubbly or keep it according to that beat. If the heartbeat is solid and strong, then the song will be too. The beat and the foundation—you just keep the bass revolved around that.
Slightly Stoopid’s Miles Doughty is shown here playing a custom Fader bass that’s chambered to give it a woodier sound, make it rounder, and feel lighter. It also features an onboard preamp. Photo courtesy of Miles Doughty
When you switch instruments, the bass player moves to the “bass spot” onstage, too. Why is that?
Doughty: I like to stand right in front of the kick drum. You get to feel all the subs and the side fills. We have two 8x10 cabs on the side of the drums, so it gets that full, round feel.
McDonald: Sometimes the stage resonates in different areas and if you stand on what we call the hot spot—it’s the fucking sweet spot—it just rumbles bigger. It rumbles up through you. It feels good.
Slightly Stoopid’s Gear
Guitars and Basses
Assorted Fender Strats
Taylor T5
Taylor 814ce
Assorted Lakland basses
Fader P-style custom bass with onboard preamp
Fader modified Jazzmaster-style body with two P-90 pickups and a stealth humbucker mounted under the pickguard
Guitar Amps
Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier Head through 4x12 cab
Mesa/Boogie Lonestar Head through 4x12 cab
Fender Twin Reverb 2x12 combo
Bass Amp
Aguilar DB 751 Head through 8x10 Ampeg cab
Guitar Pedalboard
Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb Nano
Boss PH-2 Super Phaser
Boss DD-3 Digital Delay (two)
Ibanez Tube Screamer
Boss Giga Delay DD-20
Fulltone OCD
Morley Steve Vai Bad Horsie 2 Electro-Optical Contour Wah Pedal
Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner
Voodoo Lab Amp Selector
Bass Pedalboard
Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner
MXR Bass Envelope Filter
Dunlop Uni-Vibe Jimi Hendrix 70th Anniversary
MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay
Mesa/Boogie Flux-Drive
Mesa/Boogie Tone-Burst
Mesa/Boogie Grid Slammer
Dunlop Cry Baby Wah
Picks and Strings
Dunlop picks 1.00 mm
.012 sets for both electric and acoustic guitar
How does your relationship with the rest of the band change when you’re playing bass as opposed to guitar?
McDonald: When I’m playing bass I try to keep it locked and tight and grooving. When I’m on the guitar there is a little more freedom. That’s where I let loose a little bit.
Doughty: The role of bass is to create that pocket with the drums, so any vocal, piano, horn line, or guitar can drop in there. You need that to keep the song going—it carries everything. If you’re playing something funky and fast, the bass is going to be a little busier. If you’re playing slower and more laid back, it’s going to be less notes and more locked in the pocket.
How about rhythm guitar? In such a large band, do you sometimes find you’re competing with the keyboards? How do you control the clutter?
Doughty: Sometimes you just stop playing guitar. We’ll stop, let the keyboard play, and concentrate on the vocals. When you’re not singing—bring the guitar back in. And obviously, when you’re playing something like reggae, you don’t want to be competing the whole time—like doing skanks at the same time—so you do different things, whether it’s doing shadow guitars or little licks.
McDonald: Silence is golden, I always say. Some of the best musicians know when to drop out, come back in, do air breaks, little pauses, and stops, and fills—it’s just a feeling—little formulas of when to cut in and cut out. It goes a long way.
What advice can you give younger players trying to learn how to play a reggae or ska feel?
Doughty: You need to do your homework by listening to reggae music in general. It isn’t as easy as everyone thinks. A lot of people do the upstroke for the reggae rhythm because they can’t understand the way that you hear it. Sometimes it can’t be taught if you don’t have the feel—not everyone is going to be able to do it. But I think that sticking to your guns, always practicing, and not being lazy—you’re going to break through regardless. And what’s cool about today is that you can pull anything up on YouTube. You can watch the whole technique of it.
Playing a funk groove or a reggae feel is a lot harder than it looks.
Doughty: It is a feel and it’s not as easy as everyone thinks. But also it’s not as hard if you understand what’s going on in the music. That’s why I say you have to do your homework with some of the old-school players. Sly and Robbie is a great way to start. A lot of people’s first choice is Bob Marley—he’s the most recognizable reggae musician. But there are also amazing cats like Don Carlos, Yellowman, Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Dekker—stuff like that should be studied. That’s how you learn how to play.
Why do you use the same guitars and pedals instead of having separate setups?
McDonald: We’ve tried to do that before, but it gets to be a little too much. For us it’s easier just to have one dope guitar setup and one dope bass setup. Keep it simple and make sure each one is sounding solid.
Doughty: We do so much touring—it’s easier in the long run of the madness of shows. We use the same pedals anyway so we just get a board big enough to fit the pedals that we want.
Does sharing equipment ever create problems onstage?
Doughty: Sometimes we’ll have certain guitars we want to play and they’ll get mismatched while trying to do switches. And sometimes we’ll go into a song and the pedals will still be on from the last song—that first note will be like every little sound that was going on from the last song. Sometimes that happens onstage, but it’s an easy fix.
You feature a lot of acoustic guitar on your albums. Why don’t you use it much live?
Doughty: It’s easier to use it in the studio. We have such a loud stage volume—we like to have our own show onstage aside from the show that’s going on in front of the house—that way we can feel what the crowd is feeling. When you have it that loud, the volume, no matter what you do, rattles the acoustic strings and you can’t play it cleanly.
But you break it up more in the studio.
Doughty: Yeah. A lot of the reggae songs sound good when you add acoustic rhythms to them.
Acoustic has one of the greatest tones. There’s something the electric can’t get that acoustic has. It’s fun to use it in the studio.
How do you mic the acoustics when you’re recording them?
Doughty: We plug them in direct and we mic them. We don’t have a booth [in our studio], we have rooms we like to record in.
McDonald: Our studio is like a big playground full of stuff. A whole wall is lined up with guitars, basses, and an array of different amps we use. I don’t like to be pigeonholed into using one thing.
Do you have any interesting guitars?
McDonald: A fan of ours blows these glass guitars: The glass is hollow and you can hook a bowl up to it and smoke through the guitar. It’s the most beautiful guitar I’ve ever seen in my life and it plays like butter. It sounds amazing whether it’s plugged in or not and it’s some killer craftsmanship.
Where do you see yourselves in the future?
McDonald: I just take it one day at a time. We really don’t know any better than what we’re doing. We’ve had our fair share of day jobs and we’re grateful to be able to play music and travel around. We know we’re really lucky.
“When I’m playing bass I try to keep it locked and tight and grooving,” Kyle McDonald says. “When I’m on the guitar there is a little more freedom.” Photo by Rich Osweiler
A Custom Affair
Slightly Stoopid recently added two new instruments to their arsenal of touring gear: a Fader Custom guitar and bass. They’re particularly enamored with the bass. “It’s so warm and round and every note is just crisp and clear,” says Miles Doughty. Kyle McDonald agrees. “It doesn’t feel like you’re holding a big thing and it’s super light,” he adds. “You can move around a lot more and it really brings the tones out.”
Fader Custom guitars and basses are one-of-a-kind instruments built by Craig Welsch in Boston. “Being a sound engineer, I’m obviously into detail and tone,” says Welsch. “Those two things helped me construct guitars that would do the things I needed them to do in the studio.” It doesn’t hurt that the studio he works at—Boston’s Rear Window Studio—is stocked to the rafters with vintage gear. “I analyzed those instruments and saw what was making them work—the woods, the necks, the hardware—there’s a charm to the old hardware that is considered by many to be cheap hardware. It’s very thin. It’s cheap. But it vibrates. When you get into all this newer hardware that is supposed to be high mass and all that stuff, it suffocates some of the charm of what those instruments do.”
Welsch was Slightly Stoopid’s front-of-house engineer for four years in the late 2000s. “I learned all the things they would struggle with night after night,” he says. “One of them being that the bass never quite had definition, it seemed it was the wrong kind of bass. I designed an instrument for them to be chambered to give it a woodier sound, make it rounder, and to lighten the load on their shoulders. I put a preamp inside of it—it’s basically a notching filter type of thing, like an old API EQ, and you can boost or cut at different frequencies. I shaped that around what they were going for. A lot of the old reggae lines play on the D and G strings and they want those strings to still be round and have low end.”
The guitar is unconventional as well. It has Jazzmaster-style body but a unique pickup configuration, with two P-90 pickups (neck and bridge) and a humbucker in the middle, hidden underneath the pickguard. “It has all of the positions of a Les Paul and then the two great Stratocaster sounds, those being the out-of-phase sounds in the second and fourth switch positions,” Welsch says.
“I designed those instruments specifically with them in mind,” he adds. “Meaning two guys who switch between bass and guitar during the show a lot. Kyle liked one sound and Miles liked another, and they had to find happy mediums.” Even the strap length had to be discussed. “When you throw a guy a guitar, he’s got to be able to play it.”
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.
Galloup’s Plek tech Adam Winarski preps a Yamaha acoustic for the machine.
Presently, many certified guitar-repair specialists possess the expertise required to deliver an instrument that both sounds and plays wonderfully. The standards set by manufacturers and distributors have significantly risen, safeguarded by rigorous quality protocols to guarantee the best possible acoustic experience for customers. Additionally, lutherie training has raised the bar for critical processes, and one of the most tricky is fretwork.
Traditional fretwork once involved manual labor, with technicians utilizing sandbags or similar supports to steady the neck as they straightened it with a truss rod during the filing process. A notable advancement in this field came in the mid 1970s when Don Teeter, an author and repair expert, imposed a new method: fixing the guitar body to the bench and using blocks to maintain the neck in a playing position. This refinement was one of many in the continued quest to produce superior instruments by standardized methods.
An example of the Plek’s readings from an acoustic guitar.
Photo courtesy of Galloup Guitars
In the late 1970s, another pivotal innovation was introduced by Dan Erlewine. He created an advanced fret jig with a specialized body-holding system and neck supports, adding another layer of precision to the repair process. During my collaboration with Dan in 1985, we developed a rotating neck jig that counterbalanced the forces of gravity, keeping the instrument in its playing orientation while adjusting the neck supports. This step represented a significant leap in establishing control and standardization of fretwork procedures in our industry. By 1986, our approach had evolved into a freestanding workstation coupled with a sophisticated hold-down mechanism and enhanced neck supports, culminating in increased accuracy, efficiency, and consistency. Over the decades, the Erlewine/Galloup rotating neck jig has become a benchmark in numerous shops, enhancing fretwork performance.
"This step represented a significant leap in establishing control and standardization of fretwork procedures in our industry."
By the 1990s, automated and computerized technologies permeated the guitar manufacturing and repair sectors. Initially applied by import companies in the mass production of guitars, the technology, although expediting processes, did not immediately achieve high execution standards. However, the tech dramatically improved over time, with computer-driven systems eventually transforming the industry. Contemporary automated production utilizing such advancements meets exceedingly high standards of precision. Some bespoke guitar manufacturers, such as Steve Andersen, were pioneers in adopting these methods, but it was companies like Taylor that established them in the modern era.
Inevitably, the progression of technology extended beyond the mere production of parts. Around 1995, German engineer Gerd Anke envisioned the integration of computer-assisted technology into enhancing instrument playability, giving rise to Plek technology, which uses computers to precisely measure and analyze the various components of a guitar, like neck relief, fret height, nut and bridge specs, and more. Nashville guitar-repair tech Joe Glaser was among the first to recognize the machine’s value, followed by San Francisco luthier Gary Brawer. When Heritage Guitar Inc. invested in a Plek machine, the guitar industry could no longer disregard the significance of this innovation.
“The machine’s scanning data confirmed that there was one nature of an ideal fret plane, done by hand or machine, and unsurprisingly, it conformed exactly to what physics predicts, not personal mojo.”
In the spring of 2022, Galloup Guitars obtained its first Plek machine. Promptly, our technician Adam Winarski paved the way for the Plek’s integration in our shop. Now, it’s a rarity for an instrument to leave our shop without having undergone Plek analysis and machining. Impressed by the results of our integration, we created “Intro to Plek” as a course for all students enrolled at the Galloup School of Lutherie, offering our students a practical introduction to this technology. We furthered this educational initiative with a comprehensive one-week intensive “Plek Certification Training Course” for both students and the public. This advanced Plek course serves those seeking to boost their knowledge base and employability in this high-precision field.
Plek is rapidly becoming an industry standard for major manufacturers and smaller shops alike. However, this does not mean that those without access to this technology cannot execute proficient fretwork. Personally, I continue to use my Erlewine/Galloup neck jig—not only out of nostalgia, but also because it remains an excellent method for delivering accurate and reliable guitars. Still, it’s undeniable that the process of fretting, fret dressing, and analytics of fretted instruments has undergone significant transformation, resulting in better sounding—and playing—guitars. And ultimately, that’s what it’s all about.