Three days of guitar highlights from Chicago’s world-renowned festival.
Cold War Kids’ Dann Gallucci
Former Modest Mouse guitarist Dann Gallucci joined the Cold War Kids in 2012, replacing co-founding guitarist Jonnie Russell. Dann is a big fan of T-styles and used this Fender Classic Series ’72 Telecaster Custom for “We Used to Vacation,” “Audience” and the cover of John Lennon’s “Well Well Well.”
A thick, varied take on the silicon Fuzz Face that spans punky, sparkling, and full-spectrum heavy.
Dimensional, thick variations on the silicon Fuzz Face voice. Surprisingly responsive to dynamics at most tube amp’s natural clean/dirty divide. Bass control lends range.
Thins out considerably at lower amp volumes.
$185
McGregor Pedals Classic Fuzz
mcgregorpedals.com
Compared to the dynamic germanium Fuzz Face, silicon versions sometimes come off as brutish. And even though they can be sonorously vicious, if dirty-to-clean range and sensitivity to guitar volume attenuation are top priorities, germanium is probably the way to go. The McGregor Classic Fuzz, however, offers ample reminders about the many ways silicon Fuzz Faces can be beastly, sensitive, and sound supreme.
Even though the two BC107B top hat transistors will look familiar to many who have poked around other SFF-style circuits, the Classic Fuzz is not precisely a silicon Fuzz Face clone. It’s distinguished by a low-pass filter “bass” control that true SFFs lack, but which widens its vocabulary extensively. In an A/B test with a solid, archetypal-sounding BC108 Fuzz Face clone, the Classic Fuzz sounded roughly equivalent at the 60-percent mark of the bass control’s range. But the Classic Fuzz was more dimensional, and on either side of the bass control I heard many intriguing tone variations spanning garage-punk snot and corpulent, almost triangle-Big Muff thickness.
Like most SFFs, the Classic Fuzz sounds best with a generous spoonful of amp volume. I ran it with a Fender Vibrolux just on the clean side of breakup. At amp volumes much lower than that, the fuzz voice thinned, the nuanced responsiveness to guitar volume attenuation dropped off, and the range of clean tones became much narrower. In its happy places, though, the Classic Fuzz rips—lending sparkling overdrive colors and banshee-scream aggression to Stratocasters and sounding especially sweet and terrifyingly mammoth with humbuckers
With internally adjustable midrange boost and versatile Voice 2, these pickups are designed to capture the killer tones of 80s & 90s high performance Strats.
Amid the screaming success of the Gristle-Tone signature Telecaster and P90 pickup sets, it was no surprise that Greg wanted to contribute to the Fluence single width line next.
Unlike the Gristle-Tone for Tele and P90, the Greg Koch Gristle-Tone Signature Series Single Width set represents a modern approach, extracting a wide variety of clean to high gain tones, from the pure, wide-open Voice 1, through the mid-forward vocabulary in Voice 2 with broad control over the midrange qualities to meet all of Greg’s single width needs.
For this set, Greg wanted to capture the killer tones of 80s & 90s high performance Strats, which deliver a wide-band Hi-Fi sound, with more dynamics and versatility. A resonant shift in the 2 & 4 positions can bring out those glassy, toothy in-between tones.
An internally adjustable set-and-forget midrange boost in Voice 2 offers everything from mild added “fatness” to full blown searing leads. Pull up on the Reactive Tone Control for a fat and sassy boost.
Greg Koch says, “These pickups provide the slice and the sinew without the razor blades on the high end and the flabbiness on the low end….Voice 2 brings the heat when you need to go in for the win!"
The pickups are available as a 6-string set and come in white or black. Street price in the U.S. is $269.95 for the set.+`
For more information, please visit fishman.com.
Greg Koch Single Width Pickups | Feature Highlight - YouTube
Nile Rodgers Put Rhythm Up Front (and Cory Wong Listened)
Funk-guitar wiz and Wong Notes host Cory Wong flips the script and sits in the 100 Guitarists guest chair.
Funk-guitar wiz and Wong Noteshost Cory Wong flips the script and sits in the 100 Guitarists guest chair. Wong cleared his schedule to talk about one Nile Rodgers’ work on the Halo 2 soundtrack. We were lucky that got him to return our call, but we did move on quickly.
Wong is a scholar of all things rhythm guitar—and that means all things Nile. We talk about how the Hitmaker voices his progressions—“You hear Nile play a chord progression … and it’s that song”—and the role of rhythm guitar in general. Cory delivers his list of best Nile performances, tips for direct guitar sounds, and most surprising Nile collabs.
Ever wonder what it would sound like if Nile Rodgers produced David Lee Roth covering Willie Nelson? Give a listen and drop us a know when you check it out for yourself.
This episode is sponsored by JAM Pedals.
More info: https://www.jampedals.com.
Joe Satriani and Steve Vai unite to form the SATCHVAI Band.
Kicking off on June 13, 2025, this monumental musical journey will feature stops in major cities like London, Paris, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam, and will also include performances at major European summer festivals including Hellfest, Umbria Jazz Festival and Guitares en Scene Fest. The tour is set to conclude in late July, with more dates to be announced soon.
The duo, along with each of their respective bands, initially joined forces for their first-ever tour together, outside of the G3 format, the past spring (2024) across select U.S. cities, and decided it was finally time to actually form a band together and bring that winning formula to the live stage, beginning in Europe.
Celebrating nearly five decades of musical friendship, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai made their first musical collaboration debut in March 2024. “The Sea of Emotion, Pt. 1” showcases the unmatched synergy between these two legendary guitarists as they seamlessly trade solo sections throughout the nearly six-minute opus. Their second collaboration is set to be released just before the European tour, adding even more anticipation for this epic run.
Pre-sale tickets for “The SATCHVAI Band Tour” will be available starting Wednesday and Thursday December 11 and 12, with general sales opening on Friday, December 13.
Satch and Vai’s musical careers have been intertwined since their very early days. Satriani served as Vai’s guitar teacher during their teenage years on Long Island, New York. Their connection has continued to evolve over the years, even sharing record labels, starting at Relativity Records in the late 80’s, to both calling Sony/Epic Records home for a significant portion of the 90’s. Together, they have also frequently teamed up with a third guitarist on multiple occasions throughout the span of three decades, participating in the semi-annual G3 Tours, both in the U.S. and abroad.
“The SATCHVAI Band Tour is happening! I’m so looking forward to sharing the stage with Steve again,” Satriani said. “Every time we play together, it takes me back to when we were teenagers, eating and breathing music every second of the day, pushing, challenging, and helping each other to be the best we could be. I guess we’ve never stopped!”
Vai added, “Touring with Joe is always a pleasure and an honor. He is my favorite guitarist to jam with, and now we have another opportunity to take it to the stage. I feel as though we are both at the top of our game, and the show will be a powerful celebration of the coolest instrument in the world, the electric guitar!”
Joe Satriani has had a packed schedule having recently concluded the Sammy Hagar-led Best of All Worlds Tour, which was met with much fanfare and critical acclaim. While Steve Vai has been playing shows across the U.S. as part of the BEAT tour following the conclusion of the Satch/Vai tour earlier this year.
Surfing with the Hydra Tour 2025 Itinerary:
June 13 York, UK Barbican
June 14 London, UK Eventim Apollo
June 17 Glasgow, SC Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
June 18 Wolverhampton, UK Civic Hall
June 19 Manchester, UK O2 Apollo
June 21 Clisson, FR Helfest
June 22 Paris, FR Palais Des Congres
June 23 Antwerp, BE Lotto Arena
June 24 Amsterdam, NL Amsterdam Afas
June 26 Copenhagen, DK Amager Bio
June 29 Helsinki, FI House of Culture
June 30 Tampere, FI Tampere Hall
July 2 Uppsala, SE Parksnackan
July 3 Oslo, NO Sentrum Scene
July 5 Warsaw, PL Torwar
July 8 Munich, DE Tollwood Festival
July 10 Dusseldorf, DE Mitsubishi Electric Hall
July 11 Frankfurt, DE Jahrhunderthalle
July 12 Zurich, CH Volkshaus Zürich
July 13 Milan, IT Comfort Festival @ Villa Casati Stampa
July 15 Pordenone, IT Parco San Valentino
July 16 Perugia, IT Umbria Jazz
July 17 Bologna, IT Sequoie Music Park
July 18 Saint-Julien, FR Guitares en Scene Festival
July 20 Prague, CZ Forum Karlin
July 22 Sofia, BG National Palace of Culture
More dates TBA