The gear of Slash, Duff McKagan, and Richard Fortus finally revealed.
In addition to the Voodoo, Fortus runs a Supro Black Magick combo with Celestion creamback Alnico.
Special thanks to Slash's tech Adam Day and Duff's tech Mike āMcbobā Mayhue who have both been with the band since Appetite for Destruction.
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- Slash's Blues Ball Band Rig Rundown: Dive into the Gear - Premier Guitar āŗ
The author found this one-of-a-kind tremolo/vibrato/sound-altering modulation box at Quattro Music Company in Thomas, West Virginia.
Producer and roots-guitar veteran Michael Dinallo pens his unabashed love letter to tremolo, with fond recollections of vintage Fender and Gibson amps, Dunlopās TS-1, and a one-of-a-kind mystery modulator.
Tremolo is my favorite effect to modulate a guitarās sound (and I love vibrato, too). I love it so much that itās part of the moniker of the production team I had with the late Ducky Carlisleāthe Tremolo Twinsāas well as our Trem-Tone Records label. You might recognize Ducky from his many engineering credits, including Buddy Guy, or our work together on albums like Stax veteran Eddie Floydās heralded Eddie Loves You So, from 2008.
For me, the golden period of tremolo was the early 1960s. The brown-panel Fender amps of that period have astounding harmonic tremolo, as do the Gibson amps from that period. I have a 1963 Gibson GA-5T Skylark that has a tremendous tremolo circuit. I used that amp for all the guitar parts I cut on my new album, The Nightās Last Dance,as well as all the records Iāve worked on over the last four years, either as producer or player. My favorite, though, is the 1963 2x10 Fender Superāalso a brown-panel amp. It can be so soupy that, if multi-tracked, it can almost induce seasickness.
But there are so many choices and classic sounds. The Magnatone and Lonnie Mack jump to mind, or the use of a Leslie cabinet for guitar, which is another sound I love as both player and producer. Two of the most distinct and famous uses of tremolo, to my ears, are Link Wrayās āRumbleā and Reggie Youngās arpeggiating opening chord on āThe Dark End of the Streetā by James Carr. There is a shimmery quality to big chords drenched in a slow tremolo, especially if the part is doubled. From a production standpoint, it adds depth to a track, even if itās mixed way in the back.
Letās talk about doubling a tremolo part. Once in a while you can get lucky and have the amp cycle the wave at just the right time as you hit the record button. But most often not. Usually this is not a big deal and adds to the depth of the bed part being recorded. Sometimes, though, it has to be a tight double. Thatās when Iāve spent much time guessing at the cycling and trying to hit it just right. Itās a blast when you do.
One of my favorite experiments with tremolo was setting up two ampsāa brown-panel Fender Vibroverb and a brown-panel Fender Concertāin a V-shape. The amps were set to the same volume and approximately the same tone settings. Using a stereo mic in the middle of the V, we recorded it to one track. We had to keep tweaking the individual tremolo settings in an effort to not have them cancel each other out. But what a huge, lush sound!
āThere is a shimmery quality to big chords drenched in slow tremolo, especially if the part is doubled.ā
There are many tremolo pedals and recording plugins these days, and theyāre all good, but nothing quite captures the sound of an internal tremolo circuit. You can avoid chasing their cycles, too, if a pedal has a tap-tempo function. But what fun is that?
The one tremolo pedal, for me, that comes the closest to an in-amp circuit is the now-vintage Dunlop TS-1. Thirty years ago, I needed a tremolo pedal for my road ampāat the time, a 1994 Fender tweed Blues DeVille. I found Dunlopās big, honking purple metal box with ātremoloā written across the front in wavy yellow letters. You can get wide, sweeping tremolo or set it to a hard, choppy setting where the volume completely disappears. Iāve used both applications effectively. The hard trem is great for the last chord of a song, especially live, hitting like a boxer sparring with a weighted, hanging bagāespecially if youāre diving into a psychedelic ending. And, of course, mixing in other modulation effects, such as flanging or phasing, adds another twist.
I found the most unique tremolo/vibrato/sound-altering modulation box I have at Quattro Music Company in Thomas, West Virginia. Itās not a pedal per se; itās circuitry housed in a cigar box with so many knobs and switches and variations that I still have not exhausted all the possibilities. Itās a one-off. I was told it was the only tremolo box the inventor made. Combining it with a front-end boost and diming an amp produces otherworldly sounds. Iāve used it on a couple of recordings: āNever, No More (A Reckoning)ā by Keith Sykes and me, and āTime Machineā by the Dinallos (where we were joined by Nashvilleās famed singing siblings, the McCrary Sisters). With the latter, itās most obvious as a tremolo device, and on the former itās as a sound-altering gizmo that enhances the guitar leads.
Of all the toys in the arsenal that guitarists have, Iāve gotta say, long live tremolo!
The PRS Standard is one of the two models that started PRS Guitars back in 1985. It has been out of the line up for more than ten years and coming back for the 40th Anniversary.
PRS Standard 24 Satin Electric Guitar - Satin Red Apple Metallic
The PRS Standard 24 features many classic PRS specifications, including a 25ā scale length, Pattern Thin neck with a 24-fret, 10ā radius rosewood fretboard, PRS Patented Tremolo, and PRS Phase III tuners with unplated brass shafts. Under the hood, the PRS Standard 24 is outfitted with the all-new PRS DMO treble and bass pickups with volume and tone controls and a 5-way blade switch. PRS DMO (Dynamic, Musical, Open) pickups have a āwide openā sound with vocal character, meaning they deliver clear, pleasant-sounding tones across a wide range of frequencies (bass to treble) in each pickup. DMO pickups were personally designed by Paul Reed Smith and the PRS New Products Engineering team. From our own hands-on research into coveted vintage pickup models to advancements in signal analyzation and ātuningā technology, these pickups incorporate every detail of pickup knowledge PRS has gained in recent years of R&D.
John McLaughlin: From Miles to Mahavishnu and Way Beyond
Heās never stopped developing, and weāre covering our favorite highlights of McLaughlinās career: his acoustic (and later electric) take on Indian music with Shakti, his more traditional jazz projects, and much more.
Guitarist John McLaughlinās career has been long and winding. From his early solo records and work with Miles Davis, he possessed a unique approach to the guitar that encompassed jazz and rock vocabulary, played with a biting tone and stellar, virtuosic technique. Heās never stopped developing, and weāre covering our favorite highlights of McLaughlinās career: his acoustic (and later electric) take on Indian music with Shakti, his more traditional jazz projects, and much more.
There are lots of listening highlights in this episode and weāve covered as much as we can: Mahavishnu Orchestraās first two records are undisputable; Tony Williams Lifetimeās Emergency may be the birth of fusion guitar; McLaughlinās mid-career studies in Indian music are inspiring; his take on Coltrane in an organ-jazz setting is monumental. But we could still cover a whole other episodeās worth.
Andyās axe!
The Police guitaristās go-to guitar is the source of a few mysteries, so letās crack the code.
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. In this column, weāll take a closer look at the wiring of Andy Summersā famous Telecaster, as well as some of the many mysteries of this guitar that remain unsolved today.
Best known as the guitarist from the Police, Summers was born and raised in England. He picked up the guitar at a young age, and moved to London when he was 19, aspiring to become a professional musician. Eventually, he played with some legendary bandleaders, including Eric Burdon and Jimi Hendrix. Summers studied classical guitar and composition in Los Angeles at California State University, Northridge, graduating in 1972. After moving back to London, he played with Joan Armatrading, Jon Lord, Mike Oldfield, and many more before meeting Gordon Sumner (aka Sting) and Stewart Copeland and joining the Police in 1977. The rest, as they say, is history.
The guitar Summers is most associated withāand which you can hear on a lot of the bandās hit recordsāis a well-worn and heavily modified sunburst Fender Telecaster. Letās dive into what makes it so unique.
The story goes that before returning to the U.K. from Los Angeles, Summers bought this Telecaster from one of his guitar students for $200 (approximately $1,420 today). It was already highly modified, and Summers instantly fell in love with it. Modifications included a brass nut and brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles. The bridge pickup was installed directly into the body and there is a humbucker in the neck position, plus it had a phase switch on the bridge pickup and an additional third pot and switch controlling its active boost circuitry. The only mod Summers did on the guitar after receiving it was installing replacement Schaller tuners.
Summers has stated that the guitar is from 1961, although, because of the double binding on the body, itās quite possibly a sunburst Telecaster Custom from 1963. The serial number on the neck heel indicates 1961, suggesting Fender may have used pre-produced necks from an earlier batch for the first run of Telecaster Customs in 1963. Or maybe it was a custom order from someone who wanted double binding in 1961? Dennis Galuszka from the Fender Custom Shop was the lucky guy who had the pleasure of taking the original instrument apart to closely study it while collecting info for the Tribute series. In September 2024, he told Guitar World: āIf I had to guess, it looks like the neck came off a ā50s Tele because it actually had a little white blonde paintālike they used on ā50s Telesāleft on the butt. But the neck pocket had no date written or stamped on it, which was weird. And the body has been routed out so much under the pickguard that all traces of a date are long gone.ā There are no records at the Fender factory that can shed any more light on this, so it will remain a mysteryābut not the only one.
Putting a neck humbucker on a Telecaster was nothing too special at this time; same goes for the phase switch. But while brass hardware had become a popular mod to many guitars by the mid-to-late ā70s, it wasnāt something that was common on Telecasters (or on Fenders in general), making the brass nut and bridge plate unusual.
Another mystery is the active booster circuitry inside this guitar. When the Fender Custom Shop released the Masterbuilt Andy Summers Tribute Telecaster in the mid 2000s, it was equipped with the mid-boost circuit from the Eric Clapton Strat. This circuit first debuted in 1983 in the Fender Elite Stratocaster, 10 years after Summers received this Telecaster. So the circuit used in Summersā Telecaster must have been a different one. Keeping the timeline in mind, itās likely that it was one of the many treble-boost circuits from this eraāmaybe something like the Dallas Rangemaster, EHX LPB-1, or something similar with a single-pot boost control. Or maybe it came from a cannibalized stompbox or was a home-brewed device ... again, this will remain a mystery. My personal guess is that the original circuit in the guitar stopped working after 1983, and one of the guitar techs had to replace it. Maybe Summers was not interested in those details, and as long as there was a boost available, he didnāt care what was going on under the hood.
Belt-buckle rash? A bit.
Photo courtesy of Ten-Guitars (https://ten-guitars.de)
Another mystery is the identity of the student who he purchased the guitar from. Summers has never shared their name, and we donāt know who modded it. Interestingly, in all those years, no one ever spoke up to earn the credits for this modding work. This alone fuels speculation as to who really did all these mods.
Now, letās take a look what features this guitar has:
ā¢ 2-piece alder body, white double binding, 3-tone sunburst finish
ā¢ Quarter-sawn maple neck, C profile, 21 vintage frets, 7 1/4" fretboard radius, brass nut
ā¢ Scale length 25 1/2", width at nut 1.650"
ā¢ Brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles
ā¢ Schaller M6 tuning machines
ā¢ Two butterfly string trees
ā¢ Rectangular jack plate held by only two of four screws
ā¢ 3-ply mint green pickguard with ā59 PAF humbucker in the neck position and ā60s Telecaster single-coil pickup directly mounted into the body
ā¢ Standard Telecaster 3-way pickup selector switch with modern wiring: bridge/bridge + neck in parallel/neck
ā¢ 250k master audio volume, 250k master audio tone controls
ā¢ Mini-toggle phase switch for the bridge pickup on the control plate
ā¢ Extensive routing on the back housing the active boost circuitry, 9V battery, and the additional third pot for controlling the amount of boost, all covered with a homemade backplate out of 3-ply black pickguard material
In the next installment of this column, we will break it down piece by piece, talk about the wiring, and how you can build your own Andy Summers tribute Telecaster, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding!