When he’s on the West Coast, Jim Campilongo feels something like a stranger in his own home. His latest record pays tribute to the city he misses when he’s there, and the one where he built most of his career.
When Jim Campilongo phones in with Premier Guitar, it’s from his home in the Bay Area—the same place where he first picked up the guitar in the 1970s, began playing shows with local groups some years later and, eventually, launched his recording career in the 1990s. Over the subsequent decades, he established himself as one of the instrument’s foremost creatives, building a catalog of primarily instrumental albums that encompass a dazzling array of styles—rock, jazz, roots, Western swing, classical, experimental—all informed by his inventive, flexible and never-predictable playing, mostly on a Fender Telecaster plugged direct into an amp.
He did this largely in his adopted home of New York City, where, for most of the 2000s, he was a mainstay—and, for music fans in the know, a must-see—of the downtown arts scene, with long-running and celebrated residencies at Lower East Side venues like Rockwood Music Hall and the now-defunct Living Room.
Campilongo left the East Coast to return West roughly two years ago. But his newest record, She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show, is very much a New York album—maybe his most New York one of all. It is also very much a rock album—maybe his most rock one of all. There are reasons for this. The roots of the record stretch back to the dark days of Covid, when words like “quarantine” and “distancing” were too much a part of the common vernacular. Life was weirder, quieter and, truth be told, often drearier. Campilongo found escape where he could, which manifested in daily 5 a.m. walks around his Brooklyn neighborhood. His companion was an old iPod playlist of classic-rock songs. “I’d go out, it’d be pitch black, there’d be no one around—it was like a science-fiction movie,” he recalls. “I had these old-school Vic Firth headphones, and an iPod that had a playlist of maybe 300 classic-rock tunes that I made back when iPods were the latest thing. And I would walk the streets listening to it over and over.”
The 4TET, from left to right: drummer Dan Rieser, Campilongo, bassist Andy Hess, and guitarist Luca Benedetti.
Some of the songs that, quite literally, got into Campilongo’s head? “It was ‘Mississippi Queen’ kind of stuff,” he says. “‘Hush’ by Deep Purple. Elvin Bishop’s ‘Travelin’ Shoes,’ which is an amazingly eventful track. There’s background vocals, there’s a little breakdown, there’s a melodic solo. There’s harmonies, a great rhythm.... I became obsessed with it.”
These songs, and the 297 or so others on Campilongo’s playlist, informed several of the tracks on She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show. One, a greasy, growly workout titled “This Is a Quiet Street,” was influenced by Grand Funk Railroad’s live version of the Animals’ 1966 single, “Inside Looking Out”—“a song I’ve been listening to since high school, and that I’ve been trying to write for 20 years,” Campilongo says. “This is about the closest I’ve gotten.” Another track, “Do Not Disturb,” he continues, “is like my interpretation of a ZZ Top tune.”
“I’d go out, it’d be pitch black, there’d be no one around—it was like a science-fiction movie.... And I would walk the streets listening to it over and over.”
But She Loves the Coney Island Freak Show is not all rock-influenced. Leadoff track “Dragon Stamp,” a dark, deep-in-the-pocket jam that Campilongo introduces by sounding a detuned open low string, and then hitting a harmonic and raising the pitch by bending the string behind the nut (something of a JC trademark move), came to Campilongo after repeated playings of “Step to Me,” a 1991 song from deceased New York hardcore rapper Tim Dog, on his early morning walks. “I think I listened to that 50 times in a row, numerous times,” Campilongo says. “I couldn’t get enough of it.” The emotive “Sunset Park,” meanwhile, in which Campilongo unspools languid, vocal guitar lines in a manner that is nothing short of a master class in the subtle art of touch, tone and phrasing, was influenced by a Maria Callas aria. Another track, “Sal’s Waltz,” by Frédéric Chopin. “Whether it’s successful or not, who knows?” Campilongo says self-effacingly.
Sunset Park
While many of the She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show songs have their origins in Campilongo’s early-morning walks and his iPod-provided soundtrack, bringing them into existence was in some ways a more immediate affair. To record the album, Campilongo got together with guitarist and longtime collaborator Luca Benedetti, bassist Andy Hess, and drummer Dan Rieser in a combo they dubbed the 4TET, and laid down the tracks live in the studio—two studios, to be exact. “We did two days recording at Bunker [in Williamsburg, Brooklyn], and then another two days at a different studio [Atomic Sound, in Red Hook, Brooklyn],” he says. “It was pure joy to play with those guys.”
“I always figured I could get all the sounds I want from the volume and tone knobs on the guitar, or from where I pick, and how hard; all those little variations.”
Campilongo, as is his way, kept his gear setup minimal: his trusty 1959 Fender Telecaster with a top-loader bridge, plugged straight into a 1970 silver-panel Fender Princeton Reverb fitted with a Celestion G10 speaker—no pedals required. “It’s so uninteresting for me to talk about gear, because it’s basically the same answer every time,” he says with a laugh. As for why he mostly eschews effects? “I always figured I could get all the sounds I want from the volume and tone knobs on the guitar—and on a Tele, those knobs are really dramatic—or from where I pick, and how hard; all those little variations,” he reasons. Another benefit of going sans pedals? “You kind of just accept the hand you’re dealt, and you can get down to playing music quicker.”
When it came to the playing, Campilongo stuck to another tried-and-true aspect of his guitar style—improvisation. “None of what I’m doing on the album was worked out beforehand,” he says of his solos on She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show. In his opinion, this makes for not only a better playing experience, but a better listening one, too. “If I play a perfect solo and it’s worked out, I generally don’t like listening to it, because it’s not a time capsule of that moment,” he says. “It’s like going out on a first date and having a script of what to talk about, instead of it just being a natural conversation. I want to hear the real talk, warts and all.”
Jim Campilongo's Gear
Campilongo performing at Rockwood Music Hall Stage 3, the same Lower East Side venue where he previously held a long-running residency.
Photo by Manish Gosalia
Guitars
- 1959 Fender Telecaster
- Lumiere Jim Campilongo Signature T- Model
- Fender Custom Shop Jim Campilongo Signature Telecaster
Amps
Effects
- Crazy Tube Circuits Splash Reverb
- Crazy Tube Circuits Stardust Overdrive
- JAM Pedals Wahcko
- Universal Audio OX Amp Top Box
- Boomerang Phrase Sampler
Strings, Picks, & Accessories
- D’Addario EXL120 Nickel Wound Super Light (.009–.042)
- V-Picks Fusion
- Klotz Titanium guitar cable
- Souldier guitar straps
Campilongo’s commitment to balancing on that creative knife edge informs every aspect of the album, and also his music in general. “I don’t want to ever put out the same record twice in a row,” he says. To that end, he is already plotting future challenges, including a “pseudo-jazz record where I’m playing standards in the way I would present them, which would be a little scary.”
For all his musical adventurism, one aspect of Campilongo’s artistic makeup that remains steadfast is his connection to the city that helped birth She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show. “Even though I’m back in California, in many ways I feel like a transplanted New Yorker,” Campilongo says. “It’s in my DNA,” he laughs. “It’s not like I’m returning home to the West Coast and, you know, I can’t wait to go surfing.”
YouTube It
For years, Jim Campilongo held court at New York City’s Rockwood Music Hall. Here, Jim and the 4TET tear through a She Loved the Coney Island Freak Show highlight: the Southern-rock-inflected, ZZ Top-inspired “Do Not Disturb.”
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Intermediater Lesson Overview: • Learn different ways to arrange scales. • Combine various sequences to create more intersting lines. • Solidify your technique by practicing unusual groupings of notes. Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation. |
Neutrik’s Timbre plug, made for toggling between capacitors.
Let’s begin with some typical additional capacitance values that certain lengths of cable (or capacitors) can bring to your system:
• 10’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 3 meters) -> 1 nF
• 15’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 4.5 meters) -> 1.5 nF
• 20’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 6 meters) -> 2.2 nF
• 30’ vintage coiled cable (approx. 9 meters) -> 3.3 nF
• Ritchie Blackmore-style, ultra-long vintage coiled cable -> 4.7 nF
I listed standard values here, so you should have no problem getting caps to match them in any local electronics store or online; the type of cap doesn’t really matter and will mostly be dominated by size, but I’ll share more about this in a minute.
Let’s quickly summarize the first installment of this column from last month’s issue: From a technical point of view, added capacitance shifts down the resonance frequency of the pickups, so they sound fatter, especially when using overdrive. This is exactly the reason why a lot of distortion and fuzz boxes with a vintage voicing use an additional cap at the input section; the resulting overdriven tone is fat and warm.
This month’s mod, which involves adding a capacitor to your signal, works best with vintage-flavored single-coil pickups (approximately 2.4 H inductance) or a typical old-school PAF-style pickup (approximately 3.8 H inductance). Modern high-output pickups are often sporting inductances of 6 H to 8 H, and don’t sound very good with this mod—when adding more cable capacitance to such pickups, the result is a dull and wooly tone without any clearness and definition. If you want to make your single-coil guitar sound more Les Paul-ish, you should try a 4.7n capacitor. It will shift the resonance frequency of your single-coil pickups down to the typical PAF ballpark, making for a very cool and usable old-fashioned guitar tone. It might feel a little muffled when playing clean, but ultra fat and punchy when using overdrive! In general, values higher than 4.7n are not recommended.
We have two options for where to install our cap.
On the Guitar Cable
This is the easiest location to add additional capacitance to your system, with several mod options:
1. The lightest mod ever isn’t a mod at all—it’s to simply buy a vintage guitar cable and plug it in whenever you need it! I don’t know of any company that offers modern guitar cables with intentionally high capacitance.
2. The Neutrik company offers a special angled plug, called the Timbre Plug, that you can solder to any guitar cable of your choice. The plug has a 4-way rotary knob on top to toggle between different capacitors. In addition to a bypass setting, the plug offers capacitances of 1nF, 2.2nF, and 3.3nF, letting you simulate different cable lengths on the fly.
3. You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable. You simply open one of the plugs to solder the cap between the hot and ground—that’s it. Small, 2.5 mm contact spacing ceramic caps are easy to put into a standard plug and are your weapon of choice here. It’s essential to only add the additional cap to one of the two plugs, but it doesn’t matter if you plug this side into your guitar, an effect, or your amp. This method allows you to build yourself some cables that simulate their older, longer relatives.
You can add an additional capacitor to any guitar cable of your choice to convert it into a “longer-sounding” cable.
Photo courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
Inside the Guitar
You can also add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument. If you’re looking for added capacitance with all your guitars, you’d be better off choosing one of the techniques mentioned above.
1. The easiest way is to solder your additional capacitor directly to your volume pot; this way it has a fixed value that can’t be changed and is always engaged. This operation is very simple to do, and you can use regular-sized caps for this.
You can add a cap (or several) inside your guitar if you only need this mod for one instrument.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
2. If you want to make the cap switchable, such that you can run it either bypassed or engaged, you can install a SPST mini toggle switch or use half of a push-pull or push-push pot, which usually sport a DPDT switch underneath.
This drawing shows how to make your additional cap switchable.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
3. If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, your weapon of choice is a rotary switch, setting up a kind of Gibson Varitone wiring without the inductor. Because we are switching capacitances, it is essential to run an additional 10 meg resistor in parallel to each of the caps, and to use a make-before-break, not a break-before-make, rotary switch to prevent loud popping noises when using the switch while your guitar is plugged into an amp. Leave the first lug of the rotary switch open for the bypass position without an additional cap.
If you want to use more than one cap to simulate different cable lengths, use a rotary switch.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
4. If you want to make this mod even more flexible, you can add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system. The pot should have the same resistance as your volume pot, and should be wired to your volume pot. This way, for example, you can add a 3.3nF or 4.7nF cap to the extra pot, and dial in as much cable capacitance as you like.
You can also add an additional “cable simulator pot” to your system.
Illustration courtesy SINGLECOIL (https://singlecoil.com)
On the Pedalboard
The idea of putting a rotary switch or cable-simulator-pot solution into an external unit to create a kind of extra-capacitance stompbox to use with all of your instruments is just around the corner, and yes, it’s possible! However, I don’t recommend this, because it’s physically located after the volume pot in the guitar, which means less volume (no unity gain) and less high end. But don’t worry: If you are looking for a pedalboard solution to simulate different cable lengths (which, as we defined earlier, means to shift the resonance frequency of the pickups), there are some active solutions on the market offering such a feature, usually in combination with a boost or buffer functionality. To name just a few, you should look into the Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster, Stellartone Micro Pedal, or the i2e Audio AG1.0 The PURR. Along with some other brands, these pedals will do the trick, and they’re not difficult to build if you are looking for a DIY solution.
So far, I’ve received several emails from readers asking for some more DIY guitar tools, so next month, we will look into some sustainable and environmentally friendly DIY guitar helpers—all of which you can build yourself easily by upcycling things you already have at home. Stay tuned!
Until then... keep on modding!
