"Select switch for 10 clipping diode configurations and clean boost, replicating popular ODs of the '80s and '90s with Texture and Depth controls for further tone tweaking."
The new Orange Amps King Comp is a super low noise Class A VCA compressor pedal with 18V DC power supply for extra headroom and subtle envelope shaping control. It brings studio style compression dynamics to any pedalboard and offers a warm musical response with an exceptionally low noise floor.
Developed to meet the ever-evolving musical needs of guitarists and bassists, the King Comp pedal enhances sound by adding sustain, snap and sparkle rather than flattening it, offering smooth, musical, pro-level compression with real character.
The super useful dual attack and release knobs mean users can set how quickly the compression kicks in and shape every note they play. The versatile attack control allows anything from understated tightening to pronounced pogoing bounce to be dialled in. At the same time the equally adaptable release control gives long-lasting sustain for notes and chords that can go on for miles. Plus, there is also visual feedback of any compression applied when the King Comp’s onboard LED switches from blue to pink.
At the heart of the King Comp pedal is the Class A VCA compression circuit that delivers precision dynamics with a warm, natural feel. There is also a high-quality buffered bypass to ensure signals stay strong and consistent, even when the pedal is off. The buffer maintains clarity, keeping sound punchy and defined and makes the King Comp reliable as an always-on part of any setup.
Running with the external 18V DC supply maximises the King Comp’s dynamic range and reduces compression artefacts so the pedal delivers the most transparent version of any instrument's tone, making it especially useful with hot pickups, basses and more complex pedalboards.
The King Comp pedal offers precise dynamic control with a musical feel that responds like a great amp. To find out more please go to www.orangeamps.com.
Henri and Bill Cash, the brotherly guitar duo behind Los Angeles glam-rock band Starcrawler, linked with PG’s John Bohlinger before their gig at the Pinnacle in Nashville to show off some rose-colored rock tools. Check out highlights of their dazzling setups below, and tune into our full Rig Rundown to scope the full details.
This China-made Gretsch Electromatic Double Jet has just a single TV Jones Power’Tron Plus pickup, but beneath the hood, it’s also got a Rangemaster-style treble-boost circuit (as does another 3-string Electromatic that Henri plays). Henri traced out and applied sparkle-pink paper to give the guitar its memorable finish.
This pink powerhouse is tuned to open G.
Flying Bigsby
Daniel Slusser of Slusser Guitars in San Luis Obispo, California, built this custom V-style according to Henri’s requests, borrowing from a design by Japanese builder Saraso Ju. It’s made from pine from Home Depot, bound with leather, and outfitted with a Bigsby and a Filter’Tron pickup for Gretsch groove.
Triple Threat
Cash runs his dry signal to either this Satellite Amplifiers Neutron head or Vox AC15 combo, and his effects go to the Magnatone Twilighter Stereo on the right.
Henri Cash’s Pedalboard
After a pair of Boss TU-3s and a Boss ES-8 switcher, Henri’s board has a pair of DigiTech Drops, TC Electronic Shaker, R2R Electric Preamp, Boss GE-7, MXR Carbon Copy, Way Huge Red Llama, custom “Lamb’s Head” fuzz designed by Henri and Desi Scaglione, EarthQuaker Devices Tentacle, EQD Bit Commander, and Strymon Flint. A Lehle P-Split sends his signal to either the Neutron/AC15 and the Magnatone.
Tweaked Tele
Bill’s main axe is this heavily modified Fender Noventa Tele, with a Curtis Novak P-90 and a Glaser B-bender system.
Slide Away
For slide parts, Bill uses this GFI Expo pedal steel.
Souped-Up Super
Bill plays through this modded Fender Super Reverb Reissue. The tweaks included inserting a 5E3-tweed-Deluxe-Style circuit in first channel that switches to a handwired Super Reverb-style circuit in the second channel so he can use the tweed channel on guitar and clean black-panel tone on pedal steel. It was inspired by a mod he saw Colleen Fazio did to a friend's Bassman where she changed the first and second channel to be channel switching as well.
Bill Cash’s Pedalboard
On his sprayed-painted pedalboard, Bill runs a Boss TU-3, custom “Lamb’s Head” fuzz by Henri and Desi Scaglione, Way Huge Red Llama, Way Huge Conquistador, MXR Micro Amp, DigiTech Drop, Catalinbread Belle Epoch, MXR Reverb, MXR Tremolo, EarthQuaker Devices Levitation, Electro-Harmonix C9, and a Nocturne Brain Mystery Brain.
In his 2017 book The Order of Time, Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli looks to Saint Augustine to demystify the question of how it’s possible to experience music if we are physically rooted to the present—while music, of course, happens over seconds, minutes, hours. “It is possible, Augustine observes, because our consciousness is based on memory and anticipation,” Rovelli writes. “A hymn, a song, is in some way present in our minds in a unified form, held together by something—that which we take time to be. And hence this is what time is: It is entirely in the present, in our minds, as memory and anticipation.”
The idea of this middle place haunts Brooklyn indie-rock band Big Thief's latest record, Double Infinity. In a press release, the band noted that the album title refers to the idea of the “purgatory created by the human brain, always looking to the past or future, between the things we’ve lost and the things we want, between desire and regret.” There are few lyricists in recent memory writing as movingly about this experience—that of looking back, of time passing, moving, receding and stretching out in front of us—as Adrianne Lenker.
“Without this idea of time there’d be no grandmothers and grandfathers, or children,” Lenker says over the phone from Mexico City with bandmate Buck Meek. “There’d be no difference between any stages of life. It’s so wrapped up in reality as we know it, or at least this perceived reality or dream. I feel like it’s such an interesting idea, because it’s a thing that we live with, and the parade leads to the same place for everybody. It’s all wrapped up in death and birth and all of the things we experience along the way, like longing and loss and grief and joy. While you’re falling in love with someone, you’re also perceiving the end of that thing because of time—because of the inevitability of its passing.”
“While you’re falling in love with someone, you’re also perceiving the end of that thing because of time—because of the inevitability of its passing.”—Adrianne Lenker
On one hand, the nature of music makes it a simple task to create compositions concerned with time, as all music occurs over a duration of time. But what does it actually sound like to fully realize that? As a group, and this time with a cohort of studio collaborators, Big Thief’s sonic treatment of these themes captures a specific duality of being: its miraculousness and mundanity. Double Infinity’s production is low-key and handhewn, with rhythms and repetition building feelings that oscillate between grounded and hypnotic, and flourishes of the transcendental—be it blasts of guitar sorcery (“Words”) or ambient icon Laraaji’s wordless vocal flights (“Grandmother”). The result is Big Thief’s most fluid, breathing, flowing record to date—and, for Lenker, an evolution of what the term “rock ’n’ roll” can mean.
Meek and Lenker duet on their Collings at a show in 2023.
Debi Del Grande
“It just immediately makes me think about the bedrock of the earth, and the rolling of the waters and the winds and ethers,” Lenker says. “I think about that dance between what is rooted and solid-feeling and what is fluid and liquid. [Rock ’n’ roll] really needs both.”
Creating music that captures that dance is made easier by a few special tools. Both Lenker and Meek gush over their friends and luthiers Aaron Huff (at Collings Guitars) and Flip Scipio. Huff—“a true Jedi of good in the guitar world,” Lenker says—spent four years building Lenker’s acoustic guitar in his free time, and gifted it to her on the day of a solar eclipse, the same day she met Laraaji. “It’s basically meant for the way I play—open tunings and fingerpicking—and it sounds like a grand piano. It’s so special,” Lenker says.
Meek says two of Huff’s creations at Collings—the 71 and the Ladybird—are in heavy rotation in his quiver. He uses the latter for jazzier songs. Meek and Lenker both also have their own Flipperkasters, custom models made by Scipio. “I’ve never connected with an electric guitar so deeply until he put that in my hand,” Lenker says.
“The guitars we really love are the ones that have been mediums for friendship, or conversations with people in our lives that have really influenced us,” Meek says. “The instrument is kind of just a vessel for that.”
On Double Infinity the guitar, along with the rest of the instrumentation, acts as a conduit for connection. With 10 people improvising arrangements in the studio, the aforementioned fluidity builds from individual players’ intuitive responses to the aggregate. For Meek, that led to a lot of simplifying and repeating lines, offering room to other instruments, and creating an environment where rhythm feels like the element around which everything orbits.
“The guitars we really love are the ones that have been mediums for friendship.”—Buck Meek
“Playing in this band has definitely encouraged me to tap into my intuition more, just through watching Adrianne play and write songs so intuitively,” Meek says about his experience unlearning more academic modes of improvising. “It’s a process of letting go of all of that music theory and just trusting that the language is in there somewhere, and reconnecting with a more somatic approach to improvisation.”
This all requires a concentration on being where you are. Settling into the groove, let’s say. The purgatory between Big Thief’s double infinities is, itself, an endlessness. We comprehend its power and depth when we’re jolted into truly feeling it; in moments of profound loss or acute pain or consuming love, past and future briefly cease to exist. If one listens close enough and thoughtfully enough, the effect of Double Infinity, its rolling rhythms and loose drip, is one of tapping into the moment—freedom from the dissolving before and the unknowable after.
“The thing that pushes me to keep making and playing music is that I run into my own limitations all the time, and I just want to get a little bit more free with each album we make.”—Adrianne Lenker
“I feel like the thing that pushes me to keep making and playing music is that I run into my own limitations all the time, and I just want to get a little bit more free with each album we make,” Lenker says. “And I feel like people could be like, ‘What are you doing? It sounds so loosey goosey and wide open,’ and it's like—”
“That’s the very thing I’m proud of,” Meek adds.
“Yeah, that’s great,” Lenker continues. “To be honest, I think I had more fun in that session than I ever have before, because there was this big, open feeling of music and we were listening to all these other people playing with us. It wasn’t about shaping our wants and desires perfectly into the shape we think it should be with our minds. It was about just being there for that experience.”
In one of the most iconic scenes in film history, a Gibson ES-345™ Cherry Red guitar took center stage in the film Back to the Future—and today, it’s making history again. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the beloved Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment film starring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, and in honor of October 21—officially recognized as Back to the Future Day—Gibson, the legendary global instrument brand, in partnership with Universal Products and Experiences proudly announces the Back to the Future Collection. Featuring limited-edition ES-345 models from Gibson Custom and Epiphone, as well as an exclusive apparel line, the Back to the Future Collection is designed to thrill both guitar enthusiasts and fans of the iconic film. Music and film fans can stop by the Gibson Garage Nashville and London locations to see the entire Back to the Future Collection in person, and worldwide via Gibson.com.
This summer, Gibson and Michael J. Fox launched a global “Lost to the Future” search for the original Gibson ES-345 Cherry Red guitar played by Fox in Back to the Future during the unforgettable “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance scene—a moment that inspired generations of musicians after Marty McFly’s electrifying performance of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” Despite efforts to find the guitar during the filming of the sequel, the guitar’s whereabouts remained a mystery. Fans worldwide have been submitting tips at www.LostToTheFuture.com, and after thousands of submissions, Gibson has narrowed the search and is actively pursuing a handful of promising leads to locate and authenticate what may be the most significant guitar in movie history.
“Bringing this guitar to life has been a passion project for many years, and it’s incredibly exciting to finally see it become a reality,” says Mark Agnesi, Director of Brand Experience at Gibson. “We couldn’t be prouder of how these guitars turned out—they’re truly special. This is the guitar that inspired me, and countless others from my generation, to pick up playing in the first place.”
The Back to the Future 1955 ES-345 Collector’s Edition from Gibson Custom is limited to just 88 guitars worldwide, a nod to The Time Machine from the film, and features a stunning Cherry Red finish with exclusive design details. The Epiphone Back to the Future ES-345, limited to 1,985 guitars globally, celebrates the year the blockbuster film hit theaters and offers fans an accessible way to own a piece of cinematic and musical history. In addition to the guitars, there’s also an exclusive range of Back to the Future apparel and accessories, including tees, hats, collectible guitar pick tins, a guitar strap, and an AXE HEAVEN® mini guitar that will delight collectors and fans alike.
Back to the Future Gibson Custom Collection guitar case candy includes a flux capacitor, key to the Time Machine, a Casio watch, production still from the film, a guitar strap, picks, posters and a Certificate of Authenticity.
The new Epiphone Back to the Future ES-345 is a replica of the legendary Gibson ES-345 based on the model that Michael J. Fox aka Marty McFly plays in the film Back to the Future. A loving tribute to this cultural icon, the Epiphone Back to the Future ES-345 features a five-ply layered maple semi-hollowbody with a solid maple centerblock for enhanced sustain and improved feedback resistance. The top has four-ply binding with single-ply binding on the back. The mahogany neck has a comfortable Rounded C profile and is topped with a single-ply bound rosewood fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and is adorned with pearloid split parallelogram inlays that are a hallmark of the ES-345. The 60s Kalamazoo headstock is equipped with a Graph Tech® nut and Epiphone Deluxe tuning machines with cream Keyston buttons. The Epiphone logo and Gibson Crown are inlaid in mother of pearl. On the back of the headstock, in a nod to the 1985 film, you’ll find a Hill Valley Music store decal. The Back to the Future ES-345 has gold hardware, including an Epiphone LockTone™ Tune-O-Matic™ bridge and a Bigsby® B70 vibrato tailpiece, and just like the guitar in the movie, the original Stop Bar studs are left in place. The Back to the Future ES-345 is powered by two of Epiphone’s acclaimed Alnico Classic PRO™ pickups, each with individual volume and tone controls. A mono Varitone provides even more tonal versatility. It even comes packed in a vintage-style hardshell case with Marvin Berry and the Starlighters graphics. The Epiphone Back to the Future ES-345 is limited to only 1985 units worldwide, and they’re sure to go fast, so unless you have a flux capacitor-equipped Time Machine so that you can go back in time to get one later, you’d better grab yours now while you still can.
Launching alongside the Epiphone and Custom Shop ES-345 guitars, Gibson’s apparel division will release a collection of exclusive, film-inspired merchandise. Ranging from AXE Heaven mini ES-345 Cherry Red guitars to guitar pick tins, straps, T-shirts, and hats inspired by the film, the Back to the Future collection promises to be an exciting addition to any fans collection.
Way Huge didn’t leave much to the imagination when it branded this fuzz the Doom Hammer. But that doesn’t mean it's without surprises. Jeorge Tripp’s latest design is based on an op-amp Big Muff that he modified for a client in the 1990s—primarily with the aim to tighten the low end. You hear Tripps hit that target when you play the Doom Hammer alongside other Big Muff types, which are massive in the low end and can sound comparatively sprawling in that frequency. But rather than merely heavy, the Doom Hammer’s combination of taut lows and the pronounced midrange one associates with op-amp Big Muffs is nasty, buzzy, punky, and brash. For all the desert-rock swagger in the name, the Doom Hammer is just as effective at lending contrast to heavy bass in a mix. And for any stoner rock power trio that has had to work against a wall of bottom-end sludge on stage or in the studio, it’s a practical and intriguing solution.
Fire Breather
Though it’s not hard to hear Big Muff lineage in the Doom Hammer, it can sound vastly different from most Muffs at identical fuzz, output, and tone levels. I didn’t have an op-amp Big Muff on hand for comparison, but in my experience with that circuit, I’ve found they have as much in common with other Big Muffs as they do differences. But Tripp’s recipe puts extra distance between them.
The Ram’s Head and Sovtek Muffs I used to A/B with the Doom Hammer, for instance, each exhibited the creaminess in low-midrange frequencies that makes David Gilmour obsessives ecstatic—particularly with the tone control at more modest levels. The Doom Hammer, however, sometimes has a buzz-saw aggressiveness that evokes a 1960s transistor fuzz swinging on a wrecking ball. And at low output and advanced fuzz levels it can quite convincingly play the part of Tone Bender. More modest fuzz and tone settings strike a more even balance between classic, buttery Big Muff sustain sounds and buzzier ones. And here it’s great for cooking up Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin’s questing lead tangles and Robert Fripp’s snaky synth-like lines. Indeed, the Doom Hammer, for all its midrange emphasis, can be flexible and adaptable.
The Doom Hammer, however, sometimes has a buzz-saw aggressiveness that evokes a 1960s transistor fuzz swinging on a wrecking ball.
Playing a bit more in the spirit of the Doom Hammer’s name (with an SG in drop-D, ’natch) I was still struck by how much less bossy it is in the bass range than a Ram’s Head or Sovtek. But again, this can be an ideal recipe for adding punchy contrast to the bass bomb coming from your bandmate’s Rickenbacker 4003 and Orange stack. It lends snarling aggression to big dumb rock riffs and drones, and detuned guitars sound less buried in blunted, washy overtones.
The Verdict
Jeorge Tripps’ knack for spinning new magic around fuzz formulas—whether with the wild Way Huge Atreides or the more straight-ahead Swollen Pickle—is a gift to fuzz freaks. Because, let’s face it, sometimes ferocious barrages of distortion can start to blur when ears are tired and you’re on the hunt for a different path. The Doom Hammer’s tight bass, and the resulting more prominent midrange, offer a discernibly different texture to work with, however, all while retaining the essential mass and menace that draws a player to a Big Muff in the first place.
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