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Rig Rundown: Maroon 5’s James Valentine [2015]

The mega-selling pop outfit’s 6-string guru shows us his vintage Teles, Matchless and Suhr amps, and ultra-flexible pedal and rack setup.

For tunes where he needs a soaring lead sound, Valentine also plays a mahogany-and-maple semi-hollowbody built by Swedish luthier Johan Gustavsson.

Premier Guitar’s John Bohlinger met with Maroon 5’s James Valentine before the band’s February 27, 2015, gig at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. In this segment, we see how the closet jazz cat uses a variety of vintage and high-end boutique guitars and amps to get the wide variety of sounds he has to replicate at each show.

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See and hear Taylor’s Legacy Collection guitars played by his successor, Andy Powers.

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A rig meant to inspire! That’s Jerry Garcia with his Doug Irwin-built Tiger guitar, in front of his Twin Reverb + McIntosh + JBL amp rig.

Photo by Frank White

Three decades after the final Grateful Dead performance, Jerry Garcia’s sound continues to cast a long shadow. Guitarists Jeff Mattson of Dark Star Orchestra, Tom Hamilton of JRAD, and Bella Rayne explain how they interpret Garcia’s legacy musically and with their gear.

“I met Jerry Garcia once, in 1992, at the bar at the Ritz Carlton in New York,” Dark Star Orchestra guitarist Jeff Mattson tells me over the phone. Nearly sixty-seven years old, Mattson is one of the longest-running members of the Grateful Dead tribute band scene, which encompasses hundreds of groups worldwide. The guitarist is old enough to have lived through most of the arc ofthe actual Grateful Dead’s career. As a young teen, he first absorbed their music by borrowing their seminal records, American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead, brand new then, from his local library to spin on his turntable. Around that same moment, he started studying jazz guitar. Between 1973 and 1995, Mattson saw the Dead play live hundreds of times, formed the landmark jam bandZen Tricksters, and later stepped into theJerry Garcia lead guitarist role with the Dark Star Orchestra (DSO), one of the leading Dead tribute acts.

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For the first time ever, two guitar greats, John 5 and Richie Kotzen will be heading out on the road this year. The tour will launch October 16 and run through November, hitting markets across the U.S.

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AEROSMITH guitarist and songwriter JOE PERRY is set to return to the road for a series of August performances with THE JOE PERRY PROJECT. The 8-date run kicks off August 13 in Tampa, FL and wraps August 23 in Port Chester, New York, with an August 19 performance in PERRY’s Boston hometown (see the itinerary below). For the North American trek—which marks the first solo shows for PERRY this year—the legendary guitarist will be joined by his Aerosmith bandmates Brad Whitford (guitar) and Buck Johnson (keys), along with The Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson (vocals), and Stone Temple Pilots’ Robert DeLeo (bass), and Eric Kretz (drums).

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