An eye-popping gallery of radically reimagined guitars.
Matthew Short
This vision in red from Matthew Short is a 2006 Mexican-made Fender Strat with a Floyd Rose trem. Short replaced the stock pickups with an Arcane Inc. Desert Eagle neck pickup and an Arcane Mr. Scary at the bridge. He also added the red pickguard.
Throughout the year we collect stories and photos of guitar-mod projects created by you, our dear readers. Some are so inspiring that we include them here in our annual Hot Rod issue.
Fender’s Jack White Collection dropped this week, and it includes what might be the most exciting tube amp design in decades. Fender’s Stan Cotey shares some firsthand insight into this unique amp’s design.
This week, Fender and Jack White dropped a new line that spun heads across the guitar-gear universe, proving that the Third Man’s brain knows no bounds. White has been blowing minds with Third Man Hardware’s line of collaboratively conceived gear. Working with makers of all sizes, each yellow-and-black piece is as unique as White himself.
Hooking up with Fender for the Jack White Signature Collection—which includes the Signature model hot-rod Jack White TripleCaster Telecaster and the stunning Jack White TripleSonic Acoustasonic—is as big as it gets, and this week’s announcement is proportionately epic.
The all-new Jack White Pano Verb amp looks to be one of the most forward-thinking advances in tube amps we’ve seen in … well, a very long time! Although it’s roughly inspired by three vintage Fender models—a 1964 Vibroverb, a 1960 Vibrasonic, and a 1993 Vibro-King—the Pano Verb is a rare all-new design that is poised to thrill. The single-channel stereo amp delivers 70 watts of combined power and features stereo harmonic tremolo and stereo reverb circuits, with unique routing options through the hip pair of 15" and 10" speakers. If you haven’t checked out Fender’s video announcing the amp, prepare to have your mind blown by the possibilities.
“It wasn’t based on what we could or couldn’t do, or what even was or wasn’t possible. It was just what Jack was looking to accomplish.”
Fender Vice President of Research and Development Stan Cotey, who worked closely with White to develop the prototypes for the Pano Verb, says, “There were no restrictions as far as how wild something could be. It wasn’t based on what we could or couldn’t do or what even was or wasn’t possible. It was just what Jack was looking to accomplish.” Putting those goals into action was a kick for Cotey. “I love the fact that we’re still pushing the idea of vacuum tubes and that there are things remaining to be done,” he says. “And [the Pano Verb] is a really crazy thing. It’s fun when one of the larger companies tackles a big crazy thing and releases it in a bold manner.”
We rang up Cotey to get the scoop on designing the amp as we wait to get our hands on one.
Cotey calls the Pano Verb “a really crazy thing,” and says, “It’s fun when one of the larger companies tackles a big crazy thing and releases it in a bold manner.”
The Pano Verb has a refreshingly unique and adventurous set of features.
Stan Cotey: There’s two separate power amps, there’s two separate preamps, there’s a reverb circuit. There are two separate harmonic vibrato circuits. There’s two full, separate amps in it—there’s one power supply, but everything else, there’s at least two of.
There are several different kinds of stereo interaction that could happen. The harmonic vibrato could be stereo. The reverb, even though it’s a mono tank, could be steered to the speakers differently, which kind of gives a stereo-imaging thing. So, that opens up myriad possibilities for how things could work.
How involved was Jack in the design?
Cotey: He was completely hardcore. He cared in great detail, exactly down to fine decimal points, how it worked. He was very particular about the voicing. He was very particular about the features he knew. He’s pretty studio savvy, so he had a sense of routing, how he wanted the stereo interaction of the sections to work together. He very much had an idea of stereo-ness for the amp at the outset of it. He talked early on about miking both speakers and panning them—he wanted to be able to do sort of startling things with each speaker’s content.
I think my role was to take the stuff that he wanted to do and figure out how we could do it. So, the stereo-ness of the amp, the 10" speaker versus the 15" speaker, the routing stuff you could do where the reverb goes to one speaker or both, all that stuff came from Jack.
Jack’s Vibrasonic was a touchstone for the Pano Verb.
Cotey: That amp lived with me for quite a while. He knew that he liked the harmonic tremolo.
The stereo harmonic tremolo, that’s a fairly part-intensive circuit, even in a normal brown amp. In this amp, there’s two full circuits in it, so it is literally double the parts of one of the more complicated earlier ’60s amps, just for that part of the amp. I worked out how that works. That’s two harmonic tremolos that are in sync, but opposite polarity. So, when one’s going up, the other is going down, and vice versa.
Stan Cotey is Fender’s Vice President of Guitar Research and Development and worked with White to design the prototypes for the Pano Verb.
The reverb mix on the Pano Verb is rooted in some vintage designs, but it’s handled a little differently here.
Cotey: In the video, he talked about the reverb tank in front of the amp, which forms the Vibro-King, and that he liked the idea. I think he liked the idea of having a more comprehensive, dedicated reverb circuit in an amp, not where it’s just kind of spread on the top, like margarine or something.
In a traditional Fender amp, there’s a feed that comes off the preamp circuit that goes to a driver, which is a tube and a little transformer, and that drives the reverb tank. Then, the output of the reverb tank goes into a recovery amp, a little gain stage with a tube, and that gets mixed with the output of the channel and shoved into the power amp. So, the reverb kind of occurs between the preamp and the power amp. It largely takes the tonality of the preamp on because the tone controls are upstream of it.
Jack has an old Fender amp from the early ’60s that had reverb added. I don’t know who modified it, but they actually used the second channel of the amp as the reverb return, which I think is really super clever. Then you get tone controls for the reverb. So that’s where that idea came from. He didn’t necessarily want the reverb circuit in front. He liked it between the preamp and the power amp, but he wanted to have it be more comprehensive than what would be on a typical mid-’60s Fender amplifier.
What was the most exciting feature for you to create?
The stereo harmonic tremolo was really fun, and the journey that we went on to get there was really cool. I have a tweed amp from the late ’50s from Guild that has tremolo in it, and it’s a stereo amp. It has two separate everythings. The tremolo only works on one side, and that gives the apparent sound that it’s kind of going back and forth between the speakers. We tried having just the harmonic tremolo on one side of this, and it really wanted to have two complete full circuits. So that was one of the changes that got made.
Getting the power amps to work well together was fun too. That was more about transformer and tube selection and working the power supply parts out, getting the amps where they would distort in the right way at the right times or right level. But the harmonic tremolo was definitely the elephant dancing on the bucket with the streamers going off.
Ex-B-52s member, composer, and NYC music scene veteran Pat Irwin loves pairing EHX pedals with keyboards—and recollecting good times with his late guitar virtuoso friend.
I’ve got a thing for Electro-Harmonix effects boxes. I’ve got a Crying Tone Wah that’s the coolest, a 16 Second Digital Delay, and a Deluxe Memory Man. All have made their way onto my ambient country band SUSS’s new record, Birds & Beasts. And currently a Big Muff, two Freeze Sound Retainers, and a Mel9 Tape Replay Machine are on my pedalboard. Here’s the thing: I like using them on keyboards.
I remember spending one cold winter night recording keyboards for a track called “Home” that made it onto Promise, the third SUSS album. I was playing a Roland Juno-106 through the Deluxe Memory Man while my bandmate Bob Holmes manipulated the delay and feedback on the pedal in real time. The effect was otherworldly. You can also hear the Crying Tone on SUSS’s “No Man’s Land” and “Train,” on Bandcamp. Sure, the guitars sound great, but those keyboards wouldn’t sound the same without the extra touch of the Crying Tone. I also used it on the B-52s’ “Hallucinating Pluto,” and it went out on the road with us for a while.
One of the first musicians I met when I moved to New York City in the late ’70s was the late, great Robert Quine. Quine and I would talk for hours about guitars, guitarists, and effects. I bought my first Stratocaster from Quine, because he didn’t like the way it looked. I played it on every recording I’ve made since the first Lydia Lunch record, 1980’s Queen Of Siam, and on every show with 8 Eyed Spy, the Raybeats, the B-52s, and my current bands PI Power Trio and SUSS. It was Quine who taught me the power of a good effects pedal and I’ll never forget the sessions for Queen of Siamwith the big band. Quine played everything through his Deluxe Memory Man straight into the recording console, all in one take except for a few touch ups here and there.
Quine and I used to go to Electro-Harmonix on 23rd Street and play through the boxes on display, and they let us pick out what we wanted. It’s where we first saw the 16 Second Digital Delay. That was a life-changer. You could make loops on the fly and reverse them with the flick of a switch. This thing was magical, back then.
“Quine played everything through his Deluxe Memory Man straight into the recording console, all in one take except for a few touch ups."
When I recorded a piece I composed for the choreographer Stephen Petronio and performed it at the Dance Theatre Workshop in Manhattan, I put everything through that 16 Second Digital Delay, including my clarinet. Later, when I recorded the theme for the cartoon Rocko’s Modern Life, I played all of the keyboards through the Deluxe Memory Man. Just when things would get a little too clean, I’d add a little more of the Memory Man.
I’m pretty sure that the first time I saw Devo, Mark Mothersbaugh had some Electro-Harmonix effects boxes taped to his guitar. And I can’t even think of U2 without hearing the Edge and his Deluxe Memory Man. Or seeing Nels Cline for the first time, blowing a hole in the universe with a 16 Second Digital Delay. Bill Frisell had one, too. I remember going into the old Knitting Factory on Houston Street and passing Elliott Sharp. He had just played and I was going in to play. We were both carrying our 16 Second Delays.
Who knows, maybe someone from another generation will make the next “Satisfaction” or “Third Stone from the Sun,” inspired to change the sound of a guitar, keyboard, or even a voice beyond recognition with pedals. If you check out Birds & Beasts, you’ll hear my old—and new—boxes all over it. I know that I won’t ever make a SUSS record or play a SUSS show without them.
Things change, rents go up, records are being made on computers, and who knows how you get your music anymore? But for me, one thing stays the same: the joy of taking a sound and pushing it to a new place, and hearing it go somewhere you could never have imagined without effects pedals.
The legendary Elvis sideman was a pioneer of rockabilly guitar, and his approach to merging blues and country influenced generations of guitar pickers. Here’s how he did it.
Chops: Intermediate
Theory: Beginner
Lesson Overview:
• Craft simple blues-based phrases that lie within the CAGED system.
• Understand how double-stops are used in rockabilly music.
• Improve your Travis picking.
Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
In 2016 we lost one of the most influential guitarists and unsung heroes the world has ever known. The driving force behind Elvis Presley’s first recordings, Winfield Scott “Scotty” Moore III helped shape the sound of rock ’n’ roll and inspire generations of fans. Born in 1931, Scotty caught his big break in 1954 when he was called to do a session with Elvis at Sam Phillip’s Sun Studio in Memphis. History was made that day when Elvis recorded “That’s All Right,” and for about four years, Scotty provided 6-string magic for such Elvis hits as “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Jailhouse Rock.”
A huge Chet Atkins fan, Scotty grew up listening to country and jazz. This blend would have a dramatic impact on his sound, as he would mix Travis picking with some ear-twisting note choices based on chords, rather than using an obvious scalar approach.
I used a thumbpick on the examples in this lesson to sound as authentic as possible. Using a thumbpick on some notes makes them stand out in comparison to those plucked with the remaining fingertips. Ex. 1 is a classic Scotty-type rhythm riff in E that uses some Travis picking. Play the notes on the 6th and 4th strings with your thumb, and use your index and middle fingers for the double-stops on the 3rd and 2nd strings. This is illustrated in the notation: Attack all the up-stemmed notes with your fingers and down-stemmed notes with your thumb.
Click here for Ex. 1
The next example (Ex. 2) reveals one of the more common elements of Scotty’s lead work: double-stops. It makes sense when you consider that Scotty often performed with just a bass player and drummer, so when it came time to play a solo, he needed to create a strong sense of harmony. The first three phrases begin in the “E” shape of the CAGED system before moving down to the “A” shape and returning to the “E” shape. Those last two measures sit squarely in the “E” shape at the 12th position.
Click here for Ex. 2
Ex. 3 returns to Scotty’s Travis-picking influence by outlining an A chord before leading the idea in a new direction with double-stops. The example begins in the “C” shape and resolves in the “E” shape, though this wouldn’t have meant anything to the legendary guitarist. However, his reliance on moving the five basic chord shapes around the neck is undeniable.
In this version of “Hound Dog”—a song originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton—Moore takes a bluesy solo starting at :45.
Click here for Ex. 3
The blues was an essential part of Scotty’s style, and Ex. 4 shows something he might play over the first eight measures of a blues in E. To use the moves in any given key, it’s important to understand how intervals work within a chord. For example, over the E7, I’m approaching the root and 3 (G#) with a half-step slide. With that information, you’re able to transpose this musical shape all over the neck. Approach each double-stop with this method, and you’ll get a lot of mileage out of this rather simple lick.
Click here for Ex. 4
Ex. 5 shows some of Scotty’s single-note ideas, though the phrase still begins with a double-stop on the top two strings to grab the listener’s attention. Measures three and four use a strange collection of notes. Scotty isn’t thinking of a scale here. The phrase begins with a bluesy flourish and a melodic descent to the root. When he gets there, he moves down a half-step to the 7 (an unusual note to play on a dominant chord, but if it sounds good, it is good), and then up again to resolve to the A chord.
Click here for Ex. 5
Scotty was also a big fan of using three-note grips. In Ex. 6, you can see how these ear-grabbing sounds would work over our blues progression. It begins with an E triad in the “D” shape. It’s genuinely amazing how many great chordal licks Scotty could come up with by using just a few chord forms.
Click here for Ex. 6
Ex. 7 is a little trickier, but a great example of how to move from an A chord to an E chord using some double-stops and single notes along with position shifts and sixths. This is very much a country phrase and evidence of the genre’s importance to the rockabilly sound.
Click here for Ex. 7
The final example (Ex. 8) is a longer, 20-measure piece outlining a full progression with Scotty's superb Travis-picking ideas. While this isn’t a column specifically on Travis picking with a collection of exercises to develop that skill, here are a couple of simple tips that should help you navigate this music.
First, focus only on the bass notes. The thumb needs to be automatic. Strive to put no thought into playing the bass part. This takes time but eventually you’ll be free to concentrate on the melody. The last part to absorb is the excellent ending chord. It’s a maj6/9 with the root on top—very common in the rockabilly style.
Click here for Ex. 8
From here it’s easy to hear Scotty’s immense influence on guitardom. It would be well worth your time to go down a rabbit hole of YouTube vids from the CAAS (Chet Atkins Appreciation Society) conference. Nearly every player from that scene owes a debt to Mr. Moore.
A reimagined classic S-style guitar with Fishman Greg Koch Signature pickups and a Wilkinson VS100N tremolo.
Designed to resonate with both tone and soul, this guitar boasts a slightly larger profile with a raised center section, offering superior dynamics and feel. A chamber beneath the pickguard enhances punch, while hum-free Fishman Greg Koch Signature Gristle-Tone pickups and a Wilkinson VS100N tremolo complete the package.
This marks the third signature model from Reverend Guitars for blues virtuoso Greg Koch, joining the revered Gristlemaster and Gristle-90. Each of these guitars, equipped with Fishman’s Greg Koch Signature pickups, embodies the relentless pursuit of tone, delivering inspiration to players who seek to push their own musical boundaries.
The Gristle ST has everything I need to engage in fiendish musical deeds. It has the classic sounds with a second voice to the pickups that adds more girthsome tones, a tremolo system that can take a licking and stay in tune, it’s a gorgeous looking and playing instrument that is just a little bit larger as to not look like a mandolin when played by a larger soul such as myself…I can dig it all! – Greg Koch
The Reverend Greg Koch Gristle ST is now available through any Reverend Authorized Dealer.
For more information, please visit reverendguitars.com.