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GALLERY: Lollapalooza 2014

From Kings of Leon to Spoon, Arctic Monkeys, Interpol, and even a reunited Outkast, Premier Guitar brings you a look at Lollapalooza 2014.

AFIs Hunter Burgan
The low-end punker keeps things simple by only using two basses—both black—during most AFI shows: 2012 and 2013 Fender American Standard Precision basses.

This year marks Lollapalooza’s 10th year as a destination festival—its 18th overall—in Chicago’s beautiful Grant Park alongside Lake Michigan. Since its inception, Lolla has tried to serve all music fans with a healthy dose of rock, metal, punk, pop, dance, comedy, and hip hop acts. This year was no different with sets from Outkast, Eminem, Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys, Interpol, AFI, Cage the Elephant, and hundreds more. Premier Guitar was onsite for all three days and here are just some of the guitar-centric highlights from the event.

Some of these are deep cuts—get ready for some instrumental bonus tracks and Van Halen III mentions—and some are among the biggest radio hits of their time. Just because their hits, though, doesn’t mean we don’t have more to add to the conversation.

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“Sometimes, I’d like very much for my guitar to sound exactly like a supa cobra.”

Luthier Creston Lea tells us about his favorite dirt pedal—an Athens, Georgia-made stomp that lets his guitar be a hero.

Let’s face it: Nobody can tell what overdrive pedal you’re using. Whether you’re in a carpeted suburban basement accompanying the hired clown at your nephew’s fifth birthday party or standing on the spot-lit monitor at Wembley, not one person knows whether the pedal at your feet cost $17 or $700, has true bypass, or has an internal DIP switch. Nobody leaning against the barn-dance corncrib or staunching a nosebleed up in the stadium’s cheap seats is thinking, “Heavens yes!! THAT is the sound of a silicone diode!”

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A dual-channel tube preamp and overdrive pedal inspired by the Top Boost channel of vintage VOX amps.

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The compact offspring of the Roland SDE-3000 rack unit is simple, flexible, and capable of a few cool new tricks of its own.

Tonalities bridge analog and digital characteristics. Cool polyrhythmic textures and easy-to-access, more-common echo subdivisions. Useful panning and stereo-routing options.

Interactivity among controls can yield some chaos and difficult-to-duplicate sounds.

$219

Boss SDE-3 Dual Digital Delay
boss.info

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Though my affection for analog echo dwarfs my sentiments for digital delay, I don’t get doctrinaire about it. If the sound works, I’ll use it. Boss digital delays have been instructive in this way to me before: I used a Boss DD-5 in a A/B amp rig with an Echoplex for a long time, blending the slur and stretch of the reverse echo with the hazy, wobbly tape delay. It was delicious, deep, and complex. And the DD-5 still lives here just in case I get the urge to revisit that place.

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