Halfling guitars are an unique hybrid of flattop and archtop guitars developed by master luthier, Tom Ribbecke in Healdsburg, California. He’s been a luthier since 1972, concentrating primarily on archtop guitars – commissions only and all entirely hand-built by Ribbecke himself. These guitars sell for a base price of $20,000, and Ribbecke’s reputation for impeccable craftsmanship and quality have his waiting list currently sitting at over five years long.The Halflings originally came about through a commission from Paul Szmanda, a visionary guitar collector, who asked Ribbecke to build something, “historically significant.” Given total freedom to create something unique, he had the inspiration to combine his passion and expertise in both archtop and flattop building. In a recent phone conversation, Ribbecke explained that, “if you take a good flattop guitar, like a Martin D-28, and a good archtop guitar, like a D’Angelico, and cut them both in half, right up the middle, then put them together with the archtop on the treble side and the flattop on the bass side – what you’d get is a Halfling.” The top is carved like a traditional archtop, but the bass side ends up almost completely flat instead of arched like the treble side. The resulting instrument has an additional liveliness and brilliance that many traditional archtops lack, without losing the smoothness and warmth in the low-end those guitars are known for. The Ribbecke Guitar Corporation went into business four years ago in order to take the Halflings into production, and to make them affordable. Ribbecke now has a staff of 12 and produces approximately 20 Halflings a month.
The newest addition to the Halfling family is the Halfling Pin Bridge, which has the same bass/treble configuration as the jazz box side of the house, applied to an acoustic guitar. The result is a striking, retro-styled body with a voice like no other guitar I’ve heard. It’s the guitar equivalent of a stallion – powerful and robust with a fierce and untamed beauty. The Halfling Pin Bridge is certainly a new breed and it’s not for the faint-of-heart.
"if you take a good flattop guitar, like a Martin D-28, and a good archtop guitar, like a D''Angelico, and cut them both in half, right up the middle...what you''d get is a Halfling."
In thinking about how to describe this guitar, I was reminded of the VW Rabbit Rally car I owned many years ago. If you didn’t know what you were doing, you could get yourself into a heap of trouble, but it cornered like a gazelle and flew over ground effortlessly. That’s sort of what playing this guitar is like – it requires a confident touch and a little recklessness, which is definitely a good thing. When I got it tuned up to scale, it almost seemed to come to life. There was a sudden burst of extra resonance in the lows and the highs became startlingly brilliant and clear. The response to my input was immediate and powerful – almost like ringing a bell. If you approach it gently, it gives you a lovely, clear tone, but the more aggressive you get, the more it responds to you, opening up more overtones the more you play.
The craftsmanship is exceptional – the finish and trim are flawless, from the gorgeous inlaid flower on the headstock to the hand-carved bridge. The fretboard, bridge and headplate are made from the highest grade ebony, and it is the same wood Ribbecke uses in his private shop. The tuning keys are also ebony, adding to the luxurious feel of the instrument. The instrument has a “high-concept” look, extremely well designed and eye-catching, accented by the oversized bridge and the round soundhole on the bass side of the upper bout (more on this in a moment). The neck is comfortable and glassy-smooth, measuring 1.75” wide at the nut and about 2.2” at the 14th fret – that’s slightly wider than your typical flattop, but Ribbecke prefers to have the strings sit a little further away from the fingerboard edge. The Halfling was setup with a fairly low action, almost like a hollow-body electric, which shouldn’t be surprising, as that is the style of guitar Ribbecke is most famous for building. It’s a setup that works for the Halfling, as even during extended play I felt very little hand fatigue.
That said, some acoustic players found it too alien of a design and were unable to get comfortable enough with that feel to find the Halfling’s most rewarding sounds. Players with a less confident approach were even less able to get comfortable with it. I personally found myself not concentrating as much on playing things I already knew; I instead set out to find new things to play, improvising and experimenting to discover imaginative ways to play familiar things. This certainly isn’t an “everything” guitar; it’s not going to be one of those guitars that can be all things to all players, and Ribbecke never intended it to be. I found it to be best suited to jazz, blues and solo-acoustic playing ala Michael Hedges or Richard Leo Johnson. That’s not “everything,” but it’s still a pretty significant palette.
Hearing is Believing
As alluded to earlier, a very cool detail is the 1.5” hole in the side of the upper bout, which gives the player a much richer listening experience than with a conventional acoustic. This little detail provides a wealth of feedback for the player; you can hear everything you’re playing – and not playing – much more distinctly. This would also be a new and interesting spot to place a microphone in a recording studio to see what additional overtones might be captured.
The Halfling Pin Bridge comes installed with a B-Band 1/8” Under Saddle Transducer (UST) and an A2.2 preamp, so I decided to plug in and see if it could capture all of those robust and stunning overtones. Holy Halflings, Batman! I tweaked the bass back a hair, shaved the low-mids at 550Hz, cut the high-mids just shy of a quarter turn at around 1.7kHz and dialed the treble back a smidge. By adding just a kiss of reverb, I got a rich, full and vibrant sound with gain to burn; in a word, spectacular.
Dropping into DADGAD, the bass remained punchy, but it became slightly warmer. Dropping a step further into CGDGBD, the Halfling took on a dark and glassy sound – the sustain on the bass side was extraordinary, anywhere from 16 to 20 seconds. However, the top seems most active in good ol’ standard tuning, probably because of the tension. There’s a punch on the low E string that just about knocks your socks off; every note is crystal clear and rings until you get bored and decide to start playing again.
As for questions of durability, the guitar’s top is slightly heavier than traditional flattops, making it “extremely roadable,” according to Ribbecke. He travels with two Halflings and says he’s never had any damage from air travel or otherwise. The neck has two carbon fiber rods and a two-way truss rod developed by Mark Blanchard, meaning you’ll never have to worry about stability. The model I received had been to California, Toronto and Iowa over the course of ten days, and was holding up remarkably well, considering the extremes in climate it had experienced.
The Final Mojo
This Halfling Pin Bridge is not for everyone. If you’re a tentative or shy player, it’s never going to give you what it’s capable of and it may feel very strange as well. If you’re a serious and confident player who’s not afraid to live a little bit large, this guitar will rock your world. This isn’t the only guitar you’ll ever need, but it’s one hell of a ride.
Buy if...
you want a unique instrument that will enhance and challenge you as a player, and you have the chops to give it the life it deserves
Skip if...
you’re set on a conventional flattop sound, look and feel
Rating...
MSRP $6000 - Ribbecke Guitar Corp- ribbecke.com |
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Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.