
An exclusive excerpt of the legendary engineer and guitarist rapping about the guitarists he was most excited to hear.
When I spoke to recording engineer, Shellac guitarist, and Electrical Audio proprietor Steve Albini for our April cover story, we mostly covered his personal recording techniques, with some extra space allotted for the details of his iconic guitar rig. Albini, who passed suddenly not long after the issue went to print, was generous and forthcoming on all fronts.
During our long chat, I asked him, “Which guitar players blow you away—who do you really vibe on?” I’d seen the famously opinionated Albini answer similar questions before, but I knew that he was a guy who was constantly evolving and would have a good answer.
Shellac’s To All Trains was released on May 17—10 days after Albini passed away suddenly.
This section of the interview didn’t make it to print since it fell a little outside of the theme of the rest of the piece. With it sitting here on my hard drive, I’ve come back to the list quite a few times. Shellac released what will be their final album, To All Trains, shortly after his passing, and I’ve been listening to it, stunned by its sheer electric vitality and the band’s pummeling wit (what other band can go from using “pulchritudinous” with comedic self-consciousness as on “Days Are Dogs,” to singing about “Scabby the Rat” just a couple tracks later?). Somehow, Shellac seemed to have always lived within the same world of hard-hitting interlocking rhythms and perfectly recorded sound across their discography, and yet the band evolved in unexpected increments with every record. (Has Albini’s guitar ever sounded so brutal as when he kicks on the Harmonic Percolator—unconfirmed, but a confident guess—on the opening “WSOD”?)
With each listen of To All Trains, I’ve thought about the depth in Steve’s playing that I’ve always known was there, but which he further revealed with his wide range of answers. Some of the players he mentioned are pillars behind his own angular, cutting riffage, and others will probably come as a surprise to even the deepest Albini enthusiasts.
Here’s the answer he gave:
Billy Strings
Well, I’ve seen a lot of people in the studio and my impression of them is formed from fairly close exposure. That’s different from when I’m just listening to somebody play and I’m impressed by their playing, or I’m impressed by their music. I admire somebody like Billy Strings who’s just a phenomenal flatpicker. His bluegrass guitar is cleaner and more inventive than anything that I can imagine in that idiom.
Derek Trucks
Or somebody like Derek Trucks, for example. He is a really expressive, really beautiful player in service of music that doesn’t do a thing for me. Like, Derek Trucks playing in any of the ensembles that he plays in is the highlight of the thing. I don’t think I could sit through one of those shows just waiting for him to hit the solo. I would’ve made it to the exit long before he got to a solo, unfortunately. But I think he’s a phenomenal player.
Junior Brown’s another one who really blows my mind. Danny Gatton is an incredible guitar player. But again, all of that’s in service of music that doesn’t really do a lot for me in the punk and underground world.The Jesus Lizard's Duane Denison
Duane Denison from the Jesus Lizard is maybe the cleanest player that I’ve ever worked with as a recording engineer. His technique is just exceptional. Never hits a clam, never hits a dead note. You can always hear every note in the chord, even when he is playing something that sounds chaotic and brutal. Take two is going to be chaotic and brutal in precisely the same way.
The Ex's Terrie Hessels
I really admire Terrie Hessels from the Dutch punk band the Ex. I’m certain that he doesn’t know the names of the notes on the strings of his guitar. But every time I see them, he does something on the guitar that makes me think, “Why didn’t I think of that? That’s so cool and so easy. Why am I bothering playing notes and chords and stuff?”
One time we did a show with them, and at one point, he was wearing his guitar around his neck, and he popped it off, and he put the headstock on the ground. It was a vacuum cleaner, and he started running back and forth across the stage with the headstock of his guitar scraping and bouncing on the floor. So, he wasn’t playing the guitar, he was using the guitar to play the stage, and it sounded awesome. It sounded like this big zooming noise, and you could hear every step he took sort of modulated. I think he’s an incredible guitar player.
Ty Segall
As far as guys who are just good at it, I’ve done a few records with Ty Segall, and I think he’s really underrated. His whole band is great. Ty’s really inventive—great sound, always really cool arrangements.
Dead Meadow
I have a kind of a weakness for jammy psychedelic hard rock, which isn’t at all the kind of stuff that I play as a musician, but I really love the band Dead Meadow. Their music is just a trip. Every song, you feel like the lights are out and you’re seeing things. I just love their music.
Uzeda's Agostino Tilotta
There’s an Italian guitar player that I really love named Agostino Tilotta. He’s the guitar player in a band called Uzeda that I’ve had the pleasure of recording and touring with a few times. He has another band called Bellini, which is a little bit more abstract. He’s a phenomenal guitar player, really just incredible, expressive, inventive guitar player. He plays things that sound like they could be taken from Sicilian folk music, but then he also does things that sound like modernist classical music or noise-rock freakouts and stuff.
Johnny Ramone
My first real inspiration as a guitar player, though, was Johnny Ramone. Those early Ramones records just sounded so brutal and so explosive. And then you’d see footage of him playing, and he’s using his whole arm to play the guitar at this incredible speed and—the same sort of deal with Duane Denison—just never hitting a bad note, like never blowing it ever, never not being in time, never not being in tune. Everything about it, just so precise and so good, but at maximum scale.
Shannon Wright
My favorite guitarist is Shannon Wright. She’s got a unique attacking finger-plucking style that she hybridizes with a big Doritos-shaped pick that she palms while she’s doing the plucking part, then produces like a magician for the strumming parts. It’s incredible and her performing style is energetic and she’s just the fucking best.
Bassist Scott Thunes first started with Frank Zappa’s band when he was 21 years old.
The idiosyncratic musician has gone from Zappa to the classroom, even though he says “I can’t write a bass line to save my life.”
I was surprised, intrigued, and thrilled to encounter some rather audacious bass playing at an outdoor school benefit show I played this past fall in Lagunitas, California. I was nowhere near the stage (instead, I was waiting in line for my benefit show compensation—a free meal), but I could still hear the emergence of busy, angular lines and unusual chords rumbling across the hillside venue. When I started setting up for my band’s set and the earlier band was packing up, I spotted the responsible bassist, and it all made sense.
It was Scott Thunes, the low-end raconteur who started playing with Frank Zappa at age 21. He spent the better part of the ’80s in Zappa’s band, appearing on numerous live albums and a couple of studio recordings, including the bandleader’s 1982 Top 40 single, “Valley Girl.” His career resume includes stints with Steve Vai, Mike Keneally, the Waterboys, the Mother Hips, and Fear, among others.
In recent years, Thunes (pronounced “too-ness”) has toured with the re-formed Zappa Band, Banned from Utopia, which plays a few times a year at the venerable Los Angeles venue the Baked Potato. Catch one of these shows and you’ll see how Scott’s tremendous facility on his instrument and unusual creative approach add a level of complexity to Zappa’s famously challenging music.
“I can’t write a bass line to save my life,” he claims, striking a tone that seems less like a reluctant confession and more like a bold stylistic declaration. “For 99 percent of bass players, the job is to be the intermediary between the drums and the guitar—to be both harmonic and rhythmic. And a lot of bass parts have that really great element. That’s wonderful, but people who know my playing don’t hire me to do that,” he says.
“I’m not big on laying down a bass part and then just sitting on it. I’m not a groove monster, and I never have been. That’s not why Frank hired me. I need to have space to express myself, and unfortunately that makes me fall very drastically into the overplaying bass player type. I have absolutely no problem with that because Frank didn’t have a problem with that.”
Thunes describes his “mindful overplaying” as something he’s not always been happy with. “I’ve been fired from more bands than I’ve been hired by,” he deadpans, before allowing a slight, sly grin.
Then there’s the Ramones. Thunes is a teaching artist for the rock band program at Marin School of the Arts at Novato High School in Novato, California. On the day we spoke, his six teenage bands performed medleys of the pioneering American punk band’s material as part of a final exam.
“I was really not expecting them to do well with the Ramones,” he reveals, “especially the more advanced kids, who think the Ramones are too simple. But they pulled it off. I’m very happy about it. The energy was really high, the percentage of downstrokes was up at around 85 or 90 percent, and they got tired—they’re supposed to. It was a great experience for me today, to have my kids not piss all over one of the greatest bands of all time.”
As for his own approach to playing music. Scott says he doesn’t really think of himself as a bass player. “I think of myself as Scott Thunes, who has chosen the bass as the area in which I express myself,” he says. “Now, I may not be able to write a melody or a bass line, but I can find my way through the intricacies of a harmonic system and ply my trade. That’s really all I wanna do. I just want to find a space to put my stuff in.”
For a more in-depth perspective on Scott Thunes, check out two books by Thomas Wictor: In Cold Sweat: Interviews with Really Scary Musicians and Ghosts and Ballyhoo: Memoirs of a Failed L.A. Music Journalist.
Light and very comfortable to play. Creative tonal options. Excellent hardware.
P-90s may be too hot or bright for some. Middle pickup not as articulate as expected—and surprisingly difficult to activate on the fly.
$1,229
Vola Guitars JZ FRO
volaguitars.com
Pro hardware, unusual circuit tweaks, and killer playability lend new twists to the P-90 solidbody template.
For nearly 10 years, Vola Guitars' Japan-made instruments stood out for their somewhat unorthodox features, quality execution, visual vibes that walk the line between traditional and modern, and mid-level prices that rival industry heavyweights. In the company’s varied line of 6- and 7-string guitars (and 4- and 5-string basses), the JZ FRO is more on the traditional end. Yet it still stakes out its own territory in terms of style and performance.
Subtle Upgrades
Vola’s most distinctive aesthetic feature is undoubtedly the bodyline scoop/flourish near the rear strap button. On the JZ FRO, it lends a dash of elegance and sophistication to an outline that might otherwise seem too literally Jazzmaster-like, while the handsome roasted maple neck, swooped reverse headstock, and nonstandard pickup scheme help make it clear this isn’t your average offset. It’s a classy, understated look even in the model’s flashier aged-copper and shell-pink hues. But look closer and you’ll note appointments that a lot of seasoned guitarists will appreciate, including Luminlay position markers, stainless steel frets, and a direct-to-output circuit bypass switch situated between the volume and tone knobs.
Slicing and Then Some
It’s not often you see a solidbody outfitted with a pair of humbucker-sized P-90s anda Strat-style middle pickup. The P-90s are alnico 5 units measuring 9.5k and 10.5k ohms resistance. To avail you of this circuit’s numerous tones the JZ FRO incorporates a deceptively simple-looking control array. There’s a lone tone knob, a traditional 3-way selector, and a master volume that pulls up to bring the S-style middle pickup into the mix. In this mode, with the pickup selector down, you get the bridge and middle pickup, in the middle you get all three pickups, and in the up position you get the neck and middle pickups. (More on mid-pickup tones in a minute.)
The P-90s are pretty hot, with a lot of punch and zing. In fact, the bridge pickup’s leanness and the neck pickup’s gristliness sometimes evoke Gibson P-100s.
With the JZ FRO routed through a Celestion Ruby-outfitted 6973-powered combo set to a bit of grind, I loved the bridge pickup’s tough airiness. There’s a detailed, vintage-esque character, and it gets toothier as you pair it with a boost or dirt pedal to drive an amp hard. Compared to the vintage-spec Curtis Novak P-90s in my Les Paul Special, the Vola’s bridge pickup is a little less warm and brawny, but also probably a bit more malleable and adaptable to different genres, especially if you’ve got a lot of effects in your signal path. The neck pickup is similarly powerful, though its contrasts with a traditionally voiced P-90 feel less apparent.
How about that middle pickup? Paired with the bridge unit, it yields funky, Strat-like quack—a tone you’re not going to get with most dual P-90 guitars. Accent them with a wiggle of the super smooth-operating Gotoh trem, and the Strat allusion is even stronger. Mind you, all this tone variation is available beforeyou activate the tone-circuit bypass. It acts like a powerful onboard boost: Everything is louder, hotter, and leaner.The Verdict
Vola deserves big kudos for packing so many unique features into a guitar that feels and plays this nicely at such a reasonable price. The novel tone-circuit bypass could help you cut through a dense mix or boost your solo even when you’re away from your pedalboard. That said, in some positions I found it sounded a little strident or hi-fi, and the fact that the circuit-bypass mode renders the volume knob useless makes it something of an all-or-nothing proposition. The added middle pickup expands tonal possibilities beyond P-90 norms, but don’t expect the same type of added clarity you’d get from a Strat’s middle pickup. Even so, the JZ FRO’s exceptionally smooth performing hardware and excellent craftsmanship make playing a breeze and a pleasure, and its VFP90 pickups pack a mix of power, clarity, and flexibility that make it a great choice for biting rock and thick, bristling blues tones.
There’s no disputing the influence B.B. King has had on the history of electric guitar music. We’re talking about his sound, his best records, his guitars, his showmanship, and his collabs, from an all-star jam at the 2010 Crossroads festival to, yes, even his 1988 U2 collab, “When Love Comes to Town.”
There’s no disputing the influence B.B. King has had on the history of electric guitar music.
With Lucille in hand—as well as other guitars—he carved out his sound by developing a signature one-of-a-kind vibrato and pick attack. His note choice, phrasing, and feel have basically become the fundamental vocabulary of electric blues. Even more than any other of his blues peers, his playing shaped blues and rock guitar. And that’s not to mention his singing.
So, on this episode of 100 Guitarists, we’re celebrating the King. We’re talking about his sound, his best records, his guitars, his showmanship, and his collabs, from an all-star jam at the 2010 Crossroads festival to, yes, even his 1988 U2 collab, “When Love Comes to Town.”
In our current listening segment, we’re talking about Brian John McBrearty’s recent meditation-jazz release Remembering Repeating and Julian Lage’s latest, Apple Music Nashville Sessions.
This episode is sponsored by Gibson.
A terrific twosome or a terrible twinning? It all depends on how you tame your treble.
Rein in those icy high frequencies with these handy tips.
Classic vintage Fender amps are renowned for their clean, shimmering tones. However, dialing in the “sweet spot” isn’t always straightforward, especially when you're playing on a new or borrowed amp. Pair these amps with Fender guitars—also known for their brightness—and the combination can sometimes result in ear-piercing treble and overwhelming volume. An amp that’s too powerful or an unsuitable guitar pairing can easily derail the musical moment you’re trying to create. So, controlling treble is crucial, particularly with louder amps.
In this article, I’ll share my experiences with Fender amps and how I’ve tamed treble issues through guitar tweaks, speaker swaps, amp modifications, and pedals. My goal is to help you achieve those glorious vintage Fender tones without losing your ears—or your audience—in the process.
Backline Bargaining
I’m extra cautious about bringing my brightest Strats or Teles to gigs with rented backline amps. Newer Deluxe Reverbs, for example, can be particularly tricky with dialing in a smooth tone. These amps often feature bright ceramic speakers and the EQ options are limited—there’s no bright switch to dampen the top end and no mid knob to add warmth.
Here’s what I do: I start by turning down the tone knob on my Okko Twinsonic overdrive pedal, which is very transparent. My old Ibanez Tube Screamers naturally rolled off much of the high end, making them easier to pair with brighter amps.
I also adjust the microphone placement set up by the sound crew. The tone gets brighter the closer the mic is to the center of the speaker cone. I angle the SM57 slightly and aim it closer to the outer edge of the cone, leaving a 3–4 cm gap from the grill cloth. Larger 12" or 15" speakers are more forgiving in this process, while smaller 10" speakers are less so. I’ve encountered challenging amps, like a Super Reverb loaded with 10" JBL speakers featuring aluminum dust caps. These amps sounded much harsher through the PA than they did on stage, making mic placement even more critical.
Dimming the Bright Caps
Bright caps are key components in shaping an amp’s treble response. On the Deluxe Reverb, the bright cap is always enabled, which can make brighter guitars sound harsh, especially at low volumes or when using fuzz pedals. Cranking the amp helps by adding more upper mids to the mix.
For my own Deluxe Reverbs, I sometimes disable the 47 pF bright cap or, more often, install a 25k mid pot on the back panel to add warmth. It depends on the tones I’m chasing.
Smaller amps like the Fender Champ and Princeton don’t have bright caps, which naturally gives them smoother tones. But if they sound too dark or muddy, you can add a bright cap. I installed a 100 pF bright cap on my 1966 Princeton Reverb (which has a Jensen C10N speaker from the same year, though not original to the amp). After experimenting, I settled on a 47 pF cap for just the right amount of clarity.
If you’re up for a bit of DIY, experimenting with bright cap values can significantly shape your tone. Black-panel and silver-panel Fenders typically use 120 pF bright caps, with exceptions like the Deluxe (47 pF) and the Princeton and Champ (none).
Guitar Tweaks for Warmer Tones
Your guitar’s setup can also make a big difference. Thin strings combined with pickups set too close to the strings can result in a thin, overly bright tone. Here’s how I address this:
● Lower the pickups slightly. I start with a 2–2.4 mm gap on the high E string and 2.4–3.3 mm gap on the low E, measured between the pickup pole and the string when fretted at the highest fret. Then, I fine-tune by ear to balance output across pickup positions.
● Use thicker strings for a warmer, fuller tone. I tune my guitars down to Eb to deepen the sound and increase sustain. Keep in mind, though, that this can create a looser, flabbier bass response on smaller amps.
● Hotter pickups add mids and bass, naturally reducing treble dominance. Alternatively, lowering the resistance of the volume pot can smooth out the tone by filtering high frequencies. However, changing pot or cap values will alter how your guitar responds when rolling down the tone or volume knobs.
Speaker Swaps
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, speakers play a huge role in shaping your tone. Swapping speakers or experimenting with extension cabinets is one of the most effective ways to adjust treble, mids, or bass. I’ve written extensively about this in previous articles, but it’s worth emphasizing here: The right speaker pairing can make or break your tone.
I hope these insights help you conquer any treble troubles and coax balanced tones from your Fender amps. Happy tinkering!