Premier Guitar features affiliate links to help support our content. We may earn a commission on any affiliated purchases.

GALLERY: Shaky Knees 2016

Situated in the heart of downtown Atlanta, this three-day festival included acts like the Kills, My Morning Jacket, Eagles of Death Metal, Deftones, At the Drive-In, Explosions in the Sky, and more.

All Them Witches’ Ben McLeod

Whether it’s in the studio or on the road, guitarist Ben McLeod travels light and lean when the band tours. He only brings two guitars and neither one of them are backups for the other. His main squeeze is a Les Paul Traditional that he’s modded by replacing the plastic nut with one made of bone—he says it not only helps with intonation but gives the guitar a silkier sound—and swapped out the LP’s stock Classic ’57 humbucker for a DiMarzio Super Distortion. He landed on that particular pickup after he dressed up as The Sword’s guitarist Kyle Shutt for a Halloween show and used Kyle’s guitar. He was so impressed with it that after the show Kyle’s tech gave Ben a spare Super Distortion for his Traditional. A final aesthetic tweak to his guitar was the removal of its pickguard because he is such a big fan of Duane Allman and he didn’t feel like covering up the full burst anymore. This particular 6-string uses a set of DR Strings Pure Blues (.010–.046) and is typically tuned to drop C. Learn more about this guitar and his whole setup in our Rig Rundown.

A dose of magic gain potion.

Works like a little vial of magic gain potion. Fattens without obscuring individual frequency bands.

None.

$129

Solodallas SVDS Boost
solodallas.com

5
4.5
5
4.5

The Schaeffer-Vega Diversity System—an early and very successful wireless system—excelled at the tasks it was designed for. But there was more magic than met the eye. Though designed to sound as transparent as possible, it nonetheless colored the signal in a way that people like Angus Young and Eddie Van Halen found essential.

Read MoreShow less

Positive Grid's Spark NEO offers guitarists a wireless guitar rig built into premium headphones, with AI-powered tone customization, exceptional sound quality, and versatile connectivity.

Read MoreShow less

Neil Young’s ’70s hits are some of the most recognizable radio rock jams of all time. But Neil’s guitar playing continued to grow over the ensuing decades, as he traversed styles from blues to country to electronic to rockabilly and beyond, eventually developing one of the most tonally decadent, fully formed improvisational voices in the entire guitar universe.

Read MoreShow less

This Japan-made Guyatone brings back memories of hitchin’ rides around the U.S.

This oddball vintage Guyatone has a streak of Jack Kerouac’s adventurous, thumbing spirit.

The other day, I saw something I hadn’t noticed in quite some time. Driving home from work, I saw an interesting-looking fellow hitchhiking. When I was a kid, “hitchers” seemed much more common, but, then again, the world didn’t seem as dangerous as today. Heck, I can remember hitching to my uncle’s cabin in Bradford, Pennsylvania—home of Zippo lighters—and riding almost 200 miles while I sat in a spare tire in the open bed of a pickup truck! Yes, safety wasn’t a big concern for kids back in the day.

Read MoreShow less