Kudos to Premier
Guitar and
Michael Ross for
featuring Sister
Rosetta Tharpe
in Forgotten
Heroes [May
2011]. I stumbled
on Sister Rosetta
Tharpe a few years ago while watching
the [2001] movie Amélie. She was
featured in a video montage scene
(playing the song “Up Above My
Head”) in the movie. My jaw dropped
when I watched her play and perform
(great showmanship!). Up until then,
when I thought of the invention of
rock lead guitar, I thought of Chuck
Berry. Now it’s pretty obvious there
was a co-creator—her name was Sister
Rosetta Tharpe. It’s great to see her
contribution to the evolution of guitar
recognized.—Al "Ancil" Palacio
via email
What a coincidence, Al! Amélie is how I first saw and heard Sister Rosetta, too. She blew me away! I thought, “I’m a guitar freak—why don’t I know who this is?” In fact, that experience was the impetus for creating the Forgotten Heroes series. Innumerable guitarists—and not just the big names we’re used to hearing/ reading about all the time—have served as living milestones in the evolution of guitar as we know it. And no guitarist— no matter how well read or how long they’ve been around—can possibly know them all. Forgotten Heroes aims to give those key players their due by introducing them to a new generation and adding more context for those who only have a cursory knowledge of them.
—Shawn Hammond
A Rush from Our Rush Rig Rundown
Just caught the interview on Alex Lifeson’s gear on Facebook. That was super informative and covered a lot more than I thought they’d talk about. I liked that you rolled those questions at him in an organized “input to output” fashion so we could get the whole overview. Just wanted to let you know I really liked it and thought you did a super-pro job!
—Dan Volpe
Chicago, Illinois
Thanks, Dan! It was a fun interview. And it’s nice to have someone notice the amount of preparation that goes into these Rig Rundowns. —Rebecca Dirks
Your Aha! Moments
Thanks so much for the last two months’ articles of “What Was I Thinking” and “‘Aha!’- Moment Redemption” [Tuning Up April and May 2011, respectively]. I particularly liked the Learning by Osmosis feature, which is something I’ve been doing most of my professional career. I’m much more interested in exploring what goes on inside the heads of my heroes than emulating their phrasing note-for-note. I’ve had two significant “Aha!” moments in my playing and writing lately.
- I try not to get “locked in” on a particular riff/hook and then close the door on it and say, “that’s it.” I find that if I stretch it—take it in different directions and not just accept it as finito—that there are endless opportunities for embellishing it. Use a different key, use it as a verse rather than a chorus (or vice versa), use it as a bridge for a different song rather than making a song out of it . . . you get the idea. Explore, explore, and explore. Parenthetically, I find that most of these nuggets started out as something else. They are what I term “happy accidents.” Usually when I write something that works and is actually noteworthy, I was trying to do something else.
- I’ve expanded the idea of Flesh Tones to apply to plectrums, as well. Being pretty much a late-’70s arena rocker, I had come from the Billy Gibbons school of “spank the plank” with the hardest pick you can find. I almost exclusively used Fender Extra Heavy or Dunlop .121 picks. But in an “Aha!” moment in the studio with my acoustic guitar, I found that I could achieve a much richer and singing tone by backing off to mediums or even lights. It made a huge difference in the audio map of the tracks. I’ve also gone to using the finger approach for electric to achieve some dynamics in my studio work. I’m not adept enough yet to leave the picks behind in a live situation, but I’m finding that there is an entire new sonic world to be explored with the use of my fingers on my Strat and Tele.
—John E. Mausen
San Francisco, California
I am so relieved somebody else thinks like me about covers. I have felt a little bad about not knowing a certain song when somebody finds out I play guitar. As you suggest, I listen to my favorites (Satriani, Paul Gilbert) and let that tone, selection of notes, and playing dynamics seep into what I create. I met a guitar teacher and showed him one of my songs and I was pleasantly surprised to hear from him, “Wow, that sounds like Satriani.” It made me feel so proud that I could be compared to such a demigod of rock! Of course, I am nowhere near Satriani, but your point is to let your influences be influences and not something to copy note-for-note.
Rock on,
—Edgar Cancel
via email
Corrections
In our May 2011 review of the new Fender Pawn Shop Series guitars, we should have referred to the ’72’s bridge pickup as an alnico unit and the neck pickup as a new Wide Range humbucker. Similarly, the Mustang Special has Enforcer Wide Range humbuckers with downsized Wide Range covers.
Keep those comments coming!
Please send your suggestions, gripes, comments, and good words directly to info@premierguitar.com. You can also send snail mail to Premier Guitar, Three Research Center, Marion, IA 52302. Please remember to include your full name. Selected letters may be edited for clarity.
EBS BassIQ Blue Label Triple Envelope Filter Pedal
The EBS BassIQ produces sounds ranging from classic auto-wah effects to spaced-out "Funkadelic" and synth-bass sounds. It is for everyone looking for a fun, fat-sounding, and responsive envelope filter that reacts to how you play in a musical way.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
