G&L Tribute M-2000
Muscle and value—that’s the M-2000 in a few words. But you could use many more in praising this affordable G&L. Reviewer Dave Abdo commended the comfort and playability as “simply stunning.” He also praised the intuitiveness and fidelity of the pickups and preamp, as well as a build quality that rivals much more expensive instruments. For anyone who’s longed for a G&L but found the price a little steep, the Tribute M-2000 is worth a look.
$699 Street, glguitars.com
Recording King RO-310 February 2013
A good OOO or OM is the acoustic-guitar equivalent of your favorite baseball glove—it’s got that just-right fit, it’s capable of both routine and spectacular plays, and in the best of times it’s like an extension of your own fingers. The Recording King RO-310 delivers each of those qualities, but at a price that we’ve rarely seen for an OM or OOO this good. Like any OM, it’s the essence of balance, but it’s the fact that it won’t knock your bank account out of balance that makes it Premier Gear.
$499 Street, recordingking.com
PRS 408 Maple Top February 2013
In 2011, PRS issued limited editions of the Custom 24 and Studio models that many considered the finest of the breed. Apparently, Paul Reed Smith decided those guitars were too good not to share, because the 408 Maple Top is essentially a production version of the maple-topped Private Stock instruments. As Jordan Wagner noted, it’s a guitar that can be “almost anything you want it to be.” With all that potential on tap, we’re excited to know what classic performances will emerge from this guitar in the years to come.
$2,990, street, prsguitars.com
Strymon MobiusMarch 2013
This outfit of vintage tone fans with turbo digital know-how keeps on delivering stomps that sound amazing and invite deep musical exploration. The analog purists on our staff tend to be blown away by how convincing these pedals sound, and the digital-loving nerds among us love the endless options and MIDI versatility. But the essence of the Mobius is the ability to generate crazy-good emulations of modulation effects that have stumped DSP engineers, well … forever. Nice work, Strymon—again!
$449 street, strymon.net
Epiphone '62 Sheraton E212T March 2013
Classy, classic, and just plain killer to play, the Sheraton had to be one of the finest luxe-for-the-bucks experiences we had all year. The U.S.-made Gibson mini-humbuckers made the Sheraton a willing partner for everything from Stones raunch to uptown Wes Montgomery-style tones. If you’re into this style of guitar, it would be hard to find a cooler piece of wood to hang around your neck—especially at this price point.
$779 street, epiphone.com
Mesa/Boogie Grid Slammer March 2013
Fear not, the Grid Slammer is not a super villain’s plot to undo the nation’s power infrastructure. It is, however, one hell of an overdrive—capable of kicking your amp into realms ranging from sweaty blues to medium-gain bliss. But it’ll also add an aggressive, singing quality to heavy leads and make any on-the-fence tube amp sound mean enough for the most evil super villain.
$179 street, mesaboogie.com
Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Bass Big Muff Pi April 2013
As reviewer Jordan Wagner noted, some of the mightiest bass tones in the galaxy come from combining a towering bass amp and a Big Muff. But Electro-Harmonix’s latest addition to the bass Muff family takes the impressive potential of that combination several steps further—adding noise gate, dry blend, and switchable crossover features that yield (get this) a more nuanced Bass Big Muff. Considering that a bass and Big Muff are typically about as subtle and nuanced as a B-52 raid, we consider this an award-worthy achievement indeed.
$118 street, ehx.comhttps://www.ehx.com
Carr Impala April 2013
Steve Carr’s work over the last decade has been consistently excellent. There’s not much in the amp-o-sphere he hasn’t tried: AC-like EL84 circuits, Deluxe-inspired 6V6 amps, and EL34-driven combos built for cranking out the heaviest rock. The new Impala is built in homage to the blackface Bassman, and like that classic workhorse it’s a beautiful blank slate. Reviewer Alex Maiolo called it “one of the finest rock amplifiers I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.” But considering how much more the Impala can do, a Premier Gear award is a no-brainer.
$2,490 street, carramps.com
Bogner Ecstasy Red and Blue May 2013
For players fond of post-’70s hard rock and metal, Bogner’s Ecstasy amps are a little like a Mercedes-Benz—objects of lust, but also trusted to deliver and last. For those who can’t afford the original amp, the Red and Blue stompboxes gets you remarkably close to that coveted Bogner sound. The Blue is the tamer of the two, delivering exceptionally defined low- to mid-gain tones, while the beastlier Red is geared for British-style metal.
$299 (each), bogneramplification.com
Eastman AR371CESB May 2013
Eastman’s archtops, semi-hollows, and acoustics have impressed us with regularity over the years. But Adam Perlmutter found the company’s ES-175-inspired AR371CESB to be a top-quality, beautiful-sounding archtop equally adept at rowdy rock and sophisticated jazz. At just under 800 bucks, he also found it to be a value “nearly impossible to beat.” Keep the sweet deals coming, Eastman!
$780 street (with hardshell case), eastmanguitars.com
Vigier Excalibur Special 7 May 2013
Vigier is a relentlessly inventive company—which is always nice to see in a an industry that often seems chronically retro-gazing. The Excalibur Special 7 puts that inventive spirit to work in very tangible ways that yield real results. From the proprietary vibrato to the stainless-steel frets, it’s a flawlessly built marvel of playability and a monster tone machine to boot.
$3,495 street, vigierguitars.com
Way Huge Echo-Puss May 2013
Jeorge Tripps and the Way Huge crew seem almost incapable of making a bad—or even mediocre—stompbox. And the Echo-Puss is a superb analog bucket-brigade delay that lives up to Way Huge’s impressive reputation. Anyone who’s ever loved and lost a vintage Deluxe Memory Man will love this thing. Its combination of gorgeous analog tones, smart-sized enclosure, and rugged utility make it a Premier Gear shoo-in.
$169 street, wayhuge.com
Diezel D-Moll May 2013
The 100-watt, KT77-driven D-Moll starred in our Monsters of High Gain roundup because of its superior definition and midrange detail. But lest you think Diezel traded civility for ferocity, keep in mind that our reviewer emerged from 10 rounds with the D-Moll calling its overdrive “pretty intimidating.” Indeed, the D-Moll may be a cultivated monster, but it’s a monster nonetheless.
$2,999 street, diezel.typo3.inpublica.de
Ibanez AFJ957 May 2013
Seven-string archtop players could safely be called a niche market, but that’s what makes the AFJ957 so impressive. It takes commitment and thoughtful design and execution to make a niche guitar like this so affordable. The result, as Joe Charupakorn put it, is a guitar that’s “not just a great guitar for the price, but a great guitar period.
$799 street, ibanez.com
Spaceman Saturn V Harmonic Booster May 2013
This Portland, Oregon, pedal manufacturer riffs heavily on ’60s-era NASA design aesthetics, but its pedals also seem built to space-faring specs. They are rock solid and, in the case of the Saturn V Harmonic Booster, a heavy-duty musical asset. This incredibly complex boost pedal enhances picking dynamics, responds to input changes from your guitar, and delivers cool overdrive tones that are full of character. Plus, it looks like you just ripped off a component from an Apollo capsule to put on your pedalboard!
$219 street, spacemaneffects.com
ValveTrain Trenton June 2013
This boutique amp outfit’s mantra seems to be that top tones need not mean top dollar. Though ValveTrain’s wares aren’t cheap, they’re almost always a great value for the quality and sound they deliver. With the beautiful-looking Trenton, Valvetrain delivers great tones via four switchable voices that, as reviewer Derek See described it, go from “clear to Crazy Horse.” For a very reasonable 1,400 bones, we’ll just call it killer!
$1,399 street, valvetrainamps.com
Dingwall Super P June 2013
As iconic and familiar as Fender’s Precision bass is, it’s unusual to do a do double take when you see an instrument with those same familiar lines. But with its fanned frets and biomorphic headstock, it’s hard not to stare at Dingwall’s Precision-inspired Super P. When reviewer Steve Cook wasn’t drooling over its cool looks, he was marveling at the playability, ergonomics, attention to detail, and range of sonic possibilities—which he called “downright incredible.”
$2,730 street, dingwallguitars.com
Ibanez ES2 Echo Shifter June 2013
As obsessed as we get about how stompboxes sound, it’s easy to forget that great pedals can be instruments in their own right. Take the Ibanez Echo Shifter: That control layout—three adjacent knobs, two switches, and a big slider—makes this one of the most fun-to-use echo units since the Maestro Echoplex. But they also make it incredibly versatile, expressive, and musically responsive. Whether you use it as a tool for freaking out or playing it cool, it comes at a price that make it dang-near irresistible.
$149 street, ibanez.com
Nik Huber Rietbergen Standard June 2013
We’ve had the good fortune to spend some quality time with Nik Huber and check out how they do things at his shop in Rodgau, Germany. So we were hardly startled when reviewer Ben Friedman returned a rave review of Huber’s sumptuous semi-hollowbody, saying the tones from the Häussel pickups “were bound to dazzle.” Considering this is probably the most beautiful guitar we’ve seen yet from this remarkable builder, we’re not about to disagree.
$7,325 street, nikhuber-guitars.com
Amptweaker TightFuzz June 2013
This pedal from amp guru James Brown is one of two bass fuzzes in our Premier Gear lineup this year. And attentive bass-gear manufacturers out there would do well to take note of how a good bass fuzz can be an unexpectedly versatile texture. The Tight Fuzz does it with a control set that’s sure to look busy to old-school players, but we’re betting it only takes a few minutes to change the minds of those fence sitters and curmudgeons, because the Tight Fuzz has the goods to transform your tone.
$220 street, amptweaker.com
Ibanez Iron Label RGIR20FE July 2013
You can’t really fake a good shred guitar, because even shredders on a budget have no time for crappy action, dodgy playability, and squishy, unresponsive electronics. Ibanez gets that. And in the form of the Iron Label, they’ve delivered a superb, affordable shred machine. We found the quality and playability astounding for a 600-dollar guitar. That, plus a surprising adaptability, helped make this Ibanez an easy choice for a Premier Gear award.
$599 street, ibanez.com
EarthQuaker Devices Disaster Transport SR August 2013
EarthQuaker Devices is a company with gumption, derring-do, and a music-first sense that results in pedals that can be practical and bizarre—often all at once. Case in point—the Disaster Transport SR. Yes, you can dial this dual delay up (with surprising ease) for a conventional, parallel long and short delay. But it takes but a few tweaks before you’ve converted this silver-flake delight into a peyote voyage in a box.
$345 street, earthquakerdevices.com
Reverend Kingbolt August 2013
Despite boasting a roster that includes adventurous and virtuosic players like Reeves Gabrels and Pete Anderson, Reverend’s more traditional-looking body lines can often give the impression the company has a retro agenda. The Kingbolt, however, could change that perception for good. With hot, no-cover humbuckers, a 12" fretboard radius, Wikinson trem, and graphite nut, it’s an unquestionably metal-geared machine. While reviewer Joe Charupakorn found it varied enough to deem it “a gold mine of tonal possibilities,” we suspect a lot of players are going to dedicate their Kingbolt to getting heavy above all. So much for that retro agenda.
$1,079 street, reverendguitars.com
FU-Tone High Performance Bridge Packages August 2013
Dedicated shredders obsess over guitar details that’ll never even occur to many other players. For these demanding and ultra-specialized players, little things add up to big tone and playability dividends. Yes, at least one of the packages here is built around a titanium tremolo block, yet reviewer Gerry Ganaden found the difference in tone profound. And for downright religious tone hounds, the payoff will be worth every penny invested.
$320 street (Standard Upgrade Package), $923 street (Full Titanium Package), fu-tone.com
Jaguar HC50 August 2013
The Jaguar HC50 walked away with a Premier Gear award largely for its mastery of the sound/simplicity equation. Four knobs, a couple of EL34s, a good 12" speaker, and—voilà!—you’ve got a palette of tones that ranges from jangly and airy to monstrous. Reviewer Matt Holliman also noted that the HC50 took to just about every effect he tried “like a fish to water,” which might make this the finest blank canvas for sound sculptors we played all year.
$2,029 street, jaguaramplification.com
Lakland Decade 6 August 2013
Six-string basses are odd birds, but for players willing to investigate the potential of these instruments, the musical payoff can be big. Lakland’s Decade 6 is, like most every Lakland bass, beautifully built and executed. Mate that quality with the ability to move from Spaghetti-Western baritone sounds to powerful, thumping low end, and you have a serious studio and stage secret weapon—not to mention a means of expanding your vocabulary in unexpected ways.
$3,250 street, lakland.com
Epifani AL 112 August 2013
The AL 112 bass combo makes us wonder why the guitar industry often seems so dang obsessed with the days of tweed cabs and carhops (cool as those are). The Epipfani looks vaguely like a circa-’72 vision of the future, but it takes a very different approach to bass-amp construction—using an aluminum cabinet to create a very light, tough, practical, and big-sounding bass amplifier. That’s the kind of forward thinking we can get behind.
$1,599 street, epifani.com
Catalinbread Echorec September 2013
The original Binson Echorec is perhaps most legendary because of its role as the echo unit that powered early Pink Floyd work. Those associations aside, the Binson was a gloriously quirky and unique machine with a very distinct musical personality. Catalinbread’s own Echorec uses DSP technology rather than the clunky mechanicals of the original to achieve its lush voice and superb rhythmic delays. But delay fiends and Floyd fanatics aren’t likely to give that much more than a passing thought once they plug this unit in and experience its liquid, spacious repeats.
$230 street, catalinbread.com
Fargen Blackbird VS2 September2013
The 40-watt Blackbird, as the name cheekily suggests, pays homage to Fender’s mid-’60s blackface era. But it’s counted among this year’s award winners for delivering a super-responsive tone-shaping section and an incredibly pedal-friendly voice. If you’re ready to retire your heirloom blackface, you’d have a hard time finding a better replacement.
$2,650 street, fargenamps.com
Death by Audio Thee Fuzz Warr Overload October 2013
Known for their bizarre contraptions of aural destruction, DBA’s latest fuzz is a collaboration between two chaos-loving artists—the Death by Audio team (which includes A Place to Bury Strangers’ Oliver Ackermann) and Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer. Not surprisingly, it’s capable of producing a brutalizingly powerful fuzz tone. But what makes the DBATFWO Premier Gear is its surprising flexibility—and even civility! The onboard treble boost is a perfect match for the Muff-like fuzz, and the tone control has considerable sound-sculpting power, making this fuzz a killer whether you need a slik glove or a wrecking ball.
$225 street, deathbyaudio.com
Dunlop Fuzz Face Mini Germanium FFM2 October 2013
While we were pretty excited by the convenience of the smaller Fuzz Face Mini Germanium, in the end it was the amazingly authentic vintage Fuzz Face tones and dynamic interactivity that knocked us off our feet. Senior editor Joe Gore—a seasoned Fuzz Face user if there ever was one—declared, “you’d be hard-pressed to find a Fuzz Face that sounds better at any price.” But with all that tone in a new pedalboard-friendly compact enclosure, this new Fuzz Face excels at being practical and musical.
$129 street, jimdunlop.com
Pigtronix Quantum Time Modulator October 2013
Pigtronix makes impressive-sounding, sometimes complex pedals. But with the Quantum Time Modulator, it delivers a typically inventive and rich-sounding fusion of chorus and vibrato in a compact enclosure that’s beautifully simple. The sum is a modulation unit that ranges from subtle to downright insane with a few quick twists. This ability to appease mellow texturalists and freakishly experimental players alike make this pedal a Premier Gear no-brainer.
$199 street, pigtronix.com
TC Electronic PolyTune 2 November 2013
TC’s original PolyTune tuner wowed the world with its ability to check the pitch of all six strings with a single stroke or switch to single-string chromatic mode with the pluck of one string. This newest incarnation adds a more accurate strobe mode, a super-bright readout, and a sensor that will adjust to prevailing light conditions. Who knew a little tuner could do so much or make our playing lives so much easier?
$99 street, tcelectronic.com
When we editors at Premier Guitar decide what gear to review, our overarching guideline is pretty simple: Check out the stuff that you will find compelling and useful in your creative quest. We base that on both the constant feedback we get from you online (via email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), as well as what we can intuit by reading between the lines of your requests and putting it in context with new stuff you may not have heard about yet. As a result we see a lot of really nice stuff.
So when one of our editors or contributors is struck by a convergence of value, quality, and sound that adds up to being Premier Gear worthy, it’s a safe bet we’re talking about something special. It’s fun and satisfying to encounter these especially excellent guitars, basses, amps, effects, and accessories—doubly so because so many of our award winners come from small shops and tiny bands of craftspeople who are in the same position many of the mainstream names you see alongside them were decades ago. There aren’t many industries out there where multimillion-dollar giants and little guys can share the spotlight, and we love being part of it.
Big or small, the manufacturers represented in this compendium of gear that’s won our coveted Premier Gear Award in 2013 have done very cool work. Some of it is traditional but superbly executed. Other pieces are here in no small part because their creators took chances. No matter the path, though, the end result is gear that sounds great. What you do with it is up to you and your imagination. But we’re quite confident the stellar products here will spark more than a few ideas.
In recent years, Samantha Fish’s most often-used guitar was this alpine white Gibson SG, but it ran into some issues last summer—“I ended up having to reglue the neck”—and it is now on hiatus.
If you’re already a fan of Fish’s tough Delta-mama singing and high-temperature guitar work, you’ll probably think that all this is just as it should be. You gotta reap what you sow eventually, right? And Fish has been sowing for a long time, from her bar-band days in Kansas City 15 years ago through eight rootsy, eclectic albums as a leader (not counting the two early-2010s discs she cut with Dani Wilde and Victoria Smith as Girls with Guitars, or her 2013 outing with Jimmy Hall and Reese Wynans in the Healers, or 2023’s tangy swamp-rock collaboration with Jesse Dayton, Death Wish Blues) to her current tour schedule of about 150 dates per year in North America, the U.K., Europe, and Australia.
Still, even with such a solid career foundation to draw on, mixing and mingling in the flesh with folks you’ve known all your life as names on record covers could be a little intimidating. Is it? “You know, I don’t ever think about it in those terms,” Fish says on the phone from her home in New Orleans. “So when you lay it all out there like that, it feels like, ‘Aw shit, that’s crazy.’ I mean, it is crazy. When I think about the goals that I’ve made over the years … honestly, I’ve crossed off a bunch of things that I thought were even ironic being on the list, because they just seemed so far-fetched. Every interview I’ve ever done, they were like, ‘If you could ever open up for somebody, who would it be?’ And I always said the Stones, ironically. Cause when the hell’s that gonna happen? I’m a guitar player from Kansas. That’s nuts.”
With her Stogie Box Blues 4-string, heavy hitting style, and wide array of blues and rock influences, Fish is an artist of a different stripe.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Fish spits out the sentences above in a fast, excited spray, one word tumbling over another. Then she pauses for a second, and it’s clear that wheels are turning in her head. Her voice gets more playful. “I’m gonna start speaking some even wilder things into existence just to see what happens,” she cracks, her grin nearly audible over the line. “A billion dollars!No, money’s evil, but you know what I mean.”
“I wanted to lean into superpowers.”
Given her formidable chops, it’s not that daring a leap to suggest that Fish could be capable of playingsome wilder things into existence, too. She’s certainly off to a good start with the just-released Paper Doll, her ninth solo album overall and third for Rounder Records. Whether your personal taste leans more toward nasty string-snapping riffs (the aptly titled “Can Ya Handle the Heat?”), sizzling slide escapades (“Lose You”), or high lonesome twang (“Off in the Blue”), you can’t deny that the album’s loaded with prime guitar moments. And its two longest tracks, “Sweet Southern Sounds” and “Fortune Teller”—“longest” being a purely relative term (they’re both under six minutes)—offer listeners just a taste of the neo-psychedelic fantasias that can occur when Fish stretches out in concert.
“People always come up to me and say, ‘You’ve got to figure out a way to capture the live feeling on a record,’” she reports. “Sometimes you go into the studio and it’s like, ‘Shit, I gotta make the song work for vinyl, so let’s cut it down,’ and you end up hacksawing away some of these parts that are kind of the feeling and heartbeat of the song. This time we set out to make something that felt live.”
Fish made her recording debut in 2009 as the leader of the Samantha Fish Blues Band, with the punny-titled in-concert indie album Live Bait.
Photo by Curtis Knapp
That’s one way in which Paper Doll differs dramatically from its predecessor, 2021’s Faster, which delved into a poppier territory of synths, beats, and high-tech production (and, in this writer’s opinion, did so with great effectiveness; one of Faster’s highlights, “Hypnotic,” sounds like it could have been recorded at a late-night dance club hang with Prince and the Pointer Sisters). In contrast, obviously electronic sounds are nowhere to be heard on the new disc, and the music referenced stays firmly in the American roots category: soul, rock, country, juke-joint blues. For some artists, a stylistic shift like this could be seen as a retrenchment, but for Fish, it’s the result of a major departure. This is the first time she’s ever used her road band—keyboardist Mickey Finn, bassist Ron Johnson, and drummer Jamie Douglass—to make a studio album.
“Everybody’s scratching their heads about what genre this falls into, but I know where every song started—with a blues riff.”
“Usually,” Fish explains, “I’ve worked in studio situations where there’s been a producer and they want to put the people they know together. So it was cool to bring in the band that I’ve been playing with for the last couple of years instead of session musicians. I feel like the dynamic was different—the familiarity, and just kind of knowing where the others were gonna go. It might be a minute difference to a listener, but for the players in the room, it helped breed another sensibility.”
Also helping in that department was producer Bobby Harlow, late of Detroit garage-rock revivalists the Go. Paper Doll is the second Fish album that Harlow’s produced; the first was 2017’s Chills & Fever. But whereas that album was all covers, the focus this time was on original songs, more than half of them co-written by Harlow with Fish before he was even considered to produce the album.
“Last March, Bobby came out to a show we did in Detroit,” Fish recalls. “We went out to lunch, and because I was working on writing songs, I asked him to do some co-writing with me, because I love the songs he wrote for the Go. He’s really fun to be in a room with when you’re making something, because he’s incredibly devoted to it. So we started writing, and then a few months later the label was like, ‘We gotta make this album, who’s gonna produce it?’ Well, we’re on the road all summer, so I don’t know when y’all expect us to do this record. But Bobby was available, and it was like the universe bringing us back together. He was passionate about the kind of songs I was writing, and he understood where I wanted to go with it.”
Samantha Fish's Gear
Before finding her SG, Fish’s main guitar was her Delaney signature model thinline style, with a fish-shaped f-hole.
Photo by Frank White
Guitars
- Alpine white Gibson SG
- Gibson Custom Shop ES-335
- Delaney 512
- Stogie Box Blues 4-string
- Danelectro baritone
Amps
- Category 5 Andrew 2x12
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille
Effects
- Dunlop volume pedal
- Analog Man King of Tone
- JHS Mini Foot Fuzz
- Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
- MXR Carbon Copy
- Boss PS-5 Super Shifter
- Voodoo Lab Pedal Power ISO-5
Strings, Picks, & Slides
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinkys (.010-.046)
- 1.0 mm picks (any brand)
- Various brass and ceramic slides
And where was that? “I wanted to lean into superpowers,” Fish quickly answers. “What are my strengths, what are the things that people know me for and recognize me for, and what can I amplify to make this a real statement record? It’s funny, because everybody’s scratching their heads about what genre this falls into, but I know where every song started—with a blues riff.”
Born out of the blues it may have been, but when the Paper Doll material reached the studio (actually, two studios: the Orb in Austin and Savannah Studios in L.A.), it went through some changes, partly due to the band’s contributions, partly due to Harlow’s conceptual leaps. “Bobby’s like a musicologist,” Fish says approvingly. “He’s deep. He pulls from so many different spaces, and he’s definitely introduced me to some things that I wasn’t hip to over the years. That’s done a lot to shape my musical tastes.” If you’ve had the significant pleasure of attending one of the many gigs in which Fish breaks out proto-punk nuggets like the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams” and Love’s “7 and 7 Is,” well, now you know the guy to thank.
“This time we set out to make something that felt live.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, one of Paper Doll’s best tracks, “Rusty Tazor,” is a similar romp through the garage. In a rare case (for this album) of the producer bringing in someone he knows, Harlow tapped Mick Collins of cult faves the Gories and the Dirtbombs for backing vocals. “He adds such a personality to that song,” Fish says. “And I’m a punk rock fan. I love that whole era. I just love this raw, uninhibited way of playing. There’s nothing precious about it. Leaning into the edges—that’s where the real shit lies.”
Because the Paper Doll sessions took place in between periods of touring, Fish only brought her road instruments, including a new white Gibson SG and Stogie Box Blues 4-string cigar box guitar (see sidebar for more on her personal collection). But both the Austin and L.A. studios presented plenty of other options. “A ton of guitars,” Fish remembers with a laugh, “in varying degrees of disrepair. I used a rather unruly [Gibson ES-] 335 in Savannah for ‘Sweet Southern Sounds.’ You know how some guitars fight you when you play them? Well, I like a little bit of fight, but not so much that I’m pulling the strings out of the saddle, and it was fighting me like that. It was hard to push the strings down, I could only bend in certain places. But that just made the performance more intense, and it sounded good. There was also a Tele and a Strat that they had at the Orb. We had so many tools at our disposal, it was like, ‘Let’s go nuts and play with everything we can.’”That choice of m.o. also sounds like a positive way to respond to a career moment that Fish calls “an incredible ride. Especially in the last year-and-a-half, two years, it’s just upped the ante even more. There’s nothing more to do, really. I went out, I played to the best of my ability and I did the thing that I’ve been working hard to do for the last 15 years or so. And it’s awesome to be able to show up in that capacity and perform alongside people that I’ve really looked up to. I just feel grateful. I know I’m lucky.”
Fish’s Favorites
Fish has a brawling style of playing slide, often on her cigar box. “Lose You,” on her new album, is especially representative of her approach to the classic blues technique.
Photo by Jim Summaria
For nearly a decade, Samantha Fish’s primary stage axe has been a 2015 alpine white Gibson SG that she bought new online. She’s still got it, but last year it ran into some trouble. “I ended up having to reglue the neck over the summer,” she says, “and it’s been having tuning issues. So Gibson sent me another white SG that’s just beautiful, in great shape. The neck’s a bit fatter, which is cool, different from mine. I’ve been using that one a lot”—indeed, the new SG is all over Paper Doll. “I’ve hung onto it, and I feel bad about that. I don’t want to be the person who borrows a guitar and keeps it. But it just played so great, and it was like, ‘I need this thing. What can I do to keep it?’ Luckily, the people at Gibson have been so good to me over the years.”
An even more recent addition to Fish’s electric arsenal is a Custom Shop Gibson ES-335 in silver sparkle finish, purchased in the fall at Eddie’s Guitars in St. Louis. “Because I played a 335 on ‘Sweet Southern Sounds’ in the studio, I was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna need one live, so of course I have to get this one!’ I’ve always wanted a silver sparkle, and this one is pristine. I’m so scared of the first scratch I get on it, or buckle rash. I’m probably gonna cry!”
Fish hasn’t been playing her Delaney SF1 Tele-style “Fish-o-caster” so much recently, but another Delaney model, the hollowbody 512, is still getting lots of action (often tuned to open D for slide use), as is her Stogie Box Blues 4-string, equipped with a P-Bass pickup. Her Danelectro baritone, Bohemian oil-can guitar, and clutch of Fender Jaguars are also safe at home, along with her current acoustic main squeeze, a new Martin D-45.
YouTube It
Samantha plays Jimi in this September 2024 performance from the most recent Experience Hendrix tour. The selection: “Fire.”
Versatile guitarist Nathaniel Murphy can be seen and heard on YouTube and Instagram, where he has over 450,000 followers, and demos for Chicago Music Exchange.
Guest Picker - Nathaniel Murphy
A: My signature pedal wouldn’t even really be my sound. It would have all of The Edge’s exact sounds and settings in one pedal as presets. No messing with switches or dialing in tones, just cycle through presets and it sounds exactly like “Pride (In the Name of Love),” “Mysterious Ways,” or “Where the Streets Have no Name.” It would be purely just for fun to jam at home. My own pedal would probably just be a reverb!
While recovering from a hand injury, Nathaniel Murphy “really got into picado technique and would watch Paco De Lucia and in particular Matteo Mancuso (above) vids and lessons.
Obsession: Well, I’ve just spent six weeks in a cast after a wrist fracture—very scary. During that time I couldn’t use my fretting hand so I worked on my picking hand. I really got into picado technique and would watch Paco De Lucia and in particular Matteo Mancuso vids and lessons. It’s been really refreshing and also fun working on a new technique for me, even though it’s incredibly tricky and progress is slow. But I love the challenge of it.
Reader of the Month - Steve Eisenberg
A: My signature pedal would be simple to use, have the capability of being shaped with iPhone-app based effects, and expand features as my guitar adventure grows in scope. I’m very much in the experimentation stage with my pedal work, and having direction and guidance available on an iPhone has helped me navigate in a way that ensures I’m meeting some of my guitar-adventure goals.
Obsession: Through the guidance of my instructor, I am exploring fingerstyle guitar, as it has motivated me away from just chord shapes and scale work. I was feeling a little stuck, and using the fingers of the right hand has allowed me to increase my dexterity and coordination, and motivated me to practice more often.
Gear Editor - Charles Saufley
Mr. Saufley, represented by a mallard.
A: The foundation of my signature pedal is the guts of a 1968 Vox Starstream guitar, which is made up of a Vox Distortion Booster fuzz, a Vox Repeat Percussion tremolo, and Vox Treble Booster. Sonically speaking, this is like donning a psych-punk freakbeat cape. Just before the Distortion Booster there is a Grampian 636 reverb preamp circuit to fatten up and color the works. After the freakbeat section, there will be a de- and re-constructed Roland RE-201 Space Echo. Most of the pedal enclosure will be made up of clear Lucite (illuminated by alternating-color lamps), so I can observe the tape swirling within. The RE-201’s spring reverb, meanwhile, will be suspended in its own flip-up Lucite case which will sit on dampers to insulate it from floor vibration. Hopefully, it will sound like Lee “Scratch” Perry producing Love’s “7 and 7 Is”.
Obsession: The first sounds and green and gold flashes of early spring—and the wakeful energy, ideas, and inspiration it brings.
Giving some love to Love!
Art Director - Naomi Rose
A: The enclosure would be hex color #00b4c1—branded as NAOMI blue—checkerboarded with alternating boxes of NAOMI blue glitter flock and matte NAOMI blue. The footswitch would be a bulbous orange rubber material so it’d feel squishy when stepping on it whilst playing barefoot. It would have a kick-out stand in the back like a picture frame, so when it's not in use, it could stand angled on a shelf to be admired. It would be called Ruckus because that's my middle name. What would it DO? That's a secret I will not be sharing at this time.
Our graphic designer’s dream pedal brought to life.
Obsession: Silence. I hardly listen to music or podcasts these days. When I don’t have outside noise, I tend to self-narrate in my head, which leads to making ridiculous little made-up songs throughout the day. These will oftentimes spark cool ideas and manifest into actual songs that I end up recording and producing. Even in the mundane, inspiration is everywhere. Sometimes getting rid of distractions helps you notice it more.
