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Rig Rundown: Nick Raskulinecz

Try to keep your skull glued on while geeking out on the gear the Grammy-winning producer uses to make epic albums with Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains, Deftones, Korn, Rush, Mastodon, and others.

Lzzy Hale gave Nick this Gibson Explorer—one of her signature model Gibsons—after production wrapped on Halestorm’s 2018 album, Vicious. It’s got a solid mahogany body and a ’57 Classic pickup on the bridge with a ’57 Classic Plus in the neck slot.

D'Addario Micro Tuner:https://ddar.io/Micro.Tuner

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Kevin Gordon and his beloved ES-125, in earlier days.

Photo by David Wilds

Looking for new fuel for your sound and songs? Nashville’s Kevin Gordon found both in exploring traditional blues tunings and their variations.

I first heard open guitar tunings while in college, from older players who’d become friends or mentors, and from various artists playing at the Delta Blues Festival in the early mid-’80s, which was held in a fallow field in Freedom Village, Mississippi—whose topographical limits likely did not extend beyond said field.

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Need more firepower? Here’s a collection of high-powered stomps that pack plenty of torque.

There’s a visceral feeling that goes along with really cranking the gain. Whether you’re using a clean amp or an already dirty setup, adding more gain can inspire you to play in an entirely different way. Below are a handful of pedals that can take you from classic crunch to death metal doom—and beyond.

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We chat with Molly about Sister Rosetta’s “immediately impressive” playing, which blends jazz, gospel, chromaticism, and blues into an early rock ‘n’ roll style that was not only way ahead of its time but was also truly rockin’.

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Paul Reed Smith shows John Bohlinger how to detect the grain in a guitar-body blank, in a scene from PG’s PRS Factory Tour video.

Paul Reed Smith says being a guitar builder requires code-cracking, historical perspective, and an eclectic knowledge base. Mostly, it asks that we remain perpetual students and remain willing to become teachers.

I love to learn, and I don’t enjoy history kicking my ass. In other words, if my instrument-making predecessors—Ted McCarty, Leo Fender, Christian Martin, John Heiss, Antonio de Torres, G.B. Guadagnini, and Antonio Stradivari, to name a few—made an instrument that took my breath away when I played it, and it sounded better than what I had made, I wanted to know not just what they had done, but what they understood that I didn’t understand yet. And because it was clear to me that these masters understood some things that I didn’t, I would go down rabbit holes.

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