Feast your eyes and ears on these 6-string mutants, monsters, and mooncalves—approved by Dr. Frankenstein, but ready to make great music.
The great American journalist Hunter S. Thompson famously said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." So, heeding an expert's advice, when we went looking for the world's weirdest guitar mods and builds, we turned to the pros—guitarists and builders with an otherness to their aesthetic sensibilities.
We found a sampling of some truly outstanding and uncommon instruments made or modded by a diverse group from the U.S. and abroad, and from urban and rural locales. Some are famous; others obscure. A few are deceased. But all of these axes reflect their highly personal vision of what a guitar can do, or even be. So let's dive into a mind-expanding trip into the world of beautiful fretboard weirdness.
Bo Diddley's Amoeba
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
Bo Diddley was no stranger to guitar building, but it's hard to find conventionally played guitars stranger than Bo's. This axe's amoeboid shape reminds me of the tentacled menaces from the 1968 science fiction film The Green Slime. Even the color exudes a kind of alien putrescence. And while the neck feels and plays killer, this is, indeed, a spacey beast.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
The foundational rock 'n' roll giant built his first truly playable homemade axe in 1945, fashioned from a cigar box, and he continued to build guitars from slabs of wood and whatever crossed his workbench for the rest of his life. He also commissioned creations. One of the more famous is a drum machine with a Fender Stratocaster built into it. The guitar is now M.I.A., but you can find a photo here.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
After his clave-based Bo Diddley beat became a staple of rock guitar via a series of hits starting with 1955's "Bo Diddley" and '56's "Who Do You Love?," Bo convinced Gretsch to expand his love of cigar box guitars into a full-sized, rectangular signature model: the famed firebird red G5810. Altogether, there have been seven differently numbered box-like Gretsch Bo Diddley models over the years. The original is featured prominently on the cover of his 1960 LP, Have Guitar Will Travel.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
In '59, Diddley induced Gretsch to also make the G6199 Jupiter Thunderbird model—another oddity with a scooped tail and lower end that Diddley requested because he felt the wider body of his Gretsch 3161 got in his way. Its latest iteration is Gretsch's Billy-Bo, based on an example Diddley gifted to Billy Gibbons.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
The evidence of Diddley's passion for building and commissioning oddball 6-strings is in photos all over the internet. And it's also now on the wall at Nashville's Carter Vintage Guitars, where the 2001-built amoeba guitar hangs with a $30,000 price tag.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
Its lines are less-than-elegantly carved, and the body is plywood with a plywood top that's mounted in place by wood screws. The weight? Well, it seems heavier in my hands than my '68 Les Paul, which comes in at 12 pounds.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
Besides the CD player—which works—the other sound sources are a pair of humbuckers and a Roland GK-2A synth pickup. The Lotus neck is key to the guitar's playability, and its tuners hold their ground, making this green alien more functional than might be anticipated.
BO DIDDLEY 1965
Here's Bo Diddley rocking like a damn freight train on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, with one of his specially sculpted Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbirds.
Lewis Waters' Harmonic Hot Rods
Harmonic Isolator
Blend a guitar with a celestial choir, a Theremin, chimes and bells, and a synthesizer and you'd be merely approximating the near-mystical tones created by the instruments Lewis Waters builds in Perth, Australia, under the New Complexity name. For nearly a decade, Waters sought to expand the sonic palette of his conventional 6-strings with pedals and amps and extended technique, both solo and in bands. But, as he explains, the sounds he was hearing in his head were calling for something more organic—a fresh take on the instrument itself.
Inspired primarily by the improvising guitarists and instrument creators Hans Reichel and Yuri Landman, Waters was determined to build the guitars he imagined. (Check out Landman's step-by-step instructions for recreating the drone guitar he built for Thurston Moore, in our May 2016 issue.) First, Waters enrolled in a two-year course in woodworking, while continuing his research into pickups, sustainers, tuners, bridges, and other elements essential to his vision. Then, seven years ago, he began simultaneously building two of the guitars he imagined: the Harmonic Master and the Harmonic Isolator. The sounds both make are otherworldly and solidly of the guitar at the same time.
New Complexity - Harmonic Isolator Demo
Harmonic Master
The Harmonic Master has an extended bridge that adds an independently tuned harmonic overlay to the notes played on the instrument's neck. And thanks to a behind-the-bridge pickup, the resonating notes in that independent section can be separately amplified. With two string fields, there's a lot going on, but Waters covers all of it with volume controls for each side of the bridge, a 3-way switch for the standard neck and bridge pickups, three output jacks (for guitar only, harmonic tones only, and a mix of both), and pickups by Lace Sensor. The body and neck woods available for all his guitars are Queensland maple, Tasmanian blackwood, and alder. Plus, the Harmonic Master can be ordered with a tremolo arm.
The Harmonic Isolator is a sonic step up from the Master, thanks to the inclusion of a Sustainiac electronic string sustainer and frets calibrated specifically to encourage harmonic resonance, inspired by the designs of the late and wildly inventive Hans Reichel. Those atypically spaced frets correspond to the notes in the harmonic series.
New Complexity - Harmonic Master Guitar Demo
This guitar has the same three-output-jack array as the Harmonic Master with volume controls for each side of the bridge. There's also an on/off toggle for the Sustainiac and a push/pull control for the device's four modes. In addition to the Sustainiac pickup in the neck slot, there are two Lace Sensor pickups between the guitar's two bridges.
This Reso Harp Special increases the harp portion's string array from the Reso Harp's 10 to a dozen.
Waters' third creation is the Reso Harp, which has an onboard fully tunable string reverb for creating yet another variety of intoxicating soundscapes. Essentially, the string reverb is a mini-harp-like configuration of strings adjacent to the six strings aboard the guitar's neck. Thanks to a Sustainiac, the harp strings can either resonate with the string vibrations generated by playing the instrument conventionally or they can be plucked as their own sound source. Again, there are two volume controls for each side of the central bridge, a 3-way toggle for the standard neck and bridge pickups, the sustainer on/off switch, and the push-pull for its four modes. There are four Lace pickups in all, to cover the guitar and harp portions of the instrument. Also, the Reso Harp has the same three output jacks as its cousins. And it's worth mentioning that Waters makes a hybrid version, blending elements from all three guitars and including a pickup just over the nut, à la Fred Frith.
Demonstration | Harmonic Master Reso Harp Hybrid by New Complexity
Capable of putting out four signals at once, the Harmonic Master Reso Harp has the greatest sonic potential of New Complexity's current offerings.
Reso Verb Prototype
Whether your musical tastes run toward an early gospel-blues blind cave fish like Washington Phillips or an avant modernist like Henry Kaiser, it's obvious a resonating harp offers a lot of potentially interesting textures, tones, and pads onstage and in the studio. So the ceaselessly exploring Waters is about to unveil a standalone version of the string reverb section of the Reso Harp, called the Reso Verb.
It's a box with 10 strings and two pickups—one sustaining—and volume controls for the input and reverb levels. There are input and output jacks, and dials marked treble, bass, and phase. It also has an insertable bridge, so players can create their own harmonic ratios. Heck, you don't even need a guitar to make cool sounds with this box. Any instrument with an output could be plugged into the Reso Verb.
Not surprisingly, New Complexity guitars are labor intensive. It takes Waters 200 to 300 hours to make each one, although he's contemplating ways to create his own version from stock parts in the future. For the average guitarist, getting a handle on playing one of his creations might also require many hours of study and practice. In addition to mastering the two-sided bridge concept and the harp-like approaches required to bring the most from these guitars, tuning is subjective. What's most important, says Waters, is that the harmonic ratios for creating overtones are locked in.
Vaughn Skow's 5-Pickup Frankenstrat
We've all seen Frankenstrats before, but the wall-to-wall pickup configuration on this beast looks like something hatched in one of Kenneth Strickfaden's mad-scientist-movie laboratories. In fact, it was brought to life in Nashville by pickup maker and amp builder Vaughn Skow, who's also got a long resume of sessions, TV work, and production.
"I was worried at one point that a wall of pickups would seriously dampened sustain." —Vaughn Skow
Skow purchased this Japan-made '62 reissue Strat about 15 years ago and started tinkering immediately, although he wasn't its first modder. The guitar came with a roller nut and Sperzel tuners, and, more important, a Seymour Duncan mini-humbucker in the neck slot and a Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge, plus the usual Fender single-coil in the middle. "I started messing with the pickups as soon as I got home, because that's kind of what I do," Skow says. "I like buying guitars that are good, but are already a little messed up so you don't have to worry about doing anything you want to them.
"I liked those pickup flavors, though I missed the honest-to-goodness single-coil sounds of a Strat. But I liked the sound of the Hot Rails, too, because they're a really mid-forward pickup, in the 200 Hz to 400 Hz range. So I decided to put one of my single-coils in next to the Hot Rails. "The body already had an ashtray routing done, so I started thinking about adding a single-coil to the bridge as well," he continues. "The idea became to get as much tonal versatility as possible from a single guitar. I was worried at one point that a wall of pickups would seriously dampen sustain, but then I figured that 3-pickup Les Pauls have a solid wall of pickups from the bridge to the neck, so why not?"
Once all five pickups were in place, Skow swapped the tone control closest to the bridge pickups for a toggle switch. Now, when the guitar's 5-position switch is in the bridge or neck spots, that toggle can activate or deactivate the single-coils. The finishing touch was replacing the Fender bridge with a Wilkinson VS100, and the guitar has been Skow's No. 1 ever since.
Of course, the inveterate experimenter has gone on to many other mods. Recently, he's been in demand among Kay archtop collectors for the minimally invasive pickup install he's developed, and for installing T-style pickups on banjos.
Vaughn Skow 1959 Historic Stratocaster Pickup Set - Jazz
Here's a demo of Vaughn Skow's vintage single-coil Strat-style pickups, which he added to his '62 reissue's three existing pickups.
John Cipollina's Horned Stack and Batwing SG
Photo courtesy of johncipollina.com
The lead guitarist and cofounder of Quicksilver Messenger Service may be the granddaddy of electric-guitar-era mods. By 1965, when the band was emerging as a leading proponent of San Francisco's psychedelic sound—alongside Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Grateful Dead—John Cipollina was already using a ferocious assembly of combos, heads, and horns to amplify his guitars. And his famed batwing SG—named for its custom pickguard—was wired to send separate signals to bass and guitar amps, so he could cover the sonic waterfront.
His amp setup and the batwing SG were, until recently, on view at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for many years. And they were designed to be inseparable. The stack—a blend of tube and solid-state power—consists of two Standel bass amps, a Fender Twin Reverb, and a Dual Showman head that drove six Wurlitzer horns. Cipollina used a footswitching system for reverb, tremolo, an Astro Echoplex (to the right of the Twin, in the photo), a Standel Modulux vibrato, and the horns. Truck running lights indicated which elements were in use.
"I like the rapid punch of solid-state for the bottom and the rodent-gnawing distortion of the tubes on top." —John Cipollina
Not only the batwing SG, but all of Cipollina's guitars had the split bass/guitar wiring setup. I'm not clear exactly how the wiring worked. Was it bass and guitar pickups in the different slots? Did he simply have specific routing for each pickup? The details at johncipollina.com aren't illuminating and efforts to contact a spokesperson for the late guitarist's legacy were fruitless. Nonetheless, what is clear is that one pickup's signal hit the two Standel bass amps supporting the stack. The other went to the Twin and the Dual Showman, and one of the pickups was reversed.
Cipollina's oft-quoted summation of his setup's strategy is simple: "I like the rapid punch of solid-state for the bottom and the rodent-gnawing distortion of the tubes on top."
Who Do You Love? (1973 B&W) - Quicksilver Messenger Service
With his batwing SG, John Cipollina and Quicksilver Messenger Service go full-tilt psychedelic in this live 1973 performance of Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom.
Debashish Bhattacharya's 22-String Slider
At first listen, the Chaturangui sounds like a cross between a slide guitar and a sitar, but its inventor, Debashish Bhattacharya, explains that it is, indeed, a guitar. It certainly looks and plays like one, with a tone bar—albeit a guitar that's grown a multiplicity of strings and some of the sweetest decorative work ever set to an instrument. And the Chaturangui has become a cornerstone in Bhattacharya's pioneering development of the genre of Hindustani slide guitar. It is indisputably a thing of great beauty, sonically and visually.
This 22-string instrument's invention, Bhattacharya says, began gestating when he was 3, after his mother gave him a solid-neck Hawaiian-style lap-slide guitar. "Since then, the lap guitar and me have been inseparable," he says. But the Hawaiian guitar didn't allow the long sustain, swelling overtones, percussive attack, and wide variety of sounds he was hearing from the long-established instruments in the South Asian musical tradition, like the sitar, sarod, violin, and veena. In search of those sounds, he began drawing out plans for the Chaturangui and built his first model at age 15, in 1978. This was not an easy task. "I had to get information on building this instrument in a world where Wikipedia and Google did not exist," he relates.
"The Chaturangui allows me to do at least a dozen things that can't be dreamt of with a 6-string Hawaiian guitar." —Debashish Bhattacharya
Initially, he was rebuked for his invention by both the Indian guitar establishment and the raga community. But as his career progressed, Bhattacharya won an international following for his wildly inventive playing, with John McLaughlin and Jerry Douglas among his fans and collaborators.
The hollowbody Chaturangui has a solid Poma toon neck. The sides and backs are made of mahogany and Poma toon, and the top is Canadian spruce. It sports brass frets and a resonating bridge made of deer horn. The carving on the neck and fretboard are done in yellowwood. Eight strings extend to the headstock. Six are melody strings played with a tone bar and the two on the bottom are used for low, percussive tones.
Two additional strings on the top—set apart from the neck—are plucked for high percussive tones. These are called chikari strings. A dozen sympathetic strings are set apart from the neck on the opposite side from the chikari. These can simply resonate with the melody or be raked. And the neck is scalloped, which allows the microtonal inflections and bends that give the Chaturangui its sitar- and sarod-like qualities.
"The Chaturangui allows me to do at least a dozen things I do, including tone modulation fingerpicking and resonating sounds that can't be dreamt of with a 6-string Hawaiian guitar," says Bhattacharya.
He's remained ceaselessly inventive as both a player and a builder. Nine years after making his first Chaturangui, Bhattacharya modified a Hofner guitar that was a gift from his guru, Ajoy Chakrabarty, into a Chaturangui-like instrument he simply calls a Hindustani slide guitar. And he's planning to debut a new instrument design at the 2019 Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival on November 30.
Indian Slide Guitar | Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya | Raag Shuddh Sarang | Music of India
Debashish Bhattacharya takes on a traditional Indian raga with his Chaturangui at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall with Yogesh Samsi on tabla and Unnati Dasgupta on tanpura.
Elliott Sharp's Two-Headed Transplants
Elliott Sharp, who was profiled in the April 2019 issue of Premier Guitar, has been a leader in the international cutting-edge music scene for 40 years. The New York City-based virtuoso has also been an inventor of unconventional instruments, largely motivated by necessity, since 1969. He refers to his creations, like the 3-string violinoid and the triple-course bass pantar, as "proof-of-concept prototypes."
"The metal body is the top from a 50-gallon sweeping compound can that I had found while walking through Chinatown." —Elliott Sharp
Two of the most practical and intriguing instruments I've seen Sharp play over the decades are his bass/guitar doublenecks. Sharp explains: "Doubleneck 1 was built to my specs in 1984 by Ken Heer [ of now-gone St. Mark's Music Exchange]. I had been using both bass and guitar in my band I/S/M from 1981 to '83, and then with Carbon from 1983 on, and wanted to combine them."
Sharp determined the hybrid would be compact and headless, with a Schecter Strat neck and a medium-scale Fender Coronado bass neck—both with the headstocks removed. The pickups: a Fender Tele bridge and Strat neck, and a DiMarzio P Bass and J Bass set. There are no volume or tone controls—only 3-way switching for each of the necks with the outputs routed to effects through individual volume pedals. There is also an IVL hexaphonic pickup on the guitar that fed an IVL Pitchrider 7000 guitar-to-MIDI converter through a 13-pin cable, to trigger samples or interface with the interactive composition software, M. The body is laminated rosewood, maple, and mahogany. In 1992, it was painted black by New York City-based producer and guitarist Doug Henderson, who also added the aluminum pickguard and roll bar.
Sharp's Doubleneck 2 was built in 1992 by Henderson. "While I very much liked the bass on Doubleneck 1, the guitar was less centered in its tone, which would be remedied with Doubleneck 2," says Sharp. "The body is African limba with a bird's-eye maple top. Again, a Schecter Strat neck was used, but a Fender Musicmaster bass neck went on the low-end side. Pickups were DiMarzio all around—three Strats plus P and J bass units—and the bass bridge is a massive Wilkinson. The guitar bridge is of unknown origin, but made of brass and very solid. Doug used deck plate for the pickguard. Again, there were no onboard controls except for switching: 5-way on the guitar and 3-way on the bass. The necks were each routed to effects through individual volume pedals. There was no MIDI pickup."
But wait! There's more. Versatile and powerful as they are, these doublenecks are not light. Just look at their slab bodies. "By 1996, the doublenecks—not to mention their associated effects racks—were taking their toll on my back, so I decided to create a compact 8-string extended range instrument," Sharp recounts. That's the Henderson-Greco guitarbass, built to E#'s specs by Henderson and luthier Carlo Greco, who had once been Guild's chief designer. This guitar covers the waterfront with much less real estate. Greco carved a chunky maple neck with an ebony fretboard. Henderson ascribed to Sharp's request for a streamlined V-shaped body made of limba and a bird's-eye maple top. The three pickups are all Bartolini J Bass, for a sound Sharp describes as "very hi-fi." There's a 5-way switch and a volume control, but no tone controls, since Sharp usually does that with his fingers or pedals. The brass bridge was hand-machined by Henderson and stainless-steel Strat saddles were added.
"Although the scale length is 25.5", the bass strings put out some massive low end and the guitar strings have a sweet snap," says Sharp. "For the first few years of its use, I had a trackpad Velcro'd to the body to interface with a computer for triggering samples in the STEIM software LiSa and later for MAX/MSP use."
Among the other unusual instruments in Sharp's arsenal is his doubleneck Arches H-Line, which, like New Complexity's instruments, opens up the harmonic possibilities of guitar and was inspired by the work of Hans Reichel. But perhaps the most novel is the triple-course bass pantar, which Sharp built in 1990 with the help of woodworker Andrew Zev Weinstein.
Once again, Sharp explains: "The metal body is the top from a 50-gallon sweeping compound can that I found while walking through Chinatown. It was fitted to a wooden structure that would also serve as the base for the three fingerboards, salvaged from musical roadkill. All 12 strings were bass strings and they could be tuned to various open scales or chords. The rim of the metal top served as a natural bridge. I had planned to mount magnetic pickups under the strings, but opted instead for a piezo. It may be played standing with a strap or horizontally using mallets to create a wide range of sounds reminiscent of steel drums, marimba, gamelan instruments, and string bass."
Night Music #203 Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp plays his Doubleneck 1—also using it to trigger samples—during an appearance on the television series Night Music, hosted by David Sanborn. Check out Sharp's insane tapping, and the wild sounds it creates, at the 2:00 mark.
Super Chikan's 6-String Tone Fryers
Fans of hard-core modern Mississippi blues know Clarksdale's James "Super Chikan" Johnson for his ferocious tone and entertaining, full-throttle live performances. But over the past decade, he's also earned a reputation among collectors and players for the funky guitars he builds. They're essentially playable folk-art, and what's truly strange is that no matter their origins and mismatched parts, they all bark like junkyard dogs when they're plugged in.
Johnson has made 1-string diddley bows and guitars from gas cans, cigar boxes, and even an old shotgun, but my favorite is the 6-string in the photo here. The body is a bedazzled motor housing from an antique ceiling fan. Johnson calls it his Chikantar, and it has a tone that is rude, loud, quick to break up, and—when he gets past the 12th fret—head-slicing, but without losing its corpulent tonality. Maybe that's because, as Johnson once confided, it weighs in at about 20 pounds. It also takes to fuzz pedals like a bird on a caterpillar.
Photo by Bill Steber
Typically Johnson's instruments, including the gas cans he fashions into guitars that are sometimes painted and decorated to look like chickens—a breed of fowl he claims to talk to and control—are much lighter. And in recent years he's also begun to build or reclaim and redecorate solidbody guitars.
A look at the mismatched pickups on the solidbody above reveals his parts-sourcing strategy: anything goes. Johnson scours pawnshops and junk stores and trash heaps for everything from pickups to, well, ceiling fan motor shells, and whatever is available in his workshop when he's building a guitar goes right into the pot, like a fat hen.
Super Chikan | Mississippi Roads | MPB
Super Chikan and his instruments, including the ceiling-fan-motor-bodied Chikantar, are profiled in this segment of Mississippi Public Television's Mississippi Roads series.
[Updated 9/14/21]
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Over the decades with Hüsker Dü, Sugar, and solo, Bob Mould has earned a reputation for visceral performances.
The 15th studio album from the legendary alt-rocker and former Hüsker Dü singer and 6-stringer is a rhythm-guitar record, and a play in three acts, inspired by sweaty, spilled-beer community connection.
Bob Mould wrote his last album, Blue Heart, as a protest record, ahead of the 2020 American election. As a basic rule, protest music works best when it's shared and experienced communally, where it can percolate and manifest in new, exciting disruptions. But 2020 wasn’t exactly a great year for gathering together.
Mould’s album landed in a world of cloistered listeners, so he never knew how it impacted people. For a musician from punk and hardcore scenes, it was a disquieting experience. So when he got back out on the road in 2023 and 2024, playing solo electric sets, the former Hüsker Dü and Sugar frontman was determined to reconnect with his listeners. After each show, he’d hang out at the merch table and talk. Some people wanted their records or shirts signed, some wanted a picture. Others shared dark stories and secret experiences connected to Mould’s work. It humbled and moved him. “I’m grateful for all of it,” he says.
These are the in-person viscera of a group of people connecting on shared interests, versus, says Mould, “‘I gotta clean the house today, so I’m going to put on my clean the house playlist that a computer designed for me.” “Everything has become so digitized,” he laments. “I grew up where music was religion, it was life, it was essential. When people come to shows, and there’s an atmosphere, there’s volume, there’s spilled drinks and sweat–that’s what music ritual is supposed to be.”
His experiences on tour after the pandemic heartened Mould, but they also gave him traction on new ideas and direction for a new record. He returned to the simple, dirty guitar-pop music that spiked his heart rate when he was young: the Ramones’ stupid-simple pop-punk ecstasy, New York Dolls’ sharp-edged playfulness, Pete Townshend’s epic, chest-rattling guitar theatrics. In other words, the sort of snotty, poppy, wide-open rock we heard and loved on Hüsker Dü’s Flip Your Wig and Candy Apple Grey.
Mould’s time on the road playing solo in 2023 sparked the idea for Here We Go Crazy.
Photo by Ryan Bakerink
Mould started writing new songs in the vein of his original childhood heroes, working them into those electric solo sets in 2023 and 2024. Working with those restraints—guitar chords and vocal melodies—put Mould on track to make Here We Go Crazy, his new, 15th solo record.
Lead single and opener “Here We Go Crazy” is a scene-setting piece of fuzzy ’90s alt-rock, bookended by the fierce pounding of “Neanderthal.” “When Your Heart is Broken” is a standout, with its bubblegum chorus melody and rumbling, tense, Who-style holding pattern before one of the album’s only solos. Ditto “Sharp Little Pieces,” with perhaps the record’s chewiest, darkest guitar sounds.
“It’s a very familiar-sounding record,” he continues. “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould,’ and a lot of that was [influenced by] spending time with the audience again, putting new stuff into the set alongside the songbook material, going out to the table after the show and getting reactions from people. That sort of steered me towards a very simple, energetic, guitar-driven pop record.”
Of his new album, Mould says, “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould.’”
Mould recorded the LP in Chicago with longtime bandmates Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster at the late, great Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio. Then Mould retreated to San Francisco to finish the record, chipping away at vocals and extra guitar pieces. He mostly resisted the pull of “non-guitar ornamentation”: “It’s a rhythm guitar record with a couple leads and a Minimoog,” he says. “It’s sort of cool to not have a 64-crayon set every time.”
Mould relied on his favorite, now-signature late-’80s Fender Strat Plus, which sat out on a runway at O’Hare in 20-below cold for three hours and needed a few days to get back in fighting shape. In the studio, he ran the Strat into his signature Tym Guitars Sky Patch, a take on the MXR Distortion+, then onto a Radial JD7. The Radial split his signal and sent it to three combo amps: a Fender Hot Rod DeVille, a Fender ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb reissue, and a Blackstar Artisan 30, each with a mic on it. The result is a brighter record that Mould says leaves more room for the bass and kick drum. “If you listen to this record against Patch the Sky, for instance, it’s night and day,” he says. “It’s snug.”
Mould explains that the record unfolds over three acts. Tracks one through five comprise the first episode, crackling with uncertainty and conflict. The second, spread over songs six to eight, contrasts feelings of openness with tight, claustrophobic tension. Here, there are dead ends, addictions, and frigid realities. But after “Sharp Little Pieces,” the album turns its corner, barreling toward the home stretch in a fury of optimism and determination. “These last three [songs] should give us more hope,” says Mould. “They should talk about unconditional love.”
The record closes on the ballad “Your Side,” which starts gentle and ends in a rush of smashed chords and cymbals, undoubtedly one of the most invigorating segments. “The world is going down in flames, I wanna be by your side/We can find a quiet place, it doesn’t need to be the Albert Hall,” Mould starts. It’s a beautiful portrait of love, aging, and the passage of time.
Bob Mould's Gear
Mould paired his trusty Fender Strat Plus with a trio of smaller combo amps to carve out a more mid-focused rhythm-guitar sound in the studio.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- Late 1980s Fender American Standard Strat Plus (multiple)
Amps
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille
- Blackstar Artisan Series amps
- Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- Tym Guitars Sky Patch
- TC Electronic Flashback
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze
- Wampler Ego
- Universal Audio 1176
- Radial JD7
Strings, Picks, & Power Supply
- D'Addario NYXLs (.011-.046)
- Dunlop .46 mm and .60 mm picks
- Voodoo Labs power supply
And though the record ends on this palette of tenderness and connection, the cycle is likely to start all over again. Mould understands this; even though he knows he’s basking in act three at the moment, acts one and two will come along again, and again. Thankfully, he’s figured out how to weather the changes.
“When things are good, enjoy them,” he says. “When things are tough, do the work and get out of it, somehow.”
- YouTube
Many of the tracks on Here We Go Crazy were road-tested by Mould during solo sets. Here, accompanied only by his trusty Fender Strat, he belts “Breathing Room.”
Seven previously-unheard Bruce Springsteen records will be released for the first time this summer with “Tracks II: The Lost Albums,” coming June 27.
A set spanning 83 songs, "The Lost Albums" fill in rich chapters of Springsteen’s expansive career timeline — while offering invaluable insight into his life and work as an artist. “'The Lost Albums' were full records, some of them even to the point of being mixed and not released,” said Springsteen. “I’ve played this music to myself and often close friends for years now. I’m glad you’ll get a chance to finally hear them. I hope you enjoy them.”
From the lo-fi exploration of “LA Garage Sessions ’83” — serving as a crucial link between “Nebraska” and “Born in the U.S.A.” — to the drum loop and synthesizer sounds of “Streets of Philadelphia Sessions,” “The Lost Albums” offer unprecedented context into 35 prolific years (1983-2018) of Springsteen’s songwriting and home recording. “The ability to record at home whenever I wanted allowed me to go into a wide variety of different musical directions,” Springsteen explained. Throughout the set, that sonic experimentation takes the form of film soundtrack work (for a movie that was never made) on “Faithless,” country combos with pedal steel on “Somewhere North of Nashville,” richly-woven border tales on “Inyo” and orchestra-driven, mid-century noir on “Twilight Hours.” Alongside the announcement of “The Lost Albums,” a first look at the collection also arrives today with “Rain In The River” — which comes from the lost album “Perfect World,” and encapsulates that project’s arena-ready E Street flavor.
“The Lost Albums”will arrive in limited-edition nine LP, seven CD and digital formats — including distinctive packaging for each previously-unreleased record, with a 100-page cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring rare archival photos, liner notes on each lost album from essayist Erik Flannigan and a personal introduction on the project from Springsteen himself. A companion set — “Lost And Found: Selections from The Lost Albums” — will feature 20 highlights from across the collection, also arriving June 27 on two LPs or one CD. “The Lost Albums” were compiled by Springsteen with producer Ron Aniello, engineer Rob Lebret and supervising producer Jon Landau at Thrill Hill Recording in New Jersey.
For more information, please visit brucespringsteen.net.
Tracks II: The Lost Albums
LA Garage Sessions ’83
1. Follow That Dream
2. Don’t Back Down On Our Love
3. Little Girl Like You
4. Johnny Bye Bye
5. Sugarland
6. Seven Tears
7. Fugitive’s Dream
8. Black Mountain Ballad
9. Jim Deer
10. County Fair
11. My Hometown
12. One Love
13. Don’t Back Down
14. Richfield Whistle
15. The Klansman
16. Unsatisfied Heart
17. Shut Out The Light
18. Fugitive’s Dream (Ballad)
Streets of Philadelphia Sessions
1. Blind Spot
2. Maybe I Don’t Know You
3. Something In The Well
4. Waiting On The End Of The World
5. The Little Things
6. We Fell Down
7. One Beautiful Morning
8. Between Heaven and Earth
9. Secret Garden
10. The Farewell Party
Faithless
1. The Desert (Instrumental)
2. Where You Goin’, Where You From
3. Faithless
4. All God’s Children
5. A Prayer By The River (Instrumental)
6. God Sent You
7. Goin’ To California
8. The Western Sea (Instrumental)
9. My Master’s Hand
10. Let Me Ride
11. My Master’s Hand (Theme)
Somewhere North of Nashville
1. Repo Man
2. Tiger Rose
3. Poor Side of Town
4. Delivery Man
5. Under A Big Sky
6. Detail Man
7. Silver Mountain
8. Janey Don’t You Lose Heart
9. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone
10. Stand On It
11. Blue Highway
12. Somewhere North of Nashville
Inyo
1. Inyo
2. Indian Town
3. Adelita
4. The Aztec Dance
5. The Lost Charro
6. Our Lady of Monroe
7. El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona)
8. One False Move
9. Ciudad Juarez
10. When I Build My Beautiful House
Twilight Hours
1. Sunday Love
2. Late in the Evening
3. Two of Us
4. Lonely Town
5. September Kisses
6. Twilight Hours
7. I’ll Stand By You
8. High Sierra
9. Sunliner
10. Another You
11. Dinner at Eight
12. Follow The Sun
Perfect World
1. I’m Not Sleeping
2. Idiot’s Delight
3. Another Thin Line
4. The Great Depression
5. Blind Man
6. Rain In The River
7. If I Could Only Be Your Lover
8. Cutting Knife
9. You Lifted Me Up
10. Perfect World
Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums Trailer - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.The guitarist-of-all-trades runs us through his formidable live rig.
Rhett Schull’s a busy guy. Between being one of the most prolific YouTubers in the guitar sphere, working as a trusted hired gun, and creating his own original music, including last year’s EP The Early Days, he’s an avid cyclist. Just a week before we met up with Rhett at Eastside Bowl in Madison, Tennessee, for this Rig Rundown, he was slated to ride a 100-mile race in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Those plans were dashed when 70-mile-an-hour winds stoked a wildfire near town and burned just over 26,000 acres. But the show must go on: The next night, Schull played a gig in town, a special release for people reeling from a brutal natural disaster.
Schull’s a certified gear aficionado and tone wizard, so PG’s Chris Kies headed to Eastside Bowl to have him walk us through his current live rig. Check out the Rundown here, and stay tuned; Schull’s got more music coming later this year.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Special Serus
Schull’s wife pointed out this Novo Serus J hanging on the wall of a guitar shop back in 2017, and it was love at first strum. Made from tempered pine and loaded with Amalfitano P-90 pickups, plus sporting an unmissable pink sparkle polyurethane finish, it’s a real looker, and one of Schull’s favorite guitars.
Third Man Thumper
After Schull did a video on the Fender Jack White Pano Verb amplifier, Fender sent him a Jack White Triplecaster Telecaster, part of his signature series of gear with Fender launched last year. Schull calls it one of the most versatile guitars he owns, with each of the three pickup options virtually splitting it into three separate guitars.
Firebird-Watching
This beauty from Gibson’s Custom Shop came to Schull following NAMM in 2020. On tour, he needs something with humbuckers and something with single-coils. Then, he thinks of what’s exciting him. These days, it’s this Firebird V, which doesn’t have a typical Firebird tone, but cuts closer to something like a Telecaster at times.
Rockin' Two With a Two-Rock
Schull runs two amps onstage, but he doesn’t run them in stereo; he believes the stereo image doesn’t translate as well in a live situation where listeners are spread across the speaker system’s field. With this Two-Rock Classic Reverb Signature and an AC15-ish David Edwards Apollo, Schull gets a “broadband” sound set for big, fat clean tones, like one giant amp on the edge of breakup.
Fun fact: Edwards surprised Schull with the Apollo when Rhett went to Florida to work on some videos.
Rhett Schull's Pedalboard
Schull’s 2024 EP is very effects-heavy, so he commissioned the pedalboard-whisperers at XAct Tone Solutions to build him this double-decker station based around an RJM Mastermind PBC/6X switcher. Some of the stomps, like the Chase Bliss Mood, are activated by MIDI, and all the different sounds from each song—from intro to chorus to bridge to finish—is set up in the RJM. If Rhett wants to go off script, he can hit the function button, which lets him engage pedals on a one-by-one basis. A Line 6 HX One is a “wildcard” pedal in this rig, filling in gaps as needed.
In addition to those machines, the rig includes a Chase Bliss Dark World, GFI System Synesthesia, Hologram Electronics Chroma Console, Boss Space Echo RE-202, GFI System Duophony (which mixes the Dark World and Synesthesia), Chase Bliss Automatone Preamp MkII (used for boost, EQ, fuzz, or overdrive depending on the song), Old Blood Noise Endeavors Beam Splitter, Source Audio ZIO, Memory Lane Electronics Tone Bender clone, and a Mythos Argonaut. A mysterious Japan-made Noel dirt pedal, finished in striking red and gifted to Shull by JHS Pedals’ Josh Scott, rounds out the collection. Utility boxes include a TC Electronic PolyTune3 Noir, Lehle Little Dual, a pair of Strymon Ojai power supplies, and a bigger Strymon Zuma supply.
Sterling by Music Man introduces the Joe Dart Artist Series Collection, featuring the Dart I, II, and III basses.
The original Dart I features the Sterling-shaped body with a single humbucker and volume knob. The Dart II, featuring the beloved Ernie Ball Music Man Caprice body, swaps the humbucker fortwo single-coil pickups, each with its own volume knob for precise, hum-free control. Completing the trilogy, the Dart III is a short-scale StingRay bass with a split single-coil pickup and single volume knob.
A blank canvas, the bass collection embodies the no-frills philosophy of the original Ernie BallMusic Man design—everything you need and nothing you don’t. All three basses are equipped with passive electronics, Ernie Ball flatwound strings, and are available in Natural or Black finishes. No tone knobs here.
“Jack Stratton and I are thrilled to team up once again with Sterling by Music Man to build affordable versions of the three best basses I've ever held in my hands. The JoeDart I, II, and III represent three different sounds and feels, three different eras of bass,and three different shades of my own work as a bassist,” said Dart. “The feel of these instruments is incredible, and the quality would be remarkable at any price point.”
This is a special “Timed Edition” release, only available for pre-order on the Sterling by MusicMan website for two months. Each bass is made to order, with the window closing on May 31st and shipping starting in September. The back of the headstock will be marked with a “2025Crop” stamp to commemorate the harvest year for this special, one-of-a-kind release. A gig bag will be included with each purchase.
All basses are priced at $499.00
For more information, please visit sterlingbymusicman.com.